Dreamland

“What would that be?”

“You have one man too many. I was told your team had six members.”

“It does.”

“I count seven.”

“Six and me.”

“We have only six seats in this aircraft, besides mine and my copilot’s,” she said. “And frankly, that’s not a particularly comfortable configuration, since it means I’m flying without a crew.”

“Major Cheshire said it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“I didn’t say it was a problem,” said Breanna. She had her old man’s snap as well. “I said it wasn’t comfortable. I’m traveling without a navigator or a weapons specialist a damn long way into a particularly difficult environment. What that means is – I’m in a pissy mood. Now, who’s staying behind?”

She was in a pissy mood, Freah thought, but there was no way he was backing down.

“Everyone’s coming,” he told her. “I’ll sit on the floor.”

“This isn’t a 707,” said Breanna.

“A plane this big can’t fit another person?”

“He could sit in the nav jump seat,” said one of the crewmen nearby.

Breanna shot him a drop-dead glance, then turned back to Freah.

He couldn’t resist smiling. “See?”

“If we were to set you up in a jump seat, there’d be no way to egress the plane,” she told him.

“You can’t just walk out the door?” asked Powder.

“If there’s an emergency, there’s no way to eject,” Breanna told the sergeant. She had her father’s anger, all right – it was barely under control. “Captain, come here a minute.”

Freah followed her outside the hangar.

“Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” she said. “Just pick one of your men to stay behind.”

“Major Cheshire said it was doable.”

“I’m sure Major Cheshire thought six meant six, not seven.”

“Look, I’ll take the jump seat,” said Freah. “The nav think. I can bail out if there’s a problem.”

Breanna rolled her eyes. “You’re talking about a folding seat in the bottom of the plane. If there’s a problem, you’re going out a tiny hatch – or the bomb bay. And that’s if I can slow the plane to 275 knots. You know how fast that is?”

“It’s slower than I’ve down HALO jumps,” said Danny.

Breanna looked at him. HALO stood for High Altitude, Low Opening; it was typically done from C-141’s. he’d actually only done it three or four times, but at this point he wasn’t admitting anything that might argue against him.

“Good fucking luck,” she said.

“I’m willing to take the risk, Captain.”

“It’s a hell of a lot simpler to leave one of your men on the ground. He can come later with Raven or find another ride.”

“We get there with five men, I may not be able to do my job,” Freah said. “That may mean Smith doesn’t come back. You want to take that responsibility?”

Breanna’s face turned red.

“Hey, listen,” said Freah, “your dad approved this.”

”Fuck my dad,” said Breanna, spinning away.

“Lady is pissed,” said Blow when Freah returned to the group.

“Let’s get going, no screwin’ around,” Danny told them, ignoring the titters. “We’re not flying fuckin’ TWA.”

Somalia

22 October, 1996, 0620 local

Mack bit his sleeve against the throb in his ribs as he slid to his knees. His heart pounded in his ears and his chest throbbed. He barely managed to stifle a cough.

They were in scrubland on the side of a hill, maybe a mile or two south of where he landed. Where exactly that placed them in the large world Knife had no idea. There were people nearby, though it wasn’t clear whether they were soldiers or even exactly where they were. Sergeant Melfi had just hit the dirt a few yards ahead and lay motionless, stydying something nearby.

Knife reached his right hand to his holster. Something moved behind him and he realized it must be Jackson, catching up.

At least, he hoped it was Jackson. He managed not to jump as the Marine touched his shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“He just stopped,” Smith said, nodding toward Melfi.

“He’s not too bad at point,” said the Marine. Then he added, “You want that morphine?”

Smith shook his head as vigorously as he could without jostling his ribs.

“You look pretty bad.”

“Drugs’ll put me out,” Knife told him. “You’ll have to carry me.”

Mack wasn’t even tempted. The pain told him he was alive.

They watch as Gunny crane this neck upward, then duck back down. Finally, the sergeant came back to them.

“Village maybe twenty yards away from where I was,” hissed Melfi when he returned. “Damn shacks are built out of old trucks and steel signs mostly. Damn. People live like that?”

Neither Smith nor Jackson spoke.

“Ground’s nice and flat,” added Gunny. “I think there’s a road beyond it.”

“Helicopter could use the village as a locator,” Smith told them. “If there is a road, it could land there.”

“Yeah,” Gunny, balanced on his haunches, considered it. “Let’s move that way, try and flank it,” he said finally. He threw his head around suddenly. Jackson quickly brought his gun up.

“Getting paranoid,” said Gunny when nothing appeared. “How much time until next transmission, Major?”

Smith looked at his watch. “Five minutes.”

“All right. Let’s get a little further back, make it harder for them to see of hear us, then we’ll move around that way. See where I’m pointing?”

Knife nodded.

“You know what? Let’s get behind those trees and you make your radio call now,” said Gunny. “Yeah. We can all take a break. For one thing, I got to pee. Getting too old for this shit. Go for it, Jackson. You got the point again.”

Melfi gently rested his hand on Smith’s shoulder, holding him back as Jackson moved out. The two Marines had emphasized battle separation several times, but while Knife wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with the concept – fight aircraft practices it, after all – something innate wanted him to keep close to the two men and their M-16’s.

When Gunny finally released him, Mack heaved himself forward. He waddled low at first, moving sideways and then finding a stride that kept him balanced as well as close to the ground. The point man was moving a bit quicker, the distance between gradually spreading from five to ten and then fifteen yards. All things considered, Smith was pretty damn lucky – not only had he managed to avoid capture after bailing out, but he had a Marine escort to help lead him to safety.

Going to take a hell of a lot of ribbing about that.

Jackson had almost reached the copse ahead when Knife caught the sound of a prop-driven plane approaching from the south. He grabbed the Prick ninety, cursing himself as he realized he’d neglected to turn the radio’s dial back to off after his last transmission. There was no time to worry if that might have hurt the battery or not – he held it up and began broadcasting, starting with the call sign he had used while flying.

“Poison One to Project Command, to any allied aircraft. Do you read me?”

He snapped off the transmit button, looking upward. The plane he had heard was nearly overhead, relatively low, though he couldn’t see it yet. From the sound, it was driven by a prop. That could mean it was a Bronco-type observation craft – Madcap Magician had at least one of the ancient but dependable OV-10’s in its stable.

On the other hand, it could be nearly anything else.

“Poison One to all aircraft, do you read me?”

He flipped over to the second rescue band and retransmitted. There was no response.

The airplane above passed without him being able to see it. He guessed it was between one and two thousand feet. But it seemed to be flying in a straight line.

“What do you think?” Jackson asked, crawling next to him.

“If it’s one of ours, it should have heard us,” said Smith. He pressed the radio to his ear. It was also equipped with a small earphone, but he thought he got more volume without it. Smith tried broadcasting again, this time pointing the antenna in the direction of the plane.

“Nothing?” asked Gunny when he came back.

Knife shook his head.

“I didn’t see it,” said the sergeant.

“Me neither,” said Jackson. Knife shook his head too.

“Maybe they ‘re not on our side,” suggested Melfi.

“Somalians don’t have much of an air force,” said Smith. “And the Iranians would be running a MiG down here. But you’re right. There’s no way of knowing. Could be a civilian they pressed into duty. It didn’t seem like it was moving in a search pattern, but it’s hard to tell. I mean, I’ve never been on this end of one.” He meant it as a joke, but the others didn’t laugh. “How far are we from the coast?”

“Maybe another half mile this way,” said Gunny.

“I think we should go back to our plan then,” said Knife. “We go out to the ocean and broadcast from there. If that was the Somalians, then they’d have an easier time with us near the village.”

Gunny ran his finger back and forth across his chin, thinking. “See, if I’m a soldier, I come here, ask these villagers if they saw anything. They say no, I move on. I don’t waste my time searching around here, not unless these folks have seen or heard something. Besides, the ocean’s a good hike back that way, and that’s where they’ll be looking, I’d guess.”

“Hey, Gunny,” hissed Jackson.

Smith and Knife turned. Jackson crouched down, pointing his gun back in the direction of the village.

“Something big moved.

“Another pig, I hope,” said Smith.

“Wasn’t a pig before,” said Gunny, pushing away toward a low ridge to their right.

Knife returned his radio to his pocket, making sure it was off this time. He took out his gun.

Melfi and Jackson froze. So did he.

He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything, either. He blew a long, slow, deep breath from his mouth, waiting.

Gunny put his hand up, then began waving it, as if he wanted Knife to move backward. Mack too a long step backward, then another. The trees they’d been aiming for were less than ten yards away. Just beyond them were some low bushes and what seemed to be another clearing of tall grass.

Jackson was sprawled on the ground, crawling forward.

Knife took a half step toward the copse, watching as the Marine worked toward a trio of bushes no more than a foot high. He reached into his pants pocket for something.

Gunny stood straight up. Relieved, Knife let his pistol hand drop to his side.

As he did, Jackson whipped something from his hand, a baseball or a rock.

A grenade.

Smith threw himself to the ground as Gunny opened fire. bullets ripped overhead and there was an explosion, then another, then something acrid burned his nose.

Smoke. a smoke grenade, meant to confuse the enemy. Real grenades as well.

There were shouts and more gunfire. Knife ignored the pain in his ribs as he pushed himself back to his feet and began to run, heading for the trees, unsure exactly what he was supposed to do next. He glanced at the Beretta in his hand, then nearly tripped as he reached the first tree. He flew behind the narrow trunk, gun-first, reminding himself that the first figure he saw emerging from the thick fog would be one of his own men.

He waited, saw nothing. He heard nothing.

The best thing to do, he thought, was to transmit their location. He reached his left hand to take out the radio, felt the pull of his ribs. Somehow he managed to ignore it, taking out the PRC-90 and dialing it to beacon, not wanting to take his attention from the ground in front of him. Smoke curled around the trees and branches, as if a massive cloud bank had descended to earth.

Nothing.

Knife shifted behind the tree, then turned his attention to the radio.

“Poison One to allied command,” he said. “Team is under attack. Repeat, we are taking fire.”

He stopped, listening for a response.

The airplane again, in the distance, coming from the north.

Maybe it could hear him but not the other way around.

Or maybe it was directing ground forces against them.

At this point, that didn’t matter. They knew where they were.

Allied command. Shit. Like he was in the Gulf or something?

“Smith to whoever,” he said, his heart pounding wildly. It felt as if it were smashing itself against his injured rib bones. “We are two and a half miles from the coast, maybe more. We’re southwest of the Silkworm site.”

There was a scream and more gunfire. Knife dialed the radio back to beacon, then spun around.

Nothing to shoot at.

The airplane roared overhead, barely at treetop level.

He’d have to gamble that it was on his side. Mack began to run toward the open field. With his first step the ground behind him erupted with a massive shell burst. Thrown off his feet, he dropped both the radio and his pistol, but somehow managed to land on his good side. Tumbling head over heels, he crashed into a bush and got up. He could see, or thought he could see, the shadow of a plane passing at the edge of the yellow grass just ahead. He threw himself toward it, running and breathing and feeling his ribs like a sharp ax ripping through his skin. He began waving his arms, then felt some force pulling him around, lassoing him like a steer. He swung sideways and found himself on the ground, tackled. A Somalia soldier pushed an AK-47 into his face and said something he couldn’t hear, though his meaning was pretty damn plain.

Dreamland

21 October, 2130 local

Bree fought the bile back as she completed the last-second checked before heading off the Dreamland runway. There were any number of reasons for her to be angry, starting with the Spec Ops captain’s in-her-face attitude. The jerkoff thought it was macho to sit on the floor.

Jump seat, whatever. Asshole.

“Good to go, Rap,” said Chris.

“Yeah,” she grunted.

It was Jeff she was mad at, though. This was just a milk run – admittedly a long, long, long one, but still just a milk run. Assuming she made the refuels without any problem.

Piece of cake. Even with a mix of missiles in the belly. Jackass Spec Ops captain. Just because he was her father’s friend didn’t mean shit. she was in charge of the plane – she had a good mind to march downstairs and tell the fucker to strap himself onto the rotating missile launcher in the bomb bay.

See how macho he thought that was.

She had debated going to Cheshire and demanding that Freah delete someone from his team. She had every right to do that – she probably should have done that.

But she hadn’t. In her mind, and maybe only in her mind, it was the sort of thing a woman couldn’t do. A woman couldn’t afford to be less brave, less macho, than a guy.

How was watching out for her crew – strike that, her passengers – not being brave?

Freah would have to cut a stinking hole with a blowtorch to get his sorry ass out of the plane if there was a problem. Because she sure as shit wasn’t going to slow down so he could crawl over to the hatch.

Maybe he’d move the computer equipment in the weapons area, find a way to squeeze through the bulkhead spars and crawl back to the bomb bay. Ride a cruise missile down to earth like what’s his name in that whatchamacallit movie.

Asshole!

“Rap?”

“Dream Tower, this is Fort Two. Request clearance for takeoff.”

“Tower. Uh, Captain, didn’t we do this already?”

Another fucking wise-ass, Bree thought, pushing the throttle bar to get the hell out of there.

Colonel Bastian watched from the tarmac as the immense black plane lifted itself into the night, a dark shadow shuddering into the air.

It would be an exaggeration to say he’d thought more about his daughter in the past hour than in her whole life, but it was probably true that it was the longest sustained stretch in quite a while. He’d tried concentrating on other things, and even taking a nap, but couldn’t; finally he’d decided to go out to the hangar area and wish her luck.

But he’d stopped short. He told himself that he didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her crew, but he knew that was a lie. He’d stopped because he didn’t know what to say.

Or rather, he didn’t think he could say what he wanted to say. Which was a lifetime of apologies, maybe.

He hadn’t been there when she was born. He hadn’t been there when she was growing up. It was partly her mother’s fault, partly a question of circumstances, partly his career. Her mother had asked for a divorce even before she was pregnant, and then taken off, just disappeared. Ravena’s wild streak had attracted him in the first place, the edge of danger in their relationship. Her unpredictability fired him up; he liked the edge, or had, or thought he had, when he was a young fighter jock on top of the world.

The jock eventually grew up. Ravena hadn’t.

Breanna had, though.

It was his fault he hadn’t been there. No one else’s but his.

Dog folded his arms around his chest, eyes straining to see the disappearing shadow in the distance. She was a damn good pilot; he should be proud.

He was. He was also worried about her, an anxious father who’d just sent his daughter off on her first date.

If only it were that, he thought, finally losing track of the plane in the vast, overwhelming sky.

Dreamland

22 October, 0600

“What do you call a cripple trying to cross a road?”

The two airmen looked at each other as if they’d just caught their parents in a foursome in Times Square.

“Roadkill,” Zen said. “What do you call a one-legged bank robber?”

The airman on the left shrugged. The other laughed nervously. “What, Captain?” he asked.

“Misunderstood.”

The roar of the helicopter approaching the Nellis landing pad made it possible for the two airmen to escape. The Dolphin shuttle – a French-made Aerospatiale SA.366 Dauphin adapted by the Air Force as a transport and occasional SAR craft – whipped in as if dropping into a hot LZ. The men bolted for it as it touched down a few yards away. A ground crewman pushed forward the access ramp that had been specially built for Zen. Stockard wheeled slowly, methodically building momentum as he sidled and bumped through the wide side door. Because of its SAR function, this Dolphin had a large open bay in the rear; it was easier to get in and out of than the other, which was a dedicated ferry generally reserved for – and preferred by – officers.

“Morning, Captain,” said the copilot, trotting back as Zen wheeled himself into the bird. “You in for this week’s football pool?” He pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket.

“I ought to get cripple’s odds,” Zen said, taking the sheet.

“Man, you’re in a strange mood this morning, sir,” said one of the airmen he’d been tormenting with his jokes.

“I’m just a strange guy, I guess,” said Zen, reaching around to strap his chair to the helicopter’s restraints. Greasy Hands had had someone install the quick-release hookup, making it easy for him to secure himself. Maybe next week they’d put in a special window.

“All aboard what’s coming aboard,” yelled the copilot out the rear door before pulling it shut. There was, of course, no one else waiting in the off-limits and well-guarded shuttle area. The pilot whipped the engine into a fury and the helicopter shot upward.

He was in a strange mood, Zen conceded to himself. Maybe it was because he thought he’d made a mistake with Bree last night.

He still knew he was right, that they had to end their marriage. But his stomach hurt, and it wasn’t just because of the heavy meal.

They’d sat there for an hour or more after he told her. neither one of them spoke. Then she got up to go to the bathroom. He flipped on the TV.

Someone from Dreamland called her in. Bree left without explaining what was up. He assumed there was some sort of problem with the Megafortress; she had that kind of look on her face. He could tell.

At least he thought he could.

He glanced at the list of football games on the pool sheet, but the light was dim and he didn’t really feel like going through it now. He folded it into his pocket.

Jeff had spent quite a lot of time last night thinking about using the Megafortress as the Flighthawk mother ship. He thought it might just be possible to save the project by tying the U/MFs to the JSF. The Flighthawks would be perfect escorts over hostile territory.

The JSF was a joke, so what the hell. Might as well get something useful out of the program.

Stockard mulled how to best present the idea to his father-in-law during the short flight to Dreamland. He was still thinking about it a he made his way over to Cafeteria Four for breakfast.

“Ham ‘n’ Swiss bagel,” he told Maggie, the counter-person, as he took his customary bottle of water.

“A bagel today?” My, oh, my. Living on the edge, aren’t we, Captain?” said Maggie.

“Cripples have to,” Zen told her.

“Don’t you ever use that word in front of me,” she said, nearly throwing herself over the steam tray that separated them “My son is in a wheelchair. He ain’t no cripple.”

“I didn’t mean anything. I, uh …” Zen held out his hands apologetically. “I mean, shit, look at me.”

“Well, you ain’t cripple.” Her face was red and her voice was shaking. “That damn chair doesn’t give you the right to make fun of nobody.”

“I’m not making fun of anyone. I didn’t know about your son. I’m sorry.”

She flipped the bagel together and plopped it on a plate with a harsh slap.

“I’m sorry,” Zen said. “Really.”

“Yeah,” she said. Maggie pushed her lips together; finally, she nodded slowly.

He wanted to say something else, but all he could manage was another ‘sorry.’ Maggie turned quickly to greet a newcomer. Zen took the tray and wheeled himself out into the nearly empty room.

Nancy Cheshire was sitting at a table a short distance from the doorway. She waved at him to cover over; he moved toward her slowly, the coffee lapping at the top of the cup on his precariously balanced tray.

“Hey, Jeff. Sorry I woke you up last night,” she said as he slid his tray in.

“No, I was up,” he told her. he sipped his coffee, thinking how he could make it up to Maggie. She’d always been one of the few people who’d treated him like a regular person.

“Ought to be nearly there by now,” said Cheshire.

“There where?”

“You haven’t heard what’s going on?”

“No. Where’s Bree? You called her last night?” he added, finally catching up to what she’d been saying.

“Two planes got shot down in Somalia,” Cheshire told him. “They’re putting together an operation to rescue the pilots. Madcap Magician has an operation under way. They’ve called in Whiplash, one of our Spec Op security units. Danny Freah packed up the team in Fort Two and took off for Africa a few hours ago.”

“In a Megafortress?”

Cheshire nodded. “We’re sending Raven out as soon as the control systems are tested. We’re carrying Fort Two’s crew members, and some more weapons. I should be sleeping,” she added, shrugging.

“Weapons?”

“If they needed.”

“I’m coming with you,” Zen told her. “With the Flighthawks.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Raven’s already set up for us. We can load the computer gear back in on the pallets and be ready to rock in an hour,” he told her. “It won’t take a half hour.”

“Jeff, the Flighthawks aren’t ready for combat.”

“And Raven is?”

Cheshire shook her head. “The Megafortress has already seen action.”

“Raven hasn’t. And the Flighthawks have been flying for as long as Fort Two has.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“We can provide escort and act as scouts,” said Jeff.

“We’ve only done two airdrops.”

“That’s in the past week and a half. We did maybe a million before my accident.”

She frowned, not even bothering to refute his exaggeration. Jeff kept talking, convinced he was right – convinced that not only would the Flighthawks do a great job, but that they would prove their worth to everyone and the project would live on.

He would live on. Or fly on.

“Raven and Fort Two are too valuable to risk anyplace where somebody else got shot down. The Flighthawks can take chances you can’t.”

“Maybe five years from now. Three years if we’re lucky,” said Cheshire. “After a hell of a lot more work and practice.”

“You think the pilots who got shot down are going to be alive in three years?”

”I didn’t think you cared that much for Mack Smith after, uh, the accident,” she said.

“Smith was one of the pilots?”

Cheshire nodded.

“Yeah, well, I’m still going.”

Shaving, Colonel Bastian considered whether he might just escape for a few hours – pull the phone out of the wall, or better yet, steal away to a Vegas hotel and sleep for twenty-four hours.

Wouldn’t that go over big with the F-119 junta?

But hiding wasn’t exactly his style. And besides, he needed to stay available in case O’Day wanted his input on Somalia. So he fortified himself with a quick, very hot shower, and headed back to the Taj.

By now Bastian had learned it was much faster to avoid the elevator’s security systems and go down the stairway, where ‘merely’ required a second retina scan, magnetic strip card, and a nod to the security detail at each floor. He had just burst out into the hallway down from his office when Major Stockard yelled to him from the elevator area.

“Colonel, just the man I was looking for,” said Jeff, wheeling his chair at breakneck speed. “Can we talk for a second?”

“Sure, Zen,” said Bastian, pushing open the door to his outer office. The room was jammed with a dozen other people waiting to see him. Dog gave the room a quick glance, though he could tell from the chaos that Ax was temporarily AWOL. “Sergeant Gibbs will be with you all shortly,” he said, waving off any interruptions as he plunged into his personal office. He held the door open as Stockard wheeled through, the closed it quickly.

“Colonel –”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Bastian quickly.

“I’m not worried about Bree, Colonel,” said Jeff. “I know she’s fine. I want to get the Flighthawks on Raven.”

“What?”

“The Flighthawks. If you’re sending a second Megafortress to Africa, you should send the Flighthawks along too. They can act as escorts and scouts,” he added. “We’ll have real-time surveillance and CAP.”

“I don’t know, Jeff.” Dog pulled out his desk chair and sat down. “For one thing, I don’t have approval to send the first Megafortress, let alone the second. I’m only authorizing it on the grounds that the first one doesn’t have a full crew aboard. In theory, two planes are supposed to come back.”

“Come on, Dog. You’re stuffing the Raven with air-to-ground weapons. I agree with you. We should be in this.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself. The weapons are for defensive purposes only.

“JSOWs?”

“If there are ground installations targeting them,” said Bastian. It was, at best, a thin veneer – but that was all he needed.

“So they’ll need up-to-date intelligence. I’ve flown the Flighthawks off Raven before. I know it will work.”

The phone his desk buzzed. Bastian looked at it angrily.

“You know I’m right about this, Colonel,” said Zen. “If you’re sending another Megafortress, the Flighthawks should go too. They’re proven. “They’re expendable escorts.”

“You haven’t proven anything yet,” Bastian told him. He snapped up the phone. “Bastian.”

“Couple a dozen people waiting to talk to you, Colonel,” said Ax. “And Washington –”

“Start a list. Tell Washington I’ll get back to them,” he snapped, hanging up the phone. He turned back to Stockard. “You think aircraft that cost a half billion dollars to build are expendable?”

“That’s the whole program cost,” said Jeff. “But even if it were the cost of one plane, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than someone’s life.”

As mad as he was, Bastian couldn’t quite disagree with that.

Especially since one of the lives they were talking about was Rap’s.

“Have you used the Megafortress as a mother ship?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” said Jeff. “Once they’re off the wings, flying them from the Megafortress is like flying them from anywhere. Come on. Dog. You know it makes sense. Send them.”

“You’re asking me to send an untested flight system into a war zone.”

“You already did that. Shit.” Zen nudged his wheelchair forward. “You want to prove Dreamland will work, don’t you? I know the whole concept – cutting-edge technology in the hands of an elite force. I have a copy of your paper. You’re right. That’s why this makes so much goddamn sense.”

“Where did you get a copy of that?”

“My cousin works for the NSC,” said Zen, realizing he’d gone too far.”

“Which cousin is that?”

“Off record?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t want to get my cousin fired,” Jeff pushed on, obviously hoping to skirt the question. “The bottom line here is, I want to put into practice what you’ve been preaching. Cutting-edge weapons on the firing line, where they belong.”

He was right – or at least he was making a damn strong argument. How could he not? It was exactly what Bastian himself believed.

But was Bastian right? He’d written that paper in an air-conditioned Washington, D.C., office over a few quiet afternoons. It was summer, and his evenings had been spent on a golf course, learning to play.

The report, and the man who wrote it, had been far removed from the realities of command, let alone combat. He hadn’t had to worry about consequences of failure.

“Zen, I’m going to forget about that claim to have seen an eyes-only code-word report that I doubt you’re cleared to read,” he told him. “What do we do if one of the Flighthawks crashes?”

“I hit self-destruct.” Jeff shrugged. “God, Colonel, they’re killing us anyway, right? What do we have to lose? I’m not asking you to send the JSF. You know this will work.”

Ax’s short double rap on the door interrupted them. the sergeant appeared with two cups of coffee and a stack of folders beneath his arm.

“Intel report you want to look at, Colonel,” said the sergeant, setting the folders down. “Courtesy of Centcom Planning.”

“Centcom?” Dog took the folder in his hand. It contained a short, undated memo accessing antiair defenses possessed by Iran. The emphasis was on mobile systems purchased form the former Soviet Union. According to the report, the Iranians were suspected of possessing a ‘sizable’ number – ‘more than twenty’ – of SA-3’s, SA-6’s, and man-portable SA-16’s.

Serious weapons, all. There were also improved SA-2’s, old but reliable SAMs. Though their systems were well known, their old-radar style radar could take advantage of some deficiencies in stealth technology – in other words, they could ‘see’ F-117’s in some circumstances.

They could also see the Megafortress.

Not the Flighthawks, though. Or at least not quite as soon.

A pair of robots could extend the scouting range, take the risks. Keep his people safe. That was his mission, no?

No. This wasn’t his mission at all. He’d taken a hell of a risk using Fort Two as a transport. He knew – he strongly suspected, at least – that once the Megafortress was available, it would be used. And that would certainly hold true for Raven, with its ECMs.

And the Flighthawk. Damn straight.

Who could resist the temptation to use them?

Didn’t he want that, though? Didn’t he want to demonstrate how right he was?

No, it wasn’t a matter of him being right. It was a matter of getting the job done. And saving lives.

Bree’s.

“Ax – who sent this report?” he asked his sergeant.

“Came eyes-only, without any ID,” replied the sergeant. “I thought Ms. O’Day had forwarded it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Don’t know what to tell you, Colonel,” said the sergeant, slipping out the door.

“You put him up to this?” Bastian asked Zen.

“I haven’t a clue what that paper says,” said Zen.

“All right. See if it’s doable. I haven’t approved anything yet,” he added harshly as Stockard started to smile. “I want to talk to Cheshire and Rubeo about this first.”

“No sweat. I’ll round them up,” said Zen, spinning around.

Picking up the phone to ask Ax to come back in, Bastian couldn’t help wonder if he would said something different if Bree weren’t piloting Fort Two.

Waiting for the elevator to arrive, Zen wondered if he ought to get word to his cousin Jed Barclay that he had inadvertently squealed on him. But it might be easier for Jed if he didn’t know – Jed had a natural deer-in-the-headlights look about him, except when he tried to lie.

Then the boy genius who’d gone to Columbia at sixteen and moved on to take two doctorates at Harvard looked like a third-rate car thief.

Slotting himself inside the elevator car, Zen felt a twinge of doubt – not about the Flighthawks, not even about himself, but Bree. If the Colonel was willing to send the Flighthawks, what did it say about what was going on over there?

Better to focus on his own problems, he thought, worrying about how long it would take to get the Flighthawk on the Megafortress.

Somalia

22 October 1996, 1900 local

Somewhere along the way, Mack had lost track not only of where he was and what time it was, but how many people were swirling above him. In the past few hours, Smith had been carried beneath a pole suspended between two soldiers like a piece of game, packed into the back of a pickup, shoved into the back of a sedan, placed gently in another pickup, and marched several miles – more or less in that order. Manacled and blindfolded the whole time, he had been offered water but no food, and three times allowed to pee. He hadn’t been beaten, not even at first. In fact, he’d probably give him captors three stars in the Mobile Guide to African Kidnappers.

Actually, there weren’t kidnappers. Third World or not, they were members of a serious army. They had a command structure and obvious discipline. Smith was the intruder and criminal; it was very possible that they had legal ground to execute him.

Not that they needed legal grounds. They had more than enough weapons, one of which poked itself now into the side of his neck.

“You, Captain, you will come this way,” said a voice with what sounded to him like a British accent. Smith followed the prods, quickening his pace as a hand gripped his sleeve. He tripped over a low riser and heard his feet echoing over a porch of some sort. A door opened ahead of him. Two men shouldered him down a hall to a set of carpeted stairs. They started him upward slowly, but then another hand pushed from behind. With his legs chained, he flailed for balance; the guards on either side picked him up by the elbows and carried him to a landing.

Down another hall, into a room, into a seat – hands grabbed at his face and his eyes flooded with light.

“You will tell me your name,” said the blur in front of him.

“Why?” said Smith, trying to focus.

“Because at the moment your status is quite in doubt. Spies are shot without trial.

The man was short, a bit on the round side. He wore a long, coatlike gray garment. He had a beard; his face was white. A small turban, gray, topped his head.

“I’m a prisoner of war,” said Knife.

“Then you will tell me your name and rank, and we will go on from there,” said the man, his English softened by a vaguely Middle Eastern accent. He did not smile, but he spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were dealing with a young child.

“Major Mack Smith.”

“You are with the U.S. Air Force,” said the man. You were flying an F-16. What is the name of your unit?”

Smith didn’t answer.

“Your call sign was Poison,” continued the man. “You bombed an installation of the Somalian government.”

“It was an Iranian base.”

The man finally smiles. It was faint and brief.

“Major, the base is under the control of the Somalian government. The men who captured you and brought you here were Somalian. I assure you, there are no Iranian soldiers in Somalia, or anywhere in Africa.”

“What about you?”

“I am an ambassador,” said the man. “An advisor. Nothing more.”

“I’m your prisoner?”

“No. You are no one’s prisoner. You don’t exist.”

“I’m free to go then,” said Smith. The pain in his ribs stoked up as he mockingly jerked his body upright.

“If you were to leave here now, you would be shot.”

Middle-ages and obviously a cleric of some sort, the Iranian exuded calmness, as if he were projecting a physical aura of considered peacefulness. Two men stood in plain brown uniforms behind him; neither uniform had insignias or other marks of rank, and they were not carrying weapons. About a dozen troops, Somalians apparently, stood near the door and the sides of the room. It seemed to be a classroom; a blackboard filled the wall in front, its shiny surface glaring with the reflected overhead lights. There were several rows of seats, though no desks that he could see, behind him.

“Are you hungry?” asked the Iranian.

“No,” lied Smith.

“I would suggest it is in your interest to be truthful,” said his captor. He turned to one of the men in the uniforms and said something. The man nodded, then left.

Knife gazed around the room, trying to memorize details. Yellow parchmentlike shades were drawn down over the windows on his right. The floor was covered with seemingly new linoleum, the kind that might be used in the kitchen of a modest American home. A crucifix was mounted above the middle of the blackboard.

Maybe he was in an old mission school? Or certainly some building that didn’t specifically belong to the government.

Or maybe it did. He wasn’t in Boise.

The aide returned with a tray. A large bowl of rice and some sort of vegetable sat in the middle. There were no eating utensils. Smith looked at it doubtfully as the tray as placed on a wooden chair and sat down in front of him. A thick reddish brown liquid covered the rice.

His manacled hands moved toward the bowl. Stopping them seemed to require more energy than he had. Smith scooped a few fingers’ worth of food into his mouth, then quickly consumed the contents. The liquid was sweet and sticky in his throat; the rest of the food was bland.

“And get him some water,” added the Iranian.

Two other Iranians in plain brown uniforms came in with the man with the water. One of the men had a small Sony video cam, the kind of family might use to record their child’s first steps. Smith held his head upright, staring blankly into the lens.

“State you name, please,” said the Iranian cleric.

“Mack Smith,” he said, taking the metal cup of water.

“Are you injured?”

He considered what to say. “I think one of my ribs is broken.”

“How did that happen?”

He hesitated again. If he said they had beaten him, they would simply erase that portion of the tape. Besides, it wasn’t true.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“Good question.”

The Iranian cleric smiled and nodded. Finally he said something to the man with the camera, apparently telling him to turn it off, since he did so.

“The bruises on your face – did they come from the ejection?” asked the Iranian.

“What bruises?” asked Knife. He hadn’t realized his face was injured.

“The force of the ejection would have been severe. Your parachute was found near where you landed, on the side of a sheer cliff. You are fortunate that your legs were not broken.”

“Yeah, I’m one lucky dog.”

“You will find in time, Major, that that is very true.” The Iranian motioned to the guards behind him. Two strong arms levered him upward from his chair; caught by surprise, Mack dropped the water, splashing it on his uniform and the floor. The two men behind his interrogator bristled, stepping forward quickly as if he had made a threat.

“An accident, I’m sure,” said the Iranian, holding them back with a subtle gesture of his hand. He looked at Knife the way an older relative might, as if he had known him all his life, as if he were comparing the man before him with a mental image of the child he had been. “I must attend to some business, Major Smith.”

The Iranian started to leave.

“What’s going to happen to me?” Smith asked.

“Possibly, you will be put on trial. If that happens. I will be your advocate.”

“Who are you?”

“You may call me Iman or Teacher. I am your advocate,” said the Iranian. He swept from the room, the two brown uniform and half a dozen Somalians in tow.

Goddamn faggot Iranians,” Melfi told Jackson. “Least they could have done was beat the shit out of us.”

“Yeah,” said Jackson.

He’d been shot in the leg and Gunny could see the pain hit him in waves. Worried Jackson might pass out, the sergeant continued to talk and joke, hoping to keep him from going.

“Stinkin’ pilot’s probably making a deal for us right now, what do you think?” said Gunny. “Bet we’ll get dancing girls and blow jobs.”

Jackson snorted. His eyes started to close.

Gunny jumped up from the bench. Ignoring the two Somalians standing near the basement steps, he grabbed Jackson by the shirt and shook him.

“Yo, stay with me, boy. Yo, you’re mine, shithead. Don’t go nowhere.”

“I’m okay, Gunny. I’m just tired.”

“Hey, you douche bags – get me a fucking doctor here, okay?” Gunny yelled to the men. “You faggot bastards, don’t you understand English? Hey! Hey!”

The door to the basement opened. Still holding Jackson, Gunny watched as a man in a long robe descended the stairs. It was the Iranian who had questioned them earlier. Several other Iranians and Somalians followed him down.

“Hey, Ayatollah, where the fuck is that doctor?”

The others rushed around the two Americans. One grabby Gunny; before he could slug the SOB, his arms were pinned behind him.

“We need a fucking doctor,” Melfi told the Imam.

“Your soldier will received what attention is available,” said the Iranian. He nodded, and two of his men lifted Jackson up and carried him away. The Marine’s head flopped to the side. “The wound does not appear serious.”

“I’ll tell you what. Give me a fuckin’ AK-47 and you can find out how serious it is.”

“Your false bravado is hardly appropriate.”

The Iman nodded again. Gunny was thrown to the floor. Before he could manage to get up, his arms and groin were pinned by heavy boots.

“This ain’t exactly Geneva Convention style,” growled Gunny.

“This ain’t Geneva, Sergeant,” said the Imam.

A man with a video-camera appeared from behind the cleric. A red light flashed on near the lens; Melfi spat and stuck his tongue out. The videographer continued for a few more moments, then snapped off the camera.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said the Imam, seemingly amused. He said something to the others. One or two of the men grinned.

“You’re a real fuckin’ comedian. Ayatollah,” said Gunny as the others released him. He rolled up and sat on the floor, watching as the Imam walked back up the stairs. Most of the others followed. A young soldier came down with a tray of rice mush similar to what they’d given him a few hours before. Gunny took the bowl, made a show of sniffing it, even though he figured they wouldn’t bother poisoning him – they’d just shoot him and be done with it.

grub wasn’t as bad as some of the crap the Navy served on their aircraft carriers. He spooned it quickly into his mouth with his finger. Like before, the soldier waited for the bowl quietly a few feet away.

“Here ya go, Sport,” Gunny said, tossing the bowl back. The kid was skinny; he’d be easy to overpower. But he didn’t have a weapon, and the Somalians near the stairs did. Odds were they’d too jumpy to hold their fire, even if he had their comrade around the neck.

“You find a beer up there, you let me know, huh?” Gunny said as the soldier disappeared up the stairs.

Hell of a jail, he thought. Reminded him of the storage room in an old NCO club in Florida. Guys used to help one of the waitress rearrange the boxes downstairs.

[I]Ooo-la-la[/b].

The door above opened once more. A pair of black boots appeared, followed by the Somalians in their beatup sneakers.

Major Smith.

Gunny tried to keep his expression blank as Smith was prodded down to the basement. Unlike Gunny and Jackson, Smith was wearing a set of manacles on his hands and legs. He walked slowly, then stood at attention a few feet away. Neither man spoke as the soldiers turned back and went up the stairs.

The instant the door closed, Smith collapsed on the floor.

“Jesus, Major, you all right?” said Gunny, not quite in time to keep Smith’s head from slamming on the hard-packed dirt.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Smith. His eyes were closed. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Jail, I think,” said Gunny.

“Upstairs looks like a school or something. We still in Somalia?”

“They had us in the back of a van the whole time,” Gunny told him. “I’m not sure. I think so. We were headed west, maybe northwest, I figure. Near the coast, but not on it. some Iranian guy’s in charge. Raghead.”

“The Imam,” said Smith.

“Looks like Khomeni,” said Gunny.

“This guy’s our lawyer or something,” Smith groaned. “Or he’s pretending to be, so we trust him.”

“Lawyer?”

Smith pulled himself forward, finally opening his eyes. “Ribs are killing me,” said the major apologetically.

“Yeah. They beat you up?”

“Haven’t touched me.”

“Us neither. Strange. They must be scared.”

“No. They’re going to put us on trial. They don’t want us hurt before then. We’re propaganda.” Smith glanced toward the two Somalians standing at the foot of the stairs. They were holding South African 9mm BXPs, Uzi-like weapons with telescoping stocks and air-cooled muzzles. “What happened to Jackson?”

“They took him upstairs. He got shot in the leg.”

“How about you?”

“Head hurts like shit,” said Gunny he pointed to the scrape on his scalp where he’d been nicked by a bullet. “Otherwise only thing that smarts is my pride.”

Gunny told Smith how Jackson got hit and went down right after they were spotted. Gunny toss a smoke grenade and went to get him. Somewhere around there another grenade went off, tossed by Jackson or the Somalians, he wasn’t sure. Either it was a concussion grenade or a dud; in any event, all it had done was slam the sergeant to the ground. When he tried to get up he found half a dozen Somalians in his face.

“I guess I got shot somewhere along the way,” added Gunny. “Lucky for me it hit my head and bounced off. Hit me anywhere else and it would have gone right through.”

“Let me see it.”

Melfi bent down and let Smith examine the wound, even thought Jackson had already said the bullet had only grazed him. The major agreed, describing it as a the sort of red singe a barber’s razor might make.

“What happens next, you figure?” Gunny asked.

“Take us to where the trial is.”

“If we done get rescued first,” said the sergeant. “Or bust out first.”

Smith gave him a weak smile. “Yeah, we’ll just have to bust out.”

“I got a knife in my buckle,” whispered Gunny.

The major didn’t understand at first. Finally he nodded. “My radio,” he told Gunny. “Somebody should have got the signal.”

“They’ll come for us,” said Melfi. “Don’t worry, Major. Hell, Jackson and me are expendable. But you’re a fuckin’ officer. You bet your ass they’re going to come and get you back.”

Smith groaned in reply, then sank to the floor, starting to nod off.

Mack fought to keep his eyes open. The basement smelled like a cross between a biology lab and the kitchen of an Indian restaurant that hadn’t been cleaned in a week. Knife held his elbow right below his injured rib, pushing it in to keep himself from puking.

A medical attendant – the man clearly had not been a doctor – had roughly taped the rib after prodding him harshly a few time upstairs. He’d also offered some painkillers, but Smith hadn’t dared to take them.

Knife knew he should be coordinating strategy or planning what they would and wouldn’t say with the Marine sergeant. But the pain and his fatigue and the stench were overwhelming. Thoughts flew in and out of his head like dreams. He saw himself running at the two men near the stairs with their guns, saw their bullets tearing him apart. It might be a relief.

The door opened. He saw three men coming down, carrying a fourth. They seemed to float over him.

The fourth man was dumped on the ground.

It was Jackson. Melfi went to him as the others retreated back upstairs.

“I feel better,” Jackson was saying on the ground. Sergeant Melfi helped him upright. “They gave me morphine. I don’t feel shit.”

“You fuckin’ druggie,” said Melfi. He flashed a grin to Mack, letting him know it was a joke.

“There’s another pilot,” said Jackson. “They’re going to move us soon. Tonight.”

“That’ll be our chance,” said Gunny. “We’ll break out then.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. We’ll kill them all,” said Mack, feeling his head slip back as darkness fell over him.

Naples. Italy

22 October, 1405 local

To Jed Barclay’s untrained eye, the plane looked like a 707. And in fact, the JSTARS E-8C was indeed a former commercial airliner that had been almost completely rebuilt. It had extensive command and control equipment, not to mention heavy security. The NSC staffer had been issued special code-word clearance just to board the craft.

Which impressed the Army major standing and barring his way at the entrance not a whit.

“But I’m Cascade,” Jed repeated.

“Good for you,” said the major. “You’re also too young to shave.”

“I get a lot of that,” said Jed. “If you just let me take the retina scan –”

“What makes you think there’s a retina scanner aboard?” said the major.

Two Navy officers trotted up the steps. The major nodded at them and let them pass into the interior of the plane.

“You didn’t even ask for their creds,” said Jed.

“This is a Navy operation,” said the major. “I’m only providing tactical assistance. Besides, they beat the pants off me in a poke game last night.”

“Actually, this isn’t a Navy operation at all,” Jed told him, momentarily wondering if he might get further by suggesting he player Poker as well. “We’re still working with Madcap Magician.”

Jed was fudging – overall command of the operation was due to shift to the Navy as soon as the command staff could arrive, which wouldn’t be for a few hours.

“And you think that’s going to make a difference?” said the Army officer.

“To be honest, it makes no difference,” said Jed. “Listen, Major, no offense, but I spent several hours this morning talking to the ambassadors of Egypt and Saudi Arabia about their refusal to allow U.S. planes to use their bases. Then I had to listen to an Iranian cleric, obviously a madman, denounce me for a half hour. Even more frustrating was talking to the State Department’s Middle Eastern desk, trying to explain to them why quick military action and not diplomacy was required. To be honest with you, I’m really in a pissy mood.”

The major frowned at him, but finally moved back from the door. There was no retina scan – in fact, there was no security device at all.

“You don’t want my NSC card at least?” Jed asked him.

“I’ll throw you in the ocean if you don’t check out,” said the major, pushing him into the operations area. “Don’t touch anything. These monitors here –”

“Are slaved to different part of the SAR, which gives you approximately a sixty-degree view of a selected battlefield area. Smearing of the image is countered through interferometry calibration, as well as the Litton LR-85A Inertial Measurement System. There are a total of eighteen consoles aboard this craft, which is an upgrade from the original twelve and the seventeen powered stations in the first production models, though of course one could argue that there are never enough. Frankly, the main concern with JSTARS is not the physical operation of the battlefield view and coordination system, which demonstrated its potential in the Gulf War, but rather the temptation to use the craft to micromanage the battlefield, robbing individual officers, ground- and air-based, of their decision-making role. The same concern was raised – and to some degree remains valid – with AWACS operations. And I’d be up for any poker games you do manage to organize. I assume we’re not taking off for hours, right?”

The major frowned, but said. “You’ll do,” before turning and walking away.

Northern Ethiopia

22 October 1996, 2000 local

“We’re not stopping.”

“I know that,” Bree snapped, working to hold the Megafortress on the rain-slicked tarmac. Flaps, brakes, reverse thrust, and a hurried Hail Mary seemed to have little effect as the big plane hurtled rapidly toward the end of the runway. Shapes loomed left and right, light streaming with the rain. Breanna’a arm locked as the Megafortress’s nose bounced harshly across the poorly maintained concrete. A jumble of low buildings lay ahead; the Megafortress threatened to slide into them sideways, her left side trying to jerk forward.

Finally, the plane’s forward momentum eased, the breaks or maybe the prayer catching. Breanna eased the big plane back to the center of the runway, managing a full stop three yards from a large puddle that marked the end of the concrete.

“That wasn’t four thousand feet,” said Chris. “Let alone six. And I thought it never rained in Ethiopia before January.”

Breanna edged her throttle carefully, turning the EB-52 toward the side access ramp on her right. As she did, a Hummer with its lights on approached from the right, driving along the apron. She guessed that it had been sent to show them where to go. Rolling slowly, her heart returning to normal, she turned the Megafortress onto the path. The truck pulled a 180 and began speeding away toward a hangar area.

The runway had minimal lighting, and this access ramp had none; Fort Two’s light provided a narrow cocoon for her to steer through. Breanna saw another plane standing at the far end of the ramp – a parked MC-130 Hercules.

“Must be the place,” said Chris, spotting the military transport. “We’re going to have a hell of a time taking off in this rain,” he added.

“We’ll round up some volunteers to push,” she told him, watching their guide truck disappear to the right. Breanna leaned back in her seat, the exhaustion of the long flight finally taking its toll. They had pushed Fort Two about as fast as it had ever gone for much longer than it had ever flown. While she and Chris had switched on and off – and the computer autopilot had helped considerably – Bree’s brain was crispy and her legs and arms felt as if they had been run over by a steamroller. She hadn’t slept now in more than twenty-four hours, and had needed three caffeine pills – she didn’t like anything stronger – en route.

Four large Pave Lows and a civilian DC-8 airliner were parked at the far end of a group of buildings that looked more like warehouses than hangars. The Hummer spun off and blinked its lights; Bree began to swing the plane around into the designated parking area. Two Marines with M-16-and-grenade-launcher combos appeared from one of the buildings, sauntering up as if they landed Megafortresses here all the time.”

“Gee, where’s the brass band?” asked Chris.

Captain Freah waited impatiently as the bomber trundled toward its parking area. He’d been able to sleep only a few hours, but felt a burst of energy and excitement as the big plane stopped. Undoing his restraints, he bolted up from the uncomfortable jump seat and grabbed his gear. Squeezing into the hatch area, he pulled down the handle to open and lower the access ladder. It sounded like a bus tire puncturing as it burst open; Danny took it two steps at a time, ducking his head and scooting out from beneath the plane. A pair of rain-soaked Marines waved him toward a nearby pickup. After the cramped quarters of the Megafortress navigational bay, even the warm but heavy rain felt good. Danny stood out on the tarmac getting soaked while the rest of his team disembarked. Leaving Hernandez behind to wrestle with their gear in the storage bay, they hopped into the rear of the pickup. The rain surged as the truck started, but it seemed to be a final burst, for by the time they reached the low-slung building at the far end of the base it had slowed to a drizzle.

Freah jumped over the side of the truck, walking double-time inside. Hal Briggs greeted him in the hallway.

“Look what the car dragged in,” said Briggs, slamming Danny with a shoulder chuck. “Damn, I thought the ETA you gave was a typo.”

“You didn’t think I’d let you have fun without me, did you?” asked Freah. His men filed in behind him; Danny introduced them.

“Grub’s that way,” said Briggs, pointing down the hall. “You’ll find a cafeteria, whole nine yards. You have a half hour,” added Briggs, glancing at his watch.

“Just a half hour?”

“Ospreys should be here by then.”

“Ospreys?”

“Since you busted your hump to get here, we’ll give you something real to do,” said Briggs. “Come on. Let me fill you in over at the terminal building. It’s our command bunker.”

“What is this place?” Danny asked.

“Russkies built it as a commercial strip place back in the seventies, then abandoned it when they realized the area was too rugged to support any sort of industry. Thank God for Commies with money, or at least bulldozers and cement, huh?”

Freah followed the major back outside. They walked around the side of the building to a Humvee. Briggs got in and Danny followed; they drive back toward the area where the Megafortress had parked.

“Shit. you came in a Megafortress?” said Briggs as they pass the plane.

“How do you think we got here so fast?”

“They had room to land?”

“I guess.”

Briggs turned right between the last and next-to-last buildings, then made a sharp right onto a long access road. They followed it as it circled around a row of small hangars; they looked more like sheds.

Three F-117 Nighthawks and three F-16 Vipers were parked beyond the sheds, guarded by a dozen air commandos. Briggs slowed just enough to let the guards know it was him, then sped on toward a large terminal building. Even in the dark it was obvious the building had been abandoned for some time. Lights shone eerily inside, and shadows seemed to leak from the broken windows. Two more Air Force Special Ops guards with M-16’s met them as Briggs pulled to a stop. Danny recognized one of the men, but barely had a chance to nod as Hal walked briskly inside.

A group of men clustered inside the empty reception hall, examining a series of maps spread over a trio of tables. The maps spilled over the sides; there were clutches of satellite pictures and a few rough sketches arrange around them.

“This is Danny Freah,” said Briggs, introducing him around. Quickly, Briggs filled him in on the situation. A Marine assault team supported by four F-16’s had attempted to take out several batteries of SAM missiles and a Silkworm base on the Somalian coast, while a flight of four F-117’s went after a pair of Silkworm bases a few miles to the northwest. Both of these bases were more extensive and better defended than had been though, and the team came under heavy fire. an F-16 and one of the F-117 stealth fighters were downed. The F-117 was apparently lost to an SA-2; the long-wave radar was able to detect the vortices caused by the plane, and it was especially vulnerable while launching its missiles.

“We don’t jam the radars – or should I say we didn’t – since that costs us the element of surprise. Our targets were destroyed,” Briggs added. “Frankly, the SAM had only about a one-in-a-hundred chance of getting the plane. It was an acceptable risk.” He jabbed his finger at the map, pinpointing a spot on the hilly plains just south of the coast. “We have a strong suspicion that the pilot was alive because we have radio intercepts from an Iranian MiG about a parachute in this area. His name’s Stephen Howland. Captain. Twenty-six. From Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.”

Danny nodded.

“Our intelligence is limited,” admitted Briggs, “but we think the Somalians have already recovered at least the plane. CIA has a source saying he saw an airplane on a flatbed truck out on this road. It’s not really a highway; more like a dirt road with pretensions that runs through these mountains and hills. Anyway, it would make sense, because this road goes right to Bosaso, on the northern coast, which is within five miles of where we think the plane went down. From Bosaso they might go down to Mogadishu. Or maybe they’ll try for Libya, heading west on this highway here. It’s been improved recently; we think the Iranians have helped widen and repave it. It hooks up with Burao. From there they would have a highway, a real highway, through Ethiopia, the Sudan, Libya, where they want to go.”

“Why Libya?”

“Libya signed up for the Greater Islamic League,” said Hal. “So bringing the prisoners there might be one way of guaranteeing that their partner is involved. The Iranians may also figure that with the Presidential election coming up, pounding Tehran will be an enormously popular thing to do.”

“Would it?” asked Danny.

“I don’t know about the Politics,” said Hal. He quickly went on. “They also know we’re sending ships up from the Indian Ocean. They also suspect that we could base forces in Kenya. So the Iranians it might seem safer to go by ground. They might not think we are watching.”

Briggs slid one of the satellite pictures around and pointed at it. It covered an area near the northeastern coast of Somalia. “One of our satellites is being repaired by the shuttle, and the remaining birds aren’t positioned very well for coverage. We’re also having a hell of a lot of trouble because of the weather and the clouds,” said Briggs. “This image is several hours old. We’re trying to arrange an overflight in the morning. We have a Delta Force team ready to go in as soon as we have a target. But we’re talking several hundred miles from here. We’d like to get the stealth fighter back, or at least blow up the wreckage. As soon as it’s located, we go. Same thing on the pilot.”

“What about the F-16?” asked Danny.

“You may know him – Mack Smith. He was at Dreamland. Tall guy. Typical pilot ego.”

“Sure.”

“He went out over here, a few miles away. Mack seems to have stayed around to help the Marines. The Marines credit him with saving their necks, because their helicopter was under fire. Two members of the assault team apparently saw it get hit and left their helicopter to help Smith.

“No shit.”

“Yeah. Like I said, their helo was getting hit and in the confusion the pilot decided his best course of action was to get out,” Briggs said. “He didn’t know he was missing two men. In an event, he did manage to save the rest of the team and the helicopter.”

Briggs slid the satellite image away, jabbing his finger at a yellow blotch on the map. “We’re getting an intermittent signal beacon from this spot here, about two, two-and-a-half-miles south of the Silkworm base, back in these hills here. We haven’t been able to raise the pilot. We sent a rented Cessna and managed to get this,” he added, moving around the papers to find some sketchy photocopies of snapshots.

“We think it’s the wreckage of the plane. Satellite will survey this area as well,” said Briggs. “We’re sending a team at first light. Worst case, we can destroy the wreckage. We’ll also have a team overfly the area of the radio transmission. If Smith’s down there and can work the radio, they’ll grab him.”

“That our job?”

“No. We want you to help secure this site here. Your team and a small group of Delta operators, hitting them from two sides, airlifted by Ospreys. It’s a village about ten kilometers further west that the Iranian’s have been using to train the Somalians. The feeling is that if Smith and the Marines are captured, they’d be held here.” Briggs pulled a pair of reconnaissance photographs and some hand-drawn sketches from the other side of the table and showed them to Danny. “These were taken a few hours ago. They give the general layout. This school here used to belong to a Catholic Missionary order. You see the gun emplacements. And this here is a SAM site.”

Danny strained his eyes to make out the small blotch beneath Major Brigg’s finger. It looked like a microscopic Brillo pad.

“We think it’s an SA-6, which comes on a mobile launcher. It’s likely that there are now more, since the defenses at the Silkworm site were beefed up,” said Briggs.

“Where the hell are they getting all this hardware?” Freah asked.

“Where aren’t they?” said Briggs. “The Silkworms come from China, where they may also have bought some fighters. There’s been a large inflow of weapons into Libya from Russia. Some of that has disappeared, which we think means it’s headed here. There have also been some small boats slipping into Mogadishu in the south, with or without help from the Yemenis; it’s unclear.”

Briggs continued laying out the situation. The antiaircraft defenses posed a serious problem the F-117’s and F-16’s would be needed to help the other operations. The Ospreys would arrive without escort or backup, traveling quickly at treetop level. Though that was under the detection envelope of the missiles’ ground radars, it would be dicey.

“We’re short on air support,” said Hal apologetically. “The Eisenhower is heading up from the Indian Ocean, but they won’t be close enough to help us for at least two days. We’d like to have Smith and the others out by then. If we don’t, this thing is likely to escalate even further.”

“We have the Megafortress,” suggested Danny, who’d been waiting for an opportunity to offer the plane. “They’re packing cruise missiles and four JSOWs fresh out of development lab. They can cover us going in.”

“Are you talking about my airplane?” said Captain Stockard, walking toward them from the door. She was still in her flight gear, wearing a deep scowl.

“Captain Stockard,” said Briggs. “How are you, Bree?”

Breanna ignored him, speaking to Danny instead. “That’s my aircraft. With all due respect, Captain, I’ll discuss its capabilities.”

“I was just pointing out that it carried weapons,” said Freah.

“Did you mention the runway’s about five hundred feet too short to take off from?” said Breanna. She turned back to Briggs. “And I don’t want to talk about landing. Why the hell didn’t you give is a heads-up on that, Hal?”

“I wasn’t aware you were flying a Megafortress in to begin with,” said Briggs. “How are you, Rap?”

“I’ve been better. My butt’s sore and I came this close to blowing out my tires.”

“We’re installing mesh,” said Briggs. “We can push that up. I can’t do anything about your butt while you’re in uniform,” he added.

“Very funny. When’s the mesh going on?”

“ASAP. A thousand feet okay?”

“I’ll have to do the math,” Breanna said. “Major Cheshire has to be told. Raven’s heavier than Fort Two because of the older engines. If it’t wet and she’s carrying fuel, she’s going to have a hard time stopping.”

“Raven? Another Megafortress?”

“We made the flight without a crew,” said Breanna. “Cheshire’s following with a weapons officer and navigator. She should be here within twelve hours, maybe less.”

“Shit. We can use her.”

“Damn straight,” said Danny. “The plane has jamming gear.”

“It’s the next generation ECMs,” said Rap, throwing a glare at Freah. “I doubt they’ll have time to remove it all. Just as there wasn’t time to remove the air-to-ground missiles we were carrying. Officially, we’re only here as transports.”

Briggs shook his head slowly, but he had the start of a grin on his face.

“Of course, local conditions prevail. Assuming we do get airborne,” Breanna added, “I’m going to need as much target data as possible. The computer’s persnickety and my copilot’s a real whiner. Personally, I’d trade them both for a good weapons officer, or even a halfway decent radar navigator.”

Dreamland

22 October, 1200 local

“Colonel, I thought we had a date!”

Dog jerked his head up from his desk. Jennifer Gleason was standing in the doorway/

“I had to run by myself,” said the scientist, striding into his office. She plopped herself down in a chair.

“I’m sorry, Doc,” said Dog. “I got tied up.”

“So I heard.” Jennifer glanced back at the officer door. Dog looked in time to see Sergeant Gibbs closing it.

He’ll get his, Dog thought.

“Want to do lunch?” asked the scientist.

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” said Bastian. “I’ve been handling the fallout, from, uh, some recommendations I had to make.”

“You mean killing JSF, right?” She flicked her hair back impishly.

“That’s supposed to be classified.”

“Come on, Colonel. You can’t fart on his base without everyone catching a whiff. Not that colonels fart.”

For some reason, the word ‘fart’ and her beautiful mouth didn’t seem to go together.

“I actually didn’t come here to ask you to lunch,” said the scientist quickly. She leaned forward, somehow metamorphosing from a beautiful if slightly insolent young woman to a senior scientist. “I came to make a recommendation regarding the Flighthawk program. I feel the mission to Somalia should go forward.”

“It’s not a mission,” said Dog, angered that the flight was being openly discussed.

“I understand, Colonel. I also feel that I should be along in case something goes wrong.”

“Doc –”

“First of all, call me Jennifer. Or Jen.” She favored him with the briefest of brief smiles. “Second of all, there is on one in the world who knows that computer system better than I do. That’s not a brag, that’s a fact. If you’re sending those planes halfway around the world, I should be there with them.”

“I don’t know that there’s enough room for you,” said Dog.

“I checked with Major Cheshire. She says there is.”

“Major Cheshire only reluctantly approved carrying the Flighthawks,” said Bastian, who’d spoken with Cheshire only a short while before.

“She was worried about not having enough support. I’m the support.”

Dog shook his head. It was one thing to send the Megafortresses; while they were definitely still in the experimental stage, an early version had already seen some action. Justifying the Flighthawks was much more difficult, especially since they’d lack the veneer of a ‘transport’ mission. And sending a civilian into a war zone was potentially a hanging offense. Her loss would be a serious embarrassment, and not just to him.

“I’m afraid it’s not possible,” he told her.

“If you lose the U/MFs,” she told him, “they’ll hang you out to dry.”

“If I lose you, they’ll grind me up into little pieces.”

“You’re not going to lose me. Between me and Parsons –”

“Parsons? Sergeant Parsons?”

“He’s waiting in the outer office to talk to you. We drew straws to see who would go first,” she added.

“No way.”

“Colonel, if I were a man, you’d let me go. You need support personnel for the U/MFs. Shit, the only other person who’s qualified to fix that fucking computer and the com system is Rubeo. You want to send him?”

“You talk like a sailor, you know that?” Dog said.

Jennifer shrugged. “My bag is packed.”

If she were a man – hell, that was impossible to even imagine.

They did need a support staff. But a girl?

She wasn’t a girl, damn it.

“I want to talk to Cheshire before I make a decision,” said Bastian finally.

“Good,” said Jennifer, jumping up. “Should I send her in right now, along with Major Stockard, or do you want us to keep going the way we planned?”

Shaking his head, Bastian went to the office door and looked out into the reception area. Cheshire and Parson were there, along with three other Flighthawk specialists.

“Where’s Stockard?”

“Making sure the Flighthawks are prepped,” said Cheshire.

“Everyone in here,” he told the conspirators.

In the end, Dog had no choice but to agree that if it made send to send the Flighthawks, it was logical to send a support team as well. Parsons could probably build the damn things from balsa wood and speaker wire. Gleason made the most sense as a technical expert, since she knew both the software and the hardware used by the Flighthawks’ control system. No way he was sending Rubeo – it would undoubtedly be too tempting for him to be left behind.

Sending a high-tech team halfway around the world with untested weapons was exactly what he had called for in the white paper he’d written so many years ago. So why did his stomach feel so queasy?

“You’re good with this, Major?” he asked Cheshire.

“If the Flighthawks are going, and I think they should, we have to support them.”

He nodded. “This is my responsibility,” he told her. “I’m ordering you to do this.”

Her face flushed, probably because she knew that the Band-Aid he’d just applied to her culpability wouldn’t cover much of anything if things went wrong.

“I have some phone calls to return,” he said. “I’ll try to be there for your takeoff.”

“Fourteen hundred hours sharp,” said Parsons as they exited.

“That soon?”

“We’ll kick some butt for you, sir,” said the sergeant.

Bastian returned the wily old crew dog’s grin, then pulled over his mountain of pink phone-message sheets. Every member of the JSF Mafia wanted to take a shot at chewing off his ear today; might as well let them have a go.

“Lieutenant General Magnus, please,” he said, connecting with the first person on his list. “This is Colonel Bastian.”

“Oh,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Dog was more than familiar with the tone. It meant, “Oh, so this is the idiot my boss has been screaming about all day.”

As he waited for the connections to go through, Dog fingered the official Whiplash implementation order, which had come through earlier in the day.

YOU ARE HEARBY ORDERED TO IMPLEMENT WHIPLASH AND SUPPORT SAME WITH ALL APPROPRIATE VIGOR.

‘Appropriate vigor’ could mean Megafortresses. It could mean Flighthawks.

Not if people like General Magnus didn’t want it to. Magnus was close to the Air Force Secretary; word was he was being groomed to be Chief of Staff. Dog knew him largely by reputation. An able officer, Magnus was a good man, unless you disagreed with him.

Then he was the devil’s own bastard.

“Bastian, what the hell are you doing out there in Dreamland? You sleeping?”

“No, sir, General,” said Dog.

“I understand you’ve been there for two weeks.”

“It’s about there.”

“You took your goddamn time.”

Well, thought Dog, at least he has a sense of humor.

“Well, I do my best, General, as pitiful as it may be.”

“I don’t think it’s pitiful at all, Colonel. I think it’s a goddamn time somebody had the balls to say what a piece of shit this JSF crate is.”

Dog looked at the phone, waiting for the punch line.

“You still there, Bastian?”

“Yes, sir,” said the colonel.

“Good. We’re going to take a hell of a lot of shit on this, I guarantee. But I’m behind you. You bet your ass. I read the whole damn report. Ms O’Day made sure I got a copy. And a friend of hers. Brad Elliott. I didn’t think you and Brad were pals.”

“We’re not.”

“Oh? He talks about you like you’re his son. Says you’re right on the mark.”

“Well, uh, I’m flattered. To be candid, General, I thought you were a supporter of the JSF.”

“What? Did you read that in the Washington Post?”

“No, sir.”

“I expect you’re taking a lot of shit,” said Magnus.

“That’s an understatement,” said Dog, not entirely convinced that Magnus was on the level.

“Well, hold tight. And keep your nose clean. Some of these pricks will use anything they can against you. The Congressmen are the worst.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dog. “Thank you, sir.” But his line had already gone dead.

Somalia

23 October, 0100 local

Mack woke to find the Imam staring at him. Sergeant Melfi and Jackson were gone; perhaps he’d only dreamed they were here with him alive.

“Major, very good,” said the Iranian. “Come now. We must meet our fate.”

The Imam straightened, then gestured at him to rise. Though still groggy, Smith felt almost powerless to resist.

“What’s going on?” Mack asked.

“You are going to stand trial,” said the Imam. “Justice will be swift.”

He turned and walked back to the steps. Someone behind Mack pushed him; he stumbled over his chains, but managed to keep his balance.

Goddamn. Mack Smith. The hottest stick on the patch. Damn Iranians were going to make him the star of ‘don’t let this happen to you’ lectures for the next hundred years.

The man behind him pushed again. Knife’s anger leaped inside him; he spun and grabbed the startled soldier by the throat, pushing him to the floor with surprising ease. He smashed the bastard’s head against the concrete. The chain of his handcuff’s clanked against the man’s chest as he grabbed the guard’s ears, pulling them upward to smash him again, then again, feeling the thud of the floor reverberating across the Somalian’s skull.

He knew he was being foolish. The best thing to do was go along, resist, yes, but not so overtly, not so crazily. Doing this was like committing suicide, or worse.

And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Blood spread out behind the man’s face as Mack pounded again and again, screaming, shrieking his anger.

Then a sharp light erupted from behind his ears. Then his head seemed to collapse. He blanked out.

“You screwed up their plans, Major,” Gunny was saying. “You really threw them for a loop. I don’t know what you did, but it messed they up. Kept us here for hours. And they didn’t want that, I can tell you.”

Mack waited for the hunched shadow to come into focus. They were moving, in a train – no, a bus, an old school bus with half of its seats removed. Gunny, the Marine Corps sergeant, was kneeling next to him in the back aisle. There were scratches on the wall of the bus next to him, empty.

“What do you think, Sarge?” said another Marine.

Jackson. He was leaning over a seat a few feet away.

“I don’t know, I’d say he took a slam to the noggin. You with us, Major?”

“Yeah,” groaned Knife.

“You have blood on your flight suit,” said Gunny. “Don’t look like yours.”

“No?”

Mack struggled to sit up. He was still chained at the hands and feet. “I hit somebody,” he told them.

“No shit?” said Gunny. “Way to go, Major. Dumb, but way to go.”

“Yeah, it was dumb,” agreed Mack.

“You messed them up,” added the sergeant. “Put them on notice that we’re no pushovers.”

The bus lurched off the side of the road, coming to a stop.

“City,” said Jackson, looking gout the window. “By their standards anyway.”

“Where are we?” Mack asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Gunny. He went to the window and looked outside. “Pretty damn dark.”

“Think it’s Mogadishu, Sarge?” asked Jackson. A few years before, several U.S. soldiers had died there in an ill-fated relief operation.

“Nah. Wrong direction. We’re still way north. We’ve been heading west.” Gunny returned, hovering over Mack. “Damned if I know where the hell we’re going. Can you get up, Major?”

“Maybe,” he said. he let Melfi pull him up; he sat on the floor, waiting for the blood to stop rushing to his head.

“Did he die?” Mack asked.

“Did who die?” Gunny asked.

“The guy I hit.”

“Don’t know,” said the sergeant. “The raghead guy’s still alive, if that’s who you’re talking about.”

“I didn’t hit him,” said Mack. “I hit one of the guards. A Somalian.”

The door to the bus opened up front. Two Somalian soldiers came up the stairs, followed by an American in a flight suit – Captain Stephen Howland, one of the F-117 pilots. The Imam was behind him. The soldiers stepped aside and let the pilot pass. He walked toward them slowly, eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t seem to be injured, beyond some bruises to his eyes.

“I see Major Smith has recovered,” said the Imam mildly. “There will be no more episodes, Major. They make our task that much more difficult. Our hosts get bothered.”

“You could just let us go,” said Gunny. “Then we’ll go easy on you.”

The Iranian had already started off the bus. The others followed, leaving them to the two Somalian guards and driver at the front.

“Libya?” asked Johnson.

“Yeah. The Iranians have declared a Muslim coalition against the West,” said Howland. “Libya, Sudan, Iran, now Somalia. Iraq is cheering them on.”

“The usual shitheads,” said Gunny. “They won’t get anywhere.”

“I don’t know,” said Howland. He sat in the seat opposite Johnson. “They’re gloating about Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They think they’re coming in with them. Something about air bases. Probably they didn’t give our planes permission to land.” The pilot shook his head. “There’s a whole lot of shit going down and we’re right in the middle of it.”

“Aw, come on,” said Gunny, trying to cheer him up. “If you’re standing in shit, at least it can’t rain on your head.”

“Unless you slip and fall in it,” said Howland.

“Jeez, Gunny, look at that.” Jackson pointed out the back window. A flatbed truck had pulled up behind them. A huge scrap of black metal was lashed to the rear; Somalians clustered all over the wreckage as well as the roof of the vehicle’s cab.

“My plane,” said Howland. He looked down at Mack. “They must have been waiting for me to open the bay and pickle. I got the warning and started doing evasive maneuvers, but like an idiot I flamed out.”

“You were just unlucky,” said Mack.

“What happened to you?”

“I fucked up,” said Knife.

“Ah, bullshit on that,” said Gunny, his voice almost vicious as he turned from the back window. “Fuckin’ major saved our asses is what he did. That wasn’t no fuckup. And it wasn’t bad luck.”

“Wasn’t good luck,” said Mack.

“No, sir. No fuckin’ sir,” said the sergeant as the bus lurched forward. “But it sure as shit wasn’t a fuck-up.”

Mack fought off the swelling pain in his head to acknowledge the thank-you with a nod.

Northern Ethiopia

23 October, 0300

Breanna pulled back on the control stick despite the warning from the computer that they hadn’t yet reached optimum takeoff speed. She pushed down on the throttle bar with her other hand, as if the extra force might somehow squeeze more oomph out of the four power plants, which were already at max.

She was also mumbling a Hail Mary. Couldn’t hurt.

Despite the computer’s disapproval, Fort Two caught a stiff wind in her chin and lifted off the mesh runway extension, clearing the trees at the far end of the runway with a good two inches to spare. Breanna gave herself a second to exhale, then began banking to swing onto the course north. They would fly at five hundred feet above ground level all the way to the border. At that point, she would take the plane even lower and goose the engines; they would be on their target in precisely five minutes. Chris would unleash the two cruise missiles on the known SAMs.

What happened next depended on the Somalians and the Iranians who were helping them. according to the satellite photos, a ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun sat at the northwestern corner of the complex. It would be nice to eliminate the gun before the MHV-22 Ospreys arrived with their assault teams. On the other hand, the Zeus had a limited line of sight toward that end of the base, so attacking it wasn’t a priority if other defenses had been installed along the southern edge of the old school grounds.

Unfortunately, there was only one sure way to discover if there were additional defenses there – the Megafortress would have to show itself and see if anyone took a potshot at it. It could use its JSOWs on them.

The EB-52’s ECMs would automatically ID all known Soviet-era detection and targeting radars, buzzing bands from Jaybird to Desilu, as Chris liked to joke. At the same time, it could automatically note the source of the radars, supplying the data and signal radios like Raven, for example, nor was it equipped to deal with the next-generation gear found in more sophisticated Western systems. They’d have to punt if they came up against any.

“Vector One and Vector Two are airborne,” said Chris. Pushed to top speed, the tilt-wing rotorcraft transports could approach four hundred knots, more than twice as fast as ‘normal’ helicopters. They were coming in right behind the Megafortress.

Breanna checked her instruments, scanning the glass panels of the cockpit as slowly as she could manage. Time was starting to blur by as quickly as her heat was pounding.

Jeff had told her about the first time he’d been in combat, flying over Iraq. He’d tried to keep calm by counting slowly to himself as he looked at each instrument in his F-15C, counting it off.

That was Mack Smith who’d told her that. Jeff hadn’t flown Eagles in the Gulf.

“Interceptor radar ahead,” said Chris.

Breanna looked at the left MUD, which painted the sky ahead with different colors, indicating the presence of enemy radars. A green blob hung halfway down the screen dripping and fading. The computer was processing signals received by the enemy and plotting them in real time on the screen, color-coding then seriousness of the threat. Green meant that the enemy could not detect them, generally because it was out of range due to the Megafortress’s stealthy configuration or, as in this case, low altitude. Yellow meant that they could potentially be detected but hadn’t been. Red meant that they were being actively targeted.

“We have a MiG-29, two MiG-29’s,” said Chris, working with the computer to ID the threats. At this point they used only passive sensors – active radar would be like using a flashlight in a darkened room. “They’re well out of range. Seem to be tracking north. Thirty miles. Thirty-two. Other side of the border.”

“Keep an eye on them for the Ospreys,” Bree told him.

“Gotcha, Captain.”

Breanna hit her way-point just south of the Somalian border, adjusting her course to track northeastward.

“Lost the MiGs,” said Chris. “Think they were from A-1?”

“A-1’s supposed to be too small for anything bigger than a Piper Cherokee,” said Breanna. The airstrip was located about twenty miles northwest of their target area, right on the coast.

“Maybe from Sudan then. Or Yemen. They have to be working at the very edge of their range.” Chris checked through the paperwork, double-checking their intelligence reports and satellite maps, making sure the MiGs couldn’t have landed anywhere nearby.

“Mark Two in zero-one minutes. Border in zero-one minutes,” the computer told Breanna. It also have her a cue on the HUD that they were nearing the danger zone, spitting back the flight data they had programmed before.

“Stand by to contact Vector flight,” she told Chris. “We’re looking good.”

“Hell of a moon,” he said.

Breanna had not time to admire the scenery. She edged the Megafortress lower toward the ragged steppes and jagged rocks of the African Horn, glancing quickly at the MUD to make sure no enemy radars had suddenly snapped to life. The Megafortress was now skimming over the rocky savanna at a blistering 558 nautical miles an hour. She had to be careful and alert – the EB-52 lacked terrain-following radar. Even with the improved power plants the Megafortress lacked the oomph of, say, an F-111, which could pull up instantly if an obstacle loomed. The computer and sensors helped her stay low along a carefully mapped route.

“Border,” said Breanna. They passed into Somalia, apparently undetected. Their target lay approximately 150 miles dead ahead.

“Preparing to launch cruise missiles,” said Chris, selecting the weapons-control module on his computer display. “Bay.”

The Megafortress was equipped with a rotary launcher in the bomb bay similar to the devices installed in B-52Hs. In a stock B-52, up to eight cruise missiles could be mounted, rotated into position, and then launched. Fort Two’s launcher allowed for a variety of weapons beside the cruise missiles; in this case, two Scorpions AMRAAM-plus air-to-air missiles and four JSOW weapons, which had imaging infrared target seekers. The AGM-86c cruise missiles had to be preprogrammed, a relatively laborious task for someone like Chris who wasn’t used to doing it. But once they were launched they did all the work.

“Bomb bay is open,” the computer reported to Breanna. The open bay made them visible to radar, though their low altitude made it extremely unlikely they would be spotted.

“Launch at will,” Breanna told Chris.

The computer made the process almost idiot-proof, but Chris worked through the procedure carefully, making sure they were at the preprogrammed launch points and altitudes before pushing each of the large missiles off. The twenty-foot-long flying bombs lit their engines as they slipped below the Megafortress, popping up briefly before descending even lower, guided by radar altimeters and sophisticated on-board maps.

“No turning back now,” said Chris as he closed the bomb bay door.

“We can always turn back,” said Bree. “Let’s hope we don’t have to.”

Danny felt the rest of his assault team starting to tense as the Osprey passed over the border into Somalia. Talk had gotten sparse and sparse since takeoff; no one had spoken now for at least five minutes.

No matter how much you trained for combat, or thought about it, or dreamed about it, you were never ready for it when it arrived. You punched the buttons like you were trained to, reacted the way you’d taught your body to react. But that didn’t mean you were really, truly ready. There was no way to erase the millisecond of fear, the quick surge of adrenaline that leaped at you the instant you came under fire.

These guys knew it. they’d been there before.

“Vector One has peeled off. We’re ten minutes from our target,” said the pilot.

Some of the others tried peering out the windows, cranking their heads toward the front. The cruise missiles would be finding their targets any second now; in theory they’d see the flashes.

Danny steadied his eyes on his MP-5, double-checking it to make sure it was ready. He had two clips ready in each vest pocket, along with a grenade, the pin taped so it couldn’t accidentally get snagged.

Good to go.

Chris had his face practically pasted to the screen, which was projecting an infrared image of the Somalian base, now just over twelve miles away.

“Nothing,” he said. “I see the SA-6’s, that’s all. But we’re still a good way off.”

“No Zeus?”

“No antiair guns at all. No other defenses.”

“AGMs to target, ten seconds,” said Bree. “Nine, eight, seven –”

“Wow, I see it!” shouted Chris, and in the next second the horizon lit with a yellow-red explosion. “Got him!”

The second cruise missile splashed five seconds later. Both completely obliterated their targets.

Breanna tenses, waiting for the RWR to warn her that the Somalians had belatedly turned on their antiaircraft radars.

Nada.

She activated the nightscope viewer panel. The view was limited to twelve degrees and Breanna never felt particularly comfortable with it, preferring the radar and IR scans. But the synthetic view didn’t mind the humid conditions caused by the recent rain, couldn’t be jammed, and was easy to sort when things got hot – pun intended.

“We’re going to be overhead in about sixty seconds,” she told Chris. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have a target,” he said. “Looks like the place is deserted. Shit, there are no secondaries. I think those SAMs were decoys.”

“Or we missed.”

“No.” Chris played with the resolutions on the screen. “I saw them. they’re gone. No related vehicles. I’m thinking decoys, Bree. Or they left. Place is deserted.”

“Vector Leader, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna, alerting the assault team. “SAMs have been splashed. No live defenses. Copy?”

“Roger, copy,” returned the ground mission commander from the Osprey. “We’ll proceed as planned.”

“Fort Two,” said Bree. She turned to her copilot. “Chris pull out the satellite maps. Give me a heading of that east-west road.”

“I can see it on the screen,” he told her. “What are you thinking?”

“Let’s see where it goes,” said Bree. She selected the FLIR imaging for her MUD, then banked the Megafortress to follow along the roadway. It rose through the hills toward northern Ethiopia, with a new leg skirting Hargyesa, a relative megalopolis. The road seemed deserted – or at least there were no warm engines or bodies on it, according to the FLIR.

“They could be anywhere, Bree,” said Chris. “We don’t want to get out too far from Vector, in case they run into problems.”

“I’m not intending on getting too far away, Chris,” she told him. “Relax.”

“I’m relaxed,” he said defensively. He checked his screen. “They’re thirty seconds away.”

Breanna swung out of the south leg of her orbit, heading back toward the center of the target area. She selected the starscope input for her screen, and saw two dark shadows leap into the green, wings tilting upward as they swept into a landing.

“Dead as a doornail,” said Chris, who was using the infrared to monitor the scene. “Nothing moving. Nothing hot.”

“You’re ready with the JSOWs just in case?”

“Now who’s getting tense?” asked Chris.

“Let’s open the bay doors just to be sure.”

“Roger that,” he snapped. She could quite tell if he was being sarcastic.

They’d planned to rappel, so hitting the ground behind the swirling motors was a bit of a letdown, but Danny could live with it. he and the rest of the Whiplash team spread out quickly, moving to cover the first team’s assault of the main building.

It wasn’t must of an assault. The Delta troopers had lowered themselves from their Osprey to the roof of the main building, working down to the main floor in about a fifth of the time a training exercise would have taken – less actually, since any training exercise would have used another Spec Ops team as enemies.

“We’re clear, Captain,” said the Delta commander over the com set. The lightweight Dreamland gear made him sound as if he were standing at Danny’s side. “We have blood on the floor in the basement, and some flight gear.”

“Shit. We’re too late.”

“All right. We’ll search and secure,” said the commander.

Danny cursed, then replayed the information to his men.

As soon as the ground team confirmed that the school was deserted, Breanna pointed Fort Two toward A-1, the airstrip close to the Gulf of Aden.

“I don’t know, Bree,” said Chris. “They could be anywhere. I’m thinking Mogadishu.”

“Mogadishu’s five hundred miles southeast of here.”

“My point exactly.”

Breanna didn’t think they would be lucky enough to find them on the ground. But she did want to see if her theory was at least possible. A-1 was a little more than seventy-five miles away, straight line back toward the northwest. While they didn’t have particularly fat fuel reserves, she figured they could get close enough to get a look at the airstrip before turning back to shepherd the Ospreys home.

“We’ll be within FLIR range in five minutes,” she told her copilot.

“Four and a half. I’ve already computed it,” he told her. “Man, I could go for a cigarette right about now.”

“I thought you gave up smoking.”

“Stuff like this tickles my throat,” he said. “Shit, we got something in the air.”

Chris seemed to be operating on a sixth sense, picking up something before the high-powered detectors had sniffed out the radar. But he was right – a Jay Bird radar had flicked on ahead. The computer poked a green puff in the radar-warning screen. It was below them, which seemed impossible since they were at only a thousand feet.

“The source is far off,” said Chris, hunkering over the screen and working the computer to refine the read. “This is on the ground, Bree. Shit, this has to be a MiG-21. Off, it’s off.”

“On the ground? Has to be A-1.”

“Yeah. Like it was a maintenance check or something. Or a decoy.”

“We’ll be close enough to find out pretty soon.”

“Be nice to have a pair of fighters covering our butts about now,” Chris said.

“We can deal with a MiG-21 ourselves,” said Breanna. “Ground radar?”

“Negative. Scope’s clean. No ground stations. Nothing. Of course, they could take off and turn it on once they were in the air. We’re sitting ducks here.”

“The MiG radar can’t find a standard B-52 at twenty miles,” said Bree.

“What I’m worried about are those MiG-29’s we saw before,” said Chris. “Maybe they’re Libyan fighters. Qadafi’s got a bunch of them.”

For once, his fear was well-founded. The passive sensors on the MiGs could theoretically allow the interceptors to target Fort Two from long range, possibly even before being detected by Fort Two’s own passive arrays.

“I think those MiGs we saw before are out there,” said Chris. “I think they’re waiting to ambush the Ospreys. They could be in those mountains ranges to the west.”

“If they came from Libya, they’d never have the range to linger,” said Bree.

“What if they launch from A-1? If it’s long enough for a MiG-21, they’d have no problem.”

Breanna leaned closer to her stick. They were above thirty miles from the airstrip.

“I think there’s something stalking us, maybe twelve miles off,” said Chris. “What do you think of turning on the active radar?”

“If there is something out there, it’ll tell them we’re here,” said Bree. “And it’s expressly against orders.”

“Well, there is that,” said Chris. “But getting shot down is too. If we hit the radar we can get a clear picture. We see something, we launch the Scorpions. I swear something’s watching for us, Bree. They’re to the west, right there.” He pointed across the cockpit. “I can feel it.”

“We’ll see them first,” said Breanna.

“Maybe. They could circle out through the hills, duck around us, go for the Ospreys. The rotor engines are monster signals for any IR seeker. They’ll be sitting ducks.”

Less than sixty seconds now separated them from the small airstrip where Breanna believed Smith and the others had been taken. Turn on the radar and they might never reach it.

On the other hand, if the MiGs were where Chris thought, the Ospreys would be sitting ducks.

“Go to search and scan,” she ordered.

“On it.”

Chris was wrong. The MiGs weren’t in the mountains to the west.

They were hugging the ground forty miles to the east, running south like all hell. There were four of them, and while two were within striking distance of Vector, they didn’t seem to be interested in the Ospreys – they were going for the F-117’s, just arriving on target with their Paveways as Breanna clicked the radio to broadcast a warning.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0430

As the bus wound down out of the hills, they could smell the scent of the sea through the open window. The moon and stars were fading, the sky blending into early dawn.

“There’s an air base down there,” said Gunny, who was at the window. “Shit, Major, come tell me what I’m looking at.”

Smith pull himself up from his seat and stepped over Jackson, who was sleeping in the aisle. Howland was hunched two rows back, snoring into the seat back. Mack’s head had stopped hurting, but his ribs throbbed worse than ever. He slid in the seat behind Melfi, his leg irons clanking as he pushed his face to the window.

A long strip of black jutted roughly parallel to the sea, lit by the full moon. A phalanx and leveling. On the other, crews were erecting a shelter of some sort; from here it looked like a curved pizza box. There were planes lined in a neat row near the middle. They were far away and the light was poor, but one was definitely an airliner or similar transport. There were at least two others, smaller military jets, possibly MiG-21’s. The buss bounced and turned around the road, its path taking them out of view.

“The strip’s being extended. They’ve paved it pretty recently,” Mack told Gunny. “We had a small airstrip on the map up north here somewhere when we briefed the mission; I think we had it pegged as a dirt strip. It’s a lot bigger than that now.”

One of the guards at the front of the bus grunted an instruction to keep quiet. Mack held up his hands as if he would, then leaned close to Gunny.

“There’s a transport down there, an airliner. I can’t tell in the dark what it is, but I’d bet they’re going to fly us out.”

“I say we don’t,” hissed Gunny. “I don’t think they’re going to be taking us home. And I don’t want to star in this trial the raghead is talking about.”

“I agree,” Mack said. he felt his ribs tug at him, as if to remind him they weren’t exactly loaded with options. “I don’t know what sort of chances we’re going to have, though.”

“Were you thinking of that when you slugged the raghead’s guard?”

“No,” said Mack. “But I should have.”

“You make a move, we’ll follow,” said Melfi solemnly. “Should we stall getting off the bus?”

What would that get them? A few more minutes? For what?

Odds were the Iranian would just shoot them and be done.

Preferable to being turned into cowards and traitors. That was where this was headed.

Mack grunted noncommittally, unsure what to say, much less do. He put his head back against the stiff seat top. The anger that had exploded inside him had disappeared; it seemed foreign now, as if it belonged to someone else – Melfi most likely. He was a pilot – logical, careful, precise.

Except when he let himself get shot down. That had been a fuck-up, despite what Gunny had said.

Unlike him. He was too damn good to get whacked so easy. Too damn good to do something stupid.

So what the hell was he doing sitting here?

As the bus started down the winding road, the moon stabbed his eyes. Mack sighed, but didn’t close them.

Northern Somalia

23 October, 0430

Fort Two squealed as it tucked and rolled through the air, almost as if the Megafortress welcomed the seven-g back flip. Breanna felt her world narrow to a small cone as she rolled into a dive and recovered in the opposite direction. She had become the plane, pushing through the air like a force of nature, turbines spinning, wings slicked back. It took several seconds for them to gain momentum in the new direction; she rode the air current gracefully, plunging her nose down and picking up speed. By the time the MiGs reacted to their radar, they had narrowed the gap to thirty miles, the outer edge of the AMRAAMs’ range.

“Open bay doors, prepare to launch,” she told Chris.

“Bay. They’re taking evasive maneuvers.”

Breanna’s HUD showed the radar’s air-combat-mode projection, with the enemy bandits displayed as triangles with directional and speed vectors. Confident that it could nail each of the aircraft, the combat computer displayed red hatch marks over each plane.

“Which ones are near the F-117’s?”

“Good question. Hold on.”

The stealth fighters were too far away to be detected directly; Chris set the computer to look for atmospheric anomalies – essentially canceling some of the correction it normally did to erase interference from the wind. He managed to find two of the F-117’s, just starting their attacks.

“One MiG within theoretical visual range,” said Chris.

“Targeting.”

A box appeared around the triangle. The tiny symbol blinked, as if the computer were jumping up and down, yelling at them to nail it.

“Fire,” said Breanna.

The Scorpions AMRAAM missile slipped out of its launcher so easily that only the launch indicator told Breanna it was gone. With a one-hundred-pound explosive warhead, the Scorpions packed roughly twice the explosive power of a standard AMRAAM, while retaining its high speed and superb active radar capabilities. Once launched, the missile took care of itself.

“Tracking,” said Chris. “F-117’s have buttoned up. I can’t see them at all. Okay. One MiG heading north. They’re out of it. more evasive maneuvers. They’re looking for us. SAMs are up! Shit. We’re spiked by that MiG. They’re targeting us for air-to-air.”

“Vector One to Fort Two, what’s your situation?”

“Hold tight, Vector,” said Breanna. The threat screen painted the sky ahead yellow, overlapping radrs probing for them. two fingers of red appeared at the sides; Breanna snapped the Megafortress ninety degrees, trying to beam the MiG that was now targeting them. the computer, meanwhile, began emitting electronic fuzz to confuse the ground-intercept radar that had snapped on.

“The open bay’s going to give us away,” Breanna reminded Chris.

“Having trouble picking out the MiG that’s spiking us,” he replied.

“Can we get the SAMs?”

“Two MiGs heading for us. Twenty miles, dead-on. They’ll nail Vector if they take off.”

“Get the lead MiG,” Breanna directed. “They we’ll go for the SAMs.”

“He’s too low. They’re firing.”

“Missile type?”

“No ID. No radar.”

“Impossible. They wasted heat-seekers from that range head-on?”

“Lost the missile. We’re still being spiked. Missile launch.”

The RWR buzzed a warning; the second MiG had fired an AA-10 Alamo radar missile at them. Breanna pulled the Megafortress into a hard bank, unleashing tinsel and then pushing the plane into a dive. The strategy essentially provided the enemy missile with an easy – but nonexistent – target.

She sensed what the Iranians were doing, and fired dirversionary flares as she cut a series of zigs in the sky.

“Yeah,” said Chris, catching on. “Three missiles tracking. The first much have been long-range heat-seekers, looking for our butts when we turned. I have a target.”

“Fire!” Breanna steadied the Megafortress as the missile dropped from the bay.

“We’re boxed. Damn it,” said Chris. His voice went up several octaves. “Okay, I’m firing. Shit. Here’s another Alamo –”

“Close bay. Hold on,” said Breanna calmly. She nailed the Megafortress nearly straight down, goosing off chaff and flares. At a thousand feet she rolled inverted and turned ninety degrees into the Doppler radar, in effect making the plane invisible in the eddy of the radar waves. The carbon fiber wings strained at their design tolerance as the massive plane twisted.

The Russian missiles realized they had missed, and blew up a thousand feet overhead. Shaking off the shock waves, Breanna rolled the mammoth plane upright, nudging her even lower.

“Splash One MiG!” said Chris. “Scorpion got it.”

Breanna grinned, then went back to trying to sort out their location as well as that of their enemies. They were north, heading in the direction of A-1. One of the MiG-29’s was running north toward the Red Sea.

“F-117’s got something,” blurted Chris. “Shit. Lots of secondaries. Wow! Big-time explosions. Nailed those mothers!”

“What happened to that SAM that was tracking us?” Bree asked.

“Lost it. Nighthawks got it or it just turned itself off without firing anything.” Chris clicked the radar into long-distance scan, searching for the MiGs. “We may have the scope. I have two, moving out at warp speed into the Red Sea. Spooked ’em good.”

“Go back to passive systems.”

’Damn straight.”

Breanna checked the bearing and speed that ghosted in the screen against the instrument readings in the MUD. She punched the Megafortress’s selt-test circuits, having the computer run its diagnostic as if they’d been tooling around Dreamland for the past hour.

The computer congratulated itself with perfect scores. All systems green and growing. Time to go back to the barn.

Almost.

“Let’s make it hard for the SOB to land,” she told Chris.

“Bree?”

“We still have the JSOWs in the bay. We’ll be within range of A-1 in zero-two.”

“What about that MiG-21 on the ground?”

“Something to aim at,” said Breanna.

Chris sighed deeply, but turned back to his displays without saying anything. He had meant that they were out of air-to-air weapons, which Breanna already knew.

“We have plenty of fuel,” she told him.

“We’ll be into reserves on the trip home,” he said.

“You’re not going after A-1 because of Mack, are you?”

“What?”

“I mean, you’re not getting emotionally involved here?”

“Screw you, Chris. I’m trying to do my job.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Situation.”

“We’ve chased a flight of MiGs away,” Chris told the Delta leader. “We’re proceeding north to check on A-1. We believe it may be their base.”

Breanna stared at the terrain ahead, rendered green and gray by the starscope panel. Mountains gave way to a dark black that would turn into the sea in about ten seconds. There was a road through the hills on the left. The base should be beyond that, over the next set of ridges just before the water.

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Advise us on the situation at A-1. Are you passengers there?”

“They’re nuts too,” said Chris over the interphone circuit. “We’re pushing this too far.”

“Vector, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna. “Stand by.”

She glanced quickly at the threat indicator. No radars.

“Chris, are you just nervous?”

“I’m not nervous, I’m sane,” he told her. “We’ve been flying for a shitload of time, just getting here. We’re flying over a base that launched four MiGs at us. You don’t think there are ground defenses?”

“We’ll see what defenses there are in a second,” said Breanna. “I won’t take unnecessary risks.”

She could practically hear his teeth grinding. But he nonetheless hunkered toward his display screen, where he selected the FLIR and began a close scan of the base, which was just now appearing beyond the hills.

“One Zeus antiair gun, right on the coastline. Machine guns, something, I don’t know, light, near the road. There’s a ship off shore. Tanker of something. No, no, I’m wrong – patrol boat. Has a gun. Bulldozers – man, this looks nothing like that satellite photo we saw.’

That was an understatement. The Iranians had expanded and widen the strip, making it nearly three times as long as it had been, undoubtedly strengthening it as well. They were building hangars at the far end. Three aircraft – two older MiG-21’s and one DC-8 or 707 – sat on a ramp area, their tails almost hanging over the water.

“Bus, other vehicles. I’m switching from the FLIR to the starscope. Shit – I have the F-117!” said Chris. “It’s moving. Shit, they’re loading it off a truck at the far end – no, they’re sliding down into a bunker. Shit. Shit. See it?”

“No,” said Breanna. “Can you target it?”

“Bay,” said Chris. “No, wait. No. They’re in the hangar. I can’t tell whether it’s concrete or not. I don’t think so. I don’t have a target point.”

Breanna nudged the stick to bank.

“I can’t be sure what that hangar’s made of,” said Chris. “It looks like it’s cement-reinforced.”

“Can you fly the JSOW into the hangar?”

“Maybe,” said her copilot. “The angle’s tough. I can hit it, but the missiles might not penetrate. I don’t know what’s inside, whether it’s all on the surface or if it’s like Dreamland’s hangars, with ramps and elevators.”

“That’s unlikely.”

“Yeah. But what do you figure the odds are our guys are with the plane?”

instead of answering, Breanna checked the threat scope again. There were no radars active. The Megafortress was slipping through the night undetected.

They might never have a chance like this again. If the wrecked plane was there, odds were their men were too.

On the other hand, there was no telling what sort of defenses the Iranians and Somalians had waiting.

Her instinct said go for it. She clicked the transmit button.