The startled expressions on their faces answered that question. “Hol-ee shit!” Rinc exclaimed. “This is unbelievable!”
“I take that as a yes,” Patrick said. “Listen up, everyone. We don’t have time to waste. We have some academics to start with today and tonight. You deploy day after tomorrow.”
“Deploy? Where?”
“Your Bones are being modified with a few improvements,” Patrick replied. “We’re working round the clock to get them ready.”
“Where are you, sir?” Dewey asked.
“I can’t tell you, not just yet,” Patrick said. “Once you’re under way, you’ll be fully briefed.”
“Listen, General,” Rebecca interjected. “I wanted to talk to you about the tactics you used to bring us here. I don’t like your men barging in on me, and I sure as shit don’t like your commandos shooting my guys up with nerve agents. We want an explanation. You can threaten us all you want, but you can’t force us to fly your planes or perform any missions for you.”
“Fair enough,” Patrick said. “Conference in Colonel Luger and Colonel Briggs, please… Dave, Hal, can you escort the crew to Foxtrot row? Take them through the Corridor.”
“Yes, sir,” Luger acknowledged. “Follow me, everyone.” He escorted the three guardsmen to a waiting van — Long was still out cold, but now being monitored by an emergency medical technician as he started to come around — and a few minutes later they arrived at Foxtrot row, the place where the Nevada Air Guard’s B-1 bombers were being hangared. As when they first arrived, they had to pass through another series of security checkpoints, including a handprint and retinal identification analyzer and an X-ray corridor to check for implanted listening devices, weapons, or recording devices.
“What a goatfuck,” Rebecca said. “All to see our own planes.”
“They’re our planes now,” she heard Patrick say in her head.
“Is that you, General McLanahan?” Rebecca asked, shocked to hear that voice come out of thin air. “Are you still listening to me, General?”
“We’re still connected until you disconnect,” Patrick said. “Your planes are through that corridor ahead of you. We have some techs and engineers waiting to start briefing you on the modifications.”
“What do you mean, they’re yours?”
“Governor Gunnison and General Bretoff have leased the planes to us for an indefinite period of time,” Dave Luger replied. “Actually, ever since you flunked your pre-D, we’ve been modifying them. You need to learn how to fly them right away. You start action in the forward area in two days.”
“You’re still assuming we want to be a part of any of this,” Rebecca said. “Judging by the treatment we got this morning and the support we’ve received from you and your organization, I vote we tell you to go to hell.”
“It would be a shame to lose you, but at the end of our little tour here, if you don’t want in, I’ll cut the bracelets off and send you home,” Patrick’s ethereal voice in their heads said. “We can’t take the chip out without a surgeon, but it’s completely safe and quite inert without the bracelet, I promise. I’ve had one in for years. Deal?”
Rebecca still looked skeptical and did not reply, but something on the wall caught her eye, and she went over to examine it. It was a series of photographs, memorabilia, charts, and other items, including a control wheel from a B-52. Rinc and Annie went over to look at the items as well.
What riveted Rebecca Furness’s attention was the big WAC chart and a remarkable pencil and paper recreation of an old two-page SAC Form 200 flight plan next to it — describing a B-52 bomber flight from Dreamland to Kavaznya in the Soviet Union, with a final stop in Anadyr near the Bering Strait. The chart had the triangle fix position marks on them, along with the old-style cross data blocks with Zulu time, track, groundspeed, and winds or drift angle. The Form 200 was filled out in meticulous detail with precise architect-like printing. It was dated 1988 and even had the headings filled out — it was as if whoever drew this thing up wanted to duplicate a standard Form 200 exactly, from memory.
Rebecca’s mouth opened in surprise as she read the names of the crew members on the flight plan: Brad Elliott, pilot; John Ormack, copilot; Patrick McLanahan, radar navigator; David Luger, navigator; Wendy Tork, electronic warfare officer; and Angelina Pereira, gunner. Most of those names were legends in the Air Force, pilots or engineers or weapons designers known the world over — and here they were, all on one mysterious hand-drawn flight plan.
“Kavaznya — that was that antisatellite laser site in Siberia, wasn’t it?” Rebecca asked. “The one that had the accident? I remember the Russians claimed we bombed it, but everyone said its reactor had a meltdown.” She looked at Luger in complete surprise. “You… you bombed it?”
“With a damned B-52,” Rinc said breathlessly. “Here’s a picture of it… I think it’s a B-52, with the long pointed nose and the stealth fighter tail. This is the control wheel off it. You flew a B-52 bomber all the way inside the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and bombed its most important secret military site?”
“I see you’ve noticed our little display,” Patrick said. “Be careful what you ask me, you two — you may find yourself sinking deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Dreamland, and once you’re in, you can never return.
“We can end the tour right here. Colonel Luger won’t show you what’s inside. You’ve seen more than anyone else not part of the program has ever seen before, and you are the first nonactive-duty military types to ever set foot in here. But once you step inside, I can’t take you out again. The bracelet stays on forever. You may get your life in the Air Guard back again, but you will always be tied into the high-level security and scrutiny of this place. From the moment you step through that door, somebody will always be listening.”
“I… I’m not sure if I want to do it,” Annie Dewey said, twisting the vinyl-covered bracelet absently, then rubbing the spot where the microchip was injected. “I don’t know if I want to be part of all this intrusion into my life.”
“She’s being honest with herself and with me,” Patrick said. “All of you better do the same. Like General Samson said, the life you’ll live sucks. You may get to return to Reno and fly for the Nevada Guard, but Big Brother will still be watching. You’ll always be under scrutiny, you’ll always be watched. Not only you but your families, your friends, your coworkers — anyone who comes in contact with you.
“But you’ll be a part of something extraordinary, exciting, almost mystical. We get to fly the hottest jets, test the hottest weapons. We’re not on the cutting edge here — we’re a generation or two beyond it already.”
Patrick meant to say it with great excitement, as he did to so many other newcomers to the base. But he knew what it was like in that corridor back in Dreamland, with the faces and memories of old friends staring back at him from many years and many adventures — and he couldn’t do it. Working here, living here, making the commitment to be part of this place, it wasn’t at all about excitement. It was about doing a terrible job against even more terrible odds — and winning with the fewest number of losses.
Patrick, sitting alone back in the conference room at Adak Naval Air Station, thought about the stuff back on the wall at Dreamland with his somber “thousand-yard stare,” as if his friends and partners, both living and dead, were waving to him from somewhere on the horizon — which they were. They were telling Patrick to let go of his feelings, share his fears with these people. The shadows of the dead had accepted these strangers — now Patrick had to do the same.