Dale Brown's Dreamland Read online

  Dog looked up from his papers. “Two minutes?”

  “Just checking to see if you were awake,” said the sergeant. “Fifteen minutes for the eggheads, like everybody else. Brings you to 1545, or maybe 1630. I can’t quite figure out their damn organization chart.”

  “That will be fixed by tomorrow,” said Dog. “Each project gets a specific commander, with staff attached. Line officers in charge. This is a working squadron.”

  Bastian hadn’t worked out all of the details yet, but his idea was relatively simple and followed the plan he had outlined years before. You got the technology onto the front lines by using it right away. The best way to do that was to slim down your organization. The people who had to use the weapons would be the people running the show.

  “I’ll have the paperwork in two batches for you this morning,” said Ax. “Usual routine. And seriously, there are two guys I’d like to bring in to fill out the staff.”

  “There’s a personnel freeze,” Dog reminded him.

  “Oh, that’s no problem.” Ax grinned. He glanced down at the desk. “You want a piece of unsolicited advice, Colonel?”

  “No.”

  “I’d eighty-six this fancy desk and the bookshelves and the paintings, the whole bit. I mean, if you were a three-star like the last commander, it would be austere. Hell, simple even. But some Congressman comes wandering in here, he’s going to wonder why your office is fancier than his.”

  “No Congressman’s wandering around Dreamland,” said Dog. “But thanks for the advice.”

  “Anytime, Colonel. It’s free.”

  “And worth every cent.”

  SMITH PUNCHED THE TWO-PLACE F-15E NEARLY straight up, letting the big warbird feel her oats. The Pratt & Whitneys unleashed nearly sixty thousand pounds of thrust, easily overpowering gravity.

  “Eeeeyow ! ! ! !” shouted the major’s backseat rider, a young staff sergeant selected from the engine maintenance shop. His yell of enthusiasm was so loud Smith had to knock the volume down on the plane’s interphone circuit.

  At five thousand feet, Knife sliced the plane’s right wing in a sharp semicircle, leveling off in an invert that had the sergeant squealing with delight.

  “Hot shit! Hot shit!” said the man as Smith brought the Strike Eagle right-side-up. His next comments were lost as Knife pulled a six-g bank and roll, literally spinning the plane on her back before heading off in the other direction.

  “I love it! I love it!” said the sergeant when he got his breath back.

  Knife grinned in spite of himself. He loved it too. The F-15E was designated as a strike aircraft, a bomber. But she had been developed from the basic F-15 Eagle design, and was still an Eagle at heart—a balls-out hard rocker that could load g’s on her wings like feathers and accelerate as easily as a bird hummed a tune.

  Rolling through a fresh invert at near-supersonic speed, Knife realized he’d been on the damn F-119 project so long he’d almost forgotten that flying was supposed to be fun. This was why he’d joined the Air Force.

  Two weeks before, Major Smith had been offered a slot in a provisional unit known only as Wing A. The details about its mission were sketchy—according to a friend who was helping put it together, it was going to be a blood-and-guts quick-response unit, a kind of Air Force equivalent of Delta Force. Smith would be Director of Operations for a four-plane F-16 sub-squadron connected with a black operation called Madcap Magician. It had been a while since he’d flown F-16’s, but all in all it sounded promising. When he checked it out through the back channels, however, he got mixed responses. One general whom he trusted a great deal thought it would be an A-1 career ticket to the upper ranks. Another said it was Hot Dog Heaven, a sure way to be shunted off the fast track into a career culvert.

  But damn—it was a real live flying gig, and if it was like Delta Force, he’d at least be where the action was. Besides, it seemed obvious that Dreamland was about to be flushed. The previous commander was a three-star general; no way they were going to put a lieutenant colonel in charge if they were intending on keeping HAWC up and running.

  And what a colonel. If last night’s self-important rant was any indication, Colonel Bastian—aka “God,” as everyone in the Gulf had called the one-time hotshot pilot turned Centcom strategic planner—had succumbed to serious delusions of grandeur. Knife was willing to concede that Bastian was an okay pilot and a reasonably good thinker; he knew that Dog had helped set up some good mission schemes while working with Black Hole, the central planning unit that ran the Gulf Air War out of a bunker in Riyadh. Bastian had also briefly served as a wing commander in action after the war, again supposedly doing a good job. But Dog’s ego had obviously gotten the better of him since.

  Knife had been ninety percent sure he would take the new gig when he slipped into the Eagle this morning. Now he was committed. Good riddance, Dreamland. Good riddance, F-119, chariot of slugs.

  Knife yanked the Eagle into another hard turn, leveled off, then reached for the throttle to see if the afterburners would work this early in the morning.

  They did. His backseater let out a yelp as the plane threw off her shackles and started to move. The plane bucked for a moment, then seemed to tuck her wings back, sailing through the sky as if she were a schooner gliding across a glass-smooth lake.

  “You ever break the sound barrier, Sergeant?” Knife asked as the engines swirled.

  “Sir—no!” yelled his passenger.

  “Well, now you have,” said Smith. He backed off the engines as they passed the boundary into Test Range K, which he’d been cleared to use as long as he stayed above five thousand feet. The airspace below was reserved because of static tests of an Army electronic-pulse system, due to begin within the half hour.

  “See the tank down on the ground, Sergeant?” Knife asked.

  “Affirmative, sir. That’s the EMF target. Think it’ll get nuked?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. We’re talking Army here.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant with a laugh. “We’re shielded against those pulses, aren’t we?”

  “Well, allegedly their weapon defeats standard shielding,” answered Knife, who knew that the test had been conducted about twenty times over the past month—obviously because the device didn’t work. “But, like I say, we’re talking Army.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, snickering again.

  “We’ll give it plenty of room,” said Smith, starting to bank.

  They’d been using Range K the day Stockard got nailed.

  Poor bastard.

  Stockard was a good pilot, but he hadn’t been quite good enough. A blink too slow, and it cost him.

  Knife curled his hand around his stick and took another turn, a truly hard one this time, briefly touching eight g’s.

  “What’d you think of that one?” Knife asked, easing back on the stick. “Sergeant?”

  There was no answer.

  “Sergeant?”

  There was a low moan. Apparently the force of the turn had knocked his passenger unconscious.

  Laughing out loud, Knife gunned the plane back toward the runway.

  * * *

  “CAN’T DISAGREE, MS. O’DAY. CAN’T.” COLONEL Bastian picked up his pen and began tracing a series of triangles on his white notepad. He leaned his left elbow against the chair’s armrest, the phone pressed against his ear. The National Security Advisor had just reminded him how important it was to keep Dreamland going.

  “Well, then,” said O’Day, “what can we give them to cut?”

  Bastian sighed. “I’ve been here a little more than twelve hours.”

  “The Joint Chiefs’ recommendation is full closure and shutdown,” said O’Day. “I’m meeting with them in less than an hour. What bones do I throw them?”

  “Well, I’d say preliminarily Megafortress, the Achilles laser array, definitely the Nightfighter A-10 upgrade. The Flighthawk U/MFVs, all the crap we’re doing for the Army—”

  “Crap?”
>
  “Excuse me. All of the joint-service projects can go.”

  “No,” said O’Day firmly. “Those contracts are going to help keep you alive. I’m fairly certain we can keep the Army Secretary on board. They’re gaga over the EM pulse weapon and their smart bullets. And that carbon-boron vest thing, the body-armor project.”

  Bastian rolled his eyes. “If we let politics guide weapons development—”

  “Oh, cut the crap, Colonel,” snapped O’Day. “Since when hasn’t it? Look, the first battle we wage is for survival. We keep Dreamland running, then we move it into the twenty-first century. I’ll take care of the politics,” she added, her tone softening. “Just give me a bottom-line number. We’ll work the details out later.”

  “If we could take the money from the F-119 project—”

  “Why don’t you just suggest you’d like to sleep with the Speaker’s wife?” snarled O’Day. “That would go over better.”

  Dog laughed despite himself. One thing he’d say for O’Day—she could be as irreverent as anyone he knew in the military. She was just very choosy about it.

  “It wasn’t meant as a joke,” added O’Day.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Bastian contritely.

  “All right, listen, Dog, I have a subcommittee meeting on Somalia and Iran in thirty seconds, so I’m going to have to sign off. Solid numbers by Tuesday.”

  The scrambled line snapped clear.

  Bastian gave himself a moment to recover, then called to Ax to let his next appointment in.

  The sergeant appeared in the doorway. “Bit of a complication, Colonel.”

  “What happened, he got tired of waiting?”

  “No, sir,” said Ax. “Problem is, he might not get through the door. It’s, uh, Major Stockard, Colonel,” added the sergeant. “He’s in a wheelchair.”

  “Stockard’s next?”

  “Yes, sir. Projects in alpha order. He’s the senior officer on the Flighthawks.”

  Dog stood up. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to this. Even before Stockard’s accident their relationship was at best chilly, at worst nonexistent.

  “I suggested Room 103B,” added Ax. “That would be the conference room two doors down the hallway. It has double doors. He’s waiting. You’re backed up three appointments already,” added the sergeant as Bastian got up. Ax pointed to a side door, which opened into a vacant office. “Shortcut, sir.”

  As he reached the door, Bastian realized the frame was actually fairly wide, more than enough for a wheelchair. His sergeant had arranged the meeting place to give both men more privacy. Typical Ax. “Thanks, Sergeant.”

  “Lunch’ll be waiting.”

  * * *

  ZEN ROLLED BACK AND FORTH, TRYING TO WORK OFF some of his energy, some of his nervousness. He felt like a nugget pilot, moving an F-15 up to the flight line for his first takeoff, jiggling the rudder pedals up and down. You could always tell who was new or at least nervous—the twin rudders whacked back and forth like loose shingles in the wind.

  He willed himself to stop. You didn’t want to tip off the enemy to your vulnerabilities.

  Everyone was the enemy, including his father-in-law. The fact that Zen greatly respected Bastian—whom he’d met during the Gulf War while liaisoning as an intel officer for his squadron—was an argument only for greater vigilance.

  The creak of the side door took him by surprise. Zen sat up stiffly in his chair as Colonel Bastian brushed into the room.

  “Major, good morning.” Bastian’s tone gave nothing away; he could have been greeting a Chinese military attaché. He closed the door with a slap and then folded his arms in front of his chest. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re still assigned on the Flighthawk project.” Bastian’s tone was somewhere between a question and a statement.

  “Yes, sir.” Stockard resisted the impulse to add something—anything—to the statement. He and his lawyer had gone over and over this point. Don’t argue, don’t justify, don’t explain. Just state your assignment and presence as a fact. Anything else will inevitably weaken our position.

  Zen’s position. As supportive as his lawyer was, Jeff was in this alone.

  “I think we have an unusual situation,” said the colonel.

  “The Flighthawks are an unusual project,” said Zen.

  “Major, I’m going to spare you the rah-rah bullshit,” said Bastian. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Dreamland’s on the chopping block. Even if HAWC survives, at least a dozen projects are going to be killed. Everything’s in play. The Flighthawks especially. Playing with robots is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

  “Flying with a pair of Flighthawks is like having two wing mates at your beck and call,” said Zen. He was surprised to be talking about the project instead of himself. “We’re just scratching the surface.”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “Look at what UAVs did on the first day of the Air War in the Gulf,” said Zen. “They were the ones responsible for helping knock out the Iraqi air defenses.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened on the first day of the Air War,” snapped Bastian.

  “Excuse me, Colonel. I know you helped plan the attacks. But I can tell you, as someone who was there too—if we had Flighthawks, the F/A-18 that was splashed in air-to-air on Day One would not have gone down.”

  Bastian said nothing. The Navy plane had been knocked down by an Iraqi air-to-air missile, the only air-to-air casualty of the war. Had the Iraqi Air Force been more capable, there would undoubtedly have been many more.

  “Colonel, simply using these planes as scouts will double strike effectiveness and survivability,” continued Zen. “They can provide close escort to AWACS and transport types, freeing F-15’s and eventually F-22’s for more important work. Fit them with iron bombs and they can do the job of A-10A Warthogs, close-in ground support on the front lines without anywhere near the human risk. The Flighthawks are the future. I wouldn’t have come back here if I didn’t believe it.”

  “That’s not the issue,” said Bastian dryly.

  “If you want to cut something, cut the damn JSF. It’s a flying camel. Hell, the Warthogs go faster. You could build two hundred of them for the price of one F-119.”

  The comparison to the A-10 was an exaggeration—but only just. Bastian scowled, but said nothing.

  “The Flighthawks need work. I’m proof of that,” said Zen. “But in five years, maybe three, they’ll own the skies. I guarantee.”

  “Robots will never outfly men,” said Bastian.

  They glared at each other.

  “We’re reorganizing our command structure,” said the colonel finally, still holding Zen’s eyes with his stare. “Each project will be its own flight. Pilots are going to be much more active and important in the command structure. It’ll be a lot like a combat squadron.”

  “You mean I’m going to be in charge of the Flighthawks?”

  “It means the senior pilot or officer will be responsible, yes. Everyone is going to be involved. Everybody responsible. No glamour-boy hotshots. No complicated chain of command where everyone can point a finger at everyone else. Each person will have one flight—one project, one assignment.”

  Zen nodded. “And if the Flighthawks get canceled?”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes. I know where you stand.” Bastian winced, but plunged on. “And you know where I stand. That’s the way I run things.”

  “That’s a good way to run things,” said Zen.

  “As for your relationship—marriage—to my daughter,” added the colonel, his voice regaining its formal tone, “that’s not my concern. And it should never be. You’re no different than any other officer on this base.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Zen began wheeling himself backward, swinging around to pull open the door.

  The colonel beat him to it. Zen felt his face flush red as Bastian reached past him and open
ed it for him. He bit his teeth together and rolled on.

  * * *

  “FORT TWO, MOVE TO LINE ONE, AWAIT FURTHER instructions.”

  Breanna acknowledged the controller’s transmission. She leaned against the left window of the big Megafortress, peering down past the plane’s drooping SST-style nose to give her crew chief the thumbs-up. Then she eased back in her seat, adjusted the headset’s microphone, and eased the big jet forward from its parking spot in front of the hangar entrance. One of three Megafortress test beds currently active at Dreamland, Fort Two had started life as a B-52H, the last production model of the Stratofortress. The enhanced B-52, also known as the EB-52, was a pet project of General Brad Elliott, the past commander of Dreamland, who envisioned it as a relatively low-cost, high-capability twenty-first-century flying battleship. The first Megafortress had become famous as “Old Dog,” aka Dog Zero-One Fox; it had at least arguably prevented World War III with a still highly classified preemptive strike on a Soviet laser system some years before. While various EB-52 scenarios had been proposed as production models, the Megafortress concept had never quite made it to permanent funding, losing out to “sexier”—and much more expensive—projects like the B-2.

  Each of the three Megafortresses currently flying at Dreamland was configured differently, with different power plants, avionics, and weapons systems. Three more B-52’s, including one older G model, were being converted. All made use of the same basic skeleton: a carbon-titanium hull and remodeled bismaleimide (BMI) resin wings. All were considerably more capable than the admittedly versatile and robust design Boeing engineers had drawn up nearly fifty years before.

  Breanna nudged her rudder pedal, gently pushing the plane to the right. Fort Two’s controls were “fly-by-wire”; instead of hydraulics, the control surfaces were moved by small motors directed by electronic impulses in the pedals and yoke. The system was still being perfected, and a hydraulic backup system could be selected by throwing a manual override switch near the throttle panel. Many of Fort Two’s recent experiments involved the control system’s interface with an advanced flight computer capable of flying the plane on its own through a complicated mission set. The engineers were also debating whether traditional controls—such as the yoke that looked like a sawed-off steering wheel—or more contemporary ones like fighter jet sidesticks were better. Fort Two’s control set aimed to meld some of the originals with new technology; when Breanna pulled back on the yoke, it would at least theoretically feel as if she were pulling back on the wheel of a stock model H.