Page 34 of Gryphon

The moment he stepped into Room Three, he realized this wasn’t his average weeper. She wasn’t some civilian so overwhelmed by events.

The woman waiting for him wore a green flight suit with the Finnish flag on her left arm in a Swedish military base. He didn’t know how to read her rank by the three horizontal stripes on her insignia patch. Jet pilot typically meant officer, he knew that much.

Despite the obvious helmet hair, and the seriously high-end pilot’s helmet on the bench that had given it to her, her thick dark-brown hair was lovely. Actually, it was all he saw of her as she leaned forward with her hands clasped and her elbows on her knees.

“Hi there. My name is Mike Munroe. I’m with the crash investigation team. They said you needed to talk to someone.” Not his smoothest opening.

“Right here,” she pointed between her thighs.

Mike groaned to himself. He didn’t need the come on right now.

“That’s where her ejection handle would be.”

He logged her as a question for later and reminded himself not to jump to conclusions. Neutral observer, that was the trick. Besides, he didn’t know squat. While locked in the plane with Holly, he’d missed any initial briefing that would have explained what was going on. “Uh-huh,” he tried to sound encouraging as he sat down on the bench with her helmet between them.

“She said it moved on its own.”

“They’re not supposed to do that, right?”

She raised her face and shoved aside a handful of hair. “Who are you?”

I’m the idiot they send to calm down distraught witnesses. He pulled out his NTSB ID and his CAC card. “Mike Munroe. Sorry, nobody briefed me on what’s happening. They called me in to assist but I, uh, wanted to hear what happened directly from the—” he made a wild guess and hoped it stuck “—only witness without the bias of any other, um, interference. So, if you don’t mind starting at the top, taking your time, I’d appreciate it. Your English is very good, by the way.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s the second language of Finland. Third actually after Swedish. Most of us are at least trilingual.”

“That’s great. I’m trilingual in English and bad Russian. Of course, I do have trouble with things like counting sometimes.”

It didn’t even earn a crack of a smile. But, she did hand back his ID and his security clearance after reading both carefully and comparing each to his face. She had a face that wasn’t out in Klara Dahlberg territory, but didn’t disappoint for a second.

Then she started her account. Most of it sounded pretty routine, so he listened to the second part of the conversation, the part she wasn’t saying.

Kapten Liisa Salo may have never met Major Ingrid Eklund in person, but there’d been a deep affinity between the two. The kind of connection that sounded as if it went beyond sisters-in-arms; or would have.

Liisa became more and more precise as she neared the end of her story and he tuned back in to the primary thread.

“The Gripen is an amazing plane. I wish that we flew it in Finland. And I wish I flew half as well Ingrid.”

He felt the downward spiral that must be at the end of her story. Rather than letting her reach the end, probably when she had burst into tears in front of Miranda, he circled her back to Ingrid’s last few transmissions both before the ejection and during her descent.

Coming at them several ways—he even had her tell him every detail in reverse order—to check for every nuance he could uncover. He circled back to the self-raising ejection handle multiple times, eliciting every nuance she could recall.

Only then did he let her tell the end of Major Ingrid Eklund.

And again, he had a weeping woman on his shoulder.

Thankfully no mascara.

At least this was the last time.

27

Holly stood close behind the one-way glass on Interview Room Three. Her chest hurt, no matter how many times she rubbed the side of her hand up her breastbone.

Tad leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed over his chest—almost three feet away this time. But she’d bet he was watching her ass. The SHK crash investigator who’d accompanied them the whole way stood stiffly next to him.

Jeremy stood close to the one-way glass beside her. He kept wanting to talk about each detail the Finnish pilot told to Mike. Wanted to analyze aloud the maneuverability of the JAS 39E Grippen versus the F/A-18C Hornet. To—

She’d had to threaten bodily damage if he didn’t shut up.

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