The thoughts came to her in a sarcastic tone, almost as if someone else had said it. She was mad at her husband, though she wasn’t exactly sure why.
Because he was working with Jenn-i-fer?
Whom she hated. But Zen was always working with Jenn-i-fer; it wasn’t that big a deal.
Was it?
“Hey,” said a voice behind her. It startled her so badly she nearly lost her balance.
Stoner, the CIA officer aboard to act as general intelligence consultant and Fentress’s gofer.
“Mr. Stoner. We would prefer it if you kept your seat,” she told him.
“You’re up.”
“What can I do for you?” she said frostily.
“I was wondering if I could listen in on some of the com intercepts from the trawler, if they’re in the clear.”
“You speak Chinese?”
“A bit.”
“I doubt they’re in the clear,” she told him. “But we may be able to pipe them through. G back to your station and I’ll see.”
“Can I view them?”
civilians just didn’t get it sometimes.
“We’re too far from the actual position of the ships on the surface to seem them. We have radar indications, that’s all.”
“If you get close to them, I’d like to take a look. I might be able to tell you what kind of equipment they have. I’d be very interested.”
He had a handsome face, deep blue eyes that seemed out of place with his dark hair.
We’ll try. Use the interphone from now on,” she told him. “Downstairs.”
He stared at her a while longer, then nodded.
“Kind of a jerk,” she said as she sat back in her seat.
“Who?” said Chris.
“Stoner.”
“Yeah? Seemed okay to me. First CIA guy I ever met.”
“Give him a sitrep screen, all right? Show him where everything is.”
Breanna checked with Collins about the intercepts. They’d only isolated one or two from the spy ships, and they were all heavily encoded. “Give Mr. Stoner a lowdown, would you?”
“Not a problem.”
Restraints snugged, Breanna checked their position as well as that of the other players. The Chinese and Indian fleets were moving slowly toward each other. Two Sukhois had begun shadowing the Megafortress in a long oval track three miles to the east. Same old, same old.
“Trawler’s heading off south,” Chris pointed out, referring to the Taiwanese spy ship. “Wimping out?”
“Just getting out of the way for the showdown” said Breanna.
Stoner folded his arms in front of his chest, staring at the video screen. Both the Chinese and the Indians had their chessmen in place; they could start duking it out in an hour.
So what were the Taiwanese up to anyway? Egging the Indians on? Usually, they took a more laid-back approach, but they had spy ships all over the place, including one so close it was going to catch shrapnel when the fighting started.
Stoner stared at the fifteen-inch display screen where the sitrep view was displayed. It was a simple thing, a plot of positions against longitude and latitude, yet cobbling it together was not exactly child’s play. To get all these different inputs, process them, out them on the screen so that even an untrained operator like himself could see what was going on—Dreamland indeed.
“Say, uh, Captain Ferris. Chris. This is Stoner. What’s the green triangle on my screen?”
“On the sitrep? That’s the marker for the Piranha buoy. It’s tied into the tactical system so it comes on the display. Sorry if it’s confusing.”
“That Taiwanese trawler is going to run right over our buoy if they stay on that course. Is he tracking it?”
“No way,” said Ferris.
“Well, he’s going to run over it anyway.”
Breanna pushed the plane down through the leading edge of the fast-moving cloud front, trying to get low enough for a visual on the players—and the trawler that was on a collision course for their buoy. “Stoner’s right—they’re aimed almost perfectly for it,” said Chris as they broke through the clouds into the gray stillness above the water. The spy ship looked like a child’s boat in a bathtub. “Should I try hailing them?”
“What are you going to tell them?” asked Bree. “That they’re about to run over a top-secret communications system for a high-tech weapon?”
“I probably wouldn’t want to say that,” said Chris contritely.
If the trawler hit the buoy, they would most likely lose their connection—and Piranha. It occurred to Breanna the ocean was awful big and the buoy awfully small—and yet the ship was uncannily on course for the device.
“Could they track the transmission, you think?”
“Well, the Navy couldn’t,” said Chris. “But in theory, it’s possible. That ship had been around—they might have seen the buoy launched.”
“Fentress’s—how’s your connection with Piranha?” Bree asked.