“How long before the Abner Read gets here?” Dog asked Sullivan.
The Bennett’s copilot told him that the ship had estimated it would take about two and a half hours.
“I’ll bet the Indian ship saw their flares and is homing in on the signal from Stewart’s radio,” added Lieutenant Englehardt, the pilot. “They’ll be close enough to see the beacons in a few minutes, if they haven’t already.”
“Let’s find out what they’re up to,” said Dog. “Contact them.”
He put his hands to his eyes. He was tired—beyond tired.
“Colonel, I have someone from the Indian ship acknowledging,” said the copilot. “Ship’s name is Gomati.”
Dog pushed his headset’s boom mike close to his mouth and dialed into the frequency used by the Indian ship. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh Bastian on Dreamland Bennett. I’d like to speak to the captain of the Gomati. ”
“I am the executive officer,” replied a man in lightly accented English. “What can we do for you, Colonel?”
“You can hold your position away from my men,” said Dog. “We are conducting rescue operations.”
The Indian didn’t immediately reply. Dog knew he had a strong hand—the Bennett carried four Harpoon missiles on the rotating dispenser in her belly. One well-placed hit would disable the frigate; two would sink her.
And despite his orders not to engage any of the combatants, Dog had no compunctions about using the missiles to protect his people.
“Colonel Bastian,” said a new voice from the destroyer. “I am Captain Ajanta. Why are you warning us away from the men in the water? We intend to offer our assistance.”
“If it’s all the same to you, we’d prefer to take care of it ourselves,” Dog told him.
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The Indian officer didn’t reply.
“I think you insulted him, Colonel,” said Lieutenant Englehardt over the interphone.
“Maybe.” Dog clicked back into the circuit and took a more diplomatic tact. “Gomati, we appreciate your offer of assistance. We already have a vessel en route and are in communication with the people in the water. We request that you stand by.”
“As you wish,” replied the Indian captain.
“I appreciate your offer to help,” said Dog. “Thank you.”
Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
Time unknown
WITH HIS ARMS COMPLETELY DRAINED OF ENERGY, ZEN
drifted along in the blackness, more flotsam than living being. He’d never been broken down so low, not even after he woke up in the hospital without the use of his legs.
Then all he’d been was angry. It was better than this, far better.
For the longest time he didn’t believe what they told him.
Who would? Doctors were always Calamity Janes, telling you about all sorts of diseases and ailments you might have, depending on the outcome of this or that test. He had never liked doctors—not even the handful he was related to.
So his first reaction to the news was to say, flat out, “Get bent. My legs are fine. Just fine.”
He kept fighting. His anger grew. It pushed him, got him through rehab every day.
Rehab sucked. Sucked. But it was the only thing he could do, and he spent hours and hours every day— every day—working and working and working. Pumping iron, swimming, pushing himself in the wheelchair. He hated it. Hated it and loved it, because it sucked so bad it didn’t let his mind wander.
Thinking was dangerous. If he thought too much, he’d re-
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member the crash, and what it meant.
Breanna was with him the whole time, even when he didn’t want her to be. He took a lot of his frustration out on her.
Too much. Even a little would have been too much, but he took much more than that.
The amazing thing was, she’d stayed. She still loved him.
Still loved even the gimp he’d become.
Gradually, Zen realized he had two motivations. The first was anger: at his accident; at Mack Smith, who he thought had caused it; at the world in general.
The second was love.
Anger pushed him every day. It got him back on active duty, made him determined to pull every political string his family had—and they had a lot. It made him get up every morning and insist that he was still Major Jeff “Zen” Stockard, fighter ace, hottest match on the patch, a slick zippersuit going places in the world.
Love was more subtle. It wasn’t until he got back, all the way back as head of the Flighthawk program, as a pilot again, as a true ace with five enemy planes shot down, that he understood what love had done for him: It had kept the anger at an almost manageable level.
Zen nudged against something hard in the water. He put his arm up defensively. The only thing he could think of was that he was being attacked by a shark.
It wasn’t a shark, but a barely submerged rock. There were others all around. A few broke the surface, but most were just under the waves.
He stared into the darkness, trying to make the blackness dissolve into shapes. There were rocks all around, as if he were near a shore. He pushed forward, expecting to hit a rise and find land, but didn’t. He dragged himself onward, the water too shallow to swim, expecting that with the next push he would be up on land. But the land seemed never to come, and when it finally did, it was more rock than land, somewhat more solid than the pieces he’d bumped over, but still rock.
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He’d expected sand, a real beach. He wasn’t particularly fond of beaches, except that they gave him a chance to swim, which was something he’d liked to do even before it became part of his daily rehab and exercise. They also gave him a chance to watch Breanna come out of the sea, water dripping off her sleek body, caressing it.
He shook off the thought and concentrated on moving away from the water, crawling up a gentle incline about twenty or thirty yards.
Exhausted, he lay on his back and rested. A cloud pack had ridden in on a cold front, and as Zen closed his eyes, the clouds gave up some of their water. The rain fell strongly enough to flush the salt from his face, but the rest of him was already so wet that he barely noticed. The wind kicked up, there was a flash of lightning—and then the air was calm. In a few minutes, the moon peeked out from the edge of the clouds. The stars followed, and what had been an almost pitch-black night turned into a silver-bathed twilight.
Zen sat up and tried to examine the place where he had landed. There were no large trees that he could see, and if there were any bushes, they blended with the boulders in the distance. He groped his way up the hill, maneuvering around loose boulders and outcroppings until he reached the crest.
There was another slope beyond, and then the sea, though it was impossible to tell if he was on an island or a peninsula, because another hill rose to his right.
He turned back to the spot where he had come in, perhaps a hundred feet away. The water lapped over rocks, the tops of the waves shining like small bits of tinsel in the moonlight.
The sound was a constant tschct-tschct-tschct, an unworldly hum of rock and wave.
One of the rocks near the shoreline seemed larger than the rest, and more curiously shaped. Zen stared at it, unable to parse the shadow from the stone. He scanned the rest of the ocean, then returned, more curious. He moved to his right, then farther down the slope.
It wasn’t a rock, he realized. It was a person.
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Breanna, he thought, throwing himself forward.
Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
0043, 16 January 1998
DANNY FREAH CROUCHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE ABNER Read’s boat, waiting for the chance to pluck one of the fliers from the water. The boat was a souped-up Zodiac, custom-made for the littoral warcraft that carried her. Special cells in the hull and preloaded filler made the boats difficult to sink, and the engine, propelled by hydrogen fuel cells, was both fast and quiet. Danny decided he would see about getting some for Whiplash when he got home.