Page 48 of Gryphon

He leaned into the gap between their seats and looked aft.

Miranda pictured them all too easily. Holly in the sideways seat behind Mike guaranteed her some buffer from the others. In the four main seats sat Jeremy, Kurt Anderson, the head of the SHK accident investigation authority, and a General Larsson, the chief of the Swedish Air Force. He’d been in the meeting with Liisa Salo. The last seat was taken by a two-star general with a NATO patch on his sleeve. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. Was she supposed to know who he was? She hoped not because she didn’t.

Tad had taken the rearmost seat, the cushioned toilet at the very rear.

“Yes, Miranda, that is a lot of people.”

Mike always understood. And that small truth, validating her own observation. Or was it a feeling? Whichever it was, Mike made it that much more tolerable.

“Did they say why they were traveling with us?” he asked.

“General Larsson said he didn’t want to risk being a single step away from our team.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Why?” Miranda had wondered if, like gravity or magnetism, risk fell off by the square of the distance. Perhaps this was a Counter-inverse Square Law she was unfamiliar with, where three steps away were nine times riskier than one step, rather than one-ninth as risky as a standard Inverse Square Law would dictate.

“It’s a compliment, Miranda. It means that he’s very impressed by the team and wants to make sure he’s first to learn what we find out.”

“But if you think it up, he wouldn’t be first. And if you then tell me, he’d be third at the very closest.”

“Among the first. Along with everyone else who is close by.”

“Oh.” That made sense. It should have been obvious without Mike explaining it. But it hadn’t been. She’d never thought to chart her ease of comprehension over time, but it qualitatively felt as if it was becoming more of an issue with each passing day rather than less. She shied away from asking herself why. The memory of the two autistic meltdowns she’d suffered since Andi had left struck terror into her heart. Was she in a deep regression? A lifelong regression?

No, she wouldn’t think about that.

“So, what happened?”

“Someone shot down a JAS 39E Gripen in Storuman, five hundred and sixty-three kilometers to the north.” Then she glanced down at the console. “Four hundred and ninety-seven now. They used a FIM-92E Stinger.”

Mike twisted to look at her.

“That’s all they said, other than asking me to go. I’m not sure why, a military attack isn’t a crash.” She didn’t look back, instead keeping her attention on the proximity radar. Mike hadn’t taken over the radio work with air traffic control when he’d joined her in the cockpit. That in itself was unusual. Not that the communication in the fifty-minute flight through central Sweden required much attention, but he normally handled that. Nor did he offer to act as pilot-in-command. He usually liked the practice.

It was one of the reasons she’d decided to make the flight from their latest meeting in Washington, DC, to the Reykjavik ISASI conference in her own plane. It was near the Citation’s limits, even with stops in St. Johns, Newfoundland, and Narsarsuaq, Greenland, for fuel. Within the US and Canada, Mike had never had reason to log time on long-distance over-water flights. Though she hadn’t planned on continuing to Sweden.

A complete circumnavigation?

She’d never given it serious thought. In a different political time, they might have continued right around, but with Russian airspace closed, there were no achievable connections over the Pacific. Even Amelia Earhart’s old route would require two flights beyond the M2’s maximum range. Perhaps if she had a bigger jet. The M2 didn’t have sufficient excess payload to place a large enough auxiliary fuel tank in the cabin to span the Hawaii-to-Oakland leg.

Only her and Mike?

But Mike would want to bring Holly.

And she would want to bring—

Miranda shied away from the painful thought.

She would want to bring Meg. The Glen of Imaal Terrier was her only true companion now. But even if the payload was restricted to Meg and herself, the M2 still lacked the range.

Perhaps she should look into trading up to the CJ4. But she didn’t need a ten-passenger jet. She could barely justify the M2, though it was proving useful. Besides, that would be a different plane. She didn’t like change and her autism hated it. Miranda knew this one now. In the year since her father’s Mooney had burned, she’d only piloted the M2 and her Sabrejet. No, she’d stay with the familiar and forego any thoughts of a circumnavigation.

Mike unharnessed and rose to his feet though they weren’t up to cruise altitude yet.

Before she had a chance to point out the violation of safety protocols, he headed aft. He didn’t go far.

He knelt in the area between Holly’s seat and the exit door. That was good. Unable to determine quite why, she’d been worried about them. Seeing them playing in the snow together as she’d taxied up to them had been very encouraging. This too.

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