Armageddon

Chapter 96

The large Russian aircraft looked like an angel astride the ramp, its wings giant arms that extended over the turf and dirt. Its silver skin gleamed in the low sun, and as he stared at it Sahurah felt himself drawn to the craft, as if beckoned by Allah himself. The throb in his head vanished; the cacophony of the others around him, his assistants and lieutenants with their reports and demands and updates — all faded as he looked at the plane. Truly, God had sent it. Two brothers who were mechanics had come forward from the city to volunteer their knowledge of the aircraft. They had found the fuel tanks nearly filled — the hand of the Lord, obviously. It was the only explanation.

Yayasan and the other pilot would fly the plane. The second man had experience with large jets, including the 737 sitting on the civilian side of the airport. That experience, Yayasan said, would serve him well with the large Russian plane, whose multiple engines and big body made it complicated to fly.

It seemed to Sahurah as he stared at the plane that he could fly it himself. God had sent it for him — to carry him to heaven.

“Commander, the Badger is ready,” said the pilot. “Do we have your permission to take off?”

“I am going with you,” Sahurah told him.

“To survey the city?”

“I am going with you”

“Yes, of course, Commander. Come and let us fly while we have plenty of light.”

Jennifer grabbed her laptop as she ran from the small room, following Garcia and trailed by Liu. As they reached the door, the system beeped with another warning — a second missile had been launched at the platform.

The Otomat ship-to-ship missiles fired at the platform carried a 210 kilogram warhead, just under five hundred pounds. Developed by the French and Italians, the missile traveled close to the speed of sound; that gave them roughly two minutes to get off the platform and as far away as possible.

Jennifer turned to climb up to the roof.

“No,” yelled Liu. “He’s going to take on the ships. Come on. We’ll use the boats. This way”

The sergeant pulled her down to the lower deck, and then prodded her toward the ladder. Garcia had reached it already, and with Bison had revved the motor on one of their two Zodiacs. Jennifer jumped into the other, scrambling toward the engine; Liu unlashed it and pushed it away from the dock so fiercely that he fell into the water as the boat bobbed off. By the time he got back aboard Jennifer had the motor working; she revved it and went forward so fast she nearly struck the small dock, veering off at the last second.

“Down, down!” yelled Liu at her as they flew across the waves. Jennifer started to duck but couldn’t see to steer; afraid of running into something she put her head up, steadying herself with one hand against the boat’s neoprene gunwale.

The missiles skimmed over the water on their final approach on the platform. The first soared almost directly over her head. Jennifer spun around in time to see the missile pass between the platform’s piers without hitting anything. The sky burst gray and white behind the steel gridwork; a moment later the sound cracked and the small boat seemed to lift forward with it. Just then Jennifer saw the second missile strike the upper deck, spewing black shards and circles into the air as it exploded. The sound this time pushed her down sideways, all the way to the bottom of the boat.

When Jennifer finally looked back, she saw the deck area on the northern side was blackened and battered. The superstructure leaned sharply to that side. She steered around in a circle, taking the boat toward the other Zodiac, where Bison and Garcia were scanning the horizon with a set of binoculars.

“There’s one of the ships on the horizon,” said Bison, pointing toward it. “The smaller one.”

“Our best bet is to get as far down the south coast as possible,” said Liu.

“I should have taken the LADS control unit with me,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t switch control over to Dreamland either.”

“There wasn’t time,” said Liu.

She looked back at the building. “It has to be destroyed.”

“Not worth the risk,” said Liu.

“If we don’t switch it over, Dreamland can’t take control,” said Jennifer. “The sultan’s army will stop getting information once the units are destroyed.”

“You can’t rig something up with your laptop there?” asked Bison.

“No, not without the hookup unit and the satellite antennas. I should have turned it over to Dreamland.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Liu.

“I can climb up there. It’s easy.”

“It’s not a question of difficulty,” said Liu. “It’s a question of safety.”

“We have to destroy that unit,” she told him.

“We could get some of our weapons, too,” said Bison. “All we have right now are pistols.”

“Ships are a good distance off,” said Garcia. “I think they know they hit it. Helicopter’ll keep them busy for a while.”

Liu nodded, then looked back to Jennifer.

“If the ships come close, or if the platform is too dangerous, we can leave,” she told him. “But we have to try.”

“All right. Let’s take a quick look,” said Liu, frowning as he turned the boat toward the shattered platform.

McKenna checked her instruments as the MiG-19 climbed. Not quite used to the old-style panel, she found herself staring at each of the round dial faces, making sure the information on rpms and pressures and the like registered in her brain. Four 250-pound bombs were strapped to the plane’s hardpoints, but the MiG seemed barely to know they were there, speeding through the air without a complaint.

“Brunei MiG to Brunei Army One,” McKenna said, trying to contact the ground controller in the column heading toward the capital. “How are you reading me?”

There was no answer. She tried again a few minutes later with the same result, and then twice more before getting a response.

“Brunei Army One reads you, MiG. What a glorious day to liberate our country.”

“Kick ass,” she replied.

The controller, an army major who had taken a course in working with aircraft from the U.S. air force, gave her a good brief on their present situation, then asked for intelligence on the capital.

“Give you a verbal snapshot in zero-five,” she said, double-checking her position on the paper map. “Hang on.”

Chapter 97

As soon as Mack heard the pistol shot, he went to the side of the doorway, flattening himself against the wall. The woman who had spoken to him earlier handed off her child to another mother, then got up and went to the other side, reaching it just as the two men came in.

Mack hesitated for half a second — the smaller one was closer to him, but there was no way to change positions with the woman. He threw himself forward into the man and they crashed down to the floor, the terrorist’s pistol flying across the room. Mack’s fury erupted and he pummeled the man’s head with an insane, obscene rage, pounding the flesh with a ferocious force that rose not from him but from the earth itself. Mack’s bare fists crushed the bones of the man’s jaw and nose and even the side of his skull. Blood gushed as he leapt out toward the pistol, grabbing it and rolling backward in the same motion, crashing against the wall and firing into the two forms that appeared in the doorway with their rifles. He kept firing until he emptied the gun; it took that long for both men to totter backward.

Mack scrambled to get up. He reached his feet in time to see the last terrorist standing above the woman who had helped him, pistol drawn. Mack launched himself as the man began to shoot. His momentum took the man down and they tumbled against the wall. This time, rage wasn’t enough. Mack’s hands suddenly went limp, his fingers raw and his wrists sprained from his earlier assault. He struggled to hurt the other man, hitting him with his elbow and leg, rolling his body against him and trying to batter him with the side of his head. The man had lost his pistol but pounded him with the flat of his hands, the blows like the shock of an ice pick hitting Mack’s kidney. With a scream Mack tried to get his feet under him, levering himself away. He pulled the terrorist up with him, and they pushed each other against the side of the doorway. Mack felt something swipe him on the side — his enemy had taken out a knife.

Mack threw his head forward and bit at the side of the man’s face, wholly animal now, wholly a creature of violence determined to survive. He threw every part of his body against his enemy and the knife clattered away. But Mack tumbled down, out on the wooden walkway, thrown by the other’s fury. Mack’s face landed against something soft and wet; he smelled salt and sweat. Realizing he’d landed in the chest of one of the men he’d killed, he looked for a weapon; he found the hilt of a knife and pulled it from the man’s belt.

The other terrorist had recovered his knife and charged him. Mack thought he would impale him as he came but he missed, his enemy ducking away in a bizarre dance and toppling to the ground. Mack tried to jump on him but tripped, as well. The knife flew toward the other man, who managed to duck it.

As Mack sprawled he saw one of the rifles. He grabbed at it desperately, trying to swing it up and fire. But he couldn’t reach the trigger quickly enough and the terrorist kicked it away. Mack grabbed at the leg, pushing forward just enough to make the man lose his balance. As the terrorist’s knife waved in front of his face, Mack grabbed at it but missed. He was able to hit the terrorist’s leg and groin, but his blows were weakened by his injuries and pain and the terrorist fell back, regrouping.

The gun, thought Mack. The gun. He threw himself on it. His enemy came once more, diving toward him with the knife.

This time, Mack’s finger found the trigger. The rifle roared beneath his chest, and his whole body reverberated with its ferocious roar.

Chapter 98

“Dreamland Command says the oil platform has been attacked,” Breanna told Zen. “I can’t get them on the radio.”

“Do they have a feed from the LADS?”

“Dreamland Command does, but they don’t have control of the blimps or the system”

Zen checked their position. They were about two hundred miles from the platform; it would take roughly twenty minutes to get out there.

“I say we have a look,” he told her. “Let’s launch Hawk Two.”

“I agree. I’ll inform Colonel Bastian.”

“Roger that.”

The dock floated serenely at the base of the platform, as if there had been no attack at all. Jennifer got out of the boat and lashed the line around the large steel hook.

“Wait!” yelled Liu as she reached for the ladder.

“I’m fine,” she shouted, starting up. “We don’t have much time.”

If he said anything else she didn’t hear it. The first ten feet or so up the ladder remained exactly as it had been, rising perpendicular to the waves. But at that point the ladder twisted with the structure and she found herself climbing on a slant and then twisting with it as it turned on its side. Jennifer was an experienced rock climber, but going up the off-kilter ladder was nonetheless an odd experience. She reached the. first deck and put her foot up, holding herself against the railing and then working to the second ladder, which rose up through a hatchway a few feet away.

The platform seemed to move as she got onto the deck, reverberating maybe with the footsteps of her companions who were just now coming up the ladder. Jennifer tried to ignore the gentle shaking, climbing up the second ladder to the charred and mangled upper deck. A large hole had been blown in the front of the deck to her right where the missile had hit. Metal twisted every which way, and she could see that the double-girdered pier no longer connected to the structure. The building looked as if it had been punched; part of the roof cantilevered up, almost like a baseball cap whose peak was pushed upright. A sooty black star with two dozen arms covered about half the front of the building, but the shock of the explosion had not mangled the interior, and as she crawled out on the sloping deck she could tell that the building itself had not caught fire. Two of the windows, in fact, had managed to somehow stay intact.

The floor of the building angled roughly thirty degrees to the side, sharper than the deck outside. One of the large suitcases that held the LADS control gear had been thrown against the rear wall so hard that it had embedded itself there. But the control panel itself — a pair of large LCD screens that folded out of a long trunk — sat on the desk where they had been mounted at the start of the mission. One of the feed windows on the left-hand screen was blank, but the other showed the ships approaching, with the Quick Bird dancing in front of them.

Jennifer hunched awkwardly in front of the station, one hand against the desk to keep her balance as she punched the keyboard with her right hand. She selected the handoff sequence from the command tree, but after she authorized it the screen seemed to freeze. Cursing, she was about to try again when the superstructure groaned, and the list increased five degrees. She lost her balance and slid all the way to the wall, smacking her head against the deck.

Dazhou Ti watched the helicopter with his binoculars, his anger growing with every second. The crew of the Kalsamana continued struggling with their sea-to-air missile battery, unable to lock on the target. The Aspide missile had an effective range of up to 18.5 kilometers; they were now within ten. Because of their incompetence, the gunship that had joined him was now coming under fire.

The Gendikar had been his last command before the Barracuda; his old executive officer was now its captain, and Dazhou knew he could count on his loyalty to the death. The ship had been instructed to stop him — and as soon as the radio instructions were received, its captain had radioed Dazhou to tell him that he wanted to join his crusade.

The Bofors cannon at the front of the other ship began to fire at the helicopter. Something flared from the chopper; it fired a salvo of rockets or missiles at the bridge area of the Gendikar, then bolted away.

“Have you locked the missiles on the helicopter yet?” demanded Dazhou.

“No, Captain”

“Do it quickly,” he said.

When he looked back, he saw that the other ship had stopped firing. The helicopter had managed to put it out of action, at least temporarily.

The American bastards! He would take revenge with his bare hands if necessary.

“Captain, we have a lock,” said one of the men behind him. “Fire, damn it!”

The Albatross Quad launcher shrieked and hissed as a pair of Aspide missiles flew upward. The missiles rose for a short distance, then began angling downward. The helicopter jerked to the right, firing flares and speeding away as the missiles flew toward it. Dazhou gripped his binoculars tightly as he watched first one and then the other missile veer off, exploding harmlessly. As he cursed, a second salvo was launched. This time, four missiles left the ship.

The helicopter seemed not to realize that it had been targeted again. It started back toward the Gendikar, firing another pair of its missiles. Suddenly it veered away, zagging left and right. It ducked the first Aspide but the second found its side, igniting with a red and white spark. The helicopter reared upward, then seemed to slide into another missile. It crashed into the sea, a white and black smear on the waves.

As Dazhou watched the steam and debris settle, he finally felt some of the satisfaction he had longed for. He scanned the ocean; they were now within sight of the platform area.

“It still stands,” he told his crew. “Ready another missile,” Dazhou said. “Strike it again. And let us see to Gendikar.”

As the order was passed, the radar operator called over the other officer. The man looked down at the console and then over at Dazhou with a puzzled expression. “The radar detects something overhead,” he said.

“Where?”

The man pointed in the sky. Dazhou searched the area with his glasses but saw nothing.

“Where?”

He handed the glasses to the other man, who searched in vain. Dazhou stared with his naked eyes, but still saw nothing.

“It appeared immediately after the missile struck the platform. There may have been some sort of radar jammer there.”

“You’re sure it’s not a malfunction?” Dazhou asked.

“I don’t believe so. It’s hovering, like some sort of spy plane, but the signature is small.”

“Shoot at it. Target it and shoot it down.”

Dog was waiting for her in bed, beckoning to her.

“We should get married,” he told her.

“Married? How?”

“We find a minister—”

“I mean, how would that work?”

“It would work, like now”

Like now? Not better?

Like now with her head slammed up against the wall, her legs tangled up, and the platform swaying?

I’m on the platform, she realized, not in San Francisco.

I have to get out of here!

Jennifer crawled back to the desk. The words CONTROL TERMINATED flashed in the center of the screen. Dreamland now had control of the blimps.

She collapsed the control box, pushing out the large cable that connected it to the power and antenna feeds. One of the de-tents at the bottom failed to clear; she leaned against the cable and the metal sheered off from the box. But though it looked light the control unit weighed nearly two hundred pounds; she tried to pull it off the desktop but it fell to the deck, the crash reverberating and the list increasing.

“We must go now,” said Liu, looming above her.

“Help me get this out.”

“We must go,” he said, taking one end of the control box and pushing it up toward the door.

Jennifer scrambled to follow. Outside, Liu struggled to get the control case up the inclined deck. Jennifer watched as he pushed it past the open hatchway.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and then she realized.

“Don’t!” she shouted, but it was too late — Liu pushed it over the side and the one-of-a-kind-control unit, built at a cost of at least a million dollars, fell into the sea.

“There’s no time,” said Liu. “The ships are coming. Come.”

He grabbed her wrist and pushed her down the hatchway.

With their forces stretched thin, Dog oversaw the grim task of removing Major Alou’s body from the Megafortress himself, working with two of the Malaysian soldiers as the dead pilot was carried from the wreck to the bunker area. Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby had already been brought to the small, fetid underground room, along with a Malaysian who had been killed from fragments from one of the shells. Dog pressed his teeth together, ignoring the stench that had already gathered around the bodies; the odor was a final cruelty, depriving the dead men of their last scrap of dignity, reminding all who lived that they, too, would decay.

Starship appeared in the outer bunker area as Dog left. “Lieutenant,” said Dog, nodding at him.

The young man seemed to want to say something. Dog recognized the look in his eyes, the question — the demand, really, for something that would make sense of the deaths of his friends.

No words could do that. Dog simply shook his head.

“We have to carry on as best we can,” he told Starship.

Tears began to slip from the young man’s eyes, though he tried to fight them back. Dog felt a surge of sympathy for the young man, and yet he shared his impotence. He said nothing else, pressing his teeth together and walking toward the wrecked Dreamland Command trailer. Danny Freah had retrieved some of the backup radio gear and set it up in the shade behind it.

“I’ve just been talking to the Brunei army command. They’re about to attack the capital,” said Danny when the call ended. “They have the terrorists on the run.”

“What’s Penn’s status?”

“They’re trying to reach the drilling platform and find out what’s going on with the Malaysian ships. The Malaysian navy claims they’ve been hijacked by the terrorists. Colonel, the platform was hit by at least one missile. The helicopter managed to disable one of the ships but was shot down. Dreamland’s been watching the whole thing, but they haven’t been able to communicate with the Whiplash people since the attack. It may just be that they’re too busy”

Jennifer was with the Whiplash people aboard the platform. Dog resisted the impulse to ask if she was okay — he didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t.

“Penn should be there in a few minutes. There’s a possibility the sultan’s forces will be in control of the capital by nightfall,” added Danny. “The people in the city are rebelling against the terrorists. They want their lives back.”

“I can’t blame them,” said Dog, sitting at the portable communications console so he could get an update from Dreamland Command. The console was actually an oversized laptop attached by wire to a satellite antenna.

“Colonel, the platform has been attacked,” said Major Catsman from the control center.

“I’ve heard.”

“We have control of the system, but we have to make some changes so that we can broadcast the signal over to you. Dr. Ruben has an idea of how to do it by changing the programming in your com units. He needs some technical people to implement it.”

“We have very limited personnel here,” said Dog.

“I’ll take what I can get, Colonel,” said Ray Rubeo, appearing on the screen. The scientist’s frown seemed surprisingly reassuring on the small screen.

“All right, then,” said Dog. “Tell me what it is you want me to do”

Chapter 99

Sahurah had only been aboard two airplanes in his life, and never one like this. There was a gunner’s post in the center of the cabin behind the pilot and copilot stations; he sat in the seat, looking up at the blue vastness of heaven.

“There, Commander — armored cars on the ground,” said the pilot, Yayasan. “Look!”

Sahurah stared at the sky for a few more moments, soaking in the moment. He wanted to believe that God had sent for him — he felt it strongly. And yet it couldn’t be true.

“Commander?”

The pain at the side of his head returned. Sahurah lifted the microphone on his headset and responded to the pilot.

“The sultan and his troops are marching, Commander. We can radio the command to be prepared”

“Do so,” said Sahurah. He undid the wire that tethered him to the interphone system, and worked his way past the two pilots to the nose, which had an old-style window section for an observer.

He could see a long row of vehicles snaking toward the capital a few miles away.

Was this why God had called him, to stop the demon in his tracks?

“We will strike them,” he said after he plugged his headset in.

“Yes, Commander,” said Yayasan, his voice trembling. They had no bombs, but the guns were filled with ammunition. Besides the defensive weapons at the rear and atop and below the fuselage, the pilot could fire a twenty-three-millimeter cannon in the nose.

“Are you afraid, pilot?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“So am I. God will give us courage”

“Yes, Commander.”

“I will be there in a moment,” he told him, starting back.

Even without the computer’s automatic identification library, Breanna would have recognized the aircraft synthesized in her radar screen. Only one plane like that flew over Brunei — Prince bin Awg’s famous Cold War era Badger, the same plane that Mack Smith had ridden to accidental fame in an encounter with the Chinese. She tried contacting the plane on the radio but it didn’t respond. The plane was fifty miles away.

“I see it,” said Zen. “But we better concentrate on the platform and those Malaysian ships.”

“I agree,” she said. “Should be in range in five minutes.”

“Keep up with me, Penn”

“Keep up with yourself, Hawk leader,” she told him, touching the throttle to make sure it was at the last stop.

McKenna saw the radar contact maybe sixty seconds before she saw the plane with her own eyes, the large Badger swooping down at tree-top level above the western outskirts of the city. She started to call back to the ground forces to make sure the Americans hadn’t liberated the big-tailed bomber but then realized it wasn’t necessary — bullets shot from the nose of the aircraft as it attempted to strafe the line of government troops surging toward the capital. McKenna watched the plane pull up awkwardly; its strafing had been ineffectual but that was beside the point. She leaned on her stick and put the MiG into a crisp turn that put her on the back of the big aircraft, perfectly positioned to shoot the Badger down.

Except that she had no bullets in her cannon.

“Son of a bitch,” she cursed.

The Badger added insult to injury by lighting the twin NR-23 in its tail, filling the sky with shells. McKenna buzzed over the plane, ducking another stream of bullets from a gun at the top as she dove across its path. The Badger reacted in slow motion, turning back toward the city.

“Come on, you chickenshit,” she raged at it. She goosed her throttle and streaked over the top of the plane just behind the wings, so close that she thought the tailfin would strike her. Bullets flew out from all of the plane’s guns, black streams of lead littering the sky.

“I’m going to take you down,” she said, swinging around. “Just wait.”

One by one, the red lights on the weapons panel came on, indicating that the cannons were no longer capable of shooting. Sahurah did not understand how this could be; he had only fired the weapons for a few moments. Surely the guns must carry more than a few hundred rounds of ammunition.

“Why are my guns not working?” he finally asked the pilot. “We had only a hundred rounds for each one,” said Yayasan. “You’ve probably fired them all.”

The plane shuddered and then pitched sharply to the right. Sahurah saw a silver dart thunder past the forward window.

“He’s toying with us,” said Yayasan. “He’ll shoot us down soon”

Sahurah looked up through the observation dome above the gunner’s seat. The sky remained as blue as ever.

“I’ll try to return to the airport,” said the pilot. “I can’t guarantee we’ll make it.”

“All right,” said Sahurah.

Suddenly he knew why God had called him to board the plane.

Dog finished entering the string of digits and hit the return key. The screen remained blank.

“Is that dish antenna facing the right direction?” he yelled.

“Yes, sir,” said Boston. “Uh, Colonel, no need to shout, sir. I have the headset.”

“Sorry,” said Dog. He flipped the com channel back to Dreamland. “I have nothing, Ray.”

“Give us a minute,” said the scientist.

“I don’t even have the feed I had earlier.”

“Give us a minute,” repeated the scientist.

An image of the ocean popped onto the screen. It looked peaceful, but slightly out of whack — there was an oil platform at the left-hand side, and Dog thought the image’s perspective was pushed over. Then he realized the image wasn’t askew; the platform was.

There were two ships on the opposite side of the screen. Something flashed from one.

“Colonel, do you have an image?” asked Rubeo.

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“It would appear the blimp that is providing the video image right now is being targeted,” added the scientist in his vaguely condescending voice. “We believe they knocked out the jammer when they struck the platform and now realize it is there. Press the ‘D’ and ‘E’ keys on your keyboard simultaneously.”

“Now?”

“Now, Colonel. After the screen flashes you should be able to select any image you desire. It may take a moment longer if they strike the blimp”

Chapter 100

Dazhou watched as the second missile shot upward. From working with the Barracuda, Dazhou knew there were many different varieties of electronic countermeasures, but the ability of the American device — surely it had to be American — to so thoroughly confound the radar aboard the corvette seemed incredible. Not only was the shipboard radar convinced that there was an object hovering eight thousand feet overhead, but the guidance system on the missiles had declared it was there, as well. Yet both veered off to the west, obviously confused.

“Try firing the gun,” he ordered.

The twin forty-millimeter weapon began to revolve, firing its shells in a wide pattern. Black dots filled the sky.

Dazhou started to put his binoculars down in disgust. As he did, a gray rectangle appeared in the sky to the right of the stream of bullets. It was as if a panel had been knocked from a ceiling; it folded outward then blew into twisted spirals of black and red.

“A blimp!” said one of the officers nearby. “How did they make it invisible?”

“Clever Americans,” said Dazhou. “Prepare the missile to fire at the platform.”

“It is ready, Captain.”

“Fire.”

The shifting of the platform had torn a large gash in the deck on the second level, making it impossible to reach the ladder.

“We can go over the side,” suggested Bison, pointing to the rail. “Then climb around on that girder there.”

“Good!” yelled Jennifer. “Last one in the boat’s a rotten egg,” she said, sliding through the railing.

Jennifer had two advantages over the burly Whiplashers: She was considerably thinner and shorter than all of them, even Liu. She also wasn’t trying to hump packs of gear and guns. She made it down to the ladder before them, and tested it with the weight of one foot; it remained solid. But after two steps it started to slide away toward the ocean; Jennifer scrambled down two rungs and then leaned over to the girder, grabbing on as the ladder collapsed downward in slow motion.

“Whoa, shit!” yelled Bison above her.

“I’m all right!” Jennifer leaned around the girder, trying to find a way for the others to get down. The path to her pier was now blocked, but each of the others had a narrow work ladder that ended a few feet above the water. If Bison and Liu could climb up and then across the girder near them, they could make it to the easternmost pier and have the boat pick them up.

“Worth a shot,” said Bison as Jennifer explained it to them. “Either that or climb out to the pole at the center there and slide down”

“You’d have to go all the way back up to reach that.”

“That or fly,” he said.

Sergeant Liu began working his way over, picking through a mangled gate of metal and thick wires to reach a solid, open girder that ran about ten feet across open water. “It’s doable,” he said, starting across.

Jennifer watched as Bison followed. Taller than Liu and much bulkier, especially with his bulletproof vest, he had a hard time getting through the narrow passage a third of the way across.

“Get rid of the packs,” she told him, but either the sergeant didn’t hear or, like all Dreamland personnel, was pig-headed when it came to accomplishing a mission. He made it to the girder and began climbing across. About six feet out, the metal, which looked to be a good foot thick, snapped.

Jennifer watched in shock as Bison fell six feet, then stopped abruptly in midair. Her mind couldn’t comprehend what had happened — it looked as if God had reached down and grabbed him, holding him over the sea. Incredulous, she climbed back up to the point where the deck had snapped, then reached over to the nearby girder — it was only twelve inches, but the fall looked like forever. She reached it, pulled herself up, and began making her way toward Bison, going hand over hand on a three-inch pipe for twenty feet until she reached the metalwork directly over him.

A piece of jagged metal had snagged his vest and one of the backpacks; he was literally hanging by threads, his body twisting. “You with me, Bison?” she shouted down.

“I think.” He sounded dazed.

“You are one lucky motherfucker,” she said.

All of a sudden, Bison seemed to become fully aware of where he was. He started to reach for the metal that held him. He couldn’t quite get it.

“No,” said Jennifer. “I think you can climb up and grab the girder overhead, then come over to this pier and come down. It’s a better bet than jumping.”

“I don’t think it’ll hold.”

“The girder?”

“This metal. I think I’ll just unhook and jump.”

“It’s too far. And if you miss, you’ll smack into the metal below.”

“I ain’t going to fall.”

Bison pulled on the pipe, trying to swing.

“It’s not going to work, Bison,” said Jennifer. She could see from where she was that the gap between the Whiplash trooper and the metal was nearly ten feet — much too much to jump. “Go up.”

“Maybe that is the best way,” he said. He started to pull himself up, then lost his balance. As he swung down, the pipe shifted an inch downward, taking him further away.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“It’ll be easier if you let go of the packs and the two machine-guns,” she said.

“No,” said Bison. “I can make it with them.”

“Let go of the fucking packs!” she yelled at him, furious.

Bison looked around and, finally, dropped the guns and pack that hadn’t snagged. They crashed against the metal, then rebounded into the water. He pulled himself up, groping over and across the girder to a large flange at the side of the pier where she was. The metal, about the size of a manhole cover, formed a kind of seat and he rested there for a few moments. Jennifer scrambled up to see how he was.

“You got a dirty mouth for a girl,” he said when she reached him.

“And you’re as stubborn as a mule.”

“As a buffalo. That’s how I got the nickname,” he said proudly.

They climbed down about thirty feet to a platform that completely surrounded the pier. The only way to get down would be to hang off and try and get a foothold on the girder before stretching down. It was impossible to see the work ladder from above. Jennifer thought she was nimble enough to do it, but might not be tall enough to reach back easily; Bison, on the other hand, looked tall enough but exhausted. One of them was bound to slip.

Another girder extended out over the water a few feet above the platform; a pulley set at the bottom of the metal beam was all that remained from a small lift that had been used to move equipment.

“I think we should jump from there,” she told Bison, pointing. “Jump?”

“Look, it’s only twenty feet from the water. As long as we keep our balance to the very end and go out there, we won’t hit anything. It’s like a diving platform. The others can pick us up.”

“Shit on that. Twenty fuckin’ feet”

“Easier than snaking under this platform, I bet.”

“Twenty fuckin’ feet. Maybe thirty.”

“I bet you did worse than that at Lackland when you went through special operations training.”

“Yeah, but that was Lackland. Everybody was out of their mind there”

“Come on. You go first,” she told him.

“Ladies first.”

“We’ll both go first. Come on.”

“You ain’t walking out there, are you?” he said as she climbed up.

“Should I run?” she said, standing on the girder.

“Jesus,” said Bison. He pulled himself up and started to crawl out behind her.

Jennifer waited until Bison was on behind her, then started resolutely toward the edge. She felt her right foot slip, and pushed forward — she did run now, pushing her momentum so that she was sure she would fall far from the metalwork. As gravity took her, she pushed her legs together and brought her arms in together, covering her upper body.

The water punched at her so hard that she was convinced she had struck the metal. Her lungs rebelled; she pushed upward, flailing desperately. Finally she saw light just ahead, but two strokes failed to bring her to the surface. She felt despair, tasted the salt water in her mouth.

But she’d hit rock bottom a month and a half before, when the air force seemed to turn against her, launching an investigation that targeted her. She’d survived that; she could survive anything.

A shock of cold jerked her body as if she’d touched a power line. Jennifer’s head bobbed upward, breaking the water’s surface. She gasped once, twice, then felt herself lurching backward.

Liu pulled her into one of the Zodiacs. She sat upright just in time to see Bison pulling himself onto the other a few yards away.

The motor at the rear revved. The lightweight boat bucked forward, picking up speed quickly.

“Down!” yelled Liu.

Jennifer wasn’t sure why he was yelling, until she saw the platform explode over his right shoulder.

Chapter 101

Zen brought Hawk One into a shallow dive to strafe the nearest ship, the smaller of the two. He saw as he came on that the bridge area at the front of the superstructure had already been struck by something; he slid his cannon fire into the center of the gun in front of it, riding the stream of bullets through the housing as the barrel swung in his direction. He flashed overhead, spinning back for another shot. Since the gun no longer moved he slid toward the missile launchers atop the rear deck; they looked like a pair of long garbage cans angled toward the sky.

It wasn’t clear which of the ships had launched the missile at the platform earlier, but by the time he laid off the trigger it was clear that this launcher wasn’t going to be used again — a secondary explosion erupted from the front of the tube as Zen cleared upward.

There were two more missile launchers on the port side of the ship. As he started toward them, the radar warning receiver erupted with a message — the second ship, about a half-mile to the north — was attempting to lock its anti-aircraft weapons on him.

“You’re up next,” Zen said to himself.

Penn was just clearing fifteen miles southwest of the corvette, nearly in range for the JDAM GBU-32, the last weapon in her bomb rack. The GBU-32 was essentially a thousand-pound bomb with a set of steerable fins on the back that could be programmed to strike a specific GPS point. The bomb, still being tweaked for regular military use, was extremely accurate, but it had been designed to hit land targets that didn’t move, not ships at sea.

On the other hand, airplanes had been taking on ships since Billy Mitchell’s salad days, and Breanna had worked out a solid attack plan with the help of the Megafortress’s computer. She intended on launching inside five miles, which would decrease the possibility of the ship outmaneuvering the weapon.

“Zen, I’m about a minute and a half from launch,” she told him. “I’m going to open the bomb bay. Can you take out their missiles?”

“Roger that.”

McKenna swung around, getting ready for another run at the Badger.

If she only had bullets in her cannon, she could take the slimer down. Hell, she had half a mind to fly next to the big SOB, whack open the canopy, and wing the pilot with her pistol like they did in World War I.

Hell, she’d even throw a brick at him if she had one.

She did, actually. Four of them, each loaded with 250 pounds of explosives.

Bomb another airplane?

Why the hell not?

The bombs might not explode, but if she could match the other plane’s speed, she could get them right through the wings.

Matching his speed was just a BS aerobatic stunt, the sort of gimmick Ivana used to have her do all the time to close a sale.

McKenna pulled off to the right, taking a wide circle south of the Badger as she tried to decide if she was crazy to even think about taking a shot. What the hell, she decided as she came through the wide arcing turn. She leveled off, trying to slow the MiG-19 down to match the Badger’s speed. The two planes were very different, and she couldn’t quite get it; she pulled close again but the MiG tugged at her, trying to slide off to the right. By the time she got the plane steady she was beyond the Badger’s right wing. She tried swinging out to the right and then tucking back in a kind of weave, but she was still going too fast. The Brunei airport loomed ahead; obviously the Badger was going to try and land.

Maybe I’ll wait until it lands, she thought to herself as she accelerated and turned ahead.

Then she noticed that the gun turret at the top was revolving, following her.

That did it. She didn’t wait for it to fire again. She took the turn, letting her speed bleed off precipitously; the plane seemed to whine at her but she resisted the impulse to nudge the throttle. Wings barely clutching the air, she walked the MiG slowly toward the tailfin of her prey, which was now on a glide toward the concrete runway. As McKenna slipped overhead, losing her view of the Badger, she hit the bomb release. The MiG, now a thousand pounds lighter, shot forward. McKenna went for the throttle, jacking her speed and rocketing upward.

It took more than thirty seconds for her to climb up and come back around to a position where she could get a look at the runway. When she did, she saw that the Badger had landed — without its right wing.

Miraculously, the debris from the missile and platform didn’t strike the Zodiac, but the nearby ocean boiled with the rumbling wake. The small boat, designed to withstand anything less than a typhoon, bucked and tumbled with the waves but remained afloat.

The missile had sheared the platform off into the water, leaving only three stalks above the waves.

“Where’s the other boat?” she said to Liu. “Where’s Bison?”

“Ahead of us,” said the sergeant, nodding with his head.

Dazhou watched from the bridge as the small aircraft started a fresh attack on his other ship, which had stopped defending herself. His crew had been unable to lock on the knifelike aircraft, which danced around the sky like a dervish.

“Use the cannon,” he shouted. “Sight it by eye if you have to.”

As Dazhou turned to the helmsman to tell him to steer closer to their stricken sister, his second in command shouted a fresh warning. “The plane is coming for us!”

“Shoot it down,” he said angrily.

Zen could see the anti-aircraft missile launcher turning in the direction of the Flighthawk as he closed on the second ship. He fired point-blank into the side of the launcher’s structure; his second or third shell ignited one of the missiles and started a secondary explosion.

“He’s toothless,” Zen told Breanna. “I’m going back on that first ship.”

Upstairs, Breanna gave a last-second update of the target parameters and then nudged the Megafortress into a shallow dive and then a swooping turn, tossing the bomb in the bay at the target. The JDAM left the Megafortress’s belly just inside four miles from its target, a point-blank shot for the weapon. The bomb sailed downward, made a slight correction, then nosed down toward the GPS point the Megafortress and Breanna had calculated for it — the bridge of the Kalsamana.

The ship reverberated with explosions as the fire in the missile battery behind the superstructure spread. Dazhou could taste the acrid smoke in his mouth. But he would not give up; he would not abandon the ship, nor flee his destiny.

“Use every weapon you have!” he demanded. “Everything! Everything!”

As the crew moved to comply, the bomb struck the port side of the antenna mast and crashed through the roof of the bridge area directly below, carrying through the deck without exploding. Dazhou turned in time to see something rushing through the cabin directly behind him — a ghost fleeing the demons of the past. The rush of wind seemed to him the swell of voices, the many voices of those who had tormented him in his life, returning one last time to torture him. Every mistake he had made, every man he had lost, every moment of foolishness pressed in around him.

And then the thousand pounds of explosives in the warhead ignited, and neither earthly vengeance nor human failings were of any more concern to Dazhou, or most of the men on the ship.

Chapter 102

Hours seemed to pass before Mack Smith could make himself get up from the floor. Three of the four terrorists lay in the room dead; the last huddled around a pool of blood at the side.

The woman who had helped him was sprawled on the floor, eyes open, hands unclenched.

“Are you all right?” he said, kneeling over her. “Are you all right?”

Her mouth remained agape and her stare fixed on the ceiling.

Slowly, the others in the room started to move. And then, as if by some secret signal, all the women and children began to wail.

“Stop,” whispered Mack. “Stop.”

The fearful cry continued.

“Stop!” he shouted finally, and one by one the wails turned not to silence but to softer sobs.

“Are there others? Other terrorists?” He had to ask the question three times before he got a response from an older woman at the side.

“These were the all who we’ve seen,” she said in broken English.

“Take me to the men,” he said.

She got up, jaw trembling, and walked toward him. Another woman, much younger, grabbed his arm. “Our savior,” she said. “Our hero.”

“She was the hero;’ said Mack, pointing at the dead woman. “I’m just lucky. Now take me to the others.”

Chapter 103

Sahurah felt his body lifted by a thousand angels. His pain had finally ceased. After his long, torturous journey, he had reached Paradise. The angels carried him through the golden gates, up the winding marble stairs to the vast throne room. The Messenger himself waited on the landing to greet him, surrounded by a veritable sea of angels. Light glowed behind him.

Paradise, he thought. Paradise.

And then the pain returned and Sahurah felt his body fall the hundred miles from heaven, felt it roll and slam and slap against the earth. He felt fire and cursed his existence, cursed his sins and dark desires. Something grabbed him from behind and pulled, dragging him through the black jaws of dragon-snakes that snapped at his body.

“Commander Sahurah! Commander Sahurah!”

It was part of the dream, he thought — the imam stood above him, peering down from above. The Saudi was nearby, his eyes watchful.

“Commander Sahurah!”

No dream this — Sahurah was on the runway, — a hundred feet from where the Badger had crashed. Someone had pulled him out in a misguided attempt to rescue him.

Why was the Lord so cruel to such a devoted servant? Why did he deny him the final glory of paradise?

“Sahurah — the devils are overrunning our defenses,” said the imam. “We have a pilot, and the passenger plane that was parked at the airport. Come. We will leave and return to fight another battle.”

Was this the devil tempting him? Or an angel sent to rescue him from damnation?

The imam bent down and looked at him quizzically. “Sahurah? Come, little brother. There is a time for everything. Now is our time to retreat.”

The Saudi seemed to frown.

“No,” said Sahurah. “I will stay and fight. It is jihad.”

“The Malaysians have turned against us,” warned the imam. “It is time to retreat. American warships are only a few hours away. We will regroup and wait. Our time will come again.”

“I must stay”

The imam frowned. The Saudi said something in Arabic Sahurah could not decipher.

“We must leave now,” said the imam.

“I stay to do the Holy One’s work.”

The imam nodded and then turned. Sahurah knelt, deciding to pray to the Lord that he had made the right decision. But words would not come; he could not even remember the simple prayers he had learned as a child. The throb at the side of his head chased all thoughts from his mind, and it was all he could do to stand and walk in the direction of the city.

Chapter 104

Thanks to Rubeo’s software hacks, Dog now had limited control of the LADS observation system and could switch through the video feeds. One of the airships near the oil platform had been destroyed, but a second one just to the southwest showed Dreamland’s two Zodiac boats. There were four people inside them — all of the Whiplash people, and Jennifer, lovely, beautiful Jennifer.

What if she had been in Indy?

Two patrol boats were heading toward them from the west. The boats had left occupied territory, but it wasn’t clear if they contained terrorists or the vanguard of the sultan’s troops, who were pressing into the northern part of the country, vanquishing their foes.

“Dreamland Malaysia Base to Penn,” said Dog, keying into the communications line. “Breanna, our two Whiplash boats are running toward a pair of patrol craft of undetermined allegiance.”

“We’re on it, Daddy,” she said.

For once, Dog didn’t yell at her for calling him that.

Zen flew over the ship a few seconds after the bomb exploded. It looked from the air as if it were a child’s toy with a thick hole drilled through the top. The superstructure and hull had been badly mangled, and when he took another pass he saw the corvette-sized craft had already started to slide down into the water.

“They’re out of it,” Zen told Breanna. “Going for the Zodiacs.”

“I’m right behind you”

The Whiplash team was about five miles from the coastline and just over eight miles from the platform that had been destroyed. Two patrol craft were five miles from them on what looked like a direct intercept. Both were Russian-made Matka-class gunboats; they had been purchased a few months before by Brunei, but it wasn’t clear whose side they were on.

Zen tucked Hawk One down toward the water, streaking ahead of Penn. The Whiplash people in the raft had not answered any hails, and neither had the ships. Neither patrol vessel flew any flags.

“Think we can get them to turn around?” Breanna asked.

“If I had skywriting gear, maybe,” said Zen. He rode the Flighthawk down and then held her on her wing, taking a showboat turn in front of the Zodiacs.

“Still on course,” said Breanna.

He took another pass.

“I think somebody waved,” said Breanna, who was watching on her feed on the flightdeck.

“Yeah. Listen, let me take a run over the patrolboats. Maybe we can at least find out if they’re hostile or not.”

“Go for it.”

Jennifer watched the Flighthawk spin off to the west. She leaned against the side of the boat, exhausted from the earlier climb and plunge into the water, not to mention everything that had come before. As she stared, the waves formed themselves into anthills in the distances.

Ships.

Ships!

“There’s something up ahead, ships in the water,” she yelled to Liu. “I think the Flighthawk was trying to warn us.”

Liu cut the engine and waved at Garcia and Bison to do the same.

Breanna saw the fresh contact on her radar — A 737 had just taken off from Brunei IAP.

Terrorists leaving a sinking ship?

Or a jerry-rigged bomber planning an attack?

“Zen, we have a 737 climbing up from the airport,” she said. “Roger that. You sure it’s a 737?”

“Affirmative. Should we try and stop it?”

“Why?”

“The terrorists were in control of the airport. It has to be them,” said Breanna. “They may have it set up as a bomber.”

“I can’t just shoot it down”

“We can’t just let them fly away.”

“I can put Hawk Two on it, and see if they’ll at least identify themselves,” he told her. “But then you won’t have an escort.”

“Do it.”

Zen gave control of Hawk one to the computer, telling it to overfly the gunships nearing the Zodiac, then switched his control set and pulled Hawk Two out from its post ahead of Penn. As he began to accelerate he saw that the 737 had turned northeast, heading out over the water. Its course took it away from the Zodiacs; they had to choose to go after one or the other.

To Zen, the choice was a no-brainer — his people were more important than a plane that might or might not contain terrorists.

But Breanna seemed to disagree.

“Zen, he’s not answering my radio calls and he’s picking up speed,” she told him.

“Yeah, listen, by the time we catch him we’re going to be out of range of Hawk One. I won’t be able to cover our people down there.”

“Maybe we can bluff him,” she said. “I can transmit a warning.”

Zen didn’t think that was worth her breath, but she tried twice anyway, trying to get the pilot to acknowledge. At the same time, she shifted her course to stay close to the Flighthawk pursuing the plane. Within a few seconds C³ warned that he was about to lose contact with the Flighthawk over the Zodiacs.

“Turn back, Bree,” said Zen.

“We have to stay with the terrorists’ plane.”

“They clearly have no hostile intent. Let them run away if that’s what they’re doing,” he told her. “We have to protect our own people. Tell the Filipinos to take care of it. We need to get west”

After what seemed an eternity, the plane lurched back toward the Zodiacs.

The two ships were moving at a decent speed; they were now about two miles away. Both had weapons on the bow. “Think they’re friendly?” Jennifer asked Liu.

“I don’t know. They came out of the terrorists’ territory.”

“What are we going to do?” Jennifer asked.

“Wait for another signal from the Flighthawk,” he told her. “We can always run into shore if we have to.”

Jennifer looked at the ships. If they kept on their present course, they would come within a mile of them. Retreating seemed like a poor option, given that there might be more Malaysian ships beyond those that had attacked the platform. Nor did it seem like a good bet to try running out to sea.

Beaching wasn’t a no-brainer, though. As far as they knew, the shoreline was controlled by the terrorists and Liu was the only one who had a weapon.

Chapter 105

Dog had the lads camera at its maximum resolution. There were people moving around on the narrow deck near the gun at the bow.

Jennifer was in one of the boats. More than anything else he wanted to be there with her — with all of his people, but her especially.

The ships started to turn toward the Dreamland boats. “Bree! The ships are turning,” he blurted over the Dreamland com channel. “They’re going for the Zodiacs.”

Zen angled Hawk One toward the prow of the first ship, charging downward. He had only a few dozen bullets left in the guns. Hawk Two, still catching up, was another minute and a half behind.

The targeting pipper in Hawk One blinked yellow. He didn’t have a shot yet.

“They’re coming toward us,” Jennifer told Liu.

“What’s the Flighthawk doing?”

“I don’t see it — wait, here it comes. He’s diving on them”

“Attacking?”

Jennifer stared at the small black dart diving toward the water. If he was attacking, she’d know in a few seconds.

The Matkas looked like souped-up American PT boats, with a large single-barrel gun at the bow and a pair of large boxes on either side from amidships to the stern. The boxes housed anti-ship missiles in this case, though the vessels could also carry surface-to-air weapons. Zen put his nose on the rounded superstructure just aft of the cannon; it was no larger than the cabin you’d find on a good-sized pleasure boat back home, though rather than fiberglass it was padded with armor.

A man stepped from the cabin as Zen’s weapons indicator turned red. Zen saw him clearly in the center of the screen. He hesitated, then realized why.

The man was waving his hands.

No, he had both hands up.

Zen couldn’t see what was going on at first. He had to circle around and drop his speed, taking a pass from the rear. There were three men on the stern of the ship, all with their hands raised in the air.

“Hey, Bree, I think they’re surrendering.”

“To us or the Zodiacs?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, I hope it’s the Zodiacs,” she told him. “Because water landings are hell on the landing gear.”