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Captain Brightman strodeup and looked at the frozen tableau. “What’s the status? Can we clean this up yet?”
No one answered. Susan wasn’t sure what to say.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Mike shushed her.
She prepared to argue, but Mike shushed the captain again.
“I need that tail section,” Miranda came back to life so abruptly that they all twitched in surprise.
“Miranda, where it broke off and snagged in the superstructure? It’s probably too dangerous to recover outside of a naval shipyard.” Susan still couldn’t believe that Miranda and Holly had crawled into that precarious area to inspect the damage.
“Andi?” Miranda asked.
Andi Wu turned, not to Miranda, but to look upward toward the damaged Island above as if she could see it through the steel of the Flight Deck’s underside.
Did this team have some kind of telepathy? Susan was used to smoothly coordinated teams, and fixing deeply dysfunctional ones, but these people were something else again.
“Yes,” Andi nodded at the ceiling, “I can do that. The MH-60S Seahawk has a long enough winch cable. I’ll need someone to go into the wreckage to attach it though.”
“No worries,” Holly straightened up from placing a three-foot section of wing strut just-so amongst the wreck.
“What? No!” Brightman snapped. “I’m not risking it. The downblast of the helo’s rotor blades could knock over that mast. I won’t risk losing my flight line again.”
Andi held her arm out sideways, dangling her forearm from her elbow. “I’ll fly off to the side and then set up an oscillation to swing the cable where Holly needs it without bothering anything.” She waved her hand back and forth as if it was dangling from a scarecrow’s elbow, flapping in the wind.
“No one can be that accurate.”
Susan actually laughed. “Sorry, Captain. If Andi says she can do it, believe me, she can. I’ve seen her military file.”
Brightman stared at them for a long moment then hid her face in her hands. “I can’t believe this. Fine! Go!”
“Mike?” was all Holly said before jogging out of sight with Andi. The slap of their feet blended rapidly into the carrier deck noise and they were gone.
Miranda’s whim apparently wasn’t a whim, it was an absolute command.
“Any idea what she saw?” Susan asked him.
Mike shook his head. Then he stepped forward to help Miranda slip the next piece into place.
“I do wish we had the canopy.” Miranda turned back to sorting through the latest collection of debris to be delivered.
Brightman had narrowed her eyes and was staring hard at an unremarkable half-meter square of carbon fiber in theUnknownpile.
“Captain?” Susan could see that something was bothering her.
“I saw…somewhere…where was it?” Brightman scrubbed at her face. “C’mon, Penny. C’mon…”
“What were you doing or holding when you saw it?”
The Captain pulled out her phone, then stared at her hand as if she didn’t recognize it. She jolted and looked over at Susan, “Oh, well done, Commander.”
Susan loved that memory trick every time. So simple yet effective.
“You, what’s your name?”
“Mike Munroe, ma’am.”
“Good, go up to the command bridge…tables…whatever it is. Ask them to give you a couple of airmen. There’s a walkway along the starboard, seaward side of the Island. That canopy, at least I think it might be, is lying close to the forward end of the walkway.”
“On it, ma’am.”
And now it was only the three of them, Captain Brightman and herself, watching Miranda sort through the scraps.
“Miranda,” Susan called out, hoping to draw her out. “You’ll have the canopy shortly.”
“That would be helpful,” Miranda didn’t look up. When her phone rang, she placed another piece before she answered.
