One of the equipment panels was open; Jennifer guessed that a short had juiced the panel. She reached into the small passage between the bay and the flight deck, grabbing the first aid kit off the wall. O’Brien writhed in pain so badly the first thing she did was stab him with the morphine syringe. She rammed it into his leg, right through his uniform. Then she dug into the box for the burn spray—a high-pressure can of antiseptic solution that was so cold as she sprayed, her own hands turned to ice. By the time she had gauze on his hands, O’Brien had calmed down. She helped him back onto the flight deck and got him strapped into his seat as his eyes closed.
“What happened?” asked Breanna.
“One of the panels is hot—there’s a short. Maybe if I had a schematic—can you access the on-line manual?”
RAZOR’S EDGE
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“Negative—everything associated with the computer is out.”
“If you have control of the plane, we shouldn’t mess with it,” said Jennifer. “I don’t want to screw up something else.”
“Agreed,” said Breanna. “How’s Jeff?”
“He’s fine,” said Jennifer. “He should be giving you a visual.”
“I have no feed from him,” said Breanna. “The computer’s out.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, he’s fine. He was worried about you,”
she added. Jennifer thought of Breanna’s father, worried about him for a moment, even though he wasn’t the one in danger. “I’ll find out what it looks like and come back.”
“Good luck,” said Breanna. “We’re about ten minutes out of High Top. If the damage is too bad, we’ll have to go on to Incirlik. I don’t want to mess with a short-field landing.”
IT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT HAD STUCK HIS THUMB ONTO
Quicksilver’s fuselage just before the wing on the right side. The center of the thumbprint was dark black; streaks of silver extended in an oblong starburst toward the rear where bits of the radar-evading hull had been burned away. There were one or two long lines extending toward the back of the plane, along with a small burn mark on the panel where the rear landing gear carriage folded up.
There were some other pockmarks, including a large dent on the cover to the chute they needed to deploy to land on the short field.
“The thing looks bad, but it looks intact,” Jeff told Jennifer. “I don’t know about the chute, though.”
“Okay.”
“Tell Bree I think I should land the Flighthawks at High Top and we should go on to Incirlik. I should be 226
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
able to talk to the AWACS through Hawk One in about thirty seconds. I’ll have the controller about a minute after that. You’ll have to play messenger.”
“Not a problem,” she said, starting back.
He checked his instruments. The U/MFs themselves were in good shape.
The only thing that could have done this sort of damage was a laser. Maybe they’d believe Brad Elliott now.
High Top
1830
CAPTAIN FENTRESS DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON UNtil he saw Major Alou hustling toward his plane, followed a good ten yards back by the rest of his crew. He ran after them, shouting for information. Kevin Marg, the copilot, explained that Quicksilver had been hit by a SAM.
Zen and Bree and the others—oh God.
Zen.
“The Flighthawks—they’ll be in a fail-safe orbit if the control unit was blown out,” Fentress told them. “They can help us find them if they go down. Let me come with you?”
Alou yelled something that he took to be a yes. But as he ducked under the plane he heard the soft whine of a Flighthawk in the distance. Fentress trotted back out in time to see the robot tilt her nose up above the far end of the runway, skimming in like a graceful eagle hooking its prey. The second plane came in two seconds later, just as smoothly.
Would he ever be able to land like that?
He had fifty times—on the simulator.
“Hey, Quicksilver’s heading over to Incirlik,” yelled RAZOR’S EDGE
227
the copilot from the ladder. “We’re going to fly shotgun—
Major Alou wants to know if you’re coming aboard or not.”
“I better look after the Flighthawks,” said Fentress.
“You got it, Curly.”
“I’m not Curly,” he shouted, starting to trot toward the robot planes.
Aboard Quicksilver , on the ground at Incirlik 1905
ZEN WATCHED FROM HIS WHEELCHAIR AT THE BACK OF THE
Flighthawk deck as they carried O’Brien and then Ferris out. Jennifer had already gone down to see if Alou was landing or if she could talk to him over the radio; Raven had escorted them here but there had been no way to communicate outside of hand signals.
After he landed the Flighthawks, he’d had plenty of time to go back over the video. There was only one site in the area they had flown over that could have possibly held a laser—a dilapidated factory a half mile off a highway, a mile and a half from a fair-size town in northeastern Iraq.
Two trailers were parked outside of it. There were no defensive positions that they could see, but there was a long trench running between the trailers into the building. Cables might be buried there.
While the fire had cost them the data needed to coordinate it positively, it was at least roughly where the cell phone calls and radio transmissions had originated from.
It had to be where the laser was.
“Hey,” said Breanna, coming down the ladder. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
She glanced back upward, as if she’d forgotten no one else was aboard. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she told him.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“What for?”
“We haven’t—you and I have been kind of off kilter lately. I don’t know why.”
Zen shrugged.
“I love you,” she said.
“Yeah, I love you too,” he said. The words sounded odd to him, too rushed or too quick, not as sincere as he meant. But if she noticed, she didn’t say.
High Top
2010
DANNY FREAH GLANCED OVER FROM THE COMMUNICAtions section in the Whiplash trailer, making sure he was still alone; the HQ had become something like a rec room for the base personnel. Ordinarily he didn’t mind, but the conferences with Dreamland Command and Raven were to be conducted in total secrecy.
Bison was at the door, enforcing the secure protocol with his M16A3, full-body armor, and a day and a half’s worth of unshowered B.O. Danny gave him a quick wave, then turned back to the main com screen, adjusting the volume on his headset. The excitement of the rescue—and the harried ride back on only one engine—had been eclipsed by news of what happened to Quicksilver.
“The damage was done by some sort of energy discharge weapon,” said Alou, who was en route back to High Top Base in Raven. “I saw it myself. Had to be laser.”
“We concur,” said Dog.
“The radio transmission data points to a small warehouse complex, more like a building and some trailers in Box AB-04,” said Alou. “It should be just about big enough for a laser.”
“Give me the coordinates and we’ll look at it,” said RAZOR’S EDGE
229
Dog. “The mini-KH is now on line. We can have it maneuvered into place by morning.”
“I want to move right away,” said Alou. “I say we return to refuel, and go.”
“The colonel and I have been discussing another option,” said Danny before Dog could answer. “I’d like to get us in there and take a look at it before we blow it.”
“Why?” asked Alou.
“Because if we just destroy it, we’re not going to settle any of the questions,” Danny said. His words raced from his mouth. “I say we get on the complex ASAP, Colonel.
From what Jennifer Gleason relayed, it’s an easy shot.”
“You don’t know that the laser itself is there,” said Alou. “It’s probably mobile.”