Dreamland

DREAMLAND (Dreamland #1)

by Dale Brown, Jim DeFelice

first published June 1st 2001

THE MASTERS OF DREAMLAND

LT. Colonel Tecumseh ‘Dog’ Bastian

Once one of the country’s elite fighter jocks, now Dog is whipping Dreamland into shape the only way he knows how – with blood, sweat, and tears – and proving that his bite is just as bad as his bark …

Captain Breanna Bastian Stockard

Like father, like daughter. Breanna is brash, quick-witted, and one of the best test pilots at Dreamland. But she was prepared for the biggest test of her life: a crash that grounded her husband in more ways than one …

Major Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard

A top fighter pilot until an accident at Dreamland left him paraplegic. Now, Zen is at the helm of the ambitious Flighhawk program, piloting the hypersonic remote-controlled aircraft from the seat of his wheelchair – and watching what’s left of his marriage crash and burn . .

Major Mack ‘Knife’ Smith

A top gun with an attitude to match. Knife had two MiG kills in the Gulf War – and won’t let anyone forget it. Though resentful that his campaign to head Dreamland stalled, Knife’s the guy you want on your wing when the bogies start biting …

Major Nancy Cheshire

A woman in a man’s world, Cheshire has more than proven herself as the Megafortress’s senior project officer. But when Dog comes to town, Cheshire must stake out her territory once again – or watch the Megafortress project go down in flames …

Captain Danny Freah:

Freah made a name for himself by heading a daring rescue of a U-2 pilot in Iraq. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, Freah’s constantly under fire, as commander of the top-secret ‘Whiplash’ rescue and support team – and Dog’s right-hand man …

_________________

Chapter One 1

Air Force High Technology Aerospace

Weapons Center (Dreamland), Nevada

10 October 1995, 0530 PDT

Gravity smashed against his heat so hard he nearly eased off on the stick. That would have been fatal – the butt of Major Jeff ‘Zen’ Stockard Strike Eagle was dancing across the boresight of a pursuing fighter at optimum cannon range. Stockard’s only hope was to yank and bank away, zigging and zagging in a wild twist across the desert sky, pulling between six and seven g’s as he tried to escape. He tightened his fingers around the control stick and hung on.

Zen had done this a million times – in fact, he’d fought this very same dogfight on a simulator the day before. But that was then, this was now. The simulator could only approximate what the slashing maneuvers did to his body. His neck and shoulders especially – the helmet he had to wear to control his remote escorts weighed more than forty pounds. The helmet used holographic imaging to provide enhanced optical and sensor views from both his plane and the escorts; its oval master view could be divided in half of quarters by voice command or the push of a button on his specially designed control stick. The skull bucket, with its onboard microprocessors, thick layers of LEDs, and retinascan circuits, was critical to his mission, but that was no comfort when the sudden slash of his maneuvers increased its weight exponentially. The F-15E’s ACES II ejector seat had been modified to help support it, but Zen still worried that his head was going to snap right off his body as he pushed through the seven-g turn.

Even with normal gear, seven g’s would have hurt. The cells in his pressurized suit worked against his body like a masseuse’s hands, fighting to keep his blood in place. But he was out at the edge of his endurance. Zen’s heart pounded violently in his chest as he rammed his F-15E Eagle back to the right, picking his nose up and then flailing back over in a barely controlled reverse dive.

Bitchin’ Betty – the plane’s English-language audio warning system – whined that he was about to become toast. Too many g’s, too fat a target, too little airspeed.

It might also have complained about his housekeeping, for all the attention he paid to it.

Stockard pushed the nose around, gaining just enough momentum to miss his pursuer’s snap shot as he recovered. He had to hold on for at least another ten seconds before his escorts caught up. If he lasted that long, the fighter hunting him would have become the hunted.

If he didn’t: toast.

Major Mack ‘Knife’ Smith cursed as Stoackard’s Strike Eagle once more slid out of his targeting pipper without cuing the signal that meant he’d splashed the SOB. If there had been real slugs in his F-15C’s M61A1 cannon, he was sure he’d have nailed Stockard by now. Btu even though the laser designator had danced back and forth across the Strike Eagle’s left wing and fuselage, the computer-controlled SiCS, or Simulated Cannonfire Scorping system, refused to record a fatal hit.

Only reason for that, he decided, was that he was supposed to be profiling a Su-27, with its notorious inaccurate fire-control system. Had to be. That of someone had rigged the gear against him.

Knife tucked his Eagle down to follow Stockard into a rolling dive. Stockard was clever – he was trying to get Knife to either speed up and fly right by him, or slow down enough to let the two Flighthawks catch up. The Flighthawk U/MF-3’s were the purpose of this exercise. Flying as escorts controlled by Zen, the two robot aircraft were supposed to keep Knife from shooting down the Strike Eagle. The exercise was designed to push the miniplanes and their human commander to the limit.

Which was fine with Knife. As long as he nailed the SOB.

Stockard’s left wing slid downward, and the plane seemed to literally drop from the sky. Knife pushed his nose down before realizing what was going on. Zen was twirling through an invert as he dove, aiming to swoop off at close to ninety degrees. Knife had no choice now but to follow – anything else would let the escorts catch up.

He matched the spin, catching a glimpse of one of the Flighthawks trailing him. He ignored it – if he could see it, it wasn’t in position to nail him, he decided – and concentrated on Stockard, whose rear tail fins were disappearing below his HUD. Stockard was below ten thousand feet.

So much for the rules of engagement. Not that Knife would have let them stop him from winning either. But if was a relief that the other guy had ignored them first.

Stockard’s fantail sailed into Mack’s targeting pipper, and he pressed the trigger.

No good. Stockard pulled left just in time to duck the shot, recovering at eight thousand feet.

The g forces kicked up by the maneuvers tore Knife in all different directions; he felt like he was being pinched and pulled at the same time. A dark cloud began edging toward the corners of his eyes as he saw Zen flickering to the right. He pulled at the Eagle’s stick to follow, worrying in the back of his mind that the extreme maneuvers would flame the Eagle’s nearly unflammable engines.

And then he realized he’d blown it.

Zen pushed his stick to level his wings, feeling for the plane with his arms and legs. He’d faked Smith out, but the rush of gravity was nearly too much; he felt his head starting to implode. If he were flying only the Strike Eagle he’d be fine, but he had to guide the Flighthawks as well. Even with the computer guidance system carrying most of the load, it was too much work; his brain started caving under the physical and mental stress.

That was the point of all this, right? To find the limits?

Okay, he told himself, I’m here, I’m doing this. The bar the top of his visor screen flashed green. It meant one of his escorts was now within firing range.

Okay, he repeated to himself. I’m home. All I have to do if flick my thumb down and enable the Flighthawk forward cams.

If Zen could do that, the heavy visor in his helmet would project two three-dimensional holograms in front of his eyes, each view projected from the nose of one of the U/MF-3’s. He’d say “Hawk One” or “Hawk Two,” look directly at his target, select cannon, fire. End of exercise.

But before he could do that, the center of his screen flashed red, indicating that the F-15C behind him was firing its simulated cannon. He jinked left, his consciousness narrowing to a pinprink of pure white light in a round black night.

Smith had all the stops out. He wasn’t flying the F-15C as if it were a Sukhoi, with its limited avionics and conservative flight regimes. He’d tossed aside the flight protocol and briefed plan and was flying like an American – balls-out, over the line.

Fair enough, thought Zen, pulling back left, swirling in a scissors. The green firing bar disappeared – the Flighthawks had lost the shot. The little planes were extremely agile, but the computers that helped control them were not yet as creative as human pilots in close-in furballs.

Zen yanked his nose down hard, barely escaping one more time.

His head started to float. He’d pushed too far.

Zen forced air into his lungs, forced his muscles to relax, forced the blackness away. The green bar appeared and this time he mashed his thumb downward right away, saw Smith’s butt hanging fat in Hawk One’s boresight.

“Hawk One,” he told the control computer. “Cannon.”

“Ready,” replied the computer.

“Fire.”

Knife cursed as the SiCS buzzer announced that he had been fried. He eased off on his stick and checked his power, leveling off as he reoriented himself. The dogfight had taken them to the edge of the restricted airspace Dreamland had set aside for the Flighthawk test; he began a bank south.

“Dreamland Playboy One, this is Hawk Mother,” Zen radioed. “You’re dirt.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Smith snapped. The transmission were monitored as well as recorded, but at the moment Knife didn’t care if anyone thought he was a sore loser. It was the first time he’d lost to Zen in three weeks’ worth of mock battles. The point of the exercises was to test and improve the Flighthawk U/MF-3’s, and it could be argued that his previous victories had greatly enhanced the unmanned escort program, helping to improve the combat computer programming so the miniature planes would be useful twenty-first-century weapons.

It could also be argued that three against one wasn’t a fair fight. Nor were the exercise’s rules of engagement, which called for him to approach the Strike Eagle as if he were a Su-27, slower and higher than optimum.

Somehow, none of those things made him feel any better.

“Let’s go again,” suggested Stockard. “Down for doubles.”

“Oh, you got it,” said Knife. He glanced at his fuel gauge to make sure he had gas, then ran his eyes over the rest of the Eagle’s instruments. He knew from feel that the plane was ad dash-one spec – but he also knew that relying on feel could be a quick ticket to the boneyard.

“Point Zero in zero one,” added Stockard, meaning that he and his escorts would be back at his starting position in sixty seconds.

Knife gave a terse acknowledgment and headed toward the end of the range. What he wouldn’t give to be flying the Cheetah, the advanced-airframe F-15. Its forward canards and maneuverable thrust nozzles enabled the plane to cut nearly straight lines in the sky. He would have nailed Stockard on his first pass.

He would have nailed him if he hadn’t had to worry about the Flighthawks. Three against one.

All right, he told himself. Stop making excuses and get to work.

Knife pushed himself forward against his restraints as he reached his starting point at the edge of the restricted airspace. He was ready. He’d nail the SOB, Flighthawks or no Flighthawks. This time he wasn’t holding back.

Zen replayed the final thirty seconds of the dogfight in the lower left quadrant of his high-tech visor while he waited for Smith. The herky-jerky images made it clear the Flighthawk project had a long way to go. The U/MF-3 flight computer simply hadn’t been able to keep up with the two manned planes; luck as well as skill had saved Zen’s butt from being fried.

Admittedly, carrying a dedicated Flighthawk remote pilot in the Eagle’s backseat would have helped. But the point of this particular experiment, and indeed the entire program, was to see if the remote planes could operate with minimal human guidance – if, in fact, a single pilot on a combat mission could control them while trying to evade an enemy aircraft. Besides, the com equipment and communications gear were so large there was no way to get anyone else into the plane.

Even though Zen had just nailed Smith, he felt that he had failed. He knew he was being incredibly hard on himself. But he’d had to go all out to do it. if he had been flying a strike mission, he would not have been able to complete the bombing run. Zen was the sort of pilot, the sort of man, who accepted nothing less than perfection. Settling for what was possible simply wasn’t good enough.

The U/MF-3’s were in a shadow orbit, slightly offset and trailing his wings at a half mile as he circled over the Nevada desert. It was a standard Flighthawk maneuver, one that he could tell the computer to execute and forget about, though he had the Flighthawks’ God’s-eye view selected on his helmet monitor just in case.

The U/MF’s were about the size of Miata sports cars, with delta-shaped knife wings and small canard wings. Their tail sections looked like miniature versions of the F-23’s, canted off in a squashed V. Powered by specially designed and downsized versions of the Pratt & Whitney F-119-PW-100 without the afterburner section, the planes were theoretically more maneuverable than the F-15 or even the F-22, but without the top-end speed of either plane. On the other hand, their size and wing configuration made them essentially invisible to radar beyond three miles. The Flighthawks were intended as multi-role escort craft for high-performance attack planes on difficult deep-strike missions. They could be configured for reconnaissance as well as close combat, and the engineers who had drawn up plans foresee the day a high-megawatt oxygen-iodine laser would fill the robots’ weapons bays.

That day seemed far, far in the future. The smallest oxygen-iodine laser in the world – not coincidentally under development at the top-secret base below – wouldn’t fit inside a 747 without some serious alterations.

The Flighthawks themselves had a way to go. Routine flight patterns were preprogrammed, and the small planes had enough ‘native’ intelligence to follow simple commands, like prepare a nose-intercept with an approaching bandit. But complex commands and maneuvers had to be broken down and explained to the planes. That took time and computing power. The scientists responsible for the project had promised faster and smaller computers based on near-room temperature superconducting chips (NRTSC) similar to those in the XF-34A DreamStar, the next-generation interceptor seen as a potential successor to the F-22 Raptor. DreamStar’s computer advances were numerous and so complicated that Zen had only a vague idea what they involved; still, he knew it was just a matter of time before they found their way from the XF-34A to the Flighthawks.

Even when they did, communications bandwidth might still be a problem. Since any communications could be jammed or compromised in a combat situation, the Flighthawks used an elaborate mix of laser and radio bands. Once they were in combat mode, everything went through three layers of 128-byte encryption. There was a brief but noticeable delay between command and execution in some flight regimes.

Zen checked his fuel and reviewed his flight data. He was back at twenty thousand feet, meandering at the edge of the restricted test range at 420 knots. Smith should have reached the end of the range by now. Zen stared out the canopy toward the southeast. Nellis Air Force Base, one of the busiest in the world, lay fifteen miles to the south, but with the heavy air restrictions in force, you’d never know it was so close.

Zen flicked the Eagle’s radar into air-to-air medium-range mode, scanning out ten miles to where his opponent ought to be turning around.

No contact.

No contact?

Zen started to key his mike when he realized what Knife was up to. His left hand pulled the throttle to goose the afterburners and get away.

It was almost too easy. Knife gunned the engines and jerked the nose of his Eagle off the deck, rising from fifty feet AGL as he swung up behind the Flighhawks. Stockard lit his afterburners, but that didn’t matter – the Flighthawks were caught flat-footed. Hawk One tried o follow its mother ship, but its small engine was overmatched: The silvery hull slid precisely into the middle of the square target indicator of Knife’s HUD. The Flighthawk started to jink left, but it was too late – the M61A1 Vulcan chewed it up.

Or rather, the SiCS bleeped to say it did.

Knife’s P&Ws were burning at 115 percent, and within seconds his F-15’s APG-63 radar tapped the second Flighthawk, just out of cannon range. Knife nudged his stick to the left as he closed, squaring in for a bull’s-eye.

Except the Flighthawk ducked off to the right, dropping down so fast he couldn’t react. But that was fine – his goal was to splash Zen, not the high-tech UAVs. And now that the Flighthawk had run away, Zen’s unprotected butt loomed at the top of his windscreen. Knife took a breath, adrenaline careening through his veins as he closed for the kill.

Damn good thing they were playing by cannon rules or he’d be dead, Zen thought as he jerked Hawk Two away. Sidewinder would have walloped him.

Then again, according to the rules, Knife was supposed to be about ten thousand feet higher, not flying low enough to stop for traffic lights.

Not that fighter pilots were expected to follow the rules, let alone fight fair.

Smith was probably pissed that he’d beaten him in the first round, and wanted revenge. That would make beating him again all the sweeter, wouldn’t it?

Zen waited until he was sure Mack was coming for him before ordering the remaining Flighthawk to try to acquire his opponent’s tail. Then he brought his full attention back to his own plight. The two ples were fairly well matched; Zen’s slightly more powerful power plant made up for the fact that Smith’s plane was a tad lighter. As long as they both had the pedal to the metal, Smith couldn’t catch him.

Then again, Zen wouldn’t be able to get away either. Nor would he be able to splash Smith, which was what he really wanted.

Duck and roll?

Smith wouldn’t be fooled by it twice.

Feint left, plunge right, swing back in a high-speed scissors, twisting around to let the Flighthawk nail Smith in a front-quarter attack.

Not easy, but also probably the last thing Smith would be expecting, since the U/MF-3’s were not adept at headon attacks. As the Flighthawk took its shot. Zen could buck into a tight loop and come up behind him. He’d have him for dinner.

Maybe. Very hard to execute, especially with half of his attention on the Flighthawk.

Go for it.

Zen backed his power off, sucking Smith toward him. As he warner buzzed, telling him that he was about to be nailed, Zen pushed left. He counted off two seconds, then came back hard right, rolling the plane downward with a burst of speed that got him out to Mach 1.2. Knife hesitated for a second, then began to follow.

Perfect. Zen slashed through the air like a ribbon unwinding from a spool, Smith barely hanging on. Stockard opened the Flighthawk visual screen in the lower right quadrant of his viewer, and asked for a sit map – a synthetic overhead or God’s-eye view – in the lower left.

Hawk Two was too far off the pace to complete the deal.

Cursing, Zen threw the Eagle over his shoulder, sliding and spinning downward to try to buy more time. Smith managed a snap shot, but couldn’t keep him in his target aperture long enough for the SiCS system to register a hit.

“Yo, scumbag, I would have put a half-dozen slugs in your wing on that shot,” snarled Knife. “Damn SiCS.”

Zen didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. He had to go hard on the stick as Smith dashed downward, cutting between him d the approaching Flighthawk.

Nice. Though the maneuver left Smith without a shot and potentially vulnerable himself, Zen was cut off and without enough forward energy to do anything but put his nose back down and try to pick up steam. Smith was on him again, accelerating across his path just when he thought he might try to recover. Zen threw the Eagle back down, slicing down to his left and then over into another invert as Smith somehow managed to twist h F-15C onto his tail.

The two planes twirled an elaborate ribbon in the sky, at times only ten feet apart. Zen played slapstick, ducking and bobbing just enough to keep from getting waxed. Finally he managed to get into a turn too tight for Smith to stay with; his pursuer had to back off or run the risk of overshooting him and becoming the target.

At that point, Zen should have transmitted the command “Knock it off” and ended the exercise. He’d fallen below three thousand feet and was low on fuel. He had only nominal control of Hawk One. He was far outside the stated parameters of the test. Both he and Knife had been rockin’ and rollin’ for more than an hour. Both had gotten out of bed shortly after midnight to begin the rigorous preflight procedures that were considered an important experiment if not those he personally lived by, win the engagement.

The inquiry would note all of this, in a pointed aside.

But neither Zen, nor Smith for that matter, was about to give up.

Zen cut south on a direct intercept for Hawk Two, determined to get his robot escort back into the furball. He’d used his air brakes to make his last slash, which had cost him considerable flight energy, and as he jinked onto new vector he got a stall warning. He dropped lower, quickly picking up speed, pouring on the gas as he streaked toward the desert floor. The Flighthawk, apparently confused by the twists of its target, was flying toward him at roughly ten o’clock, its own speed down to four hundred knots. Zen told the Flighthawk computer to plot a fresh nose-on-nose intercept with Smith, who by now had turned back around and had the stops out in pursuit. The plan was simple, a slight variation of the one he’d originally intended – the Flighthawk would force Knife to break; Zen would come back around and nail him from the rear.

Then he’d go home. He was bingo fuel.

“I’m coming for you, Zen,” gloated Smith.

“Hawk One, cannon,” Zen commanded.

“Not locked,” replied the computer, voice mode duplicating the visual indicator. “Outside range.”

They were at six hundred feet indicated, descending at a very slight angle. Smith was right on his tail, almost in range.

“Extreme range. Cannon.” commanded Zen.

“Not locked,” answered the computer. “Outside range.”

“Time to range,” said Zen.

“Five seconds,” said the computer.

Three too many. Zen twinged the rudder, hoping Smith would think he was planning a sharp cut. Then he held steady.

Knife bought it, but only for a second. Zen could practically feel his bad breath on his neck.

“I’m coming,” hissed Knife.

The Flighthawk bar went green.

“Fire!’ screamed Zen.

As the Flighthawk fired, Knife broke downward. The move – dangerous as well as brilliant, since they were now only five hundred feet over the desert floor – caught Zen by surprise. Zen started to pull up, then realized Knife had simply yo-yoed beneath him and was about to nail his belly. Stockard shoved the F-15 into a hard right turn. As he did, he gave the Flighthawk a command to break off its attack.

In the next second, a shudder ran through Zen’s body, something he’d never felt before. It was like a tickle from inside, starting in the middle of his spine and flashing like lightning into every muscle. His hands and feet went cold, his toes froze. The steady roar of the big Pratt & Whitneys behind Zen stopped.

The sensation lasted a bare millionth of a second. It was followed by a hard slam and unbearably loud screech, then silence.

The Flighthawk had sheared through the wing of Zen’s plane.

By the time the SiCS bleeped with the hit, Knife had pulled the plane onto its back, rolled leve, and was trying desperately to regain altitude and forward airspeed. For a moment, he lost track of everything – his target, the Flighthawk, even the ground and the sky. Blood rushed furiously around his brain, its flow distorted by the centrifugal forces of his hard-stick maneuvers. For a second or two, Knife flew on instinct alone, his arms and legs sorting what his mind could not. They got the plane stable, kept it in the air, even pushed his eyes where they belonged.

Okay, he heard himself, say. Okay. I nailed him.

The fuzz cleared and he was back in control, banking and climbing. Something big was tumbling across the sky above him. Gray foam seemed to shoot from its sides.

It took Knife nearly three full seconds to realize it was Stockard’s plane. Somehow he’d lost control and was cartwheeling across the sky.

There was no way to hold the plane. It defied gravity and every known law of Newtonian physics, moving in four directions at once, backward and forward, up and down.

Then everything stopped, time as well as the plane. It seemed to Zen that he could pop the canopy, undo his restraints, and step out. It seemed to Zen that he could stand on the seat and walk over the fuselage and look down at the sheared wing. He’d crouch and shake his head. straightening with a grunt, he’d walk to the other wing and step off. It seemed to Zen he would trot down into the desert, running at an easy pace across the test range, back to his bunk at Dreamland.

Just when he decided he would do that, things began moving again, spinning with the force of a tornado. Zen’s eyes fell to the yellow eject handles next to the seat. He realized he was too low and moving too fast to eject; the plane was tumbling and there was no way he was getting out alive. At best, he’d go out sideways and the chute wouldn’t open and with his luck he’d fly though Smith’s wing, though that would serve the SOB right.

His arms were paralyzed and he couldn’t move anyway, and Zen took a breath and closed his eyes, ready to die.

Then were was a fierce wind around him and he realized he’d already yanked the handles.

One year later …

Dreamland

7 October 1996, 1930

In the pink light of the late fall sunset, the desert complex looked abandoned. Four large shedlike hangars stood off to the right, beyond the long, wide concrete runway that Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh ‘Dog’ Bastian and his F-16 were heading for. A lone Humvee sat near the access ramp; another vehicle, a station wagon or SUV was parked next to one of the hangars. There was no tower building, and in fact the only structures that seemed inhabitable were one-story dormlike buildings made of yellowish bricks near the double fence. A few scratch roads, barely visible from the sky, wound across the flat terrain toward an old boneyard, or plant cemetery, at the extreme western end of the fence. Two, perhaps three ramshackle shacks guarded the old metal hulks, whose skeletons glittered red with the reflected light, as if they were still burning with the desire to fly.

If there were more desolate posts on earth, few seemed so ordinary or bland. Dry lake beds spread out before the mountains in the distance, crisscrossed by strange shadows and shapes, mark on the earth that could have been left by a race of desert giants, long since vanquished by the coming of man.

These immense hieroglyphics were actually a clue that the restricted desert and airspace north of Nellis Air Force base in Nevada was special indeed. For the shadows were manmade concoctions designed to confuse optical satellites orbiting above. Despite appearances, the base at the corner of Groom Lake was one of the most secure on the planet. Colonel Bastian’s presence was being monitored not only by three different ground radars, but by the two AWACS planes flying circuits around the restricted air corridors. And while nothing much might be happening on the surface of the desert, the bunkers and laboratories below were teeming with enough activity to shame a dozen ant colonies. There was indeed an air traffic control facility; it was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, including a brand-new three-dimensional rendering system that projected Bastian’s F-16 in a holographic display for the controller. The high-tech ‘tower’ was located underground – beneath enough cement to withstand a ten-megaton nuclear blast. And so was the facility it connected to, with suites of some of the most sophisticated aeronautical and electronics research labs in the country. For Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh Bastian was approaching the Air Force High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, otherwise known as HAWC or, more colloquially, ‘Dreamland.’ The four cavernous hangars – and the facilities connected by special elevators beneath them – contained some of the most advanced aircraft and weapons imaginable.

And a few that were unimaginable.

“Dream Tower, this is DCAF Flight One,” said Bastian after keying Dreamland’s frequency on his F-16 radio.

“DCAF Flight One, squawk 2351 and ident,” responded the tower, asking the colonel to prod the electronic identifying equipment aboard his plane. Even though the controller’s sophisticated equipment had already independently ID’d the plane, Bastian moved quickly to comply; failing to do so could result in a no-question-asked shoot-down by one of the MIM-23 I-HAWK batteries covered by desert camo netting just to the west of the base.

The controller did not verbally acknowledge the ID. Instead, he asked Bastian to give his security clearance.

“Diamond-diamond-black,” replied the colonel.

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir,” replied the controller finally. “Welcome to Dreamland, Colonel Bastian. We, uh, weren’t expecting you today or in an F-16, sir.”

“I assume you’re not asking me to change planes,” Bastian snapped. He had already begun to line up for is final approach, although technically he had not yet received clearance.

“Sir, nom, sir,” said the flustered controller, who immediately cleared Dreamland’s new commander for a landing on the main runway. He added in a final aside that the weather was ‘desert fine.’

The Block 1 F-16A Viper or Fighting Falcon Bastian flew was an old soldier. Dating from the very first production run of the versatile ‘light’ fighter series, the plane had been scheduled to be ‘surplused’ under the latest round of Pentagon budget slashings. Dog had managed to wangle it as a pilot-proficiency craft for his new command. It was his first victory over the bean counters; he hoped to hell it wouldn’t be his last.

The fighter chirped its wheels appreciatively as Dog touched down. A row of lights sprang to life from the tarmac in front of him as the plane trundled toward the access ramp; the lights blinked yellow, helping to guide him toward Hangar Four, which housed transport and auxiliary craft assigned to the base. All of these functions were being performed by a brand-new Automated Airport Assistance computer being tested by the HAWC wizards. When perfected, the system would be able to do much more then turn on a few lights and open some doors. With minimal human assistance. AAA and its Series S IBM mainframe would be able to run routine maintenance inspections after every flight, scanning physical flight surfaces as well as avionics equipment. The system would automate maintenance procedures and, probably in the not-too-distant future, accomplish some of the work itself. The engineers envisioned a day when combat-ready versions of AAA would do the work of a hundred or more maintenance pukes, keeping a squadron in the air around the clock.

Dog wasn’t necessarily sure he’d want to see that day. Not that he didn’t want the Air Force to get maximum use of its planes and people – ‘bang for the buck’ was the order of the day. But in his opinion, machines could only do so much work. Taking away human error and inefficiency also meant taking away human judgement and creativity. To his way of thinking judgement and creativity were what made the Air Force – any organization really – work.

As he approached the hangar, a regular welcome-wagon parade came out to join the half-dozen ground crewmen waiting for him: A trio of black security Hummers zipped out from behind Hangar One. Combat-dressed Air Force Special Operations troops poured out of the modern-day jeeps, M-16A3 laser-dot-targeted rifles in their paws.

A good sign, Dog thought to himself – it meant Captain Danny Freah had gotten to the base ahead of schedule.

Freah’s sourpuss face was the first to greet him when he climbed down the ladder.

“Colonel, welcome to Dreamland.” The captain snapped off an impressive salute. Dog had known him for a little more than a year; in all that time, he’d never seen the twenty-three-year-old African American smile.

He liked that.

“Captain.” Dog gave the detail a quick once-over, nodding appreciatively. “We’ll be having a meeting for all officers and senior NCOs as soon as I’m squared away here. Set that up for me, will you, Danny? Let’s say thirty minutes. My office.”

“Excuse me, Colonel,” said a civilian, walking slowly from the hangar. His blue shirt was open at the collar, and while his blond hair was cropped military-style, he wore a ting gold-post earring in his left ear. “You’ll never fit that many people in your office.”

“And you’re who?”

“I’m Dr. Rubeo, senior scientist.” Rubeo heaved his shoulders back like a skinny cock preening before a fight. His oversized nose dominated his bony face; though at least six-two, he looked to weigh maybe 150 pounds.

“And what do you suggest, Doctor?”

“Frankly, I would suggest you postpone you meeting until tomorrow,” said Rubeo. “Assuming it’s necessary.”

Dog pitched his arms onto his hips. “Unacceptable.”

“Colonel, let me suggest Conference Room Two,” said Freah.

Dog locked eyes with Rubeo, then slowly turned to Freah and nodded.

“You’ll be looking for Major Thomas, sir,” Danny added. “I can take you over to him myself.”

“Very good,” said Dog.

“Life support this way, sir,” said a young staff sergeant, indicating where he could leave his flight gear. The sergeant pointed toward the F-16’s large travel pod, lashed to the side of the fuselage. “We’ll get your bags.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Bastian, starting toward the hangar.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” Rubeo said the word ‘colonel’ as if it belonged to a foreign language.

“Yes?”

“You want staff at the meeting as well?

“I want all senior scientists there, yes,” said Dog, snapping each word from his mouth. “I believe that would include staff.”

“I don’t know about that. Most aren’t even on the base at this hour. They could be –”

“Thirty minutes,” said Dog, setting off to get out of his speed suit.

Danny Freah had first met Lieutenant Colonel Bastian during the planning session for a classified mission in Bosnia. Freah, then a lieutenant, had been tapped to help rescue a high-ranking Serbian defector, one of the Yugoslavian generals responsible for military planning during the Bosnia ethnic war. As originally drawn up. Freah’s job was minor; he was heading a security team on the second helo in the backup flight. But the primary helicopters had to be scrapped, and by the time the backups arrived at the pickup zone the insertion team was taking heavy fire. Freah and his men saved the day. Danny hoisted the wounded general on hi shoulders, and ran through a minefield with him to the MH-60K Pave Hawk just as the craft lifted off. The exploit had earned Danny a promotion and the right to wear a fancy medal on his dress uniform. It also got him assigned to the Pentagon, where he’d stayed just long enough to know he never wanted go back there again.

Bastian helped get him transferred into Special Operations – and then pulled some strings to get him out here just a few days ago.

A lot of guys pointed out that ‘Bastian’ sounded like ‘bastards.” A lot of other guys pointed out that the colonel’s nickname – ‘Dog’ – was ‘God’ spelled backward. But in Freah’s opinion, the colonel was just a no-nonsense ballbuster who wanted things done right and fast. More importantly, the colonel had treated him fairly and respectfully from day one.

Though he’d only been at Dreamland for a few days, Freah already knew the base as well as anyone. Showing the colonel into Main Building One – they mockingly called the bland rectangle ‘The Taj’ – he stepped quickly to the retina-scan device that stood in front of the elevator. Two of his men watched silently from a few feet away as the computer beeped clearances.

‘Elevator wont’ descend unless each passenger has gone through the device,” Freah told Bastian. “It’s brand-new. Installed after, uh, their problems.”

Bastian nodded. Like many pilots, Dog was barely average height, though his broad shoulders and squat legs betrayed the fact that he could probably out-bench Freah, who was no slouch himself. The forty-something colonel also ran five miles every morning, usually in just under thirty minutes.

The elevator arrived with a slow, pained hiss. It had never been exactly fast, but the addition of the security equipment made it excruciatingly slow. Having used the retina scan to identify them, the security system now reconfirmed its initial decision with an elaborate sensor array that measured fifteen physical attributes, from height to heartbeat. Any parameter that was out of line with recorded norms would cause an alert; the equipment was so sensitive that personnel were regularly briefed not to drink more than their usual allotment of coffee in the morning, for fear of pushing their heartbeat too high. In theory, the gear was supposed to make it impossible for an impostor to infiltrate the base. Freah was skeptical, to say the least.

“This thing taking us down, or what?” asked Bastian as they waited for the doors to close.

“Sorry, Colonel. The procedure takes a while.”

Bastian frowned as Freah explained how the device worked.

“We’ll have to find something better,” said Bastian as the doors finally closed. “With the amount of time this takes, people will be looking for shortcuts.”

“Yes, sir,” said Freah. He smiled – he had come to the same conclusion.

They had barely started downward when Bastian reached over to the panel and pulled out the stop button. The car halted immediately.

“How’s morale here, Danny?” asked the colonel.

“Colonel, I’ve only been here three days,” said Freah.

He could tell from the way Bastian pursed his lips that wasn’t going to do.

“To be honest, I’d say they’re waiting to be nuked or closed down. They’d probably prefer to be nuked.”

Bastian nodded. He might have wanted more, but Freah had nothing more to add. He honestly couldn’t blame the men and women assigned here for feeling so dejected. While the scientists were a bit flaky, by and large everyone at Dreamland ranked in the top percentiles of intelligence and ability. They were the elite, charged with an elite mission – take cutting-edge ideas and turn them into usable hardware. But in the last few months, they’d seen their ability, work, and even loyalties questioned. A spy had been discovered in one of Dreamland’s top projects.

They spy hadn’t been just anyone. He’d been the top pilot on the top project at Dreamland: the XF-34A DreamStar net-generation interceptor and flight-control system. He’d stolen the plane, doing irreparable damage to the program and the careers of maybe a hundred people, including the three-star general who had run the plane. As if the scandal and investigations weren’t enough, the budget cutters’ ax had arbitrarily slashed Dreamland’s funds so severely even toilet paper was in short supply. And things were bound to get worse. Rumor had it that Bastian had been tasked with slicing Dreamland’s budget even further – and ultimately closing it down.

But it wasn’t Freah’s job to complain, nor was it his way. And while he’d actually majored in math for a while as a college undergraduate, he’d just as soon let someone else put the numbers in a row. So he merely stood at attention, waiting for his boss to reset the elevator.

“Hal Briggs says hello,” Bastian told him when he finally pushed the button. “I saw him in Washington last week.”

Freah nodded. Briggs had headed security at Dreamland until the spy scandal. It was an ironic twist. Briggs had mentored his career, and Freah felt more than a little awkward succeeding him.

Typical Briggs: He’d found out about the offer somehow and immediately called Freah to urge him to grab it. “Even if they close the base,” Briggs had told him. “it’s a plum assignment. Go for it.”

Briggs had somehow landed on his feet after the DreamStar debacle, getting an assignment so classified he couldn’t even hint about it. They kept in fairly constant touch – especially during football season, when they traded weekly and sometimes daily predictions about games. Briggs had sent him a secure e-mail message about Bastian just yesterday, detailing an account he’d heard from someone in Washington about how many arms Bastian had had to break to get his personal ‘pilot-check’ F-16. It was thanks to that message that Freah was ready for the colonel’s early arrival.

“The major’s office will be this way,” Freah told them as the elevator stopped on Underground Level One, which was devoted to administration and support. “I’ll take you there, and then alert people about the meeting. Major’s a nice guy, but as you probably know, strictly a caretaker. He was about the only one left standing after the scandal and political BS, outside of the pilots and scientists.”

“Yes,” said Dog, stepping out.

“I expect a few of you have heard of me. I’m a pilot by avocation. A zipper suit. That means I don’t accept no for an answer. I have an engineering background, but I don’t pretend to be as scientifically adept as any of you. Frankly, that’s not my job.”

Dog took a step away from the podium, pausing for a moment to let his words sink in. Nearly two hundred men and women had crammed into the bowl-shaped lecture hall. Most had been either just going off duty or already at home, which in some cases meant Las Vegas, some miles to the southwest. A few looked like they had been sleeping. There were sharp divisions in the crowd, and not just between civilians and military. Air Force officers who had strictly administrative functions at the base were front-row-center. Two knots of senior noncoms filled the flanks, wearing respectful though perhaps slightly skeptical expressions. The scientists filled most of the middle and back rows; their eyes betrayed a ‘now-what’ attitude. That sentiment was common too among the senior officers standing along the back row. Unlike the civilians near them, they stood ramrod-straight – though Dog suspected this was more because they didn’t want to touch their neighbors than out of any respect toward him.

And then there were the pilots, sitting in the two rows nearest the door, barely concealing smirks, each undoubtedly teeming with wisecracks.

Dog gave them his most severe frown before continuing.

“You’ve taken a lot of shit here in the pas six or seven months,” he said. “I know all about Maraklow – or Captain James, as he was calling himself.” Dog made sure to spit out the name of the traitor, who had wreaked so much havoc during his so-called Day of the Cheetah. “I’m not going to belabor the point. You’ve all had to put up with enough BS on that account. Dreamland is in trouble. You know it. I know it. people are talking about closing it down. Important people, including Congress. And including the President.”

The requisite jeers followed. Dog let them get out of their system for a moment before putting his hand up.

“I can tell you right now, that’s not going to happen.”

The jeers turned to silence, and then something deeper, as if his words had created a black hole in the room, as if they had sucked every sound and every potential for sound away.

“I’m here to kick some ass,” Bastian said quickly. “And I’m going to put Dreamland back at the top of the agenda, anyone who doesn’t want to be part of that, leave now.” He waited a beat, then continued. “Good. At 0600 hours tomorrow, we’ll start mission-orientation flights. That means everybody – engineers, scientists, security, secretaries – hell, everybody, even the cleaning people – every last person on this base is going aboard an aircraft to see just exactly what the hell it is we do.”

Dog ignored the murmurs of approval from the staff people and turned to Major Thomas, who had been acting as base director of operations until his arrival. “Major Thomas will work with whoever needs to be worked with to make it go off smoothly.”

Thomas looked at him as if he’d just declared war on Canada. But Dog wasn’t about to get into a discussion.

“Dismissed,” he said, waving his hand. “I’ll see you on the tarmac in the morning.”

Dog hadn’t actually expected applause, but he took it in stride. The surprising thing was that it seemed to have started with the NCOs. He buttoned his mouth tight about a grin, gesturing to Thomas so he could explain what he had in mind while people started to file out of the room.

“No offense, Colonel,” said Thomas, whose forehead was dotted by beads of sweat, “but I would have appreciated, uh, maybe a heads-up?’

“You just got it,” Dog told him. Assuming Dreamland survived, Dog intended on picking his own staff and Thomas wasn’t going to make the cut. Still, he meant him no ill will. “There’s no problem with arranging flights, is there?” he said, trying to modulate his voice into something almost friendly.

“Well, we have to work around the spy satellites. And the pilots aren’t going to like it,” sputtered Thomas.

“I’ll take care of the pilots,” said Dog. He smiled. “I speak their language.”

“Yes, sir. But, uh, is it worth it? If we get the order to, uh, to, uh –”

“Abandon ship?” suggested Dog.

“Well, uh, no, I think they’ll keep us open. I mean, there’s so much invested here it would be foolish, but, uh –”

“I didn’t come here to mothball Dreamland, Major. Yes, I’m aware that I’m replacing a three-star general. The political implications are not entirely lost on me,” added Dog in his most severe voice. The matter was more than merely one of prestige, since in effect it demoted Dreamland far down the command chain. “However, we will carry on. Maybe they’ll even promote me,” he added wryly.

“I’m sure, uh, yes, sir,” said Thomas, taking a step backward.

“Colonel, can I have a word?”

Dog couldn’t immediately place the voice, or the face that went with it.

“Mack Smith.” A tallish major grabbed his hand and began pumping. “You might remember me from the Gulf, Colonel. I was just a captain back then, fly CAP while you were at the Black Hole. A lot of guys call me Knife.”

“Mack, of course. How the hell are you?” Dog mimicked the pilot’s aw-shucks routine, trying to put the name and face together.

Chapter Two 2

“First Tactical Wing,” said Smith.

“Smith. Knife. You bagged a MiG,” said Dog, suddenly putting the name – and deed – to the face.

“Actually two,” said Smith. “Glad to have you with us. I heard you were coming in tomorrow.”

“I was restless.”

Smith gave him a puckish grin. “About those, what are we calling them, morale-booster flights?”

“Mission-orientation flights.” Dog grinned wider than Smith had. “Don’t make anybody throw up when you put them in the backseat.”

Smith lost his grin, but only for a second. “I’m lead pilot on the F-119 project, Colonel, the Joint Strke Fighter. I’ve had that assignment since DreamStar was canceled.”

“And?” Dog let just the hint of impatience creep into his voice. He remembered Smith pretty well now. He was a great pilot. And he had bagged two planes – except that the second was initially listed as unconfirmed, due to some problem on the AWACS covering the area. Smith had raised a fuss about getting credit, bypassing his squadron commander and complaining to Centcom about it as soon as he heard the kill was in doubt.

“The, uh, we have the prototype,” Smith continued, growing less sure of himself. “The F-119. I don’t know if you’re up to speed on it yet, Dog.”

If Dog was up to speed on anything, it was the F-119. And while ordinarily he didn’t mind another pilot using his handle, something about the way Smith said it bothered him.

“I realize it’s a one-seater,” said Bastian. “So unless you’re planning on strapping someone on the wing, Knife, I think we can leave it in the barn for these missions.” He paused just long enough to let Smith think he had wormed his way out of the morale flights. “But your combat record shows you’re the best Eagle pilot – by – far – on the base. So obviously you ought to be the first one off the flight line. Hell, I insist on it. you’re top man; you get the most seat time. I believe there are two F-15s here. You have one all day. Move up the starting time to 0500.”

Bastian started to step away from Smith when a bony hand grabbed his arm. He turned to see Rubeo, the scientist he’d met outside earlier.

“Colonel, do you really feel these airplane rides are necessary?” asked Rubeo.

Before Dog could reply, a squeaky voice piped up behind the scientist.

“Hell, I think it’s blastoff idea. About time the enlisteds got into the game.”

Dog peered around Rubeo – it wasn’t exactly difficult – and smiled at Chief Master Sergeant Terence “Ax” Gibbs.

“Hey, Graybeard,” he said to the burly, gray-haired sergeant, who had adopted the falsetto to mock the scientist.

Not that Dog officially approved of that sort of thing.

“Colonel, what too you?” said the sergeant. “I’ve been here since lunchtime.”

“Then why weren’t you on the runway waiting?” Dog asked.

“Priorities, sir. Priorities.” If regulations allowed beards, Ax would look like Santa Claus after a year’s worth of Nautilus sessions. He’d served in various capacities with Dog over the past decade on a dozen commands. The colonel had asked him to come to Dreamland as his senior NCO; there was no one better at slicing red tape and tending to things that needed tending.

“Great speech, sir,” said Ax, elbowing Rubeo out of the way. “One of your best. Morale-boosting, us against the world, we’re all in it together. Nine on a ten scale.”

“Only nine?”

“You haven’t had supper, I’d bet.” Ax winked at him. “Sandwich waiting for you in your office.”

“You’re going to make somebody a fine wife someday, Ax.” Dog raised his eyes to scan the rest of the room. Smith and Rubeo had decided to retreat. There were only a few people left in the small auditorium. Two lieutenants and a captain, holdovers from the previous commander’s staff, were waiting respectfully a few feet away. Everyone else seemed to have someplace else to go.

Just as well.

“Every base need a good wife,” said Ax. “Of course, we may be put out of business any minute. And if we’re not, there are half a dozen people with shiny stars on their shoulders who want your job. I’ve had three offers already.”

“That’s all?” Dog took a step toward the waiting officers, but Ax stopped him with a subtle raise of his hand.

“She’s over there by the door,” said the sergeant, gesturing behind him.

Dog turned and saw her, sandy brown hair that managed to look alluringly feminine despite the military cut, sleeves rolled up to reveal well-sculpted forearms, hands on trim hips, fierce green eyes.

Her mother’s eyes.

The rest – such as the captain’s bars and the hard gaze of a pilot old before her time – might be traced to her father.

Him.

Dog took a deep breath, then began walking toward her. she took a breath as well, obviously tense.

“Breanna,” he said.

“Daddy.”

They winced simultaneously. Dog started to lean toward her, intending to give her a peck on the cheek. He stopped. She leaned up, then stopped. For a moment, neither one spoke. Then they both spoke together.

“I didn’t –”

“I wanted –”

“Tell you what, Captain,” said Dog, “let me go first.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Her eyes met his, and for a moment he almost asked how her mother was. But he’d already decided that was out of bounds.

“You’ll be treated like any other officer on the base,” he told her.

“I would expect nothing less, sir.”

Dog nodded.

“I was hoping to introduce you to Jeff,” she said. he noticed that she lowered her gaze as well as her voice.

Dog didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t approved of the marriage.

He hadn’t disapproved either. He simply hadn’t been consulted.

“But Jeff’s not here yet,” said Breanna. “He wasn’t due until next week. But he’s coming tomorrow.”

“I see.”

Dog frowned, wondering if he shouldn’t have his daughter removed from his command. But that would undoubtedly hurt her career – she was among the Air Force’s top-rated test pilots. And if Dog took pride in the fact that he had never done anything to help her career, he also was loath to hurt it.

Everyone knew she was here when they offered him assignment. Maybe they didn’t think it would be a problem.

More likely, they didn’t think Dreamland would last.

“Orientation flights first thing in the morning?” she said.

“I expect you to be among the first pilots off the tarmac,” he said.

“I intend on it. Wait until you see the Megafortress. Even you’ll be impressed.” Her frown turned into an impish grin, something the typical young flier might betray at the thought of a good joke. Then it morphed into something else, somebody barely familiar – the grin of a three-year-old playing hide-and-seek the day after her birthday. “At some point, I expect to have some personal face time,” she told him. “Have you found an apartment yet?”

“I’ll be on base,” he snapped.

Breanna’s face changed back to stone, eyes focused on a blank spot in the distance.

“I understand, Colonel,” she said. “No favors, please.”

He didn’t want to be mad at her – hell, if she were anyone else, he’d be joking, taking her under his wing. She was one of the future’s bright stars, the kind of officer he wanted working for him. “We’ll have dinner, okay?” he said softly. “Once I’m oriented.”

Either his words were too low or she simply ignored him.

“It was a hell of a speech. We’re pulling for you,” she said, turning away.

“And I’m pulling for you, Bree,” he said.

Dreamland

8 October, 0530

There was no prison like the human body. It clamped bars stronger than titanium steel around your chest, your legs, your head. it held you every waking moment; it mocked you when you slept. If infected time itself, poisoning both past and future.

There was no future for Captain Jeff ‘Zen’ Stockard; there was only now. He sat in his wheelchair, long fingers wrapped stiffly around the spokes of the wheels, hard rubber against his palms. He stared directly, eyes fixed on the closed door of the HH-53 as the big helicopter skirted the fringes of Nellis Air Force Base, rumbling toward Dreamland. The helo’s crew chief sat on a narrow bench seat a few feet away, having given up his attempts at starting a conversation.

Zen hated conversations, especially with strangers. There was always pity in their voices. The only thing worse was conversations with friends. He preferred not to talk at all. He preferred to be left to himself. He wanted …

What he wanted was to be able to walk again. He couldn’t have that, so he didn’t want anything else.

He’d worked tremendously hard the past eleven months – nine actually, since most of the first two were spent mostly under sedation, in and out of operations. He’d built up his arms and upper body. He’d been in reasonably good condition before the accident, but the workout routines were a revelation. Zen welcomed the pain; he drove himself into stinging bite of exhaustion, as if weariness were a physical place. He pushed weights around. He learned to swim with his arms and chest and head. He discovered the different balance of a body that couldn’t use its legs.

The humiliation was the hard part. Needing someone to open a door for him. Needing someone to lift him into the cramped backseat of a van. Needing someone to help him with a thousand things he used to take for granted in the course of a day.

Getting past the humiliation had been his first goal. He hadn’t totally accepted, but he had at least gotten used to it.

Getting back to Dreamland was his next goal. And here he was, seconds from touching down.

It hadn’t been easy. Zen had had to call in every favor, and lean heavily on his family connections besides. He’d had to find a service lawyer who knew the Disability Act and could wrangle and bluff its language into places were it didn’t belong.

Worse – much worse – he’d had to play the pity angle.

His lawyer, an Army captain wounded in Panama, was also in a wheelchair. Louis Whitson wasn’t so much an inspiration as a slap in the face. “The bottom line,” Whitson had said one morning when things looked particularly crappy, “is this: We use whatever we can use. Pity, fear, ignorance, stupidity. If it’s to our advantage, we use it. Bottom line.”

Like almost everything Whitson said, it was useful advice. They found a sympathetic Senator and an important Congressman. And an Air Force general whose brother had been confined to a wheelchair since he was six. They built a case for remaining on active duty. Reed-thin – hell, thinner than air. But with favors and pity, they got him a chance.

Better than that. Brad Elliott, the former commander of Dreamland, was under a cloud. But he still had a lot of influence – and he also had an artificial leg. The general helped twist arms and bend ears for Jeff, who had been one of his ‘boys’ before the accident. Elliott managed to find a way to use his dismissal and the resulting confusion at Dreamland to Jeff’s advantage. Technically, the general pointed out, Zen was still on active-duty roster as a test pilot assigned to the Flighthawk program, which was one of the few Dreamland projects besides the F-119 not suspended in the wake of DreamStar. So technically, that’s where he had to report.

Air-thin.

But now, as the helo pushed through the thin desert air en route to its landing. Zen felt something he hadn’t had the luxury of feeling since his accident: fear. He realized he might not be ready to come back – certainly not here.

He slipped the chair backward against the restraining straps as the Super Jolly Green Giant began banking into its final approach. Earlier HH-53 types had been used as rescue choppers during the Vietnam War. More than likely somebody with a broken spine had been sitting where he was sitting, staring at a door, wondering what he was going to do for the next fifty or sixty years, wondering if he was ready.

Wondering was a sucker’s strategy. Zen fixed his eyes on a bolt in the door handle, then but his teeth together. The helicopter settled downward, the T64-GE-413 Turbosharfts throttling back as the craft touched onto the long, smooth run of concrete. Zen kept his eyes pasted ahead as the crew chief kicked open the door; he waited without moving a muscle until the restraints on his wheelchair were removed. As the last belt slipped off, he pushed forward, rolling to the open portal.

There wasn’t a ramp. His choices were to banzai it, or wait for the crew chief and copilot to lift him down.

He waited.

“Here you go, Major,” said the copilot, a paunchy six-footer who strained as he took hold of the side of the chair.

Zen grunted. The sun threw its yellow arms from over the nearby mountains, greeting him. It would soon get warmed, but at the moment it was barely fifty. Zen felt cold despite his thick jacket as they released him onto the tarmac.

Two members of the security detail – specially assigned Air Force Spec Ops troops with rifles ready – stood a few yards away, near the entrance to Hangar One. There had been a few changes in his absence; he thought two of the hangars had been painted. Otherwise, it seemed very familiar.

Different, but familiar.

Zen waited as the crew chief retrieved his briefcase and bag from the helo.

“Sergeant. Put the bags on my la, please.”

The sergeant looked down at him.

Pity. The worse thing.

“The guards wont’ let you past them,” Zen said. “Let’s go.”

“Sir –” The sergeant seemed to lose his voice for a moment. “Yes, sir,” he said finally. He placed the bag and briefcase on Zen’s legs, then stood back and snapped off a respectful and well-intentioned salute.

Zen was only vaguely aware of it. He’d turned his attention back to the guards, who had been joined by a third person just emerging from the hangar.

It was his wife.

She knew he’d come early, try to sneak in without any fanfare. He’d been vague on the telephone, and that was a dead giveaway.

Breanna watched Jeff take the bags and wheel his way toward the security men. For a moment she twinged with anger that the crewman hadn’t carried the bags for her husband; then she realized Jeff had probably told him not to.

The Air Force security sergeants snapped to attention before challenging him. She’d stopped to talk to them earlier, warning them that Jeff would arriving soon. She’d brought them coffee, then asked for a favor – treat him no differently than anyone. In fact, If they could be a little surly, that would be better.

He hated people treating him like a cripple. He’d told her that the very first night, when he regained consciousness – used that ugly word, ‘cripple,’ before he even knew he was one.

It hurt to watch him wheel across the open cement. It made her want to cry, but that was the last, the very last thing she could do. it would be kicking him in the face.

Breanna forced her arms to hang down at her sides. She could do this. She had to do this.

“Sir, your orders, sir,” snapped one of the two sergeants, his voice cold enough to chill the heart of a Russian paratrooper.

Zen scowled. The look was so familiar Breanna felt her heart snap. He placed the bag with his clothes and other personal items on the ground next to him. He undid the clasp on his leather attaché – and old gift from his mother before she died – and slipped out a small sheaf of paperwork. The routine was, of course, not necessary, since the captain was well known and in any event would soon have his identity checked at the retina scanner at their station inside the hangar. His status and orders, like those of everyone at Dreamland, were recorded on the security computer. But it was a good touch.

The first sergeant inspected the documents while the other sergeant remained watchful. “Sir, I have to ask you if you are armed,” said the man finally, holding the papers in his hand.

Before, Jeff would have smiled wryly and said something like, “The girls all think so.”

Now he stared straight ahead, his words snapping taut in the chilly morning breeze. “My personal weapon is in storage. I am presently unarmed.”

The guard handed him back his orders.

“Your bags, sir. I have to ask that you present them for inspection.”

Zen handed them over.

“If you follow us, Major, we can complete the protocol inside. We require a retina scan. It’s a new procedure.”

The men turned smartly and began striding toward the hangar. One of them gave Breanna the faintest wink.

“Jeff.” The word slipped out faintly as he drew parallel to her. He didn’t answer; she put her hand gently on his upper arm, stopping him.

“I’m okay, Bree.”

“I know that, she said.

She stepped back and watched him wheel into the hangar. An F-15C Eagle – coincidentally the one Mack Smith had been flying when the accident happened – sat at the far end. Jeff kept his head pointed straight ahead, following the two sergeants to the computerized security device.

Breanna held her breath as Greasy Hands – Chief Master Sergeant Clyde Parsons, the senior NCO in charge of the maintenance crews – ambled up with a cup of coffee in his fist.

“Yo, Zen. Good to have you back, Major. About goddamn time.”

Jeff snorted.

“Been a slew of changes around here during your R&R. Flighthawks only got back in the air two months ago. Civilian pilot – nice guy, but not for nothin’ his nickname’s ‘Rock.’ ” Greasy Hands offered Jeff the coffee. “Dab a milk. Alzheimer’s hasn’t caught with me yet.”

She couldn’t see Jeff’s face. He didn’t say anything, but did take the coffee. Jeff and Greasy Hands had gotten along particularly well before the accident, the sergeant looking after the pilot like a doting parent.

Parsons caught her gaze. “Megafortress’ll be ready for you in ten shakes, Captain. Just checked with the crew chief.”

“Thank you, sergeant.”

The old geezer smirked. “Better watch out for Major Cheshire. Hear she’s on the rag today.”

Breanna wasn’t exactly sure how to take that; she was rarely sure exactly how to take anything Parson said. though Dreamland’s excellent work teams were a testimony to the first sergeant’s abilities as an organizer and mother hen, Parsons was old school and very uncomfortable with women being in the military. She thought that he was trying to treat her like one of the guys, which probably in his mind was a big honor. His approach to Cheshire – the senior project officer on the EB-52 Megafortress and Breanna’s immediate superior – was very different, stiff to the point of being overly correct.

“Your dad’s sure gonna stir things up,” added Parsons. “He’s a bee-whacker.”

“A bee-whacker?”

“Really likes to whack the old bees’ nest,” explained the sergeant. “Shakes things up. Got all the officers jumpin’, even the pilots.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Bree.

“He’s a butt-kicker,” Parsons told Jeff. His admiration seemed genuine. “You best watch your fanny, Major. Place isn’t going to be the same with him in charge. Now I admired the general – a damn fine man. An excellent officer. But Colonel Bastian, hell, he’s a bee-whacker. Just what we need,” Greasy Hands added, shaking his head and grinning. “I’ve heard stories.”

“So have I,” said Breanna sharply. “Jeff, I have to go get ready for a mission.”

He ignored her. it was pretty much what she expected; pretty much what he’d done in the hospital and all during rehab, after the doctors had told him he’d never walk again.

Not sure what else to do, she turned quickly and started for the Megafortress’s underground bunker.

Colonel Bastian looked up as Ax made his way across the office.

“Cup number two, not quite as strong,” said the sergeant, placing down the coffee mug. “As per request.”

Dog grunted and rubbed his eyes. He’d gotten less than two hours of sleep last night, spending the rest of the time reviewing project notes and trying to correlate some of the reports with the Pentagon data he’d come west with. His desk was littered with folders, printouts, white pads, photocopies, notes, index cards, Post-its, and even a few old-fashioned carbons.

“Sunday Times crossword puzzle in that mess somewhere?”

“Very funny, Ax.”

“You want to run through the day’s agenda yet, Colonel? I figure we wait any longer the day’ll be over and then we’ll be behind.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dog took the coffee and leaned back in the well-padded leather chair. One thing about Ax’s coffee: Even the weak cups were gut-burning strong. And hot – Dog backed his lips off without taking a full sip.

“It’ll cool down,” said the sergeant.

“Thanks for the advice. Well?”

“Okay, let’s see. Number-one priority – hire a secretary. Preferably one who can make coffee.”

“Agreed.”

“Number-two priority, we need some typist, clerks, etc., etc. I can’t be expected to do real work forever, you know.”

Ax folded his arms in front of his chest. He was joking. Dreamland had a full complement of military and civilian clerks, probably more than the ever-efficient Ax needed. But instead of giving himself away with a laugh as he usually did, his expression turned serious.

“You okay, Colonel? Usually, you’re rolling on the floor by now.”

“This is a worse mess than I thought, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.” Ax ran his left hand up behind his neck, scratching an imaginary itch. Gibb’s actual age was a closely guarded military secret, but he gave every impression of being old enough to be Bastian’s father. There were many times, like now, when he reminded Dog of the old man – kinder, without the temper. Maybe smarter, though Bastian’s father had been sharp enough to make admiral and himself elected to Congress.

“Colonel, you’re been in worse messes,” said the sergeant. “It’s just the paper-shuffling’s got you down.”

“Five of the these programs have to go,” said Bastian, pointing to the paper. “Ms. O’Day is calling this morning for my recommendation.”

Deborah O’Day was the National Security Advisor and the reason Bastian was here.

“Eenie, meeney, minee, moe.”

Dog laughed.

“Finally,” said the sergeant. “I was beginning to worry you left your sense of humor back in Washington somewhere.”

Dog smiled and took a sip of the coffee. The problem wasn’t deciding which program should be cut. The problem was that the programs that should be cut were exactly the ones the brass, the White House, and the Congress wouldn’t cut. Worse, by recommending they be cut, all he would succeed in doing was anger people and administer the final coup de grace to Dreamland.

An argument could be made to close the base. The spy scandal aside, in many ways HAWC belonged to an earlier era. Bastian realized that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War meant that big-ticket development projects with almost unlimited budgets were a thing of the past. Without the constant threat of high-tech arms race, Congress would be loath to approve the immense ‘black’ budget lines than had funded Dreamland.

But on the other hand, the end of the Cold War didn’t remove the threats to national security; it just changed what they were. In Bastian’s opinion – and in the opinion of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and the President, as far as he could tell – cutting-edge technology would be even more important in fighting the sort of brushfire wars and terrorist actions America would fact in the twenty-first century. With the future so unpredictably fluid and budget constraints the order of the day, high-tech weapons were going to be a critical force-multiplier. Delta Force was the model of the twenty-first-century Army – a highly trained, extremely mobile group ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The Air Force needed an equivalent. And it needed to multiply its limited resources with the country’s top asset – brainpower. That would be Dreamland’s role, providing cutting-edge technology to deal with a myriad of next-generation crises.

Bastian had written a briefing paper to that effect while working for the NSC under President Bust after the Gulf War. While it had gone largely unnoticed in the Administration at the time, it had attracted the attention of Deborah O’Day, a policy wonk and university professor doing consulting work for the NSC back then, o’’ay had struck up a friendship with Bastian, even having him in to talk to her classes at George Washington University. Her appointment as National Security Advisor by President Lloyd Taylor had surprised a lot of people outside the government, but not Bastian, who realized she was as sharp as anyone in D.C.

Technically, Bastian was a long way down the chain of command from O’Day. But he’d worked for her in D.C. and she had personally pulled strings to get him here.

“Assuming your phone call with O’Day is only its normal marathon length,” said Az, “we can do this today like you wanted. You start seeing your section commanders, one by one, at 0800. Fifteen minutes a pop, that gets you to 1145, with a thirty-minute time-out for Ms. O’Day. Lunch at your desk. Senior scientist, two minutes apiece, you’ll be done by one.”

Dog looked up from his papers. “Two minutes?”

“Just checking to see if you were awake,” said the sergeant. “Fifteen minutes for the eggheads, like everybody else. Brings you to 1545, or maybe 1630. I can’t quite figure out their damn organization chart.”

“That will be fixed by tomorrow,” said Dog. “Each project gets a specific commander, with staff attached. Line officers in charge. This is a working squadron.”

Bastian hadn’t worked out all of the details yet, but his idea was relatively simple and followed the plan he had outlined years before. You got the technology onto the front lines by using it right away. The best way to do that was to slim down your organization. The people who had to use the weapons would be the people running the show.

“I’ll have the paperwork in two batches for you this morning,” said Ax. “Usual routine. And seriously, there are two guys I’d like to bring in to fill out the staff.’

“There’s a personal freeze,” Dog reminded him.

“Oh, that’s no problem.” Ax grinned. He glanced down at the desk. “You want a piece of unsolicited advice, Colonel?”

“No.”

“I’d eighty-six this fancy desk and the bookshelves and the paintings, the whole bit. I mean, if you were a three-star general like the last commander, it would be austere. Hell, simple even. But some Congressman comes wandering in here, he’s going to wonder why your office is fancier than his.”

“No Congressman’s wandering around Dreamland,” said Dog. “But thanks for the advice.”

“Anytime, Colonel. It’s free.”

“And worth every cent.”

Smith punched the two-place F-15E nearly straight up, letting the big warbird feel her oats. The Pratt & Whitneys unleashed nearly sixty thousand pounds of thrust, easily overpowering gravity.

“Eeeeyow!!!!” shouted the major’s backseat rider, a young staff sergeant selected from the engine maintenance shop. His yell of enthusiasm was so loud Smith had to knock the volume on the plane’s interphone circuit.

At five thousand feet, Knife sliced the plane’s right wing in a sharp semicircle, leveling off in an invert that had the sergeant squealing with delight.

“Hot shit! Hot shit!” said the man as Smith brought the Strike Eagle right-side-up. His next comments were lost as Knife pulled a six-g bank and roll, literally spinning the plane on her back before heading off in the other direction.

“I love it! I love it!” said the sergeant when he got his breath back.

Knife grinned in spite of himself. He loved it too. The F-15E was designed as a strike aircraft, a bomber. But she had been developed from the basic F-15 Eagle design, and was still an Eagle at heart – a balls-out hard rocker that could load g’s on her wings like feather and accelerate as easily as a bird hummed a tune.

Rolling through a fresh invert at near-supersonic speed, Knife realized he’d been on the damn F-119 project so long he’d almost forgotten that flying was supposed to be fun. This was why he’d joined the Air Force.

Two weeks before, Major Smith had been offered a slot in a provisional unit were sketchy – according to a friend who was helping put it together, it was going to be a blood-and-guts quick-response unit, a kind of Air Force equivalent of Delta Force. Smith would be Director of Operations for a four-plane F-16 sub-squadron connected with a black operation called Madcap Magician. It had been a while since he’d flown F-16’s, but all in all it sounded promising. When he checked it out through the back channels, however, he got mixed responses. One general whom he trusted a great deal thought it would be an A-1 career ticket to the upper ranks. Another said it was Hot Dog Heaven, a sure way to be shunted off the fast track into a career culvert.

But damn – it was a real live flying gig, and if it was like Delta Force, he’d at least be where the action was. Besides, it seemed obvious that Dreamland was about to be flushed. The previous commander was a three-star general; no way they were going to put a lieutenant colonel in charge if they were intending on keeping HAWC up and running.

And what a colonel. If last night’s self-important rant was any indication, Colonel Bastian – aka ‘God,’ as everyone in the Gulf had called the one-time hotshot pilot turned CentCom strategic planner – had succumbed to serious delusions of grandeur. Knife was willing to concede that Bastian was an okay pilot and a reasonably good thinker; he knew that Dog had helped set up some good mission schemes while working with Black Hole, the central planning unit that ran the Gulf Air War out of a bunker in Riyadh. Bastian had also briefly served as a wing commander in action after the war, again supposedly doing a good job. But Dog’s ego had obviously gotten the better of him since.

Knife had been ninety percent sure he would take the new gig when he slipped into the Eagle this morning. Now he was committed. Good riddance, Dreamland. Good riddance, F-119, chariot of slugs.

Knife yanked the Eagle into another hard turn, leveled off, then reached for the throttle to see if the afterburners would work this early in the morning.

They did. His backseater let out a yelp as the plane threw off her shackles and started to move. The plane bucked for a moment, then seemed to tuck her wings back, sailing through the sky as if she were a schooner gliding across a glass-smooth lake.

“You ever break the sound barrier, Sergeant?” Knife asked as the engines swirled.

“Sir – no!” yelled his passenger.

“Well, now you have,” said Smith. He backed off the engines as they passed the boundary into Test Range K, which he’d been cleared to use as long as he stayed above five thousand feet. The airspace below was reserved because of static tests of an Army electronic-pulse system, due to begin within the half hour.

“See the tank down on the ground< Sergeant?” Knife asked.

“Affirmative, sir. That’s the EMP target. Think it’ll get nuked?”

“Couldn’t tell you. We’re talking Army here.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant with a laugh. “We’re shielded against those pulses, aren’t we?”

“Well, allegedly their weapon defeats standard shielding,” answered Knife, who knew that the test had been conducted about twenty times over the past month – obviously because the device didn’t work. “But, like I say, we’re talking Army.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, snickering again.

“We’ll give it plenty of room,” said Smith, starting to bank.

They’d be using Range K the day Stockard got nailed.

Poor bastard.

Stockard was a good pilot, but he hadn’t been quite good enough. A blink too slow, and it cost him.

Knife curled his hand around his stick and took another turn, a truly hard one this time, briefly touching eight g’s.

“What’d you think of that one?” Knife asked, easing back o the stick. “Sergeant?”

There was no answer.

“Sergeant?”

There was a low moan. Apparently the force of the turn had knocked his passenger unconscious.

Laughing out loud, Knife gunned the plane back toward the runway.

“Can’t disagree, Ms. O’Day. Can’t.” Colonel Bastian picked up his pen and began tracing a series of triangles on his white notepad. He leaned his left elbow against the chair’s armrest, the phone pressed against his ear. The National Security Advisor had just reminded him how important it was to keep Dreamland going.

“Well, then,” said O’Day, “what can we give them to cut?”

Bastian sighed. “I’ve been here a little more than twelve hours.”

“The Joint Chiefs’ recommendation is full closure and shutdown,” said O’Day. “I’m meeting with them in less than an hour. What bones do I throw them?”

“Well, I’d say preliminarily Megafortress, the Achilles laser array, definitely the Nightfighter A-10 upgrade. The Flighthawk U/MFVs, all the crap we’re doing for the Army –”

“Crap?”

“Excuse me. All of the joint-service projects can go.”

“No,” said O’Day firmly. “Those contracts are going to help keep you alive. I’m fairly certain we can keep the Army Secretary on board. They’re gaga over the EM pulse weapon and their smart bullets. And that carbon-boron vest thing, the body-armor project.”

Bastian rolled his eyes. “If we let politics guide weapons development –”

“Oh, cut the crap, Colonel,” snapped O’Day. “Since when hasn’t it? look, the first battle we wage is for survival. We keep Dreamland running, then we move it into the twenty-first century. I’ll take care of the politics,” she added, her tone softening.” Just give me a bottom-line number. We’ll work the details out later.”

“If we could take the money from the F-119 project –”

“Why don’t you just suggest you’d like to sleep with the Speaker’s wife?” snarled O’Day. “That would go over better.”

Chapter Two 4

Dog laughed despite himself. One thing he’d say for O’Day – she could be as irreverent as anyone he knew in the military. She was just very choosy about it.

“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” added O’Day.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Bastian contritely.

“All right, listen, Dog. I have a subcommittee meeting on Somalia and Iran in thirty seconds, so I’m going to have to sign off. Solid numbers by Tuesday.”

The scrambled line snapped clear.

Bastian gave himself a moment to recover, then called to Ax to let his next appointment in.

The sergeant appeared in the doorway. “Bit of a complication, Colonel.”

“What happened, he got tired of waiting?”

“No, sir,” said Ax. “Problem is, he might not get through the door. It’s, uh, Major Stockard, Colonel,” added the sergeant. “he’s in a wheelchair.”

“Stockard’s next?”

“Yes, sir. Projects in alpha order. He’s the senior officer on the Flighthawks.”

Dog stood up. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to this. Even before Stockard’s accident their relationship was at best chilly, at worst nonexistent.

“I suggest Room 103B,” added Ax. “That would be the conference room two doors down the hallway. It had double doors. He’s waiting. You’re backed up three appointments already,” added the sergeant as Bastian got up. Ax pointed to a side door, which opened into a vacant office. “Shortcut, sir.”

As he reached the door, Bastian realized the frame was actually fairly wide, more than enough for a wheelchair. His sergeant had arrange the meeting place to give both men more privacy. Typical Ax. “Thanks, Sergeant.”

“Lunch’ll be waiting.”

Zen rolled back and forth, trying to work off some of his energy, some of his nervousness. He felt like a nugget pilot, moving an F-15 up to the flight line for his first takeoff, jiggling the rudder pedals up and down. You could always tell who was new or at least nervous – the twin rudder whacked back and forth like loose shingles in the wind.

He willed himself to stop. You didn’t want to rip off the enemy to your vulnerabilities.

Everyone was the enemy, including his father-in-law. The fact that Zen greatly respected Bastian – whom he’d met during the Gulf War while liaisoning as an intel officer for his squadron – was an argument only for greater vigilance.

The creak of the side door took him by surprise. Zen sat up stiffly in his chair as Colonel Bastian brushed into the room.

“Major, good morning.” Bastian’s tone gave nothing away; he could have been greeting a Chinese military attaché. He closed the door with a slap and then folded his arms in front of his chest. “It’s been a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re still assigned on the Flighthawk project.” Bastian’s tone was somewhere between a question and a statement.

“Yes, sir.” Stockard resisted the impulse to add something – anything – to the statement. He and his lawer had gone over and over this point. Don’t argue, don’t justify, don’t explain. Just state your assignment and presence as a fact. Anything else will inevitably weaken our position.

Zen’s position. As supportive as his lawyer was, Jeff was in this alone.

“I think we have an unusual situation,” said the colonel.

“The Flighthawks are an unusual project,” said Zen.

“Major, I’m going to spare you the rah-rah bullshit,” said Bastian. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Dreamlands on the chopping block. Even if HAWC survives, at least a dozen projects are going to be killed. everything’s in play. The Flighthawks especially. Playing with robots is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

“Flying with a pair of Flighthawks is like having two wing mates at your beck and call,” said Zen. He was surprised to be talking about the project instead of himself. “We’re just scratching the surface.”

“Nonetheless –”

“Look at what UAVs did on the first day of the Air War in the Gulf,” said Zen. “They were the ones responsible for helping knock out the Iraqi air defenses.”

“You don’t have to tell me what happened on the first day of the Air War,” snapped Bastian.

“Excuse me, Colonel. I know you helped plan the attacks. But I can tell you, as someone who was there too – if we had Flighthawks, the F/A-18 that was splashed in air-to-air on Day One would not have gone down.”

Bastian said nothing. The Navy plane had been knocked down by an Iraqi air-to-air missile, the only air-to-air casualty of the war. Had the Iraqi Air Force been more capable, there would undoubtedly have been many more.

“Colonel, simply using these planes as scouts will double strike effectiveness and survivability,” continued Zen. “They can provide close escort to AWACS and transport types, freeing F-15’s and eventually F-22’s for more important work. Fit them with iron bombs and they can do the job of A-10A Warthogs, close-in ground support on the front lines without anywhere near the human risk. The Flighthawks are the future. I wouldn’t have come back here if I didn’t believe it.”

“That’s not the issue,” said Bastian dryly.

“If you want to cut something, cut the damn JSP. It’s a flying camel. Hell, the Warthogs go faster. You could build two hundred of them for the price of one F-119.”

The comparison to the A-10 was an exaggeration – but only just. Bastian scowled, but said nothing.

“The Flighthawks need work. I’m proof of that,” said Zen. “But in five years, maybe three, they’ll own the skies. I guarantee.”

“Robots will never outfly men,” said Bastian.

They glared at each other.

“We’re reorganizing our command structure,” said the colonel finally, still holding Zen’s eyes with his stare. “Each project will be its own flight. Pilots are going to be must more active and important in the command structure. It’ll be a lot like a combat squadron.”

“You mean I’m going to be in charge of the Flighthawks?”

“It means the senior pilot of officer will be responsible, yes. Everyone is going to be involved. Everybody responsible. No glamour-boy hotshots. No complicated chain of command where everyone can point finger – one project, one assignment.”

Zen nodded. “And if the Flighthawks get canceled?”

“We’ll deal with that when the times comes. I know where you stand.” Bastian winced, but plunged on. “And you know where stand. That’s the way I run things.”

“That’s a good way to run things,” said Zen.

“As for your relationship – marriage – to my daughter,” added the colonel, his voice regaining its formal tone, “that’s not my concern. And it would never be. You’re no different than any other officer on this base.”

“Fair enough.”

Zen began wheeling himself backward, swinging around to pull open the door.

The colonel beat him to it. Zen felt his face flush red as Bastian reached past him and opened it for him. He bit hit teeth together and rolled on.

Fort Two, move to Line One, await further instructions.”

Breanna acknowledged the controller’s transmission. She leaned against the left window of the big Megafortress, peering down past the plane’s drooping SST-style nose to give her crew chief the thumbs-up. Then she eased back in her seat, adjusted the headset’s microphone, and eased the big jet forward from its parking spot in front of the hangar entrance. One of three Megafortress test beds currently active at Dreamland, Fort Two had started life as a B-52H, the last production model of the Stratofortres. The enhanced B-52, also known as the EB-52, was a pet project of General Brad Elliott, the past commander of Dreamland, who envisioned it as a relatively low-cost, high-capability twenty-first-century flying battleship. The first Megafortress had become famous as ‘Old Dog,’ aka Dog Zero-One Fox; it had at least arguably prevented World War III with a still highly classified preemptive strike on a Soviet laser system some years before. While various EB-52 scenarios had been proposed as production models, the Megafortress concept had never quite made it to permanent funding, losing out to ‘sexier’ – and much more expensive – projects like the B-2.

Each of the three Megafortress currently flying at Dreamland was configured differently, with different power plants, avionics, and weapons systems. Three more B-52’s, including one older G model, were being converted. All made use of the same basic skeleton: a carbon-titanium hull and remodeled bismaleimide (BMI) resin wings. All were considerably more capable than the admittedly versatile and robust design Boeing engineers had drawn up nearly fifty years before.

Breanna nudged her rudder pedals, gently pushing the plane to the right. Fort Two’s controls were ‘fly-by-wire’; instead of hydraulics, the control surfaces were moved by small motors directed by electronic impulses in the pedals and yoke. The system was still being perfected, and a hydraulic backup system could be selected by throwing a manual override switch near the throttle panel. Many of Fort Two’s recent experiments involved the control system’s interface with an advanced flight computer capable of flying the plane on its own through a complicated mission set. The engineers were also debating whether traditional controls – such as the yoke that looked like a sawed-off steering wheel – or more contemporary ones like fighter-jet sidesticks were better. Fort Two’s control set aimed to meld some of the originals with new technology; when Breanna pulled back on the yoke, it would at least theoretically feel as if she were pulling back on the wheel of a stock model H.

Besides the control systems, Fort Two was testing uprated P&W JT9D-&Rxx2 engines. The power plants allowed for greater speed and less fuel consumption; their increased thrust allowed the designers to replace B-52’s stock eight power plants with four. That took a bit of getting used to; the new engine set was not only more powerful but considerably quieter. If the Xs – as the engines were called – were adopted as standard, the EB-52 would probably rate as the quietest warplane ever.

“Electric panel one, green,” said the copilot, Captain Chris Ferris. Ferris proceeded through the preflight checklist projected on one of his three multi-use displays. “Two, green. Three, green. Four, green. Crosswind crab.”

“Zeroed,” said Breanna, reading her own tube. The computer was doing the work she would have done in testing and adjusting the equipment in a stock B-52.

“We have pitot heat. We have instruments in the green. We have computers making pilot and copilot completely redundant,” joked Chris.

“As it should be,” groused Dr. Ray Rubeo, one of their two flight deck ‘tourists.’ In rebuilding Fort Two, the forward deck had been stretched and revamped, allowing two large stations to be added immediately aft of the pilot and copilot seats. The walls on either side of the cockpit near the stations featured double banks of video monitors tied to test and monitoring equipment. Rubeo was sitting at station one; Steven McCormick, a somewhat reserved computer scientist, sat at the other.

Chris laughed, continuing through the list of systems that were ready to go. Breanna told the two passengers on the radar-navigation deck below – Greasy Hands and a staff sergeant from the motor pool – that they were proceeding to the runway.

“We’ll take off, do a low-slow circuit of the range, then we’ll have some fun,” she told them over the interphone system, which could be piped to everyone on the plane.

Once manpower-intensive functions, radar and navigation were now handled completely by Fort Two’s prototype flight computer; even the weapons operators, whose ‘office’ was located behind the flight deck just forward of the wing area, were redundant. On Fort Two their panels had been replaced by banks of computers and test circuitry. Had the Megafortress been an active warplane, it would have required only pilot and copilot to complete its mission, though a defensive weapons specialist and a navigator would be preferred additions until all the flight computer systems were at production status. In some ways, Breanna liked the old B-52’s better, with its six-member overworked crews. But this was no time for nostalgia; the tower gave her final clearance as she slipped up to the end of the runway.

“Takeoff power,” she told the flight computer. She glanced at the four-pronged throttle bar, which replaced the multi-fingered mechanical control. Responding to her voice command, the throttle slid into position, thrust precisely and automatically calculated to match not only the plane’s present weight, but the runway and weather conditions. The Xs rumbled on the wings, ready to boogie.

“Noisy things,” groused Rubeo.

“Flaps. Optimum takeoff configuration. Go,” Breanna told the computer as she manually released the brakes. They started down the runway, quickly picking up speed.

“Seventy knots, eighty,” read the copilot.

They wings strained at the top of the plane, anxious to lift her into the sky. Breanna nudged her left rudder pedal ever so slightly, keeping the plane centered on the runway as she pulled back on the stick. Depending on its weight and configuration, a standard B-52 might get off the ground in three thousand meters or so; Fort Two lifted off cleanly at just over a thousand, not even breaking a sweat.

“Gear up,” Bree told the computer.

“Gear up and safe,” reported the computer as the giant wheel assemblies folded into the undercarriage.

Breanna checked her altitude, speed, and bearing in the HUD screen. The control system responded instantly to the optical-servers in the yoke housing as she entered a right bank. Whether flying at shoelace level or over fifty thousand feet, dodging enemy fighters or out for a pleasure cruise, the flight computer automatically trimmed the plane’s control surfaces for the most efficient flight regime, essentially reading the pilot’s mind – or rather, her hands and feet.

Breanna glanced back at Rubeo as the plane climbed easily upward. “Okay, Doc, change places with Chris.”

“Why?”

“Come on. You can’t see anything from there.”

“You’re not afraid of flying, are you, Ray?” asked the copilot.

Rubeo narrowed his eyes into a glare; he hated to be called Ray.

“Any monkey can fly,” he said as Chris eased out from behind the copilot’s station. Still, Rubeo hesitated, and Breanna realized that Chris was right. Rubeo was the senior scientist at the base, personally responsible for nearly fifty breakthroughs so secret they couldn’t be openly patented. His work on logic chips was critical not only for their flight computers, but for the actuators used by the Megafortress’s control surfaces. But it turned out he was petrified of flying.

Not that he would admit it. He frowned deeply as he sat down next to her.

“You might want to hitch up the restraints,” she suggested.

“I intend on it,” said Rubeo.

She noticed a definite greet tint around his gills. Breanna hit the mike button, switching on the intercom circuit.

“Good morning, and thank you for choosing Dreamland Airlines,” she said. “I’m Captain Breanna ‘Rap for Rapture’ Stockard and I’ll be your tour guide this morning. I have to ask you to remain in your restraints at all times, and please, keep your hands inside the cars. We will be moving at close to the speed of sound, and I’d hate for anyone to lose their jewelry.”

“Yuk, yuk,” mouthed Rubeo.

“On a serious note,” Bree continued, “I would remind you that we are an experimental aircraft. Our systems are held together by bubble gum and duct tape. I do expect that you will remain strapped to your parachutes and snug your skull buckets. You too, Sergeant Parsons.”

“Don’t worry about me, Captain,” answered Greasy Hands.

“If you look out the port windows, you’ll see the Z27 test range, where our friends in the Army are testing their new pulse antimissile system.” Breanna tweaked the controls stick, ducking the plane to its left. “Whoa,” she joked. “Don’t everybody look out the windows at once.”

“Very funny,” said Rubeo. His voice was an octave higher than before.

Breanna smirked, launching into a tour-guide dissertation on the history of the venerable B-52. Though she tried to make it sound spontaneous, it was a well-practiced speech; she had given it four times over the past few weeks to Air Force VIPs as part of the effort to keep the Megafortress program alive.

“The B-52 is sometimes called the BUFF – for big, ugly, fat uh, fella, shall we say?” Breanna chortled, knowing everyone would laugh at the obligatory joke. “As a matter of record, the base plane for Fort Two is older than – hell, it’s older than our copilot, Dr. Ray.”

Rubeo ignored her, staring straight out the front windscreen.

“In June 1946,” continued Breanna, “the U.S. government awarded the Boeing company a study contract for a long-range bomber. That seemingly innocuous event led to the design of a turboprop-powered behemoth superficially similar to the B-50, which had evolved from the B-29. You don’t have to have one of Dr. Ray’s four P.h.D.s to realize that a lumbering turboprop would have been no match for the interceptors under development at the same time, let alone surface-to-air missiles. The problem was primarily the engines; even optimally engineered turboprops can only turn so fast, as our Communist friends found out with their Tu-95 Bear. But at the same time, pure jet engines were equally unacceptable; they were thirsty things in the mid-1940’s, not very powerful and, as Greasy Hands might put it, “tarnation and hell” to work on.”

“Damn straight,” said Greasy Hands.

Breanna thought he might be speaking from experience.

“It was just about that time when the wizards at Pratt & Whitney came up with the J57 jet engine. It was a V-8 for airplanes, capable of delivering 7,5000 pounds of thrust without popping a gasket. An Air Force officer looked at the Boeing turboprop proposal one cold Thursday in October 1948 and declared it obsolete. Then he showed the team the specs for the P&Ws and sent them away. They called the next morning from their hotel and promised he’d have a design on his desk Monday. The engineers worked like demons, even building a balsa-wood model. When Monday rolled around, they had invented history’s longest flying bomber, arguably the most versatile and successful military aircraft ever conceived. Through 774 iterations, encompassing eight major families and an almost unfathomable number of alterations and updates, the B-52 has served for nearly fifty years as America’s primary manned strategic bomber.”

“Jeez, it is older than Dr. Ray,” said the staff sergeant sitting with Parsons below.

“Hardy, har, har,” answered Rubeo.

His response got a better laugh than the original line.

Breanna checked her flight position on the global positioning system – accurate to within half a centimeter – then did a quick scan of the vital information on the flight monitor on the right side of her dash before continuing with her historical narrative.

“Now where was I?” she said. “Oh, yes. I should probably note that our new power plants are derived from the engines used by the Boeing 767. They feature considerably more thrust, so much so that Fort Two is currently fitted with out at each engine root instead of the original pair. If my math is correct, that’s four instead of eight. Even so, Fort Two has broken the sound barrier in level flight at 55,000 feet.”

That was an incredibly impressive statistic, since it was impossible for even a ‘clean’ B-52 with minimal load and stock power plants.

“We are, as you may know, testing several engine configurations for the Megafortress,” she continued. “Fort Two is currently the only one with the Xs. And one of our planes – Raven, which we’ve used for ECM tests and Flighthawk drops – still has the original P&Ws. Needless to say, these power plants are better, increasing the plane’s already prodigious range to slightly over ten thousand miles – though most of that’s downhill.

No one laughed. Tough crowd.

“The B-52 was at least theoretically obsolete by the 1960’s,” said Breanna. “The sheer size of the plane, once dictated by the thirst of the engines, had become as much a liability as an asset. On the other hand, its large size meant we could keep piling equipment on, increasing its life as well as capability. The add-ons and alterations made a not particularly pretty plane one ugly MP, as the saying goes. But the BUFF was – is, I should say – one versatile airframe. You can’t hot-stick her – or at least, we’re not supposed to hot-stick her. But let me tell you something: If you’re beneath the bomb bay when it open-s well, fresh underwear is the least of your problems.”

“Hear, hear,” snarled Rubeo.

“She takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” said Chris. Obviously annoyed by the scientist’s disdain. “I have a picture somewhere of a B-52H model landing without her stabilizer. Try that in a Bone.”

“Bone” – from B-One – was the nickname for the B-1B, also known as the Excalibur and Lancer. Ferris had served with a B-1 squadron before coming to Dreamland.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Chris added. “I love the B-1B. There’s no better low-level penetrator in the world. Mach 9 at five hundred feet wakes you up, let me tell you.”

“Humph,” said Rubeo.

“Much of the technology we’re testing,” continued Breanna sharply, “represents the next wave of development beyond the B-1B and the B-2. Our resin wings, for example, are lighter than those of the B-2. The avionics and control suite that we are currently working on, when perfected, may be used in upgrades to the B-2 or perhaps whatever its successor will be.”

“We know all that,” hissed Rubeo.

Annoyed by the scientist, Breanna punched the plane into a roll.

“And as you can see, the physical improvement to the control surfaces, as well as the reinforcements to the skeleton, make Fort Two as maneuverable as a late-teen fighter.”

“Whoa!” yelled McCormick as Breanna put the plane back on its keel. “Better than a roller coaster.”

“Now I’m not saying a B-52 couldn’t have done that,” Breanna told the passengers as they settled down. “But there’s really no comparison between the two airplanes’ flight profiles. I could demonstrate spin recovery, for example,” she added pointedly, glancing over at her erstwhile copilot.

Rubeo had his hands wrapped around his neck, obviously trying to choke the bile back down.

“But maybe I’ll wait for another time,” Breanna said.

The words were barely out of her mouth when the plane fell out from under her in an uncontrolled, full-power dive.

Dog opened the side door into his office and stepped back fifteen years. Instead of lunch, Patrick McLanahan was sitting on the edge of his desk, wearing civilian clothes and a smile nearly as wide as his shoulders.

“Dog, how the hell are you?” said McLanahan with a laugh. “You’re damn lucky you’re not sitting in a pilot’s seat right now, or your fanny would be waxed solid.”

“I’d just hand the controls over to you and expect to have my butt saved,” replied Dog with a laugh, grabbing his long-ago radar operator in a bear hug. “How the hell are you, Patrick?”

“Still kicking,” said McLanahan. “Despite the rumors to the contrary.”

“I’ll bet,” said Dog. McLanahan had been the senior Air Force officer on the DreamStar project, and one of the heads that had rolled after the debacle.

Supposedly. He was looking awful cheerful for someone who’d recently been forced into retirement. And downright natty, with a leather jacket, sharp chinos, and expensive-looking cowboy boots.

Not to mention the fact that his shirt was tucked in.

Obviously something was up. McLanahan may have been the best bombardier in the Air Force, but he had also arguably been the worst dressed, a walking catalog of Reg. 35-10 dress and appearance violations.

“Civilian life agrees with you, I guess,” said Bastian.

“In a way.”

“You want some lunch?” Dog asked.

“Sounds good,” said McLanahan.

“You here on business?”

“In a way.”

Dog stuck his head out the door. “I’m going over to find some lunch,” he told Ax.

“They’re waiting for you in the base commander’s lounge at the end of Level B. I’ve arranged your afternoon. You’re free until 1400.”

“Thanks.”

“I expect it will show up in the next fitness review,” said the sergeant.

“I thought you told me there was a new directive requiring self-evaluation only,” retorted the colonel. “How do we get to Level B?”

“I know the way,” McLanahan told him.

Bastian matched his pace as they headed down a long corridor to a set of steel doors. Inside they descended two levels and emerged in a hallway lined with framed photographs of old Air Force fighters. A thick carpet lay on the floor. A wooden door at the end of the hall gave way to a small, well-appointed room with hunter-green walls and heavy drapes. A sergeant and an airman stood at the side of a row of four tables, each outfitted with fresh linens. The place looks like an exclusive D.C. restaurant.

“I’m going to fix this,” Dog said as they sat down.

“How’s that?” asked McLanahan.

Before Bastian could say anything else, the airman swept in and filled their water glasses. The sergeant slipped a stiff piece of cardboard in front of Dog and stepped back.

It was a wine list.

“I hear the Duck Walk by the glass is a good buy,” quipped McLanahan.

“We won’t be having wine, thank you,” said Bastian. Handing the card back. “Damn. I can’t believe Brad Elliott stood for this.”

“Well, first of all, General Elliott was a three-start general,” noted McLanahan. He seemed rather amused. “This sort of thing comes with the territory. And second of all, the lounge was used only for VIPs. Congressmen, the Secretary of Defense, important contractors the general had to impress. Otherwise, Brad ate mostly at his desk.”

“Humph.”

“Being a general means being a politician,” said McLanahan.

“Thank God I’m not a general,” said Dog.

“Listen, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t close the place until after lunch. I didn’t get a chance to have breakfast.”

Dog settled back in the chair. He’d known when he accepted the assignment that he was entering a different world he’d inhabited before – a world of privilege and power. What McLanahan said about the lounge’s use was undoubtedly true. Hell, from what he’d seen back East, this was austere. It was also likely that the facility – and its wine list – had been donated by defense contractors.

But that didn’t mean it was going to survive. Bastian was a lieutenant colonel and would live like one. And so would everyone else. As of tomorrow morning, he decided as he surveyed the room, all ‘cafeterias’ – strike that, all facilities, all mess halls, all lounges, hell, all dormitories and soda machines – would be ‘all-ranks.’ Everyone was equal, military and civilian, officer and enlisted man.

“Dog?”

“What exactly is it that you want, Patrick?”

McLanahan glanced up as the sergeant returned with menus. Dog took the card silently, scanning it quickly.

Roast leg of lamb in a raspberry mustard sauce. Pureed lentils in a sake-cream soup. Pheasant saltimbocca with squid-ink linguine.

Dog looked up at the sergeant. The man’s arms were straight down at his sides, his thumbs circling rapidly around his fingers. His cheeks were purple, but his forehead was white.

“Look,” Dog told him, trying to smile, “can you get me a medium-rare burger with fries?”

“Gladly, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Me too,” said McLanahan, handing the menu back to the sergeant. “Although I have to say that pheasant was tempting.”

“You didn’t set this up with Ax, did you?” Dog asked McLanahan.

McLanahan laughed and shook his head. “I wish I did. Just to see your face.”

“Are you here to lobby for Megafortress or Cheetah?”

“Neither actually,” said McLanahan, his tone instantly serious. “And not DreamStar or ANTARES either, if you want, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about any of the projects I was involved in. But they’re not why I’m here.”

“Megafortress isn’t going to make the cut, Patrick,” said Dog. “As much as I liked what the Old Dog did, and whatever I think of the flying-battleship idea, there’s no support.”

“I’m not here about that,” said McLanahan. “This is all your headache, not mine. I have new ones to deal with.”

“Such as?”

“ISA,” said McLanahan. ISA stood for Intelligence Support Agency, a high-level covert project funded by the CIA and DOD to support ‘special’ actions. Dog knew it well – he had helped developed the briefing papers and the draft intelligence finding that established the organizational framework. ISA operated outside of the normal military command structure, to put it mildly.

“What’s up?” Dog asked.

“ISA is putting together a special strike package. One of the pilots and two of the support personnel on Dreamland’s roster are going to be asked to join. It’s strictly voluntary, but, uh, there have been some back-channel discussions, as I’m sure you would expect.”

“They need my permission?”

“No, but some of the people back East thought you’d want to be in the loop,” said McLanahan carefully. “I was at Nellis and since we know each other, they asked me to give you a heads-up.”

“You’re running ISA?”

“No. I’m more like a consultant. A freelancer,” said McLanahan. “The pilot is Mack Smith.”

“You want the F-119 too?”

Dog hadn’t meant it as a joke, but McLanahan laughed. “Just Smith,” he said. “The 119 can stay in the shed forever as far as I’m concerned. The technical people are listed as specialists in avionics and engines respectively, but their records show they could build planes from scratch.”

While Smith was an arrogant SOB, Colonel Bastian didn’t particularly want to lose him; the fighter jock was the hottest stick on the patch. And he was the senior officer on the JSF.

“It’s about Somalia,” added McLanahan, obviously sensing his reluctance to part with the pilot.

“Oh,” said Dog. He hadn’t seen the intelligence briefings since a few days before leaving Washington, but McLanahan’s tone made it clear that things there had continued to worsen. The Iranian mullahs had been equipping one of the warlords in the eastern African country, apparently with the intention of helping him take over the government. That would allow them to control access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, as well as the Gulf of Aden – and thereby manipulate the price and flow of oil. Which itself was supposed to be prelude of their “Greater Islamic League,” a coalition of Middle Eastern countries dedicated to the prospect of giving America a headache.

“ISA is involved with Somalia?” Dog asked.

“ISA is part of a contingency plan.” McLanahan took a sip of his water. “Iran’s warlord will be in charge inside two weeks.”

“Then what happens?”

“Well, maybe nothing. The analysts are all over the place.”

“I wouldn’t count on nothing,” said Dog. “If the mullahs are feeling strong enough, they’ll base the Silkworms they bought from China there. And after that, they’ll move in the new aircraft they’re buying from Russia. Two dozen Su-35’s and the same number of the Su-27’s equipped for surface attack could bottle up half the world’s oil fleet within three hours.”

“Oil prices will go to one hundred dollars a barrel,” said McLanahan. “I read your white paper on it. hard to believe you wrote it a year ago.”

“The Sukhois are good warplanes.”

“CIA says they haven’t been sold,” McLanahan frowned, but it was impossible to tell whether he believed that or not. “They have the Silkworms ready to go. And rumor has it that they’re working with the Chinese on an aircraft carrier, which should be ready within a few months, if not weeks. The NSC is recommending that this thing be cut off quickly. Which is why I – ISA, that is, wants Smith.”

The sergeant emerged from the kitchen pushing a large cart. On top of it were two deluxe burger plates, with oversized hamburgers on grilled potato-bread rolls. Large saucers of ketchup, mustard, and relish flanked a massive heap of steak fries at the side of the plates.

“Now this is what I call first class,” said Dog, thanking the sergeant.

“I would have thought you’d be used to fancy food, having come from Washington,” said McLanahan. “I hear they love you at the White House.”

“I met the President exactly once,” said Dog. “And that was in a room with fifty people.”

The burger was excellent, perfectly charred on the outside and pink on the inside. Maybe not the healthiest lunch, but tasty enough to justify the risk.

“Like I say, the analysts are all over the place on this. We’re not exactly knee-deep in intelligence on what Iran is up to,” McLanahan said, picking up the napkin from his lap and dabbing at the side of his mouth. “Good burger.”

“Very good,” said Dog. “The Iranians have studied the Oil Shock of the seventies. They know what the impact on the Western economics would be of doubling or quadrupling the price of oil. And don’t forget, they’ll benefit from the extra money. They’ll go straight to Russia and lure another fifty or sixty scientists for their nuclear program. As well as plutonium.”

“You sound like you’re still working for Ms. O’Day.” McLanahan picked up one of the large steak fries with his fork. “CIA says they’re at least six years away from a bomb.”

“They’re crazy. More like six months. You should talk to Jack O’Connell.”

“I have,” said McLanahan. O’Connell was a CIA ground officer who’d been in Africa and the Middle East as well as Russia, tracking Russian nuclear technology.

“Is ISA hooked up with Madcap Magician?” asked Bastian.

McLanahan didn’t answer. From what Dog had been told at the NSC, Madcap Magician was an interservice Spec Ops ‘program’ consisting of volunteers from different branches trained to operate as a covert intervention of first-strike force in the Middle Easy. Different Spec Ops groups – including a small unit at Dreamland under Danny Freah known as Whiplash -–were attached as callup units; they were supposed to be available on twenty-four-hour notice. Madcap Magician itself was so secret that Bastian didn’t know much about it – but he realized from McLanahan’s silence that he had just nailed the connection.

“Obviously, you can have Smith,” said Dog. He held his half-eaten burger and roll in his hand. It was too good; it tempted him to reconsider his ‘all-ranks’ decision.

He put the burger down and pushed the plate away. McLanahan looked at him with an expression close to shock.

“What else do you need?” Dog asked.

“Food’s fine.”

“I mean the planes. Hell, I’ve got the hottest weapons on the planet here. Cheetah? The Scorpion AMRAAM-Plus? Tell me what you need and it’s yours.”

“Sounds tempting.”

“We’re an important part of the Air Force,” continued Dog. “With the top talent the military and private enterprise can offer. I have a base full of cutting-edge weapons just begging to be used.”

“I used to work here, remember? You sound like you’re making a funding pitch.”

“No. I’m stating a fact. And maybe a pitch. A little pitch,” conceded Dog. “Because if we put some of these high-tech doodads we’re working on here to work, no one will close us down.”

“Those high-tech doodads you’re working on still have bugs in them,” said McLanahan. “Believe me, I know.”

“Nothing’s without risk. If Dreamland’s going to survive – now there’s a white paper you should read,” he added, referring to the report that had led him to this post.

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

Dog stood up. “I have to get back to work, Patrick. Whoever you need, he’s yours. And I’m serious about the planes and weapons. You know more about what Dreamland can offer than I do.”

McLanahan nodded thoughtfully. “Say hi to Rap for me when you see her.”

Dog nodded, then turned and started back for his office.

The first thing Breanna thought as the Megafortress slammed downward was: Damn, this is going to screw up the project bit-time.

The next thing she thought was: Damn, we have a serious problem here.

The plane didn’t respond to her yoke. Rap commanded the computer to restore full pilot control. As she did, the legends on the heads-up displays, or HUD, glowed bright and then flashed out.

“Computer, restore pilot control,” Breanna calmly told the computer, but even the as the words left her mouth she realized the computer had been taken off-line. Fort Two’s nose was aimed toward the earth. The g’s were piling up; they were pulling four, then five, the pressure increasing exponentially.

“Okay, we’re going to backup hydraulic control,” she said calmly, reaching for the heavy lever to the right of her seat that would kill the fly-by-wire system and bring the backup hydraulic on line. “Chris, change places with Dr. Ray.”

Her thoughts and actions blurred in chaotic soup smeared by the effects of adrenaline and gravity. She had both hands on the control wheel as the hydraulic kicked in, pulled back for all she was worth and trying to prevent the plane from going into a spin at the same time. She had no engine indicators. But guessed the power plants much be close to flaming out, if they hadn’t already.

No, she had power; she could tell by the light hum somewhere in the back of her brain.

Chris slid in beside her. Rubeo was hanging on to her seat, shouting something about the electronic systems.

“They’re off-line. There’s been a massive computer failure,” he yelled.

“Well, no shit, Doc,” Breanna said. “Relax and enjoy the ride, please.”

There were any number of possible causes, from a loose wire- highly unlikely – to an anomaly caused by the Army’s weapons tests on the range below. There’d be time to sort it out later.

Assuming, of course, she regained control.

“Still accelerating and dropping,” said Chris tersely. “Passing five thousand on the way to four thousand, three thousand.”

He could easily have said zero. The aircraft began to shudder; they were through the sound barrier and still accelerating. The windshield filled with a brown blur.

Somewhere around here, she thought, the wing aerodynamics are going to help us. Eventually, the shape of the wing and the speed of the air flowing over it are going to give us enough lift to pull up. Then the trouble will be controlling it.

Breanna felt their momentum shifting and checked her trim tabs quickly, making sure the plane’s control surfaces weren’t working against the rest of the airfoil. The nose lifted steadily as the plane’s inherent flying capabilities finally took over.

“Good, okay, good. Christ?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said as they roller-coasted upward. Blue fell into the windshield.

“This is easy,” she lied. The plane pulled sharply to the left, as if it were trying to turn itself into a Frisbee.

“We just lost an engine,” guessed Chris. “No instruments. Sorry, I can’t get power into the panel no way, no how.”

“Restart. Just go for it,” she told him. Without the instruments they could only guess by feel which engine it was – probably number one, the furthest out on the left wing. “It’s got to be number one.”

“Yeah. No restart. Retrying. Nothing.” He was flying through the procedures, hitting the manual backup switches instead of using the recalcitrant computer.

“Kill four,” she told her copilot. “Balance us out before I lost it.”

“Throttling back,” he said, reaching for the control.

It worked. The loss of power was also in their favor, in effect helping to slow the plane and bring it back under control. Breanna was back on top, flying the plane instead of being flown. She felt it starting to stall, and nosed down gently, had it in her hands. Fort Two was a colt that had bolted in fright; all she had to do was pat its sides gently, reassure it, then ease it back to the barn.

If she could get the landing gear down and fly the mammoth airplane with no instruments or gauges except for a backup altimeter and compass.

Actually, the compass seemed to have quit too.

“Radio circuit completely dead, even on backups,” reported Chris. He was hyperventilating.

“You may be able to get power into the circuit by using the remote-start batter array,” said Dr. Rubeo.

Bree turned and saw him leaning over her. his face was white than a piece of marble, but the words were flat and calm.

“Won’t the circuit breakers prevent that?” Breanna asked.

“I’ll get around it,” he said.

Before she could say anything else, Rubeo slipped out of the cabin, passing back into the defensive weapons station where the revamped Fort Two’s flight-control computers were now located.

The plane began sheering sideways again. Breanna punched her rudder pedals, holding the yoke against the sharp turbulence. She brought her spoilers up to compensate.

“We’re losing another engine,” she told Chris.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” It was theoretically possible to fly the plane on one power plant – but only just. Breanna had never done it outside the simulator. “I think it’s time to land,” she told Chris.

“We can eject,” he suggested.

“Crew will never make it,” she said, dismissing the idea.

“I agree.”

She had miles of dry lake bed in front of her. All she had to do was get the wheels down. “Beginning descend,” she said, trimming and preparing her flaps. “Gear?”

“I don’t know,” said Chris, pulling on the manual control without noticeable effect. “We may have jammed the backup release or something in that descent.”

The instant Fort Two dipped into its dive, Sergeant Parsons felt déjà vu hit him in the chest.

It was either that or the extra helping of bacon he’d had for breakfast.

No, definitely déjà vu. He’d been aboard a stinking B-36 in what? 1962 maybe? ’63? Done the same damn thing.

Engines out, tearing up to shit.

B-36, now there was an airplane. Had to be before 1963, though. Damn things were retired in the late fifties.

Parsons hooked his thumbs against his restraints and waited for the pilot to regain control. He didn’t put a lot of stock in females in the military, let alone as pilots. But Rap was different. He knew she’d get the upper hand, sooner or later.

Greasy Hands thought back to the B-36 that had taken its nosedive. If he remembered correctly, the plane had been hit by a massive bolt of lightning and a serious wind shear.

So that wasn’t much help here, because they were flying in a clear sky. Still, the lights were out on the displays in front of him, so maybe it was a working model for what was happening here. Always good to have a working model when you were chewing into a problem.

The Convair had hydraulic controls – real controls, in his opinion. But something like this had happened in one of their E-3 testers, oh, five or six years before. Freak accident – pilot lost his flight computer. he’d been on autopilot and the damn thing went psycho, taking out the fly-by-wire system somehow. Had to go to manual reversion.

No, he was thinking of the two-seat A-10. It lost its hydraulic pumps and the pilot had to muscle it in.

The E-3 did loss its fly-by-wire system. Went to the backup. Not really a big deal. Landing gear was the only problem. Had to land on foam because the gear just wouldn’t unstick. Turned out one of the idiot computers had locked the doors. Damnedest thing. Sounded like all hell was breaking loose.

Nasty sound, metal on concrete. No way he wanted to hear that again, especially up close.

They figured out later that the only real problem was the damn fuses – if they simply bypassed the blown circuit breakers, the plane would have been fine. Instead, half of his people had spent nearly a month fixing the damn thing. Hell of a waste.

The Megafortress roller-coasted upward and pushed Greasy Hands back in the seat. Wouldn’t be long now before Cap’n Rap got her even. Then he’d go play with the breakers, just in case.

Parsons waited patiently for the plane to level off. As soon as the forces pushing against his ancient frame eased, the sergeant squeezed out of his seat restraints.

“Well, now, I’d appreciate you skippin’ forward an’ telling the captain that I’ll give her electricity as soon as I can,” Greasy Hands told the staff sergeant next to him as he started up to the defensive-weapon station.

Zen had just rolled out into the hangar area when he heard the alert. He looked up and saw the black hull of a Megafortress flashing out of the sun, obliterating the huge yellow disk. He pushed his chair back half a foot, then shielded his eyes; he knew even before he saw the engines it was Breanna’s plane.

She was obviously in trouble. The large black plane stuttered in the sky, its wings jittery as it took a wide bank above the base. The wings began to shake and it pulled off to the left, hanging in the air.

He could taste metal in his mouth. Zen pushed his wheelchair backward, tilting his head to watch as the big plane flew toward the mountains in the distance. A Phantom crossed from the south. For a second it looked as if it was going to plow right into the Megafortress. Then Zen realized it was flying about five hundred feet above the big bomber.

His accident a year ago had changed everything between them. He knew she tried. But he also knew it would only be a matter of time before she realized she couldn’t be with him, couldn’t really love half a man.

Still, he didn’t want to see her hurt.

The Megafortress continued toward the far end of the range. Zen realized there were a dozen people around him now, all staring up at the plane. Somebody said that it had lost its radio. Somebody else mentioned the Army tests and rumors about problems with Fort Two’s flight-control computer and the new power plants, and then everybody was talking. And then everyone stopped talking.

Zen cringed as an F-15 appeared from the east, angling toward the Megafortress. Perspiration ran down his back as the plane veered off just short of a collision.

How damn helpless I am, he though to himself.

Greasy Hands found Rubeo sprawled on the floor, his head half inside one of the computer units. Obviously the scientist had had the same idea he had.

“Excuse me, Doc,” said the senior NCO, squatting down. “What’s up?”

Rubeo backed out from under the access panel. “I’m trying to bypass the circuit breakers and feed the flight computer off the battery,” said the scientist.

Parsons nodded. It seemed to him the scientist sounded a tad less arrogant than normal, a pleasant development.

“If you let me take a look, I believe I can bypass enough circuit breakers to get the landing gear down and some of the instruments back,” Greasy Hands told him.

“By my guest.”

The sergeant slipped in under the panel. The solid-state regulator arrays snapped into the bus. Spares were lined up in a separate section at the right. Bing-bang-boing.

“The flight-computer panel is on the far left,” said Rubeo behind him.

“Aw, we don’t want the computer, Doc,” said Greasy Hands, pullin gout one of the long, thin plastic-encased assemblies. “That’s given us enough problems as it is.”

Knife had just taken off on his second orientation flight when he saw the Megafortress jerking into a wild, uncontrolled dive. He immediately called a range emergency, trying to clear traffic as he climbed up and out of the way. Banking back as he reached five thousand feet, Knife saw the black bomber level off, in obvious distress. Neither he nor the tower controller could raise it on the base or emergency frequencies.

Following toward the end of the range from the south as another plane cleared out of the way, Knife realized Fort Two was flying on two engines, just barely hanging in the sky. Its gear was still stowed, but it gave every impression of preparing for a crash landing on the dry lake bed.

That would be a mistake. It was rapidly running out of clear ground. Even with gear, brakes, and massive amounts of reverse thrust, it would run into the massive boulders that marked the craggy start of the mountain range.

He was too far off to do anything but watch.

The controls nearly pulled out of Breanna’s hands as the plane’s forward airspeed plummeted. The landing-gear door had snapped open and the gear assemblies were trundling downward.

“Jesus,” she said. The controls panels flickered back to life with instrument readings.

“Doc gave us back some electric power,” said Chris, quickly going over the flight data. “Gear have extended. Primary controls took over for the backups on the circuit.”

“I’m still on manual,” she told Chris. “And I’m staying there.”

“Roger that,” snapped Chris. “Our speed –”

“Sergeant Parsons says he’s going to try to get you electric,” yelped the staff sergeant, rolling onto the command deck as the Megafortress lurched almost straight down.

“I’d say he succeeded,” grunted Chris.

“All right, I’ve got it,” Breanna fought the big plane level. They were nearing the end of their restricted airspace. More importantly, she had run out of safe lake bed to land on, the ground below turning back into desert. The mountains loomed ahead.

“We’re going to have to turn ourselves around,” she told Chris.

“We’re on one engine,” he said.

She was so busy trying to hold the plane in the sky, she didn’t have time to snap back with something sarcastic.

Knife rocked the Eagle gently on her right wing as Fort Two banked away from the mountain range, one of her wing tips so close it was a miracle it didn’t scrape. Her wheels were down and he doubted she was flying more than a half knot over the stall speed. But she was still in the air.

He pushed his plane through a sharp turn to get behind the lumbering bomber, now slowing and then starting to descend. He put his own gear out to help himself slow down as he pulled parallel to Fort Two. He had a clear view into the Megafortress’s cockpit. Rap’s hands were working overtime; her head bobbed up and down in the cockpit, as if she were talking to the crew.

There were, at most, twenty meters – sixty feet – between the two planes. He kept one eye on her and the other on her plane, his hands ready to jerk the Eagle out of the way.

“She’s giving us a thumbs-up,” said his passenger, Dr. Jennifer Gleason, one of the computer scientists.

“Okay, give it to her back,” said Smith, nudging forward to give her a better view.

“She’s pointing down.”

“Okay. Ask if she has full control,” he said. “Make like you’re driving a truck –”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Gleason said sharply.

Dr. Gleason was in her mid-twenties and extremely good looking, with long strawberry-colored hair and a body that would melt a polar bear. But Smith found her, like most of the scientist and engineering personnel stuck-up.

“On a scale of one to five, she has about a three,” Gleason told him. “She only has one motor.”

“Engine.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Can she land?”

“Yes,” answered the scientist after a pause. “She, uh, she wants to loop back, I think.”

“She wants to land into the wind,” said Smith. “Oh, wait – she’s not trying to land on the main runway, is she?”

“How would I ask that?” said Gleason.

“She is. Okay. Hold on.” Smith radioed the control tower, mapping out the situation for them. All traffic had been cleared and emergency vehicles were standing by.

“She’s worried about the Soviet Kronos satellite,” he explained to his backseater. “It’s due overhead in twenty-five minutes. If she lands anywhere but close to the hangars, the satellite will catch her on the ground. She’s being a jackass,” he added.

“Why?”

“Ridiculous risk. She was ready to pancake in without gear a second ago. Now she’s flying like she’s out for a Sunday stroll in the park.”

“What would you have done?” Gleason snapped.

Knife didn’t answer. He’d have done the same thing.

“She’s pointing to the ground,” said Gleason. “She’s rolling her hands.”

“She wants us to make sure the gear is locked,” he said. “All right, look, do a little loop with your finger, like we’re swooping beneath her, then hang on.”

“Okay.”

As soon as Knife heard that Breanna gave the thumbs-up, he tipped the Eagle down, sailing under the large warbird.

“Gear extended and locked,” he said.

“I gave them an okay.”

Knife pulled off, trying to give Fort Two more room for its turn as it came around to line up for final approach. The plane was waddling now, its lone engine straining. It burped downward, caught itself, steadied into a bank.

“Is she going to make it?” Gleason asked.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

Smith popped up on her right side, easing the F-15E away. It would have been a hell of a lot more convenient to have a working radio, but Knife’s backseater gave them a thumbs-up. The wheels were locked for landing.

“Gear set,” said Chris. “We can trust the idiot lights and HUDs.”

“I’d rather not,” Breanna told him. “Temp’s critical in our one good engine.”

“Maybe we can get Parsons to crawl out on the wing and fix that,” said Chris.

“If we asked, he probably would.” Breanna pushed Fort Two into a shallow bank. It began shaking like hell. She eased off, gently negotiating the maneuver.

Wonder of wonders, she came out of the turn lined up perfectly with the main runway.

“You’re lucky today,” said her copilot.

“I was going to blame that one on you.”

“Two miles,” said Chris. “We’re redlining Engine Three.”

“I can glide from here,” she lied.

A very small percentage of people in the world were born to be pilots. Some fluke of genetics, some mystery of biochemistry, enabled them to fly by sheer instinct. They had some sort of sense about them, could tell exactly where they were and what the plane was doing without consulting instruments.

Breanna wasn’t one of those people. She had to work at it, struggling for everything. She’d flown umpteen hours in a B-52Gs and Hs, done more than four thousand in a simulated rigged to work like the Megafortress. Somewhere buried in that experience were situations somewhat similar to the one she found herself in now.

Somewhat similar, not exactly the same. There was no way to duplicate the whining complaint of the one good engine as it dragged more than 200,000 pounds of plastic, steel, and flesh through the thin desert air.

And no way to duplicate the flutter in her stomach as she passed the point of no return.

“We’re going to make it,” Chris yelled as they came down. “Oh, yeah.”

“With extra frosting,” she said, sensing she was right at stall speed, sensing she had it, sensing the wheels were about to slap against the cement. She felt good; she was in control.

Had Jeff felt that way right before the Flighthawk clipped his wing?

The thought evaporated as the big bomber’s wheels hit against the surface of Runway One. They sprang upward, but she had it, she was on top of it, letting the plane roll as she applied the brake gently, not wanting to blow the tires, knowing there was more than enough runway to stop safely, and in one piece.

Zen sat in the shadow of the hangar, eyes planted firmly on the ground as the sirens wailed. He could hear the support vehicles roaring out to Runway One as the stricken Megafortress came in. everyone on the base was watching.

“She’s down! She’s down! They landed okay!” someone yelled. Zen rolled his chair forward to see, then followed as everyone started running toward the apron area where the Megafortress was headed.

Had they done this when he’d gone down?

No. That had been a tragedy. This – this had somehow turned instantly into a triumph. People were yelling and shouting and high-fiving. The big EB-52 was rolling free and easy.

Anyone who thought Ken James, the bastard Russian traitor, had killed this place would be stunned to see the spontaneous celebration out on the runway as Fort Two turned and taxied toward the hangars. Demoralized? Downtrodden? Like hell. These were the best of the best, and when shit went down they pulled together. Zen found his adrenaline surging as he raced with the others, caught up in the jubilation. Vehicles were all over the place, blaring horns, wailing their sirens two or three hundred people, all buzzed with excitement, rallied to celebrate Dreamland’s survival. For somehow, Breanna’s successful landing of the stricken plane had turned into a metaphor for the base and its future. Zen could feel it.

She was alive, thank God.

He was relieved. More than that. He did still love her. he hadn’t stopped.

The Megafortress stopped just short of the hangar area, mobbed by crowd. The ventral entry hatch and ladder snapped open.

“Make them walk the gangplank!” somebody yelled.

They cheered as the first passenger, a staff sergeant from the motor pool, ducked out from under the plane. The President wouldn’t have gotten a warmer welcome than Breanna when she finally emerged.

Zen started to wheel forward. He was about five yards from the bottom of the stairs when Mack Smith ran up. Smith had escorted Fort Two down in his Eagle, landing moments after her.

Zen stopped. Smith caught Breanna a step from the plane. He twirled her off her feet and then they embraced like lovers.

One or two people near Zen turned and stared at him. He pretended not to notice.

He’d managed to unclench his teeth by the time she appeared before him. She was smiling, unaware of what he’d seen.

“Jeff,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he told her as she put her arm around his neck. He realized as he pulled back that his mouth tasted metal again.

You did a hell of a job landing that plane,” Breanna’s father told her a few hours later in his office. Her clothes were soaked with sweat. Between the impromptu celebration and all the debriefings, she hadn’t had a change to shower yet. “A hell of a job.”

She felt a shudder of cold run through her body. As if the air conditioner had just kicked on high. Everything was starting to hit her now.

“I think Sergeant Parsons saved us,” she said. softly. “Him and Rubeo. They figured out how to bypass the blown circuitry.”

“Funny, Parsons didn’t take any credit at all. Neither did that blowhard Rubeo. Captain Ferris says you took control the instant the computer went down. We’re investigating,” the colonel added quickly as a slight tremor swept into his voice. “There’s a possibility a spike from the Army tests disrupted your gear, but some of the engineers say they’ve had trouble with computer interfacing throwing voltage around for the past week. I expect this is the sort of thing that will take, uh, a while to work out. The planes are grounded until we have a definitive answer.”

Breanna nodded. She thought of saying something to her father, something corny, but the words stayed in her throat. She knew how he would react.

“I’ll tell you, Bree,” he started. “I’ll tell you –”

He obviously intended to go on, but the words simply died.

“You did hell of a job, Captain,” he said finally.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, spinning quickly and leaving his office, wanting to take no chance he would se her cry.

Washington, D.C.

10 October, 2030

Jed Barclay pulled his arms around his thin jacket, trying to keep warm as he waited outside the posh Georgetown restaurant. He contemplated going and waiting inside, but realized that his presence might inadvertently tip off any number of D.C. denizens that something serious was up. His boss, National Security Advisor Deborah O’Day, wouldn’t like that.

Barclay had spent the last two winters in New England – Harvard, to be exact – and told himself he shouldn’t feet cold at all; October in Washington was balmy by Massachusetts standards but his twenty-two-year-old frame was practically trembling with the cold.

Finally, O’Day’s Marine Corps bodyguard emerged from the restaurant. The woman tensed as she spotted him, then gave him a disapproving frown.

“Jed, what are you doing here?” said Ms. O’Day, emerging behind her.

“I, uh – you’re going to want to see this,” he said.

he unfolded his hands to reveal a yellow manila envelope. O’Day took the envelope and moved over to the yellowish light thrown by a faux-antique streetlight. Meanwhile, her date – Brad Elliott, a recently retired three-star general Air Force general – emerged from the building. Jed nodded at the general, who nodded back semi-affably.

“That’s Iranian base,” Jed said helpfully.

“Yes, thank you, Jed. What the hell are you doing with this outside of the basement?” his boss added.

“It’s not classified,” he said. “It’s off the Russian satellite.”

O’Day frowned deeply at his dodge. The Russian made a limited number of satellite images available through a public European service, which, of course, the NSC had a subscription to. Primarily useful for agricultural purposes, the images did not precisely duplicate U.S. optical spy coverage – nor were they anywhere near as precise – but they were close enough. Since they were open-source, there was no prescription against carrying them off campus, as it were.

“The launchers have been dismantled,” said O’Day.

“Yes, ma’am. The image is two days old.”

“And they’re where?”

“We’re not sure. I mean, CIA isn’t sure, and the Pentagon, well, they say not to worry. But I – well, I don’t know.”

“You’re not on my staff to keep your opinion to yourself. Come on. It’s cold out here.”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, it’s difficult to be definitive. I mean, since we took our main satellite off-line for repairs two weeks ago, we’ve been cobbling things over Northeastern Africa together. Between that and the clouds – ’

“Jed,” she said sternly.

“There were two tankers off Bandar three days ago. They’re approaching Somalia now.”

O’Day didn’t bother asking for any other information.

“Contact Madcap Magician,” she told him. “Have them put Ironweed into action. Whatever units they need. Full-bore. I’ll be back at the NSC in an hour.”

“Yes, ma’am, he said, glancing at the general before retreating back toward the Metro stop.

Dreamland

10 October, 1730 local

The thick door to the Handheld Weapons Lab opened and Danny Freah found himself staring down at a white-haired woman old enough to be his mother’s mother.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Captain Freah. I have a appointment with one of the engineers, Dr. Klondike. I may be a little late,” he added apologetically.

“You’re two hours late, Captain,” said the old lady, shuffling back to let him in. she wore an ancient gray lab coat that looked a great deal like a housedress on her. “Fortunately, we were told that was your MO unless you were under fire. Come in.”

Danny gave her an embarrassed smile and stepped into the long, narrow hallway as the steer door slid quietly shut on its gliders behind him. He had a tough time forcing himself to go slow enough to keep from running down the old lady.

Over the past few days, Danny had learned that Brad Elliott had run Dreamland with an iron fist, not only recruiting the best of the best but allowing almost no chaff – no political appointments, few ‘favors’ to the contractors. But this old lady was obviously an exception; she had to be somebody’s relative, given a job either to keep her off food stamps or fill out a pension requirement. Captain Freah liked that – it was good to know that even a tough three-star like Elliott had a little compassion.

“This way now, Captain,” said the old lady, showing him into an immense, cement-walled room. There was a long firing range with a target track at the far end. She walked toward a large metal box that looked like an oversized mechanic’s tool chest, with double-keyed pullout drawers.

“Thanks,” said Danny. “When’s Dr. Klondike getting here? Maybe I’ll get some target practice in while I’m waiting for him.”

“I’m Klondike,” said the old lady.

Danny watched in disbelief as she retrieved a set of keys from her pocket, examining each one slowly before finding the right combination to open a thick drawer near the bottom. She pulled out a Marine-issue M40A rifle, sans scope, from the drawer.

“And incidentally, I am not a doctor. My name is Anna.”

“Is this for real?” he asked as she presented the gun to him.

“Whatever you may think of the Marine Corps, Captain, let me assure you that they have no peers when it comes to selecting rifles,” she said, apparently thinking that he had been referring to the weapons, not her. “You will find the Remington Model 700 one of the finest chassis for a precision firearm available. You may indeed quibble with the use of the fiberglass instead of wood for the furniture, but remember that the Marines operate in an environment typically humid, if not downright wet.”

Still not sure whether he might be the victim of an elaborate gag cooked up by one of his men – or maybe Hal Briggs – Danny took the rifle in his hands. He had no questions about the gun. At roughly fourteen and a half pounds, with a twenty-four-inch stainless-steel barrel, it was absolutely a Remington, albeit one that had been hand-selected and finished.

“So where’s the scope?” he said.

“You’re impatient for one who keeps his own schedule,” said Klondike, closing the drawer. She toddled over to a second set of cabinets, eventually removing a small. Torpedo-shaped sight. At a third cabinet, she produced a visor set with a cord.

“How does this work? Laser?” asked Danny, examining the sight.

“Hardly,” said the old lady, taking it from his hand and mounting it on the gun. She fiddled with a pair of set screws on the side, held the visor out, squinted, frowned, fiddled some more, then smacked the top. “Here,” she said finally. “I’ll get you some cartridges. The range is over there. I assume you can find it on your own.”

Fitted with a Redfield telescope sight, the sixties-era M40 was at least arguably among the best sniping rifles of all time. Simple yet highly reliable in adverse conditions, it could not turn a mediocre shooter into a marksman. But it could turn a highly trained marksman into a deadly and efficient killer. The sight was perfectly mated to the weapon, allowing the usual adjustments for wind and range and providing a remarkable amount of light to the viewer.

The visor doodad, on the other hand, was dim.

“It can be adjusted to your tastes,” said Klondike, returning as Freah frowned and played with the LED visor screen. “Try it before you dismiss it, Captain. You said you wanted an advanced sniping weapon.”

Still doubtful, Danny steadied the weapon against his shoulder, firing from a standing position. The visor projected an image similar to the view in a scope, though it was spread in an oval rather than a circle. A legend below the firing circle declared the target precisely one hundred meters away. He braced himself and fired.

He nailed the bull’s-eye dead-on.

“Wow,” he said.

“Oh, please.” Klondike wen to the panel controlling the target location on the wall. The target piece jerked back another hundred yards. “Go,” she said.

He nailed it again.

She pushed the button and the target sped backward, this time nearly disappearing deep within the tunnel.

“Touch the lower edge of the visor,” Klondike told him.

“Here?”

“Captain, please.” She reached up and touched the very edge of the plastic panel near his cheekbone. Instantly, a range-to-target legend appeared next to the crosshatch.

Five hundred yards.

He missed.

By a centimeter.

Klondike frowned. “Perhaps the weapon takes getting used to. Ordinarily, you should get to seven hundred yards before beginning to lose some accuracy. It is, of course, a matter of skill, and choosing the right ammunition. No offense, Captain.”

“How the hell does it work?” Danny asked. “Is it a laser?”

She shook her head. “A focused magnetic pulse, two signals with a Doppler effect. If it were a laser you would have optical problems shooting through glass or water.”

“You can aim through glass?”

“Without manual correction. There are limitations, of course. The device cannot read two-dimensional shapes, and has difficulty with thin surfaces. You could not read a sign with it beyond sixty-two meters. The distance has to do with the harmonies of the different radar waves,” she added. “The sight would also be theoretically vulnerable to a system such as the HARM, which can home in on it. Still, until we perfect smart bullets – if we perfect smart bullets – it’s the most accurate handheld ballistic device available. I’ve done a little work on the barrel,” she added. “And, of course, the bullets are mine.”

“I have six guys on the Whiplash response team,” Danny told her. “I’d like to qualify each one of them on the gun.”

“It is a sniper’s weapon, Captain. At some point in the future, perhaps, we will be able to mass-produce it. For now there is exactly one available for use.”

“All the same, I want them checked out on it, if possible.” Freah’s Whiplash response team was an elite subgroup of his air commandos, cross-trained for a variety of jobs. Organized only in the last six months, they hadn’t been called into actions yet, with the exception of one training detail. But it was accepted that each member would be trained and expected to take on any other member’s job at a moment’s notice.

“As you wish. I suppose you’ll be wanting body armor as well,” said Klondike.

“We have flak vests.”

“Captain, please.” She shook her head. “Your vests are made from KM2, correct?”

“Well –”

“They weigh more than twenty-five pounds, and I doubt that half your men wear them half the time, no matter what standing orders or situation may by. Our armor, on the other hand, is made of boron carbide plates and a thinner, stronger Kevlar derivative. Unfortunately, there’s some loss of flexibility in our version, and we’ve only fashioned vests so far. Nonetheless, you’ll find they weigh less than ten pounds, and can stop a 30mm shell fired from point-blank range.”

“I’m in your hands, Annie,” said Danny.

“Yes, well, don’t get fresh,” said Klondike, leading him out of the room.

Dreamland

11 October

Colonel Bastian walked around the chunky airframe that sat in the middle of Development Shed B/3, trying to hide some of his displeasure from Rubeo and the others he had gathered on the tarmac for this impromptu brainstorming session. To him, the F-119 looked like a flying robot.

A barely flying one, given its performance specs. Mike Janlock, an aeronautical engineer who specialized in BMI resin airfoils, had just finished saying that a handful of alterations would turn the aircraft into a robust attack weapon. But those changes would make it unusable aboard aircraft carriers, as well as highly unlikely to meet the Marine Corps requirement for vertical landing at forward combat weight.

Janlock and the others had said over and over that there were three pretty good planes locked inside the F-119 airframe. Choose one – hell, even two – and America would have a cutting-edge aircraft capable of filling a wide variety of attack roles for the next two decades.

But Dog’s mandate was clear. He had to proceed with all three. Congress was so high on the project that yesterday afternoon a Congressional committee had voted to increase F-119 funding three hundred percent.

The same committee had postponed a decision on Dreamland, per the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and Ms. O’Day.

If Dreamland survived. It would get a good hunk of the F-119 development money. Bastian’s new ‘all ranks’ mess halls – already a hit – could dish out all the fancy food they wanted for the next ten years.

But damn. The plane was a flying tugboat. Hell, it was one of those five-hundred-dollar hammers the media claimed the Pentagon was always buying.

“Colonel, you were saying?” prompted Rubeo.

“A survivable tanker,” repeated Bastian. “The thinking is to replace KC-10 Extenders and HC-130’s at the same time. It would be connected to the JSP project.”

“So it has to be fast and slow,” said Janlock.

He didn’t mean it as a joke, but everyone laughed. Except Rubeo, of course.

“Seriously, if we did have one aircraft that could refuel helicopters as efficiently as CAP aircraft, in combat situations as well as on ferry flights, it would be a hell of an asset,” said Bastian, reining them in. “I can tell you from experience, a fighter with battle damage can have trouble reaching normal tanking altitude and speed. KC-135 and KC-10 tankers did a hell of a job during the Gulf War, doing things they weren’t technically capable of. I’d say more than a dozen lives were saved. At least. And ten times that number of planes. So what we’re talking about, if you guys could pull it off – the potential would translate into a lot less orphans and widows. I realize it’s not the conventional thinking, but I’ve seen what you guys can do.”

With the exception of Rubeo, who was wearing his customary scowl, the engineers and officers nodded their heads. They hadn’t thought about the problem in those terms before.

“What if we take the C-17 apart?” asked Jeremy Winters, a tall engineer with a hawk’s nose and thick, wire-rimmed glasses. “Good capacity, short takeoff so we can use forward bases.”

“Piffle,” said Rubeo.

“All right, Doc,” snapped Bastian, who’d had enough of the scientist’s chronic pessimism. “What do you suggest?”

“It depends on our goal,” said the scientist. He pursed his lips as if he had just bit into a lemon. “If our goal is simply to sustain funding, I suggest we take any aircraft we’re interested in and claim that it should be studied as a tanker.”

“All right, that’s enough,” said Bastian. “I’ll deal with the politics. I want real ideas, not fodder for Congress.”

“Colonel, you and I both know that the JSF is our lifeline,” said Rubeo, refusing to back down. “And charitably put, it’s a camel. So the most optimum solution would b another camel. But as for a survivable tanker” – the scientist’s voice rose an octave as he finally made a serious point – “the C-17 is a large and easily hit target. There is no way to change that.”

“Escorts could protect it,” said Smith. “Going to need them for the JSF.”

Uncharacteristically, Smith hadn’t said much at all. Dog suspected that he had decided to say as little as possible about JSF now that he was leaving; probably he was watching his political backside.

Smart, even though it pissed Bastian off.

“We already have a project study for a survivable deep-penetration tanker on the shelf,” said Major Nancy Cheshire. “It would need some work for low-speed refueling, but it would certainly meet the requirement for near-Mach speed, high-altitude regimes.”

“What are we talking about?” Bastian asked, still glaring at Rubeo.

“The Megafortress KC.”

Rubeo opened his mouth to object, but Cheshire cut him off.

“Some studies were done two years ago, but they never went anywhere. The idea was that we would need something that could keep up with the flying battleship concept, refueling it in a hostile environment, she explained. “Survivability was an important consideration and on that score, I know the plane got high marks.”

“Megafortress, back from the dead,” said Rubeo.

“What’s your objection to that idea?” Bastian asked the scientist.

“None as far as the specific plane goes,” said Rubeo, surprising Bastian. “My objection is one of the principle. The Megafortress – all manned aircraft are redundant.” He folded his arms in front of his chest. “Colonel, if you’re looking to tie a project to the F-119’s tail, tie the Flighthawks. They’re the future.”

“We’ve been down that road,” said Bastian. “And in any event, the robots can’t even refuel themselves.”

“Piffle. We simply haven’t thought about it properly.”

Dog wanted his people to feel that they could speak freely; he didn’t want a group of yes-men and suck-ups around him. And he knew that for a place like Dreamland to succeed, discipline had to be pretty loose.

But Rubeo really pushed the envelope.

“I appreciate your comments, if not your tone,” Dog told him. “The debate about robot planes isn’t relevant at the moment,” He turned back to Cheshire. “How far along was the tanker project?”

“I don’t know that it got beyond one or two proof-of-concept flights,” she said. “But I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to dust if off.”

“The plane kicks out some fierce vortices,” said Janlock. “We barely have them controlled enough for stable flight. We all saw how difficult it was to handle without the flight computer. if anyone other than Rap was at the controls when the gear crashed, we would have lost the plane.”

“Okay,” said Bastian. “Let’s find out.”

“Even though Fort Two and the others have been cleared for operations, we’re not one hundred percent sure the voltage spikes were due to the Army tests,” said Jennifer Gleason, one of the computer scientists. Her main assignment was the Flighthawks, but she had also had a hand in designing the advanced flight-computer components Fort Two was testing. “There are at least three other possibilities. We really ought to work through the test regimes to make sure.”

“I’m confident that was the problem,” said Cheshire. “And with the shielding and the backups, I think we’re fine. Fort Two is due for a check ride this afternoon.”

Bastian glanced at his watch. It was a little past ten o’clock. “I need to know by 1800. Doable?”

“Absolutely, sir,” said Cheshire. “Rap should be getting suited up as we speak.” She turned to Gleason. “We can run through some of your tests – all of them – at the same time.”

Gleason nodded – clearly reluctant, but nonetheless in agreement.

“So this our first choice,” said Bastian. “Choice number two, I take it, would be to study the C-17.”

“Not our project,” hissed Rubeo. The implication was clear – a C-17 tanker wouldn’t help keep Dreamland alive.

“Yes, well, there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Dog. “Anyone has any other ideas, let me know ASAP. In the meantime, let’s get this done.”

Several hours later, Knife sat in the hangar where the conference had been, staring down from the F-119 cockpit. He was waiting for the security officer to green-light the plane from the hangar. A Russian optical satellite was just completing its overhead tour. The satellite was an old Kronos model incapable of resolutions greater than a meter in diameter, but Dreamland’s operating protocols strictly prohibited the F-119 from being on the runway while it was overhead.

Ordinarily, Smith would be more than a little impatient to get going. But this afternoon he was feeling almost a little nostalgic. He’d gotten word just before suiting up that he was to expedite reporting to Wing A; an Air Force transport due to take off from Nellis at ten that evening was holding a seat. So this would be his last flight at Dreamland, as well as in the F-119.

The Congressional committee’s decision on the F-119 didn’t particularly surprise him; the project’s various contractors had plants in over 150 Congressional districts, which added up to a hell of a lot of muscle, if not brains. That was the way appropriations went these days.

Smith had decided he was in a no-lose position on the JSF. If the program continued and the F-119 was finally cleared as a production model, his resume would note that he had helped develop it. If it was killed as an ill-conceived project – which, in his opinion, it was – he could point to the fact that he had seen this and gotten out. His final reports on the project would be worded so vaguely that they could be used to support either scenario. In the meantime, he’d be doing some real flying, and probably – though admittedly not definitely – adding good notes to his career folder.

He was learning this political game well.

The lieutenant at the front of the hangar said something into his walkie-talkie, then gave the up-and-’em wave to the crew. The tractor sitting in front of the F-119 cranked her engine; Knife let go off the brakes and he began to roll out onto the tarmac. The fighter’s engines had to be started from an external power cart or ‘puffer.’ Three crewmen had the cart in place almost as soon as the plane and its tow truck stopped in front of the hangar. They moved quickly; the crew chief pumped his arm in the air and, bam, Knife had his engines up and running.

Mack ran through his instrument checks, working swiftly with the no-nonsense rhythm he’d perfected during his days flying combat air patrol in the Gulf. With the systems at Dash-One spec, he asked for and received clearance from the tower. He tapped the top of his helmet for good luck – a necessary part of his preflight ritual – then began trundling toward Lakebed Runway 34. A black Hummer and a Jimmy, both with blue security lights and yellow ‘Follow Me’ signs, led the way. Off to the east a temporary aboveground control tower and observation deck had been erected to monitor the flight.

Knife narrowed his attention to the small bubble around him as the vehicles peeled off. He pushed the F-119 to its mark, setting his brakes for one last systems check before takeoff. The right panel of his trio multi-use displays were entirely given over to flight details. His eyes scanned the graphical readouts deliberately. Satisfied, he turned his eyes toward the left MUD, where he had the GPS system selected. The enhanced God’s-eye-view screen rendered his plane as a blue dot on the color-coded terrain – in this case a brownish topo map overlaid by a gray rectangle signifying the limits of the test range. Groom Mountain’s seven-thousand-foot-high peak lurked at the far end, drawn in sharp black lines. Smith shifted his thumb on the Hostas stick, adding radar input to the display; the shading changed to indicate that it was working, though it couldn’t properly paint anything until he was over four hundred feet above ground, and couldn’t really be trusted until about eight or nine hundred.

Something for the engineers to work on.

Ready, Knife thought. His left hand moved the throttle to maximum military power. The plane trembled as the turbines spooled, the brakes straining.

Temp, RPM, pressures perfect. Good to go. He backed to idle, took another breath, gave himself another good-luck pat.

Not that he needed it, of course.

“Tower, Playboy One, I’m ready for one last fling,” he said.

“Playboy One,” acknowledged the controller stiffly.

Knife released the brakes and spooled takeoff power, his mount rumbling forward.

Breanna banked northward, heading toward Range F where the rendezvous was supposed to take place. The check flight and tests had gone well, but she could feel her stomach pinching her as they got ready for the rendezvous.

Maybe it was just the ham sandwich she’d managed while they orbited out of the Russian satellite’s view, waiting for Smith and the F-119 to take off. Mustard always gave her indigestion. Everyone else was raving about her father’s decision to spread the expertise of the executive chef among all of the base’s cafeterias, but in her opinion the food at Dreamland still rated among the worst in the world.

“Optimum, optimum, optimum,” sang her copilot as he ran through his check of the flight systems. Two of Dreamland’s top techies were performing similar checks in the former radar and navigation suite below. The weapons bay was unoccupied, except by the computers.

sitting behind Breanna and Chris on the flight deck was Major Cheshire, who was overseeing the refueling exercise. The Megafortress’s synthetic bird’s-eye view, created from radar inputs, was projected on one of her monitors. Another carried the input from a video cam installed at the rear of the plane, roughly where a refueling boom would be. With her com unit set to Playboy’s frequency, Cheshire would pretend to be a boomer, talking the attack plane in for a tank. It was ad hoc, of course – there was no boom, and Major Smith had no lights to guide him under Fort Two’s belly. But they just needed a rough approximation to make sure the concept was sound.

Breanna reached Range F at twenty thousand feet, precisely as planned for the first track. It bothered the hell out of her that the world’s most versatile bomber might only survive as a milk cow. But as Cheshire had said when she explained the mission, better a live cow than a dead dream.

“We’re ready any time you are, Major,” she told her boss.

Knife stomped the rudder pedal in a last, desperate effort to close in to the target cone below Fort Two. His right wing pulled up, propelled by a nasty eddy of air from the Megafortress’s fuselage. He steadied if for a second, then felt the plane starting to lose speed and got a stall warning.

“Shit,” he said, out loud and over the open circuit as he ducked the plane off the EB-52’s tail.

“Okay, let’s take a break,” said Major Cheshire.

“Roger that,” he snapped.

They’d been flying for nearly thirty minutes to get the F-119 under the Megafortress’s belly. The vortices and wind sheers coming off the bigger plane’s wings, fuselage, and tail were just too much for the F-119, even with its constantly correcting fly-by-wire controls.

Knife thought the controls themselves might be the problem. In his opinion, having a computer between him and the plane’s control surfaces dampened the edge he needed to put the plane precisely where he wanted. It as like the difference between driving an automatic-shift and a standard-shift car; being able to flutter the clutch or hold the revs above redline without shifting could make all the difference.

But it wasn’t like he could turn the system off. Like other inherently unstable craft such as the F-117, the fly-by-wire system was an integral part of the design, not an enhancement like in the EB-52. The JSF couldn’t fly without it.

What had Bastian called it? A flying bathtub? Have to give Dog his due – he had that nailed.

“Let’s move on to the drogue routine off the left wing,” Knife radioed. “Stay at twenty thousand feet.”

“You sure?” asked Cheshire.

“Look, you guys just follow the script, all right?”

“You okay, Major?” asked Cheshire.

Smith reminded himself the project was being monitored down in the tower.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s go,” said Smith. He began closing in on the Megafortress’s left wing, now nearly a half mile ahead. He came in ever so slowly, drawing even with the tail – then found the plane sheering off to the left into a rapid spin.

His master warning panel freaked. He fell to nearly fifteen thousand feet before he could manage a recovery.

“Playboy, you have visible damage to the leading-edge aileron on the right wing,” said Cheshire. “Copy? Knife, are you okay? Are you with us?”

“Roger that,” he said. the plane’s high-flying position – the pilot sat in what looked like a glass bulb at the top of the plane – gave him a good view of the wings. Finally sure he had it back under control, he twisted back and forth, doing a visual inspection to confirm Cheshire’s warning and the legion of problem codes on the systems screen. The leading-edge surface was bent, and he could see a piece of metal extending out from behind it. he guessed that was part of one of the motors that worked it, which the screen warned had failed. Now he had to admit that the FBW system was useful – it was compensating so smoothly for the damaged wing that he barely noticed it. undoubtedly the flight-control system had played a big role in helping him regain control of the craft.

Though serious, the damage wasn’t fatal. But his gauges showed the temperature in his right engine had shot up to the redline; there must be a problem there as well.

Stinking F-119. What a way to go out.

Appropriate, though, considering the plane.

“Dream Tower, this is Playboy One. Emergency declared. I have a slight situation with my wing and engine. Looks like it’s time to land,” Mack said, adding his altitude, position, and heading, though they would be projected by Dreamland’s powerful sensors. He and Fort Two had the sky to themselves; all he had to do was line up, pop his wheels, and land.

“Tower acknowledges, Playboy. Copy your flying emergency.”

“Mack?”

Breanna’s voice seemed to come at him from the clouds, breaking through the outside fuzz of his consciousness as he pushed toward Runway Two. He felt the kiss again, then returned to the matter at hand.

“I’m okay, beautiful,” he told her. “I can’t even tell there’s a problem. But listen, do I get a kiss if I land in one piece?”

Colonel Bastian stood back from the monitor, nudgin tnext to the air-conditioning unit in the cramped quarters of Dreamland’s mobile test tower. He could see Smith’s plane coasting toward the hangars in the distance. Obviously, the damage to the plane had been minimal.

The damage to the idea of using the Megafortress as a tanker, however, was another story.

But he had decided this morning that he definitely wanted to keep the Megafortress project alive. It wasn’t just the fact that he believed in McLanahan’s Air Battleship scenario. Even as a ‘simple’ bomber, the Megafortress made sense. With a few tweaks, it could be as survivable as an F-15E while carrying several times the payload two or three times as far. Get into low-intensity war in hot climate – say, the Middle East, as McLanaha had hinted, or Southeast Asia – and a few Megafortress might just turn the tide. And it would be cheap; the Air Force had literally hundreds of B-52’s available for conversion.

At the moment, though, that was a drawback. There weren’t enough jobs at stake to easily apply political pressure and keep it alive. But attack it to the F-119 as a survivable tanker, and there’d be plenty of pols. A few months of demonstration flights, maybe some careful work with contractors, and they’d have enough political support to revive the battleship concept.

But it was dead now.

Bastian listened as the controller exchanged information with an aircraft conducting a test near Range F.

“What’s going on?” he asked Mickey Colgan, the flight officer coordinating the day’s tests.

“Oh, that’s just a drone taking off,” said the captain. “Unpiloted Green Phantom doing IR testing. Pretty straightforward. It’s got a JSF suit on. It has to catch another drone.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. There are two Phantoms. One’s just a stock drone. The other, Green Phantom, has some wing baffles and a few other mods to stimulate the F-119 flight characteristics. They’re controlled out of the Flighthawk hangar. We’re running checks on the nitrogen-cooling system for the gear in the IR’s eye. It has to be kept at a constant temperature or –”

“You think Green Phantom could rendezvous with Fort Two?”

Colgan blinked. “Well, if the F-119 can’t do it, that old Phanton, I mean, it’s at least as bad a flier as the JSF itself.”

“Who’s the pilot?” asked Bastian

“That would be Major Stockard, sir.” Colgan seemed to bristle a bit. “They, uh, they’re trying to get him back into the swing of things.”

“How good a pilot is he?”

“Sir?”

“I mean with the drone.”

“Well, before his accident, there was no one near as good as him,” said Colgan. “But …”

“But what?”

“I don’t know if he’s back up to speed, Colonel. And he, uh, he’s in a wheelchair.”

“What’s the frequency to the Flighthawk bunker? Said Bastian, moving back to the com panel.

To say he’d flown the QF-4 drone ten thousand times wasn’t an exaggeration; Zen had learned to control the Flighthawks with the exact airplanes he was flying. He’d gotten so he could work them with his eyes closed before moving up to the much-more-difficult-to-control Flighthawks.

He closed his eyes now in frustration. The gig was simple – all he had to do was fly Green Phantom behind Phantom One-Zero-Mike at fifteen thousand feet with three miles of separation. Piece of cake.

Except his heart was pounding and there was sweat pouring from his wrists, and if it weren’t for the automated flight computer fail-safe, he would have smacked Green Phantom into the ground on takeoff.

Things had gone badly yesterday, but that at least could be attributed to rust; he’d gotten better as the exercises wore on.

He wasn’t sure what to blame this on. Maybe the F-119 mods. JSF wasn’t exactly the world’s most flyable plane, and Green Phantom was a pig’s pig.

It was easier to handle than two Flighthawks at supersonic speed, though. So what was he sweating like a bull being chases by toreadors?

If he couldn’t make this simple intercept, how could be ever control the U/MFs?

Zen rolled his neck around on his spine, the vertebrae cracking. He’d forgotten how heavy the control helmet was. He could actually take it off, since the console he was sitting at in Hangar B was basically a flight simulator on steroids. Arranged like a cockpit and developed for the Flighthawk, its standard multi-use displays were augmented by dedicated control and sensor displays, along with banks of specific system overrides and data collectors. They’d nicknamed it Frankenstein’s Control Pod.

But if he was going to get back in the program, he had to do it right, and that meant using the helmet and the Flighthawk flight sticks. It meant sucking it up and hanging in there, kinks, sweat, and all.

Zen checked the altitude on Green Phantom, nudging up to 15,500 feet. He was five miles away, closing on One-Zero-Mike’s left wing. Though he had his left hand rapped around Mike’s control stick, the computer was actually flying the plane in its preprogrammed orbit. Zen nudged his right hand back slightly, gently climbing.

Piece of cake. Two miles to go. He moved his thumb to the center of the stick’s oval top, keying the view screen from optical to FLIR input. The view at the top of his screen changed to a greenish tint, the world shading according to heat sources.

“Zen?”

“What?” he snapped over the headset.

“I have Colonel Bastian on the circuit,” replied Fred Remington, one of his civilians helping run the tests. “Something’s up.”

“Yeah, okay.” Zen’s pinkie stretched to click down the lever at the front base of his right stick; it automatically engaged computer control for Green Phantom. “Let me talk to him.”

“Major Stockard, do you think you can do me a favor?” said Bastian as soon as the line snapped open.

“Colonel?”

“I wonder if you have enough fuel in Green Phantom to try a rendezvous with Fort Two on Range F. we’d like to see if you can get close enough for a refuel.”

Zen glanced at the gauge. The Phantom had plenty of fuel.

But getting close to a Megafortress was not exactly easy. Even the Flighthawks had trouble.

A Phantom with JSF mods? Ha.

And forget about the plane – he’d just blown an easy run at a drone.

Zen didn’t know what to say. “You’re looking for that to happen right now?”

“Can you do it?”