Dale Brown: End Game

End Game

WRITTEN BY DALE BROWNAND JIM DEFELICE

Cover

Title Page DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND End Game WRITTEN BY DALE BROWNAND JIM DEFELICE

Prelude: Dreams

I: Test Run

II: Impossible!

III: Be Boarded, or Be Sunk

IV: Monkeys in the Middle

V: Fires of Hell

VI: Catastrophic Events

VII: Coming to Their Senses

VIII: Inevitability

IX: End Game

X: Tai-shan

XI: Fates Unknown

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Dreamland

Duty Roster

LIEUTENANT COLONEL TECUMSEH ‘DOG’ BASTIAN

Dreamland’s commander has been mellowed by the demands of his new command – but he’s still got the meanest bark in the West, and his bite is even worse.

MAJOR JEFFREY ‘ZEN’ STOCKARD

A top fighter pilot until a crash at Dreamland left him a paraplegic, Zen has volunteered for a medical program that may let him use his legs again. Can Dreamland survive with a key member away?

CAPTAIN BREANNA ‘RAP’ STOCKARD

Zen’s wife has seen him through his injury and rehabilitation. But can she balance her love for her husband with the demands of her career … and ambitions?

MAJOR MACK ‘THE KNIFE’ SMITH

Mack Smith is the best pilot in the world – and he’ll tell you so himself. But filling in for Zen on the Flighthawk program may be more than even he can handle.

CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH

Danny commands Whiplash – the ground attack team that works with the cutting-edge Dreamland aircraft and hightech gear.

JED BARCLAY

The young deputy to the National Security Advisor is Dreamland’s link to the President. Barely old enough to shave, the former science whiz kid now struggles to master the intricacies of world politics.

LIEUTENANT KIRK ‘STARSHIP’ ANDREWS

A top Flighthawk pilot, Starship is tasked to help on the Werewolf project, flying robot helicopters that are on the cutting edge of air combat. Adjusting to the aircraft is easy, but can he live with the Navy people who are in charge of it?

CAPTAIN HAROLD ‘STORM’ GALE, USN

As a young midshipman at Annapolis, Gale got Army’s goat – literally: he stole the West Point mascot just before the annual Army-Navy game. Now he’s applying the same brashness to his role as commander of the Abner Read. An accomplished sailor, the only thing he hates worse than the enemy is the Air Force.

Dreamland

Weapons Systems

MEGAFORTRESS

Refurbished B-52s, complete with new skin, new wings and tail section, new engines and new sensor systems. Besides generic versions, Dreamland flies EB-52s that carry AWACS and ground-surveillance radar, and others that carry electronic warfare and snooping equipment.

FLIGHTHAWK

Unmanned fighter aircraft typically flown from the lower weapons bay of the Megafortress. Depending on its configuration, a Megafortress will carry two or four of the robot aircraft.

WEREWOLF

Robot helicopters capable of being controlled from long-range through Dreamland’s dedicated satellite system. The versatile Werewolves look like miniaturized versions of the Russian Kamov Ka-50 Hokum helicopter gunship.

PIRANHA

A joint Navy/Air Force unmanned underwater probe, typically launched from a Megafortress on an ocean surveillance mission. Difficult to detect, the Piranha is often used to shadow enemy submarines.

DESTROYER – LITTORAL DD(L)

The Navy’s experimental destroyer, designed for warfare near coastlines. Considerably shorter than a conventional destroyer, the ship lies low in the water, its hull and superstructure angled to deflect radar waves. DD(L)s carry a lethal combination of Harpoon and Standard missiles, along with torpedoes and a sophisticated canon.

SHARKBOAT

The modern version of the classic PT boat, designed to operate with littoral warships such as the DD(L) 01 Abner Read.

He’d had the dream so many times it was more something he remembered than something he invented. Tiny bits of reality blurred into a jumbled progression that began and ended the same way. The beginning: running up Meadowview Street back to his condo, pursued by the sun. This was not a normal sun – he felt its stretching fingers grope his body, burning holes in his arms, neck, and face.

The end: the black wing of a redtail hawk sailing suddenly across and through the windscreen of his aircraft.

Neither of those things had an exact parallel in real life, even when the grotesque distortions were stripped away. Zen had gotten back to the house from his run well before the sun rose, and the robot plane that caused the air accident struck well behind the cockpit, snapping off his tailplane. But the logic of the dream crowded out history, sometimes even when he was awake.

The middle of the dream was always different. It usually involved bits and pieces of recent events, sometimes from sorties he’d flown for Dreamland, but more often just things that happened during the day. Often his wife Breanna was in the dream, talking to him or flirting or even making love. Today she was cooking him breakfast and complaining about the people who owned the condo downstairs. Their baby was screaming at the top of its lungs, keeping them awake.

‘How can you let a baby cry like that?’ she asked. ‘Let’s have a barbecue.’

The scene changed from their kitchen to a friend’s backyard patio. Instead of working the stove, Breanna was working the grill. When she turned away from it, Zen saw that it was piled high with wood.

‘Too smoky,’ he said, sitting in the cockpit of his F-15 rather than his wheelchair.

It’s too soon for the dream to end, he thought. But he coughed, and he was awake.

He still smelled smoke. Real smoke, from burning wood. The baby was still crying.

A baby the people downstairs didn’t have.

Not a baby, the smoke alarm.

‘Bree!’ he yelled, jerking up.

She wasn’t beside him.

‘Bree! Breanna!’

Zen started to get out of bed. His dazed brain forgot he was paralyzed, as if that fact belonged only to the dream. He tumbled to the floor.

Just as well – thick smoke curled above his head. He coughed, nearly choking.

Someone else coughed in the bathroom down the hall.

Breanna, his wife. ‘Help me!’ she cried.

Flames shot up from the floor ahead, illuminating the pitch-black condo. Zen pushed forward despite the heat and flames jumping in front of his face.

Part of his mind was still back in the dream. Was he dreaming? What was dream, and what was real?

He remembered getting into the airplane on the last day he walked, whacking his shin on the side of the cockpit as he got in, thinking the bruise was going to hurt for weeks.

‘Help me!’ cried Breanna.

He pushed his head next to the carpet and kept going. The bathroom door was closed.