Jan Stewart was the first of the Levitow’s crewmen to be picked up. Her teeth chattered as Danny helped her in. One of the sailors wrapped a waterproof “space blanket” around her and gave her a chemical warming pouch. Dork—Lieutenant Dennis Thrall, a Flighthawk pilot—was next. His face was swollen and his lips blue.
Dork’s hands were so swollen that he couldn’t activate the warmer. Danny took it from him and twisted gently, feeling the heat instantly as the chemical reaction began.
“Thanks, Cap,” said Dork in a husky voice. “Where’s Zen?”
“Still looking.”
“He and Bree were going out after us. They had to jump.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Danny.
“They should be south of us,” said Lieutenant Dick “Bullet” Timmons, huddling next to Dork. Bullet had been the Levitow’s second-shift pilot. “We were flying west. They would have bailed only a few seconds later.”
“We’ll find them,” said Danny.
He glanced over his shoulder at the Indian frigate, sitting in an oblong splash of moonlight a mile away. The Indians had volunteered to help with the rescue, but no one knew whether they could be trusted. It had been Indian missiles, 85
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after all, that had shot down the Levitow.
“We were jumped by Indian MiGs and Sukhois on our way to deploy the EEMWBs,” Bullet told Danny. His voice was rushed; he seemed to need to tell what had happened to them, to explain why they were down in the water. “They kept nicking us. The Flighthawks were gone because of the T-Rays.
Then finally, one of the Sukhois got us with an AMRAAMski. Plane held together but there was too much damage to keep it in the air. Bree did a hell of a job getting us out over the water and just holding it stable enough to jump. Really she did.”
“We’ll debrief back at the ship,” Danny told him gently.
“It’s all right.”
But the pilot kept talking.
“She ordered everyone else to jump. She and Zen stayed behind. She was going to jump, though. Definitely. She was going out. Zen too. She knew she couldn’t fly it back. And there was no way she was landing in India. The Levitow was shielded against the T-Rays. She wouldn’t have let them have the plane, even if she could have landed it. No way.”
“Relax,” Danny said, grabbing another warmer for him.
“We’ll find them.”
Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
Time unknown
ZEN KNEW BETTER THAN TO FLAIL AGAINST THE WAVES, BUT
he did it anyway, throwing himself into the teeth of the tide, pushing and pulling and swimming and dragging himself to his wife.
It was Breanna. He knew it before he could see her face in the pale light, before he could make out the raft, or the horse-shoelike collar she still wore. He just knew it.
What he didn’t know was whether she was alive.
He fought against doubt, battering his arms against the 86
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rocks.
Ten feet.
But those last ten feet were like miles. The water rushed at him as if the ocean wanted to keep her for its own. Zen clawed and crawled forward, pushing toward her, until finally he touched the back of her helmet.
His fingers seemed to snap back with electricity. His guard dissolved. If she hadn’t even taken off her helmet, how could she be alive?
“Bree,” whispered Zen. “Bree.”
His voice was so soft even he had a hard time hearing it over the surf.
“Bree, we have to get to land. Come on, honey.”
Not daring to look at her face, not daring to take off her helmet, he reached into the raft, looped one hand gently around her torso, and began pulling her toward shore.
Dreamland
1112, 15 January 1998
(0043, 16 January, Karachi)
JENNIFER GLEASON FOLDED HER ARMS AS THE ARGUMENT
continued over which weapons to ship to Diego Garcia.
“Anaconda missiles give the Megafortress pilots a long-range antiaircraft option,” said Terrence Calder, the Air Force major who headed the AIM-154 program. “In addition, they can use them against land targets if necessary. You don’t have to worry about the mix of Harpoons and AMRAAM-pluses.
It’s win-win.”
“Not if the guidance systems don’t function perfectly,”
said Ray Rubeo.
“They’ve passed most of the tests.”
“There’s that word ‘most’ again,” said Rubeo. “Most means not all, which means not ready.”
There was no question that the Anaconda AIM-154 long-range strike missile was an excellent weapon. A scramjet-
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powered hypersonic missile, it had a lethal range of nearly two hundred miles. It could ride a radar beam to its target, use its own on-board radar, or rely on an infrared seeker in its nose to hit home. For long-range or hypersonic engagements, the missile’s main solid motor boosted it to over Mach 3. As it reached that speed, the missile deployed air scoops, turning the motor chamber into a ramjet, boosting speed to Mach 5.
Its warhead could be fashioned from either conventional high explosives or a more powerful thermium nitrate, which was especially useful against ground targets.
The only knock against the missile was the fact that, as Rubeo pointed out, it still had not passed all of its tests. Like any new weapons system, the Anaconda had a few teething problems; in this case, they were primarily related to the target acquisition system and its interface with the Megafortresses’ computer systems, which Jennifer had been helping fix for the past few weeks.
“I think we will err on the side of capability,” said Major Catsman finally. “We’ll ship the missiles to Diego Garcia and let Colonel Bastian make the final call.”
Rubeo frowned. A smug look appeared on Calder’s face.
Catsman looked frustrated. Unlike Colonel Bastian, who sometimes went out of his way to encourage dissent on military options, the major seemed frazzled by the differing opinions on how to help reinforce the Dreamland team.
Since Colonel Bastian would have the final say on Diego Garcia, whether to send the Anaconda missiles or not was more a personnel issue than a weapons decision since sending the weapons would necessitate sending maintainers and techies to deal with them.
The real problem was the fact that only one radar-equipped Megafortress was available for deployment, and there was no answer to that; Catsman knew she couldn’t flip a switch and speed up the refurbishment process. The EB-52 Cheli, just barely out of final flight testing, was already en route to Diego Garcia and would arrive shortly. The next radar version of the Megafortress wasn’t even due to get to Dreamland 88
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from the refurbishment works for another month.
At least they had solved the problem of the two warheads that were missing from the projections. Rubeo found an error in the modifications that had been used to adapt the tracking program to its present use. But even that didn’t satisfy the scientist. Rather than accepting congratulations gracefully, he answered with the question: “And what else did we miss?
“The new Flighthawks will give the Megafortresses better capability,” said Rubeo, still not done arguing his point.
“That’s all they need.”
“No, Ray, the matter is settled,” said Catsman. “We’ll send the Anacondas. And the new Flighthawks.”
Similar in appearance to the original U/MF-3, the U/MF-3D
had more powerful engines and a control system that would let it be piloted much farther from the Megafortress. While they, too, were in short supply, the aircraft had already passed their tests and were ready to deploy.
Jennifer found her mind drifting as the discussion continued. She couldn’t concentrate on head counts and spare part contingencies; all she could think of was Dog.
He hadn’t even looked at her, or asked how she was, when he briefed the Command Center.
And he looked like hell.