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membered your training and did your job, the odds were in your favor. There was no reason to be scared.
But he was nervous tonight, very nervous.
The image of the little kid being born stayed in his head.
Possibly—probably—the child was dead before he was born, but he had no way of knowing.
Why had God sent them to the house if He intended on letting the child and its parents die?
A Catholic Chinese-American, Liu had always felt some solace in his faith, but now it seemed to raise only questions.
He knew what a priest would tell him: God has a plan, and we cannot always know it. But that didn’t make sense in this case—what plan could He accomplish by letting a child die?
Why go to such extraordinary lengths to send help to the baby, then snuff its life out? And the lives of its parents?
Liu looked up. Captain Freah was staring at him.
“You ready, Nurse?” Danny asked.
“Ready and willing,” said Liu, shrugging.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett,
over Pakistan
0201
WHEN THE OSPREY WAS TEN MINUTES FROM THE LANDING
zone, Dog gave Starship the order to take out the guerrillas on the ground.
Starship had the two Flighthawks moving in figure eight orbit over the lake. He took them over from the computer and brought them down so they could make their attacks from opposite sides, catching the men on the ground in the middle.
With a split screen and left and right joysticks, he felt briefly as if he were two people, each a mirror image of the other.
Green sparkles flashed on the screen of Hawk Two—tracers, fired by someone on the ground unit reacting to the sounds of the airplane.
The targeting box on the screen for Hawk One began to 222
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blink, indicating that the computer thought he was almost close enough to shoot. Starship held off for another few seconds, then opened fire just as the tracers turned in his direction.
The effect was brutal and efficient, lead pouring into the men who’d tried to shoot him down little more than an hour earlier. Only two of the men on the ground seemed to escape the first pass, running to the north and throwing themselves on the ground as the Flighthawks passed east and west.
Starship cleared both of the robot planes upward, circled them around, and then pushed into a new attack, this one with the two aircraft in a staggered trail, so that Hawk Two flew a bit behind and to the right of Hawk One.
“Ground attack preset mode one,” he told the computer.
“Hawk Two trail.”
He handed Hawk Two off to C3, allowing the computer to fly as his wingman. In the preset, Hawk Two would act like a traditional wingman, primarily concerned with protecting the leader’s tail and only firing after Hawk One had ended its attack.
Starship nudged his stick gently right, moving Hawk One on target. The Flighthawk did not use pedal controls like a manned fighter; instead, the computer interpreted inputs from the stick and took all of the necessary actions. Even so, Starship jabbed his feet against the deck, working an imagi-nary rudder to fine-tune the approach. He could have been an old-time Skyraider driver, jockeying his A-1A into the sweet spot as he looked for his enemy.
As good as the Skyraider was, it could never have turned as quickly back to the left as he did when he finally saw his targets hiding near a rock formation. He let off a pair of long bursts, then rocketed upward, getting out of the way for Hawk Two. As soon as the nose of the aircraft tilted up, Starship changed seats, so to speak, swapping control of the planes with the computer.
The targeting box was flashing red, but Starship couldn’t RETRIBUTION
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find the soldiers. Finally, he saw something moving at the very left edge of the target reticule. He kissed the stick gently with his fingers, holding his fire even though the computer declared he couldn’t miss.
When he finally did shoot, the nose of his plane was about a half mile from his targets. He walked the bullets left and then right, pulverizing the rocks as well as the men who’d tried to hide in them.
“Hawk leader to Bennett. Enemy suppressed, Colonel. You can tell the Osprey it’s safe to land.”
“Roger that, Hawk leader. Good going, Starship.”
Aboard Marine Osprey Angry Bear One, northern India, near China
0206
DANNY FREAH LEAPT FROM THE OSPREY AND RAN BEHIND
the Marine pointmen as they raced toward the men the Flighthawk had gunned down a few minutes before.
Twenty millimeter shells did considerable damage to a body, and even battle-hardened Marines didn’t linger as they surveyed the dead.
If they had been farther west, Danny would have thought the mangled bodies belonged to Afghan mujahideen. He had briefly worked as an advisor with mujahideen fighting the Russians a few years before, instructing them at a small camp in northern Pakistan. Some of those same men, he believed, were now sworn enemies of the U.S. They or their brothers had participated in a number of attacks against the U.S. military, including a suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the Persian Gulf.
“Looks like they were using sat phones to communicate,”
he told Colonel Bastian after the remains had been searched.
“I have two of the phones. One of them is pretty shot up, but maybe the CIA can get something off of them.”
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“Anything else?”
“Negative,” said Danny. “I’d sure like to know if they’re working with the Chinese.”
“For the moment, we have to assume they are,” said Dog.
“Did Dreamland Command give you possible search coordinates?”
“Northeastern quadrant of the lake. We’re on it, Colonel.”
Aboard Dreamland Bennett,
over Pakistan
0210
“BIG PACKAGE COMING FOR US COLONEL,” WARNED Sergeant Rager at the airborne radar station. “I have six Su-27
interceptors, Chinese, on their way from the north, 273
miles. Two aircraft, currently unidentified, behind them.
Large aircraft,” he added. “Maybe transports, maybe bombers. Can’t tell.”
Dog keyed the Dreamland channel to contact the Cheli.
Despite its pilot’s optimistic prediction earlier, the Megafortress was still about ten minutes away.
“Dreamland Bennett to Cheli. Brad, looks like the Chinese want to crash the party.”
“Roger that, Colonel. We’re ready.”
Dog scowled, now a little suspicious of Captain Brad Sparks’s overarching optimism. He told Sparks that he wanted him to take the Cheli north and intercept the Sukhoi at long range.
“Shoot them down with your Anacondas,” Dog said. “Use them at long range, in case the Chinese have more passive radiation seekers. The MiG-31s fired at about 140 miles.”
“Roger that, Colonel. You told me. We’re good. Copy everything.”
“Get the lead out, Sparks,” Dog added. “Our people are sitting ducks on the ground there.”
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Karachi, Pakistan
0210
GENERAL MANSOUR SATTARI PULLED HIMSELF FROM THE
rear of the Mercedes and stepped into the chilly predawn air.
Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he walked down the dark path toward a squat cement building in one of Karachi’s poorer districts. Like most of the rest of the country, power had not yet been restored, and the only light came from the dim reflection of the moon, peeking from behind a veil of thin clouds.