Piranha

Chapter 5 Death in the family

When Jennifer Gleason finally managed to unfold herself from the jump seat on the C-17’s flight deck, her legs felt if they had been stapled together. Her stomach and throat had changed places; and even her eyes were giving her trouble. Jennifer was a veteran flier, had been in the Megafortress during combat, and survived a disabling laser hit, but this was by far the worse flight she had ever endured.

It wasn’t just uncomfortable fold-down seat or the turbulent air. She’d spent the entire flight worried about Colonel Bastian; a vague uneasiness, indefinable. It was new to her; she’d never really had anyone to worry about before, not like this. None of her other boyfriends — the term seemed ridiculous applied to Tecumseh, who was anything but a boy — had aroused such emotions. Until Tecumseh — she hated calling him Dog — Jennifer had been organized and specific about her thoughts and emotions. Now her head fluttered back and forth, and her body hurt like hell.

Outside, the rain had stopped; the wet leaves glistened in the morning light. The base had been taken over by the Navy — there were several large patrol aircraft parked in front of two Megafortresses, along with a pair of F/A-18’s and a blue Navy helicopter. Three or four bulldozers were revving nearby, assisting a construction crew to erect a hangar area.

Colonel Bastian was waiting for Jennifer at the Whiplash command post. So was most of the Dreamland contingent, and a few Navy officers besides, so she had to confine her greeting to a very proper “Sir.”

“Jennifer, we’ve been waiting for you,” said the colonel. “Or rather, your equipment.”

She snickered at the unintended double entendre, but it went right by Dog and the others. He introduced two Navy officers as liaisons with the fleet, informing Jennifer they had clearance for Piranha.

“If you can give us a quick timetable,” he added in his deep voice. She had trouble turning her mind back to the project, and the reason she’d come.

“It’s straightforward. First up, we get the control gear into the planes. By tomorrow night we should have two new probes. Beyond that, there are some tests and fixes I’d like to try. Oh, and I have a fix, no, not a fix, just a tweak, on the wake detectors — I’ll put that in first. Shouldn’t take too long; it’s a software thing.”

“So how sensitive is the passive sonar?” asked one of the Navy people.

“Good enough to follow submarines of the Trafalgar type at twenty miles. I have the diffusion rates, all the technical data here.”

The officer had obviously asked the question to see how much she knew, and Jennifer, not so subtly, called his bluff, reaching into her knapsack for her laptop.

“We’ve had a few problems with the amplitude when the temperatures shifts quickly, such as when you go into a different thermal layer. We think it’s hardware, though I’ve tried two different versions of the chip circuitry and had the same results, so I’m not sure. Here — maybe you have some ideas. Look at the sines, that’s where it’s obvious.”

She started to unfold the laptop. The intel officer had turned purple. Delaford rescued him.

“I think for now we better just stay focused on equipping the other planes,” he said.

Jennifer gave the other man an overly fake smile and packed the laptop away.

“How long to install?” Zen asked.

“Three hours per plane,” she told him. She took a long strand of hair and began twisting it, thinking. “We’re going to route the com units through the Flighthawk backup gear and use the panels for the display. We didn’t have time to actually test it, but I think it’ll work.”

Dog wanted to grab her, just jump her right there — it was as blatant as that, raw, an overwhelming animal urge. His eyes bored into the side of her head; she hadn’t looked at him after coming in, probably because she felt the same way.

“All right. We need a fresh weather report. Storm should almost be out of the tracking area, which will make our job easier, at least until the next one comes through. They were talking about a twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour window, which means one full rotation. Then, the probe goes home.” Dog resisted the urge to pace — there simply wasn’t room in the small trailer. “Our Navy friends have worked on some idea about where some of targets may be located. We’re going to work with a group of P-3’s flying at a very long range on the west side of the Chinese battle group, from here over to the Vietnamese coast.”

Dog’s hand slid across a massive area of ocean as dismissively as if it were a small parking lot.

“If we find something or get a good hint, we launch. Quicksilver is up next. They replace us on station in six hours. Raven comes on six hours later. If there’s no launch, Quicksilver still helps the Navy with patrols, but we’ll take the next shift. Bu sometime tomorrow, or maybe the next day, Kitty Hawk should be in the patrol area and that will change things. I’m not sure exactly what the admiral had in mind at that point.”

Dog’s lineup would mean at least twelve-hour shifts for the crews, with three or four hours prep, six hours on patrol, two or three hours to get back and debrief. No one complained — which didn’t surprise Dog in the least.

He glanced over at Jennifer. She was looking at him, squinting ever so slightly.

Of course she was looking at him. Everyone was.

Dog forced himself to nod, shifted his gaze to Fentress, and nodded again. When he turned toward Breanna, he saw she was frowning.

“Captain?” he asked her in surprise.

“Nothing.”

“Captail Williams will give us the latest on the Chinese and Indian forces,” Dog said, turning to the Navy officer. Williams had come from the G-2 section of Admiral Allen’s staff to facilitate intelligence sharing.

“The storm slowed down the progress of the task forces.” He pulled out a small manila folder and handed some papers around. Dog glanced down at his and saw it was actually a cartoon rendering of the situation — on one side of the South China Sea was Donald Duck, on the other Mickey Mouse, both posturing on top of the aircraft carriers.

“You draw this yourself?” said Zen, an obvious snicker in his voice.

“Just keeping things in perspective,” said Williams. He dished out another version — this one a detailed sketch based on the latest reports. “Probable area of the Indian submarine is that crosshatch just to the east-southeast of the lead Chinese carrier, which is where they launched from. They haven’t found it yet, at least as far as we know. Good submarine captain — and I think we have to assume this fellow’s at the top of the heap — would use this storm to skitter around, get a new location. The Chinese don’t have an all-weather ASW capability, not from the surface anyway, their submarines may be different story, but as you can see from the diagram, they’re still at best a day away from joining the aircraft carriers. Even then, frankly, their probability of intercepting the Indian boat is not going to break double digits.”

The Indian aircraft carrier had managed to link up with the cruisers and destroyers. If everyone steamed toward each other at flank speed, they could be firing at each other within twenty-four hours.

“More likely, they’ll just shadowbox,” said Williams. “Plenty of opportunity for you to get information about the submarines. Yesterday’s show of force by Iowa seems to have dampened some of the war fever; the diplomacy’s at high pitch.” Hoping to fire a diplomatic flare of his own toward the Dreamland contingent, Captain Williams added, “By the way, that’s a good name for a Megafortress. Her Navy namesake would be proud.”

The sailor handing the chow line in the mess tent saw Danny Freah approach. “More eggs, Captain? Be your third helping.”

“Problem with that?” said Danny lightly.

“No, sir,” said the Navy seaman, lifting the metal cover on the serving tray. “No, sir. Good to seem someone with a healthy appetite.”

“It’s good cooking, sailor,” said Danny, though truth was the eggs were rubbery at best. Most likely they were powdered or flash-frozen or whatever the hell they did to eggs these days. Still, he took another full helping, then went back to his table.

He was putting off talking to Colonel Bastian. He’d already put it off since last night, when he could have caught the colonel before he turned in. This morning he could have grabbed him before his briefing session. Danny could have—should have—interrupted him.

Powder was right about the girl. That was no reason, none at all, not to do his job. She wasn’t the same woman, and he wasn’t in the same situation.

But she didn’t present a threat, nor did her village. He knew that in his bones.

They couldn’t keep her in the med tent; he had to deal with her before Peterson went over his head, which he might already have done.

Or Stoner. The spook thought he was God, just about. Spy with attitude. He would get involved soon too.

Danny was trained to be cautious, to think about what he was doing before he acted. He was also trained to act, not to sit on something for a day — days, really, if you argued he should have moved the village right away.

He sure as hell wasn’t trained — wasn’t paid—to get caught up in emotions and buried memories. Maybe Jemma was right; maybe it was time for him to quit.

And do what? Run for office? What good would he do?

Right wrongs, like Jem always said.

That was what he was doing now.

“Hey, Cap, you probably want to get over to the med tent,” said Bison, leaning down next to him. “Stoner’s hassling the prisoner.”

“Shit,” muttered Danny, getting up quickly.

He found Stoner sitting across form the woman in a chair. She was talking in English, her face red. Danny started to say something to the CIA officer, but Stoner stopped him by putting up his hand.

“They burned the house first,” continued the woman. “The houses were huts, not even as sturdy as this. Two people we have never seen again. These are the people you call saviors.”

“I didn’t call them saviors,” said Stoner. His voice was flat, as unemotional as a surgeon asking for a fresh scalpel.

“We want only to live in peace. Is that too much to ask?”

“You’re not in a good place,” said Danny, taking another step toward her. Her cheekbones were puffed out and her hair brushed straight back; her anger made her seem more like a woman.

“Where would you have us live?” she demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“If you turn us over to the government, they will massacre us.” She looked at Danny defiantly for a moment, then turned back to Stoner and began to cry.

“Mr. Stoner, a word,” said Danny. He turned and went out of the tent. When the CIA officer appeared, he walked a few feet away.

“She telling the truth?” Danny asked him.

“I told you there’d be a sob story.”

“Sob story — two people being killed is hardly a sob story.”

“What would you call it?” Stoner asked.

“A fucking massacre — an atrocity.”

Stoner shrugged.

“We’re not turning her over to the government, or the army,” said Danny.

Stoner said nothing.

“We’re not,” said Danny. “We’ll move them ourselves. Fuck those bastards — we’ll move them ourselves. Well? Say something.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say you agree.”

Stoner shrugged.

Danny felt his anger rising so high he almost couldn’t control it. “What the fuck, man? What the hell — aren’t you human?”

“We can move them. But sooner or later, the Army will find them again. We won’t have control over what happened then.”

“You know.”

Danny clamped his hand into a fist, stifling his anger. Would it do any good to tell Stoner what had happened in Bosnia? Probably not.

It didn’t matter. He’d move them himself.

“You going against me on this?” Danny asked.

Stoner shrugged. “I’m not for or against it. It’s not really my business. There’s a communication network. I have NSA intercepts that are reporting on ship activity and transmitting.”

“From here?”

“They haven’t been able to pin down the location, which is pretty interesting. I guess. There are two kinds of transmission — radio, and something that goes underwater. Not all of it’s decoded.”

“And she’s involved in that?”

“I doubt it, but we won’t know till we look in her village.”

Danny frowned, as if Stoner were saying he should have done this before.

Which, in a way, he was.

“The gear’s pretty sophisticated,” said the CIA officer. “They wouldn’t be able to hide it.”

“Those atolls,” said Danny. “If there’s some sort of network, they’d have to be involved.”

“Probably.”

“All right,” Danny nodded. “We’ll go to her village ASAP. But here’s the deal — if what she’s saying checks out, we move her ourselves.”

Stoner shrugged. Danny took that to mean it was okay with him.

Dog figured he could sneak fifteen minutes away with Jennifer while the rest of the Iowa’s crew got the plane ready. He shouldn’t, of course — but rank had its privileges. Besides, Rosen and the others were fully capable of handling things on their own.

Now, if he were really taking advantage of the situation, he would ask someone else to fill in for him as pilot, which he wasn’t.

“Miss Gleason, if I could have a word,” he said as the others began filing out of the trailer.

“Miss Gleason?” she said, her face red.

“Um, Ms. Sorry.”

“Miss Gleason”

“Uh-oh, Colonel, you stepped in it,” said Zen.

“Hmmmph,” said Breanna.

“I had an idea about adding something to the com section of the computer,” said Dog. “A language translator. As part of the regular communication area. “We had—”

“Which communication area?” she snapped. “In the flight-control computer, or the master unit? Tactical or the mission-spree areas?”

She wasn’t angry with him, he told himself, she was just busting his chops.

She was, wasn’t she?

“Well here’s the situation,” the colonel told her, starting to explain how they had tried to talk to the Chinese yesterday.

“Important officers in the Chinese military all speak English,” she insisted, absentmindedly taking a stray strand of hair and pulling over her ear.

“They may speak it, but in the heat of the battle, they don’t understand it too well.”

“You can have language experts on call at Dreamland.”

Damn, she was being difficult. “In the heat of the moment, it would be easier if you could press a button and what you said was translated and broadcast,” said Dog. “It would prevent misunderstanding, and there’d be no time delay.”

“Mmmm,” she said.

“Can you insert some sort of translator into the communications sections?”

“I’d have to think about it.”

Busting his chops, definitely. He could see the start of a grin on her face, a slight hint.

Man, he just wanted to jump in bed with her.

“We should be ready to preflight in ten minutes,” said Rosen from near the doorway.

“I may be delayed,” the colonel said. “I have to check back with Dream Command.”

“You can do that from the flight deck, Daddy,” said Breanna. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to say “Daddy,” Colonel,” she added in a tone of voice that left no doubt that she’d done it on purpose.

“Colonel Bastian, I need a word,” said Danny Freah, squeezing inside. “Has to be private, sir.”

“Well, I was just leaving,” said Jennifer.

Dog managed to sit down in the chair without stopping her.

“Have a good sleep?” asked Danny.

“Yes, Captain, I did,” said Colonel Bastian. “Go ahead.”

“The girl we picked up, from the village.”

“We still have her?”

Dog listened as Danny explained in detail what had happened, what the girl had told Stoner, and what Stoner’s team had discovered on the atoll stations.

“I should have told you she tried to shoot me,” said Danny when he was done. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I — it’s a little hard to explain.”

“You better try, Captain.”

“Yes, sir. This isn’t an excuse.” Danny’s body seemed to deflate. “In Bosnia, there was an accident, an innocent woman trying to protect a kid.”

As Dog listened, he noticed Danny kept shifting his hands awkardly. He’d never seen the captain so ill at ease.

Dog rubbed his forehead, unsure exactly what to say, much less to do. conceivably, his captain could be charged with dereliction of duty for not taking the situation seriously.

On the other hand, if this woman was just a housewife in the village — hell.

“Search the village,” Dog told Freah. “Secure it.”

“What about the atoll? I’d like to check it out ASAP.”

“All right, I’ll talk to Woods. If you’re looking for force backup—”

“I have what I need,” said Danny. “We’ll use the Marines here.”

“Not without Woods’ okay.”

“They’re authorized to secure the island.”

“Not the atoll.”

“Right,” said Danny. “One other thing. I want us to move the people in that village when we’re done. If we just turn them over to the Filipinos, they’ll be slaughtered.”

“I doubt that’s true. I …”

“We can move them ourselves. I’ll scout a new spot for them on the south part of the island. We can have them there tonight,” Danny said firmly.

“Let’s find out what’s in the village,” said Dog. “Inspect it, then contact me.”

“Can we move them? I have to know what I’m going to do with them.”

“It’s not my decision,” Dog said. “It’s up to Admiral Woods, and probably Admiral Allen. They’ll deal with it.”

“But they’ll take your advice.”

“They may, they may not,” said Dog. “More likely the latter.”

“You don’t like her at all, do you,” said Zen, rolling alongside Breanna as she walked to the Navy’s mess tent.

“Please, Jeff, we’ve been over this a million times,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

“Green-eyed jealousy. Hell hath no fury like a jealous lady.”

“At least you know your clickés.” Breanna swung through the door without holding it for him. A fresh batch of pancakes was just being put out; she loaded a double-high stack on her plate.

“Packing it in, huh?” said Zen when she returned to the table. He was sipping a cup of black coffee.

“On a diet?” she asked, taking a bite of her pancakes.

“Trying to get back my girlish figure.”

“These are good,” she said. She tried changing the subject. “How’s FDR?”

“We’re fighting the Depression,” said Zen. “You know what’s amazing?”

“The fact that you’re actually reading?”

“I read all the time before I met you,” said Zen.

“Sports Illustrated and Penthouse don’t count.”

“Penthouse Letters,” he told her. “Big difference.”

“I was wondering where you picked up your technique.”

“Roosevelt never really gave up trying to walk, not until he was in the White House,” said Zen, suddenly serious. “I think he really thought he would walk again. He kept telling people, next year. Next year. You know the thing he did with his legs, leaning on people? I bet he really thought he was walking. I bet he did.

“Geez, Bree, you got to chew those things.”

She stopped mid-bite — half a pancake slipped form her mouth.

Zen laughed and took a sip of coffee.

“Me, I’m a realist. I know I’m not going to walk again.”

“Except when you were in ANTARES.”

“Yeah. Well, the drugs did that,” he said. He looked into his coffee cup, then put it down and picked up a spoon, fishing out a fly. It was a minute or so before he began speaking again. “I understand what Frank was thinking.”

“Frank?”

“Hey, all that reading gets me an’ old Franklin on a first-name basis,” said Zen. “Except only his enemies called him Frank. I think.” Another bug dive-bombed into his coffee. “These flies must love this coffee.”

Jeff held it out, laughed — then tapped the spoon at her as if tossing the bug.

“Hey!”

He’d actually slipped the bug off the spoon, which he delighted in pointing out.

“You shoulda seen your face.”

“Ho, ho,” said Bree.

“Finish eating and let’s go recreate. I have to practice the Piranha controls in an hour.”

“Oh, you’re suave,” she said.

“Comes from reading Penthouse Letters.”

They ran is as a classic encirclement, using four squads of Marines as well as Danny’s people. Two groups were dropped east of the village, each led by one of Danny’s Whiplash troopers, while two other groups came down from the ridge. Using so many people decreased the likelihood they would achieve surprise, but Danny reasoned the available resources made it the way to go. It was a conservative choice, one that couldn’t be faulted. As he boarded the Quick Bird helo to supervise the mission from the air, he realized he’d probably chosen to do things this way to compensate for screwing up earlier.

Not screwing up. Just not acting aggressively.

Danny had his helmet plugged into the helicopter’s com circuit, which allowed him to talk on the radio channels and the interphone. He wasn’t just observing — both Quick Birds were packing rockets and chain-guns. A Megafortress and a pair of Flighthawks pilots by Captain Fentress were also supporting the mission. The two teams coming in from the coast were aboard Marine Super Stallions, helicopters the size of Pave Lows, but with an additional engine.

Stoner sat in the back of the helo. He had suggested bringing the girl with them, but Danny wasn’t convinced she’d be much of a guide. Besides, she’d inadvertently see a lot of their technology.

Another conservative choice. Late.

“Squad One is down,” said Powder, who had the northeastern approach.

“Two is down,” said Liu, heading the southeastern team. As always, the Marine helos had made their deliveries precisely on time.

As the remaining teams reached the stream, Danny checked in. fentress’s bird’s-eye view of the area showed the swamp and the area surrounding the village looked quiet. The village itself was almost completely hidden; Fentress would have to get much lower and use the IR sensors to give them a meaningful view.

“No boats,” said Stoner as they circled off the coast of the island.

“Yeah,” said Danny. He switched the feeds on his helmet visor back and forth in quick succession, checking for any sign of movement. A small zigzag of smoke made its way up from the trees, most likely a cooking fire. Danny would have his men check the ashes, make sure the locals weren’t burning documents.

“We’re ready,” said Powder, a good ten minutes ahead of schedule.

“Hold your position,” Danny told him.

“Got it, Cap.”

Danny clicked into the feed from Powder’s helmet. He could see two thatched roofs to the left of the team’s position. Something moved on the right — a kid maybe, or an animal. The range-finder said Powder’s squad was seventy-two yards away. Trees and low brush blocked the approach, but a clear path down to the ocean was just to the team’s left. Two Marines would grab anything that used the path as an escape route.

“Squad Two ready,” said Liu.

Danny ordered the two squads that had come from the ridge to move across the stream toward the swamp. Five minutes later, they were in position at the south edge of the wetlands.

“Hawk Leader, we’re ready for your run.”

“Copy that,” Fentress sounded a lot like Zen over the radio, though the two men could not have been more different. Fentress was rail-thin, and looked like he’d fall over in a breeze. Zen looked like a running back, and except for his legs, might be in as good shape. Personality-wise, Fentress bordered on flighty, though while flying the UM/Fs, he made an effort to project a calm, almost cold, demeanor.

“Feeding you video,” said Fentress.

The island came into sharp focus as the Flighthawk approached, the optical feed was at maximum magnification, making objects ten times larger than in real life. The U/MF was at five thousand feet for its first run, still relatively high.

Nothing from the village — no small-arms fire, no shoulder-launched SAMs. Good.

“Teams, move forward,” said Danny as the plane came in. “Confirm when you reach Alpha Point.”

He told the helo pilot to move forward also. A slight twinge of adrenaline hit his stomach; he leaned against his restraints as the chopper pushed toward its own Alpha Point near the coastline.

The IR feed on the Flighthawk’s next run painted the village as a green sepia Currier & Ives scene, assuming structure that might not have sides, a fenced area, probably for animals. He saw something that looked like a goat, but no people yet.

No people? Shit.

“ready,” reported Liu.

“You guys are cheatin’,” said Powder. “They must’ve gotten a head start.”

“Powder,” said Danny.

“We’re ready,” said the sergeant. So were the other teams.

“Hawk Leader. I need that low-and-slow run, give me your best shot,” said Danny. “Three and Four, move in, I’ll locate the natives for you in a second.”

“Machine gun,” said Bison.

“Everybody gold. Hold!”

Danny keyed the feed from Bison’s helmet to his, but he couldn’t make out what Bison had spotted.

“You sure, Bison?”

“I got something moving, Cap,” said Powder.

“What’s going on?” said Stoner.

Danny held up his hand, needing him to be quiet. He was in automatic mode now, punching buttons. The scram of things had a swirling logic of their own and you wanted to keep yourself on the edge, away from the whirlpool.

“Everyone hold on,” Danny told his people. “Hawk Leader, we’re ready for you now, Captain.”

“Hawk Leader,” acknowledged Fentress.

The Flighthawk dropped to a hundred feet over the island, literally at treetop level. Though it was moving slow for an aircraft — just under 150 knots — the feed nonetheless blew by in a blur. Danny calmly hit the freeze frame as the first building came in view.

Three figures in one hut, one figure in another. Four, maybe five in the pen.

Three more up near Squad Four.

“Floyd, you have three natives on your right, above that ridge there. Everybody else is in the hut, or the pen — those are animals in the pen. I don’t have Squad One and Two in view. Hang tight.”

Danny clicked forward on the feed, still didn’t have them. He could wait for another run or just go.

Waiting was conservative, but it meant giving the people in the village more time to man weapons, plan a defense.

“Three and Four move in,” Danny said, finding another solution, “One and Two hold.”

“Aw, shit,” said Powder.

“Hawk Leader, another run, further east,” Danny said.

“Copy that,” said Fentress.

The Flighthawk came over again — two people were walking south toward Liu’s team. Danny fed the details to Liu, then ordered One and Two to move in.

“Take us there,” Danny told the helo pilot, who gunned the engine on the small helicopter. The scout rocketed forward so fast Danny flew back in the seat.

“Go, go, go!” Bison was yelling. Danny clicked in the Flighthawk feed, saw an explosion on the west side of the camp. Going at the machine gun, the team used flashbangs and smoke grenades. Voices shouted in his ears. He struggled to stay above it all — outside the scram.

“Quick Birds, hold your fire,” said Danny. “That smoke is from our grenades.”

He clicked into the feed from Bison — the trees moved swiftly, then he saw ground, smoke — an old tree trunk in front of his team member.

The machine gun.

“Shit fuck,” said Bison.

“All right, everyone relax now, relax,” said Danny.

“Got two guys here,” said Powder. “Older than the hills.”

“Powder, watch it — natives coming at you,” said Liu.

“We’re on it.”

Danny pushed up the helmet screen, looking through the windscreen of the Quick Bird as the pilot pointed to the ground. Stoner leaner over, trying to make out what was happening.

“Can you get us down?” Danny asked the pilot.

“I can hover over that roof there,” he replied. “You’ll have to go down the rope.”

“Yeah, do it,” said Stoner.

“Do it,” said Danny.

There was gunfire to the right of the helicopter. The pilot hesitated, then pitched his nose toward it, steadying into a firing position.

“Hold off,” said Danny, touching the man’s arm. “Powder, what the fuck?”

“Wild stinking dogs,” said the sergeant. “Mean motherfuckers.”

“What about the people?”

“They’re all right,” he said. “We’re okay. We have two, three natives secured. No resistance, Cap. ’Cept for the barking dogs. Man, they bug the shit out of me.”

Danny let go of the pilot’s arm. “We’ll use the rope,” he said.

By the time Stoner got to the ground, the village was secure and the huts had already been searched. The unrehearsed, ad hoc operation had gone remarkably well, so well, in fact, Stoner thought the Whiplash people might actually give his old SEAL team a run for the money.

A run, nothing more.

Even the Marines had done well. The only casualties were six dogs, probably kept by the villagers for food.

The locals were sitting grim-faced in a small circle in front of one of the huts. They were all old, easily in their fifties if not well beyond. The place was what the girl had told him it was — a refugee village started by people who had fled from another island.

Captain Freah was consulting with his people, dividing the surrounding area into quadrants for a detailed search. To Stoner, it seemed a waste of time, though he wouldn’t bother pointing it out.

“Looks pretty clean,” said Danny.

“We have to hit the atolls,” said Stoner. “Sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, his voice still flat. While the captain turned and went back over to his men, Stoner looked at the huts. They couldn’t have been here for more than a few months.

“We’ll go out through the beach,” said Danny when he came back. “It’s quicker. Marine helo will shoot us to the base. I have to leave one of my guys here to supervise, and one at the security post. That’ll give us a total of six people, including myself.”

“We can use the Marines,” said Stoner.

“I have an okay for an armed recon already,” said Danny. “If we add Marines, that has to be cleared. They’ll probably want to fly in more forces, set up a whole operation. It’ll be thorough, but it’ll be overkill — and it won’t happen till tomorrow night. You told me you wanted to go sooner rather than later.”

“I do.”

“Then let’s do it.”

They gave the Chinese carriers a wide berth, working their way close to the Vietnamese coastline before heading back west. It occurred to Dog this very same B-52 frame might have pulled many missions here decades ago, dropping its sticks on North Vietnamese targets, maybe even mining Haiphong harbor. Dog had an unobstructed view of the coastline from roughly 25,000 feet; it seemed like a faceted jewel, a piece of intricately cut jade. He’d missed Vietnam, and wasn’t the nostalgic type besides, but even to Dog, it looked like the last place on earth a war would break out.

Then again, so did the empty ocean in front of him.

“Two minutes to our search area,” reported Rosen.

“Delaford, how’s it looking down there?” Dog asked him.

“We’re ready when you are, Colonel.”

“We’re talking to your friends in the Orions. They haven’t found anything for us yet.”

“Tell ’em to listen harder,” said Delaford.

“I’d give ’em new hearing aids if I thought it would help.” Dog did an instrument check, then turned his gaze back to the side window, looking down at the now-peaceful sea. His quarry was somewhere below, but where?

Armed with the satellite information as well as intercepts from SOUS and another hydrophone net, the Fleet intelligence officers had analyzed the probably course of the Chinese submarines. They had decided, given the mission, the subs would work as direct a course to the carrier group as possible, and probably get regular updates as they closed. This scenario presented several opportunities for finding the subs; not only would their route be some-what predictable, but the subs would probably pole their masts above the surface from time to time. The intel officers looked for specific choke points — in this case, places where it would be easy to find the subs as they passed — and concentrated their resources there. It sounded good, but so far, it wasn’t working. There was so much sea to cover, and without support vessels and submarines to assist, the Orions had a relatively limited view.

Dog wondered about the possibilities of extending Piranha’s range — not by the factor of two, which Delaford had said was doable, but by ten or even a hundred. It would be much more effective to launch it now and let it go find its target on its own.

Actually, they could, theoretically, do that. Just launch and search. Set a course southwest, toward the Chinese carriers; they’d find the subs sooner or later.

“Tommy, what do you think of launching Piranha blind and letting it look for the subs on its own?” Dog asked Delaford over the interphone.

“You mean completely without contact?” asked Delaford. “The problem is, Colonel, it’s such a wide area to cover. Considering Piranha can only stay in the water for eighteen hours — well, twenty or twenty-one …”

“It’ll stay longer than that,” said Dog.

“Right, I mean, it can only pursue at speed for that long, then runs down.”

“But if we figure, say, an eighteen-hour patrol, so the last six hours or so it’s near the carriers — I don’t know, can you plot something like that out? How close would we have to be?”

“Let me talk to English.”

“Orions are clean,” reported Rosen. “You know what we need? Hot dogs.”

“Oh, that’d be great on a long mission,” said Dog sarcastically.

“Break up the monotony.”

“Colonel, we think we have a good drop,” said Delaford, coming back on the line. He laid out a plan to launch Piranha at 260 nautical miles from the carrier task force and run it on an intercept. When it reached a point twenty miles from the carriers, it would then sweep ahead in an arcing search pattern.

“The only problem is what we do if, after we launch, the Orions find the Chinese subs and they’re really far away.”

“How far?” asked Dog.

“Well, anything over fifty miles and not heading in our direction is going to be problematic,” said Delaford.

“But we’ll know where they’re headed.”

“Only if our guess that they’re after the Indian sub is right.”

“I say we go for it,” said Dog.

“I agree.”

Woods and Allen might not, but Dog couldn’t see the use of flying around all day and not launching. They had to take a shot sooner or later.

“Give us that launch point again,” Colonel Bastian told Delaford.

Twenty minutes later, Dog and his copilot took Iowa down to five hundred feet, surveying the ocean and preparing to launch a buoy and the device. After a last check with the Orions to make sure they hadn’t found anything, Dog dipped the plane’s nose. Piranha splashed into the water like an anxious dolphin, freed from her pen.

“Contact with Piranha,” said Delaford, reporting a link with the robot. “We’re running diagnostics now. Looking good, Colonel.”

They ran the Megafortress in a slow, steady oval at approximately five thousand feet above the waves. As they completed their second pass, Rosen got contacts on the radar — a pair of Shenyang F-8’s were heading south from China.

“I have them at one hundred twenty-five miles,’ said Rosen. “They’re between eighteen and twenty angels, descending.”

“They see us?” said Dog.

“Not clear at this time,” said Rosen.

“Check and record our position,” said Dog, who wanted the record clear in case of attack. They were, irrefutably, in international air space.

“Absolutemento.”

“Which means?”

“You got it, Colonel.”

“Still bored? I thought the launch would perk you up.”

“Just call me Mr. Perky, sir.” Rosen worked in silence for a few minutes, still tracking the pair of interceptors as they headed south, not quite on an intercept vector. It was possible a land-based radar had picked them up as they opened their bay to complete the Piranha launch. On the other hand, it was also possible the planes were merely on a routine mission. The F-8IIMs looked like supersized MiG-21’s. though their mission was considerably different. Intended as high-altitude, high-speed interceptors, they were not quite as competent as the more maneuverable Sukhois that had recently tangled with Iowa. Nonetheless, they were capable aircraft, and their Russian Phazotron Zhuk-8 multimode radars would be painting the Megafortress relatively soon.

“We have a surface ship, thirty miles west, thirteen degrees from our present heading,” said Rosen, “Unidentified type — trawler-size.”

“Yes, we have it on the passive sonar,” said Delaford. “We’re looking at our library now. Probably a spy ship.”

“Not in the library,” said Ensign English after comparing the acoustical signal picked up by Piranha with a library of known warships.

“We can swing over and take a look,” said Dog.

“Good idea, Colonel,” said Delaford. “We’ll keep the probe its present course.”

“Keep an eye on our F-8’s,” Dog told Rosen as he nudged the stick to get closer to the ship.

“They’re turning it up a notch — on an intercept now at forty miles.”

“Surface ship is tracking us for them?”

“No indication of that,” said Rosen.

By the time the ship appeared in the distance, the F-8’s were roughly ten miles out. The two planes had cut their afterburners and were now descending in an arc that would take them about a half mile off Iowa’s nose. If everyone stayed on their present course. The fact they were heading in that direction, rather than trying to take a position on Iowa’s rear, seemed a significant tactical shift to Dog. Maybe shooting down the cruise missiles yesterday had won some friends.

Not that they necessarily wanted them.

The ship in the distance looked like an old trawler. Ensign English, working off the video feed piped down by the copilot, identified it as a Republic of China or Taiwan ship, one of a class of spy vessels the Taiwanese used to keep tabs on their mainland brothers.

“He may be looking for subs,” said Delaford. “He’s got active sonar.”

“Can they find us?” asked Dog.

“I don’t believe so.

“F-8 pilots are challenging us,” said Rosen. “In pretty good English too.”

Dog tuned his attention to the Chinese fighters, giving them the standard line about being in international airspace and having no “hostile intent.”

The Chinese replied that the Yankees were overrated and would have no chance in the World Series this year.

“Couple of comedians,” said Rosen.

In the exchange that followed, Rosen proved to be a ridiculously committed LA Dodger fan, predicting the Dodgers would “whup” whomever the American league managed to put up. The Chinese pilot — he was apparently the wingman in the two-plane flight — knew more than enough baseball to scoff at Rosen’s predictions. The man inexplicably favored the Cleveland Indians, and in fact, seemed to know the entire lineup.

As the two pilots traded sports barbs, the F-8’s took a pass and then came back to work themselves roughly parallel to the Megafortress’s cockpit. This was undoubtedly their first look at an EB-52, and the pilot complimented Rosen on his “choice of conveyance.”

“Quite a vocabulary,” said Dog.

“Claims he went to Stanford.”

After the tension of the past few days, the encounter seemed almost refreshing.

Excitedly, Delaford brought the laughs to an end.

“We have a contact. Definite contact,” he said. “Shit, yeah!”

The GPS readings showed the submarine exactly thirteen miles to the south by southeast.

“They’ve made good time submerged,” Delaford answered. “These are them — Trafalgar signature. Wow! Colonel, this is pay dirt. Pay dirt. These submarines don’t exist — this is a serious coup.”

“Relax, Commander. There’ll be plenty of time to pick up the Navy Cross at the end of the mission,” said Dog. Not that he didn’t share at least some of Delaford’s excitement — especially since it meant his decision to launch without a sighting from the Orions had been vindicated. One less thing for Allen to look down his nose about. “Make sure we’re recording.”

“Oh, yeah. Big time.”

“Thirty-five knots, submerged,” said Ensign English.

“Is that fast?” asked Dog.

“It’s good. It’s very good,” said Delaford. “And they may not even by trying. We’re twenty miles behind, at forty-two knots, our max. I’m going to settle in at sixteen miles behind them. If they’re like our guys, they’ll accelerate a bit, then stop. Jesus, I wonder if they consider slow.”

“F-8’s holding their position,” said Rosen.

“I’d like to shoot south and drop a buoy ahead of the subs,” Delaford added.

“We’ll wait until the F-8s go home,” Dog told him. “They ought to be leaving pretty soon; their fuel should be just about out.”

“Copy that,” said Delarod. “This is great, Colonel. This is really great.”

The distance from their target, their need to avoid the escort ships, and the storm all greatly complicated matters. When they were finally able to analyze all of the data, Admiral Balin was faced with the inescapable, if unpalatable, conclusion that their vaunted weapons had somehow missed. To add further insult to this grave disgrace, one of the Chinese escort ships somehow managed to get close enough to him as he doubled back to reconnoiter; two of its Russian-made ASW rockets had exploded close enough to do some damage to Shiva. One, but apparently only one, ballast tank vent was stuck in a closed position, a circulating pump in the environmental system had broken, and it seemed likely there had been damage to the radar mast. The ELF gear was apparently no longer functioning, as they had missed a scheduled transmission. Casualties were negligible; one man had suffered a broken arm.

Any competent Navy would have sunk them.

He was now out of Kali missiles, but had six torpedoes, one for each forward tube. In the chaos and the storm, he had lost contact with the Chinese fleet, but would find it again soon enough.

The torpedoes on board were primitive Russian twenty-one-inch unguided fish, which required him to get considerably closer than the Kalis. To guarantee a strike, he intended to close to within three thousand yards, if not closer.

Getting that close to a warship involved many dangers, but these were not to be thought of now. Soon, if not already, his own fleet would be pressing home the attack; no matter the odds, Balin owed it to them to press home his mission.

To be truthful, part of him was glad. From the moment he had launched the last missile, an inexplicable sadness had come over him. He had fulfilled his greatest ambitions; there was nothing else left to achieve. Even if he had been given a hero’s welcome, or promoted to command the entire Navy, he would, in effect, be retired. He had fought all these years to remain at sea — to remain alive. Retiring, even as a hero, seemed something akin to a slow and meek death.

Retirement was no longer a possibility. That notion somehow felt supremely comforting as he plotted a course to intercept the enemy.

They rigged the MV-22 with buddy tanks on the lower fuselage, allowing the Osprey to refuel the Quick Birds en route to the atoll. It was a great plan in theory, one that worked perfectly in any number of computer simulations. In the real world, however, it was trickier than hell.

The small helos struggled to stay connected to the drogues fluttering behind the Osprey. The gyrating wash of the massive propellers tossed the small bodies up, down, and sideways. The pilots compared the energy needed just to work the stick to a ten-mile kayak race; their arms were burning even before the fuel started to flow. watching the sweat pour off his pilot, Danny wondered what he’d do if the man collapsed in midair. When the Quick Bird was finally topped off, it lurched so violently to the right, Danny thought they’d been clipped by something.

“We’re five minutes out,” said the pilot, no sign of stress in his voice.

“All right, listen up,” Danny said over the Dreamland frequency. “Flighthawks give us real time ninety seconds ahead of the assault, so we see what’s there when we go in. Boom-boom-boom, just like we drew it up.”

He’d drawn it up simple: one helicopter from the south, one from the east. The one from the south overflew the small dock and landed on the beach area. The other went directly to the building seventy yards from the water. The helos would suppress and defenses — the Flighthawk snaps Zen had taken showed there were no gun emplacements or heavy weapons, so resistance should amount to no more than hand-carried light machine guns. With the defenses neutralized, the two teams would rapid-rappel to the ground.

Stoner had concluded there should be no more than six people on the islands, given the small size of the building and the lack of cover elsewhere. Danny concurred. The takedown should go quickly.

In case it didn’t, the Osprey would circle in from the north, prepared to use the chain-gun in its chin if things got tough. Fentress and the Flighthawk, with their 20mm weapons loaded for bear, would be available for fire support as well.

The island was shaped like an upside-down L, with the observation post near the tip of the leg. The head of the letter had a rocky beach that could serve as a set-down point for the helos and Osprey once the atoll was secure.

“Hawk Leader to Whiplash One,” said Fentress over the common frequency. “Captain Freah, I’m ready when you are.”

“Roger that,” said Danny. He glanced at his watch, then back at the sitrep map in his smart helmet, which showed they were about twelve miles from the atoll. Fentress would start his pass when they hit five miles. “We’re just over three minutes from Alpha. We’ll keep you posted.”

“Hawk Leader.”

Fentress wasn’t Jeff Stockard and would never be, but he was definitely capable; Danny had no doubt he’d do this job well.

So if Danny left, would somebody else walk right in and pick up the slack?

Yeah.

“Team Two checking in,” said Powder, in charge of the second squad. “Hey, Cap, can we go for a swim when this is over?”

“Only if there’s a school of sharks nearby,” said Liu.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” said Powder.

“Hey, Cap, you ever have grilled shark?” asked Bison. “Serious food. You get a little lemon, maybe some herbs. Very nice.”

“I thought you only ate burgers and pizza,” said Danny.

“Burgers, pizza, and shark.”

They were eight miles from the atoll.

“All right. Sixty seconds, Hawk Leader,” said Danny.

“Copy that.”

Danny turned to look at his pilot, an Army officer who’d come over to Dreamland specifically for the Quick Bird program. Before that he’d flown with the special operations aviation group that worked with Special Forces, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). The captains gave each other a thumbs-up; Danny sat back, clicked his viewer into the Flighthawk feed, and curled his thumbs around his restraints.

“Alpha,” he told Fentress.

“Alpha acknowledged,” said Flighhawk pilot. And the show began. “Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends….”

All Danny saw at first was a blur of blue and white whipping across the screen. The blur settled into a hatched pattern of waves as the Flighthawk leveled off, then slowed. A brown bar appeared in the distance, growing into a cat stretched across a purple rug, morphing into the side of a mountain at the top of a black-blue desert. Light glinted like crystal arrows from the blue background. Then, the image seemed to snap, and now everything was in perfect focus. A small dock sat before him, a rubber speedboat tethered to one end; above it sat a green-yellow cottage, a shack really, made of palms — no panels designed to look like palms in the distance. Fishing poles, oddly oversized, sat in the water near the dock. There was a rock at the water’s edge.

No, not a rock. A housing for a radar.

“Infrared feed,” Danny told Fentress. The pilot must have anticipated him, for as the words left his mouth, the image flashed into a gray greenness, murky monotone as if the robot aircraft feeding if had dipped into the bottom of an algae-choked pond. It took nearly three seconds for the computer to artificially adjust its sensitivity, forming the blurs into an image. If froze frame, backed out twice — all obviously at Fentress’s command — then analyzed the picture, supplying white triangles that showed a total of five people on the islands: two near the docks, one in the hut, and two about twenty yards further north, possibly observing the water.

“We’re dancing,” said Danny. He fed the analyzed picture to the rest of his team, briefly summarizing the situation. The Osprey was tasked with neutralizing any resistance from the two men on the northern side of the atoll.

“Everyone hold your fire unless we’re fired on,” he reminded them. “You know the drill. Two — if they move toward the boat, sink it.”

“Aw, Cap,” said Powder. “Can’t we take it out for a spin first?”

“Hawk Leader to Whiplash One. You need another run?”

“Negative, Hawk Leader. Hold your orbit as planned. We’re going in.”

“Godspeed.”

The Quick Bird pilot threw everything he had into the helo’s turbine engines, flooing the gates with the remains of a thousand long-gone dinosaurs. The tail whipped around and the helicopter tilted hard, pulling two or three Gs as it swooped into an arc. Once pointed at his target, the pilot began to back off the throttle, and somehow managed to come at the island like a ballerina sliding across the stage.

The effect on his passengers, however, was more like what might be felt in the cab of a locomotive throwing on the brakes and reversing steam at a hundred miles an hour. Danny felt his boron vest pushing hard against his collarbone as the restraints took hold.

If felt damn good.

“We’re hot!” said the pilots as something red erupted on the left side of the island.

“Missiles in the air!” said Danny. He could see small pops of red near the dock. “Guns — fuckers! Let ’em have it!”

The mini-gun at the side of the Quick Birds’s cabin spit bullets toward the cottage. A burst from the ground, and the helo pirouetted to the side, flares popping as it whipped into a quick series of zigs and zags to avoid a shoulder-launched SAM. The missile sniffed one of the flares and shot through it, igniting above and behind the helicopter. The small scout shot downward in a rush; Danny threw his arm out in front of him as they hurtled toward the cottage area. The pilot slid the aircraft twenty feet from the ground, hurtling almost sideways over the rooftops. As they passed the cottages, Bison, sitting behind Danny, pointed his MP-5 out the open doorway and burned a magazine at one of the men on the ground. Flames burst from the cottage. Danny caught a glimpse of the man dropping his rifle and falling backward as the chopper spun away.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” screamed Danny, undoing his restraint to go down the rope.

Stoner grabbed the rope after Sergeant Liu disappeared. Even though he wore thick gloves, the friction burned his hands. He had taken the team’s smart helmet and carbon-boron best, but because the Whiplash issue seemed a bit bulky, had opted to use his own gloves. Obviously, a mistake, but it was too late to bitch about it now. He felt the dock under his boots and let go, collapsing into a well-balanced crouch.

Ten times hotter than he imagined, everything was exploding. In the back of his mind, he heard his boss’s boss, the Director of Operations himself, bawling him out for going ahead with only six guys in broad daylight.

Yet the atoll’s defenders throwing up all this lead and blowing up so much equipment — for surely that was what they were doing — argued that hitting them as soon as they could had been the right thing to do.

Should have hit it last night then.

Liu was at the head of the dock, onshore already. The boat was on Stoner’s right. He pulled his knife and went to it, slashed the two lines, then kicked it away. Something pushed him down onto the bobbing boards — it was the helicopter rocking back after firing a salvo of rockets. Thick cordite and smoke, and something like diesel fuel, choked his nose. A fireball erupted; the water churned with a stream of steady explosions. Now all he smelled was burning metal.

These bastards had SAMs and all sorts of weapons.

“Hey, forward, damn it!” yelled someone.

It was Powder, waving through the smoke on the beach. Stoner pushed himself to his knees, stumbling toward the land.

By the time Danny made it to the ground, the gunfire had already stopped. The defenders’ stores of ammunition and weapons continued to explode, and the cottage burned bright orange, flames towering well overhead.

They’d rigged it. Bird One tried smothering the fire by flying over it, but this only made the flames shoot out the side and was dangerous as hell. Finally, Danny told them to back off. The inferno continued, doubling its height in triumph and sending a burst of flames exploding above.

“Team One, move back,” he told Bison and Pretty Boy. “Get back to that fence of vegetation. Powder, what’s your situation?”

“Two dead gomers. Can’t see what else is going on with all this smoke. We’re on the beach near the dock.”

“You got a way out of there?”

“Same way we came.”

“How’s Stoner?”

“Got a smile on his face,” said Powder. “I think we oughta draft him, Captain.”

Danny doubted the CIA officer was doing anything but frowning. The truth was, the operation was a fiasco. The only saving grace was that none of theirs were injured — a minor miracle, given all the lead and explosives in the air.

What listening post was worth this?

“We’ll wait for the fire to go down; then we’ll inspect the building,” Danny said. “Everybody just relax. Powder, those bodies near you got Ids?”

“Negative. Look Chinese, but no dog tags or anything. No names.

There was one more burst of fire from the walls of the hut, followed by an explosion that seemed to shake the island up and down an inch. Danny half-expected a volcano to open up in front of him.

Then everything was quiet. In less than two minutes, the flames had consumed themselves. Danny pushed the visor back on his helmet, and unbuttoned two buttons on his vest. He walked toward the ruins of the cottage, now a thick line of black and gray soot in the sand. The air was still hot, as if he was walking into a sauna.

“Looks like they had an underwater long-wave-communication system,” said Stoner from down the beach. “Most of it’s in pieces, but if that’s what it is, they’re very sophisticated.”

“You figure that’s what they were protecting?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know,” said Stoner. “Sure blew everything up in a hurry.”

“They must have realized we were coming when the Flighhawks came in,” said Danny. “Or they picked up the helos with their radars.”

Powder and Liu had moved up from the beach toward the cottage, and were now poking at the dust of its remains.

Powder scooped up something in his hand and started toward Danny.

“Hey, Captain, look at this….”

Danny raised his head just in time to see a mine explode beneath his sergeant’s foot, blowing him in half.

Once the Chinese planes turned back, Dog pushed the Megafortress south, tracking ahead of the submarines to a point about seventy-five miles away from the carrier’s air screen. Dog began running a figure-eight at two thousand feet, then ducked lower to drop the transponder buoy. It settled under the waves and began transmitting perfectly from its wire net. Delaford made sure he had the probe on the new channel, then sank the first buoy.

We’re looking good,” said Delaford as Iowa climbed back up through five thousand feet. “Buoy is gone. We have our two contacts now at fifteen miles, still moving at thirty-one knots now. Interestingly, the two subs are sticking pretty close together,” he added.

“Why is that interesting?” said Rosen, listening in. Delaford gave a short lecture in submarine tactics. It began fairly basically — splitting up made it more difficult for the two submarines to be followed — and progressed into a discussion of the wolf packs used by the Germans during World War II. Delaford had a theory the two subs might be talking to each other somehow, though there was no indication of that from Piranha. He had interesting ideas on short-range acoustical and light-wave systems that sounded more like science fiction than doable technology, even to Dog. His chatter, though, helped relieve some of the boredom of the routine; Dog’s job now consisted primarily of lying the same figure-eight pattern again, and again, and again, holding a steady course while Piranha did its thing.

Meanwhile, the submarines continued on a beeline for the position of the Chinese carriers. The Iowa began plotting the next buoy drop, deciding how close they would get to the Chinese task force.

As Dog found the coordinates for the next launch, a communication came in from PacCom, restricted for Dog.

“What the hell is going on up there?” said Admiral Woods, flashing onto the small video screen in front of the pilot’s console. The computer automatically restricted the communication to his headset.

“We’re deployed Piranha and are tracking two Chinese submarines. I’m told they’re making good time — thirty-two knots.”

“The MiGs.”

“The F-8’s? They played cowboy and Indian for a while, then went home. We reported that.”

“Your orders were to steer clear of all Chinese aircraft.”

“Admiral, I think you’re being a little picky,” said Dog. “The fighters came out and met us. We took no action against them. What would you have me do?”

“I would have you follow orders.”

“With all due respect, sir,” said Dog, who felt anything but respect was due, “I think you’re just looking for things to criticize. I can’t seem to tie my shoes without you objecting.”

“My people don’t talk that way to me, Colonel.”

“Maybe they should.”

“You want to go toe-to-toe with me, fine.”

“Admiral, really. What’s the problem here?”

“You’re used to running the show, Tecumseh. I understand, but you’re under my command now.”

Dog stared at the screen. Woods stared back.

“Well?” said the admiral finally.

“I was following my orders as best as I knew how. That’s all I can say.”

“I’m sending a patrol plane to help track those submarines,” answered Woods.

“I don’t see that as necessary, Admiral. We’re tracking sufficiently.”

The line snapped clear before Dog could finish.

Danny’s brain split in half, one playing an endless track of sorrow, the other stepping back calmly, decisively, peering at the scene from above. The second half realized — belatedly — the area near the cottage had been thickly laid with mines and booby traps.

“Stay where you are. Everybody!” the calm half yelled. “Stay!” He pointed at Stoner, who’d impulsively taken a step toward Powder. Liu, who’d been about ten or twelve feet away when Powder got hit, lay slumped over on the ground, moaning.

Get Liu out, then decide what to do.

Danny flipped the shield on his helmet back down. Any metal in the area ought to be a little warmer than the rest of ground, and metal might translate into mines or trip wires — he pushed the IR sensor, went to maximum sensitivity, and began scanning slowly.

Nothing.

God damn, screamed the other half of his brain. God, God damn.

Try again, said the other half. He readjusted the setting, took a long breath, then moved his helmet slowly.

He could see rocks, or something like rocks. Flipping back and forth from IR to optical, he realized there were some rocks that had a triangular shape at the bottom. These were mines, or attached to mines.

Liu, twenty yards away, curled between two of them. Danny continued to scan. There were two other mines behind where Powder had been blown up.

There were more mines over to his left. And a row of mines directly in front of him; another step and he would have blown himself up.

Powder had saved him.

He had a pretty straight path to Liu on his right, assuming he wasn’t missing any of the mines.

Danny lowered himself to his knees, the pulled his knife out of its scabbard. He began crawl-walking slowly, examining the area in front of him as carefully as he could. It couldn’t have taken him more than two minutes to reach the sergeant, but they stretched out forever. Liu turned toward him as he came forward.

“Don’t move,” Danny told him. He pointed near Liu’s head. “There’s a mine right there.”

“Helicopter,” said Liu, suggesting he be pulled out from above.

“Yeah, but I’m afraid of the rotor wash and we don’t know if there are any timers,” Danny explained. “We can do this. Just relax.”

“I got nicked in the arm and in the leg,” said Liu. “I think I’m okay.”

“Just hang there a minute,” Danny said. he bent over the first mine, sliding around it. Until he started to move sideways, his balance had been perfect, but now he started to lose it; he tottered forward toward the trigger of the explosives. With a quick jerk, he changed his momentum. His leg slipped and he fell backward.

He’d missed the mine by a good measure, but still he expected an explosion. When it didn’t come, he started to laugh uncontrollably. The spasms shook his body, emptying it not only of tension but of doubt. Sure of himself now, Danny got back up and made his way to Liu, scooping him into his arms.

“Powder?” asked the sergeant.

“No,” said Danny. He’d left a good trail and it was easy to take Liu back. He paused and got his bearings before moving, made sure the area to the south was clear. Once he started, he moved quickly.

“You okay, Captain?” said Bison when he reached him. The trooper had inflated a stretcher.

“Get him out,” Danny said. “Get the mine detector on the Osprey down here too.”

“Inbound,” said Bison. The MV-22 was just approaching the dogleg part of the atoll.

“All right. Get him back ASAP. Just go,” Danny said.

“I’m okay,” Liu protested.

“Go.” Danny returned to the spot where he’d retrieved Liu, then began moving down toward Stoner.

“You got a mine detector in that helmet?” Stoner asked.

“I got infrared.”

“That works?”

“Seems to,” said Danny.

“This ain’t worth getting blown up.”

“Now you fuckin’ tell me that,” said Danny. “There’s a wire over there. I can’t tell what it’s attached to.”

“You see it?”

“Not well,” Danny admitted. “Temperature in metal’s a little different than the sand. I got it on maximum. Problem is, there’s rocks on top of some of those mines, or they’re set up in the same. Pretty clever. I’m doing okay so far.”

“Yeah,” said Stoner.

“Yeah.” Danny was now ten yards from the CIA officer. Part of Powder’s leg lay directly to his right. “How the hell did they work around these mines?”

“Maybe they weren’t armed. Get attacked, they hit the radio and turn it on,” suggested Stoner.

“Yeah,” said Danny, working closer. Eve though the way looked clear, his paranoia felt overwhelming.

“Protecting something.”

“I think that was a long-wave-communication device out by the shore they blew up,” said Stoner. “Looked like big fishing poles? Use it to communicate with submarines.”

“So this was an Indian post?”

“Guys looked Chinese to me.”

The Osprey, already loaded with Liu, buzzed low over the water and headed out, its large rotors whipping it toward its top speed of 425 knots, twice as fast as any helicopter in the world.

“He gonna be okay?” Stoner asked.

“He said he would. He’s just about a doctor, so he’s probably right,” said Danny as he reached Stoner. “Now we go back the way we came,” he told him. “Easy.”

“Yeah.”

“My footsteps.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Bison had started toward them with his gear, moving very slowly and marking the mines with reed-thin flags. It was as if he were laying out an odd golf course.

“They must’ve had some pretty high-tech stuff here,” said Stoner as they walked. “They sure as shit fought to protect it.”

“Yeah, they did.”

“That hump down by the water didn’t blow completely. Was probably a radar.”

“Yeah,” said Danny.

“Look at it once the mines are clear.”

“After we secure my sergeant’s body, yes.”

“We’re ready,” said Jennifer. “We should have it.”

Zen stared at the screen. “Nothing. Didn’t work, Jen.”

“All right, hold on.”

Zen pushed back in the seat. The sim program included a short-handoff module, but it wasn’t much of a workout — on the program, the screen appeared and you went.

No screen, no go.

“All right, let’s try again,” said Jennifer.

Zen’s main screen turned green. White axis lines dissected it into four quadrants. Two white blobs sat in the upper quarter, percolating like tiny Alka-Selzer tablets.

“Hey, got radar feed,” said Zen.

“Sonar!” corrected Jennifer.

“Yeah, sorry. Got it. Okay, this is the synthetic thermal feed?”

“Right.”

“Looks like I’m flying in soup. Except for the grid, there’s no reference.”

“You’re swimming, not flying.”

“Whatever. Running diagnostic set. You out there, Delaford?”

“I’m watching everything you do,” said the Navy commander from Iowa, which was orbiting the ocean a short distance away.

Zen’s Flighthawk controls had been replaced by two oversized keyboards and a control stick large, but considerably less flexible, than the Flighthawks’. While Piranha’s full range of commands could be entered through the keyboards, Zen’s interest — and training — was confined to a very small subset, which could be handled by preset buttons carefully marked with tape. He could flip between a view synthesized from either passive sonar or temperature-deviant sensors. The computer automatically processed the contact data, displaying a small amount of its information in captions beneath each of the white synthesized images on his main screen; more information on each could be called up on the auxiliary screen. His speed controls were also worked by dedicated keys on the left board.

“How are you looking over there, Quicksilver?” asked Delaford.

“Uh, well, the sea is kind of a brownish green,” said Zen.

Delaford laughed. “I can tell you how to change the colors if you want.”

“I’m just fine,” Zen told him.

“All right. Those two white blobs are our submarines. We’re twelve miles behind the closest one. This is as close as we want to get. They’re oblivious to us. All their attention is ahead. Pretty soon they’ll be turning around,” added Delaford. “They’ll pull a quick spin in the water to make sure there’s no one behind them.”

“What do I do then?”

“Just stop. Their active sonar can’t see us beyond roughly five miles, if that. Truth is, we could probably get right on their hulls and they’d never know we were there.”

“Okay.”

“Temperature sensors are not nearly as sensitive. Here, look at the screen.”

Delarod fed in the display. It took Zen a second to realize the orange funnels in the milky greenish-brown field were the target subs.

“Very obvious what sensor you’re looking at,” noted Delaford.

“Clever.”

Delaford ran through some of the routine, then repeated things Zen had already heard from one of the Navy briefers as well as Jennifer. Zen felt a little like a high school backup quarterback being crammed with information on the sideline after the star went down. Best things to do, he thought, was just get into the game and work it out on his own.

“Okay, so eventually these guys split up. It’s not going to matter who you go with, but once you do, you have to stay with him. Just make sure the other sub doesn’t come back around and try and sniff you out,” said Delaford.

“I thought they couldn’t see me.”

“Hear you. Probably, they won’t.”

“Probably?”

“If we could sneak past an American destroyer, I wouldn’t worry about a Chinese sub,” said Delaford. “On the other hand, that’s kind of why we’re here, to figure out what they can do.”

“All right, I’m ready.”

“I would go with the sub that heads west,” said Delaford. “That’s the one that will be likely to be closest to the Indian ships, so if they’re going to do anything fancy, that’s the one that’ll do it. We want to see if they lay mines, fire torpedoes, that sort of thing. Be an intelligence bonanza, as long as you don’t get in the way.”

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“When they surface, just hang back. They come up every so often to use their radio. You know the auto-destruct sequence, right?”

“Yes, we do,” shot in Jennifer.

“Our preference is to pick up the probe when we’re done. You can hit the home sequence. You remember?”

“Yeah,” said Zen. “You know, I’m really ready to go. Let’s do it.”

“All right, do a ten-degree dive for a hundred meters, then return to three hundred meters depth,” said Delaford.

Zen pushed the joystick forward, remembering he needed to move very slowly. A bright red number appeared on the grid line as soon as he pushed on the stick to its right, what looked like a compass with an artificial horizon appeared, showing the attitude of Piranha’s nose. The depth climber — or rather, dropped — through 310 quickly, but the attitude of the probe barely budged. It was like flying in thick honey. Or swimming in thick honey — Zen had trouble conceptualizing what he was doing.

“Good enough,” said Delaford as he hit the mark, then brought the probe back. “Every movement is very gentle. Very Zen-like, Zen.”

“Ha-ha,” said Zen.

“So when do I get to fly the Flighthawks?”

They ran through a few more maneuvers and the detection modes. Delaford then transferred complete control and watched over Zen’s shoulder for a while.

“We’ve got great data so far,” the Navy commander told them. “What we get from here out is just icing on the cake. Anything you find out — how deep they go, weapons — it’s all icing on the cake.”

“Chocolate or vanilla?” asked Jennifer.

Delaford laughed, then signed off.

Dog’s brief to Breanna was simple and quick, filling her in on the position of the Chinese, where they’d dropped Piranha’s com buoys, and their encounter with the fighters. There were some civilian commercial vessels at the far eastern end of the patrol sector, heading south but obviously trying to avoid the Chinese fleet. They also counted three Taiwanese spy ships in the search range. Breanna already had the tanker tracks and contact info, and there wasn’t much to say about the weather forecast, which was still predicting clear skies for thirty-six hours or so.

He told Breanna that at least one SSN had been detailed south to try to intercept and trail the Chinese subs; Delaford though Woods would end the Piranha mission once he was sure the attack sub was on the trail. In the meantime, other ASW assets were moving in on the eastern side of the Chinese fleet. It was possible they too would make contact, at which point their job would likewise, be ended. The idea was to switch to the least sensitive method of data-gathering as soon as possible.

That, and to make sure Dreamland couldn’t grab all the credit.

“One thing you want to watch out for, Captain,” he added when he had exhausted his official brief, “is Admiral Woods. He seems to have a stick up his ass. He takes it out and beats me with it at every opportunity. He blamed us for the contact with the Chinese interceptors.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have buzzed Beijing,” said Breanna.

“Stay clear of the carrier air screen if at all possible,” Dog told her, not particularly appreciating the joke.

“That’s kind of up to them, isn’t it? If the subs keep going the way they’re going, it’ll only take another two hours or so before we’re in their patrol area,” said Bree. “Sooner or later they’re going to see us.”

“Understood,” said Dog.

“Anything else, Daddy?”

“Captain, I’d appreciate it—”

“Bag the Daddy stuff. Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

He longed to ask to speak to Jennifer — she was on board Quicksilver, helping Zen — but it was too much of an indulgence.

“All right, Quicksilver. See you later.”

“Roger that.”

Dog broke the Megafortress out of her figure-eight track and found his bearings for the Philippine base. They were just climbing through twenty-five thousand feet when the computer buzzed with an interruption on the Whiplash command link. The words INCOMING TRANSMISSION. PRIORITY: DOG EARS appeared on the HUD screen.

Danny Freah’s voice, but no image, came through after Dog authorized the feed.

“Colonel Bastian?”

“Daniel. How we doing?”

“Not good, sir. We’ve lost one of our men. Sergeant Talcom. Powder.”

Dog listened as Captain Freah described the operation in cold, sober tones.

“I understand,” he said when the captain was finished. “I’ll notify Admiral Woods. Where are you now?”

“We’re still at the site, waiting for the Osprey to return from transporting Sergeant Liu.”

Dog listened as Danny told him what they’d found — not much actually. They still had the mission tapes to analyze. The dead enemy soldiers who hadn’t been charred beyond seemed to be Chinese; they figured the atoll had been a spy site.

“We think there’s a whole chain of them, running north,” said Danny. “Stoner thinks that, but they’re not using known Chinese codes; or Indian codes for that matter. CIA’s pretty interested.”

“I’m assuming you don’t require my assistance,” said Dog.

“Affirmative. We’re ready to bug out.”

“I’ll see you back at the FOA.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hang in there, Danny.” The words were trite, way too automatice — he had to say something but couldn’t come up with anything profound. “Iowa out.”

He killed the connection, then went through the plane’s status with Rosen. He checked on the other members of the crew, talked to Delaford about the way Zen had handled Piranha, asked Ensign English what it was like a hundred meters below the ocean during a storm — all delaying actions before telling the rest of the Dreamland team their friend was dead.

He punched through the circuit that connected back to Dreamland, bringing the command center on-line in what amounted to a conference call with the other Megafortresses and the mobile base back at the Philippines.

“I have some very sad news. Today, Technical Sergeant Perse ‘Powder’ Talcom lost his life to an enemy mine in a reconnaissance mission in the South China Sea. Powder was an exceptional man, an important member of the Whiplash action team, a cutup at times, and a ferocious fighter.”

Dog stopped abruptly. He couldn’t sum up a man in a sentence, and there was no need to. The people listening knew him pretty well, most of them probably better than Dog did.

“Colonel Bastian out.”

“God, Sergeant Powder,” said Jennifer. Tears started to slip from her eyes. “He was so sweet — he was one of the people who helped deliver that baby in Turkey. God.”

She started sobbing, then brought her hand up to clear her eyes so she could see the display. The communication algorithms didn’t require any tweaking — the Piranha system as a whole was probably the least bug-ridden project she’d ever worked on — but she ran a test on the signal strength anyway.

“You okay, Jen?” asked Zen. He was sitting a short distance away on the Flighthawk control deck.

“Oh, yeah, I’m all right.”

“It sucks. Powder.”

“Yeah.”

The sobs bubbled up again. She pushed back her teeth together, trying to force them away. She barely knew the sergeant, barely knew most of the enlisted men in Whiplash and at Dreamland.

What if Colonel Bastian were killed? What if his plane went down? It was not impossible — the EB-52’s weren’t invincible. A mechanical problem, a screwup in the computer system that helped run the plane…

She’d worked on that system. Maybe she hadn’t tested it properly, maybe there was something she’d messed up. God, she’d worked so hard she must have forgotten a million things, screwed up in a million ways.

“Jen?”

“I’m okay,” she said. She reached to push her hair back, forgetting she was wearing a helmet. “I’m all right,” she insisted again.

“It’ll help a little if you focus on the mission,” said Zen.

“Since when did you become a fucking shrink?”

The remark was wildly inappropriate, but Zen didn’t say anything, and she couldn’t find a way to take it back.

Bree settled onto the flight-eight pattern above the Piranha buoy. The sea was almost glasslike, and though it was getting dark, the sky was so clear, if you squinted just right you could see Australia, or at least think you could.

Thoughts of Sergeant Powder’s family crowded into her head as she went through some routine instrument checks with her copilot. She didn’t know Powder very well — he was a bit crude, a class clown, not the kind of man she liked — but he was a member of the team, of their family.

She could imagine his mother getting the news.

The nights by Zen’s bedside came back to her.

“Engines so in the green I think they’re sprouting buds,” said Chris, subtly hinting that she’d started to daydream.

“Roger that.”

He read the fuel states — having tanked before coming on station, they had more than ten hours of flying time. Breanna glanced at the long-range radar, which showed the Sukhois patrolling over the Chinese carriers one hundred miles away. It was unlikely they didn’t know the Megafortress was there, or why.

Powder’s poor mother would never know what happened. They wouldn’t be allowed to tell her much.

“Captain, we’re intercepting broadcast from that Taiwanese spy ship,” said Freddy Collins, handling the Elint board. “Should I roll tape?”

“Go for it,” said Breanna. The transmission were actually recorded on computer disk, but there was no ring to “imprint electrons.”

“Whole lot of talking going on,” added Collins. “But they’re using a very sophisticated code.”

“Can’t break it?”

“As a matter of fact, no, not with our equipment,” said Collins. “The computer claims it’s using some sort of bizarre fractal code on top of a 128-byte thing — and they’re skipping frequencies on some sort of ultrarandom basis besides. The boys at the NSA are going to want to see this.”

“Probably talking about us,” said Chris.

“Torbin, what kind of radar is that Taiwanese vessel using?” she asked.

“Negative on that. Don’t have transmissions. Sukhois have standard Slot Back radar. They’re not close to picking us up. You want data on the carrier and the escorts?”

“They tracking us?”

“Negative. I’d compare the carrier’s radar capabilities to the AN/SPG-60 the Navy uses. Not particularly a problem for us; they can’t see their own planes beyond fifty miles. No airborne radar capacity.”

“You sound a little disappointed.”

“You always like to go against the best.”

“Don’t get too cocky.”

“Yes, ma’am; thank you, ma’am.”

Torbin was a big blond Norseman, a rogue throwback to the days of the Vikings they’d shanghaied from a terminal Wild Weasel posting in Turkey. He fit right into the Dreamland crew.

All they’d give the poor woman was a folded flag and some well-meaning salutes.

Zen nudged the joystick ever so slightly to the right, trying to keep the closest white blur in the center of his screen. Like the Flighthawks, Piranha had a set of preprogrammed routines, one of which allowed it to simply trail its designated target. Still, he preferred to manually steer the probe — otherwise, he really had no function.

They were about twenty miles from the end of their effective communication range; they’d have to drop another buoy soon.

The submarines were changing course, making a slight arc that took them due east. They were well behind the carrier group — Zen started to slow, remembering Delaford’s warning they would probably spin around to look for him, but they didn’t. They had their throttles open, plunging ahead at thirty-eight knots. Much faster and he’d have trouble keeping up.

Zen hit the toggle, changing the synthesized view from sonar to temp. the nearest submarine looked like an orange funnel in a greenish-brown mist; the other was such a faint blur, he wasn’t sure he would have seen it without the computer legend. The computer used all of its sensors to keep track of the targets, and could synthesize a plot from any angle. Jeff briefly toggled into front and top views. I was important — but difficult — to remember the views were based only on sensor information; he wasn’t looking at reality, but a very simplified slice of it. Anything outside of the sensor’s sensitivity was missing from the scene. That meant, for instance, when he looked at the thermal image, anything precisely the temperature of the water wouldn’t show up.

He went back to the passive sonar feed, the easiest to use when controlling the probe. The lower portion of the screen looked foamy and white, a by-product of the sound reflections the device picked up. As Jennifer had explained, it was a kind of refracted energy, similar to glare bouncing off sand. The computer could only filter so much of it out, but a good operator could compensate for the blind spot by changing the position of the nose every so often. In effect, pushing the spotlight into the darkness. Zen nudged the nose down slightly, peering into the basement, then tucked back to keep his target in sight.

They were turning again, this time south. Zen made another course correction, then studied his sitrep map on the far-right screen. He guessed the subs were making an end run around the back of the carrier task force.

Zen glanced over at Jennifer. She seemed more herself, her nose almost touching one of the computer screens. The only signs she was still upset were that she wasn’t talking to herself or sipping her diet soda.

“Hey, Jen, we’re going to have to drop a buoy soon.” He said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just want to make sure they’re going to hold roughly this course. I’ll work it out with Captain Stockard.”

“You have to watch the carriers.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

“There’s a comeback for that, but I don’t remember what it is.”

Zen turned his attention back to the screen. He realized he’d slipped a big off-line, and started to correct a little too quickly. The probe went too far right, then wallowed a bit as he overcorrected. He backed off, easing his grip.

A warning tone buzzed in his ear. He started to frown, thinking the computer was scolding him, then he realized it was showing a new contact.

“Jennifer — I have a new contact. No range markings,” he said. He flipped back into the thermal mode — there were only two funnels. He went back — the third shadow was off to the left; it didn’t seem to be moving.

Jennifer punched buttons at her station. “Roughly thirty-eight miles away, but the probe isn’t sure. Very quiet, angled away — could be a submarine using only its battery. I’m guessing it’s the Indian sub.”

“Not one of ours?”

“Hang on.”

He could hear her pounding her keys.

“Doesn’t appear to match. We can check with PacCOm, though, see if the position would match. I think it’s the Indian. It’s got to be. Can you hold your position while I talk to the Piranha people and see if I can get more data?”

“The Chinese subs are trucking,” he told her.

“Well, hang back a little while I get Commander Delaford. They’re not using active sonar?”

“They haven’t since we came on.”

The probe’s nose began to oscillate; he’d moved it too fast. Zen gently applied pressure to get it into a wide circle, where it stabilized.

“The Indian sub is supposed to be further south and to the east,” said Jennifer. “Commander Delaford says it’s possible it is one of the American attack subs at a good distance, beyond what the probe is reading. He can go through the data later. Stay with the Chinese. We’re going to check in with PacCom.”

“We’re going to need that buoy soon,” Zen said, pushing up his speed.

It would not be an exaggeration to say things had gone in completely the opposite direction from what Chen Lo Fann had intended. Now that he had all of the data and weighed all of the evidence — the attack on his post, the interception of the missiles, the communications showing the American and Chinese pilots joked freely — it was clear a secret agreement had been reached between the two countries. They somehow saw India as a common enemy, and if they joined together against India so quickly after the animosity of a few months past — what would that mean for his Free China?

Annihilation, surely.

The course must be reversed. To do this, however, he would have to go well beyond his mandate. He would have to violate his orders. In a way that was most unambiguous.

There was no choice, though. He would use the robot planes; not to spy, but to provoke the Communists. They would think they were American U/MFs; they would attack in turn. The Americans would have to retaliate. It would be a replay of the events a few months before, but this time the Americans would have no reason to stop. This time, they would annihilate the Communists. China would once more be unified under a free government.

His own government would be displeased with his methods. Despite the outcome, he would be punished. But Chen had no choice. Disaster loomed, and he could not count on fortune reversing herself without his own action.

As he went to board the helicopter that would take him to the dragon ship, Fann told himself that this was the way it must be.

“Redtail One to Quicksilver. You reading us there, Air Force?”

Breanns clicked the talk button. “We have you, Redtail,” she said, acknowledging the communications from the S-3B, an ASW aircraft launched from the USS Independence. The two-engined Lockheed Viking was an incredibly versatile craft developed primarily for antisubmarine warfare. Packed with electronic equipment, it could launch and monitor up to sixty sonar buoys; it was also equipped with an inverse-synthetic-aperture radar for finding surfaced submarines at long range. When feeling aggressive, the S-3s could pack everything from antisub torpedoes to Harpoons and even Rockeye cluster bombs. They could also carry nuclear depth charges, though as a general rule these were not deployed.

Like all Vikings in the Navy, this one was scheduled to lose its ASW role in the next few months. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the conflict with China, it probably already would have changed roles. Orions and helicopters were set to take on the task, though as this plane’s presence showed, neither aircraft could quite completely take the versatile little Lockheed’s place.

This particular S-3B happened to be a member of a storied squadron, the oldest dedicated carrier ASW group in operation, the Fighting Redtails. While their planes and detection gear had changed dramatically since the squadron was first organized in 1945 (it didn’t gain its nickname until 1950), the pilots and crew members still showed the determination born in a period of worldwide strife.

They also liked to rag on the Air Force whenever possible.

“What the hell you doing out over water, Air Force?” mocked the Redtail pilot. His plane was roughly fifty miles to the southeast, approaching at about 320 knots. “You lost?”

“We hear you Navy boys needed your hands held,” replied Breanna.

“Hey, Air Force, either you’re a woman or real popular with the choir.”

“Want to hear me sing?”

“Only if it’s ‘Anchors Away.’ ”

“Sorry, my plane is programmed to self-destruct if I sing that. You want a fix on our contacts or what?”

“Roger that, good-lookin’.”

“My, what a charmer,” Bree said to Chris. “Give the joker what he’s looking for.”

“A punch in the mouth.”

“Just the coordinates for now,” she said. “You can protect my honor later.”

As Chris filled Redtail in on the submarine contacts, Torbin told Breanna the Chinese were scrambling a pair or fighters after the S-3.

“Redtail, be advised you have some tagalongs,” Bree told the Navy flight.

“We always dig a little faster and a little harder when people are watching,” answered the pilot.

“Come again?”

“Line from ‘Mike Mulligan,’ ” explained the Navy aviator. “You know, Maryanne and the Steam Shovel. Kids book.”

“You got me.”

“You don’t have kids?”

“Negative.”

“I’ll give you one of mine.”

Two Sukhois from one of the Chinese carriers rode out to shake hands with the S-3. Chris tracked them for the Viking, then helped Breanna get ready for the buoy drop, now less than five minutes away. After they opened the bay doors and started to nose downward, the radar picked up a new flight taking off from the T’ien, the Chinese carrier that had recently entered the arena.

“Sikorsky SH-3,” said Chris, his voice jumping an octave. “Wow. Where’d that come from?”

“Range?”

“One hundred miles. That’s a Sikorsky. The Chinese don’t have it,” added Chris. The venerable SH-3 had served with many countries, but wasn’t listed in the inventory of Chinese aircraft. “Those are ours.”

“Want me to tell them to give is back?”

“Captain, I have an active search radar off a Sea King AEW Mark 2 British helicopter,” reported Torbin. “Hey, this is pretty interesting stuff — the Chinese have a Sea King bag on that Sikorsky. Searchwater. Getting parameters.”

Torbin was using the slang term for the special airborne early warning system installed in Royal Navy Sea Kings. The British had pioneered the use of AEW systems on helicopters, installing what they called Searchwater radar with a data link to their Harrier aircraft. Mounted in what looked like a large spaghetti pot off the starboard side of the aircraft, the radar gave roughly a hundred-mile coverage when the helicopter reached ten thousand feet.

“Chinese don’t have this sucker,” added Torbin.

“Yeah, so you think the Queen defected?” asked Breanna.

“More like someone from Spain. They use this configuration. Wait, though. You know, it’s not exactly a Searchwater.”

“Does he have us?”

“Uh, negative on that. Our profile’s too small for him.”

“Okay, everybody take a breath,” said Breanna. “Let’s drop the buoy, then recheck your gear and make sure our Ids are right. Major Stockard, Ms. Gleason, we’re about thirty seconds away from the drop.”

Danny Freah’s legs wobbled as he stepped out of the Quick Bird; he had to grab on to Stoner to keep his balance. The rest of the team was waiting near the edge of the runway. For some reason, he had expected Powder’s remains to be waiting there as well, though, as protocol demanded, the dead man had already been removed to a proper area to await disposition.

“Colonel’s inbound,” reported Bison. His eyes looked red, but his face was set in its usual frown.

“Okay.”

“Marines found a place for the villagers,” added the Whiplash trooper.

“The Marines?”

“Peterson worked it out with some Navy people. The word came down. No government, just do it. They’re about to take off now.”

“Where?”

Bison thumbed toward a “Frog”—a general-purpose transport helo that looked like a Chinook shrunk to half size. “Blow’s with ’em,” said Bison, referring to Sergeant Geraldo Hernandez. “They thought you might like to go, so they waited a little. Been two or three minutes.”

“Yeah, maybe I will. All right. Stoner?”

“I gotta make a report.”

“How’s Liu?” Danny asked Bison.

“Claim’s he’d rather fix himself than let a corpsman near him.”

“Good,” said Danny. “I’ll be back.”

He began trotting toward the waiting Navy helicopter. The crewman at the door waved and helped him in; a moment later the helicopter lifted off.

The villagers didn’t have much, but the rear of the chopper wasn’t all that big, and in order to fit, Danny had to stand next to the door. The Filipino girl he’d captured stood against the opposite wall, staring at him. Danny tried smiling at her, but she didn’t respond.

The spot they’d found for the village was on another island about fifteen minutes to the south. Blow, squeezing over to Freah, told him some Navy SeaBees were at the new village site already; they’d cleared it with a dozer, erected some temporary canvas tent, and were digging so they could pour foundations — three small prefab housing units had been located by the ever-resourceful engineers and were en route.

“Build a skyscraper if you let ’em,” said the sergeant. “Peterson really kicked some butt. Gotta give it to the Marines. Except that they’re Marines, they’d be okay.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “Locals give you any trouble?”

“Not really. Just the silent treatment. I’m sorry about Powder,” added Blow. “That sucks horseshit.”

““Yeah,” said Danny. “Locals give you any trouble?”

“Not really. Just the silent treatment. I’m sorry about Powder,” added Blow. “That sucks horseshit.”

“Yeah.”

“You see it happen, Cap?”

Was he asking because he was accusing him of screwing up?

Danny looked down at Hernandez, who was six or seven inches shorter than him. There wasn’t any anger in his face, just confusion, a little sorrow.

“Yeah. He was a few yards away,” Danny told his team’s pointman gently. “If Powder didn’t get it, I would have. Sucks.”

“Dedicated,” said Danny.

“Crazy fucks.”

“Yeah.”

The helo settled down. Unlike the last village, this one had a good view of the shoreline, which lay a quarter mile below the settlement area. Danny guessed the Filipinos might not appreciate that. They wanted a place where they could hide, and the clear view worked both ways, but it was too late to worry about it. He jumped out as the helo touched down, then helped the Navy people unpack the villagers’ gear.

“Got a Lieutenant Simmons wants to see you,” said one of the sailors on the ground. “He’s a liaison guy. He helped set this up. Some paperwork, and I think he needs some advice on classification or some such thing.”

“Yeah, okay. I gotta get back, thought,” said Danny. He put down the box of cooking gear he’d taken from the helicopter. As he rose, the girl he’d taken prisoner passed in front of him.

It was as if he wasn’t there, just another ghost in the jungle. Danny felt anger well up — he’d busted his ass for these people, for her, and they just went on like he wasn’t there.

“Hey,” said Danny. He grabbed her arm. She jerked it back. “You gonna thank me?” he said.

she reared back her head. if it hadn’t been for the wind from the blades of the helo, he spittle probably would have struck him in the face.

The consensus was clear — definitely a Sikorsky, definitely something very similar to Searchwater, though

not quite an exact match. It looked like it might be a bit harder to jam, according to Torbin, who immediately volunteered to try.

“Let ’em be,” said Breanna. “Chris, get on the line to Dreamland Command and tell them about this. They’re going to be very interested.”

The helicopter climbed into an orbit over the aircraft carrier. As interesting as it was, the Sukhois that had charged after the Viking were a higher priority; and so Breanna sidled in their direction, making sure to stay within ten miles of the Viking, the Sukhois stared to sandwich the Navy plane in a high-low hello-there routine; one Chinese pilot came in over the S-3 while the other came in below. Even at five hundred knots, it was doubtful the separation between the three planes added up to ten feet.

“They’re crazy,” said Chris. “They’ll hit ’em for sure. They can’t fly that well in the damn daylight, let alone in the dark.”

The radar shoed the Chinese fighters merging with the Viking and, looking at the display, it seemed as if they had crashed. Instead, they had simultaneously sandwiched the S-3 swooping across in opposite direction. It would have been an impressive move at an air show.

“All right, let’s see if we can get their attention so our Navy friend can drop his buoys,” Bree said, reaching for the throttle bar. The engine control on the Megafortress was fully electronic, and unlike the old lollipop-like sticks in the original B-52, consisted of a master glide bar that could be separated into four smaller segments. Unless the individual controls were activated, the flight computer assumed that it had discretion to fine-tune any discrepancies in the engine performance to maintain uniform acceleration.

Not that any aircraft maintained by a member of a ground crew under the direct supervision of Chief Master Sergeant “Greasy Hands” Parsons would dare show any discrepancies.

Breanna couldn’t get close to the Chinese without getting close to the S-3 as well. Even so, she got close enough to send a serious vortex of air currents across their wings.

Not that it had any effect.

“They’re really a pain in the ass, ain’t they?” said the pilot in Redtail One. “They’re not going to keep me from doing my job,” he added.

Possibly hearing the comment, the Sukhois below the S-3 accelerated and popped up in front of the Viking’s nose. Redtail One fluttered; as the plane started to bank the Chinese planes seemed to swarm tighter. Two Sukhois flying over the Shangi-Ti changed course and headed in the S-3’s direction.

Jennifer Gleason, meanwhile, had filled the S-3 pilot in on the submarines they were tracking and their present course. As the pilot tacked toward it, the other fighters arrived. Though he chopped his speed, he couldn’t shake the weaving Sukhois.

Zen, eavesdropping on the radio communications, had an almost overwhelming urge to hit the gas and chase off the Chinese planes, and had to keep reminding himself he was controlling a robot probe under the water. Maybe because of the distraction, it took him a few extra seconds to realize the two subs he was following were splitting up.

“Bree — our targets are splitting. I’m with the one heading west. We’re going to need another buoy soon.”

“Roger that, Hawk Leader. Ms. Gleason, give all the data to our Navy friends.”

“Already have, Captain.”

“Can we help you somehow?” Bree asked the Redtail pilot as the Sukhois swarmed around the Viking.

“Short of firing at them? Negative.”

“Yeah, my orders suck too,” said the Navy pilot, referring to his rules of engagement, which, because of the complicated political situation, strictly forbade him from doing anything but running away. “Current ROEs are bullshit on top of bullshit.”

“I didn’t know you had antiair weapons,” said Breanna.

“At this range, I could hit them with my Beretta,” said the pilot.

One of the Chinese Sukhois nearly clipped the S-3’s wing as he rose up suddenly. The Redtail pilot cursed over the fighters. Undaunted, the two other Chinese planes stayed right on this tail. As the S-3 leveled off, one slipped beneath him.

“What do you think they’ll do if we activate our gun radar?” Bree asked Chris.

“Activate theirs?”

As Bree considered it, one of the Chinese planes came at the S-3 head-on.

“Man, they’re out of their minds,” said Chris.

Breanna checked her position, then switched back into the radio circuit. “We’re going to have to cut out of this dance in a few minutes,” she told Redtail One, starting another pass in an attempt to pull the Sukhois away.

“Acknowledged,” said the pilot tersely.

The interceptors took no notice of the bigger plane, ducking and weaving with the S-3.

“We’re going to have to leave you, Navy,” said Breanna.

“Been fun, Air Force.”

Breanna tucked her wings and pushed the Megafortress west toward the coordinates Jennifer Gleason had plotted for the next buoy drop. She was just about to give the order to open the bomb bay doors when Torbin’s deep voice rattled in her headset.

“Sukhois have activated gun radars!” he barked.

“ECMs,” said Bree. It was undoubtedly another ratchet in their harassment campaign, but she wasn’t going to just stand there. “Hawk Leader, I mean Piranha, we’re going to have put that buoy drop off for a second.”

“Copy that,” said Zen.

Bree pitched the Megafortress around, taking nearly eight Gs to get back on an intercept. “Chris — tell Redtail we’re coming back. Then target these motherfuckers. Excuse my French.”

The copilot’s answer was garbled by the force of gravity as the big plane’s momentum shifted. The Megafortress’s electronic countermeasures filled the air with a thick radio fog, but at close range from behind the plane the Sukhois pilots could have used straws and spitballs and still brought the Viking down. That didn’t seem to be their intent — at least not yet. The lead Sukhois accelerated on a diagonal, crossing so close over the S-3 they seemed to collide.

“Shit,” said Redtail One over the radio. The plane tucked toward the waves, but then righted itself.

“Scoprions,” Bree told Chris.

“Our orders—”

“Fuck our orders.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Another copilot might have pointed out the captain was about to set herself up for a court-martial — and was taking him along, but Chris had flown with Bree forever and helped her ignore any number of orders. “Let me offer a suggestion — we’re close enough for the Stinger air mines.”

“Stinger then. Good idea.”

Chris brought the tail gun on line as Bree began banking.

“Redtail One, I’m going to come right over you and nail those mothers,” she told the pilot. “Just hold your course.”

“Negative, Air Force. Negative. Shit.”

“Redtail?”

“I’m ordered to return to my carrier. Repeat, I just got the order to break off. I have to scrub.”

“Scrub? You’re kidding,” blurted Chris.

The Navy pilot didn’t respond, but his actions showed he was dead serious — he began a slow bank to the east. The Sukhois continued to dog him, not yet realizing they’d won.

“Quicksilver, what’s going on up there?” asked Zen.

“Just the normal command bullshit,’ said Breanna. She scanned her instruments, trying to control her anger.

“We need to drop the buoy, Bree,” Zen reminded her.

“On it,” she said, pulling the big plane back toward the drop point.

It was a long green bag, a simple thing, the kind of wrapping that emphasized the one enduring truth of man’s existence.

“Shoulder, arms!”

Like everything Whiplash did, the service was a bit ad hoc — and utterly suited to the task at hand. All Dreamland personnel available gathered near the edge of the runway, standing between the long dark bag and the gray C-130 waiting to take it home. The powerful lights of the Seabee work crews turned the night a silvery yellow as four members of the action team, four of Powder’s closest friends in the universe, walked to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. Each man shouldered a different weapon — an M-16, an MP-5, a Beretta pistol, and a Squad Automatic Weapon. One by one, they pointed their guns skyward and fired off a burst in his memory. Each weapon had been Sergeant Talcom’s.

Danny Freah held the pistol. A sensation came over him as he pulled the trigger. He wanted to fling the gun in, throw it into the water, one last offering to the universe. But he was an officer, and he was a man of discipline and self-control, so he simply turned and led the others back. As the chaplain thumbed through his Bible, he couldn’t help thinking this might very well be the first time Powder had ever sat through a reading from the Scriptures.

“I say unto you which hear,” began the reverend, “love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smitheth thee on the one cheek offer also the other …”

The words, from Luke 6, struck Danny off balance. Why was this idiot talking of mercy when his man was dead?

Turn the other cheek? Bullshit!

A new urge came over him. Danny wanted to grab the minister, throttle him, make him say something more appropriate, more comforting.

But Danny Freah was a man of discipline and self-control; he did nothing.

“Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”

The words drifted away. The chaplain stepped back. On a tape player found by one of the Marines, a recorded bugle began its lonesome wail. Powder’s best friends in the universe each went to the corners of his remains, then gently placed him on board for the journey home.