Dreamland

“Green Phantom simulates the F-119.”

“That’s exactly the point. We want to mock up a refuel off a Megafortress. Mack Smith had some trouble,” added the colonel. “I’d like a second opinion.”

“I’m on it,” snapped Zen.

Breanna took Fort Two out of its orbit at 25,000 feet, gliding gently on its left wing to twenty thousand smack in the middle of the range where the new exercise would take place. She pushed the big plane into place, gingerly nudging its nose so it slotted exactly along the three-dimensional flight line the computer was projecting in the HUD navigation screen. They were mimicking a standard tanker track, flying a long oval in the sky as if they were a KC-10 Extender or a KC-135 Stratotanker on its anchor near a war zone, waiting for attack planes and fighter returning from action. Neither Chris nor Major Cheshire had said anything since the colonel ordered the new trial.

Zen had said exactly four words over the radio, but the tension in his voice practically drilled a hole through her skull.

“Green Phantom, we have you at eighteen thousand feet, on beam, closure rate at two hundred knots,” Cheshire told Jeff.

The robot Phantom was going approximately a hundred miles an hour faster than it should have been. Breanna flipped her HUD plot that showed the plane approaching behind them. its speed abruptly slowed, but Green Phantom was still flying too fast to get into the refueling cone. She resisted the temptation to hit the gas, knowing that would only make things more confusing for Zen.

“Three miles,” Cheshire said. “He’s not going to make it.”

Breanna could feel Chris staring at her. She continued to hold her position.

Green Phantom just wouldn’t slow down. Zen nudged the throttle push-bar on the underside of the one-handed stick control. The thrust-indicator graph at the right side of the screen obstinately refused to budge.

He could tell the computer to lower power. He could tell it precisely how many pounds of thrust to produce – or, for that matter, what indicated airspeed he wanted. But using verbal commands, relying on the computer – it seemed like giving up. And he wasn’t giving up. He was doing this, and he was doing it himself.

Partly because Smith had failed. And partly just because.

He tapped the glider with his finger. Finally the robot’s speed began to drop, but it was too late.

“Breakaway, breakaway, breakaway,” Zen said calmly o the interplane frequency. The ‘breakaway,” Zen said mandated full military throttle and an immediate one-thousand-foot climb by the tanker aircraft, and idle power and a one-thousand-foot descent by the receiver. Zen purposely used a calm tone of voice instead of an excited one to communicate to Bree and Cheshire that there was no imminent danger. When he was level, he said. “Let me try another shot.”

“Copy that.”

Tanker pukes would be laughing their butts off if this had been the real thing. Stockard pulled the computer-engaged switch at the base of the stick, then gave the system verbal instructions to pull Green Phantom around. The C³ flight computer helping fly the plane was like a two-level brain. The basic level handled inputs from the stick and worked to keep the aircraft stable. For example, it knew that pulling back on the stick meant that the pilot wanted the plane to climb, and adjusted the control surfaces accordingly. This level was always on, and was very similar to what happened in a stock fly-by-wire system, such as the one in the JSF.

The upper level of the brain, which could be invoked verbally or by pulling the engage-disengage toggle that rose like a weed in front of the stick, was more an advanced copilot or even wingman. It translated verbal instructions, monitored sensors, and could plot and follow courses. It had a limited ability to plot and suggest strategy.

C³ could probably attempt the tanking demo on its own, with only some verbal prodding from Zen. But Jeff was determined to nail it himself.

If he could. Flying a remote-controlled plane under a tanker was a difficult task. Even without the odd wind eddies and vortices coming off the target plane, you were too far away. You were projecting feel and perspective literally across miles, imagining how it would be in the cockpit rather than really being there. You couldn’t feel the plane buck or sense it starting to wallow, or know just how the detent on the throttle was going to nudge under your wrist. You couldn’t slide your foot on the rudder pedal just so, moving your butt on the seat that infinitesimal inch to nail the hookup just so.

Jeff couldn’t slide his foot anywhere.

Get over it, he told himself. Just fucking get over it.

Jeff took back control as the Phantom came out of its orbit behind the Megafortress. “Pilot,” he said.

“Pilot,” confirmed the computer.

He nudged the throttle down. He was three miles behind the Megafortress, closing at a rate of roughly two miles a minute, easing in.

“You’re a little too high,” said Cheshire.

“Roger that, said Zen, stubbornly holding his position for a few seconds. The Megafortress had nudged down to eighteen thousand feet, speed nailed precisely at 350 knots.

A half mile off the tail of the big bomber, Zen took a deep breath, ready to go for it. He felt like he was crawling in, a thief sneaking in the back door.

“Looking good,” said Cheshire.

Zen pasted his eyes on the V of the bomber’s tail. Nice to have some director lights there.

Computer could give him some cues. Shit – why hadn’t he thought of that?

Rust, rust, rust. Stubborn rust.

“Inside the cone in ten seconds,” said Cheshire. “Nine, eight –”

The tail suddenly flashed large and then began moving to the right. The computer buzzed, but something inside Zen had taken over; he didn’t hear the warnings or Cheshire’s transmission. He nudged the stick to the right, thumb on the trim button as he corrected to compensate for the vortex. Then he gave the stick a quick shock forward, finessing the eddy of wind pushing Green Phantom backward. He nudged throttle, closed again, but the wind whipping off the bigger plane was beating the hell out of his wings. He tried again, pushing in; again the computer screamed and Cheshire yelped, and he felt sweat soaking his zipper suit. Green Phantom’s nose poked upward and it was over; he rolled downward, breaking off the attempt.

“Shit,” said Cheshire.

“Copy that,” he told her. “Let’s go again.”

“Zen, we’re at the end of the range,” said Breanna. “We have to take our turn.”

Her voice sounded far away, the way it had the first night in the hospital, when he came to.

“Yeah,” he said.

She didn’t respond. The Megafortress had already begun a shallow bank, turning through the air.

“We briefed twenty thousand feet,” he said testily, as if the two thousand feet might actually have made a difference.

Again she didn’t respond.

Why was he so mad? Why did he feel humiliated? Smith had blown exactly this test, and he’d had the real stinking airplane. He’d been in the goddamn cockpit.

And he had two legs.

Colonel Bastian looked at Colgan.

“They were pretty close,” said Colgan. “A hundred yards.”

“That’s an awfully long hose,” said Bastian dryly.

“Between the wings and the engines, the Megafortress beats the hell out of the air,” said Colgan. “The engineers used the vortexes to increase the lift and flying characteristics they were trying to maximize them, not smooth them out. I’m not an expert, but I don’t think there’s any question they can be eased off with some work.”

No question, but many dollar signs. And in good conscience, he couldn’t recommend proceeding with a project that showed no evidence it would succeed.

Why the hell not? What was the F-119?

A political plane. A horn of plenty.

A cow and a bathtub.

Did that justify lying about the Megafortress?

“Time’s getting tight,” said Colgan. “Want me to tell them to knock it off?”

Bastian looked up at the large clock above the controller’s console. The hands counted off time until the Russian satellite would be overhead.

Thirty minutes. They had to be back in the hangar by then, since the satellite would be overhead for several hours.

“If they want to try again, that’s fine. Just don’t get caught on the ground by that satellite.”

“Control advises we have time for one more run around the track due to satellite coverage,” Cheshire told Zen.

He had heard the transmission. It took every ounce of self-control not to snap back that he might not be able to walk but he could still hear as well as anyone.

Banking Green Phantom to start the approach, he realized he’d done his best flying in those few seconds after the alarms sounded. He’d slipped into a different mode, flying instead of tiptoeing.

He was too damn worried about everything – about not having legs, about who was watching, about how jittery Green Phantom and its JSF suit got under Fort Two. He’d been thinking instead of flying. He had to get beyond all that.

Just stinking fly.

Easy to say, harder to do.

“Fort Two,” he said, “proceed around the track and take your speed up to five-fifty. Hold it there.”

“Jeff?” said Breanna. “Five-fifty?”

“Do you copy, Fort Two?” he snapped.

There was a pause.

“Roger that,” she said finally.

“Major, what exactly do you have in mind?” Cheshire asked.

It was legitimate question. So why was he pissed at Bree?

He still loved her, even though he couldn’t have her.

Don’t let that screw you up. Of all things.

“The low-speed vortices the Megafortress throws off are pretty wicked,” Jeff said, his lips and tongue pausing over each word. “We had trouble doing formation with the Flighthawks at low speed, but once we brought it up we were fine. You remember those test, Major?”

“Affirmative,” snapped Cheshire. “You may be right, Zen. I think you are.”

“It’s worth a try,” added Breanna.

“Last one we have today,” said Cheshire.

“Copy that,” said Zen. “But there’s always tomorrow,” he added, the words suddenly bubbling into his mouth.

Breanna studied the HUD cue, her speed precisely at 550 knots. Green Phantom came on steadily. She guessed that Zen had decided to let the computer handle the throttle speed this time, concentrating on his joystick controls. Going from the Flighthawks to the kludgy Phantom must be like going from a hand-built racing bike to a tricycle. She suspected the QF-4’s engines were at the firewall.

He was coming in smoothly, though. Cheshire called out the distances – a half mile, five hundred yards, a hundred yards, fifty yards.

God, please let him do it, thought Breanna. Please. Whatever it takes from me, just give him this today.

“You’re in! you’re in!” Cheshire couldn’t contain her excitement.

“Copy that,” said Zen blandly.

Thank you, God, thought Breanna. Thank you.

Zen started to feel a little cocky as he slipped Green Phantom over to what would be a drogue position on the left wing. An immense eddy of air flowing beneath the number-one-engine brought him back to reality, pushing the drone’s nose downward. He fought it through, hanging tough as he pushed toward the imaginary cone that would signal success.

Approaching my turn in zero-one,” warned Breanna.

Zen grunted. He moved his hand to the throttle, intending to take over from the computer. as he did, the robot began falling off to the right. He fought it back, but by the time he had the plane level Megafortress was starting her turn. That made it more difficult; he poked in and held it for a few seconds, then found the speed backing down despite his nudging on the control. He slipped back – had he been doing a real tank, fuel would have splashed in his face.

“Pumpkin time,” declared the controller.

“I can do it,” he said, poking up his speed.

Colonel Bastian broke in. “Major Stockard, you’ve already accomplished your mission, he told him. “Let’s just get the cows back in the barn. I appreciate your efforts. A damn good show. You too, Fort Two. You all may have just saved Megafortress project from extinction.”

Zen let his arms droop over the sides of the wheelchair as Green Phantom rolled to a stop at the end of its landing range. The control link snapped off; the plane was now under the command of the ground crew, which was busily arranging its front end under the special hoist unit at the back of its trailer. The airmen would have it tarped within seconds, just in case the Kronos satellite managed somehow to slip its orbit and arrive ahead of schedule.

“Want to get something to eat before we debrief?” asked Remington. He’d left his control booth and was standing next to Zen. “You look like you could use a beer.”

“Why?” Zen snapped.

“You need an excuse to have a beer?” asked the dumbfounded engineer.

“I’m on duty,” said Jeff. He tried to make his voice sound less harsh, but it was clear from Remington’s face that he had failed.

“Hey, suit yourself,” said the engineer. “I’ll feed back the video.”

“Fred, wait.” Zen pulled off his headset, tossing it onto the console panel. He wheeled around, slowed by the industrial carpet. He remembered the day they had put that down, how good it had felt beneath his feet after standing for hours, watching one of the other pilots work with the drones.

Remington stood near the monitoring area, arms stiff, frowning at him.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Zen. “I mean, shit, yeah, I’d love a beer. But, uh, I haven’t had any since, I don’t know when.”

“Well, if you’re looking for an excuse,” said the civilian,” I’d say that was a damn good one. We can snag a beer in Lounge B. I’ve already prepared the report on the refuel,” he added quickly. “The colonel will have everything he needs.”

Preparing the report was Zen’s job. his anger twinged.

Had Remington done the work out of pity? Or was that just Remington, super-efficient nerd boy, always on top of things?

Not to mention thirsty.

Would he have done it before the accident? Zen couldn’t be sure.

“I should look at it,” he told the engineer.

Remington smiled. “My laptop’s in the briefcase, with the report and video,” he said, pointing. “We’ll check it out while we’re waiting for the bartender to pour some frosty ones.”

Zen laughed. If he remembered correctly, Lounge B was self-serve. Come to think of it, last time he’d been here, it hadn’t offered beer.

Jeff was in the Flighthawk control room by the time Breanna finished with the Megafortress. He didn’t seem to be anywhere in Bunker B, the underground suite of offices used as the Flighthawk development center. Breanna began walking toward their dormitory suite, which was located in Yellow Two at the far end of the base.

The suite had belonged to her before they’d gotten married. Approximately 250 square feet were divided between two bedrooms, a central living room-kitchenette-utility space, and a bathroom. The décor was early pressboard, augmented by some posters of Impressionist prints inherited from the previous occupant, a chemist working in one of the weapon sections. Breanna greatly preferred the condo near Las Vegas she and Jeff had bought, but they had held onto the suite because it was convenient to have a place to crash on the base. Unlike many military facilities, Dreamland had a surplus of housing; while you couldn’t count on the shower pressure in the morning, at least the price was right.

Breanna could tell Jeff wasn’t in the suite as soon as she pushed open the door. She went to the bedroom and cranked open the windows, trying to remove the musty smell that had accumulated since she’d last been here a few days before. She sat down on the bed, found herself leaning back sinking into the pillow. Despite the success of the test – despite Jeff’s success – she felt depressed and drained. Things between them weren’t going well at all. She had known it would be a long process, the most difficult thing they’d ever done together by far. But that didn’t make her feel any better.

Bree got up and went to fill the tub. Baths always made her feel better.

Steam rose quickly from the tub, the water so hot she nearly scalded her fingers just pushing the stopper closed. Definitely a good-luck omen – truly hot water was as rare as good water pressure.

Straightening, Breanna began to undress. The steamy air softened her skin of her cheeks. She felt the poisons and worries that had accumulated in her body beginning to escape. She flattened her hands over her face, pushing her fingers back over her hair and then down over her chest to her hips and thighs, stretching slowly, relaxing after the stressful day.

Breanna slipped into the tub even though the water was still running. The knots in her muscles gave way; her legs slid limp against the side of the narrow tub, the close confines somehow reassuring.

They had showered here together, many times. To be able to that again, just one –

But those were distracting thoughts. She had live in the present, not the past. She still loved Jeff. She might love him more, in fact – he was brave and determined and he could be stubborn, but that was attractive too. He’d nailed the test the best pilot on the base – the next-best pilot on the base – had failed.

Jeff would never walk again. His back was broken. She could deal with that; she could survive that. And as soon as he was sure of that, as soon as he saw that she wasn’t just pitying him, it would get better. She knew it would.

It would.

Breanna lowered her head to the surface of the water, feeling the tingle. She wanted to reduce her consciousness to just that feel, to just the hot tickle on her skin. Her face and breasts and legs fuzzed with the warmth.

Many times before they were married she sat in this very tub like this, thinking of Jeff. She believed she could feel him there will ESP, close her eyes and he would magically appear at the door.

A knock in the hallway startled her.

Imagination?

No, there it was again.

“Jeff?” she called.

“Hey, anyone in there?”

Breanna jumped out of the tub. She grabbed the small towel from the bar, anxious to let him in.

it wasn’t until she started to turn the knob that she realized it hadn’t been his voice.

“No, it’s Mack,” said Major Smith.

Bree pushed the door shut quickly. “I’ll – I was in the bath,” she said. “Wait just a second.”

Smith laughed when she reopened the door a minute later.

“You didn’t have to get dressed for me, Rap,” he told her.

“Major?”

“My, we’re formal today,” said Smith, “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” said Breanna, who’d jumped into her flight suit. As she closed the door behind him she glanced toward the bathroom, noticing her underwear on the floor where she’d left it. She went to close the bathroom door.

“Expecting Jeff?”

“Well, he is my husband,” she told Smith. “Can I get you something? A Coors?”

“Sure.”

Breanna squatted down in front of the fridge, retrieving two beers from the bottom compartment.

“I figured I’d stop by and say good-bye,” Smith told her, taking the beer.

“Good-bye?”

“Assignment came through.”

“Oh?”

Smith shook his head. “Can’t tell you about it.” He grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “If you want, I’ll try and get you transferred too.”

“Thanks, Mack,” she said.

“I’m serious. They’ll be closing this place soon. A few months. Nothing against your dad,” he added, sipping the beer.

Smith was attractive; good-looking and damn smart, he was also obviously bound for bigger and better things. He could play the political game and clearly wanted to be a general. She liked him, even though his ego was bigger than the room they were sitting in.

“How’s the JSF?” she asked.

“An access panel flew off and jammed one of the rods in the leading-edge assembly,” said the pilot. “The panel wasn’t secured properly. Mechanics ought to be shot.”

“That sounds a little harsh.”

“You can’t do your job, there’s no excuse. I could have augured in,” said Smith, who didn’t seemed very concerned. “Anyway, I’m glad to be rid of the F-119. I just wish –”

He let his gaze drift into hers. Breanna felt her heartbeat double.

“I’m not really attracted to you, Mack,” she heard herself say softly. She knew instantly it was a lie, and he must have too. Breanna stared down at the floor.

“Bree.”

His hand felt warm on her face, reassuring like the bath had been.

She forced herself to shake her head no.

Zen actually enjoyed the beer, even though he drank only a quarter of it. Remington and the others seemed genuinely happy about the day’s tests, and at least pretended not to notice that he was in a wheelchair.

He knew they weren’t oblivious, and there were a few awkward silence and glances. Still, the test had gone well, and Remington’s new laptop had some cool video extensions that replayed the flight videos very sharply, and the report was perfect. And what the hell. Between the beer and the day, he actually felt damn good. He even joined in the good-natured kidding of Lou DeFalco, the civilian who’d been acting as lead Flighthawk pilot in Zen’s absence. They call DeFalco ‘Rock’ – not exactly a flattering nickname for a pilot.

“You didn’t think I’m bad in the Flighthawk,” said DeFalco with a laugh, “you should see me in Aurora. There I’m Big Rock.”

“I heard you put one of the Flighthawks through the hangar door,” said Zen.

“No way,” said DeFalco. “It was the side of the hangar.”

“True.” Remington laughed. “We just barely missed. He came, I’m not exaggerating, within an inch. Damn computer protocols don’t always lock out on proximity.”

“Hey, if they did, Rock would never get off the ground,” said Paul Kardon, one of the weapons engineers.

“Hey, Zen,” said Nancy Cheshire, walking in. “Your wife’s looking for you>”

“Uh-oh,” groaned the others in unison.

“The ball and chain beckons,” deadpanned Remington.

Zen laughed along with the others.

“You better go run her down, Major,” said Kardon. “And don’t take any gruff. Remember – you outrank her.”

“Yeah, but she’s connected.” DeFalco laughed.

Zen tried Bree at the Megafortress bunker, and then over at the Taj, before one of the security sergeants said he’d seen her heading toward Yellow Two, the dorm building where she had her apartment.

Their apartment.

She was trying. Shouldn’t he let her make the attempt? There was a chance that she might be able to get over the fact that he was a cripple.

Was that fair? Let her waste her life on him?

Even though the entrance to the dorm building was ramped, Jeff had trouble negotiating the bumps. He had to jiggle his wheels sideways on one, and that killed his momentum. Finally he reached the exterior hall, only to find it nearly impossible to pull the heavy door while rolling backward.

“Hey, Major, let me grab that sucker for you,” said Captain Danny Freah.

“Thanks,” said Zen, rolling backward as the big Air Force security office pulled open the door.

“Ought to have an electronic eye on it,” said Freah as Zen rolled into the foyer.

“That’s not necessary,” said Zen, fighting against his embarrassment.

Freah seemed t sense the awkwardness, and opened the inside door quickly.

“Heard you nailed that tanker sim this afternoon,” said Freah. “Good going.”

“I didn’t realize that’d be big news,” said Zen.

“Hey, Major, relax.” Said Freah. He pulled his hands back as if he’d touch a hot stove. “I happened to be in the control tower when you got it. they were applauding.”

“Yeah,” said Zen. Hadn’t meant to snarl. He pulled his wheelchair around, starting down the hallway for the room. It was automatic – he didn’t think about the stairs at the far end the hall.

The flight down was only six steps deep, the suite door barely ten feet beyond that. But there was no way he could get down the steps without help. He’d have to go back through the lobby and around through the back wing, where there was a ramp. As he started to wheel backward, he saw the door to the suite open.

Mack Smith popped his head out, then turned back to say something before leaving.

Smith skipped up the stairs, disappointed with Breanna and maybe himself. He hadn’t gone there to seduce her.

So why had he gone then?

He hadn’t found an answer before he reached the lobby. Coincidence of coincidence, who was just arriving but Bree’s husband Zen.

That was close.

“Hey,” said Knife, grabbing Zen’s chair as he was rolling down the back hallway. “Hey, Zen, what are you up to?”

“What are you to?” snapped Stockard furiously.

Smith let go of the wheelchair. Captain Freah and a Spec Ops security guard were standing near the front door a few yards away.

“I’m sorry,” said Smith.

Paralyzed and all, Stockard looked like he was going to bolt out of the chair and strangle him. Mack knew better than to say anything about Rap, even though nothing had happened, but he wasn’t sure what to say.

“I was just making my rounds, saying good-bye,” said Mack, taking a step back. He hadn’t had a chance to say anything about Zen’s legs, but this sure as hell wasn’t the time.

And anyway, what the hell could he say? Tough break?

He’d already said something like that in the hospital.

“I’m saying good-bye,” Mack repeated.

“Good-bye for what?”

“Hell, Zen, what’s up your ass?” Smith took a step backward and stuck his hands on his hips. For a second he thought Stockard was going to put his head down and ram forward with his chair.

“Uh, Majors,” said Freah, coming toward them with the air of a kindergarten teacher. “Can I be of some assistance?”

“I’m fine,” said Zen.

“Me too,” said Knife, starting for the door. “Good-bye, Zen. Tell your wife I said hello.”

“Tell her yourself,” said Stockard.

Smith spun around and headed through the lobby door, letting it slam shut behind him.

Chapter 3

A matter of conscience

Two weeks later

Ethiopia

21 October, 0400

“All right Marines, listen the fuck up.” Gunnery Sergeant James Ricardo Melfi gave the small handpickedplatoon one of his best sneers, even though it was difficult for them to see in the dim light from the nearby flare. “That means you too, Goosehead,” he told one of his sergeant. “Jack, you close your fuckin’ mouth or I’m puttin’ a boot in it. You want to yawn, you go to the dentist. All right, girls, here’s the deal. We come off the Chinook, we split into the two squads, we hit the buildings the way we laid it out. We take out missile one and missile two, we call in the fuckin’ Air Force. We give the weenies two minutes to get here because they’re not Marine aviators.” He paused to allow his men the appropriate contemptuous snort, then continued. “At that point, we take the administration building, which should be defenseless, assuming the Air Force has done its job. if they have not, then Fire Team B, following my lead, will do it for them, wiping out the tank with their bare hands if they have to.”

Actually, they would be using a Russian-made SPG-9 piece of shit. The light antitank gun fired a 73mm missile that had a fairly good chance of destroying the ancient M-47 – but only if it hit it. The weapon wasn’t particularly known for its accuracy.

“Team A, meanwhile, will be taking care of the machine guns on the east side of the building. Prisoners and wounded to be evacuated to the Chinook rendezvous point, blah-blah-blah. You girls got that?”

“Oh, we got it, Sergeant Honey,” said the Team B point many, Jerry Jackson.

“Listen, Swishboy, you just make sure you don’t trip going out of the helicopter,” Melfi told him. “I’ll boot your black ass right into the sandbag post.”

“Oh, I wish you would, Gunny.”

The others laughed, and so did the sergeant, even as he shook his head. He thumbed toward the two green unmarked Chinook standing on the dirt pad behind him. The flare he’d lit behind him made the aircraft look almost purple in the early morning twilight. Looming beyond them were jagged hills, their sharp shadows and shapes making the place look like the far side of the moon, rather than the ragged hinterland of northeastern Ethiopia.

“Okay, let’s run this like we’re under fire, all right?” said Gunny. “Check your gear and move out.”

The Marines quickly gave their rifles and gear the onceover as they silently lined up to board the helicopters. They’d been issued plain-Jane M-16A1 rifles that had been bought on the black market. Beside the Russian antitank gun, they were carrying two French machine guns – AA52’s, which were actually quite good, though they used odd-sized bullets. The Chinooks that were to carry the Marines ostensibly belongs to Zaire. Their uniforms, which had an Army puke-green tint to them, bore no insignias or markings.

In Gunny’s opinion, these and a dozen other elaborate precautions designed to camouflage the group’s identity weren’t going to fool anyone if the Marines were actually called on to do the job they were practicing to do. in Gunny’s opinion, they’d be better off admitting they were Americans and, hot damn, taking a real Marine Expeditionary Force – Cobras, Harriers, Ch-53’s, SAWs, M240’s, the whole shebang – against the damn Somalian SAM site and blowing the living shit out of it, foreign politics be damned.

But of course, Gunnery Sergeant James Melfi had been in the Marines long enough to not have an opinion in these matters. If Madcap Magician wanted to pretend they were merely pissed-off mercenaries hired by a pissed-off and jealous African dictator who wanted to get back in power in Somalia, so be it.

“All right, girls, let’s move it out,” said Melfi, prodding his men to board the double-bladed Chinook transport. Captain Peter Gordon, who’d been conferring with the pilots, frowned at him – he’d already bawled Melfi out twice today for using ‘inappropriate language.’

“Sergeant?” snapped the captain.

“Pussies are all hot and wet for you, Captain,” said Gunny with as straight a face as he could manage.

“Helos bearing three-niner.”

“Confirmed.” Mack Smith glanced at the way marker on his INS an put his plane into a bank away from the path the two helicopters were taking. “Posion Flight, prepare to break. Let’s do this the way we drew it up.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

The four F-16’s now split into two different flights, Mack and his wingman staying southeast of the helicopters while the others flew north. Mack scanned the glow of his instruments in the Viper cockpit, then snapped his APG-68 radar into ground-attack mode. He was ahead of schedule, but had had trouble picking out the target during last night’s exercise and wanted to take no chance this time.

“Helicopters should be putting down now,” he told his wingman, Captain Kevin Sullivan, Sullivan acknowledged. Packing a pair of HARM missiles, Sullivan was to watch for any radar indication that would indicate SAM activity. The HARMs, or High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, were designed to home in on the powerful radar systems used by the SAMs. In this particular scenario, they were looking for an SA-3 batter, a medium-altitude, medium-range missile system protecting an installation on the northern coast of Somalia.

The simulated coast of Somalia. They were actually flying over Ethiopia.

“Ground team inbound,” snapped the Chinook pilot on the cue. The secure, coded KY-58 com system rendered the voice almost metallic. “Taking fire. LZ is hot.”

“Poison One riding in,” said Mack. He snapped the sidestick hard, rolling into a dive from 18,500 feet. Mack gave a quick glance toward his radar-warning receiver, making sure he was not being tracked. He mimed hitting his master arm switch, working through his routine as if he were actually carrying the four GBU-24 laser-guided bombs and six five-hundred-pound ‘dumb’ or unguided bombs they planned to use on the mission.

“SA-3 site is up,” Sullivan. “Dotted. HARM away. You’re clean.”

In theory, the most serious antiair Mack would face had just been taken care of before it could launch missiles.

Knife, meanwhile, had put his Viper into a steep dive toward the target. His targeting system in the HUD projected a diamond smack on the long wall at the base below; the wall was simulating a tank.

“Bombs away,” he said, pretending to pickle the iron off his wings. He jostled the wings up and down, as if simulating the g forces as three thousand pounds fell off, beginning to recover and position himself to fire the laser-designated GBUs on the ground team’s cue.

Gunny felt his knee twinge as he trotted toward his two-man SPG team. He tried to ignore it, grumbling as the F-16 banked above.

“All right, tank is wiped out,” he told the men. “Get the machine gun. Come on, let’s go, let’s go. This ain’t a pleasure cruise. Move it!”

“Bam,” said the loader after the gunner mimed the weapon firing.

“Good, okay, okay,” shouted Gunny. The men were leaping over the wall, firing live rounds at the empty warehouse.

A fresh flare rose in the distance. Captain Gordon trotted up, a nightscope in his hand. There were only three night-vision binoculars assigned to the entire thirty-member assault team.

“Looking good, Sergeant,” said Gordon.

“Uh-huh,” said Melfi. His knee was really screaming now, but there was no time to baby it. with the first and second ring of ground defenses now wiped out, the six men on his right were supposed to move in and take out the surface-to-ship batteries installed along the railhead. The Silkworm missile launchers were being simulated by a pair of old Land Rovers at the far end of the warehouse complex. Gunny half-trotted, half-walked behind the fire team as they scrambled forward. As they bolted over the wall that had played the role of the tank, they suddenly stopped.

“What’s going on?” he yelled at them over the wall.

“Supposed to be an armored car,” hissed one of the men, reminding him of the scenario. “We’re hitting it with the LANTIRN for the F-16.

“Shit. Right. Sorry,” said Gunny, taking advantage of the break to walk around to the edge of the wall rather than struggling over it. meanwhile, the fire team leader illuminated the pretend target so the F-16 above could hit it with the GBU-24’s.

“Destroyed!” yelped the team’s com specialist, who was communicating with the plane.

Gunny followed along as the team proceeded to the parking area where the Silkworm were supposed to be. The Marines moved quickly – a little too quickly, of course, since there was no one actually in front of them. The two demolition specialists set their charges on the Land Rovers.

“Move out, move out!” called the team leader.

Gunny retreated with the others. He barely made it back to the wall before the cars blew up.

“Okay, into the helicopter!” Captain Gordon screamed.

Gunny permitted himself a moment’s worth of satisfaction, staring at the flaming trucks. They’d made sure the gas tanks were full – might as well have one big boom. They he walked back toward the LZ, where the helicopter was winding its props.

“Helo outbound,” Smith told his flight.

The other pilots checked in as the four F-16’s proceeded to their postattack rendezvous point. In theory, two HARM missiles, six five-hundred-pound iron bombs, and a total of eight GBU-24’s had been fired at the ground installation on the coast of Somalia, all scoring hits. Destroyed were two SA-2 and four SA-3 ground-to-air launchers, along with their radar vans and specialized crews. More importantly, two batteries of Silkworm antiship missiles had also been wiped out. not to mention one tank, one armored car, and unspecified number of Somies.

Fantastic. Now if the Iranians and Somalians would cooperate, the operation c9ould proceed.

Smith squirmed in the F-16 seat. Canted back at thirty degrees to make it more comfortable in high-g maneuvers, if felt awkward to him, almost as if he were sitting in a dentist’s chair. He knew that eventually he’d get used to it, but that didn’t soothe the kinks in his shoulders.

Mack checked the time. Four-forty. They had plenty of time to go again, as planned. But before he could signal the helicopter, their ground controller broke in.

“Poison Flight, this is Madcap Magician. Return to base. Repeat, return to base.”

“One copies,” he said, recognizing the voice of ISA commander Major Hal Briggs.

Briggs ordinarily wasn’t up this early, et alone working the radio. And Mack knew the major was supposed to be in Saudi Arabia today, overseeing another operation only tangentially related to the crisis in Somalia.

Smith’s heart started double-pumping. “Okay, guys,” he told the others. “Let’s get back to base pronto.”

The White House

21 October, 0700 local

In his seven months as special assistant to the National Security Council, Jed Barclay had seen – seen, not met, not talked to – the President of the United States of America exactly twice before. And now today – now, this instant – he was giving him a personal briefing in the upstairs residence of the White House on the most important and dangerous international development since the Gulf War.

Hell, this was twenty times more dangerous, as he was endeavoring to point out between his nervous coughs and tremors.

The President’s Chief of Staff frowned as the word ‘hell’ escaped from Jed’s mouth. Neither the President nor Ms. O’Day reacted. Jed pushed on.

“The Iranian mullahs have decided that the time is right for their greater Islamic League. That is, of course, Islam as they interpret it, not as most of the rest of the world or even the Iranians interpret it. but you’re all aware of that. The takeover of the Somalian government was the first step. Locating the Silkworm antiship missiles there was the second. They had a credible threat to shipping, and their ultimatum must be taken seriously. In a few months, they’ll have the aircraft carrier they’re building with the Chinese. Either the West – us basically – adds a one-hundred-percent tax to the price of oil and divides it among the members of their alliance, or they will attack shipping. They’ve menaced two ships already.”

Jed paused, sensing that he was starting to hyperventilate. He had prepared a short sidebar to his presentation outlining the origins of some of the weapons systems known or suspected to have been shipped to Somalia and southern Iran, including a dozen improved SA-2Bs that seemed to have come from Yugoslavia. But it was superfluous and his audience was anxious; he took a long breath and moved on.

“We have several options. The first, of course, is negotiation –”

President Lloyd Taylor shifted in his seat. “Cut to the chase, son. The election will be over before your report is. What are the odds of the covert action working?”

Jed literally gulped as his mind shifted gears. He had prepared long arguments for and against each option, including the Madcap Magician operation the President had just referred to. That plan – removing the surface-to-ship and surface-to-air missiles in Somalia with a ‘sanitized’ covert-action team – was, in fact, his recommendation. But he’d come expecting to have to argue for it, and only now realized that the President might actually already had discussed and considered it in great detail with Ms. O’Day.

He coughed, the jumped to what he had planned as the conclusion to his presentation.

“By knocking out the missiles we can demonstrate a firm hand. Resolve, I mean,” said Jed. “At the same time, the diplomatic solution can proceed. The covert, I mean, Madcap Magician, is preferable because it can move quickly and provides at least a veneer of deniability. In any event, full military intervention would take days if not weeks to pull together, by which time the price of oil will have risen catastrophically. Madcap Magician has positioned and trained units under the Ironweed contingency; they need only a few hours’ notice. As far as negatives go, we’re working without real-time satellite coverage and the intel –”

“Odds of success,” prompted Ms. O’Day in a stage whisper.

“The simulations,” he said, “have shown a seventy percent chance of success.”

“Seventy percent?” said the President’s Chief of Staff.

“I think it’s work the risk,” said O’Day.

“What does our Harvard whiz kid think?” asked the President. He said Harvard the way someone who had graduated from Yale would.

“Well, sir.” Jed fumbled with his tie as memorizing he speech. “I, uh – concur with Ms. O’Day. However, we have to –“

“However, you feel that the possibility of failure is higher than the models indicate,” said the President. “But that we should proceed anyway.”

“Well, see, it depends on what you’re measuring. There’s a built-in prejudice in any such model. I mean, I tried to keep it out of this one, O’Day had warned him, above all else, not to use the word ‘coefficient.” “But the real issue here goes beyond the computer model.”

“I agree. Computer modeling of political situations is absurd,” said Taylor’s Chief of Staff.

“Well, that’ a bit far,” snapped Jed, momentarily forgetting where he was. “I mean, the thing is, we do need tools to qualify certain factors. See, my point is, Mr. President, we have to meet this aggressively. To a certain extent, we have to be willing to risk partial military failure. And we also have to anticipate adverse reaction from the other Arab states. Saudi Arabia will feel particularly vulnerable, as will Egypt. They’ll definitely bar their bases to us. We’ll end up having to rely on Israel for the military buildup, and that will have even more consequences. But if we do nothing – if we fold – the results will be disastrous. We should be prepared for a measured but aggressive response. When Libya joins the coalition – and I say when, not if – we should attack with everything we’ve got. There are a dozen contingency plans drawn up for that. At that point, the Greater Islamic League folds. I’m certain of that.”

“Where’d you get this punk kid?” Taylor growled to O’Day. “Excuse us,” he said harshly, dismissing Jed.

Confused and impotent, Jed slipped out of the room. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach.

Worse. Maybe hit in the head with a baseball bat.

He walked down the hallway in a daze. Ms. O’Day somehow materialized behind him. With a stern look, she motioned for him to follow her downstairs. He did so, despite the searing pain of his insides. Never in his life had he screwed up so badly.

And the thing was, he wasn’t even sure precisely how he had screwed up.

Too many coughs and stutters. Not enough respect. Mentioning the computer simulations, even though they were one of the reasons he was here. And above all, using that damn word ‘coefficient.”

Neither Jed nor his boss spoke until they were back in the NSC basement, walking toward her office.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry? For what?”

“I didn’t mean to, uh, make the President angry.”

“O’Day laughed. “Jed, you may be a genius at foreign policy and computer science, but you have a lot to learn about Washington.”

“Washington?”

“There’s an election in three weeks, remember?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Ms. O’Day shook her head.

“Was I supposed to check this with polls or something?” Jed asked. He had a vague notion that military action would hurt the President’s chances at getting reelected. On the other hand, rising gas prices would effectively kill them.

wouldn’t they?

“Jed, Ironweed is proceeding,” said O’Day. “Madcap Magician has already gotten the okay to move. We’re ratcheting up for the reaction. Two carrier groups are moving into the Mediterranean for training missions. Everything you suggested is proceeding. Hopefully, it won’t be needed,” she added. The National Security Advisor pursed her lips. “But if it is, we’ll deal with it the only way possible – aggressively, but with a measured response. In the meantime, Cascade is being detailed to the Middle East to keep an eye on things.”

“Cascade?”

“My personal representative. Unofficially, of course. His assignment is to observe the routine training procedures, familiarizing himself with them.”

“But the President was angry. And he certainly didn’t authorize –”

“Keep that in mind,” she said sternly. “And don’t forget about the election, okay?”

she glanced her watch. “Your flight leaves from Andrews in a half hour. If you hustle, you may be able to hitch a ride on Marine One with the President’s wife.”

“The President’s wife?”

“Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t make the flight,” added O’Day, “even though she’s the only one on the passenger list. Probably just as well. She would definitely want you to change that tie. Good God, Jed. We have to go shopping when you get back.”

Dreamland

21 October, 0700 local

Ordinarily, Colonel Bastian didn’t have much use for donuts, especially the crème-covered, choke-your-arteries kind. But Ax had insisted that hey were mandatory morale boosters for early morning staff meetings, especially when the people gathering were going to hear things they didn’t like hearing. And so he’d let the sergeant go ahead and ring the damn things to the conference room, along with the coffee tankers and an oversupply of semi-hard bagels. It was a good thing too – they’d been going at this now for nearly an hour without letup.

Long enough for Dog to concede, if only to himself, that the donuts weren’t that bad an idea.

“Colonel, I’ve gone over the numbers at least ten times with the contractors,” pleaded Major Cheshire. “There’s just no way we can sustain the EB-52 project with this little money. The flight-computer system for the three new planes alone will cost ten million dollars.”

“There’s got to be a way,” said Bastian. “The budget committee is reluctant even to grant that much.”

“What’s another ten million to them?” groused Rubeo. “They probably spend more than that on lunch.”

“Each computer has to be designed specifically for the individual plane,” explained Cheshire. “The gallium-arsenic chips that control flight functions are made by the NSA plants, which sets the price. That’s where the expense comes in. It’s absurd. I know, but they’re padding their own budget.”

“Then do in another way,” said Bastian. “Can’t you use off-the-shelf parts?”

Cheshire shook her head.

“Can we make the chips ourselves?” he asked.

“Not without a fab,” said Rubeo, “which will cost billions. Colonel, you can’t nickel and dime Dreamland. It won’t work.”

“I wouldn’t call ten million dollars nickel and dime,” said Bastian. “That’s a hell of a lot of money.”

“Colonel, wouldn’t it make mode sense to tell the Congressmen these are the weapons systems that we need?” asked Cheshire.

Bastian sighed. She was right. On the other hand, that wasn’t the way this was going to work. The Air Force and DOD had already done that.

And under their scenario, Dreamland hadn’t made the cut.

O’Day wanted program figures and a new budget so she could reinstate HAWC on a black line, with help from her Congressional allies. If Bastian had had more leverage – if he’d been a three-star general instead of a lowly lieutenant colonel – he’d be able to fight on a few other fronts and maybe get Dreamland back in the big game. But he simply didn’t have enough weight to counteract the generals who wanted Dreamland closed down because of the Ken James affair; O’Day’s strategy was the only play.

“Look, I’m recommending we proceed with the Megafortress program, which calls for developmental trails of several models,” Bastian told them. “But realistically, the only portion of the program that we can count on will be the tanker, because of JSF.”

“That’s the project that should be discontinued,” said Rubeo.

“Well, Professor,” Dog said. “if you want to call your local Congressman and tell him that, be my guest.”

“One Megafortress could do the job of four JSFs,” said Cheshire.

“Can it land on an aircraft carrier?” Bastian said.

“It wouldn’t have to. Its unrefueled range –”

“Look, I’m not going to argue about the JSF design. I agree with everything that’s been said. But I have to deal with reality.” Dog pushed himself back in his chair. “Now let’s get back to our agenda.”

Zen turned the corner into the Flighthawk ground-level hangar so sharply he practically ran down Jennifer Gleason, who was making some adjustments to the on-board computer in the Hawk Two. She was bending over the front of the aircraft, her back to him; he found himself gazing at the soft, perfect curve of her hips.

“Hey, Zen,” she said, still bent over the U/MF-3. His chariot made it impossible to arrive anywhere incognito.

“Hey, yourself,” he said.

“Back from the colonel’s meeting so soon?”

“I sent Mike,” he told her.

“Poor Mike.”

“Yeah.” Mike Janlock, the resident BMI resins and airfoil-design specialist, was the senior scientist on the Flighthawk project and had been in charge of it before Bastian’s reorganization. Even if Zen hadn’t begged out of the colonel’s budget session because of the morning’s test flight, he probably would have asked Janlock to go along in his place. Jeff didn’t want to spend the time ducking the pitying glances everyone else would be throwing toward him. Besides, word was Bastian had already made his final decision on the Flighthawks – they weren’t making the cut. No amount of meetings or reports or well-reasoned arguments or even pity would change his mind about ‘robot’ planes.

“Well, we’re not closed down yet,” said Gleason.

“No, not yet.” Jeff grabbed the wheels of his chair. “You’re blowing off the preflight briefing?”

“No, sir,” said the young scientist. She glanced back at him. “We had the discrete-burst module reengineered last night, and I’m getting it in place. I’m almost finished.”

“You did it again?”

“The last one failed the shock test after you, huh, went home.”

“You should have called me.”

“Well, matter of fact, we did.”

“I was over in the visiting officers’ hall. I didn’t feel like going all the way out to Ewen,” he added lamely.

“Anyway, I’m just about done. Everybody else is inside.” Jennifer smiled at him, then went back to whatever it was she was doing. She’d tucked her long hair up under a white smock cap; a single strand draped down across her neck, hanging down over her shoulder. Her breasts pushed against her lab coat as she leaned into the machine; he could see the outline of her nipples against the fabric.

Stop, he warned himself, rolling forward to the small room they used to brief their missions.

Everyone was there – including Breanna, who as sitting at the far end of the table talking to Lee Ong. Ong was responsible for the Flighthawks’ physical systems and acted as the ‘mission boss,’ coordinating the many details involved in the airborne tests.

So why was Bree here?

“Good morning,” said Zen, wheeling himself toward the front of the room. “Jennifer should be in shortly.”

He glanced around the room, carefully avoiding Breanna’s gaze. “Where’s Bobby?” he asked, referring to the usual pilot of the E-3 mother ship.

“Captain Fernandez has the flu,” said Breanna. “So does Kathy. I volunteered to fly Boeing in their place.”

Zen snapped his head toward her.

“You don’t have problem with that, do you?” She said defensively. “Pete Brinks is coming over to copilot.”

“No, of course not, Captain,” he said. He turned to the others. “Captain Stockard flew Rivet intercept flights in RC-135’s when she was a teenager,” he them. “Maybe she’ll entertain us with stories about eavesdropping on Russian air defenses if things get boring.”

“Maybe I’ll just roll Boeing through an invert if things get boring,” she said.

Zen felt his face starting to flush as the others laughed. He turned the floor over to Ong, then rolled along the far side of the room toward the coffeepot at the back. Coffee was on eof the things he’d all but given up since the accident, but he didn’t want to sit out at the front where Breanna could stare at him.

It was possible that the two pilots assigned to fly Boeing were actually sick. And Breanna was at least arguably the next best choice on the base to take the mission; she had a lot of experience in the large jets. But it seemed to him like a hell of a coincidence.

Not to mention the fact that he should have been consulted about who would replace the other pilots. He hadn’t seen Mike this morning, nor had he talked to Ong. One of them must have made the call.

If Zen asked – when Zen asked – undoubtedly they’d give him the same line Jennifer had used. They’d tried calling him at home, blah-blah-blah.

And maybe they had. They could have called and gotten Bree. She would have instantly volunteered. That was Bree.

So maybe they weren’t conspiring against him. Even if it seemed that way.

He hadn’t gone home last night, and in fact hadn’t gone home for the past few nights. He was, in fact, avoiding her, trying to figure out what to do – or rather, how to do it.

Ong laid out the mission succinctly, setting the overall objective. They were going to put the Flighthawk through a series of low-altitude maneuvers to simulate a low-level penetration during an attack mission. The mother ship would follow behind it, first at five miles, then ten miles, then fifteen miles, and finally twenty. The extended distances were the point of the exercise; the Flighhawks had never been successfully controlled beyond seven miles while operating in Combat One, the secure communications mode.

Breanna then stood and reviewed her flight plan. Ordinarily this was, at best, a perfunctory part of the session. But Rap gave a precise, detailed briefing that covered everything from expected wind to fuel burn to radio rescue frequencies. She even included information about simulating an airdrop launch for the U/MFs, which the Boeing could not in fact handle. Jeff could tell the others were impressed that she’d done her homework.

Tough act to follow. He put down his coffee and began wheeling himself toward the front as she finished. With all the details already presented, his job was basically to ask if there were any questions and then give then a rah-rah to hit the door with.

He didn’t feel very rah-rah, though.

“We’ve gone over the courses and the distances,” he told them, faltering. “We, uh, we have complete satellite clearance through the morning. The Devil Canyon portion at the end of the flight is trickiest, because at twenty miles we have physical obstructions between the Boeing and the Flighthawk, assuming we’re at proper altitude – which of course we will be,” he added quickly, glancing toward Bree.

She was looking at him attentively, not glaring, not accusing, just watching.

“Look, I know it’s likely the project is going to be cut,” he said, looking back at the others. “There’s no reason to bullshit you guys. You’re too damn smart. There’s no political backing for the Flighthawks. You guys have been dealing with it for a hell of a lot longer than I have.”

He noticed one or two heads going up and down, saw a few frowns. Jennifer put her hands in front of her face as if she were going to cry.

“The thing is, we’re right. I know we’re right. The Flighthawks, U/MFs, are the way of the future,” Jeff said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, as we all know, but somewhere down the line, these guys are going to be saving a hell of a lot of lives. They’re going to keep pilots from getting their butts blown off.” He laughed. “Not every pilot. But a lot of them. and this is what’s going to happen. They’ll mothball us, close us down. We’ll all go on to better jobs. Me, I’m think McDonald’s. Can I supersize that for you, sir?” he mocked.

They laughed.

“But I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Zen continued. “Few years from now, maybe two, maybe ten, maybe twenty – hell, I don’t know, the future. Somebody’s going to find our work on a shelf somewhere, and they’re going to realize we were right. They’re going to pull our reports out and they are going to save themselves a ton of work. Probably enough work to save one or two pilots in the process. So we have to get as much done before they pull the plug. Bastian’s going to save Dreamland,” he added, “by doing what he has to do. so we have to hang tough and do what we have to do,” Zen wheeled backward, starting for the door. “Let’s go kick some butt out there today, huh?”

Zen left them in silence, wheeling out the door before they could react. He continued across the hangar and out onto the tarmac where the modified 707, ‘Boeing,’ waited.

The Flighthawk remote systems had grown even bigger since Zen’s accident. The U/MFs had been grounded for nearly nine months while the entire project was reviewed; computer capacity had been increased on the controlling end, adding to the stored emergency procedures and routines. In the interim, and unrelated to the accident, the cooling mechanisms for the secure communications gear had been ‘improved.’ These increased the remote computer pallet from the size of a Honda Accord to that of a Chevy Suburban with a weight problem. Not only did it no longer fit in an F-15E, it was a squeeze to make the rear of the Boeing.

The scientists swore the gear would be miniaturized in the future – but they kept coming up with ‘improvements’ that added to its bulk. Near-room temperature superconducting chips and circuitry promised great advances in speed and much smaller sizes, but the gear was still too sensitive to be relied on. Not to mention expensive.

Zen’s accident had led the Air Force to abandon an important part of the original concept – having a combat pilot to fly the robots along with his own plane. There were proposals to fit the gear into a B-2, but the guidance telemetry could theoretically alert next-generation sensors to the invisible bomber. The B-1 fuselage needed extensive modifications to fit the controlling unit. Neither plane’s wings could easily handle both U/MFs, though the B-2’s could be reinforced to do so.

The Megafortress EB-52, on the other hand, was big and strong enough to handle the job. And in fact they had conducted several airdrops and test runs from the Megafortress before Zen’s accident. They’d managed one last week, just to make sure some of the modifications to the computer worked properly. Zen would have liked to do more, but the only Megafortress currently plumbed for airdrops was being used as a test bed for next-generation radar and communications-jamming equipment. Those tests were running behind and had very high priority. By the time the plane – nicknamed ‘Raven’ – was free for real feasibility work, the Flighthawks would be history.

‘Hey, Major. Ready for blastoff?” asked Pete Connors out on the concrete apron.

“I’ve been ready all my life,” Zen told him, following Connors out toward the Boeing. the airman had parked a forklift near the rear crew door. They’d perfected this method of boarding the plane several days before. It was a hell of a lot easier than crawling down the stairs on his butt – which he had done on Raven.

“I ought to get one of these built into my wheelchair,” Stockard told him as he maneuvered under the large forks. Connors had played with the blades so he could easily lock them beneath Zen’s chair.

“Gee, Major, I’m surprised you haven’t gone for the Version 2.0 Upgraded Wheelchair,” joked Connors. “Has your TV, your satellite dish, your come-along cooler.”

“No sauna?” Jeff braced his arms as the metal forks clicked into the bottom of his chair.

“That’s in 3.0. you should sign up for beta-testing,” said the airman. “Ready?”

“Blastoff.”

It took Connors two attempts to get him lined up and through the special equipment bay in the rear of the plane. But that was a vast improvement over the first day, when it had taken eight or nine and he’d nearly fallen to the ground. Zen gave the airman a thumbs-up before rolling forward into the test-crew area.

“Great speech, Major,” said Ong, who’d sprinted out to oversee one of the engineering crew’s more important preflight tasks – brewing coffee in their zero-gravity Mr. Coffee.

“I thought you guys fell asleep on me,” said Zen. “I heard some snores.”

“No, seriously. Thanks.” Ong tapped his shoulders, “You’re damn right.”

“Thanks,” said Zen.

“Oooo, Mr. Coffee is smiling,” said Jennifer, climbing in. “Smells like we should use that for fuel.”

“Too corrosive,” said Ong.

Zen wheeled over to the Flighthawk station, carefully setting the brake on his wheelchair before snapping the special restraints that locked it in place. The mechanics had cleared a pair of seats and reworked the control area so his seat could be locked in place.

Zen reviewed the hard-copy mission data Ong had left for him before getting ready for takeoff. Placing the Flighthawk computer in static test mode, he took hold of the mirror-image flight sticks, working quickly through the tests with the dedicated mission video tube at the center of the console. He limbered his fingers – they were always cramping like hell – and then pulled on the heavy flight helmet for a new round of checks.

The ground crew, meanwhile, had wheeled the Flighthawk and its portable power cart out onto the runway. With the control systems operational, Jeff and the computer began yet another round of tests, making sure that both sets of flight computers and the link between them were optimal. Only when this new round of tests was finished did the ground crew fire up the Flighthawk engine, powering the small plane with a ‘puffer,’ or power cart specially designed for it. The Flighthawk’s miniature engine needed a large burst of air running through its turbines before it caught fire.

The U/MF purred like a contented kitten. Impatient to get going, Jeff ran through the control surfaces quickly, flexing the flaps and sliding the rudder back and forth. He split the top screen of the visor into feeds from the forward and tail cams for the test, confirming visually the computers’ signal that all the surfaces were responding properly. He revved the engine one last time, checking temps and pressures.

Preflight finally complete, he put his visor screens back into their standard configuration. Blue sky filled the top half, with a ghosted HUD-like display in the middle and engine and flight data in color graphs to either side. The bottom was divided in three, with radar, flight-information, and instrument screens left to right. If he were flying two Hawks, the typical layout would feature the second plane’s optical or FLIR view on the left, and a God’s-eye of both planes and the mother ship in the middle.

“Let’s get this show on the road, Captain,” he told Bree.

“Acknowledged, Hawk Commander,” she said. “Hell of a speech, Jeff. Everybody appreciated it.”

“Uh-huh.”

The jerk of the aircraft as it moved toward the main runway always took him by surprise; he was so absorbed by the Flighthawk’s stationary view that the sensation was momentarily disorienting.

“Fly the prebriefed orbit,” he told Breanna as they waited for the tower to give them final takeoff clearance.

“I wouldn’t do otherwise,” said his wife.

“Anything else you want to say?”

“No,” replied Bree.

“I stayed in the officers’ guest suite. I was too tired to come home.”

“I wasn’t asking,” said Bree.

Zen waited silently as Boeing lifted off and began to circle across the range. Hawk One continued to idle, waiting for its mother ship to hit its first way marked before coming up.

“Point Alpha reached,” said Breanna finally.

“We’re good,” Jeff,” said Jennifer, monitoring the systems a few feet away from him. “It’s your show.”

“Flighthawk Control to Dream Tower, request clearance B for Hawk One, takeoff on Lake Runway D, per filed plans,” he snapped.

“Tower confirms, Hawk Control. Hawk One, you are clear for takeoff,” said the controller. “Unlimited skies, we have no wind at the present time. Not a bad day for a picnic. Good aviating, Major.”

“Thanks, Straw,” Zen told the controller. He brought the Flighthawk to takeoff power and let off the brakes. The slope graph indicating speed galloped upward as the ground flew by in Jeff’s visor view. By 120 knots the Flighthawk was already starting to strain upward. Zen pulled back on the joystick and the aircraft darted into the sky, eager to fly.

How could they kill this plane? He thought. It needs less room to take off than a Piper, is harder to find than a Raptor, and can turn twists around an F/A-18.

Hawk One’s speed and altitude built exponentially as the P&W powering it reached its operating norms. Zen flew to five thousand feet, steadying his speed at five hundred knots. He began banking into an orbit approximately three miles south of the mother ship, Boeing’s tail appearing in the top of his screen. The techies would run through a series of signal tests here before proceeding with more difficult maneuvers.

“Data flow is good,” reported Ong. “Ninety seconds more,” said the engineer. Physically, he was somewhere to Zen’s left, but he seemed a thousand miles away, back on the ground.

God, to be flying again. Jeff thought. to feel the g’s hitting you in the face as you yanked and banked, to hear the roar of the engines as you went for the afterburners and shot straight upward, to gag on the kerosene as the smell of jet fuel somehow managed to permeate the cockpit.

Okay, some things he could do without.

“We’re ready to push it,” said Gleason.

“Pilot, proceed to second stage,” Zen told his wife.

“Proceeding,” said Breanna.

Smith was gone. Jeff hadn’t said anything to her about that SOB that night – what was there to say? Who could blame her for going somewhere else?

He would have preferred anyone else in the world. But you didn’t get to choose who your wife had an affair with.

“Major, we’re ready. If you can bring your altitude up to ten thousand –”

“I’m on it,” he told Ong, pulling back on the flight stick and nudging the throttle slide.

They were going to simulate an air launch with a roll and tumble beneath the mother ship – not the preferred, smooth method, but a necessary test to make sure the improvements to the communications system held. Jeff pushed away the extraneous thoughts, pushed his head into the cockpit, into the unlimited sky around Hawk One. He was flying again, and if he didn’t smell kerosene in his face or maybe feel the g’s kicking against his chest, his head was there, his mind rolling with the wings as his eyes fought for some sort of reference, his sense of balance shifting and almost coming undone as the small plane inverted beneath Boeing to kick off the test pattern.

“Good, good, good,” sang Jennifer. “Oh, Mama, we’re good.”

“Yes!” said Ong. “solid.”

“Hawk One copies,” said Jeff, swinging around and heading into a trail pattern behind Boeing as briefed.

“Drop simulation was perfect,” added Ong.

“I got that impression.”

“You want to pus it? We can try that penetration test we put off yesterday,” added the engineer. “I think our game plan was way too conservative.”

“Copy. Bree?”

“I’m game, if you tell me what you want.”

“Circle back and just begin again. I’ll take it from there.”

“Roger that,” she said.

Jeff took the Flighthawk off toward the west end of the range, zooming near Groom Mountain before heading back on a hgh-speed intercept with the mother ship. As he came around, the search-and-scan radar bleeped out a big, fat target for him, painting Boeing as if she were an enemy bomber trying to sneak in for an attack.

Fit this sucker with some decent missiles and it would be a front-line interceptor.

“Beginning Test Phase,” Jeff told the others as he closed behind the Boeing at a rate of roughly fifty miles an hour. “Ten seconds.”

“Go for it,” said Ong.

“Copy,” said Bree.

Why was he avoiding her? it was more than Smith. Hell, Smith had nothing, or almost nothing, to do with it.

Zen pushed the Flighthawk into a dive as it flew under the tail area of the mother ship. He mashed the throttle and rolled inverted, swooping down and around in the direction of the mountains. The plane swooped through a thousand feet before he leveled off at five hundred feet, cranking at just over five hundred knots.

“Computer, ground terrain plot in left MUD,” he said. Immediately a radar image appeared. Zen pushed the Flighthawk lower, running toward the mountain range.

Attack planes often flew at low altitude to avoid radar. The reflected ground clutter made it difficult to detect planes when they were close to the ground. Something as small and stealthy as the Flighthawk would be invisible.

Zen flew Hawk One into a long canyon at the far end of the test range, gradually lowering his altitude to three hundred feet above ground level. The floor of the canyon was irregular; he went through one pass with only fifty feet between the U/MF and the side of narrow ridge.

The image in the main viewfinder was breathtaking. He could see the sides of the mountains towering above him as he raced down the long corridor. He flicked his wrist right, pulling the small plane on its wing as he took a turn into a pass. The radar plot in the lower quadrant flashed with a warning of an upcoming plateau, but Zen was on it, gently pulling back and then nailing the throttle for more speed. The exercise didn’t call for him to break the sound barrier, but what the hell. He felt the shudder, then eased back as the image steadied – there was no longer a line between him and the robot plane; the distance had been erased.

“Looking good,” said Ong somewhere behind him.

“Mama!” yelled Jennifer.

“I’m having trouble keeping up,” reported Breanna.

A complaint? A compliment?

The Flighthawk was at nearly top speed, flying at less than a hundred feet over the ground. Zen began his turn, starting to lose speed as the wings dragged through the air. The U/MF’s flight surfaces adapted to minimize some of the loss, the forward canards pushing upward as he made the turn. He was down to 550 knots, pretty damn good, the plane having taken nearly nine g’s. the maneuver would probably have blackened out a ‘real’ pilot.

“We’re still hot,” said Ong. “Okay, Major, Captain – knock it off and return to holding track. series One, Two, and I guess we’ll call Three complete. We need a few minutes to dump the data, but it looked impressive.”

“Full communications gear and functions,” reported Gleason.

“I had some trouble at the end,” said Breanna. “You pulled out to about eight miles.”

“Yeah, well, you just have to keep up,” Zen told her.

“Doing my best, love,” she snapped.

Zen could feel the others in the control area around him bristling. They were used to banter back and forth like this all the time – but then it had been joking fun; now it seemed to stick, to wound.

“Sorry, Captain,” he said. “I guess I was feeling my oats. I’m still getting the kinks out.”

“No apology necessary.”

He couldn’t remember how they’d been. He couldn’t remember the past and didn’t want to – the past was poison now.

“Let’s try the same test, only at twenty-five miles,” suggested Ong. “You think you can work the track out, Zen?”

Twenty-five miles was twice as far as their improvements were supposed to be good for, and beyond the theoretical limit of the communications and control system. But Jeff snapped back, “Copy,” and began pushing the Flighthawk to its starting point.

This time he took the initial dive a little easier, letting his wings sweep out as he found the thicker air. Boeing swept south, widening the distance between itself and Hawk One. Zen concentrated on the virtual windshield, moving with the small plane as it sailed over the mountain slopes at five hundred knots. His altitude over ground level dipped to a bare fifty feet.

He could go lower. He nudged the stick, more brown flooding into the view screen.

He was fifteen miles from the mother ship, forty feet AGL.

Thirty-five.

He felt like he was there. The dirt-alert sounded, warning him of an upcoming ridge.

Zen learned his body with the stick, sliding around the obstruction.

Oh baby.

“Hawk connection lost,” scolded the computer suddenly.

“Hold present course. Override safety procedure. Reacquire,” Zen demanded. He still had live visuals, and in fact thought he was in control.

“Out of range,” said the computer. “Safety Routine Two.”

“Shit. Bree.”

“We’re where you put us,” she said defensively.

“Reacquire,” Zen repeated. He jerked the stick, but nothing happened.

Then the view screen went blank.

Behind him, the engineers were scrambling.

“It went into fail-safe mode,” said Ong. “Sorry, once it’s in Routine Two it’s impossible to override. That was added.”

He stopped short of saying, “After your accident.”

“We did really good, though,” insisted Gleason. “We were at seventeen miles before the signal began degrading.”

“Once it did, it went like shit,” added Ong.

“Com modules are off-line,” reported Jennifer.

“Hawk One is returning to the lake bed,” said Ong. He broadcast a generic ‘Knock it off’ alert over the Dreamland frequencies, even though the skies were clear.

“Well, at least we know the fail-safe is working,” said Breanna.

If Jeff hadn’t known how expensive the helmet was, he probably would have thrown it through the Boeing’s fuselage.

Danny didn’t get around to checking his secure e-mail until mid-morning. Hal had gotten back to him – but not with the football prediction he’d expected.

“Danny, won’t be talking to you for a while,” read the message. “Having too much fun. Wish you were here.”

He leaned back on the hard metal chair in his security commander’s office. He wasn’t sure where ‘here’ was, but he had a pretty good guess. CNN that morning had reported that the Iranian Navy had stopped a tanker off the northern African coast. It had also reported that the President had been ‘in close consultation’ with his security advisors and other world leaders all night.

If Danny hadn’t taken the Dreamland assignment, Hal probably wound have asked him to join whatever he was putting together. He’d be in the middle of things.

He might still end up there, if Whiplash was called out.

For just a second, the young captain allowed himself the luxury of fantasy. He saw – felt – himself on a big Pave Low, zooming into a firefight, bullets and missiles flying through the air. He saw himself in a Hollywood zoom, dashing into the smoke, a wide grin on his face.

It wasn’t really like that. It was dirty and it was messy and you never knew exactly where the hell you were, or whether you were going to live or die.

But he loved it anyway. or at least, loved having survived it. nothing could beat that rush.

Danny jumped to his feet and went to attend to one of the million things that needed attending to.

With Mack Smith gone, Major Rocki Mendoza was the ranking officer on the F-119 test project. Colonel Bastian found her in the JSF project hangar, an underground complex directly below Hangar Three, an hour after his conference broke up.

“Colonel, glad you could cover over,” she said as if she had been hoping he’d come. Her voice echoed off the polished concrete floor. “I was just about to discuss the testing schedule for the new avionics suite with Greg Desitio, the vender rep. Want to join in?”

Bastian grinned at Desitio, who’d told him earlier that the avionics suite had been delayed another six months because of ‘unspecifiable contingencies.’ Then he turned back to back to Mendoza. “Actually, Major, I wanted to take one of the fighters out for a spin.”

“For a spin, sir?”

“You think you can arrange a test flight?”

Mendoza’s cheery manned vaporized. “Well, we’d have to check for the satellite window and –”

“I looked at the satellite window already,” Dog told her. “It’s clear until three.”

“And then the prep time involved –”

“I understand there were some landing gear issues to be gone over, and you had slotted a test flight.”

“Well, yes, but we’ve already prepped that mission.”

“You don’t think I can handle it?” Dog asked.

Mendoza narrowed her eyes. With Mack’s departure, her stock had skyrocketed; clearly she didn’t want to be bothered by a puny lieutenant colonel.

Bastian struggled to keep his poker face.

“Of course you can handle it, sir,” said Mendoza. “The JSF is a pleasure to fly. It’s just that Captain Jones is already upstairs and ready to go.”

“Jonesy doesn’t mind,” Bastian said, enjoying the sigh of the air deflating from her cheeks. “I already had him brief me on the flight. He’s flying chase in my F-16.”

While Dog felt pretty full of himself as he hustled into this flight gear, he hadn’t pulled rank just to annoy Mendoza and upset the flight-test crew. He had decided that if Dreamland’s future was tied to the JSF, he should at least feel how the seat beneath his fanny.

It felt fairly good, actually. Stonewall One – one of the three F-119 testers – had a newly modified ejection seat that featured a form-molded back and bottom. It wasn’t possible to make the padding on an ejection seat very thick; the force of the seat as it rocketed out of the craft would bruise a pilot’s butt, if not break his bones. But this was by far the most comfortable pilot’s chair Dog had ever sat in.

Unfortunately, that was about the only superlative the plane deserved. The sideseat control stick, familiar from the F-16, felt sloppy from the get-got. The plane as supposed to be optimized for short-field takeoffs, but the engines were sluggish. Even with a reduced fuel load and no payload, Dog found himself struggling to get into the air.

Airborne, things seem even worse. The plane lumbered rather than zoomed. In a turn, the wings acted as if there were five-thousand-pound bombs strapped below them – and maybe one or two above. Worst of all, the AC wasn’t working properly; Bastian kept glancing around the cockpit to double-check that he wasn’t on fire.

All of these things could and would be fixed. An uprated engine was under development, though its weight and some maintenance issues made it unattractive to the Navy. The present avionics system – stolen from an F-16 – would be replaced eventually by a cutting-edge system that would do everything but fly the mission for the pilot. And on and on.

Still, the plane itself seemed like a tugboat. Dog tried yanking and banking as he completed his first orbit around the test range at six thousand feet. The F-119 moved like a toddler with a load in his pants, waddling through maneuvers that would be essential to avoid heavy flak while egressing a target.

Not good.

It did somewhat better at fifteen thousand feet, but it took him forever to get there. Dog thought back to the complaints of the A-10A pilots during the Gulf War, when standing orders required them to take their heavily laden aircraft well above the effective range of flak as they crossed the border. Those guys hated going over five hundred feet, and they had a point – their airplanes were built like tanks and carried more explosives than the typical World War II bomber.

The JSF, on the other hand …

Dog sighed. The politicians were in love with the idea of a one-size-fits-all-services-and-every-mission airplane. The military had to suck it up and made do.

Did they, though? And what would those politicians say when people who flew the F-119 were coming back in body bags?

He checked his instruments and position, then radioed in that he was ready to check the landing gear.

“We were never off the briefed course,” Breanna repeated. She folded her arms and stared across the makeshift conference room. Zen continued to glare at her; she felt sure that if she turned she’d find the plasterboard wall behind her on fire.

“I didn’t say you were off course,” he said.

“Well, you implied it.”

“I think we did fairly well,” said Ong, clearly as uncomfortable as the other techies in the room debriefing the mission. “We have to go through the downloads and everything else, but we were out at seventeen miles before the connection snapped.”

“I think I can tweak the com module some more,” said Jennifer. “We’re definitely on the right track.”

The scientists continued to talk. To Breanna, it was as if they were speaking in a room down the hall. She could feel Jeff’s anger; it was the only thing that mattered.

But why? The scientists were saying they’d just kicked butt on the test.

That was what they were saying, wasn’t it?

So why was Jeff frowning?

He was pissed at the world because of his legs.

“We keep bumping up against the limits of the bandwidth,” said Jennifer, talking to Bree with what was probably intended as a sympathetic smile. “The degradation of the secure signal is difficult to deal with in real time. If we didn’t have to encode it and make it so redundant, we’d be fine.”

“We are making progress,” said Jeff. “The changes you made worked.”

It seemed to Breanna that his manner changed as he spoke to the computer scientist. He was more like himself.

“We can make it better.” The young scientist twirled her finger through one of the long strands of her light hair. Maybe she did it absentmindedly, but the way she leaned against the table at the same time irked Breanna. Her shirt was at least a size too small.

Why didn’t she just yank it off and be obvious?

“What’s the big deal whether it’s ten miles or twenty?” said Breanna.

“Because the mother ship is a sitting duck,” snapped Jeff, turning on the glare again. “A MiG or a Sukhoi at ten miles could crisp Boeing before it even knew it was there. We need to push out to fifty at least.”

“You’re supposed to by flying with combat planes,” said Breanna.

Ong started to explain about the size of the computer equipment, but Breanna cut him off.

“Yes, I know. Right now you need a lot of space in the mother ship for the control computer and the communications equipment,” she said. “What I’m suggesting is you make the mother ship survivable.”

“A JSF with a trailer,” joked one of the engineers.

No one laughed.

“Megafortress,” said Breanna. “Twenty miles, even ten, would be fine.

“Yeah, well, get us the flight time,” said Jeff. “We’ve had a total of two hours with Raven in two weeks. And before I got here, there had been two drops in three months.”

“I’ll try.”

Zen nodded. For an instant, maybe half an instant, his anger melted away. Breanna thought she saw something in his eyes, something she hadn’t seen in a long time.

She might have imagined it. She knew in that second that she truly loved him, that she wanted to help him past this – past everything, she loved more than his legs. She loved his mind, his spirit, the way he laughed, the way he said everything was bullshit when it was. The way he actually listened to her – listened to anyone, no matter what he felt toward them.

Breanna felt more and more like an outsider as the debriefing session continued, the crew and engineers picking over different possibilities for improving their connection. Jeff was very businesslike, rarely joking; it seemed to her he’d become colder since the accident, and just to her.

She followed him into the hall as the meeting broke up. “Jeff” she called as he started into the men’s room.

“I got to pee. It’s full,” he told her. He pointed to the small pouch he carried at the side of the chair – a piddle-pack.

“Tonight?” It was all she could manage as her throat started to close.

“Yeah. No sweat, I’ll be home. Sorry about last night. I was just too beat to deal with getting back. And it was late.”

“Sure,” she said, but by the time she got the word out of her mouth, he’d pushed into the rest room.

When Colonel Bastian returned to his office after the test flight, he found himself walking around, rearranging things on his desk that didn’t need to be rearranged. He went through Ax’s two piles of papers that needed attention – left pile, immediate attention; right pile, sooner-than-immediate attention – got up from his chair, sat back down, got up again.

Dreamland had been included as a direct line item in the F-119 program. In the past few days he had received calls from several generals above him, including the three-star Air Force ‘liaison’ for the interservice project. He’d also spoken to two admirals, three DOD budget analysts, no less than five Congressmen, and a Senator. All had congratulated him, assuring him that Dreamland’s future was no set. While other facilities were trying to wrestle some of the JSF tests, it was clear that Dreamland was the best suited for the project.

Part of the reason for this, Bastian knew, was the fact that everyone figured they could keep a puny lieutenant colonel under their thumb. And while there had been hints of a promotion ‘in the wind,’ as one Congressman put it, even a full bird colonel or brigadier general would be a long way down the pecking order.

In the wind. It was a foul wind. By hitching himself and Dreamland to the JSF, he was saddling the Air Force with a turkey.

Worse, he was going against his conscience and his duty.

Was he? Was telling other people what they wanted to hear such a sin?

The JSF wasn’t that bad a design. Hell, the people here knew how to fix it. they could too – though the necessary changes would turn it into two or three different planes, with less than forty percent interchangeable parts. Each plane would be excellent, well suited for its job. The only drawback would be the expense.

No, the only drawback would be the fact that DOD and the Joint Chiefs and Congress and the President wanted a Joint Services airplane, one size fits all.

How many men would die because of that?

None – there’d be excellent CAP and AWACS and the SAMs would be suppressed, and everything would snap together clean and to spec every day. What could go wrong?

“Hey, Colonel, why are you messing up my system?” asked Ax, standing in the doorway. “You’re making one pile out of two.”

“Jeez, Ax, did you knock?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” snapped the sergeant, momentarily coming to full drill-master attention.

“Come on in, Sergeant Ballbuster,” said Bastian. “What the hell are you up to?”

“Just looking after my papers, Colonel,” said Ax, fishing the signed documents from Bastian’s desk. “How was your flight?”

“Uneventful, thanks,” said Dog. “Who’s my next appointment?”

“Nothing on your agenda rest of the day.” Gibbs smiled. “I believed there was some sort of scheduling snafu that indicated your test flight was continuing until tomorrow and that you couldn’t be disturbed.”

“You’re a piece of work, Ax.”

“Thank you, sir.” The sergeant smiled again. “I do actually have a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. I have this friend who has this problem. He’s an executor for a trust. All the people connected with the trust, they want him to buy some stock. He thinks the stock is lousy, but he knows that if he doesn’t buy it, they’ll can his sorry ass and hire someone who will. He kinda needs the job, and he figures if they fire him he’ll be bagging groceries. On the other hand, he likes to look himself in the mirror every morning when he’s shaving.”

Bastian shook his head. “Thanks, Ax.”

Gibbs’s face was the very model of innocence. “Sir?”

“Tell your friend to do what he thinks is right, and damn what everyone else wants,” said Bastian, getting up. “I’ll check in with you later.”

“Thank you, sir,” snapped the sergeant as Bastian snuck out the side door.

Breanna had timed it all out with the precision of a deep-strike mission against a well-fortified enemy city. The five-disc CD player had been armed with Earl Klugh and Keiko Matsui – jazz artists admittedly more to her taste than his, but definitely capable of establishing a preemptive romantic mood. two long tapers of pure bees-wax sat in candleholders in the middle of the freshly polished dinette table, ready to cast their flickering soft light over the borrowed china place settings with their elegant flower patterns. A bottle of Clos Du Bois merlot sat nearby, with a six-pack of Anchor Steam Beer on standby in the refrigerator. Two salad plates – with fancy baby lettuce and fresh tomatoes from a helpful neighbor’s garden – were lined up for the initial assault. A light carrot soup would follow, with waves of seafood crepes and lamb chops to administer the coup de grâce. The lamb was running a little behind, but otherwise everything was perfect, including the long, silky dress Breanna hadn’t worn in more than a year. She glanced at herself in the hall mirror, bending and twisting to make sure she’d gotten rid of the flour that had spilled on the side. The dress was very loose now on the top and in the back; she’d lost a bit of weight since Zen’s accident, but figured that was better than the opposite.

So where was he? He had boarded the Dolphin helicopter shuttle from Dreamland for Nellis precisely an hour and a half before; she had promised dibs on the leftovers to the pilot so he’d call with the heads-up. At Nellis, Jeff would have boarded the public bus – it was a ‘kneeler,’ dipping down to the ground level to allow wheelchairs to access an onboard elevator – and ought to have arrived at the end of their condo development’s cul-de-sac ten minutes ago.”

If he blows me off tonight, I’ll kill him, Breanna though to herself.

And just on cue, she heard his key in the door.

She jumped into action, lighting the candles with the small Bic lighter, hitting the stereo, killing the lights, relighting the burner under the asparagus. Rap made it out to the foyer just as Jeff closed the door behind him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I thought you’d like some dinner,” she said, reaching toward him. He held his briefcase out in front of him; she took it from him and then leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Well, kinda.”

“Come on,” Breanna said, backing away. “Dinner is served.”

“I guess I can’t suggest we send out for pizza,” said Jeff.

“Not if you want to live.”

He rolled forward to the table in the seating area between the kitchen and living room. Breanna rushed to unfurl his napkin, placing it gently on his lap. She let her cheek brush against his as she did.

In her fantasy about how this would go, Jeff turned his mouth toward hers and they began a long and passionate kiss, interrupted only by the buzzer announcing that dinner was ready.

In reality, the buzzer rang as soon as their cheeks met. She pecked his cheek, cursed herself, and went and got the soup.

“Wow,” said Jeff.

“We had this at the first restaurant you took me to. Remember?”

“The first restaurant I took you to was Cafeteria Four at Dreamland.”

“Restaurant,” she said, sitting down. “Café Auberge.”

“Oui, oui,” he said.

“Oh, God, wine. You want wine? I have merlot. Or beer – I found a six-back of Anchor Steam.”

“Either’s fine.”

“Why don’t we start with wine?” she suggested. “It will go with the main course.”

“There’s main course?”

“Dahling, I am the main course.” She fluttered her eyes, laughing as she retreated to the kitchen.

Dog wrote out the draft of his formal report on a lined yellow pad as he sat at a back table in Cafeteria Four. He made a few false starts, pausing to listen as a pair of engine technicians debated whether the meat loaf or open-faced turkey was better. He considered walking over to say hello, but their embarrassed waves somehow reminded him that he was just avoiding the work at hand. He nodded, then began writing in earnest, his Papermate disposable pencil squeaking over the paper.

“Despite the great weight of politics and certain outrage that I’m sure will meet this report, I cannot in good conscience recommend that the F-119 project as currently constituted proceed,” he wrote. “I have carefully reviewed the data on the project, and have personally flown the aircraft.”

He paused, wondering if that might sound a little conceited. Before he could decide, Danny Freah’s deep voice bellowed behind him.

“Letter home, sir?”

Bastian looked over his shoulder to find Freah grinning. “Not exactly,” he said.

“Probably not a classified document,” said the base’s security officer, pulling up a chair.

“Probably is,” said Bastian. “But I figure you’ll bounce anyone who gets close enough to steal it.”

Freah laughed. “I’m raring for a fight.”

“How are things doing?”

“Security checked have come back clean. Hal felt things in good shape.”

“I imagine he would,” said Dog.

“He’s up to his ears about now,” added Freah.

“In what sense?”

“I was watching CNN a while ago. The Iranians sound like they’re going to make a play to cut off shipping in the Gulf. Increase the price of oil.”

“Another attempt at wrecking my budget,” said Dog. He jostled his pen back and forth. “You miss the action end, Danny?”

“This is a big job, Colonel. I’m grateful for the assignment.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“I didn’t realize it was a question.”

“I guess not,” said Bastian. “In a way, I guess I miss the action too. Not losing kids, though.”

“No, sir,” said Freah, suddenly serious. “That part sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as long as everything’s secure,” said Freah, standing up.

“Looks like it.”

Dog watched as Danny go to the cafeteria line. He emerged with an orange juice carton, then disappeared out the side door.

Losing kids sucked. If this concept of Dreamland were ever implemented – if it truly became a cutting-edge unit assigned to covert and non-covert actions where high-tech could leverage a favorable result – he’d be sending plenty of kids into harm’s way.

Including his daughter.

Bastian put his pencil back to the pad. He reviewed what he’d written, letting the sentence about his flying the plane stand. Then he added, “I have appended some of the relevant reports. Because of the political nature of this project. I have taken the precaution of removing the names of the authors. This recommendation is my responsibility and my responsibility only.”

Would that save them, though? It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to figure out who had done what.

“You look like you’re trying to untie the Gordian knot.”

Surprised, Dog looked up to find Jennifer Gleason, the young computer scientist who worked primarily on the Flighthawk project, smiling down at him.

“The Gordian knot?” he asked. “You know, I’ve always wondered what that was.”

“The Gordian knot was a complicated knot tied by King Gordius of Phrygia,” said Gleason. “Supposedly, anyway. The oracles claimed that whoever could undo it would rule Asia. So along came Alexander the Great. He hears about it, goes over to it, and without wasting a blink of his eye, slices it with his sword.”

Bastian laughed.

“Probably not a true story,” said Gleason. She flicked her head back so her long reddish-blond hair glistened at her shoulders. “But it has a certain charm.”

“Especially if you’re trying to work out a budget,” said Bastian.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No. I need interruption,” he told her, flipping the top page back over his pad so the writing couldn’t be read. “Sit down.”

She slid in across from him and took the top of her yogurt container.

“Dinner?” he asked.

“More like a late lunch.”

“No wonder you’re so skinny.”

“I hope that was meant in a professional way.”

“Touché, Doc.”

“Most people call me Jennifer or Jen, Colonel.” Gleason smiled and then spooned some of the vanilla-flavored yogurt into her mouth. “I always thought doctors were the people who were sticking stethoscopes in your face and thermometers in your chest.”

“I think that goes the other way around.”

She smirked. Dog searched for something else to say, but all he could think of was the Flighthawk project – not a good topic, since he’d already decided to recommend cutting it. and in fact he half-expected she’d sat down to make a pitch for keeping it.

“You run every morning?” she asked.

“I do actually.”

“I saw you this morning. I was going to ask if I could join you, but I chickened out.”

“I don’t bite,” said Bastian.

“I was a little worried about your pace. I only run to keep in shape for climbing. I rock-climb on weekends,” she added.

“You rock-climb nearby?”

“There are some great climbs in the mountains at the end of F Range,” she said.

“I always wanted to try it.”

the words slipped from his mouth before he could stop them, but she didn’t laugh.

“It’s easy. I’ll show you sometime. As long as you dint mind taking orders from a civilian.”

“I don’t think I’d mind at all.”

“Good.”

“You can run with me anytime you want,” he said.

“I’ll see you in the morning then,” said Jennifer, finishing her yogurt.

He watched her walk away, then went back to work.

Jeff hadn’t eaten like this in years, not even in a restaurant. Breanna had knocked herself out for him, and he appreciated it.

But it only made him more determined.

The truth was, he’d come to this conclusion months ago. Seeing her with Smith just brought him back to his senses.

So why didn’t he feel calm about it?

Dessert was the only course she hadn’t cooked herself, homemade cannolis from the only Italian bakery within five hundred miles. As Jeff finished his, he leaned back in the chair and watched her sip her wine.

“You’re beautiful, Bree. Really, truly, beautiful,” he told her.

“Nice of you to notice,” she said. The line had once been a joke between them, usually applied to something like doing the dishes or vacuuming without being asked. Now it sounded off-key, almost sorrowful. “You want some more wine?”

He shook his head. “Maybe that beer.”

“Fine.”

A twinge ran though him. He didn’t really want the beer. He was stalling, he’d become good at that, hadn’t he?”

Still, he waited until she came back, the beer in a frosted pilsner glass.

“You thought of everything,” he told her.

Stall, stall, stall.

Just go for it.

Bree seemed to sense what was coming. “Jeff, I want us to work,” she said, her voice beginning to tremble. “I know it’s been hard. I know it’s going to be tough –”

Something deep inside him took over, a calm forcefulness that pushed him to take care of things as he knew they had to be taken care of. Jeff held his finger up to her lips. “Bree –”

“D-don’t –” she stuttered.

“I saw you the other night with Mack Smith.”

“You saw me where?” She straightened, suddenly stiff.

“I saw him come out of your suite at Dreamland. Our suite.”

“No –”

“It’s okay, Bree. It really has nothing to do with anything.”

“But –”

“Look, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I decided a long time ago – six months maybe. You don’t need me, Rap. I’m going to hold you back.”

“That’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit,” she said. Her face was flushed; she practically spat as she spoke.

Wine or blood?

“No, listen to me,” he said calmly. “It’s not your fault. I understand. Totally. This wasn’t part of the deal.”

His hands started to tremble. He reached to put the glass of beer on the table in front of him; it slipped halfway, falling to the floor.

“Oh, Jeff, no,” she said, throwing her arms around him.

“I want a divorce,” he told her. “For your sake. For mine too. It’ll help us move on.”

“No, Jeff, no,” Breanna buried her head in his lap, sobbing. He bent over, fingers running through her hair, his eyes blurry with the leaping flame of the candles on the table.

Ethiopia

22 October, 0350

Sergeant Melfo settled into the canvas seat as the Chinook jerked into the sky. The large engines on the big-hulled Boeing helicopter had a distinctive whomp that seemed to push the twenty Marines down between the tubular supports of their seats. Gunny scanned the row of men toward the front of the chopper. The dim red interior lights added more shadows to the darkened camo faces, making the unit look like a collection of ghosts riding in the night.

If the operation went smoothly, it would seem as if ghosts had carried it out. within two hours, the Iranians would lost most of their ability to launch a preemptive strike against the Gulf shipping.

Assuming everything went off as planned. The intelligence bothered Gunny; they’d been given satellite information that was several hours old. That might be okay for the big stuff – blowing up another Silkworm missile battery wasn’t a big deal. But the Iranians could easily have airdropped some light armor, or added more machine guns near the bluffs overlooking the Silkworm battery.

Too late to worry about it now.

“Zero-five to LZ,” barked the helicopter crew chief.

“Hang tough, girls,” said Gunny, cinching his helmet strap. “We do this dance the way we rehearsed it.”

Knife noted the way marker and did a quick scan of his instruments. He had the volume on his radar-warning receiver near max; his air-to-air radar was set at wide scan. The sky was clear ahead, the sea and coastline peaceful.

Not for long, he thought. The helo was cutting a course bare inches from the scrub trees and jagged hilltops twenty miles to the west. Further along the coast, a flight of F-117’s was cutting over the Gulf of Aden, aiming for another secret Iranian base on the Somalian coast. All hell was about to break loose.

“Poison Flight, time to twist,” said Smith to his F-16 wingmen.

“Three.”

“Four.”

The two F-16’s peeled off, their exhaust nozzles swelling red in the dark sky as they accelerated northward. Knife pushed his nose down, beginning a glide toward their target area. His wingman fell in behind him.

The Chinook would broadcast a signal when it was ten seconds from the LZ. Anything before that was trouble. Smith made sure his radio was set, then quickly checked his GPS page, double-checking to make sure his navigational gear was functioning properly. The INS would conjure a diamond in his HUD to show the target area when he rolled in; he wanted to make sure it would be accurate if he had to roll in with the dumb bombs in a hurry.

His heart beat like a snare drum. He was swimming in sweat. He jerked his head back and forth, practically screwing it out of his socket, checking for other fighter, for missiles that had somehow managed to defy or trick his gear.

Wasn’t going to happen, but knowing that didn’t relax him, and certainly didn’t stop the sweat or the drumbeat.

He’d felt this way in the Gulf, though not on his first mission. His first mission – the first three or four, really – had been tremendous blurs. He was so consumed with the minutiae, the tankings, the radio calls, simply checking six, that he hadn’t had a chance to get nervous.

Mack had also lost about ten pounds in three days, so obviously he’d been sweating a little.

His first kill came on the firs patrol he flew, a fluke.

Not a fluke. A product of a zillion hours of training. It was a push-button, beyondvisual-range kill with a Sparrow radar missile. He’d ID’d, locked, and launched in the space of maybe three seconds.

Skill. That was definitely how he nailed splash two – though the F-15’s tape had screwed up, depriving him of credit.

He wasn’t getting a shoot-down tonight. The Somalians didn’t have an air force and the nearest Iranians were well over two hundred miles away. And besides, he was driving an F-16 configured for ground-pounding.

“Bad boys to Poison Leader, we are one-zero, repeat, one-zero. All calm.”

Before Smith could acknowledge, his RWR began bleating and an icon appeared in the middle of his receiver scope. An instant later, his wing mate yelled a warning over the short-range radio circuit.

“SA-2 battery up! And two more. Shit. there’s four batteries there, not two. Sixes! SA-6’s! Shit-fuck! Where did those bastards come from?”

Gunny had run twenty feet from the rear door of the Chinook when the flare ignited overhead. He began cursing, immediately understood what had happened.

“Team One, Team One!” he shouted, pushing his old legs hard as he ran forward. “Listen up! The defenses are on the south end of the field. They moved everything beyond the ditches. Come on, come on – everybody move it! let’s go!”

As he ran forward, Melfi caught sight of the first muzzle flash from the enemy lines; a streak of red that flared oblong in the black smear. The ground shook, but the explosion was at least a half mile away from the LZ. The Somalians had zeroed their weapons in on the highway, obviously expecting the attack would be there. They had fired the flare as well.

“They don’t know where we are!” shouted Gunny to his men. “Come on, come on, they can’t see us. Let’s go. We got about ten seconds to get across their ditch. Mine team! Mines! Come the fuck on! Blow the field so we can advance. Come on!”

The different elements of his assault team began fanning out, remembering the instructions for this contingency. They were sluggish, weighed down by their equipment and hampered by the dark.

Or maybe it just seemed to Gunny like they were moving in slow motion. The two buildings where they’d expected resistance lay twenty feet ahead, across a large ditch lined with antitank obstacles. The buildings were quiet.

Which didn’t mean they were empty, of course.

The missile launchers had apparently been moved closer to the water, nearly four hundred yards further south of the spot briefed. Small-arms fire was coming from that direction. The finicky light from the Somalian flare showed pointed shadowns around the slight rise there, but they were too far away to see anything, let alone attack it.

There was a thud, then a series of thuds.

Nothing.

No mines.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” shouted Gunny. “They moved everything to Purple site.”

“Incoming!” yelled someone ahead. “Tank!”

Gunny threw himself to the ground. A large-caliber shell, possibly from an M47, splashed through the trees at the right. The sergeant pushed himself back to his knees, and for the first time realized all hell was breaking loose at the north end of the site, where Captain Gordon and his team had gone.

“Get the SPG on that tank,” yelled Gunny. “Com!” Com!” he added, calling for the radio specialist. “Where the hell are the F-16’s?”

As if to answer, a tongue of fire lit from behind the Somalia lines and two huge fists leaped from the earth.

“Two launches, eleven o’clock!” shouted Smith as he saw the missiles flare off their launchers. His RWR skipped out warning bleats as he jinked hard and kicked out tinsel, metal chaff designed to fool the radar of the acquiring missile.

In some respects, the Somalians had done them a favor by turning on their radars and firing the missiles. Powering up his HARM missiles, the pilot of Poison Two calmly dotted the offending radar van on his threat scope and released the antiradar missiles. With the targeting information downloaded into their miniature onboard computers, the radiation-seeking missiles were in can’t-miss mode – even if the radars were to turn themselves off, the missiles would fly directly to the target points and obliterate the gear.

But that didn’t account for the surface-to-air missiles that had been fired, or pure bad luck. The SA-2’s were equipped with terminal guidance devices that allowed them to home in on an enemy even if their ground units were wiped out. Worse, as far as Knife was concerned, were the SA-6’s – nasty medium-range missiles that weren’t supposed to be here, but were now sending his warning gear into a high-pitched shriek.

And the SA-3. Not to mention triple-A, which erupted with a red cloud to the northeast.

Knife’s head swirled in a tempest of colors and sweat. The warning receiver was still bleating. He pulled the Fighting Falcon over, yanking the F-16 nearly backward in the air, altitude dropping abruptly as he fired off more chaff.

Pulling back on the sidestick at fifteen thousand feet, he found the target area in his windshield. Someone had even fire a flare to show him where everything was.

Thoughtful.

Knife forgot about the SAMs and the antiair and the RWR as he saw the muzzle flash of an ancient M47 tank foam red about three o’clock in his screen. The tank was his primary target if the ground team ran into trouble.

Which obviously it had.

“Poison One, targeting tank,” he said. His pipper slid over the dark shadow of the turret before he realized he hadn’t had any communication from the ground team at all since the helo had called with their time-to-landing.

It was too late to worry about that now. Red fingers jabbed out toward his eyes; he ignored the flak and pushed the trigger on his stick, pickling two five-hundred-pound bombs into the tank. As he started to pull out he saw another ground missile launch; he nudged his stick to the right and called the launch, at the same time riding forward to dump iron on the launcher. If Poison Two acknowledged, its broadcast was lost in the blur of gravity and the roar of his F-16A’s GE F-110 turbofan as he pickled, then jerked hard to get away from the new missiles.

They had just targeted the tank when a loud whistle sounded above them. before Gunny could shield his eyes, the night flashed white. The tank erupted in a two-fisted swirl of fire, dirt, and metal sailing in every direction.

“About fucking time,” growled Melfi, picking himself up. “Forward, forward! Tank’s history. Go, girls!”

One of his men began screaming on his right. Gunny ran up and found Lance Corporal Gaston curled over a large splash of tangled uniform, half his side blown open by bomb fragments. The medic reached him in the next second; Gunny saw him wince and realized Gaston wasn’t going to make it. He straightened, saw that half the kid’s arm was lying on the ground.

“Get those fucking ship missiles,” Melfi yelled, pulling his M-16 to his side. He ignored the complaint from his knee and began to run forward toward the heaviest gunfire.

Smith whipped back toward the target area, finally satisfied that he had ducked the SAMs. A wall of tracers illuminated the coastline, thrown up by four of five Russian-built ZSU-23 antiaircraft guns. It occurred to him that he was only seeing a fourth or fifth of the actual bullets being fired, since only the tracers showed in the dark. A shitload of lead was being propelled into the sky.

Fired blindly, but dangerous nonetheless. Knife clicked his radio, asking Poison Two for his position.

No answer.

“Two, this is Poison Leader, posit?”

Nothing.

“Two? Give me your position. Two? Posit?”

“Poison Two blind,” his wingman finally replied. “Two-one-one for one-three off egress.”

Smith blew a long sigh into his mask before plotting his wingman’s position with the bearings he’d broadcast. He thought he’d gone down.

“All right, you’re five, six miles south of me, due south,” Knife told him.

“Poison One, copy. I have you on radar. I’m Angels twenty-five. Out of arrows, Knife. I took some flak but I’m okay. Engine’s fine. Controls responding.”

“You’re hit?”

“Roger. Fuel’s fine. Nothing bad, but I can see burn marks on the wing and I felt it.”

Knife glanced at his own fuel gauge, calculating that he had enough for perhaps five move minutes’ worth of action before hitting bingo, the theoretical turnaround point. He was still carrying four GBUs under his wings.

They were intended for the Silkworms. But the ground team still hadn’t checked in, which meant that they weren’t in position to illuminate the targets with their laser designators.

He’d have to do it himself. No big deal, as long as he could find the targets beyond the wall of flak.

Assuming his wingman was okay.

“Two, if you can hold an orbit, I’m going to mop up.”

“Copy. Go for it, Knife. I’m fine.”

Smith tried hailing the ground team as he plotted a course toward the Silkworms. He climbed to just over twenty thousand feet, well out of reach of the flak. But the air seemed to percolate with it, Viper shuddering as he came up on the dirt landing stripe that marked the western end of the target zone.

The radio static cleared as he eyeballed the master arm panel.

“Poison One, we are sparking the target. Repeat, sparking your target.”

About fucking time, he thought, acknowledging and leaning slightly on his right wing. He was ten miles from the site. Eyes pasted on the video screen, he hunted for his target. There were vague blurs, but no cues, no nothing. The LANTIRN targeting gear was having a hell of a time sorting through the battlefield smoke. In the meantime, the cloud of flak had moved in his direction.

“Poison One, have you acquired?”

“Negative,” he groused. “Just make sure you got it on.”

“We’re taking fire.”

Yeah, no shit. Join the party.

He was less than five miles from the target and running over a minefield of antiaircraft fire before the target finally crystallized in his monitor. The sparkle had a big, fat Chinese-made SS-N2 missile dead on; he goosed off one GBU, then released another, just to be sure.

“Find me another target,” he barked.

The magic flashlight moved to a new target. As he was about to launch he realized he was about to overfly his target. He pickled anyway, got messed up, confused, lost himself for a second pulling around to retarget. His RWR screamed a fresh warning and for a half second Mack Smith fell completely apart, lost his concentration and the plane, fell behind himself in a whirl of gravity-fed vertigo, the F-16 responding to his sharp jerk on its fly-by-wire stick.

Jesus, he thought. Oh God, I’m screwed.

The antiship missile site erupted with a cascade of secondary explosions, each bigger than the last, as if a series of larger and large gas cans had been ignited with a pack of firecrackers.

“That’s it, let’s go!” Gunny shouted. The explosions were so intense he could feel their heat on his face, and he was nearly a half mile away.

“The pilots wants more target!” shouted the com specialist.

“Tell him he’s blown everything to hell,” shouted Gunny, grabbing the man with the target designator and yanking him hard backward. “We’re going while the going is good! Come on, girls! Come the fuck on!”

His men finally snapped to behind him as he trotted back toward the LZ. The explosions at the missile-launching pad had shocked the defenders silent, but Gunny knew that wasn’t going to last. He fanned his arms through the air, urging his men back toward the waiting Chinook.

He found himself standing at the spot where Gaston had been hit.

He glanced down, looking for the remains of the poor kid’s lost arm, thinking to give it a decent burial.

Wasn’t there.

A fresh explosions snapped him back to life. He whirled around, saw his point man trotting toward him, a grin on his face. Jerry Jackson was first in and last out.

“Hey, Sarge.”

“Jackson, knock that fucking watermelon grin off your face and get moving,” Gunny yelled.

“Gee, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared,” mocked the corporal as he caught up.

“We got everybody?”

“Didn’t see no one,” said Jackson. “Better check around for Gaston, though. You know how he likes to jerk off in the bushes.”

“Yeah,” was all Gunny could manage.

Knife’s stomach pitched toward his mouth. He clamped his teeth shut, holding steady on the ground stick as the dark, oxygen-deprived cowl slipped back from over his face. The F-16 could withstand more than nine g’s, at least one more than its pilot under the best circumstances, and this was hardly the best. The plane was pointing nearly straight down, shrapnel streaking all around, an SA-3 somewhere in the air, hunting for his belly. He could escape it – he’d been in more difficult spots – but only if he could keep his head clear. And right now that seemed damn impossible.

Gravity clamped its thick fingers around his temples. Squeezing with all its might, it began to mash his skull into powder. The wind ran from his chest, and a long,

Jagged sword began ripping up his stomach.

An image shot into his head – Zen Stockard, his body begin propelled from the F-15 cockpit, hurled sideways in a tumble.

Poor bastard.

Just not good enough. Not as good as me.

I am not getting fried here.

Smith regained control of himself as well as the plane, rolling through an invert and now tracking to the north, the RWR still bleating. Even so, he began hunting for a target. Everything was on fire below, everything; he couldn’t find anything to hit.

Knife jinked and saw a large shape passing through the air maybe four hundred yards away. It was the missile the Somalians had fired, but to Knife it seemed like the demon that had tormented him all through the attack, the panic that had tried to sneak up on him, panic and rust and doubt.

“No fucking way,” he screamed. He pulled himself up in the slant-back seat, straining against the restraints. The enemy missile shot clear, unguided, lost, no longer a threat.

The ground team’s Chinook was two miles away and taking fire; there were armored cars approaching from behind the buildings. He took a quick breath, switching the mode on the LANTIRN bomb-guidance system to allow him to designate the target himself. The targeting cue instantly zeroed in on the lead vehicle.

“Good night, motherfucker,” he said, loosing the GBU from his wing.

Gunny and Jackson were two hundred yards from the helicopter when the ground began percolating with heavy machine-gun fire. The two Marines dove into a ditch, where they found themselves pinned down with half a dozen other Marines. They could hear but not see the helicopter beyond a row of low trees or bushes. An armored car or personnel carrier, maybe two, rounded out from behind the near building and began firing.

“We have to move!” yelled Gunny. “Move!”

“Move!” echoed Jackson, trying to urge the others to stop returning fire and retreat to the Chinook. “We’ll cover you.”

The far end of the ditch burst with an explosion. Gunny cursed, falling forward and hitting his chin on Jackson’s boot.

“Damn it,” he said, starting to pull himself up.

“Down! Down! Incoming!” yelled Jackson.

Something roared above them and the armored car hissed. Red metal flew through the air.

“The Chinook’s moving!” yelped Jackson.

“Go! Go!” yelled Gunny. Above them one of the F-16’s was wheeling through the sky, trying to cover their retreat. The Somalians had temporarily turned their attention to it, throwing everything they had into the sky.

“You got balls,” Gunny told the F-16 as he burned a clip in the direction of the Somies. “Even if you are a pansy-ass Air Force pilot.”

Knife was out of GBUs and about halfway through his store of cannon shells, slashing and dashing the Somalian forces as the Chinook tried desperately to round up the last member of its fire team. The helicopter pilot’s aircraft had been hit and he was worried about making it back to Ethiopia, but the man didn’t want to leave without every one of his passengers aboard.

Somewhere in the past two and half minutes, Knife had told the pilot that he’d hang in there as long as needed. Somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Mack had decided he had to stay close and help keep some of his guys alive. And somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Major Mack ‘Knife’ Smith had realized that he was flying maybe twenty feet over the trees and taking a hell of a lot of risk with all this metal flying through the air, not to mention the damn fireworks from the still-exploding missile stores.

Flames from the two vehicles he had smashed gave him a clear view of the remaining troops firing on his Marines. Smith swooped in for a low-level cannon attack. The Chinook stuttered to his left as he rode in, the barrels on his M61 beginning to churn. He cut a swath through the Somalians, then picked up his nose to bank around for another pass. As he did, he saw a pair of wheeled vehicles moving forward behind the far building. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw an H-shaped shadow at the top of one of the vehicles – a missile launcher maybe, but he was beyond it too fast. His RWR stayed clean.

“Poison One, this is Poison Three, we are moving to engage four bogies at this time,” snapped the lead pilot of the second group of F-16’s. “Repeat, we have company. MiGs. Possibly Libyan. They’re coming south and they are hot!”

“Copy,” said Knife. It was past time to call it a day. “Pelican, get the hell out of there,” he told the Chinook pilot. “Go! Now! Go!”

He banked around to cover the helicopter’s retreat. He hunted the shadows for the two vehicles he’d seen, his forward airspeed dropping toward two hundred knots. He saw something loom on his left; by the time he got his nose on it, a tongue of fire ignited form the top.

Missile launcher. Probably an antitank weapon or something similar, but he felt sucker-punched as the missile sailed toward the helicopter. He began to fire his cannon, even though he wasn’t lined up right, he pushed his rudder to swing into the shot, but was too high and then too far to the right. He thought he heard a stall warning and went for throttle; rocketing upward, he realized he was low on gas.

The helo was still hovering. The missile had missed.

His RWR bleeped. The MiGs were on them already. Shit.

“Pelican! Get the fuck out of here!” he screamed.

He plunged his aircraft back toward the remaining vehicle, again firing before he had a definitive target. Meanwhile, Poison Three called a missile launch; things were getting beyond hot and heavy.

Knife reached to put the throttle to the redline, already plotting his escape southwest toward Poison Two.

Something thudded directly behind his seat. He felt the Viper’s tail jerk upward, and in the next instant realized the control stick had stopped responding.

“I’m hit,” he snapped. And in the next instant he pulled the eject handles, just before the plane tore into a spin, its back broken by not one but two shoulder-fired SA-16’s

Gunny and Jackson were still fifteen yards from the Chinook when it started to pull upward. But the old sergeant had been prepared for this – he’d removed the flare pistol from his vest pocket to signal them.

Before he could fire, something exploded above him. He jerked his head back and saw the plane that had been covering their escape erupt in a fireball. Something shot into the air; a second or two later he realized it was the pilot.

Gunny turned around.

“Gunny, Sarge, shit. helo’s this way,” said Jackson, grabbing his arm. “Come on.”

“We got to go get that pilot,” Gunny said.

“Fuck that.”

“Here,” Gunny said, pressing the flare gun into his point man’s hand. “I’ll catch up.”

“The hell you will,” said Jackson. The corporal tugged the older man around.

“I’m giving you an order to get the hell out of here,” said Gunny.

“If you’re stayin’, I’m stayin’. I got point,” said the Marine, pushing past in the direction of the parachute blossoming in the firelit sky. It was falling over the low hill to his right, away from the Gulf of Aden.

It was probably a moot point by now, since the Chinook was thundering off in the distance. Still, Gunny appreciated the sentiment.

“I hope to hell that pansy-ass pilot’s got a radio,” he grunted, following up the hillside.

Chapter 4

Whiplash

Dreamland

21 October, 2000 local

Colonel Bastian walked the two miles from his office to the base commander’s ‘hut,’ the wind chilling his face. He’d shipped the summary of his report via the secure e-mail link and packed off the full package, committing himself before he could change his mind. You were supposed to feel good when you followed your conscience, but he felt as if he’d just stabbed a friend.

A lot of friends. Not to mention himself.

Dog paused near the entrance to the low-slung adobe structure that was his temporary home at Dreamland. The guard assigned to his premises had taken shelter in a blue government Lumina parked a few yards away. Surplused aircraft and failed experiments sulked in the darkness, watching him with steely eyes. Among the planes were craft once considered the nation’s finest – a B-58 Hustler, some ancient B-50 Superfortress upgrades, three or four F-86 Sabres. They were indistinguishable in the shadows, tarped and in various stages of disrepair. But Dog felt their presence like living things, animals driven to cover.

Time moves on, he though to himself.

He waited for something more profound before finally shaking his head, realizing he was freezing out here. The desert turned cold once the sun was gone. He trotted to ward his front door, deciding to throw himself into bed and rest up for the inevitable storm tomorrow.

The phone was ringing inside as he opened the fiberglass faux-wood door. He picked up the handset, bracing himself for an angry blast from one of the many generals and government officials connected with the F-119 project.

But the caller was his own Sergeant Gibbs.

“Colonel, we need you back at the office,” said Ax.

“What’s going on?”

“You need to make a secure call back to D.C.,” said the sergeant. “Whiplash has been activated.”

“Does Danny know?”

“Captain Freah is on his way here,” said the sergeant. “He had to round up his men.”

“Send a car.”

“It should be there in about ten seconds,” said Ax.

Dog put down the phone. While in theory the team could be headed anywhere, even a training mission, Dog realized it must mean things had popped in Somalia. More than likely, that was why Washington wanted to talk to him.

Better that than the JSF.

He took a moment to pull on his old leather flight jacket, then went back outside, where a Humvee was waiting for him.

Danny Freah was at the wheel.

“Whiplash had been activated,” said Freah as Dog pulled himself intot he seat.

“Ax just told me. You have transport?”

“I was hoping you could expedite something. They want us in Africa yesterday. There’s a C-5 en route from back East.”

“A C-5?”

Freah smiled and shrugged. His team consisted of only six men; they carried their forty pounds of equipment on their backs. The big Lockheed transport planes could move the better part of a company.

Freah quickly lost his smile. “Word is, two of our pilots went down in Somalia. And two or three Marines stayed back to help them. One of the pilots was Major Smith.”

“Shit.”

“A rescue operation is being planned.”

“That C-5 will take eighteen hours to get you there.”

“At least,” said Danny.

Bastian folded his arms across his chest. ISA and Madcap Magician would have it own units nearby, but obviously they were anticipating serious trouble.

“Maybe we can wedge your boys into the backseat of our SR-17s,” he joked.

“We only have one on the base,” said Freah, who didn’t seem to be joking. He pulled the Humvee in front of the Taj. “What about the Megafortress?”

“An EB-52?”

“Major Cheshire says Fort Two could make the run in less than twelve hours.”

“Fort Two is a test bed. They nearly crashed a week ago.”

“I know that,” said Freah. “I also know the Somalians have this thing about dragging soldiers through the streets after they kill them.”

Dog got out of the truck and walked into the building, barely pausing for the security scan. Danny caught up in the elevator; neither said anything as the car began its slow descent.

Africa was a damn long way to go in a plane that typically never left the protected airspace over Dreamland.

On the other hand, there was at least a rough precedent. Another EB-52 had been used in Central America during the Maraklov/James fiasco some months before. The plane had acquitted itself quite well.

But it had also been flying with a full crew.

Fort Two was more than a transport. If he was going to send it halfway around the world, he should sent it with a full weapons load. It’d be invaluable.

Hell, it’d be the star of the show. Demonstrate what Dreamland could do.

That wasn’t what this was about. They had to get Smith and the others out.

“Ax, get Major Cheshire over here right away,” he said as he stormed into his office.

“She called a few minutes ago to say she’s on her way,” said the sergeant. “ETA in zero-five. Your burger should be here by then as well,” added Ax. “Fries too. Got one for Captain Freah as well. Coffee’s on the boil.”

Northern Somalia

22 October, 0525 local

Mack swam mindlessly, eyes closed, body buffeted by the waves. A fish or something had attacked itself to his chest, clamping powerful jaws around his ribs. He gasped for air, then realized he wasn’t swimming at all – he was hanging by his parachute harness. Every part of his body aches, but his ribs hurt most of all; he guessed some were broken.

He’d lost his helmet somewhere. Undoubtedly he’d taken it off himself, but he couldn’t remember doing so. He was suspended about thirty feet up the side of a jagged hill, the top of his chute snagged around a tree or rock. One of his hands had somehow tangled in his lines, and his legs were roped against each other. He faced a sheer cliff.

There was a knife in his speed pants. He tried to bend his body, and felt himself starting to fall. Desperately he tried to grab the rock; he rolled sideways, still caught.

Smith tried leaning toward his leg, but found he was stuck. As he craned his head upward he saw someone else on the hill above him.

It was a woman. Her dress fluttered.

No. The parachute.

He was in shock, close to losing it. He was going to die here.

Mack told himself to calm down. All he had to do was get off the hill, get his radio. They’d be looking for him by now. The sun was already up.

Shit. His wingman hadn’t been nearby. They’d have only the vaguest idea where he was.

Not like when Zen went down.

He felt a twinge in his legs. They hurt, but nowhere near as bad as his ribs. A good sign, right?

Smith had a pocketknife beneath his vest, secured there by a lanyard clip. Steadying himself against the rock face with his left hand, he managed to thread his other arm free from the tangle. Then he slid his fingers beneath the vest to feel for the knife. He had to lever his elbow around, and felt a fresh twinge from his ribs as he grasped the clip and worked the knife free. He brought it back and pulled it open, only to have it slip from his hand. Dirt and small rocks slid all around him as he grabbed helplessly for it.

Shitfuckinhell. This can’t be happening to me. Not me, goddamn it. I’m too fuckinggoddamngood a pilot to have my fanny waxed and end up snagged on a stinkinggoddamnfuckinghell hillside. It’s a goddamn joke.

Smith took as deep a breath as his injured chest would allow, then pushed his right arm in the direction of his tangled legs. He felt himself start to slip, but kept going; he tumbled sideways again, but snagged, crashing against the rocks as he grabbed his leg with his right hand. He got the knife, then realized his legs were pinned together, not by the parachute line, but by the metal buckles on the lower straps, which snugged the pant legs above his boots. He levered the long knife blade behind one of the straps and freed himself, carefully gripping the knife this time. As he straightened put he began to drop again; he managed to swing his elbow against the rocks as he slipped down about five or six feet before the chute once more snagged. As he stopped he smacked the side of his face, scraping his cheek and nose.

When the burn subsided, he realized he could simply slip himself out of the harness and drop free. Problem was, the ground was still a fair distance.

Twenty-five feet? Maybe only twenty. There were bushes at the bottom of the ravine.

Long way to fall, even if the pigmy trees broke his fall. Better to slip down some more, even though the scrapes hurt like hell.

Knife swung his legs forward and back, gently at first, then harder, trying to nudge himself down. A sharp knob on the rock poked his forearm. Dirt and pebbles shot down the hill, but he stayed put.

His gut began to retch. Bile came up into his mouth and his ribs screamed with pain.

Stinkingfuckshithell. How the hell can this be happening to me? Me!

Knife clawed at the wall next to him. Maybe it would be easier to climb up it. He lodged his knife into the webbing of his vest, then tried digging his feet into the cliff side. He levered himself up a few feet, one step, two steps, a third. He managed to pull himself up enough so that the lines hung free. He stepped to the right, trying to avoid getting tangled. He took on step, then slipped and fell, sliding two or three feet before managing to grab on and stop.

Nothing to do but let himself fall.

But as he reached to unclasp his harness restraints, the rock or tree or whatever it was holding him began to give way. He pushed himself close to the face of the hill, trying to squeeze into the dirt and rocks as he slid. He clawed and slipped the whole fifteen feet to the ground, crashing through foliage so sharp he thought he had fallen into a spear pit.

Finally on the ground, Mack lay back, trying to blink away the pain – trying, in fact, to blink away everything: Africa, the mission, the shoulder-fired SAMs that had hit him.

Had to be shoulder-fired SAMs. He’d had no warning and they’d gotten his tailpipe. But Mack Smith wasn’t supposed to be the kind of pilot who got his fanny nailed like that, was he?

Finally, Knife rolled over and got to his feet. He removed his Beretta from the vest, checking to make sure the weapon was loaded. It felt heavy in his hand, a little greasy, as if it were covered with oil.

The ejection-seat survival kit and life raft sat at the very base of the hill a few yards away, looking as if someone had come and set them out for him. Besides flares, water, some candy bars, and other odds and ends, the kit included a PRC-90 survival radio, backing up the one he carried in his vest.

As he bent to open the kit, he heard some something crashing through the bushes a few yards away. He slid to one knee, slowly raising the pistol to eye level.

Something moved and he fired.

There was a squealing, a subhuman voice, a half growl.

“I’m sure as hell glad that wasn’t me,” said a voice behind him.

As Smith jumped back, something grabbed his pistol hand. He began to fight back, found himself wrestled to the ground.

“Relax, pilot, we’re on your side.”

A green and black mask contorted over him.

It wasn’t until the teeth flashes white and gold that Knife was certain the figure was human.

“I’m Sergeant Melfi. My point man Jackson is around here somewhere. We’re Marines. Come on, Captain, let’s get the fuck out of here. Shooting that pig may have felt good, but it’s gonna bring a bunch of Somies runnin’.”

“Pig?”

“Whatever. Fuck, maybe it was a lion,” said Melfi. “Come on, Captain, let’s go.”

“I’m Major Smith.”

“Whatever. Come the fuck on. We have to get on the other side of these hills and find some real cover.”

Dreamland

21 October, 2030 local

Dog stood over his desk, studiously ignoring the blinking light on his telephone. The light indicated that someone from Deborah O’Day’s office was holding – and had been holding for at least ten minutes.

“The thing to do is split the Whiplash team between two planes,” he told Cheshire and Freah. “This way we can crew them. they’ll arrive loaded for bear.”

“We don’t have two planes ready,” said Cheshire. “Only Fort Two is in shape to fly. Raven’s computer and fly-by-wire systems are still being upgraded to take care of the problems Fort Two encountered. We should have them on-line tomorrow night.”

“What about Plus?” Bastian asked, using the nickname for Megafortress One, officially carried on the books as EB-52-DT1A Megafortress Plus. Plus had been used a few months before to help recapture the stolen DreamStar experimental aircraft, flying all the way to Nicaragua.

“The wings are still being refitted. It will be at least a week before it’s ready. Raven’s the one to go. The ECMs will blast out anything the Iranians have.”

“They’ll overheat first,” said Rubeo.

Proposed as the next-generation electronic-warfare set, the xAQ-299 admittedly had some heating issues. But having decided to send the Megafortresses, Bastian was in no mood to let Rubeo’s dour puss derail him.

“All right, let’s do this,” he said. “Use Fort Two to take Whiplash to Africa. We’ll expedite the work on Raven, pack the two other crew members and more weapons in it, and ship it out as soon as it’s done. How soon can you take off?”

“Actually, Colonel. I think it would be better if I take the Raven,” Cheshire told him. “I’ve been flying it and its voice-command system has been trained for my voice. Besides, given the ECMs, it’s more likely to be the one that would see action.”

“Who flies Fort Two?”

“I took the liberty of alerting Captain Stockard,” Cheshire said. “She should be on base within a half hour.”

Dog nodded, then glanced at his phone.

“Danny, this sound good to go?”

Freah nodded.

“Let’s do it,” said Bastian.

“Colonel, I must note that you’re sending a test aircraft into a war zone,” said Rubeo.

“I don’t believe it’s an official war zone yet,” said Bastian dryly. “I’m sending it as a transport. Both planes are going as transports.”

“Semantics –”

“Doc, I appreciate your coming, truly I do,” said Bastian. “I don’t know why you thought it important to show up, but I appreciate it.”

Dog held up his hand, cutting off himself as well as the scientist.

“Out, everyone,” he said as he picked up his phone. “This is a classified call. Go!”

Breanna urged the small Honda faster, plunging through the desert night toward the base. She was glad to escape, glad to run from the disaster that had become her life. One some level she knew Jeff’s attitude was just a phase, a plateau on his way to coping with his disability, adjusting to his new life. But on another level, she was starting not to care. There was only so much she could take.

The counselors had tried to prepare her for this; they’d been hopeful, predicting that it would soon pass. They all felt Zen would come back stronger than ever, his true nature winning out.

But how did they know? They had all perfect spines, working legs. None of them had been top-dog test pilots with blue-sky careers ahead of them.

He suspected her of seeing Knife? Jesus. Where the hell did that come from?

Major Cheshire hadn’t said what was up, but she did promise a helicopter would be waiting to whisk Bree from Nellis to Dreamland. Obviously something big was brewing.

Thank God. She needed a diversion.

Me. O’Day herself was on the line when Dog picked up the phone.

“Colonel, I think you’ve lost your mind.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Madame Advisor,” he replied.

“Don’t Madame Advisor me. I read your e-mail. Do you know what’s you’re up against on the JSF?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He heard a loud sigh from the other end of the line. He imagined the petite woman shaking her head in her office, rolling her eyes before scrunching herself over the desk. She’d pulled up the sleeves of her white blouse – O’Day always wore white blouses to work.

“Dog, are you damn sure about this?”

“The F-119 is not a workable design as presently configured,” said Bastian, repeating the bullet line of his memo. “It can be, but the changes it needs will mean missing the interservice target.”

“They’re going to come after you on this, Tecumseh,” O’Day said. Rarely if ever she did – or anyone, for that matter – use his given name. “Wait until morning.”

“I know.”

“I’ll back you up, if this is your considered opinion.”

“It is.”

“It may mean Dreamland closes.”

“I weighed the consequences.”

“All right. You’ve heard about Somalia?”

“Yes. We have a team getting ready for transport.” Dog debated whether to tell her exactly how he intended on supplying that transport, but decided it was best not to. If she didn’t know. She couldn’t order him not to.

Not that she could order him to do anything, at least not directly.

If he was so afraid of telling her, why do it in the first place?

“I may call on you to look over some estimates. It will have to be back-channel,” she said.

“Understood.”

“This is going to dominate things around here for a few days,” she added. “It will take some of the heat off you and the JSF. I suggest you use it to line up the ducks.”

“The ducks?”

“And next time my office calls, Colonel, don’t keep me on hold,” she said, hanging up.

Danny Freah caught a ride out to the Megafortress hangar with Lieutenant Greenbaum, whom he was leaving in charge of base security in his absence. He spat out directions machine-gun style, warning Greenbaum about a dozen details that could snap up and bite him in the butt if he didn’t watch them. But all the time he talked, Danny was shaping his mission plan in his head. he had his go-bag in the back, along with a silenced MP-5 equipped with a laser sight. Four other members of his team would be similarly equipped; the other two carried M-16A2/M203 grenade-launcher combos.

The M40A sniper outfit had a special metal box all to itself. Along with a set of custom-tailored carbon-boron protective vests, it was waiting with the team in the hangar. There was also a line-of-sight discrete-burst com set developed by another Dreamland’s experimental labs. While the gear technically wasn’t cleared for operational use, Klondike had cleared it for ‘field testing.”

She’d also warned there’d be hell to pay if they lost it. but Danny didn’t plan on letting that happen.

According to the orders he received, Whiplash’s prime duty would be to crew a Pave Low tasked to transport and support a Delta assault team. But the Whiplash operators were trained to crew everything Air Force Special Operations flew; they could eat snakes, jump from planes, and leap tall building with a single rappelling line. They might be called on to do any or all of those once the fun started.

Greenbaum pulled up in front of the hangar. A ground crew was already working furiously on the big black bomber inside.

“Okay, now as far the duty rosters go,” Danny told his lieutenant, “you do have some flexibility.”

“Captain, no offense, but you’ve gone over the rosters maybe five times already? Seriously, sir. I do think I can handle it. The only tough part is going to be controlling my jealousy.”

Freah laughed. “I hope you’ll still feel that way in a week.”

“I’m sure we will, sir.”

Freah looked at the young man’s face. Greenbaum looked like a jayvee kid who’d been told he wasn’t making the trip to the big bowl game. He also looked to be all of fifteen, not twenty-three.

Of course, Freah wasn’t much older. He just felt like he was.

“Okay, Greenie. Kick some ass.”

Freah’s men were waiting in the hangar. Lee ‘Nurse’ Liu and Kevin Bison were at the entrance, copping smokes, while the others huddled near the big black plane’s tail, watching as the ground crew prepped the aircraft.

Freah had selected the Whiplash response team himself. All of the men were qualified as parajumpers with extensive SAR experience, cross-trained to handle each others’ responsibilities. Freah had organized them roughly along the lines of a Green Beret ‘A’ team for ground operations.

“Looks like they lost two plane about two miles apart,” Perse ‘Powder’ Talcom told him. Power was the team point man and intel specialist; he had gathered satellite maps and some briefing information before reporting to the hangar. “One to MiSs and the other to ground fire. roughly, they went down here.”

Talcom pointed to large swatches of Somalia coast.

“Got to figure out they got SAR units out there already,” he added. “Navy task force coming up from this direction. Few days away, though.”

Freah nodded. Talcom had recently been promoted to tech sergeant – obviously because he had relatives in the Pentagon, according to the others, who were all staff sergeants.

“What you’re saying is, fun’s going to be over before we get there,” said Bison, coming in from his smoke.

“There’s a lot of other shit going down,” said Freah. “Libya’s getting involved. There’s talk of Saudi Arabia being declared a no-fly zone.”

“Good,” said Jack ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, the team com specialist. “I’m getting bored around here.”

“What’s a no-fly zone mean to us?” asked Liu.

“It means you don’t fly there, Nurse,” said Powder.

“Nurse was thinking of strapping on a rocket pack and taking on the ragheads by himself,” said Bison. Liu had earned the nickname ‘Nurse’ because he was the team medic.

“I’d like to try a rocket pack someday,” said Geraldo ‘Blow’ Hernandez. Hernandez was the tail gunner and supply specialist, as well as the team’s jumpmaster.

“Yeah, Blow, I bet you would,” said Freddy ‘Egg’ Reagan, adjusting the elastic that held his thick eyeglasses in place around his bald head. Reagan was the squad weapons specialist, and could handle everything from a Beretta to an M-1 tank. Rumor had it he was learning to fly an Apache helicopter on the side.

“All right, we may end up with something important to do, but at the moment our assignment is straightforward,” Freah told them. “There’s a Pave Low en route from Germany. We take over for the regular crew, yada-yada-yada. You guys know the drill.”

“Hey, Captain, we invented the drill,” said Blow.

“Is it a DeWalt or a Bosch?” said Powder.

“That’s supposed to be a joke, right?” asked Liu.

“If I have to explain it, it’s not,” said Powder.

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Egg.

“Captain, what are we really doing?” asked Blow.

“Whatever they tell us to do,” said Freah. “That good enough for you?”

“They wouldn’t call us out if they didn’t want us playing snake-eaters, right?”

“Maybe,” said Freah, who suspected that Madcap Magician did have some covert ground action – aka ‘snake eating’ – in mind.

“Captain Freah?”

Freah turned to find Captain Breanna ‘Rap’ Stockard standing in full flight gear behind him. She extended her hand and he took it.

She had her old man’s grip. “Looks like we have a problem here.”