Target Utopia

1

Colonel Danny Freah adjusted his sunglasses and stared out the passenger window of the Escalade as the SUV wound its way across a jungle ridge, its wheels clinging to a highway so narrow that brush poked against the windows on both sides. The lush jungle of southwestern Borneo in East Malaysia was considered a natural wonderland, one of the few pristine places left on earth. A few years before, this had made it a much-sought-after destination for rich tourists. But the outbreak of virulent guerrilla warfare involving combatants ranging from radical Muslims to sociopathic Maoist throwbacks had dimmed its attractiveness to even the most adventurist arriviste. There were many easier ways to cheat death.

Danny, though, wasn’t here as a tourist, and though his eyes scoured the nearby jungle eagerly, he wasn’t admiring the sights. Nor were the glasses he was tweaking actually sunglasses. They were high-powered smart glasses, Google glasses on steroids, as the developers called them. Developed from the “smart helmet” technology Dreamland had pioneered a decade earlier, they allowed him to scan in infrared as well as an optically enhanced and magnified mode.

“One time I was in Honduras,” said his guide, a portly CIA officer named Melvin Gephardt. “I was in the U.S. Army then, seventeen years old. First or second night there, and we’re in the jungle.”

“Uh-huh.” Danny had learned to throw in a few absentminded remarks every so often to keep Gephardt from bothering him with actual questions, or anything that had to be taken seriously.

“So we’re sleeping in these tents, right? Each one of us had one. Canvas, you know the drill. So anyway, one of the guys is sleeping and his arm somehow gets out of the tent, right? All of a sudden, middle of the night, we hear this bloodcurdling scream. I mean, someone is dying.”

“Mmmm.”

“Jump up, run out — this huge Anaconda has his arm like up to the pit in its mouth. Oh my God. The snake had to be like as long as this car.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So everybody’s yelling, and this Special Forces guy, right? He’s like there as an advisor for the Honduran army—”

“Stop the car!” yelled Danny, pulling at his seat-belt buckle.

Gephardt hit the brakes. Danny leapt from the SUV before it stopped moving. He trotted down the road about five yards, then made his way into the brush. Pushing his way between the thick vines and trees for about twenty yards, he made his way to a sickly looking Mahang tree, the lone survivor of a clear-cut harvest some ten years before. Older than the other trees, it stood out like a gnarled senior citizen in the middle of a high school prom dance, as thick as its neighbors were slender, stooped where its neighbors were bounding boldly toward the sun.

Eight feet off the ground, a Z-shaped limb rose from the trunk. Fending off the thick vines, Danny clambered up, then pulled himself out onto the limb. Conscious of his weight and the slowly sagging branch, he stretched out toward a black piece of wood wedged in the thin branches at the end.

A piercing screech froze him. Danny glanced to his left and saw an orangutan ten yards away, perched in the swaying top of another tree. The ape bared its teeth in a gesture clearly intended to intimidate.

Danny tried to remember the very brief advice he’d been given on dealing with the animals. The orangutan screeched again, then began shifting its weight so the tree swayed sharply. Ten yards was nothing for an angry orangutan; the animal could easily launch itself and land on Danny’s tree, if not his back.

“Go away,” Danny snarled, as nastily as possible. He couldn’t remember if this was the advice or not; it just seemed like the most sensible thing to do.

The orangutan screeched again.

“Get!” shouted Danny.

The animal gave one last ferocious screech, then retreated.

Danny breathed slowly, then continued out along the limb, moving cautiously but determined to get what he’d come for as quickly as possible.

The branch cracked. Danny felt himself slipping downward, but he didn’t fall; the damage was only partial, not enough to sever the limb.

The leaves of several trees nearby rustled violently. A dozen small black figures fled, looking like a swarm of giant bees following their queen to a new hive.

Monkeys. But at least they were going away.

“Sumabitch!” yelled Gephardt below. “Don’t fall.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that,” muttered Danny, stretching a bit more.

“What the hell are you doing, Colonel?”

Danny didn’t bother to answer. He inched out closer to the black object, grabbed it and wrestled it from the branch. Just over five feet long, its skin was as smooth as polished stone; the end closest to Danny looked like the nose of a dolphin, with small, round protrusions where the eyes would be. Two oblong stubs marked the middle of each side; the rear looked as if it had been bitten by an animal three or four times larger than the orangutans that were now fleeing.

The object was a little too cumbersome to carry down with him. Danny maneuvered it to an open space in the foliage and let it drop. Then he half shimmied and half climbed back down to the ground. He banged his knee as he went; it complained quite adamantly, reminding him of every other time he had hurt it, which was quite a lot. It strongly implied that he had reached the age when he shouldn’t be climbing in trees.

“You gotta watch these monkeys,” said Gephardt when he reached the ground. “They’re pretty strong when they’re mad.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, trying not to make it too obvious that he was stretching his knee.

“That’s it, huh? That’s from the airplane? UAV, sorry. That’s the part they didn’t get?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, resisting the temptation to say something sarcastic.

“That’s what, from the fuselage? Where’s the motor?”

“Got me.”

Actually, he knew from the techies who’d been examining the UAV’s capabilities from afar that it was likely the motor had broken off, and recovered with the wings and rest of the aircraft by the rebels who were controlling it. But even though he was CIA, Gephardt wasn’t cleared to know anything about it. So Danny kept the details to himself.

“We’re gonna want to get moving,” said Gephardt, looking at the object as Danny picked it up. “Rebels are all over the place.”

“Coming.” Danny turned the long fuselage around, making sure the glasses were recording every inch. The visuals were being sent back to a situation room in a bunker at Langley, the CIA headquarters in suburban Virginia. When a barely audible beep told him the techies were satisfied that he had examined every conceivable angle, he lifted the slender fuselage onto his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“How the hell did you see that thing through all the foliage?” asked Gephardt.

“I eat my carrots. Let’s get back.”

Gephardt continued his story about the snake as they started back down the hill. It was a story Danny had heard in many different guises over the years: a Green Beret or some other resident expert would come out, measure the victim’s other arm, then chop the snake about two inches deeper, releasing the victim. He was then medivacked out, his arm scarred with acid burns.

Anacondas were rare in Honduras and had their pick of much easier prey than sleeping soldiers. Still, the size of the snakes made it exactly the sort of tale suitable to be passed down from generation to generation, a kind of campfire ghost story that many of its tellers — Gephardt undoubtedly among them — told so often that they inevitably became convinced must have happened. While Danny had a relatively high opinion of the Agency as a whole — he worked with some of the best officers in the business — the little he knew of Gephardt made it clear that he swam in the shallow end of the pool. It was more indication of how low a priority Malaysia had to not just the Agency, but the U.S. in general. Ironically, upward of forty percent of the world’s commerce shipped through the nearby waters, a fact not lost on the pirates operating there.

“So, you flyin’ right outta here?” asked Gephardt as they turned off the scratch road onto a slightly wider one.

“Yeah. I gotta get back.”

“I’ll still stand you that beer when we get into town.”

“If there’s time,” said Danny, hoping there wouldn’t be.

“Shit!”

Danny looked up. There was a man with an assault rifle in the road ahead.

“I can deal with it,” said Gephardt. “Not to worry.”

“Two more on the side,” said Danny. He touched the right frame of his glasses, switching them into infrared mode.

“Yeah, I see ’em. You know what? We’re just gonna blow right by ’em. Screw the bribe. I don’t like the idea of stopping.”

“Guy with an RPG farther down. Twenty yards. On the right.”

“Shit. How are you seein’ that?”

The discovery of the man with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher changed the equation; running past would be too risky.

“Back up,” said Danny. “We can backtrack.”

“Too late. Just be cool,” added Gephardt. “It’s only going to cost us money. Agency money.”

Slowing the SUV’s pace to a bare walk, Gephardt rolled down the window and held up a small wad of cash, yelling something at the man in Malay. The man seemed unimpressed — he lifted the rifle in front of his chest with both hands and motioned for Gephardt to stop. Gephardt slowed to a stop by applying the brakes, but kept his right foot on the gas.

“Hello,” yelled Gephardt — the greeting sounded roughly the same in Malay as in English. “Apa yang anda mahu? What do you want? The tax?”

The man said something in return that Danny didn’t catch, then walked over to Gephardt. Meanwhile, the two men Danny had spotted on the side of the road trotted toward them. One went to Danny’s window, the other continued around to the back of the vehicle.

“Tidak, tidak,” said Gephardt. Danny recognized the word as “no”; the rest of the sentence was indecipherable. He was out of range for the microphone embedded in the frame of his glasses, or the computers at the Whiplash “Cube” could have interpreted for him.

That seemed unnecessary. The man who’d stopped them spoke in tones that suggested they were conducting normal business: he seemed to want more money. Danny glanced at the man standing near the passenger side. He was young, maybe fifteen, or even fourteen. The Chinese QBZ-95 bull-pup assault rifle he was clutching looked several years older than him, and surely had seen more action — the bull pup’s dull green surface was scratched and even dented; the box magazine was wrapped with tape in two places, and it looked like a small piece of the top handle grip was missing.

The hand-me-down Chinese weapon suggested that the man was a member of the 30 May Movement, one of the three rebel groups vying with the East Malaysian government in this part of the island. Not nearly as well funded as the others, 30 May was smaller than the others, though every bit as ruthless.

Gephardt continued to speak with the man on his side of the SUV as Danny scanned ahead. The man with the RPG was pointing it at the front fender. Another man had joined him. Two more figures were heading down a small hill in the distance, just at the very edge of his infrared range.

The man at the back of the SUV grabbed at the handle for the rear hatch.

“That’s no good,” said Danny loudly. “That’s mine.”

“I got it,” said Gephardt quickly. He turned back to the man at the door, his voice louder than before.

Something he said apparently angered the man, who raised his rifle.

“Easy,” said Gephardt. “Relax.”

Danny had seen enough. “Whiplash Rotor, command Danny Freah,” he said, alerting the system to accept direct commands. “Terminate all targets within one hundred yards of vehicles. All targets are hostile.”

In seconds the air began to percolate, as if the very molecules of nitrogen and oxygen were exploding. The men around the truck fell to the ground.

“Gephardt, go!” said Danny. “Go! Get us out of here.”

The CIA officer, not quite understanding what was going on, hesitated, though only for a moment. The SUV lurched forward, dirt spinning as it veered first left and then right.

“What the hell?” said Gephardt.

“Just stay on the road.”

He did, though barely. They careened through a dozen curves before the road straightened out.

“All right, slow down,” said Danny as they hit a wider, well-paved stretch of highway.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Gephardt.

“They were getting dangerous.”

“We were just arguing on a price—”

“No. They were too aggressive. I didn’t come all this way to lose my fuselage. I can’t afford to take chances.”

Danny tapped the side of the right temple tip at the back of his glasses, then studied the image that appeared.

“There’s a clearing about three-quarters of a mile up ahead,” he told Gephardt. “Stop there.”

“Why?”

“Just stop there.”

“Not without a reason. If those guys had a radio or phones—”

“They’re all dead,” said Danny. “Just do what I say.”

Gephardt tightened his lips. Danny scanned the nearby jungle, making sure there was nothing ahead.

“There,” he told Gephardt as they came around the bend. The clearing was small, maybe a dozen yards long and another two dozen deep; the far side was all jungle, and there were some rocks amid the high brush near the road.

Danny got out of the truck and went around to the rear of the SUV. He took out the fuselage he’d retrieved and hoisted it onto his back. It was so light it felt as if it had been made out of Styrofoam, not high-tech carbon and metal fiber.

“You comin’?” he yelled to Gephardt, who was still in the vehicle.

“Coming where?”

“I’ll drop you back at the compound.”

“I gotta get the Escalade back.”

“You sure?”

“Jesus, man. Are you crazy? How are you getting out of here?”

Danny pointed toward the sky.

“Helicopter?” asked Gephardt.

“Osprey,” said Danny.

“Why the hell didn’t we take it out here in the first place?”

“I didn’t want to attract attention if I didn’t have to,” said Danny. “Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.”

“Man.”

“Are you coming?”

“I got the Caddy. I can’t leave it. The drive’s easy from here,” added Gephardt. “That’ll be the only checkpoint. The army’s about five miles down the road. Won’t even cost me anything.”

“OK.”

“You didn’t have to kill them.”

“I couldn’t take a chance,” said Danny. “You don’t have to wait,” he added.

Gephardt frowned. “Who are you really working for?”

“I told you. Fact-finding for the NSC.”

“The NSC doesn’t have magic bullets that appear out of nowhere.”

“Neither do I,” said Danny, starting into the field.

2

The monster leered at the base of the stairs, its mouth open wide enough to display its black teeth. Blood-edged eyes bulged from their sockets, hunting for prey. Suddenly its nostrils pinched together — the scent had been found. It bounded up the stairs with a deathly scream: food was at hand.

Turk Mako steadied his gun and shot the zombie square in the head.

One hundred thirty points floated onto the screen, increasing his score in the video game to 10,400. He was on level 12; things were just starting to heat up.

“Say, babe, are we going swimming or what?”

Turk turned and glanced at his girlfriend, Li Pike, who was standing near the door of the small hotel room suite. The oversized T-shirt she wore over her bikini somehow accented rather than hid her athletic frame. The curve of her breasts and hips teased desire into Turk. His eyes followed the hem of the shirt down her smooth legs, pausing over her sculptured calves and then wandering to her bare toes. She’d painted her nails last night, before they went out; the bright, glossy red seemed to glow.

“So, are we going?” she asked.

“I’m on level 12,” Turk answered.

“And?”

“Well, and—” He saw a zombie coming to the right of the screen, dodged the joystick left, spun and fired. As the zombie’s head shattered, he hit the key to pause the game.

“And you’d rather play a video game than hang out with me,” said Li.

He knew she was joking — Li had a way of exaggerating her smile when she was teasing or being ironic — but still there was the gentlest bit of an edge in what she said.

A small bit.

“No, no,” he said.

“What would Dr. Kleenex say?” Li teased.

“Avoidance therapy. I’m killing zombies because I can’t kill my boss.”

“The Iranians, you mean.”

“Them, too.”

No doubt Dr. Kleenex — Turk’s nickname for the counselor he’d been ordered to see as a mandatory “de-stress” from his last mission — would have read quite a bit into his absorption in the video game. But then, Dr. Kleenex read quite a bit into everything.

The counselor’s real name was Washington Galiopis, but he had earned the nickname by prominently stationing boxes of tissues near Turk’s chair every time the pilot reported to him. The man seemed to want him to break down and cry.

That wasn’t Turk. Nor did Turk feel that he had post-traumatic stress, though he would certainly admit to having been under a great deal of strain on the mission, which involved the secret destruction of two Iranian nuclear weapons bases.

As a test pilot, he was used to dealing with stress. Admittedly, having been on the ground and getting fired at — and firing at others — was a new and not entirely pleasant experience. And immediately upon his return, he had lost his temper, briefly, when confronting his boss, Breanna Stockard, the head of the military side of Whiplash.

The thing was, she deserved to be blasted. In his mind, telling her that she should have had more faith in him was the mildest possible thing he could do.

After all, she’d sent someone to kill him.

As things worked out, Turk had befriended his would-be assassin, Mark Stoner, by saving his life. Together they had escaped, thanks to a plan Turk concocted.

It was only when they were back in the States going through the debrief that Turk realized how close he had come to being assassinated, and why. He didn’t blame Stoner at all. On the contrary, Stoner had saved his life, and he had nothing but gratitude for him.

The same could not be said for Breanna. Until now he’d looked at her as a role model, almost an older sister. Her husband and her father were both war heroes and superb pilots, men Turk greatly admired. But now he knew that her kindness and concern toward him was fake. She didn’t care if he lived or died; she didn’t care about anything, except for the mission.

Turk, too, was dedicated to doing his duty. He had been prepared to die and even expected to many times, not only on that mission but during his entire service with Special Projects and with the Air Force in general. But the fact that he and Stoner had gotten out alive proved that he shouldn’t have been given up for dead. Breanna should have had a better contingency plan for getting him out.

Because she didn’t, some of the bravest men he’d ever known, all members of Delta Force, had died in Iran. They’d died protecting him, and helping him do his job. How the hell was he ever going to make up for that?

“So, are you coming or not?” asked Li.

“Just let me—”

She stalked over and kissed him on the lips, leaning her chest into his.

The kiss ended too soon.

“I’ll be downstairs.” She straightened. “Try to make it by lunch.”

Turk watched her walk from the room. Li was a pilot herself — she flew A-10s — but there was something about the way she filled a bikini that ought not to be allowed.

Kill zombies?

“Damn,” muttered Turk as the door closed behind her. He switched off the TV and tossed the controller on the bed.

“Wait up,” he called, hustling for the door.

3

Danny Freah took a deep breath, then rose from his seat and walked to the front of the secure conference room in the basement of the White House. He’d given a number of presentations in this room, yet he’d never felt quite the flutter in his chest that he felt today. Partly that was because the President herself was here; he’d never directly given her a briefing before.

And partly it was because he was afraid of the implications of what he was about to say.

He cleared his throat and positioned his thumb on the remote control for the laptop, which he’d already hooked into the projection system.

“Thank you,” said Danny, clicking through to the first slide in his PowerPoint. “Uh, first of all, I apologize for the, uh, primitiveness of this. I just got back from Malaysia, and uh, I pulled this together…”

God, he told himself, calm down. He glanced at Breanna Stockard, who was sitting near the end of the table. She gave him a grim nod, as if to say, Get on with it.

“For the past twelve months a small rebel group in Malaysia known as 30 May Movement has been active on the island of Borneo, which as you know Malaysia shares with Brunei and Indonesia. Their activities have been primarily in the state of Sarawak, which is the largest part of East Malaysia. You have three countries sharing that island, each encircling the other. Borneo is on the coast, East Malaysia is around it, then Indonesia. That’s, um, East Malaysia.”

Danny paused for a quick sip of water, then continued. “The 30 May Movement is named after an alleged massacre that occurred on the island, near the border with Indonesia. The group is relatively small, thought to number perhaps five hundred active fighters. That is dwarfed by the size of the other two main groups, which are primarily fighting in the eastern portion of the island, where we’ve had, uh, where we’ve sent Marine advisors.”

Danny caught a glimpse of Jonathon Reid’s bored face. Reid was the head of the CIA half of Whiplash. Skip over the background, he’d said earlier. They know it!

“So, as you know, the group has not been of much concern to anyone. But a few weeks ago something happened to bring it to our attention. This.”

Danny clicked to the first slide. Scratchy video began to play — it was from the camera of a Malaysian fighter-bomber, a Northrup F-5E, which was considered ancient even in Malaysia. The “Freedom fighter” had been pressed into a ground-support role, and at the start of the video was pulling up from a strafing run at a rebel stronghold.

Suddenly, a black shadow appeared on the right side of the screen, flashing toward the plane. It passed quickly overhead.

The object looked like a missile, and apparently the pilot of the F-5E thought that’s what it was, since he immediately rolled his plane and fired off chaff and flares — an unnecessary precaution, most pilots would have agreed, since the trajectory of the object made it clear that it had missed his plane. Nothing outside of the U.S. arsenal could change course quickly enough to give him a problem.

But the Malaysian pilot was right to be worried. As his plane rolled away, a warning sounded in the cockpit, announcing that he was being tracked by a weapons radar.

“The sound you’re hearing is a warning that the plane is being tracked at close range,” said Danny as the video ended. “The plane was subsequently shot down. There are a couple of things to note,” he added, “starting with the fact that the object was not detected at close range; there was no threat indicated. And that the shoot-down occurred within moments of the radar being activated.”

“What shot it down?” asked the Secretary of State, Alistar Newhaven.

“We believe the object that we saw at the beginning of the video. We think it is a combat UAV.”

He flashed a few images on the screen. All were artists’ concepts based on the extremely brief and blurry image in the video.

“A combat UAV?” asked the Secretary of State. “Whose? I thought we were the only nation that had them.”

“That’s why we’re here,” said the President. She nodded at Danny to continue.

“We don’t have enough data to say for certain,” admitted Danny. “The aircraft was pretty beat up. The damage is consistent with gunfire, but frankly it could also have been a missile, and whatever hit it, there’s no way now of knowing whether it came from the air or the ground. The Malaysians thought it must have been a ground-launched missile, as none of the rebel groups have been known to use aircraft. They dismissed the item in the video you saw as simply another missile that for some reason hadn’t been detected.”

Danny flipped the slide to a map of an area near the western coast of the island.

“The incident was pretty much dismissed until a group of four Su-29s were attacked in roughly the same area two weeks ago. They were shot down in the space of about ten minutes.”

“The Malaysians have Su-29s?” asked the vice president, Jay Mantis.

“Yes, sir, they do.” Danny nodded. While the Russian-made Su-29 was a few decades and at least a generation and a half old, it was still considered a front-line fighter, and Danny wasn’t surprised that some members of the government weren’t aware that it was in a third-world nation’s inventory. “They have a pretty unique mix of aircraft. The fortunate thing that happened here, and it seems by accident — as the UAV was engaging the last aircraft, it appears to have inadvertently been struck by debris from one of the planes it had fired on earlier. The debris sheered one of its wings; it went into a high speed spin and another of the wings came off. Part of the fuselage landed in this area here.”

Danny clicked on the slide showing where he had found the main part of the aircraft.

“I picked it up myself two days ago.”

“It’s been a hectic few days for you, I’m sure,” said the President, leaning forward in her chair.

“Yes, ma’am.” Danny nodded. “The Malaysians blamed the Indonesians. The two countries have a complicated history. The Indonesians weren’t backing the rebels, at least not these rebels—”

“The Indonesians have given us assurances,” said the Secretary of State.

“Yes, sir. In any event, the technology that would have to be responsible is far beyond anything the Indonesians are capable of. It’s on par with the early Flighthawks. Maybe beyond.”

“A group of guerrillas are flying UAVs that are more advanced than ours?” said the vice president incredulously.

“It looks like that,” said Danny.

Mary Christine Todd glanced at her watch. The meeting had gone five minutes longer than her aides had allotted; it was time for her to bring it to a close if she had any hope of staying on schedule for the rest of the morning.

“The bottom line is, we need more information about what’s going on here,” said the President. “Colonel, do you have a recommendation?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do. I’d suggest we send a full team from Whiplash, try and capture these UAVs and find out what’s going on. We can have a team out there in three days.”

“What would that entail?”

Todd listened as the colonel outlined a plan to move a piloted and unpiloted aircraft as well as Ospreys and a ground team into the jungle. She knew what the objections would be well before he finished. And she knew that the colonel must know that as well.

“If we send that sort of firepower into the area, there’s bound to be a reaction from the Chinese,” said Newhaven. “Indonesia as well.”

China was key. Congress was pushing hard for a rapprochement, which even Todd admitted could benefit the U.S. Her administration was secretly negotiating with Beijing on a number of issues, including territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Chinese indicated they would renounce some of those claims if it could be done without losing face. The political dance was difficult: show too much force in the region, and the Chinese would have to reply with their own. Show too little, and the Chinese would have no incentive to back off their aggressive positions.

“The Whiplash team can operate discreetly,” said Danny.

“It hasn’t in the past,” said Newhaven pointedly.

That was out of line, and the President cut the Secretary of State off.

“I think the Office of Special Projects has an admirable record,” said the President quickly.

“You put high-tech gear in there and you might just as well tell the Chinese to triple their aid to the rebels,” said Newhaven. “Plus, if these things are being flown by the rebels, then they’ll be after them, too.”

“Assuming they don’t already belong to the Chinese,” said Reid.

“The CIA ought to know who owns them,” snapped Newhaven.

“I understand your point, Mr. Secretary,” said the President. “We have to find a way to get the job done without calling much attention to it. Even among our own people.”

That was a veiled reference to Congress, which was dead set against giving more aid to the Malaysians. If the oversight committees found out there was a full-blown Whiplash mission to the island, objections would be quickly raised. Todd was willing to deal with the political fallout, but it seemed premature at this point; there was no firm evidence that UAVs were even there — as she understood the data, it could have been missiles.

“We have a small group of Marines set to support the Malaysians in that area,” said the National Security Advisor, Michael Blitz. “Can we fold this operation into them?”

“Any Whiplash presence is too much,” said the vice president.

Todd held her tongue. Her contempt for her vice president was well known. Nonetheless, it was obvious as the discussion continued that he was expressing a view that seemed to be shared by the rest of the council and the cabinet members present. The evidence didn’t seem to warrant the risks that a Whiplash deployment would entail politically.

“All right,” said the President after her scheduling aide pointed at his watch. “As I said at the outset, I have a breakfast meeting to attend. I expect a recommendation by the time I return to the White House.” She rose. “Colonel, thank you for coming. Ms. Stockard, perhaps you’ll walk with me upstairs.”

Breanna, surprised at the invitation, felt her cheeks burn. She pulled her things together and waited in the hallway for the President, who was stopped by some aides just outside the door and given information about an explosion in a coal mine that morning.

Danny nodded as he passed; Breanna gave him a thumbs-up.

“Good job,” she said.

“Thanks.” He beamed. For some reason the colonel was more nervous about public speaking than facing combat.

“So, Breanna, how is your daughter?” asked the President as she sailed up the hallway. Breanna had to practically leap to stay up with her. Christine Todd was very much like a sleek sailboat when she moved. Whatever other effect the job had had on her, her energy was undiminished.

“She’s great.”

“If she’s half as smart as her mother and father, she’s got quite a future.” Todd smiled and stepped into the waiting elevator. She was alone with Breanna, except for her two Secret Service escorts. A man and a woman, they were well practiced at pretending not to hear what the President or anyone with her said.

“I have a few too many enemies in Congress at the moment,” said Todd. “Whatever you do to investigate this further, it will have to be done within the Marine contingent. No Whiplash troop or aircraft presence.”

“Then maybe the CIA or the Air Force themselves should continue the investigation,” offered Breanna.

“No, the parallels to our technology are too provocative. I want the experts working on it. I just want it done quietly. If your full team’s presence is warranted, then we won’t hesitate.”

“If you’re sure—”

“And the senator?” asked the President, abruptly changing the subject.

“Same old Zen.”

“Yes.”

“You know, someone mentioned the other day that Zen would make an excellent President,” said Todd.

“Who said that?”

“It was a party person.” Todd gave her a grin the Cheshire cat would have been proud of. “I was forced to agree.”

“I don’t think he wants to be President,” said Breanna.

“That would be a pity.”

The elevator door opened and the President abruptly exited, leaving Breanna to wonder what the real purpose of the exchange had been.

4

At roughly the same time Danny Freah was running the video of the Malaysian air force’s encounter with the unknown UAV, Ray Rubeo was staring at the same image. It was playing in the screen on the left side of his desk; the screen next to it was showing a simulation he had constructed that revealed what he thought the program governing the aircraft’s movements was doing. Though he had adapted the simulation from one of his company’s own programs, it had nonetheless taken him considerable time to construct.

Three hours.

He was dismayed. Years ago it would have been less than half that. His brain, he was convinced, was starting to slow down.

There were still several hours before the sun would come up over his isolated Arizona ranch, but Rubeo wasn’t interested in sleep. He never was when there was a problem to be solved. And this problem was more vexing than most, the issue of his getting older aside.

He turned his attention to the monitor on the right. It was showing an analysis of the code in the middle screen, computing the amount of resources needed for it to run under various systems. The screen was broken into four quadrants, displaying the performance of four different possibilities. The bottom left assumed the program was in the system originally designed for the Flighthawks, some fifteen years before; the chart was off the scale. So was the one next to it, which displayed the system that had replaced it a few years later.

Rubeo was not surprised. Both systems were primarily intended as backups to a human pilot, and the decisions that the computer had to make in controlling a complex airframe were very primitive.

The top two screens were what bothered him. The left showed the system used by the Tigershark in “guiding” its UAV escorts. The Tigershark was Dreamland’s own aircraft, and the system it used to guide the UAVs was the most advanced currently in existence.

According to the program, the maneuvers and the decisions that the computer had to make to guide the aircraft they had reconstructed at the speed it had flown taxed this system near the breaking point as well. Only the fourth quadrant showed a system that could handle the plane confidently through the complex maneuvers.

It was an experimental system that used custom-made organic processing chips. It had never been built.

He got up from the computers. Rubeo’s house was a combination retreat and high-tech lab. Located in a remote area of the desert, it matched his personality — austere and yet at the same time expansive. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, then went out on the back deck.

The wind had died. The clear black sky and sparkling stars foretold a brilliant day.

The abilities of the aircraft were one thing. The behavior was something else. Rubeo’s people had pieced together the engagement between the mysterious UAV and the Malaysian Sukhois. There were gaps, but the pattern looked very, very similar to an attack that had been mapped out and preprogrammed for the original service Flighthawks a decade before.

Impossible. Or at least highly unlikely.

Rubeo sighed, and took a sip of coffee.

And then there was this: the material from the fuselage Danny Freah had recovered was made of a carbon-titanium alloy similar to that used in the Flighthawks and the more modern Sabre UAVs. It was the product of a rare and very expensive process, one thought to be well beyond the reach of the Chinese or the Russians, let alone a third-world country.

If he didn’t know any better, Rubeo would swear the UAVs were Dreamland’s own.

But that was impossible. Wasn’t it?

Back to work, he told himself, draining the coffee and turning to go back inside.

5

Danny Freah rubbed his chin as Turk Mako continued speaking. He was more than a little surprised by what he was hearing.

“… I just want to go back to being a regular pilot again,” continued Turk. “I never really intended to stay on this duty with Whiplash.”

Half a dozen entries in Turk’s personnel file made it clear that was a bald-faced lie.

Danny’s office at the Special Projects headquarters was rather large by military standards, a full thirty by thirty feet. Besides his desk there was a sitting area with a couch, chairs, and a large-screen TV. Unlike much of the rest of the bunker, the walls were real, constructed of thick concrete, predating the installation of the energy beams that walled off most of the interior of the three-story, deeply buried bunker.

Under ordinary circumstances, the office felt massive. At the moment, however, the room seemed absurdly small.

“You don’t want to work for Special Projects anymore at all?” asked Danny, paraphrasing what Turk had told him. “You want to go back to the regular Air Force. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. That’s it.”

Danny watched Turk fidget. “You want to go back to Dreamland as a test pilot?”

“That’s not possible. There are no other slots.”

“You realize Whiplash is short of pilots,” said Danny. In fact, Turk was presently the only pilot; they were seeking funding to expand the roster but it wasn’t clear they’d get it.

“Yes, sir. I’ll stay until the transition. Whatever you need.”

“You don’t want to fly?”

“No. I do, I do.” Turk fumbled. It seemed obvious to Danny that he hadn’t thought this out very clearly at all. “I do want to fly. Just not… just not here.”

“You’ve been through a lot, Captain,” Danny told the pilot. “Iran—”

“Iran has nothing to do with it.”

Danny couldn’t hide his exasperation. “Nothing?”

“I–I can’t work for Ms. Stockard,” said Turk. “That’s really the bottom line.”

“You can’t work for Bree?”

Turk shook his head.

“Sometimes, when we go through something that’s… difficult…” Danny struggled to find the right words. He knew Turk had been through a lot, and wanted to show him the respect he deserved. But a good part of him wanted to turn the captain around and give him a good kick in the behind — maybe that would get him thinking straight.

“Sometimes after a big battle or some other combat,” said Danny, “we end up with a tough reaction. Difficult. At first. Then, you know, after a little time off—”

“She wanted me killed, Colonel. Damn it.”

“Come on, Turk. That’s not fair. That’s not what happened.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“You’re getting a little emotional—”

“If someone sent someone to kill you, what would you think?”

“Stoner was sent to rescue you.”

“To kill me. That was the first option. I talked him out of it. And the Delta boys had that same order. Kill me.”

“No,” insisted Danny. In his opinion, Turk’s anger was just misplaced anxiety, a delayed reaction to everything he’d been through. “If things had gone poorly, then it was understood that you might not come back. I explained that explicitly to you. And you were good with it.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what the real deal was. It was understood that I would be killed.” Turk had started out calmly, but now his face was turning red. “I’d be killed by our own people, under orders. You know it. You know it. Did you give that order, too?”

“I think you need time to think,” Danny said. “I think — you really should have more time off. You’ve earned it.”

“I don’t want time off. I just don’t want to work for Breanna Stockard. That’s pretty straightforward, sir. And, uh, I know the situation here. But… I think I’ve earned the right to request a transfer, under the circumstances.”

“All right,” said Danny finally. “I’ll get the paperwork moving. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime I’m back and ready to work. I can fly today if you want. I passed the physical yesterday.”

Danny got up from his desk. He always thought better on his feet; the blood flowed to his brain.

“Is there a problem, Colonel?” asked Turk.

“It’s a little contradictory, don’t you think?” Danny walked over to the credenza, where photographs from some of his earlier exploits were displayed. There was a photo of him, Breanna, and Turk after one of their earliest missions. “I mean, you don’t want to work for Ms. Stockard, but you want to work.”

“I think that makes perfect sense. I just want a different unit, that’s all.” Turk folded his arms. “That’s never happened before?”

Danny’s eyes scanned the credenza. There was a photo of him and his old mentor, Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian. Then a colonel, later a general. He’d given Danny a lot of good advice, though Danny hadn’t taken all of it; he wished he had.

“I’m ready to go back to work, Colonel,” said Turk. “Use me.”

“I do have a possibility of something, but it doesn’t involve flying,” said Danny. “I need someone who knows a lot about combat UAVs.”

“I’m your guy.”

“It’s not in the States.”

“Even better.”

An hour later Danny sat down with Breanna over at the Pentagon to discuss just that. It was one of the more difficult conversations they’d had. As usual, Breanna did her best to make it easy.

“I understand his feelings,” she told Danny. “He feels betrayed.”

“That’s not fair,” Danny said.

“Feelings rarely are. And it’s beside the point.” She smiled. Even if they hadn’t worked together for so long, he’d have recognized it as forced. “So what’s the solution?”

“I think we give him some space and time to think about it. He’ll come around.”

“Fair enough. We’ll give him as much space as we can. He can have leave—”

“He doesn’t seem to want it. And frankly, I think working’s probably the best therapy going anyway. He was supposed to be on desk duty at the Cube for a while,” added Danny, using the slang term for the special operations bunker. “But that would probably drive him nuts.”

“There’s no test program at Dreamland for him,” said Breanna. “Not for at least two months.”

“I was wondering about having him come with me back to Malaysia. Assuming the mission is approved. The duty will be pretty light, and I’ll be there to watch him.”

“There’s a war going on there. You were almost killed.”

“Gephardt was a fool,” said Danny. “I’ll steer way clear of him.”

“If we have to integrate with the Marines and the Malaysians, what’s his cover?” asked Breanna.

“Ground flight controller. They use pilots all the time. He’s had training. He can actually do the job.”

“It’s too close to combat.”

“I don’t think combat’s the problem, Bree.”

“No, I am.”

Danny didn’t have an answer for that.

Breanna understood Turk’s anger. Even though she had given the only orders she possibly could, she still felt tremendous guilt. She had, explicitly, directed that one of her own people be killed if he was going to be captured. Not even the genuine relief and joy at hearing that he was alive could erase it.

Turk was a tough kid and a great pilot. And, at least according to the doctors, he didn’t seem to have post-traumatic stress. He’d recovered fully from the light injuries he’d had, and in fact seemed to be in the best shape of his life. But throwing him back out in the field — was that really the best thing to do?

“You’re worried that something will go wrong when we’re out there?” asked Danny.

“I’m just worried that he’s been under a lot of stress,” said Breanna.

“If I didn’t think he could handle the job, I wouldn’t be recommending him,” said Danny. “And I do need an expert with me.”

“You’ll be in constant communication with our experts.”

“It’s not the same as having somebody on the scene. Tech is great, but…”

“All right,” said Breanna. “Take him.” She reached into the in basket on her desk. “The President authorized the mission a half hour ago. You can take one other technical person, but you’re just observers. Keep the lowest profile possible.”

“That’s my middle name. Low profile.”

6

Danny Freah and Turk Mako stood on the tarmac of a small jungle airport, waiting for the advance element of Marine Task Force Tango-Bravo-Mary to arrive.

If Turk was feeling any hesitation at getting back close to combat, it wasn’t apparent to Danny. Then again, he didn’t seem to be overly excited either. He was just… Turk.

Arms folded, the young Air Force captain watched the sky as the drone of the approaching aircraft echoed over the nearby mountain range. A pair of F-35B Lightning IIs appeared from the east, flying in low over the treetops. The jets — Marine Corps versions of the standard military multipurpose fighters — had full loads of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons under their wings. Thundering past, they banked into a turn and circled overhead.

While Danny had seen considerable action with various Marine units over the years, he had never worked directly with an F-35B group before, and he watched the aircraft with some curiosity.

The Marine version of the Lightning II was configured for short-runway operations; it could land and take off vertically, and often was called on to do just that. Vertical takeoffs limited the combat weight the planes could use, which generally meant carrying less fuel, fewer weapons, or both, and so as a general rule the Marines preferred to operate the aircraft with short runways rather than direct vertical liftoffs. The runway they were using here was precisely the reason the Marines had fought so hard to get the aircraft in the first place. Officially listed at some 1,200 feet, its usable space ran just over eight hundred; the northern end had caved in some years before due to erosion and was never properly repaired. Barely as wide as a C-130’s wingspan, the strip of concrete had been patched in numerous places with cement and aggregate, and just walking along it Danny could feel bumps and see waves in the surface.

As the jets passed overhead, four V-22 Marine Corps Ospreys appeared over the jungle, flying in a staggered follow-the-leader formation. The closest aircraft had already begun tilting its propellers upward, transitioning from conventional airplane flight to that used by helicopters. The Osprey reminded Danny of an Olympic runner who was spreading his arms wide as he approached the finish line.

The aircraft pivoted above the dense jungle canopy as it came in, sliding into a hover in what could only be described as a well-practiced aerial ballet. The rest of the squadron followed, touching down together in a display that would have wowed many an air show audience. Once down, the Ospreys trundled toward the three trailers at the southern end of the strip. The trailers had been delivered by C-130s barely two hours before. Parked near an old cement building that looked like it dated to British colonial times, they were the only other structures at the base.

The rear ramps of the aircraft popped open and Marines began double-timing down to the tarmac, where they were greeted by the small advance force that had secured the base ahead of Danny two days ago. In less than five minutes a total of sixty-eight men and twelve women were deposited on the ground; the ramps were shut and the Ospreys began heading back into the air. Their takeoff was a notch less coordinated but just as efficient as the landing. All four Ospreys were over the nearby mountain before the F-35s dropped down to land.

“Want to go meet the neighbors?” suggested Danny.

“Be there in a minute, Colonel,” said Turk. “I need to take care of nature first. You go ahead.”

“Be on your best behavior.”

Turk grinned in a way that made Danny wonder if maybe this was a good idea after all.

Two more planes landed as Danny walked over. The head of the air detachment was a short, stubby Marine named Lt. Colonel James Greenstreet. His thick torso and long arms reminded Danny not a little of the orangutans he knew were out in the trees watching them. He had a sunburnt face and a scar above his right eye; these complemented the sort of no-nonsense, no-bullshit manner that Danny had long admired in the typical Marine officer. While it was clear from the way Greenstreet stalked across the concrete that he would never be called easygoing, his quick smile and eager handshake signaled that he was exactly the sort of man Danny wanted to work with, the kind of officer who found solutions and didn’t stop to calculate what the effect was going to be on his career. The only thing that struck Danny as out of place was the cigarette Greenstreet popped into his mouth as they began talking; it was rare, these days, to encounter an officer in any service who smoked.

“So where are the Malaysians?” asked Greenstreet after he’d finished introducing Danny and Turk to the small group of officers and senior enlisted who’d come over to care for the planes.

“They’re due at the base tomorrow morning,” said Danny.

Greenstreet nodded. “We’ll get them sorted. You’re going to handle ground coms?”

“Not me personally. I have a captain with me,” said Danny. “He’ll train the Malaysians. We met them yesterday. They seem competent.”

“Good.”

“They’re going to set up a camp at the south end of the base,” said Danny. “Your Captain Thomas has already worked out the details. He said you have security, but if you need more, the Malaysians can augment you near the hangars and such.”

“Captain Thomas knows what he’s doing,” said Greenstreet. “We’ve trained with him before. And, uh, as far as the locals go: no offense, Colonel, but most of us feel more secure without them.”

“Understood.”

Turk folded his arms as he walked toward the F-35. Even before he had begun testing new aircraft for Dreamland and Special Projects, he hadn’t been a particular fan of the Lightning II. Like a lot of fighter jocks — at least of the American variety — he saw speed and acceleration as the ultimate virtues of an aircraft; the Lightning II was known to be somewhat below average in those categories when compared to the F-22, let alone the hot rods Turk guided. These shortcomings might have been excused, at least in Turk’s opinion, if it made up for it with stellar maneuverability. But the plane’s weight and configuration made it less than acrobatic.

Turk tried hard not to be a snob. The F-35 had real assets: dependability, versatility, and a suite of electronic sensors that were at least a generation ahead of anything else in regular service around the globe. But after flying the Tigershark II in combat, it was hard to look at any other aircraft and not think it was a bit of a pig.

His opinion of the Marine aviators who flew the plane was quite a bit higher… mostly.

While the fierce service rivalries that once characterized the military were largely a thing of the past, he’d had a bad experience with a squadron of Marines at a Red Flag exercise very early in his career. The Marines — flying F-35Bs, as a matter of fact — had been led by one of the most arrogant SOBs he’d ever met. The fact that the instructors at Red Flag had regularly spanked his squadron’s collective butt would have therefore been very satisfying — except for the fact that Turk and his two-ship element of F-22s was regularly charged with flying with them.

His combined unit only managed to beat the instructors on the very last exercise, and that was because the F-22s followed their own game plan, essentially using the Marines to bait the larger group of aggressors.

Different group, Turk told himself as he walked over to introduce himself. Give these guys a chance. Not every Marine aviator is a jerk.

And besides, it was their commander who was the A-hole. The rest of them were decent human beings. For Marines.

Two of the pilots, still in full flight gear, were stretching their legs near the wings of the planes.

“Hey!” yelled Turk.

“Hey, back,” yelled the Marine Corps aviator closest to him. Tall for a pilot — he looked like he might be six-eight — he started toward Turk.

“How you doin’?” asked the pilot. He had a southern California twang. “You the Air Force dude in charge?”

“No, that’s Colonel Freah. Danny Freah,” added Turk, pointing. “He’s over there.”

“I’m Torbin Van Garetn,” said the Marine, thrusting out his hand. “A lot of people just call me Cowboy.”

“Why Cowboy?”

“ ’Cause they think it’s funny that a Swede wears cowboy boots,” said the other pilot, coming over. “Don’t let his sloppy uniform fool you. He’s the best executive officer in the whole damn Marine Corps. My name’s Rogers.”

“Turk Mako.”

“So what’s your gig, Turk?” asked Cowboy.

“I’m going to be working with you guys as the ground air controller.”

“Cool. You’re Air Force.”

“That’s what it says on the uniform.”

Cowboy laughed. “My bro’s in the Air Force. Tech sergeant. He is stationed in California, the lucky bastard. Gets a lot of surfing in.”

“You’re into surfing?”

“Isn’t everybody?”

“Cowboy!” shouted a voice from back near the planes.

“That’s our C.O.,” said Cowboy. “Kind of, uh, well, I’ll let you form your own opinion.” He smirked.

“Cowboy. What are you doing?” said the commanding officer as he walked toward them. His tone wasn’t exactly friendly. “Is your aircraft squared away?”

Cowboy winked at Turk, then spun around to meet his boss. “Not yet, Colonel. Just making the acquaintance of our Air Force liaison.”

“Well get your aircraft taken care of, then deal with your social duties.”

Turk braced himself. The snarl of a commander a little too full of himself was universal, but the gait seemed not only unique but all too familiar.

No way, he thought.

But it was — the C.O. of “Basher” squadron was none other than Lt. Colonel James “Jocko” Greenstreet, the man who had commanded the F-35s at Red Flag.

Of all the stinking bad luck.

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Greenstreet,” barked the pilot, stopping about ten feet from Turk. “Who are you?”

“Turk Mako.” If Greenstreet didn’t remember him, he wasn’t volunteering the memory.

“What’s your rank?”

“I’m a captain.”

Greenstreet frowned in a way that suggested an Air Force captain was too low for him to waste breath on.

“We’ll brief when we have our aircraft settled,” said Greenstreet.

“Can’t wait,” said Turk as the colonel strode away. He couldn’t tell if Greenstreet had recognized him and didn’t think it was worth acknowledging, or if he was simply extending the same warm and fuzzy feelings they’d shared at the Air Force exercise.

“You meet the Marine squadron leader?” asked Danny, walking over.

“Jocko Greenstreet,” Turk told him. “Lieutenant colonel. Real piece of work. Don’t call him Jocko,” added Turk.

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Turk explained.

“I assume you’ll keep your personal feelings to yourself,” said Danny.

“Absolutely,” said Turk. “I’m sure he will, too — not that it will make any difference at all in how he behaves.”

Two hours later Danny, Turk, and Trevor Walsh — the Whiplash techie who was going to handle the local monitoring gear — joined the Marine Corps pilots and some senior enlisted men in one of the trailers for a presentation on the UAV.

“This is what we’re interested in,” said Danny, starting the briefing with blurry images of the UAV in action. “While your primary mission is still to assist the Malaysians, we appreciate any help you can give us. We’re very, very interested in finding out what exactly this UAV is and who’s flying it. We expect that it may fly into your area.”

“You ‘expect,’ or it will?” asked Colonel Greenstreet sharply.

“I can’t make any prediction,” said Danny, who didn’t mind the question or the tone. “Unfortunately. But when the Malaysian air force had its fighters on the western side of the island, it appeared.”

“Would have been nice if they told us before deploying us here,” said Greenstreet.

“That wasn’t my call,” said Danny.

“We’ve flown on the eastern side for weeks,” said Greenstreet.

“Cowboy says he saw a flying monkey,” joked one of the Marines from the back.

“I did,” laughed Cowboy.

“Enough,” said Greenstreet, immediately silencing his men.

Danny clicked his remote, bringing up a few slides of the fuselage that had been recovered, then the artist’s renditions. He detailed the two sightings, with map displays, and reiterated what had happened to the Malaysian aircraft that had attempted to engage it.

“We’re not exactly sure that it was the UAV that shot anything down,” said Danny. “Not to denigrate their flying but—”

“We’ve seen ’em,” said Cowboy. “You’re not denigrating anything.”

This time Greenstreet didn’t bother stopping the snickers.

“Nonetheless, ground fire can’t be completely ruled out,” said Danny. “And while the flight patterns suggest a combat UAV, we have no hard evidence. That’s why we’re here,” he added. “Myself, Captain Mako, and Mr. Walsh, that is.”

“The Malaysians aren’t exactly the best pilots in the world,” said Greenstreet. “But I’d expect them to know what type of aircraft they were dealing with. And how many. One seems ridiculous.”

“Exactly,” said Danny. “But whether it’s one or ten or whatever, that unknown aircraft is pretty fast and highly maneuverable.”

“And you’re sure it’s a UAV?” asked one of the Marines.

“It’s too small to be manned, as far as we can tell,” said Danny.

“Where does it launch from?”

Danny shook his head. “Don’t know that either. We have elint assets coming on line,” he added, referring obliquely to a specially built Global Hawk that would pick up electronic signals. The aircraft was due in the area in a few hours. “Like I say, we’re here to fill in the blanks, and there are a lot of blanks.”

“You sure this isn’t a Flighthawk?” asked Cowboy.

“It’s not one of ours.”

“Chinese clone?”

“It’s possible,” admitted Danny.

“The nearest Chinese warship is three hundred miles away,” said Lt. JG Kevin Sullivan, the intelligence officer for the task group. “And that’s a destroyer. Hard to see it launching something as powerful as a Flighthawk.”

“Unless it’s just a recon drone and the Malaysians screwed up,” said Greenstreet. “That I can definitely believe.”

“There is a Chinese carrier task force a little farther north than the destroyer,” said Danny. “But that’s being monitored very closely.”

“They don’t have UAVs aboard,” said Sullivan.

“Not that we know,” agreed Danny. “Nor do they have anything nearly this capable. But like I say—”

“You’re here to fill in the blanks,” said Cowboy and a few of the other Marines.

“That’s right.”

“So if we see it, we can engage it?” asked Cowboy.

“If you’re in Malaysian airspace and it’s hostile, and you know it’s a UAV and that it isn’t one of ours, absolutely.” Danny turned to Turk. “Captain Mako has some notes on its probable characteristics.”

He flipped the slide to a video simulation that had been prepared to show the drone’s likely flight characteristics. It was smaller than the F-35s and more maneuverable, but presumably would not be as fast. The heat signature from its engine was minimal, but still enough for an all-aspect Sidewinder to lock at two miles, farther if the attacker was behind the UAV.

“Basically, you don’t want it behind you,” said Turk. “This is just a rough outline.”

“The more we can find out about it, the better,” added Danny. “But don’t put yourself in danger.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Greenstreet.

“Shoot the mother down at first opportunity,” said Cowboy.

Everybody laughed.

The briefing turned to working with the Malaysian ground force. The unit would undertake search and destroy patrols in areas where the rebels were believed to be active. Turk would use a pair of backpack UAVs — small remote-controlled aircraft with wingspans about as wide as a typical desk — to help provide reconnaissance. Nicknamed “Seagulls,” the UAVs could feed video directly to the Marine F-35s through a dedicated satellite communications channel. The channel allowed two-way traffic, which meant Turk could in turn tie into some of the F-35s’ sensor net as well.

Details out of the way, the briefing broke up for a round of beers, recently deposited in an ice chest by a fresh round of Osprey visits. Danny watched the pilots interact; they were young, sure of themselves, pretty much typical pilots as far as he could tell. Greenstreet seemed stiff and a bit too tightly wound; on the other hand, Captain Thomas, the ground commander, was genuinely relaxed.

In his heart of hearts, Danny would have greatly preferred to be working with a Whiplash team, concentrating solely on finding the UAV. The group of Marines he’d been given looked more than solid, but you could never know exactly what you had until the lead started to fly.

In all his years in special operations, the Marine Corps had never let him down. Hopefully, that string would remain unbroken.

7

“I had an interesting discussion with the President the other day,” Breanna told Zen, plopping down in the living room chair across from him. It was late; their daughter had been asleep for several hours, and by rights both should be in bed.

“National security?” asked Zen.

“Hardly,” said Breanna. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Pumpkin-chocolate stout.” He held the pint glass out to her. “Want some?”

“I don’t trust that combination.”

“Your loss.” He took another sip. “So I’m guessing this wasn’t a top secret conversation.”

“Not this part.” Their respective roles in government — Zen a senator, Breanna in the DoD — made for an awkward set of unwritten rules and, occasionally, difficult protocol between them. Breanna generally couldn’t talk about work, even if she thought Zen might have valuable advice. “Ms. Todd said you’d make a good President.”

Zen nearly spit his beer laughing.

“I don’t think it’s that funny,” answered Breanna.

“I hope you agreed.”

“I did. I do. Of course, you’d have to start getting better haircuts.”

“What’s wrong with this?”

“Twenty years out of date. Maybe if you dyed it.”

Zen rolled his eyes. They’d had this discussion many times.

“Seriously,” said Breanna. “Why did she bring that up? Do you know?”

“Buttering you up, probably.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’ll be starting her reelection campaign soon.” Zen shrugged. “Maybe she figures she can get rid of me by having me run in a primary.”

“Ha, ha. She likes you.”

“Mmmm…” He took a long swig of the beer. While they were members of the same party, Zen and Ms. Todd had had a number of disagreements, and he certainly wouldn’t be considered among her closest supporters in Congress. On the other hand, Breanna knew that the President did genuinely trust his opinions and probably valued his willingness to disagree — she had that rare ability among Presidents to actually seek out counterarguments to her own positions.

There was also the fact that he had helped save her life.

“It’s a mystery,” said Zen. “One of many.”

“Wanna go to bed?” Breanna asked.

“There’s an invitation I’d never turn down,” said Zen, a twinkle in his eyes.

8

Turk ducked low to escape the branch as it swung back across the trail. In three days of working with the Malaysians, he’d not only learned to duck when he heard the distinctive sound of a branch swinging through the air, but had developed a kind of sixth sense about the team and how it moved through the jungle.

The eight-man patrols were led by a point man and the team sergeant. Turk was usually the third man in line, trying not to get too close but on the other hand keeping them in sight, which in the jungle wasn’t always easy. He remembered the training the Delta boys had given him before his Iranian mission: don’t bunch up, be always wary, know where the rest of your team is.

These guys weren’t Delta, but they had been working in the bush long enough to move as a team, quiet and wary. Except for Turk’s M-4, their main weapons were ancient M-16 assault rifles, supplemented by a single Russian AEK-999 Barsuk, a squad-level 7.62 x 54mm machine gun. The six handguns they had between them included two Smith & Wesson revolvers. They carried an odd mix of Chinese and American hand grenades. By far their most impressive weapons were the large machete-style knives they had at their belts, one sharper than the other. All appeared to have been handed down from at least a generation before, and even the most austere was a tribute to the man who had crafted it. While used to hack through thick underbrush, they could cut off a man’s arm or even head with a slight flick of the wrist.

Each man carried extra water, ammo, and rudimentary first aid supplies in a small tactical vest or a web belt; they had no radios, let alone GPS gear or even compasses. Armor and helmets were nowhere in sight. Had Turk not been there, the patrol would have been operating completely on their own; the Malaysian air force was already stretched thin and needed to handle operations in “hotter” areas. Artillery support was a luxury unheard of here.

Only two of the men spoke English with any fluency: the commander, Captain Deris, who had studied for two years in Australia; and Private Isnin, whose nickname was Monday. Monday was the point man, and he had the instincts of a cat. Slight, and barely out of his teens, he managed to get through the brush without making much of a sound, and seemed as comfortable in the thick trees as he was on the road. Though he was at least five years younger than the next youngest man, it was clear they all trusted his instincts, and even Deris deferred to his sense of direction.

Monday and Sergeant Intan, about forty and a devout Muslim, seemed to communicate by telepathy. Neither spoke during a patrol, but the NCO constantly flashed hand signals back to Turk and the rest of the patrol as they walked, somehow perceiving what Monday wanted to do.

Turk wore a set of Whiplash glasses, which allowed him to see the feed from the two Seagull UAVs overhead as they patrolled. The drones were strictly reconnaissance aircraft. Relatively simple but capable of automated flight through a designated orbit, they fed back infrared images without interpretation by a computer or other device.

Operating in a remote section of the jungle a few miles from the Indonesian border, the patrols were designated as “presence and contact” missions by the Malaysian command: the unit swept through different areas, showing that they were there and hoping to come in contact with enemy guerrillas. The settlements here were isolated and tiny, generally with less than a hundred people. Most of the time was spent simply walking along trails. In the three days they’d been out, they had yet to see the enemy.

Today they had a target to check out — an abandoned mine about three miles from the highway. The Malaysians had been given intelligence claiming the rebels were using it to store weapons. A flyover by the Marine F-35s the day before had failed to find anything. The Seagull circling the area showed no activity now. But the terrain around the target area was the most complicated they’d worked through yet, and there was always a possibility that something was hidden in the foliage.

Turk followed as Monday continued up the trail, weaving toward a small rise that would let them see the approach to the mine. Suddenly, Sergeant Intan waved him to the ground; Turk dropped, then turned to signal to the others. Moments later he heard the sound of a truck straining up the hill nearby.

Turk crawled toward Monday and the sergeant; Captain Deris followed.

“Bandits,” the captain told Turk. That was the English word they used to describe the rebels, whom they regarded as criminals. “They must be driving to the mine. We will move back and parallel the road.”

He gestured with his fingers to make sure Turk understood.

“OK,” said Turk. He clicked the back of his glasses, opening the window on Seagull 2’s feed. The truck was an older pickup. The bed had been pulled off and replaced with a wooden platform surrounded by wide stakes. It was moving through a pass that led to the mine.

Turk dialed the Marines into his radio circuit.

“Basher One, this is Ground,” he said. “Do you copy?”

“Loud and strong, little guy,” said Cowboy. The Marines worked in two-ship units, with two planes always on alert as the Malaysians patrolled. The length of the patrols and the lack of refueling assets made it impractical for them to stay airborne when there was no contact with the enemy, but the base was close enough to the patrol area that they could be in firing range in under ten minutes.

“We think we have activity out here,” said Turk. “Request you get onboard.”

“Roger that. We’ll be airborne in zero-two. Check in when you have a definitive word.”

“We’re moving toward the target now. Check the feed on Seagull 2.”

“Looking at it, Ground. I see the truck.”

“Roger that.”

After a few minutes of walking, the patrol left the trail and moved into the jungle, intending to sweep around from the east in case anyone had been posted near the road. As they were about to start back toward the hill overlooking the mine, the Seagull spotted another pair of trucks heading in the same direction as the other one. A total of a dozen men sat in the back of the pickups.

It was a sizable force for the guerrillas. Captain Deris was pleased.

“A good catch. The airplanes will help,” he said confidently. “Bomb them at the mine.”

“We need to ID them first,” said Turk, citing the rules of engagement.

“Why? It’s an enemy site.”

“We need to confirm that they’re enemy, and not Malaysian army,” said Turk. “Or civilians.”

“No civilians are here. We’re the only army.”

“I didn’t make the rules,” said Turk. “You know them as well as I do. Visual IDs, or we’re under fire. Otherwise the Marines can’t do anything.”

The captain frowned but didn’t argue. After talking with the NCO for a few moments, he broke the squad into two units. Deris led the first, with Monday, Turk, and another man in a semicircle toward the hill where they could see the mine. The other half of the squad was assigned to hold the ground between them and the road, in case of an attack or reinforcements.

It took roughly ten minutes for them to reach the position, but it felt like hours. With each step, Turk felt his heart beat a little faster. He checked his M-4 several times as he walked, making sure he was locked and loaded; he kept his finger against the side of the trigger guard, tapping occasionally to reassure himself that he was prepared to fire if he had to.

Inevitably, he thought of Iran. The memories were confused, more about the emotion he’d felt than what had actually happened. He remembered the exhaustion and anger rather than the men he’d killed. His adrenaline kicked in; he was excited in the same way he’d be excited if he were in the air.

But it was different. In the air, Turk felt like a king — he knew his aircraft and his own abilities so well that he was never afraid, never less than completely confident. On the ground, his weapons felt cruder and less dependable, even though he’d been shooting rifles since he was a boy.

The mine was an open pit a little over a hundred yards in diameter, pitched on the side of what had been a low hill. Abandoned several years before, its sides were devoid of vegetation, thanks to whatever poisons, manmade and natural, were left from the operation. A misshapen green pool of water sat at the center.

The three trucks were parked in a semicircle at the entrance ramp to the flat land surrounding the pit. Three men were standing near one of the trucks, consulting a map. The rest of the men had gotten out of the trucks and were milling around the area. Turk counted a dozen.

“Attack now,” said Captain Deris.

“We still don’t know if they’re rebels,” said Turk. “They could be miners, just checking the site.”

Deris frowned. “You see they have guns.”

“Your government wrote the rules, not mine,” said Turk. “I’m as frustrated as you.”

“What’s ‘frustrated’?”

“It means — just hold on.” Turk examined the feed from Seagull 2. There was a list of items that indicated rebels — a flag was the most obvious, but he couldn’t see one. Nor could he identify the black armbands the 30 May Movement regularly wore on operations.

Guns were permitted — as long as they were from a list that included American rifles and the ubiquitous AK-47, all popular out in the bush. But if Turk could identify them as modern Chinese assault rifles, it could be assumed the group were rebels.

The normal Dreamland systems would have ID’ed the gun automatically. Turk had to work harder with the Seagull.

“Seagull 2, move to two thousand feet,” he commanded. “Maintain present orbit.”

The robot plane began moving downward slowly. Turk cranked the magnification to its highest level.

“Hey, Ground, what are we seeing?” asked Cowboy.

“I’m working on it,” answered Turk.

“We cleared or what?”

“Relax a minute.”

“I’m way relaxed, dude. Do we have a confirmed target or what?”

“Stand by.”

The Seagull cruised over the hillside. Its light body color was practically invisible against the clouds, but veering across a patch of blue it stood out. While the wings were shaped like a bird’s, anyone who studied it carefully would realize from its movements that it was an aircraft.

Suddenly, three pops echoed against the hills.

“Gunfire!” said Captain Deris.

Turk studied the guns being raised. They were bull pups — Chinese weapons.

“Basher One, confirmed hostiles at target area,” said Turk, involuntarily flinching as a muzzle flashed in his viewer.

There was more gunfire, closer — the rebels had spotted the Malaysians on the ridge.

“Roger that, Ground,” said Cowboy. His voice dropped an octave, and there was no hint of humor. “I have three vehicles; roughly a dozen armed men.”

“Confirmed,” said Turk. “All are hostile.”

“We have your position noted,” added the Marine.

“Cleared hot. Go get ’em.”

“Inbound. Advise you take cover.”

In the few moments that had passed since the first gunfire, Monday and Captain Deris had begun firing back. The rest of the rebels had opened up, training their weapons on the hill. Bullets began ripping through the nearby trees.

“Basher is inbound,” Turk yelled to the Malaysians. “The fighters are on the way.”

He no sooner had given the warning when something whistled in the distance. The ground shook as eight GBU-53 small diameter bombs, all steered by radar seeker to the precise location of the trucks, ignited in quick succession. The explosions destroyed the vehicles and killed or wounded two-thirds of the rebels who’d been nearby.

Monday bolted to his feet, ready to charge down the hill toward the depleted enemy.

“Stay down! Stay down!” yelled Turk. “The planes are still attacking!”

His voice was drowned out by a second round of explosions, these closer to the hill, as the second Marine F-35 mopped up the knot of rebels who’d initially opened fire.

Squatting near a tree, Turk looked at the feed from Seagull 2. All of the rebels were on the ground.

“Basher, stand off. We’re going down.”

“You got it, dude,” said Cowboy, his voice jocular once more. The difference was so striking that Turk would have thought he was talking to another pilot.

Turk followed Captain Deris to the mine. The scent of dirt and explosive mixed with the thick, moist smell of the jungle. Nothing was moving. The F-35s had done the job.

Aboard Basher One, Cowboy unsnapped his oxygen mask and popped a stick of gum into his mouth.

Greenstreet’s voice boomed in his helmet. “Basher One, give me a sitrep.”

“Three vehicles, fifteen tangos down,” replied Cowboy. “We’re standing by for the ground team.”

“What’s your fuel state?”

“Oh, yeah, we’re good.”

“Cut the bull, Lieutenant.”

Used to Greenstreet’s prickly ways, Cowboy smiled to himself and read off the exact data, confirming that both F-35s had enough fuel for several hours’ worth of flying, with plenty left in reserve.

“Basher One, did you ID the target before dropping your weapons?” asked Greenstreet.

“Friendlies were under fire from the targets,” said Cowboy. “We were cleared in via Captain Mako.”

“You’re sure.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Good.”

Lord, don’t let me grow up to be a squadron commander, Cowboy thought.

He was just about to tell Greenstreet that he had won the squadron pool on who was going to see action first when the aircraft’s warning system blared. The F-35’s AN/APG-81 radar had picked up a fast-moving object flying in his direction.

“Stand by,” he told Greenstreet. “I have a contact.”

He wasn’t picking up an active radar. To Cowboy, that meant it had to be an aircraft, rather than a missile fired blindly in his direction.

Which in turn meant it must be the UAV they were looking for.

“Kick ass,” he muttered, turning the F-35 in its direction.

The bogie was roughly forty miles away and closing fast. Under other circumstances Cowboy could have launched an AMRAAM with a high probability of a kill. But not only was he prevented from doing that by the ROEs — he hadn’t been threatened, nor had the bogie apparently turned on its weapons radar — his job was to gather as much information about it as possible. And that meant getting up close and personal.

“Two, you seeing this?” he asked his wingman, Lieutenant John “Jolly” Rogers.

“Roger One.”

“Like we talked about,” said Cowboy. “You’re high.”

The two planes increased their separation, Cowboy moving eastward as his wing mate angled to the west. Cowboy wanted the UAV to come after him; Basher Two would cover him from above and take it down if necessary.

“No radar, no profile like anything we’ve seen out east,” said Jolly. “Not Malaysian. Not standard Chinese either.”

“Roger.” Cowboy dipped his nose, pushing the jet for a little more speed.

The UAV was coming at him almost straight-on. Cowboy plotted a simple roll and turn to line up for a Sidewinder shot as it passed. That would give his sensors the maximum amount of time to pull data before he downed the aircraft — assuming it did something to allow him to do so.

“Basher One, what’s your situation?” said Greenstreet from the ground.

“We have the UAV on our screens. At least we think it’s him,” added Cowboy. “Preparing to engage.”

“Observe it first. Visually confirm it’s hostile before firing.”

“Yup. Acknowledged.”

Cowboy calculated the intercept — a minute and thirty seconds. The UAV still wasn’t using a radar against him.

“Come on,” he whispered to himself. “Light me up so I can take you down.”

The bogie was flying about 5,000 feet above him. Cowboy got ready to turn. It would be in visual range in a moment.

A minute twenty.

Suddenly, the UAV disappeared from his radar screen.

“What the hell?” muttered Jolly over the squadron frequency.

As soon as he heard the Marines chattering about the UAV, Turk switched his communications to the Cube, where Tom Frost was coordinating the data gathering.

“You getting all this?” he asked Frost.

“I have the F-35 data,” said Frost. “Global Hawk elint aircraft isn’t picking up anything.”

“Nothing?”

“I’m resetting the frequency scan. The aircraft is a little too far east. We were worried about the Chinese detecting it earlier.”

A few seconds later Frost told Turk that the computers were synthesizing a possible profile for the UAV. It didn’t appear armed.

“Also looks like it might be different than the earlier ones,” said Frost. “Check out the model.”

Turk put his glasses into 3-D mode and spun his hand around, examining the enemy aircraft. It had small stubby wings that reminded him of the Cold War era F-104 Starfighter, a high-speed aircraft. At the rear, the UAV was a very different beast, with a much thicker, wedge-shaped body, a Y-tail, and some sort of directional-vector thrust system — it suddenly cut a nearly ninety-degree turn in the sky.

The turn caused the aircraft to disappear temporarily from the F-35s’ radars, a variation on the old trick of beaming a Doppler radar. The American system was too smart to stay blind for very long; the F-35s’ redundant systems were able to find it again quickly. But the second or two of confusion, along with the course change, gave the little SUV just enough of an advantage to duck into the ground clutter near the coast, camouflaging itself in the irregular radar returns caused by the ground. It was a command performance, and the fact that Turk had dealt with exactly that sort of maneuver from attacking Flighthawks in simulated combat didn’t make it any less impressive.

“Basher, your bandit is two sixty off your nose,” said Turk, telling the Marine pilot that the UAV had tucked down to his left. “Ten miles. He’s going to try popping up behind you.”

“Uh—”

“Trust me. Put your plane on your right wing and look for the bogie to cross your nose in twenty seconds. It’s going to be low — he’s in the weeds and trying to get behind you. Break now!”

With his F-35 bleeding off speed, Cowboy knew he was a sitting duck for any aircraft that came up behind him. But what Turk was suggesting was very counterintuitive. It seemed almost impossible that the drone could spin around quickly enough to get behind him, let alone get underneath him.

Instinctually, it seemed a dumb move, and not least of all because it would leave him vulnerable to a plunging attack from above, the direction he expected the drone to come from.

Did he trust the Air Force pilot?

Cowboy leaned on his stick, driving the F-35B hard and sharp, exactly as Turk had suggested. The g’s hit him hard, pushing him back into the fighter’s seat.

A black bar appeared at the right side of his windscreen. The targeting radar was going wild.

Mother!

“Can I fire?” asked the Marine, pushing to stay with the UAV. But before anyone answered, the black aircraft turned its nose abruptly in his direction and sliced downward, moving and turning at a speed Cowboy didn’t think possible. He made his own abrupt turn, losing so much altitude that the Bitchin’ Betty warning system blared that he was too low. He scanned his radar and then the sky, but the slippery little UAV and its tiny radar cross section had once more disappeared in the weeds.

Damn.

Turk realized what was happening as soon as Cowboy got the altitude warning. There was no way the Marine was going to catch the other plane now.

Still, they needed as much data as they could get. And they were going to get it by going home.

“Your bandit’s heading west,” he told the Marine.

“Yeah, we’re following.”

“You have it on radar?”

“Negative.”

“Did he turn on weapons radar?” Turk asked.

“No.”

“All right.”

“We’re going to search this area. Once he’s over the water he should be easy to find.”

“Easier, maybe.”

“Yeah. You see where he launched from?”

“I didn’t. I’ll check back with my people,” added Turk, though he could already guess that the answer would be no: they would be giving the F-35s a vector to the site if they had.

Turk signed off with Cowboy and continued down the slope to the mining area. His boots sank into the soft ground. The place smelled like dirt, and death.

While considered “small,” two-hundred-pound GBU-53s still made an absolute mess of anything they hit; the three guerrillas who’d been holding this part of the perimeter had been obliterated. Twenty yards away, half of one of the trucks lay on its side, blown over by an explosion.

A severed leg lay on the ground. Turk stared at it for a moment, frowned, then kept walking.

Three months ago, that would have turned my stomach, he thought. Now it’s just one more ugly part of the landscape.

9

Finally, they’d come.

Lloyd Braxton stared at the console, even though the displays were blank. He had been waiting for this moment for many months. In a sense, he’d been preparing for it for years.

It was intoxicating. Kallipolis was becoming a reality, precisely as he had envisioned. The days of nation states were passing before his eyes; the elite was ready to take over.

He clenched his fists, controlling his excitement.

There was a great deal to be done. This was just one small step in the evolution.

The next step was to defeat the Dreamland people — Special Projects, Whiplash, whatever the hell bs code name they were using. Defeat them and take their technology, the last piece of the puzzle.

Defeating Dreamland would be sweet. Rubeo and his web of sellout scientists, technodrones for the governments of the world, would finally be put in their places.

Braxton scolded himself. If this became a quest for revenge it would fail. He had argued this many times with Michaels, Thresh, and Fortine — especially the ship captain Fortine — who while still being true believers, bore personal grudges against their governments and a host of officials who had wronged them. Braxton didn’t blame them, exactly, but he knew that Kallipolis was a movement of history, a phenomenon like the Renaissance or the Reformation, not something to be sullied by personal grudges.

Kallipolis was both a goal and a philosophy. The philosophy was perfect, unfettered freedom: true dependence on the self, and a true unshackling of the governmental binds that kept men and women from reaching their potential, both personally and as a race. Kallipolis would do away with national borders and provide those who were worthy of it complete freedom and the unrestricted ability to achieve.

The people who made up the Kallipolis movement — aside from the very small group of people he employed, there were over a hundred in close communications with Braxton, and a few thousand more beyond — were members of the intelligentsia, scientists and engineers, and those who had done something with their lives, people who were the builders, not the takers; what they had in common was the ability to see things without emotion and act on them. They acted as he must act: entirely on the scientific principles that had gotten him this far.

So… it was on to the next move. Provoke the Americans into showing themselves, and get Whiplash to expose the tech he needed.

He needed to talk to the rebel leader on Malaysia immediately. The sooner the Americans were provoked, the better.

10

Breanna rolled over in the bed, aware that she had to wake up but unsure why. She was in the middle of a dream, caught in an incomprehensible tangle of odd thoughts and a snatch of memory. The setting was her childhood, a home near the railroad tracks. She was running to catch the train. Her father, dressed in his Class A uniform, was yelling at her to stop. The train was a steam locomotive, a huge nineteenth century bruiser stolen from a Christmas display and multiplied a hundred times…

Up, she told herself, and she slipped off the covers, grabbing the vibrating phone on her bed stand.

Zen snored as she grabbed a robe from the end of the bed and walked to the hallway.

“Breanna,” she said into the phone.

“Need to talk,” said Danny Freah.

“Give me two minutes. I’ll call.”

Pulling on the robe, Breanna went down to the kitchen and glanced at the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Indonesia was a day and an hour ahead, making it three-thirty there.

She hesitated for a moment, then hit the button on the coffeemaker. As the water started to heat, she went to the kitchen table and pulled her daughter’s laptop open. The Web browser came up; she checked the news headlines on her home page quickly, making sure nothing important had happened in the roughly two hours since she’d gone to bed.

Coffee in hand, she went to her office in the basement. Two minutes later she was talking to Danny over the Whiplash com network’s secure link.

“No video from your end?” asked Danny when his tired face appeared on the screen.

“I have it off. Commander’s prerogative.”

“I have an update on the UAV we encountered today.”

“OK,” she said, yawning.

“Turk was looking at the flight patterns that were reconstructed by the team Frost heads,” said Danny. “He says it followed a defensive pattern he recognized from the Flighthawks, to the letter.”

“Is he sure?”

“I had him go over it a couple of times. He looked at everything — the approach, the maneuvers, the way it got away. He said he’s flown against that attack a lot.”

“Is it a Flighthawk?”

“No. Turk compared it to a late model Flighthawk with stubbier wings.”

Breanna tapped on her keyboard, tying into the Cube’s computer system. Within a few minutes she had a video of the reconstructed encounter.

“I see what he’s saying,” she told Danny. “But we still don’t have any elint data.”

“Turk had a theory about that. This is a preprogrammed pattern, something you could tell the Flighthawks to do. They wouldn’t need to be in full communication.”

“That’s right. Have you talked to Ray about this?”

“He’d gone home.”

“I’ll talk to him,” said Breanna.

“If it is following the Flighthawk’s program, the source might be — it could be—”

“Us,” said Breanna.

“Yeah. Someone who worked on the Flighthawks.”

While there had been Flighthawk crashes and shoot-downs over the years, the aircraft were equipped with a series of fail-safe devices for completely scrubbing the memory and destroying the chips. There was no indication that the systems had ever failed. There hadn’t been a crash now in several years.

“This thing gets worse and worse,” said Danny before hanging up.

Zen opened his eyes as soon as he smelled the coffee. He glanced at the clock — it was a few minutes before three.

He lay in bed, listening to the house. He couldn’t hear Breanna; that meant she was downstairs in her soundproof office. She wouldn’t have left the house without kissing him good-bye, which inevitably woke him up — though he would never tell her that, for fear she might stop doing it.

Their daughter Teri was sleeping down the hall. He could hear her light breath. The child could sleep through a train crash without waking, something that never ceased to amaze Zen.

The coffee smelled good.

Zen made a halfhearted attempt at drifting off; a grand total of thirty seconds passed before he threw the covers off and pushed himself to the edge of the bed for his wheelchair.

Breanna had grabbed his robe when she’d gotten up, so once he was in the chair he wheeled to the bureau and pulled out a sweatshirt. Then he rolled down to the kitchen. He was pouring milk into his coffee when Breanna came up from her office.

“You took my robe,” he told her. “Yours was on the chair.”

“Sorry, I just grabbed what was there.” She leaned into him for a long kiss. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Worth getting up for,” said Zen. He took his coffee and went over to the table. “Problems?”

“Eh. Just the usual.”

He knew from the tone in her voice that whatever had gotten her up was particularly sticky, but he also knew that he couldn’t push her for details.

“Kinda strong,” said Zen, sipping his coffee.

“No more than usual.”

Breanna sat down at the table across from him. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.

“A lot going on.”

“Thinking about what Todd said?”

“Oh… no. I don’t think I’d want to be President.”

“Why not? You could do a hell of a lot.”

“Maybe…” He took another sip. Bree was right — the coffee wasn’t any stronger than normal.

“What are you doing today?”

“Committee stuff. And fund-raising.”

“Your favorite.”

“Worse than that. I’m meeting with Jake Harris.”

Harris was an entrepreneur who’d made three fortunes and lost two before he was thirty years old. He’d held on to the latest, and over the last few years had become one of the most important political fund-raisers in the country.

“Count your fingers and toes before you go in.”

“It’s after that I’m worried about. I’d have to do this all the time if I ever ran for President,” he added.

“The price you pay.”

“Yeah.”

Lifting his coffee mug to his lips, he realized he’d nearly drained it. He took a last gulp, then wheeled over to the machine for a refill.

Breanna watched her husband wheel across the floor toward the coffee. For just a moment she saw him as he was before the accident at Dreamland that had taken the use of his legs — a brash young pilot, skilled and already wise beyond his years.

He was extremely bitter after the accident. Even so, it didn’t change what was vital about him — the need to strive, the urge to compete and be the best at what he did. The tragedy hadn’t made him a better person, but his will to keep going, his struggle to keep contributing to Dreamland and the Air Force and above all his country — those things had made him into a man to be admired, a real leader.

He would make an excellent President.

But should she urge him to run? He’d have to give up a lot, from the trivial — his skybox at the Nationals — to things that had no price, like time with their daughter.

Breanna curled her feet under her, then tucked the robe around her. It was thick and warm, and reminded her of him.

She hadn’t taken it by mistake.

She felt an urge to tell him about the plane — he’d know right off if the maneuvers were the same as those programmed into the Flighthawks. He also might have a theory on why that was. Just a coincidence? Or much more?

But she couldn’t.

If he ever did run for President, how many things would they never be able to share?

“Need a refill?” Zen asked.

“No, it’s full.”

Zen balanced the cup between his legs and wheeled himself back to the table. All these years, and he still insisted on an unpowered chair. There was more than a little macho masochism in him.

“Whatever you do, whenever you do it,” said Breanna, “Teri and I are with you.”

Zen smiled. That was one thing that hadn’t changed, ever, and the way his eyes shone, it was clear it never would.

“Thanks, babe,” he told her. “You think we can go back to bed?”

“You think we can sleep after all this coffee?”

“Who said anything about sleep?”

“Hold that thought,” said Breanna, rising. “I have to make a phone call.”

Despite the hour, Ray Rubeo answered on the first ring.

“Ray, it’s Breanna. I–I’m sorry to wake you.”

“You didn’t. I’m working.”

“Oh. OK. Listen I just talked to Danny. He said that Turk Mako has a theory—”

“Let me guess. He sees parallels between the UAVs and some of our aircraft.”

“Well, yes,” said Breanna, surprised. “Did you talk to him?”

“No. But I’ve noticed the parallels myself. I understand the implications,” he added. “I’m taking it very seriously.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Breanna. Rubeo took everything seriously.

“Is there anything else? I am in the middle of constructing a model.”

“No, that’s it. I’ll talk to you in the morning at the Cube.”

“Very well,” he said, hanging up.

11

Turk rolled over on the thin mattress in the trailer room. Though exhausted, he found it impossible to sleep. After he’d returned from the mission — the Malaysians were bivouacked in tents near the trailers — he’d gone over the mission several times, first for Danny, then the Marines, then Danny again. By the time they were done, his brain was practically buzzing with the encounter; he saw it from all angles, even the enemy UAVs, though of course this was impossible. His mind wouldn’t let go.

While he could get sleeping pills from the corpsman assigned to the Marines, Turk didn’t like to use them, or even the more conventional aids available in the form of bourbon, scotch, and beer. He stared at the ceiling, but his thoughts just wouldn’t stop, and finally he got up, pulled on his boots — he slept in his clothes — and went out to see if a walk might help.

He heard someone throwing up in the bathroom. The door was open and he saw Lieutenant Rogers kneeling in front of the bowl.

“You OK in there?” he asked.

“Damn food killed me,” said Rogers between heaves. “I feel like my stomach is being turned inside out.”

“I’ll get the corpsman,” said Turk.

Rogers groaned, then went back to throwing up.

Turk headed toward the administrative trailer to look for the duty officer and find out who and where the medic was.

He was about halfway there when he heard a whistle above him. It was a strange, unearthly sound, a high-pitched sizzle that seemed to snap against the strong night wind.

The explosion that followed was something else again.

Turk fell as the ground seemed to dissolve beneath him. He landed on his side, and for a moment all the adrenaline that had kept him awake disappeared; he was dazed and confused, not sure where he was or even, in that moment, who he was.

“Incoming!” yelled a Marine nearby. “Mortars!”

Turk bolted upright, energy and consciousness instantly restored. He turned and ran back into the trailer he’d just come out of, screaming at everyone inside.

“Get to the bunker, get to the bunker!” he yelled, directing them to one of the two shelters the Marines had installed immediately after taking the base.

Men plunged from their rooms, charging into the barely lit corridor in various states of dress.

“Mortars,” said one of the NCOs. His voice was loud, but there was no excitement in it, let alone fear. “Move out!”

“The planes,” said Cowboy, coming out of his room at the far end. “We gotta get them off the field. Get the rest of the pilots! Pilots, come on!”

Turk ran to Rogers in the bathroom. He was still hunched over the toilet, his legs curled around him on the floor.

“You gotta get out of here,” Turk said and grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

“Man…”

“Come on, Marine. Stand up.”

Rogers struggled to comply. Turk helped him out into the hall, then down toward the doorway.

Two rounds hit nearby as Turk pushed Rogers out. He lost his balance, falling against the wall and letting go of Rogers. The Marine went down to his knees and threw up.

The stench turned Turk’s stomach, but he managed to grab the shorter pilot and drag him over his shoulder. The compound lit with the flash of another explosion, this one up near the airstrip. The light helped Turk orient himself, and he turned in the direction of the nearest bunker.

“Yo, Rogers,” he said. “It would sure help if you could push your feet every so often.”

Danny Freah had just finished taking his boots off to go to sleep when the first mortar hit the base. It had been a few years since he was on the receiving end of a mortar attack, but it was an experience few people wanted to relive, and Danny certainly wasn’t one of them. He pulled his boots back on, grabbed his secure laptops and the satellite phone, and ran from his trailer toward the command bunker, built around the foundation of an old building at the center of the base.

Captain Thomas met him a few yards outside the sandbagged entrance.

“Great way to wake up,” snapped the Marine captain. Two men ran across the field, M-16s in hand, hustling to a perimeter post. “We should have eyes on in a minute.”

“You gotta get all the planes off,” said Danny. “Where’s Greenstreet?”

“He ran up on the strip. I’m sure he’s got it under control. Let’s get inside the bunker.”

Calling the structure a bunker was a bit of an overstatement. The interior had been dug out about three feet, and the sides built up with sandbags. The roof consisted of a series of corrugated steel panels covered with sandbags and dirt. Power came from a gas generator a dozen yards away.

The Marines had launched an RQ7Z Shadow, and its controller was flying the aircraft west, attempting to locate the attack. Based on the original RQ7B, the drone could carry a slightly heavier payload and was designed to be launched by one man rather than two; otherwise the performance specs were similar. Looking like a stick glider with a triangle at its tail and a ball turret below its wings, the UAV jetted into the sky from a small metal trailer. Once airborne, its infrared camera provided a 360-degree view of the battlefield; its laser designator could be tied into the F-35B attack systems.

Right now it was getting an eyeful.

“We got over fifty savages in the weeds,” said the Marine at the controls. “They’re massing for an attack on the west side of the base.”

Danny spun around and nearly struck Captain Thomas.

“I heard him,” said Thomas. “We’ll be ready.”

A marine ran out to help Turk as he pulled Rogers into the shelter near the airstrip. Just as the weight was lifted off his shoulder, the ground rocked with another nearby explosion. Turk lost his balance and fell straight back, smacking his head on the ground. He rolled to his belly and got to his knees, momentarily disoriented. Then he pushed to his feet.

The Malaysian ground troops were about four hundred yards away, near the outer perimeter. Turk decided that he should head over there in case they needed to liaison with the Marines. But before he could take a single step, one of the crew chiefs for the planes ran up to him, shouting about Rogers.

“We’re looking for him — they need him in the air!” yelled the Marine.

“He’s sick,” said Turk.

“Damn. We need to get the plane off. It’s a sitting duck.”

“I’ll fly it,” said Turk. “Take me up there.”

“But—”

Turk grabbed hold of the man’s arm and pushed him in the direction of the runway. “Let’s go!”

Danny stood at the side of the small bunker as Captain Thomas took control of the situation. The rebel force was sizable, nearly four times the number of Marines assigned to guard the perimeter. But the Corps had a slogan: every Marine is a rifleman. And Thomas lived by it: he had already drilled the maintenance and support people in the defense of the base. He now rallied them into position, readying for the assault the Shadow had seen coming.

Ironically, all that preparation left Danny feeling useless; he didn’t have an assignment.

“Give me a rifle,” he told Thomas. “I’ll help on the perimeter.”

The captain frowned. “No offense, sir, but—”

“I guarantee I’ve seen more action than you, Captain,” answered Danny.

“Yes sir, but, uh…”

Danny knew that Thomas considered it his job to provide security, and that he would feel responsible if anything happened to him. He’d been in the same spot himself, many times.

“Look, Captain, I can shoot as well as most of your men, I’m sure,” he said bluntly. “You need bodies. And if anything happens, I gave you a direct order, which everyone here will vouch for.”

“What I could use is someone liaising with the Malaysians,” said Thomas. “I haven’t been able to reach them on the radio. Their equipment is primitive — and that’s if they remember to use it. I need someone who can get a radio to them and tell them what to do. They can reinforce the southern side of the perimeter.”

“Did Turk go down to talk to them?”

“Uh, Captain Mako ran up to the airstrip to fly one of the planes,” said a lance corporal who just entered the bunker, wearing his helmet and carrying an M-16A4. “One of our guys is sick, I heard.”

“Give me a radio,” said Danny.

Thomas hesitated, but then complied. “Mofitt, go over with the colonel,” he said, turning to the man who’d just come in.

“Yes, sir, right away.”

“Let’s do it,” said Danny.

One of the F-35s started down the runway as Turk ran up. It took him by surprise, and he ducked involuntarily as it roared past, both pilot and steed eager to get into the air.

Turk continued toward the other planes. Two crew dogs were attaching bombs to the hard points of the nearest aircraft, despite the continuing whistle of the mortar attacks. A pair of rounds landed every thirty or forty seconds, with an occasional single shell breaking the pattern. They were getting closer to the runway, walking up in fits and starts.

Turk spotted Colonel Greenstreet in front of the wing of the plane being armed. He was shouting at the ordnance men, yelling at them to finish their business so he could get in the air and do some “f-in’ good.”

A second F-35 taxied out from behind the aircraft. It hesitated a moment, then seemed to explode off the runway so fast that Turk thought it had been hit by a mortar shell.

One of the crewmen spotted Turk and ran to him.

“Captain! Have you seen Lieutenant Rogers?” he shouted.

“He’s sick,” said Turk. “I’m going to fly. Get me to his plane.”

The crewman pointed to the very end of the tarmac and began running toward it. Turk caught up in a few seconds and then passed him, racing to the F-35B as the shriek of incoming rounds pierced the air. The shells exploded a hundred yards away, off to the right; while they landed harmlessly, Turk realized that the enemy had changed its sights and was now aiming at the planes and the runway.

A crew chief met Turk as he reached the airplane. “Captain Mako?”

“Rogers is sick!” shouted Turk. “I’m getting his plane up!”

“Uh—”

“I’m checked out on it,” he said. “We leave it on the ground it’s dead.”

That was apparently enough of an argument for the crew captain, a gunnery sergeant who’d heard Turk during the briefings and knew he was a pilot.

“She’s fueled!” shouted the gunny. “We just put some bombs on the rack.”

“Good! Let’s go.”

“You need gear!” yelled the NCO. “Where the hell is your helmet? You need a flight suit!”

“Get them quick or I’m going up like this,” said Turk. Technically, he didn’t need either, but one of the gunny’s men was running up with a helmet, and Turk knew he’d have a much easier time with the plane if he was geared up properly. Fortunately, the suit was a little big and he was able to get into it quickly.

“Careful where you step, Captain,” said the gunny as he climbed into the plane.

“Call me Turk!”

“Get your helmet on!”

“In the plane!” Turk pulled himself over the fairing and slipped in.

It had been two years since he’d been in an F-35B, let alone flew one. Though the plane shared a large number of parts with the Air Force’s F-35A, in truth it was a much different animal, certainly when taking off and landing.

And it had been quite a while since he’d flown an A model as well, come to think of.

“Damn.” Turk momentarily blanked. He stared at the controls. “What the hell do I do first?”

The crew chief appeared on his right with the helmet.

“Here, Captain!” he shouted as two more rounds landed somewhere behind them. These sounded much closer than the last set. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. Let’s go!”

“What the hell are you doing!” yelled Greenstreet, materializing on his left.

“Rogers is down in the bunker puking his guts out,” said Turk. “He’s sick.”

“What?”

“He’s sick. Something he ate. We have to get the plane off the ground.”

“Where’s the rest of your gear?”

“We don’t have time — I’m just going to get it off the ground.”

If Greenstreet thought that wasn’t a good idea, the thud-thud of two more rounds falling, these near the edge of the runway, convinced him otherwise.

“Go! Get him off the ground!” he shouted to the crew. “And don’t wreck my plane!”

“I won’t. Don’t worry about that,” snapped Turk, reaching to start the engine.

“You good, Captain?” asked the crew chief, his voice considerably kinder if just as loud as Greenstreet’s.

“Yeah, I’m good. Get yourself to shelter.”

The Marine gave him a thumbs-up and disappeared off the wing as the ground shook with a fresh explosion.

Turk looked back at the panel.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” he said aloud.