Danny knew what the sergeant meant, but it was still a poor choice of words.
“Let’s see if he goes fast enough to miss them,” Danny told the sergeant. “Better for all of us if he just drives on.”
“Your call,” said the Marine, his tone leaving no doubt that he disagreed with Danny’s decision.
Danny waited for the car to come into view. If only the Whiplash team had jumped, he could have told Liu and the others to change their landing spot to avoid being detected.
But he felt that was too much to ask of Jennifer.
She really shouldn’t have been on the mission at all.
“Guy’s a slowpoke,” said Gunny, who was watching the car with a set of night glasses.
Danny glanced toward the sky. The team would be opening their chutes just about now.
“We may make it,” said Danny hopefully.
“Your call.”
“Yes, it is.”
THE SHOCK OF WIND AS SHE HIT THE SLIPSTREAM BELOW
the jet sent a chill through Jennifer so severe that her legs shook. Even with the Dreamland night-vision technology embedded in the smart helmet, all she could see was black.
“Damn,” she told herself.
That was as close as she would come to admitting that she’d bit off a little more than she could comfortably chew.
She pulled her arms and legs back closer to her torso, shaping herself into a frog position as she plummeted downward.
The altimeter in the smart helmet was somewhat distracting—the default display flashed large numerals in blue as the jumper descended—but she did like the infrared night view, which bathed the world in a warm green glow.
It didn’t feel like she was falling. The sensation was more of flying, sailing through the air at a tremendous clip. For all her intellectual skills, Jennifer loved to push her body; running and rock climbing were regular pursuits. Skydiving wasn’t quite as much fun—there was too much prep involved, RETRIBUTION
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which meant she had to plan quite a bit with her schedule.
But it was definitely a rush.
The smart helmet showed her where she was compared to her designated landing zone. She tilted her arm and left leg, leaning back to the right spot.
A tone sounded. Jennifer yanked the ripcord, and within moments the loud hurricane rush transformed into something gentler. This wasn’t the lullaby of a bassinet slowly lulling a newborn to sleep: she had to work, checking her canopy with the aid of a wrist flashlight and then steering according to the cues given by the helmet. The parachutist and her parachute were a miniature aircraft, capable of flying literally miles before touching down.
Jennifer didn’t have to go quite that far. With her chute and lines looking good, her course set, she enjoyed the view.
There were small huts in the distance, a car on a road, the Osprey and work team.
The digital altimeter counted down her altitude: 200 feet …
150 … 100 …
The helmet blacked out.
Her legs locked. She tried to relax them, tried to relax everything, taking a deep, long breath.
The ground grabbed her before she could exhale. Jennifer tumbled hard to her right, skidding ignobly and twisting completely around three times before coming to a stop against a pile of very hard rocks.
DANNY FREAH SAW THE FLASH OF THE BRAKE LIGHTS JUST
as the f irst Whiplash trooper sailed across the landing zone toward his touchdown. The auto was a mile away, and slightly ahead of the parachutist as he landed, but Danny decided he just couldn’t take a chance.
“Nab him,” he told Gunny. “As gently as possible.”
“Will do,” said the Marine cheerfully.
Danny turned his attention to the team landing around him. Suddenly, the night was filled with the sound of a woman cursing her head off—Jennifer Gleason had come in 180
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hard twenty yards away from him. Danny ran over and found her rolling up her parachute.
“Hey, Jen, you keep that up, the kids are going to learn a whole bunch of new words,” he said.
“Stinking fucking helmet.”
Danny couldn’t help but laugh.
A fresh string of expletives exploded from her mouth. “It’s not funny, Freah,” she told him. “The stinking helmet blacked out just before I landed.”
“Did you have it in default mode? If so, it reverted to standard view five seconds before you landed. You should have set it to a custom mode if you wanted it to continue counting.”
Jennifer expanded her vocabulary to include a description of what could be done to default mode. The description defied the laws of physics, though Danny made it a point never to argue science with a scientist.
“Where is the stinking bomb at?” she said finally.
“This way,” said Danny.
She seemed to be limping as she followed.
“You want an ice pack on that knee?”
“Just show me where the son of a bitch is.”
Danny got Jennifer over to the warhead, then went to check on the rest of his team. Liu and the others had landed about a quarter mile away, shading away from the car.
“Good to see you, Cap,” said Blow. “How’s Boston doing?” he asked, referring to Sergeant Ben Rockland. Boston had been hurt, though not seriously, apprehending the Iranian commandos who instigated the Indian-Pakistani nuclear exchange.
“He’s going to be OK,” said Danny. “Listen, there was a car stopped up the road.”
“We saw it coming in,” said Liu.
“Run up there and see if you can help the Marines with the language,” said Danny. “Link back to Dreamland and use their computer translators.”
“On it,” said Liu.
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A few minutes later Sergeant Liu, Gunny, and two Marine privates returned with a skinny Pakistani man who looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“You gotta hear his story, Cap,” said Liu. “Claims his wife is pregnant and he’s going to fetch her mother.”
“They don’t have doctors in Karachi?”
“Doesn’t live in Karachi,” said Liu. “Lives about five miles up the road. She sounds like she’s in serious labor, Captain. Kind of like that breeched birth we had on the Iranian mission?”
“You guys deliver babies?” asked Gunny.
“We do all sorts of things, Sergeant,” said Danny.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett,
over Pakistan
2100
DOG TURNED THE STICK OVER TO HIS COPILOT AND GOT UP
to stretch his legs. The crew’s resentment had diminished a bit, but he knew he still wouldn’t win any popularity con-tests.
Not that it mattered. He walked to the galley and started a fresh pot of coffee in the Zero Gravity Mr. Coffee. The sealed coffeemaker, which worked as advertised, was still rated by most of the technical people as their biggest contribution to mankind.
“Hey, Colonel, you got Ray Rubeo looking for you,” said Sullivan.
“Thanks, Kevin.”
Dog poured himself a half cup of the steaming java, then made his way back to his seat. Rubeo’s familiar frown was frozen on the screen.
“One of these days, Ray, you’re going to smile,” said Dog.
“It won’t be today. We’ve done some new calculations based on Ms. Gleason’s findings,” said the scientist, launching into an explanation of why the five missiles still missing 182
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had not been found. They all belonged to a subtype of the Prithvi family that had not been previously identified. According to Rubeo, solenoid valves that controlled parts of the engine had been shielded sufficiently so they had not been destroyed by the T-Rays.
As Rubeo’s discussion veered toward the technical, Dog cut him short.
“Do we have new projections of where they came to earth?”
“We’re working on them, Colonel. There are several vari-ables involved. At a minimum, we believe that all of the missiles went much farther north.”
Rubeo had a map ready. The search areas included Kashmir and the borders of Afghanistan and China.
“Ray, this map has to cover a hundred thousand square miles.”
“It’s 225, 963.” Rubeo’s scowl deepened. “We are working on reducing it. We don’t entirely understand why the solenoid valve—and it was only one—on the missile at I-17 wasn’t affected. We should have this quantified in a few hours, depending on how quickly Jennifer works.”