Dale Brown - Dreamland

“I’m sure we will, sir.”

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

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

“Okay, Greenie. Kick some ass.”

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

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

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

Talcom pointed to large swatches of Somalia coast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Egg.

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

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

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

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

“Captain Freah?”

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

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

“What would that be?”

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

“It does.”

“I count seven.”

“Six and me.”

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

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

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

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

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

“This isn’t a 707,” said Breanna.

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

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

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

He couldn’t resist smiling. “See?”

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

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

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

Freah followed her outside the hangar.

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

“Major Cheshire said it was doable.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Good fucking luck,” she said.

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

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

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

Breanna’s face turned red.

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

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

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

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

Somalia

22 October, 1996, 0620 local

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

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

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