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Looking around, Miranda plucked the clipboard from Susan’s hands. Before she could protest, Miranda had opened the clip, twisted the pages to either side, and released it, crumpling their corners.
Before Brightman could explode, Miranda began talking.
“Imagine this is an F-35C.” The pages did stick out past the clipboard’s edges like wings. “I’m assuming by the fact that we’re on an aircraft carrier and the pattern of the exhaust marks that it wasn’t an F-35B.”
“It was a C,” Brightman managed, though Susan swore she could hear the woman’s teeth grinding over the sound of the jet now taxiing to the forward catapult.
Miranda appeared to ignore the interruptions of the flight operations as if they never happened. They were simply non-moments of time when all conversation ceased, Brightman issued a few commands regarding ship heading or tactical patrols, conferred with one of her other officers about operations, and earmuffs were replaced then removed after launches and recoveries. Miranda always restarted at exactly the same place in the sentence she’d left off.
“So, the clipboard I’m holding—” she dropped it on the table. “Oh, never mind, the scale is all wrong.” She stepped over to the Ouija Board and picked up a round with a popsicle stick. “This scale is much better. It’s within eighteen percent anyway.”
The Handler tried to grab it back, but Holly rested a hand on his shoulder and he flinched aside as if he’d been punched. Others wouldn’t know that the tall, beautiful blonde had also been a top Aussie Spec Ops operator, though Susan herself now had no trouble remembering. Holly had probably squeezed a nerve cluster as neatly as a Vulcan nerve pinch.
“How do you figureeighteenpercent?” Susan still couldn’t tell if what Miranda Chase was saying was fact or some fantasy in her head.
Holly rolled her eyes at her and Mike was smiling. Andi was…shifting herself to always be between Miranda and the flightline. Her arms were slightly spread as if to grab Miranda at the least misstep. So Andi understood air carrier deck operations, she’d simply been willing to sprint into harm’s way to protect Miranda.
For about the twentieth time, Susan wondered who the hell these people were.
Miranda continued, unaware of all of the dynamics around her. That was about the only thing at the moment that made perfect sense.
“A six-foot card table to represent the USSTheodore Roosevelt.The painting of the deck outline on the table isn’t quite to scale, but it does reach end-to-end. A three-hundred-and-thirty-two-point-eight-meter-long ship reduced to a six-foot table. The F-35C Lightning II’s length is fifty-one-point-five feet. This round,” she held up the model for the plane, “is a hundred-and-two-millimeter round. That makes it eighteen-point-four percent too long for this scale. A .30-06 round would be closer, it’s only two percent too short, but I didn’t see any available. I could wait if you’d like to fetch some but I don’t really see the point.”
“Why not?”
“The four-and-a-half-inch popsicle stick is completely out of proportion. It’s almost fifty-nine percent too long to properly represent the wingspan. I’d have to cut off the identifying number you’ve written on the wing to correct that.”
Susan hadn’t seen her look at a calculator once, nor a look-up table for any lengths. Maybe she really was that good. “Why don’t you proceed with the tools at hand?”
Miranda looked at down at the Ouija Board diagram and pointed. “Why is that one parked in the Island?”
The Handler reached for the plane Miranda held.
Susan waved him off. She didn’t want a repeat of the events on the flight here.
“That,” the Handler pointed at the bullet-popsicle stick combo parked on the drawing of the Island, “was Number 892. It’s still up there, or at least some of it.” He pointed toward the wreckage above them.
“Oh,” Miranda put down the plane she’d picked up, Susan would now bet to within a millimeter of its original location, then selected the one with 892 written across its popsicle stick.
This time Acting Captain Brightman had to wave off the Handler’s protest.
If Miranda noticed, she gave no sign.
