Armageddon

Chapter 8

Mack Smith banked hard right, putting the A-37B Dragonfly at a right angle to the Megafortress’s radar. Had the radar been an older unit, he might have succeeded in confusing it. Pulse-Doppler radars had difficulty picking up returns from objects at a ninety-degree angle; many were the pilots who had managed to escape an enemy’s grip because of it. But the Megafortress unit wasn’t about to be fooled; the crewman aboard the EB-52 sang out loud and clear with his bearing and speed.

Hallelujah, thought Mack to himself.

It was probably the first time in his life that he actually wanted to be caught. Mack took a hard turn north and did a quick check of his instruments. The Cessna wasn’t a fancy beast, but it was sure and dependable, and the indicators showed she was in prime condition.

“Dragon One, this is Jersey,” said Breanna Stockard, who was aboard the EB-52. “Looks like we’re through with the low-altitude hunts. What’s your pleasure?”

Mack checked his watch and fuel. “Let’s move out to sea and practice some sea surveillance,” he answered. “That okay with Deci?”

Deci Gordon was a Dreamland radar specialist who was aboard the EB-52 helping train Mack’s men.

“Good for me,” answered Deci. “Your people did very well on the low-altitude stuff. A-pluses all around.”

He was being kind. The two pilots who had taken stints at the stick had flown decently. But the equipment operators tasked with finding Mack while he flew at low altitude around the nearby mountains had batted only about .300 — great in baseball, fatal in war.

Mack knew that working the radar involved a heck of a lot more than hitting a few keys and jiggling some toggles, but his people had a long, long way to go before they would be competent enough to find a MiG hell-bent on nailing a real target.

Two weeks before, Mack would have vented his frustration at the poor score, or at least let the crew aboard the EB-52 know that they had to step it up. He was learning, however, to be more laid back, or at least more selective with his criticism.

He had to be. The two specialists aboard Jersey were the last two he had. The other two had quit.

As Mack adjusted his course and started to climb through five thousand feet, he saw something flare in the right side of his windscreen. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing a fire.

“Jersey, this is Brunei Dragon One. I think I see a ship on fire. Stand by.”

Mack gave the throttle a shove and turned in the direction of the flames. From this distance, the fire looked more like the sparkle of a gem, glittering red. The ship itself was a gray shadow around it.

“Mack, we see it,” said Breanna. “We’ll have GPS coordinates in a second”

“You got a Mayday or something?” Mack asked Breanna. “Nothing”

Mack alerted his ground controller, who staffed a combat center at the International Airport control tower back in the capital. (As in many other smaller countries around the world, the International Airport or IAP handled military as well as civilian flights.) Besides calling out the navy and local harbor patrol, Mack told the controller to contact the Malaysian air force at Labuan. The small air station there — the only other air base besides Brunei IAP on the northern side of Borneo — operated a squadron of French-built Aerospatiale SA 316B Alouette Ills for search and rescue.

“We’ll stay in the area until rescue is underway, give ‘em some hope, anyway,” Mack added.

Breanna reported that the ship had not answered any of their hails.

“Roger that,” said Mack. He was now within two miles of the ship, and could see that the vessel had settled low in the water. “I’m going to get close and see what I can see.”

Low and slow was one thing the A-37B did really well. Mack decided to pop on his landing lights, not so much because it would help him see better, but because it would show survivors he was there and help was on the way. His speed notched down steadily until finally it seemed as if he were going backward.

As he approached, it looked to him as if there were two ships on fire. He banked, hand gentle on the stick as he slipped around for another look.

The ship had broken in half somewhere around the superstructure.

Must’ve been one hell of an accident for it to blow up like that, thought Mack, sliding around for another pass.

The Megafortress pilot had forgotten to tell the computer that the exercise was over, and so it kept blinking a warning at him that he was outside of the programmed flight area. It was nothing more than an annoyance, since the plane wouldn’t override the pilot’s commands, but the flash was driving Breanna crazy. Still, she avoided the temptation to turn it off herself, or even to bring it to his attention. In a few days she wasn’t going to be here to straighten him out; it was time to take the training wheels off.

But boy, it bothered her.

Finally, the pilot turned to her and announced: “I have a difficulty with the warning system.”

“It just needs to be acknowledged. Tell the computer the exercise is over. You might check your course, as well,” she added, noticing that he had allowed his heading to drift well to the west.

“Right. Yes,” said the pilot. He was in his late thirties, older than Breanna. Even so, he seemed nervous and jumpy; he didn’t have the been-there, done-that, I-remember-one-time-we-had-to-fly-backward-in-a-storm-with-one-engine calm most jocks pushing forty displayed. Not that he was a bad pilot; he just didn’t seem to have the hash marks his age implied.

Something else bugged her. The crew was, well, quiet.

In an American plane, certainly on a Dreamland crew, the specialists would be singing out, talking about contacts and the like. But the two men at the mission stations behind her on the flight deck were silent. Breanna’s copilot station allowed her to peek at their contact screens; she did so and saw that the men were refining their equipment and seemed to have a competent handle on things — they just didn’t talk about it.

By now, Mack had completed a third orbit of the stricken vessel and reported that he saw no boats in the water. He switched to a different frequency and began talking to the harbor patrol, which had been alerted by their ground controller.

“Captain, what do you think of this?” asked Deci. “Hit that two scan, low resolution. I’m feeding it.”

Enhanced by the computer, the image showed a dark blur in the left-hand corner of the screen, racing along the coast toward Malaysia.

“Just a ghost?” asked Breanna.

“No. There’s something there,” said Deci. “Moving real fast — out around three hundred knots.”

“What boat goes that fast? Cigarette speed boat?”

“Never heard of one even half that fast. Has to be a plane, but according to the radar it’s at three feet.”

“Three feet?”

“I know it’s weird,” added Deci, “but it’s a live contact. The computer has never seen it before”

“I’ll bet.” Breanna flipped into Mack’s circuit. “Brunei Dragon One, we have an odd contact you might want to know about,” she said. “Indications are it’s a plane flying very low, but it may be a weird radar bounce off a boat of some sort. Moving to the east, northeast at a very good clip. You might want to check it out.”

“Give me a vector,” he snapped.

Clean, throttle lashed to the last stop, and a good wind at its back, the manual said the A-37B Dragonfly could do 440 knots.

Mack had it nudging 470 as he tracked in the direction Breanna had fed him, running up the coastline. He was about thirty seconds from the spot where she’d gotten the first contact just a hair under four miles — but he had nothing on his radar and couldn’t see anything, either.

He leaned his head far forward, as if the few inches of extra distance would help his eyes filter away the shadows and mist.

“Dragon One to Jersey — yo, Breanna, where is this thing?”

“Stand by.”

She came back again with a GPS location.

“Hey, I’m in the Stone Age, remember? I don’t have a GPS locator on board.”

“Sorry — you look like you’re almost on top of it. Two miles.” Mack reached for the throttle, easing off on his speed. The shoreline was an irregular black haze to his right.

Sixty seconds later, Breanna announced that they had lost it. “Stand by:’ she added.

Stand by yourself, he thought. He had let his altitude slip to two thousand feet. He was passing just over a marina, but moving too fast to sort out what he saw.

“Pleasure boat,” he said with disgust, snapping the speak button as he tucked into a bank to check it out. “Hey, Jersey girl — did you have me chase a pleasure boat? There’s a marina down here.”

“You know a pleasure boat that goes three hundred knots? Stand by. We’re looking for it.”

Mack circled around. There were at least two dozen boats in the marina, but no airplanes.

“Not a seaplane?” he asked, though he didn’t see one. “Seaplane? If so the computer couldn’t find it on its index. Hold on.”

Mack pulled out the large area map from his kneeboard and unfolded it, checking to see where he was.

“Dragon One, we have it twenty-five miles to your northeast, along the coast:’ said Breanna over the radio.

“Your sure about that, Jersey?”

“We’re as sure as — stand by,” she added, a note of disgust creeping into her voice.

Mack started a turn in the direction she had advised, but as he came to the new course Breanna told him they had lost the contact completely.

“Right,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re trying.”

“I’m looking at empty ocean.”

“You’re right on the vector.”

She added that the Brunei authorities had just reported a ship underway to rescue survivors at the stricken ship, which had now been identified as a freighter due to dock at 6 A.M. in Brunei. Mack flew about ten miles to the east-northeast, then banked into an orbit fifteen hundred feet over the waves, riding a curlicue as he looked for Breanna’s contact. He began heading toward the masts of a group of fishing vessels further northward on the shore.

“Flight Jersey to Dragon One,” said the airborne radar operator aboard the EB-52. “Report: Two Su-27s coming in your direction from the south. Report: bearing one-six-five. Report..

Mack listened incredulously to the contact information. The two planes were over Malaysian territory, on a course that would take them out over Mack’s position. But Malaysia didn’t have any Su-27s, and all eighteen of their MiG-29s were over at Subang, a good thousand miles away. As the MiGs were the most capable planes in the region, two spies at the airport there were paid good money by the prince to keep them informed.

Two others were paid so-so money. All of the air bases operated by Indonesia and Malaysia, including the two Malaysian and one Indonesian fields on Borneo, were covered around the clock by spies. Mack surely would have known by now if these planes were operating there.

Whoever they belonged to, they were moving at a good clip — the radar operator warned that they were topping six hundred knots.

“We’re sure they’re not MiGs?” asked Mack.

“Yes, Minister. We’re sure.”

“Yeah, those are definitely Su-27s, and they’re hot,” confirmed Deci.

“Roger that,” said Mack, pulling back on his stick and climbing off the deck.

Breanna did a quick run through the screens that showed how the Megafortress was performing, and then brought up the fuel matrix, which gave the pilots a set of calculations showing how long they could stay up with the fuel remaining in their tanks. The Megafortress computer system could make the predictions seem terribly precise-42.35 minutes if they spent it doing these orbits and then headed straight home — but in reality fuel management remained more art than science. The screen gave the pilots several sets of reasonable guesses based on stock mission profiles as well as the programmed mission. It could also make calculations based on data inputted. Breanna brought a “profile map” up at the side of the touchscreen and quickly built a scenario from it by tapping a few options. They could climb to twenty-five thousand feet, engage the two Sukhois, and then slide back home.

Just.

Not that they could actually engage the Sukhois. They weren’t carrying any anti-air missiles. They didn’t have any shells for the Stinger air-mine tail weapon; the shrapnel discs were in relatively short supply and weren’t needed for training.

“Captain, what are your intentions regarding the Sukhois?” she asked the Megafortress pilot.

He replied that he would remain on station until Mack gave him other orders. It wasn’t the wrong response, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of answer that was going to set the world on fire.

“Should we take the initiative and ask the minister what he wants us to do?” she said, her patience starting to slip a little. “Maybe suggest we try and establish contact with the bogeys and get them to declare their intent? Maybe prepare an offensive or defensive posture?”

“By all means,” answered the pilot. “But the minister may prefer to deal with them himself.”

“The A-37B is a sitting duck,” she said.

To her surprise, the pilot chuckled. “The minister would not lose an engagement,” he said.

“He’s unarmed.”

The pilot chuckled again, his laughter implying that she didn’t understand the laws of physics — or Mack Smith. The minister could not be shot down, and anyone foolish enough to attack him would get their comeuppance — even if they were flying cutting-edge interceptors and he was in an unarmed plane designed as a trainer.

Breanna, no longer able to contain her frustration, hit the talk button. “Dragon One, what’s your call on the Sukhois?”

“I want to see what the hell they’re up to and where they came from:’ replied Mack. ‘Because there are no Sukhois on Borneo. Malaysia’s MiGs are way over in West Malaysia near the capital.”

“Mack, I can assure you, those are Sukhois, not MiGs and not ghosts. Your people are not screwing this up. Those planes are coming hot. What are you going to do if they turn hostile?”

“Hey, relax Bree. I’m cool.”

“You’re a sitting duck. And they haven’t answered our radio calls. If they get nasty—”

“Oh, give me a break, will you? I can handle them.”

One’s loonier than the other, Breanna thought.

Mack continued his lackadaisical climb, trying to conserve his fuel while making sure the pointing-nose cowboys running for him knew he was here. They were now about eight minutes away, flying at roughly twenty thousand feet, separated by about a quarter-mile. Their radars were not yet in range to see the Dragonfly.

But given their speed and direction, it seemed highly coincidental that they were flying in his direction on a whim. “Mack, you’re in radar range of the Su-27s.”

“About time,” he said.

“You want us to jam them?”

“Hell no! I want to see who these guys are.”

“They know he’s there,” Deci told Breanna over the interphone. “Altering course slightly. They should be in visual range of Mack in, uh, thirty seconds,” said Deci.

“I’ll pass it along,” said Breanna.

“Radar — uh, they just turned on their air-to-air weapons,” said Deci. “They may really want to shoot him down.”

Mack came out of his turn about three seconds too soon, and had to push into his dive before he saw the first Sukhoi. He got a glimpse of it in his left windscreen, then heard the RWR complain that one of the fighters had switched on its targeting radar.

“I was afraid of that,” he groused out loud, as if the device could do anything but whine. A second later it gave another pitched warning, indicating that the enemy’s radar had locked on him and was ready to fire.

Then the unit freaked out, obviously a result of Breanna’s ordering the Megafortress crew to jam the airwaves so he couldn’t be shot down.

Mack sighed. A completely unnecessary order, even if her heart was in the right place. Mack pulled his plane into a tight turn and put himself right below the Su-27s as they turned. Separated by ten thousand feet and a good bit of momentum, all he caught on the gun’s video camera — rigged for the training exercises — was a gray blur. He pounded the throttle but there was no hope of keeping up with the Su-27s. Within two minutes, they were beyond his radar.

And he was short on fuel.

“Jersey, this is Dragon One. I’m bingo on fuel, headed for home”

“We’re close to our reserves, as well,” replied Breanna. “Did you get any sort of IDs on those Sukhois?”

“Negative,” said Breanna. “They had old-style N001 radars. Seem to be Su-27S models.”

The NOO1 was a competent but older radar type, and no match for the Megafortress’s ECMs or electronic countermeasures. It meant the planes themselves were relatively old and had been purchased second- or even third-hand. But it didn’t say who they might belong to. For the moment, at least, their identity would have to remain a mystery.

“Your seaplane didn’t show up?” he asked.

“I don’t think it was a seaplane.”

Probably not, thought Mack to himself. More than likely, his neophyte radar operators had bungled a routine contact with a speedboat, then sent him out on a wild goose chase.

He listened as Breanna updated the rescue situation — there were now two vessels conducting a search, with no survivors located as of yet.

“Time to pack it in,” he told the Jersey crew. “Head for the barn.”

He snapped off the mike, then did something that would not have occurred to him a few weeks ago.

“Hey, crew of the Jersey — I mean, crew of Brunei Mega-fortress One,” said Mack, touching his speak button. “Kick-ass job. Very, very good job. Attaboys all around.”

Chapter 9

Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.

As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn. “Who are you?” demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.

“I was sent,” said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have explained.

“What is your name?”

Sahurah gave the name he had been told to use — Mat Salleh, a historical figure who had led an ill-fated uprising against the British on Borneo in the nineteenth century.

The soldier frowned and gestured that he should hold his hands out at his sides to be searched.

If I were carrying a bomb, Sahurah thought to himself, I would detonate it now and be in Paradise.

But he was not carrying a bomb, nor any weapon, and the search went quickly.

“This way,” said the guard, pointing to the gate. “The captain is waiting. You have a long journey ahead”

Sahurah nodded, and followed along inside.

FLUSH WITH HIS VICTORY AT SEA, DAZHOU MET THE MUSLIM fanatic in his office.

“Have a drink,” he said to him, putting down a bottle on his desk. He laughed at the expression of horror on the man’s face. “It’s juice,” he told him, “but you needn’t drink it anyway.”

He looked at him more closely. “You’re the messenger?”

The fanatic nodded. There was no possibility of mistake — no rebel would show up here on his own. Unlike many of the rebels in the movement, Sahurah appeared to be a native of Borneo, very possibly of Malaysian extraction, though with thirty-one different ethnic groups on the large island there were many who could claim to be native here. Dazhou’s own family had been on Borneo for centuries.

“You know who I am?” Dazhou asked.

The young man — he was surely in his late twenties, though his face showed the pain of someone much older — shook his head.

‘That is just as well,” said Dazhou. “There is a bathroom there, if you need it. We will leave in five minutes. Once we start, we will not stop.”

Chapter 10

After the botched demonstration of the robot warrior system, Danny’s day became an unrelieved series of frowns and down-turned glances. He avoided breakfast with the congressmen, claiming that he had to work with the technical team recovering the devices, and managed to skip lunch by tending to his normal duties as security chief on the base. But couldn’t avoid the afternoon debriefing sessions, which culminated in a show-and-tell session for the VIPs in one of the Dreamland auditoriums. Danny walked down the hallway to the room feeling like the proverbial Dead Man Walking.

The ARC robots had actually worked exactly according to spec. Unfortunately, they had been foxed by Boston, who exploited a weakness in the system to torpedo the mission. The inexpensive, off-the-shelf sensors in the units could not see very well through smoke. While the grenade that Boston’s team member had launched at the unit might not have blinded it for very long, once it started firing off its canisters the entire area was for all intents and purposes shrouded in an impenetrable fog. Boston had timed his intrusion just right, racing as fast as he could eight hundred and fifty meters to the downed airman, who by the exercise rules was unarmed and couldn’t hear him anyway because of the approaching Osprey. Armed with only his pistol — a rifle would have slowed him down — Boston incapacitated the airman, then waited for the rescuers.

It wouldn’t have worked in real life — the grenades would have been shrapnel rather than smoke, and presumably incapacitated or killed the intruders. But that distinction seemed lost on the congressmen who were watching the video feeds in the Dreamland conference center. And the army people present for the demonstration weren’t very happy about it either. The Army had supplied 90 percent of the development funding so far, and its contribution was up for review.

Danny stood gamely with the project officers and the science types as they opened the floor up to questioning. One of the congressmen started things off by asking where the man who had shown the way around the robots was.

“Sergeant Rockland is probably enjoying a well-earned rest right now,” said Danny, trying to force a smile. “One of my best men. We try to train them to think outside of the box”

“Or the robot,” said the congressman.

Danny did his best to laugh along with them, ignoring the dagger eyes from the army people.

Boston was waiting for him in his office when he finally made it over there two hours later.

“You were looking for me, Cap?” asked the sergeant. Something about his sophomoric smile burned right through Danny.

“You blew the parameters of the test,” Danny told him. “You screwed the whole stinking thing up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those were supposed to be shrapnel grenades. Your team would have been dead.”

“No, we were far enough away. I made sure of that”

“You ran right through the smoke,” said Danny. “That wouldn’t have happened in real life. You would never have made it in time.”

Boston shrugged.

“I don’t like your attitude. Sergeant,” said Freah.

“Captain — don’t you preach that we ought to use our heads?”

“Go on. Dismissed. Go”

“But—”

“Out!”

Danny pretended not to see him shake his head.

Chapter 11

As Mack pulled himself out of the A-37B’s cockpit, the fatigue that had been trailing him the whole flight jumped out and wrapped itself around his neck. The sun beat down on the concrete apron, and the humidity hung around him like the thick steam of a shower room. Mack had originally planned to go home and take a nap after debriefing the training session, but the morning’s developments meant there would be no rest for the weary; quite the contrary. The sultan would undoubtedly be wondering what was going on and expect a personal briefing, as would Prince bin Awg. The central defense ministry — a collection of service heads and other military advisors, including Mack — would also be looking for information.

The EB-52 banked overhead, preparing to land. Mack turned back toward the runway, watching the big plane swing in. It wobbled slightly — obviously one of his people was at the stick. Still, the landing was solid. All in all, they were making progress.

Slow progress, but progress.

“ ‘Scuse me,” said a woman’s voice behind him. “You Mack Smith?”

Mack turned, surprised to hear what sounded like an American accent.

“You’re the minister of defense?” said the woman.

“Deputy minister of defense — air force,” said Mack, giving his official title. “Such as it is.”

He might not have added the last comment if the woman had been anything other than, well, plain, though plain didn’t quite cover it. She was somewhere over twenty-one and under forty, five-four, on the thin side. Her short hair had a slight curl to it, and that was the nicest thing you could say about her looks. She wore a pair of jeans and a touristy blue shirt.

“I’m McKenna,” she said, thrusting out her hand.

“McKenna is who?” said Mack.

“Pilot. You were looking for contract pilots? Does it help that I can speak Malaysian?”

She reeled off a few sentences in the native language, which was shared by Brunei and its island neighbors. Mack hadn’t been here long enough to understand more than a few words; he thought he recognized the phrase for “have a nice day,” but that was about it.

“I think you have the wrong idea,” said Mack. “I’m putting together a combat air force. The civilian airline is still on its own”

“Well no shit,” said the woman. “I’ve flown F/A-18s for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and for the last year I’ve been a contract pilot for a horse’s ass of an outfit trying to sell third-hand Russian-made crates of crap that I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in. That light your f-ing fire?” said McKenna.

Well, she could talk like a pilot at least, thought Mack.

“I don’t have any F/A-18s,” he told her.

“I can fly anything,” she said. “Ask Prince bin Awg. He let me fly his MiG-19 and his Sabre last year. We went at it a bit and I waxed his butt good. I’d love to get behind the wheel of one of those,” she added, thumbing toward the Megafortress, which was just heading toward its parking spot in front of the hangar on the left.

“It doesn’t have a wheel. It’s got a stick, like a real airplane,” said Mack. “They put it in when they upgraded it.”

“Well kick ass then,” said McKenna.

Mack started toward the hangar to change, and McKenna fell in alongside him.

“So? Am I hired?” she asked.

“Hired for what?”

“For a pilot.”

“What Russian planes did you fly?”

“Anything and everything.”

“MiG-29s?” asked Mack.

“Do it in my sleep.”

“How about Su-27s?”

“One or two”

“You fly them around here?”

“Nah”

“Out of Labuan?”

“Are you kidding? The Malaysians don’t operate jets out of there”

“Ever?”

“About six months ago we tried to sell a pair of MiG-29s,” said McKenna. “We brought them to Kuching at the far south of Borneo from the peninsula to demonstrate some of the changes that extended their range. But no one was buying.”

“What about the Indonesians? You fly Sukhois out here for them?”

“For the Indonesians?” McKenna laughed. “Malaysia, Indonesia — their governments aren’t on Borneo,” said McKenna.

“You have to sell where the money is.”

“You haven’t flown Su-27s on Borneo at all?”

She shook her head.

“You hear of either country having them?”

“You’d know better than me, Minister.”

Mack stopped. “Yeah, cut the shit. They have them?”

McKenna examined his face for a moment before answering. “Indonesia doesn’t have anything newer than Northrop F-5s. The Malaysian Royal Air Force has MiG-29s and F/A-18s over in West Malaysia, near the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Most of what my boss sold was used and it’s hard to buy used when you’ve been buying new. Her dealings with the Malaysians were mostly for ammunition and some avionics spare parts.”

“I was jumped by two Su-27s this morning,” said Mack.

“Get out of town.”

Mack smiled sardonically. “They came up out of the south-west, from Malaysian territory, turned on their targeting gear to scare me, and took off.”

“They scared you?”

“Yeah, right.”

“What’d you do?”

“Gave them the finger and took their pictures,” he said. “I want to figure out who they are”

“I’ll look at it for you if you want”

Mack shrugged. It couldn’t hurt, though most likely it wouldn’t help, either.

“They could have come out of Kuching,” admitted McKenna. “But it’s a good hike to get up here, over five hundred miles. And your spies would have told you they were there, wouldn’t they have?”

“Who says I have spies there?”

“You have spies everywhere,” said McKenna. “Dragonfly, huh? You would’ve been dead meat.”

“What, from a couple of Sukhois? Give me a break,” said Mack.

“Depends on the pilot,” said McKenna, her voice only a bit conciliatory. “If it were me, I’d’ve waxed your fanny.”

“If you were in the Sukhoi?”

“Either way”

“If you fly half as good as you talk, McKenna,” said Mack, resuming his stride toward the hangar, “you got yourself a job.”

Chapter 12

The time difference between the States and Brunei made it difficult for Breanna to get any information without invoking official channels, which she didn’t want to do. Finally she thought of Mark Stoner, a CIA agent who’d worked with Dreamland on some recent missions and who was back east in D.C. By the time she tried him, however, it was midnight there, and when she got his machine she left a message, asking him to call “when he got a chance.” Then she forgot about him until, to her great surprise, the hotel desk buzzed her room at 3 P.M. to tell her he was on the line.

“Mark — what are you doing up at 2 A.M.?” she asked.

“It’s 3 A.M. here,” said Stoner. “There’s a twelve-hour difference. No daylight savings. We’re a half-day behind you. You said you had a question.”

“Couple of questions. Unofficially.”

Breanna told him about the aircraft, which according to the images captured by the Dragonfly had no identifying marks.

“They came out of Malaysian territory?” Stoner asked when she had finished her summary.

“Looked like.” She didn’t want to be too specific, worrying that anyone listening in would be able to gather information about the targeting system’s abilities — and she had to assume that might include Malaysian spies.

“There are two Malaysian air bases, auxiliaries to civilian airports. Neither field is really set up to support military jets, at least not that I know.”

“Can you check?”

“Have you talked to the Department of Defense?”

“I filed a report, but no one seemed particularly interested. A pair of Sukhois doesn’t really rock their world.”

Stoner was silent for a moment, then he asked, “If I gave you an address, could you get to it this afternoon?”

“I think so “

“It’s in Kampung Ayer. Do you know what that is?”

“The island city in the bay off the capital?”

“Write this down.”

Breanna found Mack standing on the back of a pickup truck at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean several miles southwest of the airport. A British-built truck sat nearby, with two Brunei air force sergeants working an old field radio in the back. Below the cliff was a narrow plateau of rocks just out of the water’s reach. Several pieces of plywood were set up as targets for an A-37B.

Breanna watched as the airplane came around from the north and made a run parallel to the coastline. The rocks bubbled and one of the plywood panels split in two. The airplane then rose abruptly, its right wingtip no more than ten feet from the cliff edge.

“I have to say, pretty good,” said Mack. “Tell her to nail the last target any way she wants,” he shouted to the men in the truck.

Not five seconds later, the Dragonfly rolled back toward land, heading dead-on for the beach — upside down. The last piece of plywood folded in half.

Not that anybody on land had seen. They’d all ducked for cover as she blew past, maybe six feet off the ground.

“New pilot?” Breanna asked.

“Yeah. I’m pretty desperate,” said Mack.

“He looks pretty good,” said Breanna. “Even if he is a showoff.”

“It’s a she,” said Mack. “And actually, her looks are, uh, not exactly on the measurable chart. But she’s a helluva pilot. Why are you here?”

“I’m doing you a favor,” said Breanna. “We need to go out to a place in Kampung Ayer.”

“We? Listen Bree, I’m due back in the capital in an hour to explain to my fellow ministers of defense how aircraft that don’t exist may very well have sunk that merchant ship. I don’t have time for a boat ride.”

“I called Mark Stoner and told him about your Sukhois. He told me to go out to see someone there.”

“Stoner’s the CIA spook who’s an expert on South Asian weapons?”

“One and the same.”

The A-37 buzzed back. Mack didn’t duck this time.

“I hate show-offs,” he said, jumping out of the truck. “Especially when they’re worth watching.”

Kampung Ayer was a water village in the bay outside the capital. Buildings rose on stilts from the murky water, whose pungent odor matched its mud-red tint. Until today, Breanna had seen the lagoon city only from a distance. She stared at the people as she and Mack passed in their water taxi, amazed at how ingenious humans could be.

“There,” said the man driving the water taxi. They pulled up against a planked walkway that led to what looked like a floating trailer. Its rusting metal roof was weighted down by satellite dishes.

“You wait, right?” said Mack, pointing at him.

“I wait,” said the man.

Mack jumped up and started walking toward the house. Breanna scrambled to follow. She barely kept her balance on the bobbing boards, and had to grab Mack’s arm just as she caught up to him.

“Hey,” he said. “Watch it or we’ll fall into that sewer water.”

“Thanks, Mack.”

Mack pulled open the screen door and they walked lino what could have passed for a doctor’s waiting room. A young Malaysian sat behind the desk, paging through a magazine.

“Mark Stoner sent us,” said Breanna.

“Cheese is expecting you,” said the man, gesturing toward an open doorway to his left. “Go in”

“Cheese?” said Mack.

The only light in the room came from a large-screen TV, which was tuned to CNBC. Hunched on the floor in front of a leather couch was a man pounding a keyboard. A bottle of Beefeater gin sat next to him.

“Hello,” said Breanna.

The man put his hand out to shush them, then continued typing.

“You’re Cheese?” asked Mack.

The man picked up the Beefeater, took a swig, then held it out to them without looking away from his laptop.

“No thanks:’ said Breanna.

“I’ll pass:’ said Mack.

The man took another swig, still typing with one hand. In his thirties or early forties, he was obviously American, wearing a light blue T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans.

“Stoner’s people, right?” he asked, still tapping his keys. “Yes,” said Breanna.

“I want to know about some airplanes,” said Mack.

“I don’t want to know anything. Nothing. Zero.”

“Mark told me to come here,” said Breanna.

“Yeah, but I don’t know anything about it, okay? I have a Web link for you to look at in the other room,” he said. “I typed it in already. All you have to do is hit enter.”

The man typed one more thing on his laptop, then put it down and got up.

“James Milach. They call me Cheese because I made a killing in the stock market involving Kraft. No shit,” said the American. He shook Mack’s hand — then bent over and kissed Breanna’s. “Beefeater makes me formal,” he said, sweeping away into the next room.

Mack thought for sure he’d stepped into an insane asylum. Stoner was a spook, and spooks knew weird people, but this character was — a character.

But then this had been a particularly perplexing day all around. The sultan had expressed some concern about the Sukhois, but discounted Mack’s theory that they had been responsible for the attack on the merchant ship. The spy network, meanwhile, reported that there had been no activity at any of the airports on Borneo or even nearby Indonesia or Malaysia.

The Brunei navy’s pet theory was that the ship had been sabotaged by Islamic terrorists, who had placed a bomb aboard. While Mack wouldn’t rule that out, it was a convenient theory in that it kept the navy from having any responsibility. The investigation was continuing; thus far, no survivors had been found.

“You hit the button, and then you can take it from there,” said Cheese, standing over a Sun Workstation. “You got it?”

“Sure,” said Breanna. “This is the Web?”

Cheese smiled at her. “Not exactly. But you don’t want to know too much, do you?”

Mack rolled his eyes, then hit the key and bent toward the screen. Brown and black shades slowly filled the screen. It took a few moments for Mack to realize he was looking at a satellite photo of the northern part of the island, which was Malaysian territory.

“Some sort of Russian satellite,” said Breanna, pointing at the characters on the side of the screen. “You think he’s tapped into their network?”

“I don’t know,” he told her, leaning down to squint at the screen. “But that looks like the outline of a Sukhoi on what looks like a highway in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to have to look at a map but I think that’s Darvel Bay, on the eastern side of Sabah province. That whole area is just jungle. Or at least it used to be.”

Chapter 13

Dog hustled from the Dolphin shuttle helicopter that had dropped him off at Dreamland toward the black SUV waiting to ferry him over to his quarters. He was surprised to find Danny Freah behind the wheel.

“Personnel shortage?” Dog asked as he got into the passenger seat beside him.

“Wanted to have a chat.”

“Fire away,” said Dog, bracing himself.

“We had a problem with the demonstration this morning,” started Danny.

Dog listened as the captain detailed what had happened. “l’m sorry, Colonel,” said Danny as they arrived in front of the small bungalow that served as Dog’s quarters here. “I’m truly sorry”

“Well, the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped, I agree,” said Dog. He wanted to sound philosophical without sounding as if he were making light of the situation — a tough balance. “But actually it doesn’t sound that bad. If the technical people explained about the smoke grenades, I’m sure it’ll be kept in perspective”

“We screwed up in front of a bunch of people who would like to chop off our heads,” said Danny.

“Congress doesn’t want to chop off our heads. Just our budget,” said Dog.

“Yeah.”

“It’s all right, Captain.” Dog opened the door. “I’m going to just put this stuff inside and then head back over to my office. Can you stay a minute and give me a lift?”

“Yes, sir.”

Danny’s mood was even more somber than before. Dog pulled his bag out of the truck, searching his mind for a better pep talk as he walked up the path to his quarters.

When Jennifer saw dog finally coming up the walk, she leaned against the wall, knowing she’d be just out of sight when he came in. She listened to him fumbling with the key; as the door creaked open she heard her heart thumping loudly. She hesitated a second, suddenly feeling foolish for sneaking into his apartment to surprise him.

Dog, oblivious, closed the door behind him and took a few steps into the dimly lit cottage.

“Hey,” she said, staying back by the wall rather than going to him as she’d planned.

“Jen!”

He sound surprised, not shocked but taken off-guard, as if she were the last person in the world he’d expect here, the last person he wanted to find here.

“What are you doing?” Dog flipped on the light.

“I was surprising you,” she said.

“Great,” he said, but it sounded unconvincing to her.

“Do you want some wine?” she tried, struggling against her growing anxiety.

“I would but I have to get over to my office and then look after the congressional delegation. Maybe later, okay?”

“Oh”

“You all right?” He put his arms around her but somehow it felt forced and unnatural.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“I do have to go. I’m sorry,” he said.

Kiss me, she thought. Kiss me. But even when he did, she thought he was distracted, and she felt worse than before.

“Later?” he said, letting go of her.

She forced herself to nod. But then she added, “I may have to work.”

“Oh. Well. Try to come over.”

“I will.”

Then he turned and, without bothering to change, went back out the door.

Chapter 14

The long ride across the island left Dazhou stiff and impatient, though he knew better than to show emotion, let alone physical discomfort, as he waited outside the general’s office. General Udara was inside, speaking on the telephone just loudly enough to make it clear to Dazhou that he was there; this was no doubt his intention, as the commander never lost an opportunity to demonstrate his superiority to his underlings. Finally, after he had waited for nearly twenty minutes, Dazhou was shown into the office. Udara pretended to be reading some report, making a show of frowning before looking up and pointing to the paper.

“You exceeded your authority,” said Udara.

“The Barracuda had to be tested. The target presented itself. The opportunity was taken. It coincides with our greater plans and schedule.”

“You think it is all that simple,” snapped Udara. “You think you can use the cover of events to indulge your psychological needs. We had to divert two aircraft to take the attention away from you.”

“Why?” asked Dazhou.

“The radio reports back to the Brunei air force center showed they were pursuing a craft. We could not afford discovery.”

“Which aircraft?” asked Dazhou.

“Part of our project,” said the general dismissively. “You do not need to know every detail.”

Dazhou held his tongue. He could easily guess that the general was referring to the Sukhois that had been brought three months ago to the base in the northern mountains; Dazhou had informers in the military who had told him how the planes had been purchased from the Ukrainians and then shipped in pieces and reassembled. They were necessary for the “project,” as Udara dismissively termed it, but using them to cover the Barracuda’s escape had been unnecessary. Still, he knew better than to argue with the general, who commanded all Malaysian military forces on Borneo. While Dazhou had first suggested the alliance with the terrorists to achieve their common aim, it was General Udara who had made it possible, and he wielded such power that Dazhou could not cross him.

Yet.

“I expect from the reports that the vessel worked,” said Udara.

“Precisely as predicted.”

“You are ready to proceed?”

“Upon your order.”

It was the note Udara had been waiting for. His manner changed; he smiled and leaned back in his seat.

“You are tired after your journey?” said the general.

“No.”

“Something to eat?”

“No thank you, sir.”

“How long will the sultan fend off the terrorists?”

“Without our help, the terrorists will struggle for weeks,” said Dazhou. “If we help them, the sultan and his puppet government may last twelve hours.”

Another smile. Udara rose. He took a few steps away from his desk, filling the room with pompous swagger. “The messenger is here?”

“He is.”

“Who is he?”

“I do not know.”

“The secretary said he was a child.”

“He is young, but not that young. I would say in his twenties. With these fanatics, it is difficult to say sometimes.”

“Does he have information about the connection to Afghanistan?”

“I thought it best not to interrogate him without your authority,” said Dazhou, who in truth was not in the least interested in the Islamic crazies and their network of madmen. He wanted only to eliminate the bastard sultan of Brunei, whose family had seized his ancestors’ property two generations ago, casting them into poverty. At long last, the wrong would be avenged.

“If we give the terrorists Brunei, how long do you think they will be satisfied?” the general asked.

“I do not think it would be long,” said Dazhou. “And it is irrelevant.”

“Yes,” agreed the general. “Quite irrelevant.”

Whether the terrorists would be satisfied with controlling Brunei or not, the Malaysian government would not allow the terrorists to control their neighbor for very long. On the contrary — one of the attractions of the plan was that it would allow them not only to crush the terrorists and seize oil-rich Brunei, but to receive ASEAN backing to do so. Once the sultan was kicked out and the terrorists in control, the Malaysian military would turn on its allies of convenience. Dazhou had already drawn up plans to do so.

But those operations were in the future. For now, they had to concentrate on Brunei.

Udara went back to his desk and picked up the phone. “Have our visitor fetched from the room and brought to me,” he told his assistant.

Sahurah sat on the floor of the empty room, trying to keep his mind ready. Again and again it drifted. He saw the girl he had had in Beaufort, the other in Sandakan. Beautiful, beautiful girls — temptations from the time before his commitment, sins, and yet he couldn’t banish them.

He owed the true God his complete attention, especially now, especially here on this mission. He should see himself as God’s trusted messenger — for as the imam’s emissary what else was he? And yet the impure thoughts haunted him, hungry ghosts clawing to be fed. The flesh was a terrible chain, an awesome torment. He would be better to be rid of it, gone to paradise.

He was a coward, a coward and a failure. That was the lesson of the miscarried plans on the beach. He should have shot the infidel devils the moment he saw them, rather than hesitating.

Sahurah was not exactly sure where on Borneo he had been taken. The men who rode with him in the jeep had blindfolded him three separate times, including the last hour. He guessed he was on the northern part of the island, in the Malaysian region known as Sabah, but in truth he could have been in the south or in Indonesian territory as well. He thought he had detected the scent of seawater on the breeze as he was led from the Jeep, but it had been fleeting.

A soldier opened the door and nodded at him. Sahurah got up and followed him down the hallway. They went up two flights of carpeted stairs, past walls made of polished stone with elaborate inlays. The walls had once been lined with sculpture, but the niches were now bare.

The soldier stopped and turned in front of a wide doorway lined with an elaborate molding. Inside, Sahurah found a young man at the desk. He gave Sahurah a disapproving frown, then picked up his phone.

“Go,” the man at the desk told him in Malaysian. “And be quick about it.”

Sahurah gathered his dignity and walked into the room at his most deliberate pace. He was a messenger and a representative, not to be treated without respect.

Dazhou was inside, sitting in a simple wooden chair. Behind the desk was a short, skinny man in a military uniform. He was nearly bald, his face the red color of ruby glistening in the sun. Sahurah believed that the man was either the army general who commanded Malaysian forces on Borneo, or one of his immediate underlings. He had seen the pictures some time ago and couldn’t remember precisely which one he was. He stared at the man now, trying to memorize his features so he could describe them later.

“You have been sent?” said the officer.

“I have been sent”

“And?”

“I was told to come,” said Sahurah.

“That’s all?”

“Perhaps you should begin by paying your respects to the general,” said Dazhou from the side.

Sahurah bowed his head. “I am not here on my own, or I would offer profound apologies.” The words came slowly at first, but as he found the formula they began to flow. “I am not worthy of the people who have sent me. They, however, are your equals, and should be treated with the respect due. As I am their representative, then I must also be accorded respect.”

“Please, little puppy, don’t lecture me,” said the general.

He glared at Sahurah. The general’s hostility stiffened Sahurah’s resolve — he was here not on his own but as the representative of his imam, of men who had the word of the Prophet deep in their soul and could pass it to others. He would not disgrace them.

“I am not here on my own,” repeated Sahurah.

Dazhou found the muslim madman’s impertinence rather amusing, though of course he did not laugh in front of Udara. The terrorist was showing commendable backbone. Of course, there was always the danger that would provoke Udara into having him bound and taken to the basement; whatever amusements that provided, it would set back their plans several years, if not derail them completely. And so he decided finally to interrupt and move things to their conclusions.

“No one is insulting your masters,” said Dazhou. “The fact that you were brought into the general’s presence rather than being shot on the street — as any rebel is apt to be — proves that the general holds them in very high esteem.”

Dazhou glanced over at Udara. The general’s cheeks were a shade of bright red, and beads of perspiration were now arranged in a row on his forehead. Dazhou decided to proceed quickly.

“Were you told to say anything?” he asked the messenger.

“Nothing”

“Then your master understands the gravity of the situation, and the generous concessions that the general has made to him.”

Dazhou turned and once more looked at Udara. For a moment, he feared all was lost, and decided he would have his revenge against Udara as well as the terrorist. But then the general spoke very calmly.

“Tell him to proceed on the third day after your arrival.” he told Sahurah. “The third day. Do you understand?”

The messenger might have been insulted — Dazhou surely would have been had the tone been used toward him — but all he did was bow his head.

“Very good,” said Udara, addressing Dazhou. “Let us have some lunch.”

Though he had not planned to stay, Dazhou thought it wise to agree.

Chapter 15

Mack fought hard to control his temper, knowing from experience that displaying any emotion would only bring smiles to the lips of the others in the room. To a man, the other ministers hated him and would seize on any excuse to stab him in the back somehow.

There were fourteen different ministers and “realm advisors” here, along with members of their staffs, crowded into a conference room that might make a good-sized closet back home. The air-conditioning didn’t work very well, and more than one of the gray faces around the table looked as if it were about to nod off into oblivion. The chief of staff — officially the sultan’s personal counselor for matters of defense — sat at the head of the table, eyes gazing at the ceiling fan. One of the navy ministers was explaining, for the third time, how it was impossible for the ship that sank to have been attacked by a ship.

The minister was speaking in Malaysian. A translator sat behind Mack, whispering the words in English. Everyone in the room could speak English perfectly; Mack suspected that they conducted the meetings in Malaysian simply to emphasize that he was an outsider.

When the navy minister stopped speaking, Mack put up his finger, though he knew from experience that he would not be recognized. Sure enough, the floor went to one of the army people, who began explaining why the Sukhois Mack had encountered did not exist.

That was it. “I’ve had enough,” said Mack, standing up. “Enough”

The translator looked at him, awe-struck. He thought he heard snickers as he walked out the door, but didn’t give them the satisfaction of looking back.

Prince Bin Awg was somewhat more sympathetic than the ministers, or at least polite.

“The Sukhois have to be dealt with,” Mack told him over lunch at the prince’s palace a few miles from the capital. “It’s possible that they attacked the ship.”

“I think a bomb planted aboard remains the most likely possibility,” said the prince. “It would account for the total destruction. And your aircraft did not detect the attack.”

Mack couldn’t argue with that. It was possible that his crew, only rudimentarily trained, had missed it. But given the course and location of the aircraft when they were detected, it seemed to him unlikely that they were responsible for the attack. But perhaps they were part of a larger attack package, or a reconnaissance flight. In any event, they were still a threat.

“The question in my mind,” said Mack, “is why did Malaysia bring them onto the island secretly? What are they up to? How are the planes equipped?”

“Very good questions,” said the prince. “But you are assuming they are Malaysian. If so, where would they have flown from? I have checked with our sources myself — there are no jet fighters at any of the bases on the island.”

“I think they built a strip near Kalabakan, as part of a highway,” said Mack “I want to fly over it and find out.”

“Kalabakan?”

“That’s my theory,” said Mack. He’d decided it was best not to share the source of his information unless absolutely necessary — the back door might come in handy in the future.

“Flying that far over Malaysian territory — it’s very far. It may be seen as provocative,” said bin Awg.

“I’ll take the Megafortress,” said Mack. “They won’t see us.”

“I don’t know, Mack. I will have to talk to the sultan personally.”

“Okay,” said Mack. “When?”

“Tonight. Or perhaps in the morning. The timing needs to be right.”

“Look, we have to deal with this, and we have to deal with it now,” said Mack. “Even if they didn’t sink that ship, why are they sneaking interceptors onto the island?”

“Perhaps they see the Megafortress as provocative,” offered bin Awg.

Before Mack could respond, the prince raised his hand and signaled to the servant at the far end of the room. The man came over with two bottles of European mineral water, refilling their glasses.

“The Sukhois were older models,” said Mack. “They may have been purchased from Ivana Keptrova”

“No,” said bin Awg.

“No?” said Mack, surprised by how quickly he had responded. “I asked her, and she gave me her word of honor.”

An arms dealer who gave her word of honor — Mack couldn’t decide whether that was quaint or naive. Ivana was a semi-official representative of the Russian government — she claimed to work for the Kremlin but seemed to be under no one’s direct control — and had arranged for several sales of naval equipment to Brunei. She’d also helped bin Awg buy old Cold War hardware and parts. McKenna, who’d worked for her, thought it unlikely she had supplied the Sukhois, but Mack refused to rule it out.

“Maybe we can use this with Washington to get the F-15s,” he said. “Their main argument was that there was no threat, right? Well, with a couple of Su-27s next door, you can shoot that argument down right away”

“The F-15s are going to be denied,” said bin Awg.

Mack felt as if two of the legs of his chair had just been sawed off.

“We have heard unofficially,” added the prince. “The sultan is rethinking our arrangements.”

“Totally denied?” asked Mack.

“We may be able to get F/A-18s. But now there are questions about the fiscal outlay.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mack.

“They are very expensive”

“Are you saying we’re not adding aircraft?”

“Oh, no, no, no, Mr. Minister. I’m not saying that at all. We of course are adding aircraft. Of course. Two more Megafortresses, some interceptors as well, as soon as it can be arranged. But the F/A-18s are not free, and the air force requires a great deal. I’m sure you agree”

“We need planes.”

“Yes,” said bin Awg. “We will get them. Eventually.”

“Eventually better be pretty soon,” said Mack.

“Time moves more slowly in Brunei than in America, Mack. You must learn to relax.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Mack, picking at his lunch.

There were more problems to deal with when Mack got back to his office in the capital: the maintenance section had used its last spare part for the A-37B radios; the next one that broke would be out of action until replacement parts arrived in six to eight weeks.

“You can’t just cannibalize them?” Mack asked Brown, the officer in charge of the aircraft. “We have four that are stuck in the hangars permanently.”

“We already have,” said Brown.

“What parts are you talking about?” asked McKenna, who’d been standing near the door to Mack’s office waiting to come in to see him.

Brown explained, adding that he had been working on getting the parts ordered for weeks. McKenna waved her hand.

“There’s a shop in Manila where you can get the radios if you want. Frankly, you can upgrade the whole avionics suite for just about the same price,” she said.

Brown stammered something about protocols. McKenna shrugged.

“You have anything else, Brown?” Mack asked.

He shook his head.

“Good. We get the jet fuel’?”

“Working on it.”

“Well, work harder,” said Mack.

Brown nodded, apologized, then left.

“Why don’t we just buy off the civilian suppliers?” asked McKenna.

“Damned if I know,” confessed Mack. “There’s a whole bureaucracy dedicated to making sure I can’t get what I need.”

“The civilian suppliers are cheaper than the fuel Brown’s been getting.”

“How do you know?”

She smiled. “It’s coming through the government, right?”

“Yeah, we have some sort of contract or something.”

“You’re pretty naive, Mack.”

“What do you mean?”

McKenna explained that certain citizens have interests in certain businesses, which the old administration of the air force had been involved with.

“Not crooked, exactly,” she said. “Just a lot of backslapping.”

“So they want to be paid off now, is that it?” Mack asked.

McKenna laughed. “What they want is for you to leave. You’re an outsider, Mack. They want you out of here. They’ll do what they can to make you look bad”

Mack felt his face getting hot. “That’s a pretty dumb game. Dangerous.”

McKenna shrugged. “You can take care of most of them.”

“How?”

“Cut their balls off.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s easier than you think,” she said. She pulled up a chair.

“What do I do?”

“Find another supplier. Then suddenly they’ll have plenty of fuel for sale.”

“You know of one?”

“I might be able to find some fuel, if you’re not too particular about where it comes from.”

“All I’m particular about is if it works.”

“It’ll work.”

“That why you came in?”

“Actually, no. I had an idea on how to flush those Sukhois out, if they’re there.”

“I’m listening”

“Requires practicing some air-to-air refueling between the Dragonflies and EB-52”

“Forget it, then. None of these guys are good enough to fly an A-37 Dragonfly behind the Megafortress. It kicks off some very wicked wind shears. It took a while for the computers to figure out how to do it with a Flighthawk”

“I could do it. If someone who knew what he was doing was flying the Megafortress.”

Mack listened as she detailed the plan. It involved a fly-around of the island by a Megafortress and two escorts two or three days in a row to establish a basic pattern. On the third or fourth day, one of the A-37Bs would pretend to have an air emergency. As it recovered, it would fly close enough to the airstrip to get a good look at it. An aerial reconnaissance pod under one of the wings would snap some pictures and they’d be set.

“That airstrip is eighteen miles inland,” said Mack. “You’re talking about overflying their territorial waters and then running in there — I don’t know. Those planes come up, you’re cooked”

“If you can handle them, I can”

“Too risky.”

“Well, if you’re too chicken—”

“I’m not too chicken,” snapped Mack. Then he smiled at her, and laughed at himself.

A little.

“Don’t do that, McKenna,” he told her. “Don’t try to out-macho me. Okay? Just be straight. No head games. You don’t need them”

She shrugged, not particularly remorseful.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” said Mack. “That it?”

“Breanna Stockard tells me she goes home Tuesday. What are the odds of me doing some time in the pilot’s seat before she leaves?”

“Go for it.”

McKenna smiled, and got up.

“There’s a tanker sailing to the Philippines with some jet fuel that’s supposed to be sold to a private investor there,” said McKenna. “I may be able to find a phone number so you could put in a counter offer.”

“That private investor wouldn’t be your ex-boss, Ivana Keptrova, would it?”

McKenna shrugged. She might not be much to look at, Mack thought, but she was one hell of an operator.

Just the sort of person he needed around here.

“Do it,” said Mack. “Buy it.”

“How much?”

“The whole thing. The ship if you have to. There’s this guy named Chia in the Finance Ministry—”

“That’s Gia,” said McKenna. “Gee-uh.”

“You know him?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah. He has this line of credit for us, operating money we can spend, but getting him on the phone is next to impossible so you have to go over there and see him in his office, buttonhole him, you know what I mean? And then on our side there’s Braduski—”

“Bradushi. Like sushi. He’s the guy who cuts the checks for you. I had to talk to him to get paid. He has a mother who needs an operation in Manila.”

“Oh?”

“He was on the phone when 1 came into his office,” said McKenna.

“Well, we can help him, right?” said Mack, catching on. “We make sure we fly her over there, he makes sure we have our fuel.”

She just smiled.

“You just got yourself a raise and a promotion, McKenna,” said Mack. “Air Commodore McKenna, second in command.” She started to laugh.

“Hey, if I’m a minister, second in command can be a commodore,” he told her. “Play your cards right and you’ll be ‘Air Marshal’ at the end of the week. Take that office with the windows down the hall. You want a secretary? Take one of mine. The pretty one”

“No way. She can’t type and she can’t figure out the phone, let alone the computer. I want somebody who can do some work”

“How do you know she can’t type?”

McKenna rolled her eyes. “If I want something good to look at, I’ll get one of those buff boys pulling security in front of the office”

“They’re eighteen years old,” said Mack.

“And?”

“Kick butt, Commodore.”

“I intend to,” she said, marching out.

With McKenna gone and his biggest logistical problem on its way to being solved, Mack began tackling the paperwork, signing his name with abandon. He was about a quarter of the way through the pile when the phone rang. Mack picked up the line quickly, only to find himself speaking to a woman with a thick Russian accent.

“Mr. Minister Smith, good afternoon; I am so glad to have this opportunity to speak to you,” said the woman.

“I didn’t quite catch your name,” said Mack.

“Ivana Keptrova. You have heard of me? I work with friends in the president’s office. The Russian president,” she added.

“Just the person I wanted to speak to,” said Mack.

“And I you. It appears you have hired an employee of mine.”

“Problem?”

“Not a problem perhaps,” said Ivana. “An opportunity maybe. But I would watch her.”

“Oh, I intend on it. Why are you calling?”

“You are in the market for aircraft, are you not?”

“I’m looking for a squadron of F-15s,” said Mack. “You have any?”

“You’re making fun. But if you were more serious, we could speak of the Sukhoi, a very excellent plane,” she said. “With some adjustments here and there, they are twice the plane the Eagle is.”

“Right,” said Mack.

“I can arrange a demonstration.”

“I’ve flown Sukhois,” said Mack.

“Then the sale will be easy”

Mack wondered if the encounter had been meant as a sales demonstration. There was only one way to find out.

“Maybe we can talk in person,” he suggested.

“Of course. How about lunch tomorrow?”

“Lunch?”

“You don’t mind mixing a little pleasure with business, do you Mr. Minister?”

“What time?” he asked.

Chapter 16

Jed Barclay was almost to the Metro stop when his beeper vibrated. He stopped, hung his head, and without bothering to check the number walked back to his office in the White House basement. He’d learned from experience that, whatever other virtues his boss had — and he did have many — understanding that his aides needed sleep was not one of them.

But it wasn’t Freeman who had called him. It was Mark Stoner, who’d sent a message to the NSC duty officer asking that Jed contact him immediately.

“I think you want to get a look at something that’s going on in Borneo,” said Stoner when Jed reached him at the apartment he was renting outside the city. “I’ve been looking at this all day with some of our guys”

“Borneo? 1 think maybe Fred would be better,” Jed told him, referring to a staffer who handled Southeast Asian matters.

“It may complicate that airplane deal the White House is pushing with Brunei,” said Stoner. “And you have some Dreamland people over there.”

Jed sighed. “Should I meet you at Langley?”

“I’d rather do this at your office,” said Stoner. “And I’m supposed to leave town in the morning. Pretty early.”

“Well, I’m here,” said Jed, pulling off his coat.

Stoner showed up a half-hour later. He had a day and a half’s worth of stubble on his face. Deeply tanned, he’d lost considerable weight since Jed had last seen him. If not quite gaunt, he looked more like a bleached-out castaway than a hardened former SEAL and CIA agent.

“I got an off-the-record phone call the other night from someone in Brunei,” he told Jed, starting right off without even bothering to say hello. “It didn’t make a lot of sense. So I hooked the person up with somebody there I met. And did some checking myself.”

“Okay,” said Jed, not quite following along.

“You have some satellite images from Dreamland’s deployment at Brunei. The images may include the northern part of the island, around on the eastern shore in Malaysian territory, south of Darvel Bay”

Jed turned to his computer and tapped into one of the databases. During the operations in the South China Sea, the U.S. had moved its satellites to provide extensive coverage of the region. They had also conducted surveillance with a variety of systems, gathering electronic signals and other information to compile a profile of activity. But most of the effort had been focused on China and India. America did not yet have the capability of observing every square inch of the globe twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Doing so with satellites was not only absurdly expensive but technically unfeasible given present limits in technology. Improvements were steadily being made, but the day when someone could sit in a bunker in Omaha and read license plates around the clock in Beijing — let alone a less important place like Borneo — was still a good way off.

Jed paged through some images, which had been filed as part of a routine series covering the Whiplash deployment. Borneo was a large island shared by three different countries. Brunei territory formed a misshapen W on the northern coast. Sabah, the Malaysian province on the northern part of the island, wrapped itself around Brunei. Below it was the Indonesian territory, Kalimantan.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“Piece of road that could be used as an airstrip. About three thousand meters.”

Jed hunted through the images, which mostly showed desolate rock or impenetrable jungle. “This?” he said finally, pointing at what looked like a thickened pencil line near Rataugktan.

“Compare that to an image a year ago,” said Stoner.

The only picture Jed could find was from two years before. The road seemed narrower and ended in a T, which no longer seemed to be there.

“What I think they did was widen and flatten a road that was there, making it into more of a highway. The photo interpreter I talked to says the concrete is pretty new,” said Stoner. “And that what looks like a gully on the northern end there is actually painted on. It’s fairly clever, and if you weren’t looking for it, you might not catch it.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Stoner. “But if you can tap into the Russian network and look at their archives, there are two photos that show aircraft on the strip. I came across it by accident when your person called. They were looking for a way to get an image of the island, and I knew someone who would have access to the mirror site that the Greenpeace hackers set up when they broke in a few months ago.”

“Someone?” asked Jed.

“Just someone,” said Stoner. “Private guy. Thrives on information. He probably can get into the Russian system on his own, but I didn’t ask.”

Jed couldn’t get into either the Russian or Greenpeace systems from his computer, since doing so would potentially leave a trail and therefore represent a security breach. He could have any of a number of people do it for him, however.

“What sort of planes?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Stoner. “The interpreter thought they were Sukhois.”

“Breanna Stockard reported that the Brunei air force encountered Sukhois,” said Jed.

“Two plus two,” Stoner deadpanned.

“I could see having a base for counter insurgency there,” said Jed. “The guerillas are operating throughout that entire area. But why would you put interceptors there? Those are pretty useless against terrorists.”

“I don’t know,” said Stoner. “There was a ship that was blown up, right?”

“They’re still investigating. No one thinks it was sunk by a plane.”

“Maybe no one’s right, then,” said Stoner.

Jed turned back to his computer, tapping into SpyNet — the informal name for the intelligence community’s intranet featuring briefings and information from around the world. The CIA was tentatively agreeing with the unofficial Brunei assessment — a terrorist bomb had been planted in the ship.

“This your assessment?” Jed asked.

“No”

“You agree with it?”

Stoner said nothing. Obviously he didn’t, Jed realized — that was his whole point in coming over.

“What about a submarine?” asked Jed.

“Australians keep track of the Malaysian subs, as do the Chinese,” said Stoner. “Very unlikely.”

“Okay,” said Jed. “But why would the Malaysians want to attack a Brunei ship?”

“I don’t know,” said Stoner. “Maybe they’re trying to help the guerillas.”

“Are you still working on this?”

“I’m not working on anything at all,” said Stoner. “I’m being parked.”

“Parked where?”

Stoner made a face that was halfway between a grimace and a smile. “I’m going to be an adjunct history professor at a college up in Poughkeepsie.”

Jed listened as Stoner explained that his supervisors had decided, for his own good, to give him a kind of working vacation, arranging for him to go to the college as part of procedure to build a cover for a future mission. Or at least, that was the story they told him. The reality, as both Jed and Stoner knew without it being laid out, was that the CIA powers had lost confidence in Stoner for some reason, or more likely were preparing to lay the blame for certain agency failures on him. Stoner had been in charge of developing information about several Indian weapons, and had in fact been in the middle of doing that when he nearly got killed from the fallout. At the same time, his section had missed the development of two small tactical nuclear weapons and their delivery system by a private company in Taiwan. It looked to Stoner like the skids were being greased for him to tacitly take the fall. He’d never be accused of screwing up; people would just know he was “parked” and assume the worst.

“Maybe I’m just paranoid,” he said.

“You want to teach history?” asked Jed.

Stoner shrugged.

“Why don’t you come work for us?”

“Let me think about it,” said Stoner. He got up. “Sorry, but I got to work on a lesson plan. I missed the first couple of weeks of class.”

Chapter 17

Breanna had just finished running through the last simulated flight session of the day when one of the air force liaison officers poked his head up onto the Jersey’s flightdeck.

“Madame Captain,” said the man, “a Mr. Jed Barclay wishes to speak to you without delay.”

While it was the rule rather than the exception, Breanna found the formal politeness an unending source of amusement, and it wasn’t until she reached the phone in the small office at the side of the hangar that she realized it must be one o’clock in the morning back in Washington.

“Jed, what’s up?” she asked.

“I need you to go to a secure phone,” he told her. “Can you get to the embassy? It’s at Teck Guan Plaza in the city.”

“I guess. This about the planes?”

“I’ll call you there in a half-hour.”

“Give me an hour.”

“Okay”

“They were definitely Su-27s,” Breanna told Jed when she reached the embassy. “But beyond that I don’t know anything else. They were over Malaysian air space the entire time, and the standing orders for Jersey’s training flights are that they be conducted either over Brunei or over international waters”

“Would an American crew have picked them up if they took off from that airstrip you found?” Jed asked.

“I don’t know. Deci thinks so, but the routines we were running had us pretty low at a couple of points, and I think they would have been missed.”

“Could they have hit the freighter?”

“No way. Just no way. We might not have caught them at the precise moment of attack, but we sure would have seen them earlier. Besides, I doubt they would have returned after an attack. To get back around — no way”

Jed asked her questions about the Brunei air force and the defense ministry in general. It was Breanna’s opinion that, the purchase of the Megafortresses and the hiring of Mack notwithstanding, the Brunei air force remained at best a paper tiger.

“Their attitudes — they’re not very serious,” she explained. “Not even about counter-insurgency. They have trouble getting fuel and supplies. I think that the sultan is trying to turn things around, and certainly Mack is, but there are a lot of other people who are more interested in other things.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jed. She could hear him stifling a yawn. “What’s going on, do you think?” she asked. “Were the planes and the attack on the merchant ship related?”

“I don’t know. So far it doesn’t fit together. The Malaysians have a pretty serious insurgency problem. Islamic terrorists have been trying to overthrow the government for years. But Brunei hasn’t been targeted by the terrorists, at least not seriously. Their base of operations has been too far away.”

“The people who tried to kidnap Zen and I a few days ago were supposedly terrorists,” said Breanna. “So maybe they’re coming into Brunei now. That incident, the ship — maybe they’re looking for easier targets here.”

“Could be,” said Jed.

“I’m due to leave for Dreamland in a couple of days. You want me to put together a brief on the military situation here when I get back?”

“Be a good idea,” said Jed in between another yawn. “If you come up with anything in the meantime, let me know”

“Will do. Now get some sleep.”

Chapter 18

Sahurah waited for nearly an hour before he was picked up. Two scooters drove up and stopped; the man on the first turned to him and nodded his head. Sahurah took that as the signal to get on and he did so without comment. He held on as the bike whipped through the city streets, turning down alleyways and then doubling back, carefully eliminating any possibility of being followed. Finally it stopped in the middle of a street four blocks from the spot where he had started. As Sahurah slipped off, a battered Toyota drove up behind him. For a moment, Sahurah feared that the government had decided to arrest him.

The window on the car rolled down an inch. “Come,” said the man.

Sahurah walked slowly to the vehicle, opened the door, and got inside. There was another man sitting next to him, middle-aged, someone he had never seen or met before. The car began to move, driving along the narrow road out of town and then climbing up the hill to the cliffside highway. Even at night, the view of the ocean as it spread out north was spectacular, an inspirational hint of God’s expansive universe, but Sahurah did not take the chance to glance toward it.

“What happened?” asked the man.

“The imam is the only one I will address. He instructed me”

Sahurah pressed his fingers together so they would not tremble. Only a few weeks ago he would have felt anger rather than fear at being tested this way. How weak he had grown in such a short time.

The man took a pistol from his pocket. “What if I shoot you?”

That would be a great relief, Sahurah thought to himself. But he said nothing.

The man nodded and put his weapon away. “I was told you were a brave man, brother. I am impressed.”

Roughly an hour later, the car pulled off the shoulder of another road overlooking the sea. Within a few minutes, three cars passed, then two pickups with men in the rear. Finally, a battered black taxi pulled next to them. The imam sat in the back seat; the Saudi visitor sat next to him. Sahurah was told to sit next to the driver, and did so without comment. They drove for a while, taking a dirt road that tucked through the jungle and then doubled back to a promontory over the water. The driver stopped and got out of the car.

“Report now,” said the imam.

Sahurah told him everything that had occurred.

The Saudi murmured something Sahurah could not hear. The imam answered, and then both men were silent.

“You have done very well,” said the imam finally.

He leaned forward. Sahurah felt something press him in the side. He turned and looked down, and saw that there was a small pistol in the imam’s hand.

“Take it,” said the imam.

Sahurah reached across his body with his right hand and took the pistol. It was a small, lightweight gun, a semi-automatic that fit easily in the palm of his hand. It occurred to Sahurah that he might take the gun and hold it to his head.

“Kill yourself,” said the imam.

Surely he had willed his leader to say that.

“Sahurah? Did you hear me?”

“To shoot myself?” he asked. “Will I be denied Paradise?”

“To die as a soldier of jihad is to be made a martyr, if you are under orders,” said the imam. “No matter the circumstances.”

Sahurah knew that suicide was a sin, but he also knew that there were conditions when death was not considered suicide. He had done nothing to prepare himself, however — his body was not clean or properly prepared, and he worried that perhaps he would not find Paradise if he complied.

But he must obey. More importantly, he wanted to. He wanted to be finished with this tiresome, trying world, where he could not cleanse himself of evil thoughts and failures. He wanted to be beyond weakness and lust.

“Are you afraid, Sahurah?” asked the imam.

Sahurah put the gun to his mouth and pulled the trigger. When nothing happened, he realized he had pushed too lightly, and pressed again.

And again.

He felt the imam’s hand on his shoulder. “You are our bravest soldier, Sahurah,” said the imam gently. “Give me back the gun. From this moment on, you are to be honored with the title of Commander. How does that make you feel?”

Sahurah stared at the weapon in his hands. He felt cheated, but he could not say that. A finger of pain began clawing up the back of his neck.

“Your future is the future of us all,” added the Saudi in Arabic. “You will bring great glory to the soldiers of God.”

Chapter 19

Zen was working now. Sweat poured down his back, drenching his undershirt beneath the flight suit. A crowd of onlookers — including three congressmen and their staffs, along with some Pentagon and army VIPs — were watching from only a few feet away as he worked his Flighthawks through an exercise designed to demonstrate the future direction of aerial warfare. It was an all robot engagement — Lieutenant Kirk “Starship” Andrews and Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby were at the sticks of their own U/MF-3 Flighthawks, trying to keep Zen’s Hawk One and Hawk Two from getting past them on the test range to the northwest. They were doing a reasonably good job of it, too; Kick’s Hawk Three was closing in on Hawk Two, with Star-ship’s Hawk Four right behind. A large flat screen directly behind Zen showed the positions of all of the Flighthawks, and even provided a score as calculated by the computer.

“The Super Bowl of the sky,” joked one congressman. He and the others were eating it up.

Starship and Kick were aboard the Megafortress Raven which was flying overhead. Zen sat down on the tarmac beneath a specially rigged tarp, the center of attention. There was just enough wind and crowd noise around to interfere with the boom mike, prompting the computer to ask him to repeat every third or fourth voice command.

Zen squeezed the throttle slide on the back of the joystick controller, pushing Hawk One to accelerate past the two Flighthawks trying to close in on him. He got past Kick, but Starship was very much on his game today — he anticipated what Zen would do and managed to get right on his tail.

It took Starship another ten seconds or so to finally lock Hawk Two in his gun sights and take him down. It was a little longer than Zen had hoped — hey, these guys were his star pupils — but all in all, it was a respectable show.

Unfortunately for his pupils, Zen had suckered them into that encounter so he could sneak Hawk One to the target. He let the computer take over Hawk Two and concentrated on bringing Hawk One up the deck and nailing the target aircraft. He now had a clear path; the other planes were too far to interfere.

Except that he couldn’t find his target, which should be dead ahead at two thousand feet.

The computer beeped at him. He was being tracked by a ground radar near the target aircraft. If he didn’t confuse the radar within five seconds, the defensive system would fire a pair of improved Patriot missiles and nail him.

“Jam it,” he told the computer.

While the computer filled the air with electronic static, Zen threw the Flighthawk into a hard turn, firing off chaff and flares, as well. He actually only needed the chaff, which was composed of shards of metal that confused the radars, but the flares made for a good show. He heard a few oohs and ahs behind him.

Zen’s speed had dropped below three hundred knots, and he was now vulnerable to a fresh hazard — a pair of Razor antiaircraft lasers, which were using a new optical sighting system that could not be foxed by standard ECMs, chaff, or flares. Zen leaned forward, waiting until the lasers began to revolve in his direction before starting a series of sharp evasive maneuvers, literally zigzagging back and forth across the sky. The laser system was a half-step too slow to hit the Flighthawk at very close range, but Zen knew he couldn’t do this all day; he really needed to find his target, and now.

The computer beeped at him, but it wasn’t marking an X on the target board — it was warning him that he was about to be pounded from above. Zen slapped his stick and dove away as Starship flailed down in a desperate attack, followed not more than two seconds later by Kick.

In anything other than an exercise, the laser would have destroyed their Flighthawks, but it had been programmed to look only for Zen’s aircraft, and they flew through the air untouched. Zen shook them with a flick of his wrist, but he’d not only lost time but his orientation on the battlefield. He started to turn right, then caught a glint of something on his left.

Bingo. The target.

“Computer, target,” he said, designating it with his hand. The screen changed instantly, putting up a blinking yellow triangle that boxed the spec he had pointed at.

Yellow meant not yet.

The computer warned that he was being tracked by the Patriot radar. He fired everything he had — flares, chaff, prayers.

Red.

“Gotcha,” he said, pressing the trigger.

The screen blinked, then went blank.

The computer had taken over. He’d been shot down by the Razor laser.

Zen, exhausted, threw himself back in the chair. There was a gasp from the crowd, then a loud round of applause.

Dog slapped him on the back. “Take a bow, Major.”

Zen looked up and gave the colonel a sardonic smile.

“I think the computer scored it as a tie,” said Dog.

The others were now gathering around his station. Zen reached over for his coffee, which was propped on a small table near his wheelchair.

“That was some performance,” said Congresswoman Sue Kelly, a Republican from New York. “You really had those computers going.”

“Thanks,” said Zen.

“And you almost got the blimp,” she added enthusiastically.

“Almost,” said Zen.

Of course, “almost” meant he’d lost the exercise, though that didn’t seem to matter to them. And it certainly didn’t bother Dog, who would now use the exhibition to talk up his favorite ugly-duck weapons system, the LADS blimp.

The blimp’s shape and structure were not terribly different from the basic design airships had used since roughly 1910. It was a fattish sausage, with its inner skeleton made of carbon-fiber material that helped keep it light. The engine was a hydrogen-cell powered propeller shielded within a baffled area at the lower end of the rear. It could do fifty knots or so — not particularly fast but respectable for a lighter-than-air vehicle. The sensors employed by the unit were housed in a flat pod that hung at the bottom of the bag. The pod, and two-thirds of the blimp, were covered by a lightweight plastic panel and an array of advanced LEDs, or light emitting diodes, which were powered by the engine and a strip of solar electric cells at the top of the craft. In simple terms, the LEDs — considerably more advanced than the ones used in consumer products, though the basic principles behind their functioning remained the same — tinting reflected light to create an optical illusion. The system was optimized for daylight skies — not only would it not blend well against a forest, for example, but it also had some difficulty at dusk. Even during the day, if someone were to stare at the vehicle for a long time, they would probably realize that there was something not quite right about that part of the sky. But at a distance to a casual observer, the LED system was the closest thing to a magician’s magic cloak of invisibility ever invented. Once problems with voltage spikes and the infrared signature were worked out, the system was likely to represent as big a revolution in warfare and surveillance as the first-generation Stealth Fighter had.

The blimps were visible on radar, and by very finely tuned infrared systems. The radar problem could be taken care of — as it had been in the demonstration — by placing jammer units close to the blimp but not actually in it, preventing an attacker from homing in on them. The IR problem was more difficult to overcome, but even the sensors in the Flighthawk could not pick up the blimp until the aircraft was within roughly two miles.

“Now remember, there’s a lot of work to do yet,” Dog told the crowd as the airship rode toward them. “You can see, though, how it comes in steadily even though there’s a good wind today out of the west. High winds have been a problem for lighter-than-air ships since their invention.”

“Is that a problem at thirty thousand feet?” asked one of the congressmen.

The airships’ ability to fly that high — it actually had been taken to over forty, and larger ships could go much higher — was classified. Dog made a show of acting perplexed, then answered.

“I thought I heard a question about altitude. I can only say we fly very high around here. And our altitude at the moment would be limited by sensor abilities to something oh, just out of the range of normal anti-aircraft guns. But no, that’s not a problem.”

There were some nods and appreciative winks. Zen shook his head, admiring the way the colonel handled the VIPs. For a guy who didn’t like politics and Washington BS, he sure could play the bigwigs when he had to.

Dog continued, waxing poetic about the system. The colonel was totally sold on blimps — with or without cloaking LEDs — as a low-cost way of providing radar and other sensor coverage over remote areas in the future. Much larger blimps were also being studied as low-cost equipment movers, and to hear Dog tell it, the day of the lighter-than-air vehicle was just around the corner.

The VIPs started drifting away toward the LADS landing area, watching the six-foot aircraft slide downward. Zen snickered as the aircraft’s controllers — it was flown entirely from the ground — pulled one last trick out of their hats: the LED system flashed, making the airship disappear into the background for a moment. Then the crowd of onlookers seemed to appear in the sky; as they settled down, they were replaced by a message: “Welcome to Dreamland.”

The VIPs applauded heartily.

“Everything’s PR,” said Zen, shaking his head.

“Yes,” said Ray Rubeo. Rubeo was the head scientist at the base, and its resident cynic.

“You should be happy, Ray,” Zen told the scientist. “Your computer beat me.”

“A draw is not a victory,” said Rubeo. He put his hand to his ear, squeezing the tiny gold earring there. “You flew well, and probably were only held off because your two students cheated.”

“Want to go for two out of three?”

“Another time, Major,” said the scientist, walking away.

Dog spotted Jennifer walking toward Zen’s station as the blimp dropped into a hover. He turned to Major Natalie Catsman, his second in command, and asked her to take over for him. She nodded.

“I have to tie up a few things, but I’ll meet everyone for lunch,” he announced. Then he walked swiftly toward Jennifer.

She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a light blue T-shirt. Even in those simple clothes, even with her hair military-short, she was beautiful, ravishingly beautiful.

And she was angry with him, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.

Dog waited while Jennifer and Zen discussed the parameters of the exercise they’d just flown. Zen started to laugh.

“Good morning, Jen,” said Dog, finally breaking in. He saw her whole body stiffen, inexplicably tensing up. Dog ignored it, turning to Zen. “You flew very well, Major. Your guys did a good job, too”

“I almost got your blimp,” Zen said.

“Either way, we would have looked good,” said Dog. “You going to be at lunch? The congresspeople can’t get enough of you.”

“I’ll do my bit for the team.”

“I appreciate it.” Dog turned to Jennifer. “You have a second, Doc?”

She shrugged, then followed as he walked toward the hangar.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“You weren’t at the apartment when I came back.”

“I had to work.”

“I’m sorry I had to leave. I know you were trying to make it a surprise. I just …”

The words stopped coming. He wanted to tell her — what, exactly?

That he loved her, damn it. But he couldn’t get that to come out of his mouth. Maybe it was because he was her boss, maybe it was because he was a good decade — well, decade and a half — older than her.

Maybe it was because the sun glinted off her hair and made her look like an angel. He just couldn’t say anything worthwhile. And so he said nothing.

“I’ve got some work,” she said. Her hand reached to her shoulder, as if to flick back her hair. It was an old habit, one she hadn’t completely erased. Something flashed into her face — pain maybe, a grimace of recognition.

“Dinner later, you think?” suggested Dog.

“I don’t know,” she said, turning.

He watched her walk away, feeling as impotent as he ever had in his life.

Chapter 20

Sahurah saw him as he walked from the house.

How young he is, thought Sahurah. Sixteen or seventeen.

The boy turned and went up the path. Sahurah waited a moment longer, then began pedaling his bicycle in the opposite direction, riding away from the small, well-kept house where the recruit lived with his mother and father and five sisters.

An only son in heaven. The parents would be proud.

Sahurah reached the intersection and turned right, pedaling more slowly now. The center of town was on the right. He took the turn and continued past the mosque, not daring to raise his eyes as he turned up the drive of an office building and pedaled around the dirt lot. There were no cars, and Sahurah saw no one. He rode back to the road, saw that the string was still tied to the post — a sign from the two men he had posted as lookouts that all was well. Then he turned right again and went to the end of the street, turning into the driveway of the last house and riding into the back.

The property had not been occupied for some time — it belonged to the mosque — and the jungle had begun to reclaim the yard, pushing close with large trees and brush. Sahurah put his bicycle down in the weeds where it could not be seen, then walked up the back steps into the house.

The recruit was in the back room as instructed, sitting in the middle of the floor.

He was smoking a cigarette. Incensed, Sahurah went to the young man and grabbed it from his mouth, throwing it against the wall.

“Where did you get that?” Sahurah demanded in Malaysian.

The recruit was so terrified he could not speak. Sahurah looked down at his face and again thought to himself, he is young.

Too young.

And yet some might have said that of Sahurah himself only a few years before.

“Stand, and let me look at you,” Sahurah said roughly.

The recruit rose and turned around. How old was he? Sixteen? Fourteen? Old enough to be a soldier in jihad?

But this was not Sahurah’s concern. The imam had already decided, and his own job was simple. He did not even need to know the boy’s name.

“Come with me,” he told the recruit, walking to the next room. He knelt at the side of the floor and removed two boards, then pulled up a small case. He unsnapped the lock and opened it. A small weapon sat inside.

The gun was an INDEP Lusa submachine gun. Made in Romania, the weapon fired nine-millimeter bullets. It measured only seventeen inches with its stock folded, and weighed barely five and a half pounds. The barrel could be removed to make it lighter and shorter, even easier to hide; Sahurah decided to do this.

He had three magazines. Two would be used for training. “Come,” he told the recruit. “We have much to do, and only a short time.”

Chapter 21

“So when are you coming home?” Zen asked Breanna when she called the apartment. It was just past 8 P.M. in Nevada; over in Brunei it was a little after eleven o’clock in the morning.

“Supposed to leave tomorrow,” she told him. “But it looks like I’m going to have to take a commercial flight to Japan. Since I’m going to be there anyway, I was thinking of staying in Tokyo for a day or two.”

“Why?” asked Zen.

“Because it’s Tokyo,” she said.

“Well, yeah, Tokyo.”

“Zen, sometimes I think you are the most boring person in the world. It’s Tokyo! There are temples there, museums, restaurants, sights — I’d even like to ride on the trains.”

“Like a sardine?”

“You wouldn’t want to look around Tokyo if you had a few days off?”

“Oh sure, if Godzilla was around.”

“What would you do?”

“Besides rushing home to the arms of my darling wife?” He took a sip of his beer.

“Don’t be a wise guy.”

“I’m not being a wise guy. If I were in Tokyo — I know what I’d do. I’d check out the Tokyo Giants. Supposed to be a great baseball team”

“Zen.”

“Well, not compared to American baseball, of course. But good for Japan”

Zen laughed as his wife made a flustered sound.

“All right, they could probably beat, say, the Cincinnati Reds. But not the Dodgers,” he added.

“Be serious.”

Speaking of baseball, the Dodgers should be on by now. He put his beer between his legs on his lap and bent his head to hold the phone on his shoulder as he rolled his wheelchair into the living room.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Breanna continued. “What do you think about what we were talking about in Brunei?”

“What do I think about what?” he asked, stalling as he looked for the television remote. He knew what she was referring to. The game came on. The Dodgers were ahead of the New York Mets, two to zero, bottom of the second.

“I meant, about a family,” said Breanna.

They had spoken about a “family” — a euphemism for having a baby — for all of ten minutes in the car going over to the beach.

“I’m sorry, I was fiddling with the TV. What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. We’ll go over it when I get home.”

There was a certain tone in her voice that Zen called the “husband can’t win” tone.

“Maybe we should talk about it when you get home,” he said.

“We should,” she answered, a little too forcibly.

“So if you play tourist in Tokyo, when will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I vote for straight home. I miss you,” he said.

“I miss you, too.”

“But if you want to stay,” he added, “I understand.”

“I’ll think about it, babe. You take care of yourself.”

“I always do” Zen smiled at her, though she couldn’t see him. “You take care, too. They figure out what those Sukhois were all about?”

“They’re still pretty baffled. Same with the ship. Jed seems to think the Islamic guerillas who have been fighting in Malaysia are looking for easier targets.”

“I could see that,” said Zen. He was glad she was getting the hell out of there, but saying that he was actually worried about her somehow seemed out of bounds. “How’s Mack doing? Come on to you yet today?”

“I told you, he hasn’t at all since I’ve been here,” said Breanna.

“Yeah, right.”

“No. He’s — you won’t believe this, but he’s changed. He’s more — I don’t know. More mature.”

Zen laughed so hard he nearly spilled his beer. “Right. Mack Smith, mature. What a concept”

“I’m not kidding.”

“You’ve been sitting in the sun too long, babe. Mack Smith?” He laughed even harder.

“All right, all right. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll try to call before the plane takes off. It’ll be early afternoon your time.”

“Sounds good,” he told her, hanging up.

Mack Smith? Mature? Changed?

Mack Smith!

Zen began to laugh so hard tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

Chapter 22

She was beautiful, he had to give her that. Mack watched Ivana Keptrova turn heads as she walked across the restaurant toward his table. Tall and thin, with dark features and a simple strand of pearls as her only jewelry, she had a regal appearance. She wore a black business suit, with a skirt that stopped just at the knee; on someone else it might have seemed boring, even dowdy, but on Ivana Keptrova it seemed as sexy as a piece of lingerie.

Mack rose and took her hand. She swept down into her chair, smiling at the waiter, who faded toward the back for a moment and then reappeared with a bottle of champagne.

“It’s the only thing worth drinking while discussing business,” she told Mack, holding her glass up for a toast. “Or for pleasure.”

Mack played along, very careful about taking minute sips of wine. He listened to her talk about Prince bin Awg and the sultan as if they were all close personal friends; he feigned interest in her talk about the navy, which she was apparently supplying with new patrol boats.

“What I’m interested in are fighters,” he told her finally. “Sukhoi Su-27s.”

“A very good airplane,” she said. “The newer models especially. We have upgraded the avionics to a point where they rival the F-15s.”

“The ones I’m interested in are older,” said Mack. “They’re used”

She made a show of confusion. “We can always find inexpensive alternatives,” said Ivana. “But I was under the impression that the sultan wanted frontline equipment.”

“I’m talking about two aircraft that Malaysia’s operating on Borneo.”

“Malaysia?”

He had to admit, she was good. Mack had no idea if she was bluffing or truly ignorant.

“Malaysia or Indonesia,” said Mack.

“Neither country has purchased new Sukhois from Russia,” said Ivana.

“What about used?”

“I don’t believe so, darling.”

“So, you don’t know anything about them?”

“Quite honestly, no. Sukhois to Indonesia? They haven’t the funds.”

“My theory is Malaysia,” said Mack.

“Well, perhaps they purchased some surplus weapons from another country. Have you considered the Ukraine?”

“I’ve considered many things,” said Mack, bluffing himself.

“Well, I might be able to make inquiries for you, if you are truly interested,” said Ivana. “But in the meantime it occurs to me — this is a threat you must meet.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“Even the older model of the Su-27 is formidable, especially against your Dragonflies. Now, a dozen Su-30MKIs, with full support, associated weapons.. “ She let the sentence drift out of her mouth as if she were reading the bullet line from the front cover of a sales brochure. “And you know, there is a side-byside attack version being planned, better than your F-15E.”

“How much money are we talking?” said Mack.

Ivana pouted. “We do not discuss numbers at lunch,” she told him. “Drink your champagne. How is Miss McKenna?”

“She’s fine. Sends her regards”

lvana smiled. “You are not a very good liar, Minister Smith. Truth suits you better. Miss McKenna and I had an unfortunate misunderstanding over money. A commitment was not fulfilled at the proper time and — but these things happen. I would gladly take her back”

“Yeah, well, she works for me now,” said Mack. “You don’t know anything about those Su-27s?”

She patted his hand indulgently. “I’ll find out for you. I have done good business with the sultan’s navy. There’s no reason we can’t be friends and do business together.”

“We might be friends,” said Mack, “if I knew how Malaysia got those Sukhois.”

“I will find out,” she said. “Come. You haven’t even ordered your lunch yet. Here is our waiter.”

As Mack looked up, something on the other side of the room caught his eye. He turned toward it and saw a short, thin young man entering the room, clearly out of place. He had a black garbage bag with him.

“Death to the sultan!” yelled the kid. The bag started to fall away. As it did, Mack saw that there was a gun behind it, a small weapon barely bigger than a pistol.

“Down!” yelled Mack. He threw over the table, knocking Ivana to the ground. The tart pop of the submachine gun echoed over the screams of the people.

Mack reached beneath his jacket and pulled out his Beretta. The kid turned the weapon toward his side of the room. Mack rose and fired, both hands on the pistol. The first two bullets caught the kid in the stomach and chest, pushing him backward. The machine-pistol he had been firing fell to the ground; the young man seemed to crumple against the wall.

Someone tried to push Mack down.

“Leave me the hell alone, damn it,” Mack yelled at him. He took a step forward, then saw that the terrorist was still writhing on the floor.

He fired two more shots into the man’s body, then realized belatedly that the terrorist had been wearing a vest of explosives. By now others were reacting, bodyguards springing forward belatedly, guests cowering on the floor. The person who had been trying to push Mack down was his driver and bodyguard; Mack turned and saw his face had blanched white with shock. Two policemen came in from the front door; another came up behind them.

Ivana lay face up on the floor. One of the madman’s bullets had caught her in the side of the head.

“What the hell is going on in this damn country?” said Mack, holstering his pistol. “This is supposed to be paradise, for christsake.”