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  “Shit!” was the only warning he could give before the pilot from Kansas City overran the transmission with a curse.

  After that there was nothing but static.

  II

  Gone

  Dreamland

  27 May 1997 0453

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL TECUMSEH “DOG” BASTIAN LENGTHENED his stride as he jogged onto the long stretch of macadam that paralleled the razor-wire fence on the southeastern perimeter of the Dreamland “residential” area. This was inevitably his favorite part of the morning run, not least because the three-quarter-mile straightaway led to the last turn and the trot home. A boneyard of old aircraft lay to the right; the shadows seemed not so much ghosts as spirits urging him onward. In truth, he saw only shadows of shadows, since the skeletons were too far away in the dark to be made out. But even thinking of the old-timers disintegrating into the desert somehow comforted him. The bare skeletons reminded him that the ad-monition of “dust to dust” meant not only that conceit was ill-advised, but that everyone had a purpose and a role, and the reward of rest was guaranteed no matter how trivial your job in life, or how short you fell from your goal.

  Not that Dog Bastian was a man who fell short of his goals. Indeed, his record since arriving at Dreamland the year before was one of astounding achievement.

  And one conspicuous incident of direct insubordination—which had averted the destruction of San Francisco and Las Vegas.

  A lot had changed since Dog had arrived at Dreamland. The base, then on the verge of being excised, was now charged not merely with developing weapons, but of using them in extreme situations. A new President had taken office, and with him there had been a new cabinet and a fairly thorough reshuffling of the civilian and military defense hierarchies. Dog’s patron—the NSC director herself—had lost her post. But he had remained and even thrived.

  Temporarily, at least. Two months before, Dog had been placed “under review” by the three-star general who was his immediate and at the moment only military superior. Precisely what “under review” meant remained un-clear. Lieutenant General Harold Magnus had made no move to discipline him for disobeying orders against flying, and it was obvious he wouldn’t—given the circumstances, it would have been ridiculous. In the interim, a new defense secretary had taken over, along with a chief of staff from the Navy. “Under review” might apply to Dreamland’s status in the defense structure, which admittedly was hazy. While part of the Air Force, the base was not included under any of the normal commands. Its personnel were predominately Air Force, but they included many civilians, and a smattering of men and women from the Army and Navy as well. In developing weapons, Dreamland was in all practical effect a contractor—not just for the Air Force, but for the Army, Navy, CIA, NSA, and in one case, NASA. Its covert “action team”—aka Whiplash—consisted of a ground force commanded by Danny Freah and any other assets assigned to a mission by Dog himself. Once a Whiplash order was initiated by the President, Dog was answerable only to him or his designated deputy.

  He knew that eventually all of this would change.

  Dreamland and Whiplash were too important to be commanded by a puny lieutenant colonel. The latest rumors posited that Whiplash would be expanded to full squadron size and then placed under the Special Operations Command (USSOC). A two-star would take over the base, which would remain a hybrid command. While such a split was antithetical to the concept that had established Whiplash, as well as the reason Dog had been sent here in the first place, it had a certain Washington logic to it that made the rumor seem fairly authentic.

  Yet it didn’t bother Dog. As a matter of fact, he no longer thought about his career in the Air Force. He even considered—albeit lightly and without focus—what sort of job he might take if he returned to civilian life. Nothing about the future bothered him these days, especially while he was jogging.

  The reason waited a few yards ahead, stretching in the chilly morning air.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” said Dog as he approached.

  “I had a late night,” said Jennifer Gleason. She paused in her warm-up routine long enough to accept a light peck on the lips, then fell into a slow trot alongside him. “I had to help Ray on some last minute coding for Galatica. The navigation section in the autopilot programs developed some nasty bugs when the spoof lines were imposed and the GPS signal was blocked. Major Cheshire’s supposed to fly it this morning, and we didn’t want her landing in Canada.”

  “Spoof lines?”

  “Well, the ECM coding in the three-factor section doesn’t interface with the GPS at all, but for some bizarre reason there was this variable table that was affected. It had to do with the allocation of memory—”

  “I think we’re venturing into need-to-know territory,” said Dog, picking up his pace. “And I don’t need to know.”

  “Too technical for you, Colonel?”

  “Nah.”

  Jennifer tapped at him teasingly. He caught her hand, then folded it into his, her long, slim fingers twining around thumb and pinkie. They ran like that for a few yards, Dog luxuriating in the soft echo of her footsteps next to him.

  “I get off here,” he said as they approached the narrow road that led to his quarters.

  “You’re not running with me?”

  “Hey, I’ve done my time.” Dog slowed to a trot and then a walk. Jennifer let go of his hand, but also slowed, trotting backward to talk a few more moments before saying good-bye.

  “Come on, you can do another circuit.”

  “Can’t. Chief Gibbs probably has the papers three feet high on my desk already,” said Dog. “Maybe we can meet for dinner?”

  “How about lunch?”

  “Can’t do lunch. How about off base for dinner?”

  “Are you sure Gibbs will let you off base?”

  “Ax works for me, not the other way around.”

  “Have you checked the organizational chart?”

  “No way. He drew it up,” Dog said, laughing.

  Chief Master Sergeant Terrence “Ax” Gibbs was the colonel’s right-hand man; the chief tended to the p’s and q’s of the job and at times acted as a substitute mother hen. Ax came from a long line of top-dog sergeants, a chief’s chief who could organize a hurricane into a Sun-day picnic.

  “The question is, can you get away?” said Dog.

  “You’re the worst workaholic on this base, and that’s saying something.”

  Jennifer jogged forward. Her long hair framed a beautiful round face, and even in rumpled sweats her body pulled him toward her.

  “I will meet you at the Dolphin port at 1800 hours,” she said a few inches from his face. “Be there or be square.” Dog laughed, then leaned in to kiss her. As their lips touched, he caught the flash of a blue security light in the distance.

  “Now you’ve done it,” said Jennifer. “Chief Gibbs heard you talking about him.”

  “I have no doubt,” said Dog. He turned toward the approaching truck, one of the black GMC SUVs used by the base’s elite security force. The Jimmy whipped so close before halting that Dog took two steps off the pavement, nudging Jennifer out of the way as well.

  “Colonel, got a message for you,” said the driver. Lieutenant William Ferro, the security duty officer, was out of breath, as if he’d run instead of driven. “You have to, you have a secure call.”

  “Relax, Billy,” Dog told him. “Gleason, I’ll see you at 1800.”

  “You got it,” Jennifer told him, whirling and breaking into a smooth stride.

  “Whiplash,” said Ferro as Dog got into the truck. “I didn’t know if I should say that, in front of the, uh, scientist, sir.”

  “That scientist has seen more combat than you have,” said Dog, who might have added that her clearance was also considerably higher. “But you did okay. When in doubt, don’t.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant stepped on the gas and whipped the truck into a 180, shooting toward Taj, the main building at the base. Dog’s office and a secure com
munications bunker known as Dreamland Command were located in the basement.

  The colonel ran his hands over his face as they drove, mopping the perspiration. His shirt had a wide, wet V at the chest. He’d change once he knew what was up.

  “Do me a favor, Billy,” he said as the lieutenant screeched to a stop in front of the building. “Roust Captain Freah and ask him to meet me up in my office as soon as he can make it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Billy—slow down a bit, all right? This thing’s a truck, not a tank. You’ll get hurt if you hit something.” THE DOORS TO DREAMLAND’S SECURE COMMAND CENTER snapped open with a pneumatic hiss. As Dog stalked across the threshold, the automatic lighting system snapped on. He went to the bank of video consoles on the left, hunkering over the keyboard as he pecked in his password. The screen’s blue tint flashed brown; a three-option menu appeared, corresponding to the communication and coded protocols. Dog nudged the F3 key, then retyped both his password and the Whiplash activation code. Then he opened a small drawer beneath the desk and took out a headset.

  “Configuration Dog One,” he told the computer that controlled the communications suite. “Allow pending connection.”

  The screen popped into a live video from the situation room at the Pentagon. Lieutenant General Magnus, in his shirtsleeves, was conferring with an aide at the side.

  “General,” said Dog.

  Magnus turned toward him with his familiar scowl.

  “Tecumseh. Sorry to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping, General. I’d just finished my run.”

  “We’re having some problems in Iraq,” said Magnus.

  “Very bad problems. You’ll be hearing news reports soon.

  We’re getting ready for a press conference upstairs. The executive summary is this—Saddam has shot down three of our planes.”

  “What?”

  “We recovered one of the pilots and had a quick look at the wreckage. We weren’t able to get a full team out there but we have some of the photos. One of your men happened to be in Europe and was routed out there by coincidence. Mack Smith. He looked at the wreckage.” Dog nodded. Mack wasn’t a true expert on plane damage—though of course he thought he was. Still, he knew enough to give a lecture on it to terrorism experts and had commanded an investigation in the past.

  “What did Mack say?”

  “I don’t have the report yet, or the photos,” said Magnus. “This is still developing. Two of the planes are still missing. They’re definitely down.” Dog felt a surge of anger as the news sank in. He’d flown missions over Iraq, commanded guys in both Southern Watch and Operation Comfort. If there were men down, there was a good chance he knew them.

  Iraq should have been taken care of six years ago, steamrolled when they had a chance.

  “Retaliatory strikes are under way,” continued Magnus. “We’re stepping up reconnaissance. We have satellite coverage, but we’ve pulled our U-2s until we’re sure they’ll still be okay. We need one if not two Elint aircraft there, and we believe the RC-135s might be vulnerable, at least if they stray close enough to hear what’s going on in Baghdad. It’s a precaution, of course, but until we know precisely what happened, we’d prefer to—”

  “I can have a pair of Megafortresses in the air this afternoon,” said Dog.

  “Two?”

  “I believe we can have two,” said Dog, thinking of Raven and Quicksilver.

  “Two would be optimum. We’ll want a black base, not Incirlik.”

  “Okay,” said Dog, realizing that was going to be considerably more difficult than merely sending the Megafortresses.

  “You’re not being chopped to CentCom on this, Tecumseh,” said Magnus. “You’re supplying them with information and support, but you remain an independent entity. This is a Whiplash operation. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir, absolutely.”

  “If you can find the radar and the missile sites, take them out,” added Magnus, making the implications of the order explicit. “Don’t bother going through Florida and pussyfooting with the political bullshit. Full orders will follow. Jed Barclay is going to bird-dog you on this, for the President. I’m only tangentially involved.” Magnus turned away from the screen briefly, nodded to someone behind him, then turned back. “Your orders should arrive no later than 1400.”

  “The planes will be en route by then, General.”

  “Very good.”

  The screen went blank.

  Dreamland

  0603

  “WHERE YOU GOIN’, MY BLUE-PAINTED PAIN IN THE YOU-know-what?” twanged Staff Sergeant Louis Garcia, half singing, half cursing at the errant wires in the hard-point assembly he was trying to adjust. Breanna rolled her eyes and took a sip of her Diet Coke, painfully aware that anything she said would not only further delay their takeoff but elicit a riff of bad Dylan puns from the man on the portable scaffold.

  “How’s it looking?” asked Merce Alou, keeping his voice down.

  Breanna shrugged. “Something about the wire harnesses fouling up the hydraulic fit,” she told Major Alou, Quicksilver‘s pilot.

  “New antennas in the nose okay?” asked Alou, nodding toward the gray and silvery front section of the plane. Thanks to updates in their electronic intelligence, or Elint, gear, both Raven and Quicksilver had new blunt, almost triangular, noses. The faceted proboscis not only accommodated the latest array of sensors, but would also facilitate a false-echo electronic countermeasure system still being developed and scheduled for installation next fall. The new nose was not yet coated with its radar-deflecting Teflon paint, which took several applications and could ground it for some time.

  “Checked and rechecked,” said Breanna. “Least of our problems.”

  Alou grunted noncommittally. He’d done much of the work shaking down the new gear in Raven, his usual mount, and he seemed to be remembering those teething problems.

  “We only have a clear satellite window for another hour and a half,” he said finally. “We’ll have to scrub if we’re not ready to fire the Hydros in forty-five minutes.

  I’m not sure we can even preflight by then.” Breanna took another sip of her soda. Russian satellites crisscrossed overhead on a predictable schedule. The Megafortress was no longer considered top secret—both Jane’s and Airpower Journal had written articles on the aircraft in the past few months. Many of the details were wrong, but that was undoubtedly the idea of whomever had leaked them. Newsweek had published a grainy photo following the so-called Nerve Center affair, and Time had run not one, but two artists’ sketches.

  The Hydros they were to launch from the bulky hard-point, however, were very secret. From the distance, they looked like sleek red tubes with a slightly swelled rear. In fact, they could easily be confused for water or gas pipes, were it not for their aerodynamic noses and tiny fins at the back. But the thin, titanium-ceramic bodies held a pair of gossamer copper-carbon wings and a large tube of hydrogen. After the Hydros were dropped, the wings were inflated either by remote control, timer, or preset altimeter. The foot-long stubs allowed the tubes to glide back down to earth. While still in its early stages, the Hydros were expected to form the basis of next-generation disposable sensor devices or even bomb kits. And the implications of the technology—airfoils on demand, as one of the scientists put it—were far-reaching.

  “Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door,” said Garcia. He stood back triumphantly.

  “That mean we’re ready?” Alou asked.

  “One more cup of coffee ‘fore we go,” sang Garcia, apparently meaning yes.

  “Can we mount the Hydros?” asked one of the scientists who stood in front of the knot of ordies and the Hydro.

  “Just don’t go mistakin’ heaven for that home across the road.”

  “One more song lyric and you’re going to heaven,” said Breanna, “and it won’t be in an airplane either.” Thirty minutes and at least a half-dozen song allusions later, Breanna and Alou had the Megafortress
on the taxi-way. A black SUV Jimmy sat ahead at the turn into runway one. They trundled toward it then braked; they had to wait for Galatica to land.

  “Holding at Heaven’s Gate,” said Alou.

  The controller acknowledged. Galatica was on final approach.

  Breanna curled her arms in front of her chest, undecided about whether to watch “her” plane land or not. She looked up at the last moment, just in time to see the plane drop into view. Her undercarriage and tail had been severely damaged in the crash landing, but there was no way to tell now; she descended toward the dry lake bed like a dark angel with her wings spread, her Teflon-coated surface smooth and sleek black.

  “I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” Bree muttered to the aircraft.

  “Don’t worry, I’m still saying my prayer too,” said Alou.

  Breanna felt her face flush, embarrassed that she had spoken out loud.

  “Okay,” said Alou. He held up his thumb, then gave a wave in front of the window to the crewman at the security truck. They removed their brakes and stepped to the line, toeing along the back apron of the runway for a moment before giving Quicksilver the gas. Breanna scanned the glass wall of instruments in front of her; all systems were green as they skipped lightly into the air.

  Breanna’s disappointment at not being the first to take Galatica disappeared as soon as her stomach felt the impact of the two g’s or so that Quicksilver pulled getting off the runway. She’d missed that rush of adrenaline these past few weeks. The maneuvers in the simulator had touched eight negative g’s, a fairly hard shove—yet they hadn’t felt as sharp, as nice, as warm as this.

  “Preparing to clean gear,” she told Alou.

  “Proceed.”

  “Computer—raise landing gear,” she said.

  “Raise landing gear,” repeated the automated flight assistant. They worked through their flight plan, bringing the Megafortress to ten thousand feet over the northernmost test area. They reached it about ten minutes ahead of schedule and had to wait for the recovery team to get ready on the ground.

  “I didn’t know you were religious,” said Alou as they began a wide orbit around the range. “I saw you pray before takeoff. That happen after the crash?” Bree grunted, not caring to get into a discussion. She hadn’t actually been praying.