“I’m warning you, Bastian. Play by my rules.”
Dog checked his course on the navigation screen. They had to drop below three thousand feet to drop the buoy as configured, and they were still above the cloud cover at 25,000 feet.
“Are you there, Bastian?”
“I am here, Captain. As a matter of fact, I’m just double-checking where here is.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Colonel, we have a surface contact coming out of the coast near Karin, about fifty miles due south of us,” said Dish, who was operating the surface radar aboard the Wisconsin. “Thing is, I don’t have that marked as a major port, and this is a pretty big ship. Nothing in the database about a tanker or anything either.”
“Run that by Commander Delaford and see what he thinks about it,” said Dog. “Ask him if it’s worth jogging down in that direction for a look-see.”
“Bastian?”
Dog clicked his talk button. “Yes?”
“You’re to move your operation to Diego Garcia as soon as possible. Note I said possible, not convenient.”
Gee thanks, thought Dog.
“We’ll be there in twenty-four hours, if not sooner,” said Dog.
“When are you rendezvousing with my ship?”
“It’ll take us a few hours to get the probe close enough to get overhead.”
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165
“Make it here as quickly as you can.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Khamis Mushait Air Base
2130
WITH THINGS OUTSIDE THE GATE QUIET FOR THE MOMENT, Danny Freah decided to do two things he’d been putting off since arriving in Saudi Arabia: call his wife, and take a shower.
He did the latter first, scalding the desert sand out of his pores. By the time he got out he felt like a lobster—but a relaxed one. He got dressed and returned to the Dreamland Command trailer. After checking to make sure that nothing had changed outside—it hadn’t—he put through the call, trying her university office first.
“Dr. Freah.”
“Hi, Doc. I was wondering if you could cure my sore throat,” said Danny. It was an old joke between them—her Ph.D. was in black studies.
“Well, hello, stranger. Where have you been?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Have you talked to Rosenstein?”
“I’m fine, how are you?”
“Don’t duck the question.”
“I haven’t had a chance,” said Danny.
“There’s a party at the Guggenheim Museum two weeks from today that would be fantastic for you to attend,” said Jemma Freah. “All the important people are going to be there. It’s a cocktail party, mixing art with politics. A lot of bucks. Definitely a good place to press the flesh.”
Politics was the last thing Danny wanted to talk about. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs under the console carefully to avoid the stack of black boxes controlling the communications functions.
“How are you, Jem?”
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“Fine, but I have a class in two minutes. Can you make that party?”
Danny had no way of knowing how long the present deployment was going to last. It was conceivable that, if the Dreamland team moved to Diego Garcia, he’d be able to go home for a few days, maybe even an entire week, around Thanksgiving—Diego Garcia not only had its own security, it was at least arguably more secure than any base in the Continental United States because of its location. But about the last place in the world he wanted to even think about being was a political cocktail party.
Would he ever feel differently?
If not, then why run for office?
“I don’t know what I’ll be doing then,” said Danny.
“Why not?”
“You know I can’t go into details, Jem.”
“Yeah, well, look, I have to go to class. Send me an e-mail.”
“Good idea,” he said, though he really didn’t have anything to say. In fact, he wondered why he’d bothered to call at all.
Aboard the Wisconsin , over the Gulf of Aden
2135
STARSHIP BROUGHT THE FLIGHTHAWK SOUTH, DROPPING
through two thousand feet as he approached the lumbering ship. There were two much smaller vessels moving in its wake, twenty-foot open boats. The infrared camera in the nose of the Flighthawk painted the ship a ghostly green in the display; the angle seemed odd—the bow looked as if it poked up out of the ocean. Starship thought there was something wrong with the camera or viewer, and hit the diagnostic section for a self-test.
The test showed no problem. The ship looked to Starship SATAN’S TAIL
167
like an old oil tanker; it carried crates or something lashed to the deck.
“What do you have there?” asked Delaford.
“I don’t know. I’m getting some distortion from my infrared viewer. Bow’s kind of out of whack. I’m switching to the low light. Pretty dark, though.”
“Looks like an old amphibious vessel,” said Delaford.
“See how the bow sweeps up?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not in our database,” said Delaford. “Can you get closer?”
“I can just about land on his deck if you want.”
Starship tucked the Flighthawk into a roll, knifing down through one thousand feet. He continued to accelerate as he dropped toward the water. As the altimeter ladder ramped down through five hundred, he started to level off, getting a high g warning as he pushed the robot plane into an extremely sharp turn to take it over the ship. He leaned forward against his restraints, pushing the robot toward her limits.
For the first time on the deployment, and for one of the first times since he had started flying the U/MFs, he felt as if he were on board the tiny aircraft. He sensed the rush of gravity as he bent the wings to complete his turn. The aircraft took over 9 g’s; he could feel his body reacting, tensing and leaning against the forces the Flighthawk was encountering.
This is what Zen means, he thought to himself. This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
“There used to be some sort of gun at the rear deck—at the forward area too,” said Delaford, somewhere far behind him.
Starship poured on the dinosaurs, accelerating back toward the Megafortress. He was still low, barely a hundred feet over the waves. He began another turn, banking much more gently, lining up for a run over the bow area for another angle.
Delaford was talking over the interphone, telling him about the ship: “The Somalians had a large Russian vessel that was designed as an amphibious ship. It was supposed to 168
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
be used to transport tanks and equipment. Hasn’t been used in at least five years. This is probably it, patched up to be used as a freighter, or more likely being taken to a salvage operation. Stolen, maybe.”
This is how it’s supposed to feel, Starship thought again. The ship grew in his screen, its upturned bow on the right side. He realized he should slow down for a more detailed view, but by now it was too late; he was already beyond it.
“One more pass, low and slow,” he said aloud. He nudged his throttle back and took a breath, reminding himself to stay in control. He could feel his pulse thumping in his throat.
Get too excited and you lose it.
That was Kick’s saying, wasn’t it?
You with me, Kick?
Get too excited and you lose it.
Yeah.
Starship exhaled very slowly as he took the Flighthawk into a turn, trying to stay calm. But just as he reached the far point of the turn, the computer warned that he was at the far end of his control range.
“Three seconds to disconnect,” it said in his ear.
“Colonel, I need you to come east.”
“It’s unnecessary, Lieutenant. Get back to the Wisconsin.”
“I just need one more pass.”
“Back to the Wisconsin,” said Dog.