Target Utopia

1

Danny Freah listened to the progress of the battle via radio as he watched the feeds from the Global Hawk and the smaller battlefield UAV. As fractured and contradictory as they were, he felt the radio transmissions gave him a better sense of what was going on. They were more visceral, and he could judge from the excitement in the voices what the men on the ground were feeling about the battle.

They were done; it was over, it had been a good mission, and now things were going to be easy for a day or two or three.

The sudden appearance of the drones changed everything. The two aircraft popped up over the water a few miles from the coast. As they did, the elint-equipped Global Hawk II being commanded from back in the Cube detected a transmission.

The game was on.

“Basher Two, you see those aircraft?” asked Danny.

“Affirmative,” said Turk. “We just got them on radar. I was about to radio you.”

“Aircraft are considered hostile,” said Danny. “You are authorized to shoot them down.”

“Copy that. Basher One, you copy?”

“Basher One copies. We’re cleared hot. Bandits are hostile and will be engaged. I’m talking to ground now.”

Danny got up to reposition his slate computer against the console to his left. Just as he lifted it, the ground shook with two tremendous thuds. He lost his balance and fell to the ground as a third and a fourth round exploded, these much closer.

“Mortars!” yelled someone as Danny struggled to his feet.

“Find those mortars!” yelled Jack Juno, the lieutenant Thomas had left in charge at the base.

Danny got up and looked at the UAV screens to see if he could help. But the Marines were too fast for him.

“Located!” shouted one of the men working the radar that tracked the rounds.

“Well, get some fire on the damn thing!” shouted Juno as the shelling continued.

While the mortar radar had located the source of the rounds, the IR feed from the UAV didn’t detect anyone there. Danny punched into the Whiplash com line to ask for help.

He was surprised to hear Ray Rubeo’s voice.

“You’re under fire,” said the scientist.

“Yes.”

“Either your enemy is very lucky or they have an extremely thorough understanding of the technology the Marines are using. My vote is the latter, but it’s irrelevant,” he said. “You notice the thick foliage area where the mortars are firing from?”

“Affirmative.”

“They’ve come down parallel to the ridge and the stream that runs northwest — look at it on the map screen. There is enough water vapor from the stream to degrade the small sensors in the Marine UAV. This is a consequence of the IR-cut filter technology. It’s inexpensive, but as you see—”

Danny cut him off. “Doc, no offense, but I’m needing a solution here, not a dissertation on the way the different sensors work.”

“We’re going to divert the Global Hawk to the area and fly it at five thousand feet,” said Rubeo. “We’ll supply you parameters to readjust the radar in a moment.”

“If I do that, we can’t track the UAVs,” said Danny.

“What are the F-35Bs for?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Colonel, your aircraft can’t be in two places at one time, and at the moment your survival is paramount,” said Rubeo, his tone even more withering than usual.

“Right.”

The Marines had begun firing back at the mortars, but without noticeable effect. A new source joined in, this one targeting the mortar radar. Before the Marines could return fire, the radar was damaged and put out of commission.

“These bastards are getting some help,” said Lieutenant Juno. “Can we get air support back here?”

Turk heard the call from the forward operating base that they were under fire, but without target data for the mortars, there was little they could do at the moment. In the meantime he and Cowboy had their hands full dealing with the two UAVs, which had juiced their engines and were maneuvering to engage the American F-35Bs.

“Trying to climb above us, right?” said Cowboy.

“Yeah,” answered Turk. Deciphering what they would do next wasn’t that hard; it was figuring out three moves from now that was difficult.

Turk was struck by the fact that the planes were acting differently than they had the day before — rather than trying to remain undetected, they were going out of their way to make their presence known, changing their headings to make their profiles as wide as possible for the F-35 radars to pick up.

Why?

If these had been Sabres or even Flighthawks, it would be because they’d learned something from the earlier encounters. And they were trying to use that to some advantage.

So what had he learned from the earlier encounter? And what would they have expected him to learn, and then do?

Turk guessed they were trying to get the F-35s to use their radar missiles at long range. They must be confident of beating them.

“Let’s take a sixty-degree turn east. That’ll keep them on our nose as they climb.”

“Roger. I’m looking for a lock for the AMRAAMs,” added Cowboy.

“We want to hold on to the radar missiles as long as we can,” said Turk.

“Uh, that’s not what we briefed.”

“Yeah, I know. But hold on to them anyway. It’ll keep them from getting too close.”

“How’s that going to work, kemosabi?”

“I’m thinking. They flew purposely in a way that we could see them; they didn’t have to. So I’m figuring they want us to shoot sooner rather than later. It’s a guess,” he added, as if that were necessary.

A sharp cut by the UAVs as Cowboy got a lock told Turk he was right. At ninety miles away they were in range of the AMRAAM 120D radar missiles the planes were equipped with, but the planes would be able to easily beam the F-35s and temporarily disappear from the radar too far for the missiles’ own guidance systems to pick them up.

Turk called another break and brought them back on the scope.

“It’s a cat and mouse game,” he said. “We have to get closer.”

“What are they going to do then?”

“I’m thinking.”

The trick was to use their tactics and expectations against them, Turk realized.

“I’ll bait them,” he told Cowboy. “I’m going to fire the AMRAAMs, then try and get in their faces. They think they sucked me in. You keep your distance until they come after me. When they’re both on my tail and you have a lock, fire. The closer you are the better; we don’t want them to outrun the missiles.”

“How close do you want them to get to you?”

“As close as it takes. I’ll tell you when to fire.”

The radar aboard the Global Hawk was used by the Cube to synthesize a three-dimensional view of the jungle, painting the trees and terrain in gray-greens. There were two clumps of rebels in the shadow of the ridge; Danny gave both locations to the Marines as possible mortar locations. Meanwhile, the Marine’s Shadow UAV found a large clump of men north of the camp, less than a mile away.

“They’re going to attack once the mortaring stops,” Lieutenant Juno predicted, pointing at the screen.

“Can you target them with your mortars?” asked Danny.

“We will if we can. I just lost coms with the mortar team. I’m going to send someone — Mofitt!”

The corporal came over and listened as the spotter gave him the coordinates. Then he took off out of the bunker.

Danny turned his attention back to the displays. Though they were a mile away, the rebels were running toward the perimeter. It was the weakest of the four sides to begin with, and the mortaring had softened it up.

“They’ll be at the defenses in five minutes,” said Danny. “There are fifty of them at least. You’ll have to shift your mortar attack or we’ll be overrun.”

“My coms with the mortars are still out,” yelled Juno as the bunker shook with another strike. “I’ve lost two of my mortar men, and a third’s injured.”

“What about Mofitt?”

“Can’t raise him on the radio. I’m going to send someone else.”

“I’ll go,” said Danny. He yelled to Ward, the Whiplash techie monitoring the UAVs, to keep an eye on the targets and feed him their coordinates every thirty seconds.

“Colonel, don’t go,” warned the lieutenant.

Two rounds landed, one practically on top of the bunker.

“All right,” said Juno, giving in. “Get the mortars redirected. I’ll organize a counterattack.”

Turk closed to within fifty miles of the two UAVs before getting solid locks for the AMRAAMs. He dished them off in quick succession, then buttoned up the fighter, though his stores on the wings still presented a juicy radar picture.

Just as he had thought, the UAVs made sharp turns and switched on their ECMs. Still, the AMRAAMs continued in their direction, and for a moment Turk thought he might have two kills. But the small planes could cut unbelievably tight turns in the air, and now managed to duck under the radar missiles. They were already coming for Turk when the AMRAAMs realized they were hopelessly lost and self-exploded in disgust.

Turk tucked his wing down, pushing his plane lower — and closer to the enemy’s flight path. He got a warning that the targeting radar in the closest small aircraft was trying to lock on. He went steeper into the dive, striving for a balance between being an enticing target and a dead one. A warning blared — the small aircraft had locked on him from ten miles away.

Turk waited anxiously for a warning that the small aircraft had fired a radar missile, but none came. The Flighthawk 3s could carry small radar-guided missiles that were effective at twenty miles, but as the UAV closed the distance without firing, Turk knew these aircraft weren’t carrying them.

It wasn’t much of a possibility, but it was one less thing to have to worry about, he told himself.

Somehow, that hardly cheered him.

“Basher One, do you have a lock?”

“Working on it, Two.”

“Keep closing.”

“If you stop flitting around, I might have a chance.”

Turk rolled into an invert and then let the nose of the plane dive downward, in effect making a large loop in the sky. The maneuver changed the plane’s direction 180 degrees; he was now facing toward the two UAVs. He was hoping they would now start turns and come around for a rear quarter attack; instead, the radar receiver warned that they had just locked on to his plane.

Too far for a shot, thought Turk. They were four miles away. He knew he had a few seconds.

A flash of light danced off the front fuselage. The infrared detector buzzed — the aircraft were firing a laser at him.

Turk pushed straight down into a dive, twisting away from the enemy UAVs. They were on his back, swooping almost parallel to each other so that he couldn’t escape by simply going to one side or the other.

“OK,” he said over the radio. “This is as close as I want them.”

Actually, closer, he thought.

“Fire, Fox One,” called Cowboy. “Fire, Fox One.”

Turk pushed the F-35B into a tight turn. Gravity punched him in the face and chest, then tried wrestling his hand from the stick. He got a temperature warning in the engine. The gauges began lighting with cautions, and now the aircraft’s Bitchin’ Betty system chimed in, saying he was going too low.

“Pull up!” said the automated voice, bizarrely calm yet very incessant. “Pull up!”

Turk yanked back on the stick, but he’d miscalculated his momentum; the plane continued to sink.

“Throttle, throttle, throttle,” he said, as if he were talking to the plane. He jammed the control to full military power and struggled to keep his nose positioned correctly. He was still losing altitude, unable to overcome the basic laws of physics. His stomach shot into his throat, then fell like a stone to his feet: he was climbing.

He hit his flares and the stores of chaff, desperate to confuse the UAVs any way possible. He could see one of them flying about a mile away, just ahead, banking to come back after overshooting him.

The aircraft was roughly the size of Flighthawk 3s, but with a profile closer to an X-48. Stubby wings extended from a wing-in-body design just like the Gen 4 Flighthawk. But there were a pair of small turbojets at the rear, rather than the single engine of the Gen 4. A twin-boom tail sandwiched the engines, which, judging from the aircrafts’ maneuvers, had directional thrust. Adjusting thrust from both engines also probably helped.

Suddenly the aircraft disappeared in a burst of smoke. Cowboy’s AMRAAM had caught it.

But where was number two?

Danny grabbed the lieutenant’s M-16 and ran out to find Mofitt. He’d gotten about halfway across the compound to the mortar station when he saw a body lying flat on the ground.

Mofitt, he thought. Damn.

He ran to the body and slid down next to him. The man’s head raised as he did.

It was Mofitt. He turned his face toward Danny’s, his white cheeks covered with dirt.

“Where are you hit?” Danny asked.

“I… I don’t know.”

A mortar round whizzed overhead.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

“I’m — uh—”

Danny scooped him into a fireman’s carry and carried him back to the bunker. About twenty yards from the entrance, Mofitt seemed to lift off his shoulders. Danny became weightless, spinning around on the ground like a top that had just been pulled off the string. A hailstorm descended around him and he slammed into the ground, face-first.

A black and gray kaleidoscope danced around his head as he caught his breath. He knew what had happened — a mortar shell had hit nearby — but somehow he couldn’t put that knowledge into any context, much less plan what to do next. His confusion seemed to last an eternity, and when it started to fade it was replaced by a heavy rolling sound, the kind a heavy steamroller would make if it were pushing his skull into the ground.

Danny got to his feet. Mofitt was nearby, on his knees, shaking his head. Danny tried to ask him if he was OK, then realized the blow had left him deaf.

It was a good thing they hadn’t reached the bunker. The shell that had knocked him to the ground was a direct hit on a spot weakened by the earlier blasts. It had torn a massive gash in the roof near the entrance, splitting through the metal below the layer of sandbags and dirt.

Danny saw beams of light inside — flashlights. Two men ran up behind him, then began clawing at the dirt and debris that had fallen into the entrance.

Moving in what seemed like slow motion, Danny began to help. The six people who’d been in the bunker were all still alive, but in various degrees of shock. Lieutenant Juno was bleeding from an enormous gash at the top of his head, but his was the lightest injury; his radio man had a compound leg fracture and two broken ribs. Trevor Walsh, the Whiplash technician, was sitting at his bench, dazed and holding his limp right arm against a small but sucking wound at the side of his chest.

“They have lasers,” he told Danny. “Turk just called it in.”

Danny heard the words from a distance; his hearing was coming back.

“You’re wounded,” he told Walsh. He repeated it twice, unsure if he was garbling his words.

A corpsman ran in shouting orders, directing that the injured be taken to a second bunker being used as a med station. Danny pointed to him; Walsh got up slowly, trying to help.

The corpsman looked at him and told him to join the rest of the wounded, but Walsh refused, claiming he wasn’t so hurt that he couldn’t continue to do his job. He went back to his post, adjusted Danny’s tablet, then promptly collapsed. The Marine com specialist, his face dotted with gashes and oozing blood, helped lift him onto a stretcher that had just been brought in, then took his spot.

“Colonel, I have Captain Thomas,” the Marine told Danny. “He wants to know the situation.”

Danny heard the words like faint echoes in the distance. That was a vast improvement from just a few minutes before.

“The radio?” Danny asked.

The Marine handed it to him.

“We’re getting a lot of incoming,” Danny said into the mike. “We just took a big blow to the command center. The lieutenant is out of action.”

“The Ospreys are heading for us,” said Captain Thomas. “I’m going to leave a platoon to mop up. The rest of us are coming back.”

“We’ll hold the fort until then,” said Danny. “Wait—”

He leaned over and looked at Walsh’s large sitrep screen, which was showing the radar feed from the Global Hawk.

“There’s a road about a quarter mile north of the force that’s aiming at our northern perimeter,” he told the captain. “Big enough for the Ospreys to land. Get them in there, roll them up.”

“Affirmative. Can you give me coordinates?”

“I’m going to give you back to your guy who’s looking at everything from the UAVs and aircraft. He’ll punch this stuff straight to you. Right?”

“Got it, Colonel.”

As he put down the radio handset, Danny realized his hearing had returned just in time: he could hear gunfire on the perimeter.

“You stay here,” he told the com specialist. “Anyone else who can stand, grab your rifle and come with me.”

2

Zen would have had to have been the stupidest person in Washington not to realize that Todd’s overture to him meant she wasn’t going to run for President. He would also have to be extremely naive to interpret anything she said as a guarantee that she definitely would support him if he decided to run.

However…

At the moment, at least, she was clearly disposed to helping him. And her support would be useful within the party.

Mostly, anyway. And outside the party it was surely a liability. The administration was under virulent attack for what critics and much of the media called its hawkish worldview.

The funny thing was, Zen thought it wasn’t hawkish enough.

Be that as it may, his main questions now were: why was Todd not going to run for reelection, and why was she backing him?

He could guess the answer to the latter: she loathed the vice president, who, as he’d told her, would be the most likely candidate, and on foreign policy matters Zen’s views were probably the closest to hers in Congress.

So why wasn’t she going to run? Did she fear impeachment, which the opposition party was always talking about? Several House members even submitted bills to do just that, but they had never made it out of committee, let alone to the floor of the House. Her allies held a small but firm majority in the House that usually kept the opposition in its place, but there was always the danger that she would do something to anger just enough of them to tip things against her.

So did he want to be President?

It was what every little boy wanted, wasn’t it?

It had been. Eons ago. These days, only madmen and maniacs wanted to be President.

Zen smiled at himself. He was a little of both. Every fighter pilot was.

There were other things he wanted. Walking again topped the list.

After all these years in a wheelchair, after everything he’d achieved, in the back of his mind that remained a deep desire. Deprived of so much…

Had he been, though? One could argue that he’d gotten everything out of life that a man could possibly want: adventure, a great career, a wonderful wife, the most beautiful and brightest daughter in the world —

“Dad?”

He broke from his reverie and saw his daughter Teri standing in front of him. From the looks of things, she’d been there for quite a while.

“Thinking about senating again,” said the eight-year-old in a voice that dripped of satire. She was never cuter than when she was being impertinent.

“As a matter of fact, I was,” said Zen.

“Well, I’m hungry. When are we eating?”

He glanced at his watch — it was closer to bedtime than to dinnertime.

Ouch! That wonderful wife was going to kill him.

“We’re eating right now,” he told her. “Get your coat.”

“My coat?”

“You don’t want McDonald’s?”

“Yeah!” said his daughter, running from the room as if she’d just won the lottery.

If only every political decision were so easy.

3

By the time Turk realized where the other aircraft was, it was nearly too late. He threw his wing down hard and hit his flares and chaff, desperate to get his butt out of the pip of the attacking UAV. Fortunately, the laser’s relatively small size and its need to pause and recycle between bursts meant that it had only a few milliseconds on target before he was able to dance away. Even so, the high-energy beam put a nasty black streak on the side of the fuselage, momentarily raising the temperature in the engine into the red. Turk jerked the stick and worked his pedals, trying to jink as unpredictably as possible and confuse the always logical computer guiding the UAV. Then, falling way too low to build enough speed to run away, and worried about the engine blowing up, he pulled the fighter into as tight a turn as it could manage and held on, hoping the UAV might make a mistake and turn inside him.

That didn’t happen. But when he checked the radar, he realized the enemy aircraft was gone. Somewhere in the middle of his crazy dance he’d shaken free.

“Basher Two, how’s your plane?” asked Cowboy.

“I’m OK.” Turk glanced at his panel and realized that the alert on the engine was off; whatever harm the laser had done wasn’t permanent, or at least wasn’t affecting him at the moment.

“You’re going in circles,” said Cowboy.

“Yeah, I know. I can’t locate the UAV.”

“It’s low.”

“Yeah.”

Finally, the UAV popped back onto his radar screen. It was below him, barely five feet over the trees, and running northwest toward the water.

Home?

“I’m turning to follow Bandit Two,” Turk told Cowboy.

“I have your six.”

Danny Freah gathered six men as he ran across the compound. He found another half-dozen spread out along the sandbags and shallow trench at the north side of the camp.

“We need ammo!” said the sergeant who’d taken charge. He was lying on the ground next to the Marine manning a 50-caliber heavy machine gun. “Ammo!”

Danny sent two of the men back to get bullets and waved the others along the trench.

“They’re about fifty meters down,” said the sergeant, pointing to the trees. “We just beat the first element back. How the hell did they get so close without us seeing them?”

“The water vapor off the stream that runs down in that direction casts a shadow on the IR sensors,” said Danny. “Somebody was pretty damn smart about what our gear can see.”

A bullet flew nearby. One of the Marines responded with his M-16.

“Hey! Hold your fire unless you have a definite target,” shouted the sergeant. He turned back to Danny. “If they charge, they can overwhelm us. I just polled everyone and we’re down to two mags apiece. The machine gun has ten rounds left.”

“We can ambush them from the side,” said Danny, looking across the terrain. “Get them off balance.”

“Good idea if we had more ammo, Colonel.”

“It’s coming. If they attack before that, we’ll have to make them think we do. Just enough to stall them.”

“OK.”

“I need two volunteers,” shouted Danny.

Every one of the men, including the sergeant, put up their hands.

“Just two,” said Danny.

All the hands remained.

“Pick two guys. You have to stay here,” Danny told the sergeant. “We’ll wait until the force starts moving forward, then we cut them from the side. It’ll stop them, or at least it should.”

“If you can get to the flank,” said the sergeant as a fresh volley sounded from below. “And if they don’t decide to charge you.”

4

Lloyd Braxton looked up from the screen in disgust. The American fighters had managed to shoot down one of the two Vector UAVs. The autonomous program in the surviving fighter was locked in interceptor mode, and would keep fighting the other aircraft.

That was foolish. But its next logical decision — which it would make if it concluded that the battle was hopeless — would be to return to the base it had taken off from.

That was even worse.

Braxton could override those commands, issuing new ones to direct it to the second pickup point. But if he did, his signal would tell the Americans where he was. He’d be forced to switch bases sooner than he wanted. The rebels were about to overrun the American base, but that would hardly compensate for this setback.

The UAV wasn’t ready to challenge the Dreamland technology. But that was why he wanted the Sabres in the first place.

Braxton slammed his hand on the console, then got up and paced around the small cabin. When he calmed down, he went back and gave the UAV the command to fly to another area and, if possible, fight. With that done, he hit the self-destruct sequence on the control gear, then picked up his low-chance-of-intercept radio.

“We have to move,” he said, informing the others before gathering his gear to leave.

5

Danny waited until the men came back with the ammo before setting out. His two Marines were privates nicknamed Fern and Monk — short for Geraldo Fernandez and Terry Monsuer. Fern was a recruiting poster Marine, six-four, bulging biceps, quick smile. Monk was nearly a foot shorter, and may very well have weighed less than one of Fern’s legs.

“We go south, then cut back across the ravine,” Danny told them, drawing a map on his palm. “There’s a little creek there we’ll take up to their flank.”

“Right,” said Fern.

Monk nodded beside him.

“You guys been in combat before?” Danny asked.

“Ten minutes ago,” said Fern.

Monk nodded again.

“That’ll do,” said Danny, starting out.

The Marines had night gear and Danny had his glasses, but there was enough light around the cleared perimeter for them to use their Mark 1 eyeballs and still see well enough to fight. Danny ran along the defense line, head lowered toward his chest. His mind was clear; adrenaline and the necessary excitement of battle had pushed away all of the little wounds and distractions. He could even hear well enough to discern the sound of brush moving in the distance — the rebels were getting ready to make another charge.

He found the cut and started down the hill, sliding on his butt after about ten feet. The rough stones bruised his hands and legs, but he ignored the light pain, moving across the open ground the Marines had cut to give themselves a clear field of vision and fire. He saw an opening in the trees on his right and headed for it, cutting off Monk as he ran. Four steps into the jungle he stopped — the foliage was so thick overhead that he could no longer see without switching the glasses to infrared.

“Your gear working?” he asked the others.

“Yup!” said Fern.

“Take point,” he told Fern.

The Marine grinned and moved ahead, using his night gear to guide them in a winding trail east. Danny and Monk followed. It took ten minutes of trotting and pushing through the brush to reach the point near the creek where Danny had decided they would take their turn. When they stopped, Monk held his finger up and then pointed to his ear.

Men were moving nearby.

A rifle sounded. The rebels were making their attack.

“Can you see them?” Danny asked Fern.

“Negative.”

“We need to get closer and get their attention,” he said. “Drop when you see them.”

The UAV dipped down so low as it came to the shoreline that Turk thought for sure it was diving in. But it continued forward, accelerating to near Mach speed while still managing to fly bare inches over the top of the waves.

Turk could go either as low or as fast as the UAV. But not both. He stayed high, but even so, his passive infrared sensor lost the aircraft.

“Two, you still have him?” asked Cowboy.

“Stand by.” The long range scan caught the aircraft as it turned. “He’s got four miles on me, angling north. I’m losing ground.”

“Fast little devil.”

Little was the operable word, as far as the radar was concerned; depending on its angle to the sensors, the aircraft’s profile ranged from the size of a swallow to that of a bumblebee. The faceted silhouette had been designed to make it difficult to track from several common angles, rear included.

“I’m going to juice the afterburner and angle north,” Turk told Cowboy. “I can come on at a different angle and have a better chance of seeing him.”

“You better check your fuel, Air Force. We don’t have tankers waiting to gas us up.”

“Yeah. I think I can make it,” hedged Turk. He made a mental calculation — unless the UAV landed in ten minutes, he’d be into his reserves heading back. “You stay on the heading you’re at. I’ll do the tracking.”

“Roger that. Don’t run dry. It’s a long swim home.”

“Two,” said Turk, acknowledging with his call sign.

Danny saw flashes in the brush to his left a second before Fern dropped to his knees. A dozen shadows were moving about twenty yards ahead, focused on the base perimeter.

“There,” whispered Monk, coming up behind him.

“Yeah,” answered Danny.

Fern had his hand up, watching. Gunfire erupted from the base perimeter, which was roughly two hundred yards away on their left; the rebel vanguard was at the edge of the wood line in front of them, with more rebels behind, just to Danny’s right.

“Fire!” yelled Danny, pointing his rifle at the nearest shadows.

The enemy didn’t react at first, oblivious in their charge. But Danny’s gunfire found its mark, and before a full minute had passed the shadows stopped coming. They were on their bellies in the brush, either cut down or taking cover.

“Grenade!” yelled Fern, tossing one.

“Fire in the hole,” answered Monk, throwing one of his own.

Danny saw shapes moving on his right and fired, emptying his magazine. Fern threw another grenade, then a third, as the rebels turned to answer their fire.

Bullets pinged around them, the rebels changing their targets. Danny slid to the ground. Another mag was taped to the one he’d emptied; he loaded it and began returning fire, aiming at the flashes.

The grenades cut down a sizable portion of the rebel force. Confused and no longer confident, they began to fall back. The machine gun at the perimeter began to fire, and suddenly the main body of rebels was retreating. A mortar shell landed in the middle of their path, and the retreat turned into a rout. The assault had been broken.

“Fall back!” yelled Danny, concerned that they might be shot by their own forces if they pursued the fleeing rebels. “Let’s go.”

They moved back slowly, in proper order — the closest man to the enemy trotted back, tapping his companion as he passed, then taking up a position to lay down covering fire as the others repeated the process. In a few moments they reached the creek where they had started. Danny heard the drone of Ospreys in the distance — the reinforcements had arrived.

“Back to the perimeter,” he told his companions. “Good job.”

Turk found the little UAV on his left, six miles ahead of him. It was well over the water now, heading toward the collection of reefs and tiny islands off the coast.

The UAV had dropped its speed to five hundred knots. Turk lost his radar contact but found that he could make it reappear by tucking his nose down, subtly altering the angle of the radar waves without actually changing course. At 8,000 feet above sea level, he had just enough altitude to play with to keep the target aircraft on his screen.

He tried hailing the Whiplash operator back at the Marine base to see if he was picking up anything else from the Global Hawk, but got no answer.

The reefs and rocks below had long been a collection of hazards for mariners. Most of the rocks dotting the area were either submerged or too small to be inhabited, but there were larger islands in the Ebeling Reefs and the neighboring Sembuni Reefs to the north big enough for the aircraft to land on. Ships passing up from the Java Sea mostly steered through a channel to the west to avoid the hazards. The outer islands and reefs had lately become a haven for pirates, who, though not as accomplished as the pirates off Somalia, practiced the same sort of extortion.

Finally the UAV disappeared from his screen, and Turk couldn’t find it. He tucked down, rose, tucked down, moved a bit left then angled east. A brief flicker hit the radar, then nothing.

“I think he’s turning east,” he told Cowboy.

“My scope is clear.”

“Yeah.”

“Whiplash Base to Basher Two,” said Rubeo, radioing from the Cube over the squadron frequency. “Captain Mako, are you reading me?”

“Two. Go ahead.”

“What’s your situation?”

“I just lost contact.”

“The base has released the Global Hawk and we’re flying it back in your direction. It should be in range in five minutes.”

Five minutes would be an eternity, but there was nothing to be done about that.

“Some of the people here think it may have doubled back to the island of Brunei,” added Rubeo. “Do you have an opinion on that, Captain? Is it feasible?”

“Negative on that,” said Turk. “He would have come past us. No way he did that.”

“Not even at low altitude?”

“Negative.”

“What is your theory?”

“He’s got to be heading toward one of those reef islands.”

“Thank you,” said Rubeo. “Continue your pursuit as you feel fit. Do not endanger yourself further.”

“Roger that,” said Turk, surprised that the normally coldhearted scientist was actually concerned about his well-being.

Contrast that with Breanna, he thought.

“Where do you think he is?” asked Cowboy, who’d heard the conversation.

“Just like I said, heading for a landing somewhere ahead.”

“Might be flying to Vietnam or western Indonesia,” said Cowboy.

“He doesn’t have the fuel,” said Turk. “The airframe is too small. He’s gotta land soon. On one of these islands.”

“These aren’t islands,” said Cowboy. “They’re spits of dirt.”

“He won’t need much to land.”

Turk started cutting different angles in the sky, altering the direction of his forward and side radars. He got a few blips in the general direction the UAV had been taking but then nothing. It would have at least a ten mile lead on them now; the chase was essentially over.

As good as the sensors aboard the Lightning II were — and they were the best in the “conventional” fighter fleet, and by extension the world — the size and stealth characteristics of the UAV were better, at least at this range. Turk decided that his only option was to hit the gas — he selected his afterburner again, juicing Basher Two over the sound barrier. He held his speed for only a few moments, knowing that every millisecond of acceleration was costing him fuel, and in turn lessening his time in the air.

The UAV popped onto the screen, closer than he thought: five miles away.

It turned to a heading almost exactly between north and east, and for a few moments he had a profile of it from the rear side quarter. Rather than adjusting his course to follow, Turk adjusted his course to parallel it. He got another fleeting glimpse, then another, then lost it.

There’s a way to make this work, Turk told himself. Go farther north and flip around.

“I’m going to jump ahead,” he told Cowboy. “You stay on the present course.”

“You want me to follow?”

“No, stay on your heading,” said Turk. “You’re going in the general direction. I’m going to slide around a bit and try and get a good radar on him. I have an idea.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Turk hit his afterburner again, riding it for three seconds before backing off. He started a turn, aiming to push the nose of the plane at the UAV’s rear fuselage. He found it only three miles away — the drone had slowed considerably.

“You better check your fuel, Two,” said Cowboy.

“Yeah, I know. Listen, Bandit is down to two hundred knots. Gotta be looking to land.”

“Where? There’s nothing out here.”

Cowboy was right. The reef tips were so small even a seagull couldn’t call them home.

“He may just be slowing down for fuel conservation,” answered Turk.

Or maybe he was running out of fuel. Turk was suddenly closing on the contact at a good rate; its forward speed was down to 150 knots.

“I’m thinking he’s going to crash,” Turk told Cowboy.

Two seconds later the UAV disappeared from the screen.

6

At some point Ray Rubeo stopped studying the data flowing across the screen and just stared at the simulation of the UAV in flight. It was impressive, all the more so because it had been developed without the help of a massive government program.

True, vast amounts of it had been stolen or inspired by his own work. Still, to have constructed something so smart and capable — the scientist in Rubeo couldn’t help but admire the ingenuity.

But he wasn’t here to admire someone else’s work — especially when that other person seemed bent on destroying everything he had worked for.

Rubeo tapped his screen, changing the window to see an analysis of real-time performance data. He was surprised to find that the screen was no longer updating.

“What happened?” he asked his team back in New Mexico.

“The UAV appears to have crashed or stopped operating,” said Kristen Morgan, one of the operators handling communications with him. “It’s off their radars and nothing they do will bring it back. They’re close enough to pick it up, or they were.”

“Command signals?”

“If there were, the Global Hawk was too far away to pick them up. When you diverted it to protect the base—”

“Yes, I understand. A necessary decision.” Rubeo scowled. It was a chess match, and one had to protect his pieces until an advantage could be had. “Compile the data as soon as you can. We need models, everything we discussed.”

“Will do.”

“And how are we coming with the file on Braxton and his associates?”

“It’s thicker than it was. We have a whole range of his shell companies and some contractors.”

“Keep working on it,” said Rubeo. “Update my files here every hour.”

“Not a problem.”

“Something he’s done will give him away,” Rubeo told her. “As brilliant as he clearly is.”

7

By the time Danny got back to the command bunker, most of the debris had been cleared and the systems restored. Lieutenant JG Cathy Talaria had taken over and replaced the wounded with fresh staff.

Walsh was back, chest bandaged and arm in a sling.

“Are you OK?” Danny asked.

“Broken arm. The rest is nothing.”

“Don’t—”

“They lost the UAV,” said the techie, changing the subject. He was here for his brain but he shared the tough-as-nails will of the rest of the Whiplash team. “I have the Global Hawk running a search pattern in the area. It has to land soon, at least according to our calcs. It slowed way down before we lost final contact, so it may have crashed.”

“Where?”

“Not sure, Colonel. Turk thinks over the water. But it’s just a guess.”

“Hmmm.” Danny leaned down to look at the console. Walsh had a map up on one of the screens showing the approximate search location. There were several small islets in the area, but none were big enough to support a full base. All had been scouted even before Danny first arrived to look for a base; as far as they could tell there were none.

“If it crashes, we need to recover it,” said Danny. “Hopefully before it sinks.”

“Not going to be easy, Colonel. They’re roughly a hundred miles from shore. And that’s at a minimum.”

“Better to try than give up.” Danny went over to Talaria and told her what he wanted to do.

“If Captain Thomas says we can spare the men, I’ll lead a squad myself, sir,” said the young woman.

“That’s your captain’s call,” said Danny. “Where are the Ospreys?”

“They’re both on the ground getting refueled and checked over,” said Talaria.

“I’m going to talk to the pilots. Tell Thomas what I want to do, and ask him to detail a squad to help me, if possible.”

Turk flew over the area where he’d lost the radar contact. There was nothing but dark, empty ocean. He settled into a widening orbit as he searched.

“Basher One, do you have a contact?” he asked his wingman.

“Negative, Two. What are you seeing?”

“Nothing.”

“You think he crashed?”

“Possibly,” answered Turk. Even in daylight it would have been hard to detect the fragments of the small aircraft on the surface of the ocean. Now, without a fire, there wouldn’t be enough for the passive IR sensor to pick up either.

Turk stared out of the cockpit, frustrated. They’d come so far, only to lose the damn thing.

“Basher Two, check your fuel gauges,” said Cowboy. “How good are you at treading water, Air Force?”

Turk glanced at his fuel gauge and did some quick math. He had about forty-one minutes of fuel left… and it would take about eighteen to get home. They had planned to land with about twenty minutes of reserve, a generally prudent mark.

“I’m a lousy swimmer,” Turk told Cowboy. “I’m about three minutes to bingo. I have enough fuel for two more minutes. The Global Hawk is flying this way.”

“Basher Two, do you have contact with your bandit?” asked Walsh, back at the Marine base.

“Negative. Lost it. We’re trying to get a visual or something, anything, on a wreckage.”

“Be advised the Global Hawk just had a fleeting contact about fifteen nautical miles east of where you are. I’m heading the aircraft in that direction. Stand by for a vector.”

“Roger that,” said Turk, altering his course as Walsh read out the heading. It was almost exactly due east of the point where he’d lost the aircraft.

“Hey, Air Force, you don’t have the fuel for this,” said Cowboy.

“I got twenty minutes of reserve.”

“Turk—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to break your plane,” answered Turk.

“That ain’t it, dude,” responded Cowboy. “If we have to punch out, I can’t swim.”

Danny strapped himself into the copilot’s seat of the Osprey and hung on as the aircraft began its short taxi down the runway. With no way to quickly tie the Osprey pilot directly into the Whiplash communications system, they’d settled for a low-tech solution — he would relay information to the pilot as he spoke through his own gear. It was easier to do that from the second officer’s seat.

An unconventional solution, but the Marines liked to brag that they could adapt to any situation, and they seemed determined to prove it tonight.

“What’s our ETA to the area?” Danny asked the pilot after they’d swooped into the sky.

“Fifty minutes, give or take, depending on the final location,” he told him. “Faster if I could go over Brunei.”

“No,” said Danny. “Hold off on that. If we get an actual sighting, and if there’s a need, then we’ll do it. On my responsibility. But I don’t want to cause a ruckus without a very good reason.”

“You’re the boss.”

The UAV had slowed to eighty knots by the time Turk got it on his radar. It had climbed as well; it was now at 8,000 feet.

Why had it climbed?

Eighty knots was slow, possibly close to the slowest speed the aircraft could go and remain flying. It was continuing to decelerate, all the while staying at the same altitude — surely it would have to stall in a matter of moments.

“Basher Two, I’m one mile behind you,” said Cowboy. “I have the contact on the radar. It’s five miles away.”

“Roger. Copy.”

“How is it flying?” asked Cowboy. “Airspeed is dropping through seventy knots?”

“Copy.”

“What — Damn! Did he just blow up?”

“He just deployed a parachute,” said Turk, interpreting the new radar returns. “Come on — we want visuals.”

“Remember your fuel.”

“Roger.” Turk glanced at the gauge. He had ten minutes of his reserve time left… and that was with a good tailwind.

But there it was, descending less than two miles from him. He clicked on the radio to tell Walsh.

“Roger that. Global Hawk is three minutes away. Is there a ship there?”

“Negative. Nothing.”

“Colonel Freah and a team of Marines are heading there to see if they can recover it. Can you stand by until they arrive? They’re about forty minutes off.”

“Can’t do it,” said Cowboy, breaking in. “We don’t have the fuel.”

“Understood,” answered Walsh.

“Sorry for interrupting,” Cowboy told Turk. “But I don’t want you doing anything rash.”

“I wasn’t gonna.”

“Not a problem, then.”

“Roger that.”

Cowboy leaned his head to the side until his helmet touched the canopy. The night vision in the helmet made it possible to see, though the range was somewhat limited.

“I see the chute,” he told Turk. “It’s going down slow. Nothing there, though.”

“Yeah.”

Earlier, Cowboy had entertained a fantasy of using the F-35B’s vertical landing ability to touch down near the UAV’s landing spot, grab the thing, and take off. But that wouldn’t work here, even as a fantasy.

“Why parachute into the water?” he asked Turk. “Why the hell not just crash and be done with it.”

“Probably just following its programming.”

“Computers.”

The UAV had fallen to 2,000 feet. Cowboy slowed Basher One to just over a hundred knots, watching it go down. The entire experience felt surreal, and for good reason: he was taking a leisurely spin around an aircraft that had tried to shoot him down less than an hour before.

“I wonder if I could snag the chute with my wheel,” he told Turk.

“Hey, that’s a great idea,” answered Turk.

“No, no, I’m kidding.”

“I’m going to take a shot at it,” said Turk.

“What are you going to do if you catch it?”

“I’ll bring it back to the base. Stand by.”

Turk lined up the chute in the dead center of his windscreen. Snagging it was probably a one in a million shot, he thought, but even a slight chance was better than nothing.

The trick was to get close enough to the parachute so he could get it, but not have the engine ingest the cloth. What he needed was a big hook underneath — arresting gear would have been perfect. The tip of a missile might work — except that he didn’t have any more.

That left his landing gear, as Cowboy had suggested.

A ridiculous long shot, and a dangerous one, but getting the UAV was high priority, and what the hell — as long as he didn’t ingest the chute, there was no downside.

Besides, he’d faced longer odds in Iran, among other places.

The Lightning II shuddered as he deployed the landing gear, and Turk swore it was a reaction to the fact that he was lowering his gear with no land in sight.

The parachute was at 1,200 feet. He had time for one pass, maybe two.

Bitchin’ Betty gave him a stall warning as he eased closer to the target. He nudged the throttle slightly, saw the canopy coming on his left side…

Too far!

Turk pushed his rudder pedal, sliding in the air.

Come on, baby!

His left wing knifed toward the floating nylon blanket. Turk held steady, not even daring to breathe.

“Missed,” said Cowboy. “Damn close. It ducked to the side at the last second.”

Turk hadn’t counted on the vortex of wind under the aircraft; it had pushed the chute out at the last second, whipping it below and past the wheel.

“Let me try,” said Cowboy.

“You’re not low enough,” said Turk, banking for a second try. “Get into position to follow me. If I miss, you get it. Be careful not to get it in your engine intakes.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

As Turk came out of the turn, he realized that the parachute had fallen faster than he’d thought it would; his wing had given it an extra push. He started to line up, then saw what looked like a whale with a unicorn’s horn appear on the surface of the water.

“What the hell is that?” he asked Cowboy.

“Stand by.”

Turk’s warning system began to blare — a radar had appeared out of nowhere and was tracking him.

“What’s going on?” he cursed, hitting his throttle for thrust and cleaning the gear. He came back on the stick, climbing to get higher and give himself room to maneuver.

“It’s some sort of submersible,” said Cowboy. “It’s snagging the UAV.”

Turk spun his head but was too far past the sub to see.

“It’s in the water — watch out!”

There was a small burst about halfway up the line to the chute — an explosive device cut the connection between the UAV and its parachute. Meanwhile, the submarine dove below the water, the aircraft in tow.

“Damn,” said Cowboy. “That’s right out of Star Wars.”

“Or Dreamland,” said Turk, banking to try to get a look.

8

Gerry “Bird” Rodriguez was nothing like Zen remembered him from Dreamland. There, he had been a quiet if hardworking junior scientist; now he was not only self-assured and expansive, but clearly well off: he had arrived at the restaurant in a Mercedes S, and the watch on his sleeve looked to be a Patek.

He’d also put on quite a bit of weight since the days they played pickup basketball together back at Dreamland, before Zen’s accident. At six-eight, Rodriguez was tall enough to be a domineering presence under the basket in any pickup game, but had been so thin that you could miss him if he turned sideways. Now there was no missing him at all. Well-proportioned for his size and ruggedly handsome, he dominated the restaurant like he dominated the paint.

“I’m glad we were finally able to make our schedules mesh,” said Rodriguez. “You’re so damn busy.”

“Not as busy as you,” said Zen. They’d been trying to meet for two months.

The waiter came over and cleared their plates. Rodriguez ordered a scotch for dessert. Zen, who’d been drinking water with dinner, asked for a bourbon.

“We have several,” said the waiter, who began reeling off a list of boutique brands, none of which Zen had heard of.

“Woodford?” Zen finally asked.

“Coming up,” said the man approvingly before sweeping away.

“So what do you think, Zen?” asked Rodriguez. “Do you think you want to try?”

“It’s very — It’s an interesting idea.”

“I know you’ve been through this a lot,” said Rodriguez. “A lot of people have promised that you’ll walk again. I can’t make a promise. But this process has worked with two other people.”

“But there’s no guarantees.”

“No. Exactly. It’s an experiment. That’s why we want you, after all.”

“The fact that I’m a senator has nothing to do with it.”

“No. It raises the bar for us — if we fail, obviously, that’s real bad.”

“If it succeeds, you have a lot of media attention.”

Rodriguez shrugged, and Zen thought of an after-game beer session where Rodriguez had made a similar gesture about his thirty points, giving the credit to his guard — Zen. But even if he was being a bit disingenuous, he was right that they were taking risks themselves, and he’d already agreed to keep everything quiet as it proceeded.

And in any event, so what? If it was a chance to walk again, what was the difference?

“Explain a little more,” said Zen. “How much of me are you going to cut up?”

“Just the good parts.” Rodriguez took him through the cell grafting techniques — he’d tried something like that in his last year at Dreamland — but lost Zen when he began talking about the nanolevel microchips that would be placed in his spine and legs.

The drinks came; Zen savored the sweet burn of the bourbon in his mouth.

“It’s a long process,” continued Rodriguez. “Over the course of a year, like I said. We have to put you into a coma — three times.”

“Just three?” joked Zen.

“Yeah. If it works. That bit’s only for a few days, but it adds up.” Rodriguez laughed nervously. “To you, it’ll feel like you’re sleeping.”

“But I eventually wake up.”

“Yeah, that part I can guarantee. Almost guarantee,” Rodriguez corrected himself. “That part is basically like a normal medical procedure. It’s done every day at hospitals for patients in trauma.”

“So this is trauma?”

“Sure. Think about it — it’s the reverse of what you went through at Dreamland. You’re coming back in the other direction.”

That made more sense to Zen than the nanochips.

“The rest of it is the risky stuff,” said Rodriguez. “But we’ve done it on two other people. Whom we didn’t have nearly as good medical histories of. So I’m pretty confident, or I wouldn’t be here. That, and I still think of myself as your friend, and want to help.”

Rodriguez had explained that his well-documented medical history and the length of time he’d been crippled were major assets to the program. When they were done, they would know a tremendous amount about the process and the human body’s reaction to it.

“It’s a three year commitment,” added Rodriguez. “But only the first two are really heavy. After that, it’s pretty much just real life.”

Zen nodded. They finished their drinks in silence.

“Well, let me think about it,” Zen told him.

“There’s a lot to think about,” said the scientist. “I would… I do need an answer relatively soon. A month, tops. There’s one other candidate.”

“And I have a limited window physically,” said Zen, referring to something Rodriguez had said earlier.

“That’s right. Your age. We’re already pushing the envelope.”

“Can’t do anything about that,” said Zen.

“Not yet.” Rodriguez smiled. “Soon.”

9

Lloyd Braxton brought the beer bottle to his lips and took a small sip. Brewed in Oregon by a small craft brewer, the vanilla porter had a slightly bitter taste; Braxton couldn’t work out whether it was intentional or a by-product of its long trip to the South Pacific. He also couldn’t decide if he liked it or not — the bitterness seemed to fit his mood, even if it gave the beer more bite than he would normally prefer.

The robot submersible had taken hold of the Vector UAV, so at least they had lost only one craft. The problem were the damn rebels — they were incompetent boobs who couldn’t launch a simple attack on a lightly guarded outpost without getting their butts kicked. They’d fired only one of the guided rockets they’d been given, rather than massing them, as instructed. God only knew what other things they’d flubbed.

Hitting the Dreamland people with anything less than a knockout blow was a huge mistake. He’d seen that himself years before.

He still had hope. Whatever else, they’d been bloodied. They’d send a major team now. That would give him his chance.

He looked toward the shore, then glanced at his watch.

Thirty seconds.

Braxton took another sip of his beer, letting the bitterness eat the sides of his mouth. He liked it, he decided; he would order more. Assuming that was ever possible.

A sharp slap echoed over the water. Braxton raised his head and stared at the island, but there wasn’t enough light to see what was happening there. He had to settle for the sound of the settling dust and the birds that were fleeing the explosion. The underground compound, his home for the past six months, had just been blown up. Dirt and rocks covered what had once been one of the most advanced private computer setups in the world.

He had others. Braxton turned to the wheelhouse.

“Take us below,” he told the captain. “We’re running behind schedule.”

10

By the time Turk turned back toward the submarine, it was underwater. His finger practically itched as he ran over the empty surface of the water, the cannon begging to be used, though it would be pointless.

He had a more pressing problem now — he was tighter on fuel than he’d planned.

It got worse as they headed back. At first he thought he’d simply gone dyslexic and got two numbers mixed up. Then he realized that he was leaking. It was a slow dribble, but with his stores so low, it was enough to turn him into a glider well short of the runway.

“I think one of those laser shots got the fuel tank,” he told Cowboy. “I’m going to have to think about putting down somewhere.”

“Can you make it back to land?”

Turk studied the numbers. Home was out of the question, but he could make it back to the island.

Probably.

“There’s a little airport at Kampung,” said Cowboy, naming one of the emergency alternatives the squadron had briefed. “It’s near the coast. You might make that.”

Turk had to look it up on the map. It was a small airport near the coast. It was reachable — but only if he went straight there. Which presented a problem.

“I can get there if I go over Indonesia,” he told Cowboy.

“Better to do that than crash.”

“Yeah.”

Indonesia snaked around Malaysia on the western coast. Turk picked a spot that would take less than three minutes to cross.

He tuned to the printed radio frequency of the tower at Kampung but couldn’t get a response to his hail; neither could Cowboy.

“Place may not be big enough to have a tower,” said Cowboy.

“It has a published frequency,” said Turk.

“Remember where we are, Air Force. This ain’t America.”

“Roger that.”

The Indonesians had apparently been monitoring the flight, for he got a warning as he approached their territorial waters. He didn’t respond to the initial hail, holding his course; by the time the controller radioed again, he was approaching land.

“I have a fuel emergency,” he answered, deciding honesty was the best policy.

“Unknown flight, you are ordered to exit Indonesia airspace.” The controller had a British accent.

“I intend to. I have a fuel emergency,” he repeated. “I am heading for an emergency landing.”

Turk wasn’t exactly sure what the controller would say; anything from a threat to shoot him down to a gracious offer of assistance was possible. Instead, the controller simply said nothing, which was just fine with him. The Indonesians weren’t about to scramble any of their aircraft after him in any event; all of the repercussion would happen after he landed.

Assuming he landed. Then again, if he didn’t, he wouldn’t care what the Indonesians did at all.

He was over their land long enough to picture himself in an Indonesian jail eating spiders and ants for dinner. It wasn’t a pleasant vision, but he soon passed into Malaysian territory, where more mundane worries took over: how far could the F-35B glide without fuel?

The airport was fifteen miles away.

“Walsh, how are we coming with that tower?” Turk asked the Whiplash techie.

“Airport is closed. Has been for months,” responded Walsh. “I’m looking at the field — pockmarked pretty bad. Rebels attacked it two or three times before they finally shut it down.”

Turk was about to say that it would have to do when Bitchin’ Betty interrupted.

“Warning,” said the automated voice. “Fuel emergency. Fuel emergency.”

“No shit, you told me that already,” he said.

“Turk, can you make it?” asked Cowboy.

“I can make it,” said Turk, tightening his grip on the stick. The runway was five miles away, somewhere in the shadows of the land ahead, unlit and unready for him to land.

Danny Freah stared out the Osprey’s side window at the ocean. There was still a full hour before dawn, but he could see the ripples on the surface without night vision.

“The submarine is no more than ten miles from us, if that,” he told the pilot. “Can we get into a search pattern?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Osprey moved into a gentle arc toward the point Turk had given Danny. No matter how advanced it was, the submarine that grabbed the UAV had to be somewhere nearby, but the Osprey lacked gear to track it. The task force with the Marine MEU off the northern shore of Malaysia had antisubmarine assets, but the nearest vessel in the task force was over six hundred miles away.

“You sure it didn’t just crash into the water?” asked the pilot. “I mean — submarine picking it up? Pretty far-fetched. For rebels, I mean.”

“Not really,” said Danny. “Drug smugglers use them off the coast of Florida and the Southeast all the time.”

“Drug dealers?”

“These are small subs.”

“A lot of money in drug dealing. Can’t see it out here.”

Danny didn’t answer. The pilot didn’t entirely understand what they were dealing with, but who could blame him? Small submersibles cost less than a large pleasure boat, but still — why would anyone spend so much money on such high tech to help a band of ragtag rebels?

Ragtag rebels who’d nearly overrun a Marine base, granted.

They’d do it if they were testing their gear. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn he was up against Dreamland itself.

But then that was why he’d been tasked out here to begin with.

“Colonel, I have no contacts anywhere within ten miles,” said the pilot. “What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Take another few circuits,” said Danny reluctantly. “If we don’t see anything, let’s go home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you go vertical?” Cowboy asked. He’d zipped ahead to check the runway.

“No way,” said Turk. “Even if I knew what I was doing. Not enough fuel.”

“How much?”

“It’s reading zero.”

“South end of the field is beaten to shit. I’m thinking you have less than fifteen hundred feet of good cement to land on.”

“Yeah.”

“Tight but doable.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Come on, Air Force. You’re Superman.”

“Thanks,” said Turk, who was feeling anything but super.

“Come ten degrees north and you’ll line up.”

Turk made the adjustment. The Bitchin’ Betty circuit was having a stroke, warning about fuel, speed, altitude, and the fact that he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a week. None of this would be a problem, he told himself, if he could just see the damn runway. It was ahead somewhere, but even the vaunted low-light abilities of the F-35’s helmet couldn’t pick it out.

As he pushed over a cultivated field, Turk thought of using it, but by then it was too late.

“You see the runway?” asked Cowboy.

“Negative, negative.”

“Push your rudder, dude. You’re off three degrees.”

“Which way?” demanded Turk.

“Right.”

Turk eased his foot on the pedal.

In daylight, this would have been a breeze. Why the hell couldn’t he see it?

His landing lights caught a blank expanse in front of him, then a seam in the ground — the edge of the runway just to the right, as Cowboy had said. Turk started to exhale, then realized he was flying in utter silence: the engine had just run out of fuel.

Bitchin’ Betty was not pleased.

“Yeah, yeah,” he told the machine. “Watch this.”

He held the airplane in a glide just long enough to clear the worst of the holes the rebels had dug with their mortar shells. The F-35B’s undercarriage groaned as he bounced across the ripped surface. It jerked to the right as he got the nose wheel down, but held enough concrete to brake just before hitting the turf at the far end of the runway.

Down! And in one piece!

Turk popped the canopy open and climbed up out of the seat. He suddenly felt cold and wet — he’d been sweating so much his suit was soaked through.

Cowboy passed overhead, wagging his wings.

There was a light in the sky a few miles off, coming from the south — it was the Marine Osprey from the base, heading toward him with fuel and a team of mechanics to patch up the plane.

I hope they got beer, thought Turk. And a lot of it.

11

Ray Rubeo stared at the large screen at the front of the conference room and its map of the area where the UAV and submarine had disappeared. A yellow circle showing the area the submarine could be in slowly expanded.

“Ray?” Breanna leaned across the table toward him. “Are you with us?”

“Yes. You said it’s the Vector program,” he recounted, still staring. “Submarine launched UAVs. I agree.”

“The Vector program was a study for the Navy that Dreamland participated in,” Breanna told Reid. “It used the AI from Gen 4 in a sub-launched variant. The airfoils are different. Jennifer Gleason worked on both.”

“And this Braxton fellow?” asked Reid.

“He would have been involved as well.”

“The aircraft was recovered by a small submarine, roughly the size of a pleasure boat,” said Breanna. “There are a lot of similar craft in Australia and on our coast — rich people’s toys. They don’t go very deep or very fast, but they’re hard to detect by surface ships or planes that aren’t looking for them. And the Navy doesn’t keep track of something so small.”

“Yes,” said Rubeo. He got up from his seat and walked toward the wall, staring at the map.

“Wouldn’t it have to be pretty substantial to launch a plane?” asked Reid. “Even a small one.”

“They didn’t launch from the sea,” said Rubeo.

“How do you know?” asked Reid.

“You said it yourself, the submarine is too small. The most difficult problem to solve has to do with wings. The wingspan here is too large for the submersible we saw. The submarines are used for recovery only. And it may have been a backup in any event. Remember, it was being pursued, and its mate had been shot down.”

“I still see an Iranian or Chinese connection,” said Reid. “For me, the submarine clinches it. It could be working with a larger ship.”

“Braxton hates governments, all governments.” Rubeo pictured the young man: bright red hair, skin so white it seemed almost opaque. Quiet, as a general rule, but when he did talk, passion glared behind his bright green eyes. He was a pure libertarian, a young man who thought Locke was practically a fascist, and had in fact told Rubeo so one late night. Science had to be pure and divorced from the corruption of governments and anything that stole individual freedom.

So governments are a necessary evil? Rubeo had asked.

Governments are evil, period, Braxton answered.

“Politics and war make for strange bedfellows,” said Reid. “He may very well have decided that to accomplish his Kallapsis or whatever his nirvana is called, he needs to take temporary steps with temporary alliances.”

Reid went back to his spot at the conference table. Waving his hand over the surface, he brought up a virtual keyboard and commanded a small window to appear in the main screen. Typing furiously, he tapped into the joint intelligence network, then over to the Navy tracking site where the latest fleet data was kept. The program showed the last known positions of all fleet vessels, American and foreign. He zeroed in on the South China Sea, then filtered for submarines. The nearest submarines — both American vessels — were several hundred miles away; one was with the Marine task force and another was shadowing a Chinese carrier.

“I would expect that if they were working with the Chinese, we would see a Chinese vessel,” said Rubeo. “I realize it’s not definitive, but we have checked. I’ve checked.”

“I’ve requested antisubmarine assets be moved into the area,” added Breanna. “The problem is, the Navy doesn’t have a lot of them, and they’re stretched thin as they are.”

A patrol aircraft was being detailed from Japan and would be on station within twenty-four hours. But the Navy was scrambling to find not only a secure base closer to the area that it could use, but a relief plane to extend the search times. Antisubmarine air patrol was not glamorous, and with the demise of the Cold War, had never received the funding it deserved.

“At the moment, our elint drones are the best bet,” Breanna said. “We can go back and look at all transmissions in the area, and try correlating that with places that might be used as bases, both offshore and in Indonesia and Brunei.”

“It must be offshore,” said Reid. “If it were in Brunei or Indonesia we’d have picked it up.”

“In a way, it’s certainly simpler for us if it’s offshore. But the modeling of the possible airport hasn’t found any matches.”

“The modeling must be wrong,” said Reid.

“Obviously. Ray?”

He looked at her.

“If we can get close to one of these, can we take it over?” Breanna asked. “Since it uses our coding?”

“We’re looking for vulnerabilities,” he said. “There aren’t many.”

“Isn’t there a way to convince it that it belongs to us?” Reid asked.

“Only if Jennifer Gleason told it to,” said Rubeo. “And she doesn’t appear to have done that.”

12

Danny Freah ran his hand over his head, mopping off the sweat, as he walked down the rear ramp of the Osprey after landing back at the Marine base. He’d never been a big fan of hot weather, and the wet heat of the South China Sea was starting to get to him.

Captain Thomas was waiting on the tarmac.

“Colonel, a word,” said the Marine officer, in a tone that suggested he was barely holding his temper. He turned and began stomping toward the bunker.

Danny had heard about Turk’s fuel problems, and while he would have preferred it if the pilot had contacted him before crossing Indonesian airspace, it was nonetheless far superior to allowing the aircraft to crash. Washington had already rung with the protests, and Danny was sure the heat was being turned on the administration. But he couldn’t figure how the fallout had gotten to Thomas — “stuff” might roll downhill, but the Marine ground commander had no role at all in the decision. At this point, the operation was Danny’s, and there shouldn’t be any “stuff” falling on any of the Marines, let alone Thomas.

Danny sighed to himself and followed along, prepared not only to defend his pilot but to tell Thomas the facts of life, as gently as possible. He was a good commander; no need for him to get bent out of shape.

Though cleared of major debris, the bunker looked somewhat worse for wear. Several piles of dirt lined the side, and a mangled desktop had been propped against the wall. The Marines had determined that the damage had been done by some sort of rocket rather than a mortar shell. There was no evidence yet about whether or not it was guided, but the direct hit made them strongly suspect that it was.

Thomas had reestablished his “office” in a small corner at the rear. His backup satellite link and other com gear had been set up on a portable table; a laptop was on the floor. It wasn’t the most private spot in the world, but the two other men in the bunker were wearing headsets.

“Where did you find Mofitt?” Thomas asked.

“Excuse me?” asked Danny, completely taken by surprise.

“Corporal Mofitt.”

“When, during the attack?”

“Yes. I need to know.”

It had only been a few hours ago, but so much had happened that Danny had trouble recalling the specifics of the incident. “I was running — he hadn’t made it to the perimeter forces,” he said. “He — I found him on the ground maybe fifty yards from them. No, I guess it was closer to the bunker, because I brought him back here. Or I started to. That’s when we got hit.”

“He had made it to the forces?” asked Thomas.

“No,” said Danny. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t get there. Because they hadn’t heard anything when I went back. What’s this all about?”

“Mofitt wasn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, we were outside of the bunker when the missile or whatever it was hit.”

“Before then. Somebody saw him standing in the compound, frozen, a little while before you came by,” said the Marine captain. “I think he froze under fire.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“He was fine the other day,” said Danny. That encounter was more vivid in his memory. “We had contact, we took fire, he shot back. He seems pretty reliable.”

“I’m going to have him shipped out ASAP.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”

“No.”

Danny mopped the sweat off the side of his head. “What does he say about it?”

“His opinion isn’t worth asking.”

“He didn’t speak up for himself?”

“I haven’t talked to him and I’m not going to. I don’t need his side.”

Shipping the kid out was one thing, but not speaking with him was something else. Danny had met plenty of unreasonably hardass officers in his career, but Thomas didn’t come off like that. Maybe it was the fact that his people back at the base had been hit hard; very possibly he felt guilty over it.

Danny came around the desk. He didn’t want the captain’s men overhearing what he was going to say.

“I might dial it back a bit,” he told the Marine. “I’d talk to him first. Sometimes, jumping to conclusions—”

“Maybe you can afford a chickenshit in the Air Force. We’re Marines. We can’t.”

“I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to,” said Danny, still keeping his voice down.

“I’m not questioning your courage, Colonel,” said Thomas. “Even if your reputation didn’t precede you, I’ve seen you in action. You got more balls than half my men combined. And I don’t have any chickenshits here. At all.”

“I’m just saying you might lighten up and give him a chance to speak,” said Danny. “And not necessarily for his benefit either. You don’t want to come off like someone who just jumps the gun on guys. Talk to him, then decide what to do. Your other guys will notice that.”

“What would you do if one of your people froze under fire?”

“First of all, I’m in a slightly different situation.”

“How?”

“All of my guys are Tier One volunteers, with a lot of combat behind them,” said Danny, using the military term for top-level special operations units. Like the Navy’s DEVGRU and the Army’s Delta Force, Whiplash had extremely high standards and expectations. “But, regardless, if that happened, before I did anything I’d talk to him. If he was good enough to work for me in the first place, then I owe him the respect of hearing his side of the story.”

“Counsel him,” said Thomas.

“That’s the buzz word, yeah,” said Danny. “But whatever. I don’t know that I’d be trying to give him advice, but I’d talk to him. Maybe something happened that I didn’t see. That’s all I’m telling you.”

Thomas frowned. Danny looked over and saw Walsh walking toward him.

“Colonel, sorry, but I have an urgent message from Ms. Stockard,” said the techie. “I think they got a lead on the base the aircraft flew from.”

Patched and loaded with a small amount of fuel, Turk took the F-35 from the battered airstrip and headed south to the Marine base. By comparison it looked like a first-class regional airport: the mortar holes had been quickly patched, and there was a controller to welcome him in. The ground dogs waiting at the edge of the tarmac were as eager as any Air Force crew to get the plane back into action; they rushed up as soon as he came to a full stop.

“Thanks for getting my aircraft back in one piece,” said the crew captain. “Course if you hadn’t, I’m not sure the boys woulda left you in one piece.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time,” said Turk, pulling off his helmet.

“Ha ha, don’t let ol’ Gunny spook ya,” said Cowboy, coming up and pounding his back. “Good work gettin’ in back there. Boys said you came in with no power.”

“I like to use every ounce of fuel,” said Turk. Then he turned serious. “Thanks for watchin’ over me.”

“Any time.” Cowboy laughed. “The crew would have cut my legs off if I let anything happen to their plane. Although I think they’re warming up to you a bit.”

If he was correct, the sentiment didn’t seem to extend to Colonel Greenstreet: the squadron leader was waiting for them in the makeshift squadron room/environmental shack/all-around squadron squat. He stared at Turk as the pilot entered.

“What the hell happened out there?” the colonel demanded as Turk began taking off his speed pants.

“We shot down one of the UAVs,” said Turk. “Other one disappeared under the water.”

“Yeah, but what happened to our plane?”

“Basically, it had a hole burned in the fuel tank,” said Cowboy.

“I’m talking to Captain Mako, Lieutenant. Thank you for your input.”

“They said something about it loosening a seam,” said Turk, careful to keep his tone scientific. “The crew chief’s gonna talk to some of our tech experts. They’re real interested in the weapon.”

“How did you get yourself in that position to begin with?” It was more an accusation than a question.

“He was saving my butt,” said Cowboy. “If it weren’t for him, I would’ve swam home.”

Greenstreet shook his head, then sighed and walked out.

“Glad you’re feeling better,” said Cowboy to his back.

“Thanks for standing up for me,” Turk told him.

“Hey, what are brothas for?” Cowboy laughed.

Changing the subject, he said, “You fly against these kind of things all the time?”

“Enough.”

“That’s what I want to do,” said Cowboy. “I’d love to get that sort of gig.”

“As a test pilot?”

“Well, you’re more than that, right? That’s why you’re out here.”

“True.”

“That’s what I want to do,” said Cowboy again.

“Really?”

“Damn straight.”

“They may be looking for pilots soon,” said Turk. He didn’t think it necessary to tell Cowboy why.

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, really. I don’t know what sort of qualifications they’re going to want. But they probably are going to be interested in anyone who’s already been in combat. Of course, you wouldn’t only be flying F-35s. You probably wouldn’t fly them at all.”

“What do you have to do to sign up?”

“You have to talk to my boss, for starters.”

“And you can get me in with him?”

“It’s a her,” said Turk.

“Oh, OK. Sorry.”

“I’m just giving you a heads-up.”

“Thanks. Do you think she’d want me?”

“I don’t know what they’d be looking for, exactly,” said Turk. “But I’ll try and find out. And I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“Great. Let’s go grab some food.”

Another shoulder chuck started Turk out of the trailer and in the direction of the mess tent. But they’d only gotten halfway there when Danny Freah hailed them down — literally waving his arms to get Turk’s attention.

“We have a possible ID on the submarine,” he told Turk. “It’s a civilian craft bought in New Zealand six months ago. We’d like you to take a look and see what you think.”

“I didn’t see it too well,” confessed Turk. “Did you, Cowboy?”

“I think I can remember it.”

“Come on, both of you.”

“It does look like that could be it,” said Cowboy five minutes later. He was down on his hands and knees, face practically pushed into the screen of one of the Whiplash displays. A synthetic radar image of what might have been a small pleasure boat was on the screen.

It might have been a small pleasure boat. Or a submarine along the lines of a Seattle 1000, a luxury civilian submarine made by one of the preeminent companies in the business, U.S. Submarines. An engineer with the firm had studied the image and decided that, while the craft wasn’t one built by his company, it possibly could be a submarine.

Which was roughly Cowboy’s judgment as well.

Possibly.

The submarine had been purchased in New Zealand, supposedly by a Japanese businessman who intended on sailing it to Japan. That was a little unusual, given the length of the journey and the fact that he could have easily had another delivered direct from the States. More unusual was the fact that the submarine did not appear to be registered or docked anywhere in Shikoku province, where the businessman allegedly was from.

But the real reason for Danny’s interest was a routine satellite observation photo from a few weeks back that showed the submarine near an island in the area of the Sembuni Reefs offshore of East Malaysia.

The only way to know for certain if the submarine was using the island was to go there. And sooner rather than later. But the Whiplash team was still twelve hours from reaching Malaysia.

That wasn’t a problem, as far as Captain Thomas was concerned.

“We have plenty of people for an assault,” he told Danny after watching Cowboy and Turk tentatively ID’ing the sub. “Let’s get out there.”

“How soon can you be ready?” Danny asked.

“We’re Marines. We’re always ready.” He grinned. “We can take off in an hour. Less if you need us to.”

Danny turned to Turk and Cowboy. “Can you guys fly cover?”

“If they let me near a plane,” said Turk.

“They will,” said Cowboy.

“I’ll talk to Colonel Greenstreet,” said Danny. “Are you guys sure you’re not tired?”

Turk shrugged. Cowboy shook his head. “Like the captain said, I’m a Marine. I don’t get tired.”

“You’re going to fly over that island in broad daylight?” asked Colonel Greenstreet. “If they have antiair there, you’re going to draw all sorts of fire.”

“The satellite images don’t show anything like that,” said Danny. “Even though they’re a couple of days old, I think it’s unlikely they moved anything in.”

“The photos also don’t show your aircraft. Or even that sub,” added Greenstreet.

“True.”

“It’s not the F-35s I’m worried about,” said Greenstreet. “It’s the Ospreys. They’re sitting ducks. You can put an RPG into the side and they’ll go down. What you have to do,” he added, “is have the F-35s take a couple of runs and try and suck out any defenses. Then you have the Ospreys come from this end, where at least they might have a chance if someone tries shooting at them.”

“Agreed,” said Danny.

The island was small — maybe ten acres, half of it covered with trees and thick brush. Shaped like an irregular opal, it had a necklace that sprawled from one side — a jagged reef that poked over the waves at several different points and extended for about a half mile.

The working theory was that the sub recovered the aircraft and returned it there for launching. A small rocket engine was attached to the rear of the aircraft, which was then launched from a small gantry like a guided missile. That meant the base could be small and easily hidden in the jungle. Whiplash analysts put the probability of the base being there at only seventy-five percent.

How exactly they came up with the percentage hadn’t been revealed.

“So you land here and here,” said Greenstreet, pointing at the sides of the island opposite the treed area. “You may need support fire on that tree line.”

“That’s exactly what we think,” said Captain Thomas, the ground commander. “So you have to be ready to bomb the area.”

“And there’s a possibility they may launch when they see us coming,” said Danny. “You have to be ready for that as well.”

“Obviously.”

“How many aircraft can you give us?” asked Danny.

“I have two pilots, myself and Cowboy. Lieutenant Van Garetn, that is,” added Greenstreet, using Cowboy’s real name.

“I think we oughta fly Turk out there, too,” said Cowboy. “He knows how these things fight.”

Danny glanced at Turk, who was standing quietly against the wall on the opposite end of the room. He was staring blankly at the projection of the island. He seemed more like his old self; less angry, a little easier-going. There was always going to be a hard edge to him now, and an even harder core. Danny knew that seeing people who were close to you get killed changed your brain chemistry forever. But maybe Turk was coming out of the worst part of the dark place Iran had left him in.

“We could fly three planes,” said Greenstreet. The vaguest note of reluctance mixed into his clipped, professional aviator tone. “We can kit one of them up for air-to-air, and mix the others. If Captain Mako is up for it.”

“I’m good,” said Turk.

Thomas wrapped up with an impromptu, “Let’s get going and kick butt the Marine Corps way.”

Danny smiled, but it was Turk who had the last word:

“And if that doesn’t work, we’ll give them a touch of Whiplash.”

13

“We’re getting really good data flow from the Marine F-35s,” said the techie supervising the data collection, Hy Wen. “We’re good to go whenever they are.”

Breanna nodded. The Cube’s situation room — a complex of data stations arranged theater-style in front of a massive wall screen on the very bottom level of the Cube — was packed to overflowing. Exactly ninety-eight analysts and technicians had been brought in for the project, both to gather and analyze data on the UAVs and to support Danny, Whiplash, and the Marines. It was the most people they’d ever had in the Cube at one time.

The only problem was feeding them. Literally. Greasy Hands Parsons — Breanna’s special assistant and majordomo — was currently trying to solve that problem with a cook over at the CIA kitchens. Hopefully, he would solve it soon — Breanna was starving.

She tried to get her mind off food by walking around the workstations. She found Ray Rubeo halfway down, arms folded, hunched over an analyst from the Air Force. The analyst was a cryptographer, tasked with trying to break any encryptions in real time.

“Just like the old days, huh, Ray?”

He frowned.

Breanna sometimes suspected he didn’t like people.

Other times she was sure of it.

14

Turk had gone much longer stretches without sleeping, but the stress of combat, and flying an aircraft he wasn’t thoroughly used to, was starting to wear him down. The sides of his head felt numb, his eyes were scratchy, and his throat was sore. On top of which, his arms and upper back kept cramping.

Couple more hours, he told himself. Then we sleep.

Turk knew from experience that once things got hot — when the Marines went in, or if the UAVs appeared — everything that was bothering him would disappear. The problem was the long intervals of boredom a fighter pilot inevitably had to endure. The briefs, the preflight, the prep, the long flight to target, the ride home — these were all the very thick bread that sandwiched the few minutes of excitement he lived for.

Very thick bread, especially with Greenstreet cutting the slices.

“All right, Basher flight. We’re zero five from the target. Basher Two, you are my wing. Basher Three, you are top cover. Acknowledge.”

“Basher Two acknowledges,” said Cowboy.

“Three,” said Turk tersely.

“Sounding a little tired up there, Three,” offered Cowboy.

“Negative,” said Turk. He was at 22,000 feet, a good 10,000 over the other aircraft. He’d picked that altitude because it was a few thousand feet over the starting point for the Flighthawks’ favorite long-range attack routine against ground attack aircraft. Of course, there were literally dozens of different routines the computer guiding the UAV interceptor might use. And in Turk’s opinion, the Marine F-35s should worry more about MANPADs — shoulder launched ground-to-air missiles — than UAVs.

“Let’s do this,” said Greenstreet, hitting the throttle to spurt ahead.

Turk juiced his gas. His heartbeat began picking up. He scanned the sky from left to right and back, checked his readouts, then his radar.

“Nothing,” said Greenstreet as his F-35 approached the reef at the side of the island.

The spit of land was so tiny that the aircraft were over it in literally half a heartbeat. Turk stretched himself upright in the ejection seat, alert, on edge — this was the point to watch for a response, for now it was obvious to anyone that they were there.

Nothing.

“Infrared, radar, all systems clear. Nobody home,” said Greenstreet. “We take another pass. Stay with me.”

They banked wide and came around for another pass in the same direction, this time lower but just as fast. Turk felt himself starting to lose a bit of his edge. He warned himself this was the most dangerous point of the mission, a bit of a lie but a well-intentioned one. He needed to stay alert; he needed to be ready.

“Nothing down there but sand rats,” said Cowboy after they cleared the island.

“Low and slow,” said Greenstreet.

They took two more passes without drawing a response or seeing anything move on the island.

“I’m going to talk to the Ospreys,” said Greenstreet as Basher One rose from the final flyover at 3,000 feet. “They should be here inside ten minutes.”

A few minutes later aboard Marine Osprey One, Danny Freah steadied himself at the back of the aircraft’s rear ramp, waiting for the Osprey to touch down. He had his gun in his hand, loaded and ready to fire. The F-35s hadn’t drawn a response or seen anyone on the island, but that wasn’t a guarantee the place was deserted. Danny knew from experience that even the best radar and infrared detection systems could be fooled with patience and creativity. He’d been ambushed too many times in his career to take a landing like this — against a well-equipped and undeniably intelligent opponent — for granted.

“Charlie Platoon! Ready!” shouted an NCO as the rotorcraft settled into its landing squat.

“Ready!” shouted the rest of the company. They were loud enough to briefly drown out the engines.

The ramp fell and the Marines hustled out. They might not be considered a “Tier One” group, but they were as professional, moving quickly across the sand as they stormed the open beach.

The platoon’s first objective was to take holding positions along a low rise near the center of the open area of the island. The jets were then called in for another flyover, while the Marines watched for a reaction. That done, two three-man groups got up and ran to the tree line. When they didn’t find anything or draw fire, they plunged a few yards deeper. With still no contact, the commander unleashed the unit in a systematic search of the island.

Danny, trailing behind, couldn’t have organized them better. But if he’d been hooked up to a lie detector and questioned, he would have had to admit that he was disappointed: if the people with the UAVs weren’t here, where were they?

As the ground units scoured the island, Greenstreet had Turk extend his orbit outward, theorizing that the UAVs might be using this as bait and would launch from another base.

A civilian airliner twenty miles to the north provided the briefest of diversions before Turk double-checked its identifier with the Cube. Otherwise, the sky was empty, except for the Marine force.

There were dozens and dozens of little islands and reefs below, but the vast majority weren’t big enough for a walrus to sunbathe on. Turk took his circle wider, double-checking his position with the other aircraft as he flew. Trying to stay alert, he ran himself through the possible reactions to a UAV, trying to guess where it would come from. He thought about Cowboy and the pilot’s desire to fly with Whiplash.

Then he thought of Li. That was very dangerous — she was distracting even at the best of times. He refocused his thoughts as well as his eyes, examining the islands and waves below.

Turk’s attention drifted again. Suddenly he was back in Iran, flying the Phantom that he and Stoner had used to escape in. MiGs were coming after them.

God, am I ever going to get away from them? Flying this old crate, desperate for fuel, a sitting duck…

He jumped upright against his restraints. He hadn’t fallen asleep, but he’d been slightly dazed, inattentive. He thought of taking one of the emergency “go” pills he had in his leg pocket before something serious happened.

The AN/APG-81 AESA radar system had picked out two contacts at ninety miles, coming fast in his direction from 30,000 feet.

Fast movers. J-15s. Chinese.

J-15s! Chinese carrier planes.

“I have two contacts coming hot from the northwest,” said Turk, hitting the mike. “Chinese.”

Danny reached the edge of the island and pushed out onto the shallow ledge overlooking the water. If there had been people here in the past ten years, they hadn’t left a trace.

The ocean spread out before him, the water shimmering with the afternoon sun. The waves were so gentle that they barely made a sound as they lapped against the rocks skimming the rim of the island.

The place was picturesque, at least. Maybe in a few years some international hotel chain would discover it and set up a massive resort.

“What do you think, Colonel?” asked Captain Thomas.

“Analysts were wrong,” said Danny.

“Not wrong — they hedged their bets.” Captain Thomas smiled. “We just happened to be in the twenty-fifth percentile.”

He was referring to the estimate that there was a seventy-five percent chance the base would be here.

“How do they come up with those percentages?” asked the Marine. “Dart boards?”

“I think it’s dice,” said Danny.

“Military intelligence. Oldest oxymoron going.”

Danny picked his way across the rocks, skirting the water. The truth was, the estimates the analysts made were usually pretty good; they were able to deal with an incredible amount of data and make guesses based on historical patterns. But in cases where there wasn’t a past to speak of, it was all just a guess, wasn’t it? Garbage in, garbage out, as they liked to say.

“Hey, Colonel,” yelled one of the Marines who’d come out on the shore about twenty yards away. “What do you make of that?”

Danny walked over to the private, who was pointing at the reef. “Make of what?”

“Next to the reef?”

“In the water there. See how it jugs out a bit? Under the water?”

“I don’t see anything but the reef,” said Danny, staring. The rocks formed a small, shallow cove; the water was lighter, almost a pale green in the sun.

“The rocks and coral and what have you are irregular. There’s a straight line there.”

Danny stared but he couldn’t tell what the private was talking about.

“I’m going to take a look,” said the Marine. He began walking out on the sand that had piled up on both sides of the reef.

“Don’t fall in,” warned Danny.

The private waved his hand. He took a few more steps, then retreated back to shore where he gave his rifle to one of his companions, then pulled off his tactical vest and boots. Stripping to his shorts and undershirt, he hopped into the water, then swam and walked to the part of the reef he’d been pointing to. He glanced around before diving under the water.

“What the hell is that private doing?” growled Captain Thomas, walking out from the brush.

“He thinks he found something,” said the man holding his rifle.

“Maybe it’ll be his sanity,” groused the captain.

The private resurfaced. “It’s dug out,” he yelled. “Colonel, it’s dug out.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are metal beams here, and on the other side it’s real deep. Watch.”

He dove back under the water, bobbed up, then disappeared again. A few moments later he resurfaced farther down the reef. The water there came up to his waist.

“Like it’s a little minislip for a boat,” said the man. “I think there’s a channel that extends out into the ocean.”

Danny turned to Captain Thomas. “Do you have any combat divers?”

“No. I may be able to get a diver flown in from the Navy ships with the MEU.”

Danny glanced at his watch. “My guys’ll be here in a few hours. They’ll have gear.”

“Maybe we’re not in the twenty-fifth percentile after all,” said Thomas, a little more cheerful.

“Colonel Freah!” A Marine lance corporal pushed through the trees. “Basher flight needs to talk to you. They have Chinese aircraft heading their way.”

Turk’s aircraft was “clean” — there were no weapons or other stores on his wings — and therefore almost surely invisible to the approaching Chinese fighters. He had a pair of AMRAAMs in his weapon bay; he could thumb them up and shoot the planes down before they realized he was there.

But of course he couldn’t do that. They were all in international airspace. He was not under threat, and without any legal or logical reason to attack.

He could do it, though. There was a certain power in the knowledge.

“Basher Three, say situation,” radioed Greenstreet.

“Two bogies,” he repeated. “Same course and speed as before.”

“Stay passive on your sensors. We’ll supply the data.”

“Roger that,” said Turk.

He’d turned off the active radar as soon as the other aircraft were ID’ed. The F-35s could share their sensor data with each other, which made it more difficult for enemies to attack or even know how many planes they were dealing with. At this point it was probable that the two Chinese pilots didn’t know he was there.

“We’re going to stay north of the island to keep them from getting too curious about what’s going on down there.”

“May not work,” said Turk. “Whatever surveillance aircraft they’re using may have picked up the Ospreys earlier.”

“True, but it’s the best we got,” said Greenstreet. “And your colonel suggested it. You keep your eyes on everything.”

“Acknowledged.”

“And don’t shoot.”

The two Chinese aircraft were depicted on his radar screen as red diamonds with sticks showing their directional vectors. The bands on the radar circle helped categorize threats as well as organize contacts. As a general rule, the closer the circle they were in, the more serious the threat. The Chinese planes had just crossed from the farthest band into the third circle, sixty miles from the aircraft. They were about ten degrees off his nose to the west, flying an almost parallel course. They were closing on him at a rate of roughly seventeen nautical miles a minute; Turk had somewhere between two and three minutes before they would be able to detect him with their standard radars.

Eons in an air-to-air fight.

Unlike Basher Three, the other two F-35s had bombs under their wings, making them more easily visible on radar. The two Chinese fighters apparently could see them — a few seconds after Turk gave Greenstreet his status, they hailed them.

“Unidentified American planes, you are flying in Chinese territory,” said one of the pilots in easily understood but accented English. “Say intentions.”

“We are on a routine training mission in international waters,” replied Greenstreet. “State your intentions.”

“You are in Chinese territory. You must leave.”

It was a typical Chinese bluff, and Greenstreet answered it as it deserved to be answered — with quick sarcasm. “Check your maps, boys. This is international airspace and we are not moving.”

Turk banked and began to climb in the direction the Chinese fighters were taking. If Greenstreet could be a prig and a pain on the ground, now his attitude was not only appropriate but reassuring. Turk knew he wasn’t going to take guff from the Chinese, and there was no doubt about how he would act if fur flew.

The Chinese hadn’t switched their weapons radars on, and nothing they were doing could be considered antagonistic.

Obnoxious, maybe, but even there they were low-key by typical Chinese PAF standards. Turk had heard many tales about surveillance planes being buzzed so closely by fighters in the South China Sea that they had lost paint.

Turk had never encountered a real Shenyang J-15, though he knew the aircraft’s capabilities and weaknesses from simulations. The Feisha — or “Flying Shark,” as it was called in Chinese pinyin — was a two-engine multirole aircraft capable of hitting Mach 2.4. Either heavily influenced by the Sukhoi Su-33 or directly cloned from the Russian fighter — you could never be completely sure with the Chinese — it featured the latest in home-grown avionics technology. Like the Su-33, it had outstanding flying characteristics, but it was limited in range and reliability by its use of Chinese-manufactured engines, which were not on a par with the Russian originals, to say nothing of Western counterparts. The weight of the aircraft and its need to operate off carriers that lacked catapult systems were further handicaps. The fact that the J-15s were moving quickly meant they would not be able to linger long.

On the plus side, the J-15 had descended from some of the best close-quarters fighters ever built, and would have a distinct advantage against the F-35 at very close range. The American aircraft were meant to destroy enemies at long range, before the enemy even knew they were there. If they weren’t allowed to do that, a good portion of their edge over other types would be gone. In a knife fight, superior electronics, ease of maintenance, and long-term dependability meant very little.

The Chinese aircraft repeated their warning, which Greenstreet ignored. Climbing through 25,000 feet, Turk positioned Basher Three so it could swoop down behind the Chinese planes if they kept on their present course. The J-15s, meanwhile, slowed, perhaps fine-tuning their intercept. They seemed to have no idea that Turk was now above them, or even that he was there at all.

Circling north of the operation area, Basher One and Two were between the Chinese fighters and the assault force on the island. As the J-15s closed to within ten miles, they turned so they could pull into a course parallel to them. Turk maneuvered Basher Three toward the point where the intercept would occur. The two Chinese planes throttled back, aligning themselves so they could easily get on the F-35s’ tails — a very dangerous position for the Americans.

Turk decided he would return the favor. He pushed his nose down, then gave a judicious tap of the throttle that allowed him to plop down behind them as they hailed Basher flight with yet another warning.

“You are in our airspace,” said the Chinese leader. “You will leave or be—”

He didn’t finish what he was saying for at that moment he realized where Turk was. He jerked his plane left; his wingman went right. Both dished off flares and chaff even though Turk’s targeting radar wasn’t active and, except for his positioning, hadn’t done anything specifically threatening.

At least nothing that would stand up in a court of law, let alone public opinion.

“We are in international airspace,” said Greenstreet calmly. “Conducting routine training missions. You will desist from bothering us.”

The Chinese aircraft regrouped to the west. After radioing their controller for instructions, they were apparently told to go home and did so, without comment.

“Tail between their legs and bye-bye,” said Cowboy. “That ends that.”

“I doubt it,” said Greenstreet. Then he added, much to Turk’s surprise, “Good timing, Basher Three. We’ll make a Marine aviator out of you yet.”

15

Braxton nearly missed the import of the warning: Chinese agent Wen-lo had been transported in the last few days to the Mao carrier task force.

Wen-lo was one of several Chinese agents who’d tried to contact Braxton and reach an “accommodation” with Kallipolis over the past several years. The fact that he had been taken to the Chinese carrier task group operating in the near vicinity meant that he was looking to up his game.

Braxton had never met Wen-lo, but he detested him nonetheless as a pawn of a repressive regime. He hated the Chinese government at least as much as he hated America’s, and had vehemently rebuffed all attempts at contact. Other members of Kallipolis would have been far more accommodating; they saw nothing wrong with selling older technology to them. “They’ll steal it anyway” was a common excuse.

Braxton did a quick search for additional news on Wen-lo, but the rest of the results were several months old. Wen-lo worked for PLA-N technical intelligence — the Chinese navy. Though still in his thirties, he had the rank of hai jun da xiao, equivalent to a rear admiral or OF-6 in the American navy. So presumably he could command decent resources from the task force.

Too many distractions, thought Braxton. He would focus on the Dreamland Whiplash people for now and deal with the Chinese later on.

16

It was as easy as child’s play — assuming the child was very, very bright.

The reef on the target island had helped hide an underwater refueling and stocking area. There was space for two bays; at the bottom below the ever-shifting sand there was an automated mechanism for refueling the submersibles. The equipment was relatively simple — on par with equipment used by robot vacuum cleaners, one of Rubeo’s techies quipped — but it was entirely autonomous: there was no need for a human to initiate the process or intervene in any way. It was one more indication of how sophisticated the people behind the UAV system were.

It also gave the intel people numerous leads. Combined with the material recovered from the UAV that had been shot down, they had a large number of leads and were rapidly filling in details about the people behind the drones.

More important in the short term, the underwater structure gave them something to look for. Or rather, it gave their computers a new set of parameters to try to match.

They found a match on an island in the Sembuni Reefs, roughly eight miles away. About a square mile, it was much larger than the island where the submarine station had been found, and also uninhabited. It was just south of the disputed zone with China, along the edge of the main shipping channels.

But they also found a match in a place nearly four hundred miles farther north, on a formation known as Final Reef — and half a dozen other names, depending on who was doing the naming.

The reef was in the contested zone between Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China. Malaysia and the Philippines claimed the reef based on its location along the continental shelf; the other two countries claimed the area by ancient fishing rights. In a maneuver designed to boost their claims — not just to that reef, but to the Kalayaan islands — the Philippine government had sent an old American merchant transport, the Final Pleasure, to the atoll five years before, using it as a base for a half-dozen Filipino marines who essentially asserted squatter rights there. The Chinese had responded by stationing an ever-changing flotilla of fishing vessels in the area; when one left, another would invariably take its place. Malaysia and Vietnam occasionally sent patrol boats to the vicinity; there had been two shooting incidents over the past eighteen months, with the patrol boats shooting “in the area of” a Chinese fishing vessel and the Filipino ship. There were no injuries in either case, nor had there been a noticeable effect on the conflict.

“The location of this last base is very delicate,” said Reid. “Geopolitically — this is potentially a land mine.”

“That may very well be why it’s there,” suggested Rubeo.

“If it’s a base at all,” said Reid. “There’s a single girder at the stern of the ship, underwater.”

“The metal is identical to the others,” said Rubeo. “We see a rope ladder coiled on the deck. It is certainly worth checking.”

“No sub there,” said Reid.

“The proximity to the reef makes it difficult to be certain,” noted Rubeo. “That entire side of the ship is shadowed by the hull and the reef. But we have no firm evidence of a sub, no.”

“They must be working with the Filipinos,” said Breanna, “if they have a base there.”

“Or they’re paying the equivalent of rent,” said Reid. “That would be more their style. The images of the merchant ship don’t show a large presence, if there’s one at all.”

Reid pulled up a brief PowerPoint slide show on the island conflict prepared by a CIA analyst. Most of the slides were attempting to put the conflict into the larger context, but three showed the merchant ship and made estimates of its capabilities and the size of the force there. If the conspiracy had a large base on the ship or the surrounding reef, it was extremely well-hidden.

“We have to check it out,” said Reid. “At a minimum.”

“True.”

“And even if this is some sort of mistake on our part — even if there is no base on the atoll, the fact that there are two submarines that we can identify, the fact that there are definitely two bases — it’s larger than we thought and much more involved.”

Breanna waved her hand over the screen, moving back to the slide on Braxton. Even after all these years, she recognized the face — hollow cheeks, bleached white skin, eyes that seemed a size too small for the head. He was still thin, and his hair, once long, was cut to a quarter inch of his scalp. It was prematurely white now, and he had a scar over his right eye, but the stare was familiar.

“If we’re serious about finding them,” said Breanna, “we have to move quickly. And we can’t tell the Filipinos.”

“Well…”

They looked at each other. Both had worked together long enough to know each other’s thoughts.

“If we tell the White House, there’s a good possibility things will get very complicated,” said Breanna.

“If we tell the President.”

“We’re authorized to pursue Braxton and Kallipolis already.”

“We are.”

“I’d say we should just pursue it and not ask for permission,” said Breanna.

“I think I have to agree. We already have authorization.”

Breanna considered the situation. The Chinese had not registered a protest.

Which was worse? Waiting and possibly missing Braxton, or stumbling into an international incident?

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” she said finally.

“Agreed. Let’s authorize the mission.”