He pressed the trigger and bullets spewed from the front of the Flighthawk. Extended bursts took quite a bit of momentum from the small aircraft, but the computer compensated seamlessly.
Beyond it. He was beyond it. Had he missed?
Get the other one.
“Hawk leader?”
“Keep your damn shirt on,” he told the Bronco as he looped back to get the second tank.
RAZOR’S EDGE
249
Aboard Wild Bronco , over Iraq 2350
DANNY GRABBED THE SIDE OF THE COCKPIT AS THE PLANE
wheeled away from the gunfire. He tried to ignore Mack’s voice over the interphone and concentrate on the view in the smart helmet, which showed bullets flaring and then erupting in a fire.
“Any day now, Fentress,” said Mack.
“Relax,” Danny told him, watching the screen as the Flighthawk circled back over the road. Both tanks had definitely been hit. There was no one near the building, as far as he could see.
“Let’s get down,” Danny told Mack.
“About fuckin’ time. Hold tight—there’ll be a bit of a bump before we stop.”
THE ENGINES REVVED, THEN DIED. THE PLANE PITCHED
forward and seemed about to flip over backward.
Powder was sure he was going to die. Someone began to scream. Powder opened his mouth to tell him to shut the hell up, then realized it was him.
The aircraft stopped abruptly. There was a loud crack on the fuselage and the rear hatch slammed open. Bison fell out of the plane and Powder followed, slapping down the visor on his smart helmet so he could see.
“Let’s go!” yelled Captain Danny Freah. “Let’s go—the building’s there. Two tanks, road behind us—they’re out of commission. Come on, come on—Liu, Egg, Bison—run up the flank like we planned, then hit the door. Powder—you’re with me. This ain’t a cookout! Go!”
Powder trotted behind the captain, his brain slowly un-scrambling. His helmet gave him an excellent view of the hardscrabble parking area near the building. A small 250
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
white circle floated just below stomach level, showing where his gun was aimed.
“Okay, flank me while I check the back of the building,” said Danny.
Powder trotted wide to the right like a receiver in motion, then turned upfield. The building sat on his left. It looked a bit like the metal pole barn one of his uncles had built for a car shop back home, though a little less faded and without the exhaust sounds. Powder scanned the field behind it, making sure it was empty. He turned to the right, looking down in the direction of the road and the tanks.
“Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves, Cap,” he said.
“For ten minutes, tops. Watch my back.”
Danny began making his way toward one of the two doors they’d spotted on the side of the building. Powder saw something move near the road out of the corner of his eye; he whirled quickly, then realized it was the airplane they had landed in, taxiing for a better takeoff position.
Bastard better not leave them. Then again, considering the ride down, walking home might be a better option.
“Powder?”
“Yes, Cap?” Powder turned back toward the building, spotting the captain near the wall.
“Flash-bangs. Window halfway down,” said Danny, who gestured toward it. “I’ll take the window. You go in the door on the left there. See it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t move until I give the word.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
RAZOR’S EDGE
251
On the ground in Iraq
2355
DANNY TOOK THE TAPE OFF THE GRENADE AS HE LOOKED AT
the window. Best bet, he thought, would be to knock the glass out with the stock of his gun, toss, jump in after the explosion.
Not a tight squeeze. Landing would be rough, though.
He could hear Rubeo talking to someone back at Dreamland in the background on his satellite channel.
The scientist had warned him that there ought to be at least a dozen technical types running the laser, maybe even more. Danny didn’t expect much resistance from them, but you could never tell. Some of the people at Dreamland could be pretty nasty.
“Front team ready,” said Bison, who had come out around the corner to liaison.
“Powder?”
“Hey, Cap, this door isn’t locked. We might be able to sneak in.”
“Bison, what about the front?”
“Hold on.”
As he waited, Danny switched to infrared mode and tried to see beyond the window inside. He couldn’t make out anything.
Might be a closet. Would there be a window in a closet?
How about a john?
A top-secret facility without much security and an open back door?
No way the laser was here. Danny felt his shoulders sag.
“Front door’s locked, Cap. We’re going to have to blow it.”
“All right, the way we rehearsed it.” Danny slid the 252
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
window open and readied his grenade. “One, two—go!”
he said, breaking the glass. He popped the grenade through, then hit the side of the building as the charge flashed. In the next second he rose and dove inside. A burst of gunfire greeted him. He leveled his MP-5 and nailed two figures about fifty feet away. As they fell, he realized the gunfire had come from the other direction; he whirled, saw he was alone—another automatic weapon went off. He was hearing his own guys, firing up the enemy.
A pair of tractors for semitrailers sat alone in a large, open area. Otherwise this part of the warehouse was empty.
Danny slapped his visor to maximum magnification.
The tractors were just tractors.
No laser.
No stinking laser.
Powder was on the floor to his right, working toward him on his hands and knees. They couldn’t see the others—there was a wall or something between them.
Empty. Shit.
“Wires all over the floor,” said Powder. “Phone wires and shit.”
“Cut ’em,” said Danny. “Cut the fuckers. Two guards up there, maybe someone else beyond the wall.”
THE EXPLOSIONS HAD PIERCED MUSAH TAHIR’S DREAM AS
he slept on the cot not far from his equipment, but his mind had turned it into an odd vision of water streaming off the side of a cliff. He saw himself in the middle of a large, empty boat on a bright summer day. A calm lake stretched in all directions one second; the next, the water turned to sand. But the boat continued to sail forward. A large pyramid came into view, then another and another.
RAZOR’S EDGE
253
It began to rain, the drops suggested to his unconscious mind by the gunfire outside.
Tahir bolted straight up. Gunfire!
His AK-47 was beneath the bench near the computer tubes. He needed to get to it.
There were charges beneath the desk. He could set them off if all else failed.
As Tahir pushed out of bed, something incredibly cold and hard slammed into his chest. As he fell backward onto the cot, he saw two aliens in spacesuits standing before him. They held small, odd-looking weapons in their hands; beams of red light shone from the tops of them.
The alien closest to him said something; too frightened to respond, Tahir said nothing. One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bed, and the next thing he knew he was running barefoot outside, pushed and prodded toward God only knew where.
“GOT AN IRAQI, CAPTAIN,” DANNY HEARD LIU SAY. “THREE
guards, dead. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else. Screens, black boxes, whole nine yards. This must be the computer center.”
“Record everything you see, then pull whatever you can for the plane. Computers especially. Look for disk drives, uh, tape things, that sort of stuff. Go!” said Danny.
“What do we do with the Iraqi?” asked Liu.
“Bring him with you. We’ll take him back and question him.”
“Hey, Cap, no offense but where’s he going to sit?”
“On your lap. Go!”