Strike Zone Read online

  Only a few hundred people worked here, and the majority lived here as well. Not only did civilian experts mix freely with military personnel, service people of all ranks worked together in as close to harmony as the high-pressure, creative atmosphere would allow. The cafeterias, lounges, and rec areas were “all ranks,” open to everyone who worked at Dreamland, from Dog all the way to the kitchen help. Pilots still ruled the roost—it was, after all, an Air Force operation—but, with a few notable exceptions, the zippersuits kept their egos well in check.

  Partly, that was a function of whom they worked alongside. Everyone here was the best of the best. The ordies loading missiles to be tested on a plane were likely to have helped design and build the weapon. And partly, it was a reflection of Dog’s own personality, and his desire to run a cutting-edge operation that made a difference, not just for America, but for the world.

  Dreamland had done that, as Piranha proved. But it had also paid a terrible price.

  The loudspeaker near the side of the bleacher blared with a solemn martial tune. The colonel stiffened, waiting for the honor guard that just now emerged from the building. He glanced at the bleachers, where everyone had suddenly snapped to attention. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, the scene brought a smile to his lips—not only were all of Dreamland’s military personnel wearing freshly starched uniforms, but the civilian scientists, engineers, and other technical experts were wearing their own Sunday best—suits and dresses.

  Dresses!

  Ties!

  These were as rare a sight at the top-secret base as any Dog could imagine.

  The colonel fell in, his legs a little rusty as he marched to his place at the front. He was joined by the Reverend Madison Dell, Dreamland’s chaplain, and two other members of his staff: Major Natalie Catsman, who had just been named second in command at the facility, replacing Nancy Cheshire, who had recently been given new responsibilities integrating the Megafortress in the regular Air Force; and Captain Danny Freah, who besides being the head of base security also commanded the Whiplash ops team, the ground force charged with providing security and ground intervention in connection with Dreamland deployments.

  After a brief prayer, Dog stepped forward. He’d worked on his speech for several hours the night before, carefully revising and rewriting it over and over again. But now as he walked to the microphone, he decided not to take it from his pocket.

  “I don’t have a lot to tell you,” he said simply. “You’ve done a good job, and I know you know that. I also know that, like me, you’re hurting today, because of our friends who aren’t here. Unfortunately, that’s part of our business—it’s part of our lives. I hate it myself… ”

  CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH stared into the distance as Dog began to read the President’s commendation. He was thinking of the man he’d lost to a booby trap, Sergeant Perse “Powder” Talcom. Powder was a hell of a team sergeant, a hell of a serviceman, a hell of a hero. The two men had been together since Bosnia, coming under fire several times. Like any good officer, Danny drew a line between command and friendship, duty and camaraderie. And yet, Powder’s loss affected him in ways he couldn’t fully explain. Dog had offered him the chance to talk at the ceremony; Danny had begged off, claiming he wasn’t much of a talker.

  The real reason was that he could never have hidden the tremor in his voice, or stopped the tears from falling.

  Powder’s death had convinced him that he should take an offer to run for Congress back in New York, where his wife lived. To do that, he’d have to leave the Air Force.

  Dog had asked him to stay on for a short while. The ghost clone business had to be investigated by someone the colonel trusted, and the job naturally fell to Danny.

  But he would quit when it was done.

  Quit? Was he walking away?

  No. His time was up; he’d done his duty. He could leave.

  Quit.

  The reverend stepped forward and gave a reading from Isaiah, his text the famous line about beating swords into plowshares. It was appropriate in a way—Dreamland’s efforts had saved many lives, and given the diplomats a shot at turning China and India from their warlike ways. But Danny couldn’t help thinking that no text about peace would ever be truly appropriate for a warrior, certainly not a member of the Whiplash team. Peace was an unfulfilled promise, a mirage that sucked you in. As soon as you dropped your guard, disaster would strike.

  As it had with Powder, stepping on the mine.

  My fault, thought Danny. My inattention cost my man his life.

  My fault.

  A solitary tear slipped from the corner of his eye.

  As the minister ended his sermon, recorded music began to play through the speakers. As it grew louder, a slightly discordant bass note could be heard rising over the violins like an extended rap note coming from far away. A Dreamland formation suddenly appeared from the desert floor, seeming to rise from the mountains themselves.

  The first plane over was an EB-52—black, huge, and thunderous, a Megafortress similar to the one Dreamland had lost in the South China Sea. Born as a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the airframe had pounded communists in Indochina and stood alerts against Soviet bomber strikes, then gone on to serve a long and respected career as a testbed, launching drones and missiles.

  Just when it seemed ready to retire, the Dreamland wizards had tapped the thirty-year-old soldier for refurbishment. It had been taken into a large hangar and stripped naked, most of its parts dismantled. New wings made of ultra-strong composite were added; the rear tail and stabilizer assembly was replaced with a V-shaped unit affording more maneuverability and somewhat less radar profile. The eight power plants were replaced with four Dreamland-tuned monsters that could drive the aircraft nearly to the speed of sound in level flight, yet were as easy on gas as a well-tuned Honda.

  The wires and circuit boards that had made up its avionics systems were salvaged and recycled for other B-52s; their replacements were fiber optic and gallium-arsenic, silicone, and in several cases custom-grown crystal circuitry. Besides the equipment that helped the pilot fly the aircraft through a hostile-fire zone, this particular EB-52—nicknamed Raven—was stocked with an electronics suite that would have made an NSA officer’s eyes water. It could capture a wide array of electronics signals, everything from encoded radio transmission to missile telemetry and even, as some of the Dreamland wags put it, the odd leak from a microwave oven. Besides monitoring those signals, Raven could use its on-board circuits to confuse and baffle a wide range of radars, providing cover for a fleet of other aircraft.

  Raven’s bomb bay had been overhauled so that its rotating dispenser could launch (or drop) a variety of smart weapons—not just bombs and air-to-ground missiles, but AMRAAM-plus antiaircraft missiles. At its tail, the four 12.7 or 50-caliber machine guns had been replaced by a Stinger airmine gun, which could pepper the sky behind the plane with exploding shards of tungsten, just the thing to shred a jet engine and ruin a pursuing fighter pilot’s day. While no match for a frontline American interceptor, the Megafortress could hold her own when attacked by most enemies—as this one had done on several occasions.

  Next over the Dreamland apron area was a heavily customized C-17, the product of an intense collaboration between Dreamland and the highly skilled engineers at McDonnell Douglas further enhancing its already impressive heavy-hauling and short-runway abilities. Dubbed the MC-17D/W-2, the black-skinned aircraft sported two belly blisters, which in time would be filled by specially designed howitzers. According to the concept, the aircraft would be able to drop two companies of Marines and then provide fire support à la the AC-130, combining two functions in the same aircraft. The weapons had not yet been fitted to the plane; they were due to be tested in about two weeks. The guns, as awesome as they were, were just a start—a team was hard at work trying to make enough adjustments to the Razor antiaircraft laser so that it could be used in place of the howitzers.

  As the big plane came over, she dipped her l
eft wing, a nod to the fallen comrades being honored at the ceremony below. Not far behind the MC-17 came an F-22. Like every aircraft at the high-tech developmental center, the Raptor’s airframe had undergone extensive revamping. Now longer, it sported a delta-shaped airfoil and saber-toothed tiger strakes at the front; the design was being studied for possible use as an F-15E replacement.

  Last but not least in the Dreamland formation was a B-1B, the swing-wing, Mach + attack craft that had once been seen as the B-52’s replacement, though the versatile Stratofortress had refused to be pushed aside. The big wings of the Lancer—sometimes dubbed the “Bone” by her crew, a pun on B-One—were fully extended, allowing the aircraft to parade over the grounds at a low and solemn speed.

  This aircraft had been used to test some concepts for the Unmanned Bomber project; its four GE F101 engines had only recently been returned to their place under the wing roots and fuselage, reclaiming their position from hydrogen-powered prototypes that would be the main impetus for the UMB. Immediately after the ceremony, the B-1 would head for Underground Hangar Five, where she would begin a new phase, testing a concept as an advanced penetrator/weasel equipped with antiradar HARM missiles and a multiple mini-bomb launcher.

  As the B-1 climbed away, a second group of aircraft, these much smaller, appeared from the right. Four U/MF-3 Flighthawks thundered by in a diamond pattern. Just as they reached the center of the viewing area in front of the stands, one of the aircraft peeled off; the others circled around the field, commemorating the loss of Dreamland’s fallen comrades. Smoke canisters under the fuselages of the remaining aircraft ignited, and the sky turned red, white, and blue. The Dreamland audience rose to their feet as one, saluting their comrades and pledging themselves once more to the cause of keeping America free and the world safe.

  Danny stared into the distance, back teeth tightly clenched.

  Dreamland Commander’s Office

  1407

  SOMETIMES IT SEEMED like Dog’s whole life came down to paper. Reams of it sat on Colonel Bastian’s desk—reports, folders, notices. The computer at the corner held even more—emails, various attachments, all marked urgent, more urgent, or impossibly urgent. Dreamland’s command structure was perhaps the most streamlined in the military, yet it still killed more trees than Dog could count.

  There was a familiar knock on the door. Fearing that it meant Chief Master Sergeant Terrence “Ax” Gibbs was bringing yet another wagonload of paper for him to process, Dog growled “come” in a voice that would have sent anyone else into retreat.

  Ax, however, walked calmly into the room. He had taken the precaution of arming himself with a fresh carafe of coffee.

  “Thought you could use a refill,” said the chief.

  “Thanks,” said Dog, his mood lifting slightly.

  “Jed Barclay’s on line four over there,” he added, pointing to the lit button on the black scrambled phone. “He’s got an off-the-record heads-up for you.”

  “Just great,” said Dog, his mood once again diving into the depths.

  He took a sip of the coffee, then punched the button. Ax thumbed through some of the paperwork on the desk, retrieving several items he needed, then left.

  “Jed? What can I do for you?” asked Dog.

  “Colonel. Um, this is, uh, un-unofficial,” said Barclay.

  Barclay was the National Security Council assistant director for technology and the right-hand man of the NSC advisor, Philip Freeman. Jed’s responsibilities included acting as the de facto liaison between the White House and Dreamland. Though only in his early twenties, he’d been involved in several Dreamland missions and had proven that, despite his pimples, he could hang in there with the best of them.

  It was a very bad sign, however, that he was stuttering. He usually only did that when a situation was red-lining.

  “Uh, I’m calling off the r-record,” he said.

  “Jed, I know it’s bad news, so don’t sugarcoat it,” Dog told him.

  “I wasn’t going to, Colonel. I wouldn’t sugarcoat anything.”

  “Don’t bullshit me either.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So?”

  “The NSC and the Joint Chiefs, they put their heads together in a way—well, you know how Admiral Balboa is, and what they want is an outsider. We cut them off a bit and got a compromise but—”

  “Who’s investigating?” asked Dog, deciding to cut to the quick. Balboa was the head of the Joint Chiefs and a general pain in the butt when it came to anything concerning Dreamland.

  “Air Force Office of Special Investigations,” said Jed. “They’re sending a woman out this afternoon. Her name is Cortend, and she’s a bitch with wings. Um, pardon my French.”

  “Didn’t sound very French to me, Jed.” Dog sighed and took another sip of his coffee. “Who is she?”

  “Full-bird colonel. She’s, uh, she’s going to answer to the chief of the Air Force directly because—uh, do you want all the political interplay, or just the shorthand?”

  “Shorthand’s fine.”

  “They want to make sure this isn’t a replay of the Russian situation a few years ago,” said Barclay, making an oblique reference to the spy scandal that had preceded Dog’s arrival at the base. “Defense Secretary Chastain got Balboa to sign off on her because she did the, uh, she found the fraud at J&D on the propulsion contract last year, and the Chinese spy at the Alaska contractor. She’s tough. But even so, this is just like a preliminary, unofficial, I mean, she has full powers, but it’s—”

  “Thanks, Jed. I get the picture,” said Dog. Basically, they were sending someone there with the power to turn the base upside down, but because she was only coming on an informal or unofficial basis, she wouldn’t have to play by any of the rules meant to keep things fair.

  So be it.

  “There’s a couple of people who want your scalp,” added the NSC official. “Uh, I know you don’t care for the politics but, uh—”

  “I don’t.”

  “They may, uh—you have to watch the way you handle it,” said Barclay. “Because they have their knives out.”

  “I appreciate the warning, Jed. Really. It’s all right. I can take care of myself. So can the rest of the people here.”

  “There was something else,” added Jed.

  “Fire away.”

  “The President wants to talk to you personally. He’s concerned about China. You probably ought to expect his call around midnight our time. You know how he burns the midnight oil.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dog hung up the phone. The President had personally ordered Dreamland to intervene between China and India. The unit’s stock—and Dog’s—were extremely high with the White House. But if a spy had delivered Flighthawk technology to the Russians or Chinese or anyone else, that would change quicker than the stock market had on Black Tuesday.

  If a spy had penetrated the U/MF project, he or she was undoubtedly still at Dreamland. Dog didn’t think it possible.

  Then again, General Brad Elliott, the last commander of Dreamland, probably didn’t think any of his people had been spies either. And he’d been proven wrong.

  General Elliott. God rest his soul. He had given his life to stop China from taking over Taiwan and engulfing the U.S. in a major war. A true American hero.

  Dog took another sip of the strong black coffee. He gave himself thirty seconds to enjoy it, and then went back on the offensive, tackling the paper before him.

  Dreamland Ground Range Three

  1500

  DANNY FREAH NODDED at the twelve men dressed in full combat gear, then began his short speech.

  “It’s live fire. I don’t want anyone hurt. Sergeant Liu will go over the objectives. You’ve all been through the Army Special Forces Q Course, so I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with this.”

  Freah glanced at Liu, who was suppressing a smirk. The exercise had been designed with the help of two Army SF v
eterans with the express intention of making it much more difficult than the SF qualifying exercise, no picnic in itself. It wasn’t really a matter of physical exertion. The men would be slogging nearly thirty miles in the next twenty-four hours with full rucks, addressing a number of objectives that ranged from taking out a machine-gun post to helping a little girl find her doll. (This was a particularly perverse exercise: The girl was in the middle of a simulated minefield. Once rescued, the doll contained a radio-activated bomb that had to be disarmed. Throwing it away was not an acceptable solution, since it would set off all the mines.)

  The difficult aspect of the exercise was the fact that it was impossible to succeed. Everyone in the exercise—everyone—would wash out at some point. That was when the true test began.

  The men here were in excellent physical shape. Most had worked as PJs, members of the illustrious “pararescuer” community that had saved countless Air Force and civilian lives. Several had jumped behind enemy lines in Iraq during the Gulf War to direct close combat support. All were volunteers, and in fact Danny had chosen them all as part of the elite security force that kept Dreamland safe. The final cut—a trooper to replace Sergeant Powder on the Whiplash action team—would be made by the present members of the deployment squad themselves.

  The recruits were divided into four three-man teams, each matched with a Whiplash trooper, who would rotate to a new group after six hours. Liu, as team sergeant, would move between the teams.

  “All right. You have your orders,” said Danny. “Sergeant Liu.”

  Liu stepped forward. At five-six and maybe 140 pounds, he hardly seemed the typical hard-assed special operations soldier. Indeed, most of the men in front of him outweighed him by a hundred pounds. But he could have taken any of them with one hand tied behind his back, even the three men who, like Liu, had black belts in Tae Kwon Do.

  “Team One up,” said Liu.

  As he did, he pressed a button on the remote control in his pocket. An M/V-22 Osprey gunship revved from the other end of the range, bullets spilling from the pair of Avenger Gatling guns in its belly.