Dale Brown - Dreamland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where did you get a copy of that?”

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

“Which cousin is that?”

“Off record?”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They could also see the Megafortress.

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

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

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

And the Flighthawk. Damn straight.

Who could resist the temptation to use them?

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

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

Bree’s.

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

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

“I find that hard to believe.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somalia

22 October 1996, 1900 local

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

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

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

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