Zen breathed a reassuring sigh, since she was sure to get on him for being late. Instead of justifying his tardiness, her absence presented a perfect opportunity for turning the tables on the notoriously punctual captain; he could claim he’d been here the whole time, waiting outside. He stopped a few feet from the doorway and pulled his paperback from the corner of his seat, starting to position himself as if he’d been reading in the shade.
“More Roosevelt!” said Bree behind him.
“More Roosevelt,” he said, closing the biography of the President. “Where you been?”
“I was necking with Chief Parsons around the corner,” she said. Chief Master Sergeant “Greasy Hands” Parsons was in charge of the maintenance team and old enough to be her father — or grandfather.
“I’ve been waiting,” he said.
“Oh, baloney. I saw you come up.”
“Musta been some other pimp in a wheelchair.” Zen smiled at her.
“So which book is this?”
Bree reached down and picked it up; Zen saw the opening and snuck in a kiss.
“Heavy reading,” she said. The book was Geoffrey Ward’s A First Class Temperament. “Whatever happened to Sports Illustrated?”
“I only get it for the swimsuit issue,” said Zen. His interest in Roosevelt had started by accident during his flight home from Turkey, and now he was truly fascinated by the only man to have been elected President four times — all the time confined to a wheelchair. He’d worked through several FDR volumes, and was now eyeing Kenneth Davis’s five books, the definitive tome on Roosevelt’s life. While he joked that he wanted to see how a “fellow gimp made good,” what truly fascinated Zen was Roosevelt’s ability to get along with so many people.
His charm certainly was innate. As Undersecretary of the Navy, well before being crippled, Roosevelt had practically started a war with Mexico — against the Administration’s wishes and the country’s interests. Still, his boss had treated him like a son.
How did he manage to get on with so many people after polio took his legs? Wasn’t he bitter? Why didn’t bitterness come out in his relationships, which seemed to show no trace of anger or frustration? Zen didn’t fool himself that his own relationships were on nearly so lofty a plain; at least privately, he railed about his condition every day.
“Ready for lunch?” Bree asked.
“Starving.”
“Red Room?”
“Nah, Admiral Allen’s there, and Ax says stay away.”
“Allen? Is that who landed on my runway?”
Zen gave her the gossip he’d heard from Chief Gibbs: Apparently the admiral was on a tear because his people had gotten their fannies waved during the Piranha exercises. One of Allen’s favorite commanders, Admiral Woods, had pulled some strings to alter the parameters of the test in his favor — and still lost. There was justice in the world, Zen concluded. They Navy being so damned concerned about their little egos being crushed that a top admiral had to come and personally try to soothe things over gave Zen immense satisfaction.
It wasn’t until they were at their table with full trays of food that Zen realized Bree was distracted. He made a joke about her choice — salad with a side of yogurt — then one about his — a double helping of homemade meat loaf, with extra gravy. She hardly snickered.
“Bad flight?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Something up?”
“I fly every day,” he said.
“You know what I mean. Flying a robot. It’s not the same thing.”
“Yeah,” he said. He missed a lot more than flying.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Jeff,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” he told her.
“It’s a promotion. It’s important.”
Zen slid back a little in his seat, looking at her face. Breanna was not by any definition, a worrier. Her eyes were fraught with it now.
“Hey.” He paused, not really sure what to say. After an awkward silence, he stumbled on. “There’re plenty of different projects out there. You don’t have to take something you don’t want. But if you do take it, I know you can do it,” he added quickly. Her lips had pursed — a bad sign. “I mean you’re beyond capable of it. I mean, that’s why you got it.”
“The Megafortresses.”
A sore subject, he knew, since she had hoped to inherit Major Nancy Cheshire’s place when she left. But Merce Alou, who outranked her, had been tagged.
“To be honest with you, Bree, the EB-52, not that it’s a dead end or anything, but it’s now, uh, mature.” Zen hated using the bureaucratese, but it did essentially describe the program. The EB-52 was now a production aircraft; the advances were sure to be incremental. “The UMB. Hell, that’s the future. Or something that comes out of it. Ask anybody. But if it’s not what you want to do, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s a big adjustment, that’s all,” she said, poking her salad. She frowned, but this time at him. “You’re not going to eat all of that, are you? It’s pure fat.”
He laughed and reached for his soda — then yawped with pain.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Tooth. Geez.”
“Are you going to get it fixed or what?”
“This afternoon.” The cold soda had shot through the nerve into every cell in his skull, and his head reverberated with pain. He put down the glass and rubbed the back of his jaw on both sides hoping to ease it somehow.
“Not going to cancel this time?”
“I didn’t cancel on purpose,” he mumbled.
Bree’s manner had brightened; in fact, she seemed to be suppressing a giggle.
“I’m glad my misery is entertaining,” he told her.
“Don’t be a sissy.”
“You filled it with extra ice,” he said. “You knew I had the appointment.”
“Just a coincidence,” said his wife.
Freed from his onerous escort duty, Danny Freah took a tour of his perimeter, checking on the security post. His body still felt the lingering effects of his “visit” to Turkey, Iraq, and Iran a few months before; he’d been injured in a mission that recovered data and parts from an Iranian antiaircraft laser facility. His legs were especially bothersome — Danny had stretched and partially torn ligaments in his right knee.
Not that he’d taken any time off to mend. You had to break something for that. Like your neck.
Danny eyed the fence along the road, looking at the video cameras posted at irregular intervals. The entire base was constantly watched. Not just by human eyes, but computer programs, which searched for spatial anomalies, as the programmers stubbornly referred to intruders. Additional sensors were buried in the perimeter area. Mines and remote-controlled ground defenses — basically old M2HB machine guns with massive belts of ammunition in modified fifty-gallon drums — were webbed around the fences. A generation ago, it might have taken the better part of an army regiment to provide as secure a perimeter, Dreamland could, at least in theory, be secured with only six men, though Danny’s security squadron was considerably larger and growing every day.
He turned off the perimeter road, driving up a short hill toward a bunker halfway between the underground hangars and the main gate. A brown slant of cement marked the entrance to the hardened security monitoring station. Lieutenant William McNally and two airmen were inside, reviewing the security feeds and drinking coffee, not necessarily in that order.
“Hey, Boss,” said McNally as Danny came through the doors. “How’s the admiral?”
“Looked like he was searching for a boat.”
“Can we shoot down his plan next time? Razor guys say they had it nailed at twenty miles.”