by Dale Brown
“Going to put the fuzz detector on full,” said Zen. “Jeff, it’s not going to make any difference.”
“Knowledge is power. Just hold us level until the tanker gets here.”
“I have an idea. Let’s break off the stabilizer and land.”
“What?”
“Let’s assume the bomb is there, okay? What do we do? We can’t eject, we can’t land. We twiddle our thumbs for the next twenty years—or twenty seconds, until the timer nails us.
Jeff nudged the Flighthawk closer. There were intermittent signals.
“I think it is in the tail. Where they repaired the plane.”
“Great. Snap it off and let’s go home. I’m getting hungry.”
“How do you want me to snap it off?”
“Shoot it off with the Flighthawk.”
“You’re out of your mind, girlie.”
“Don’t call me girlie while we’re working.”
Zen pulled up the armament panel. The U/MF was down to two slugs.
Not that he had intended on using them.
“Don’t have enough bullets, Bree.”
“Slice through it,” she said. “Fly right into it. This way we’ll be sure nothing else hits us.”
“Rap, even if I managed to do that, how are you going to land without a tail?”
“You know how many times I’ve done that?”
“Zero.”
“Hell, it was in pieces when I landed in Brazil. I’ve done it once a week on the simulator. Jeez, even my father can do it.”
“I’m not worried about him.”
“You have a better idea?”
HE DIDN’T.
Breanna decided that sooner was better than later—it wasn’t like they were going to gain anything by waiting.
As they crossed into Dreamland’s restricted airspace, she leveled at a thousand feet. The range was cleared; they had nothing but empty lake bed for miles.
Was snapping off the stabilizer better than letting the bomb explode?
Depended entirely on how big the bomb was. And where it was. And luck. And how clean a break Jeff got.
Three hundred feet was really too high to do this.
Small bomb wouldn’t do much damage. Except for the debris and shrapnel and fire.
She could land without one stabilizer. Hell, she could land without the whole tail.
Of course, if Jeff missed and somehow took out the wing as well …
“We’ll get ready to land,” she told her husband. “You have to hit me when we’re at three hundred and fifty feet.”
“Shit, Bree, we’ll roll right into the ground.”
“No way.”
“Bullshit.”
“We will if you miss and crash into the rest of the plane.”
“Bree.”
“On a ten count.”
“Fuck you.”
“With great pleasure,” she said, watching the altimeter slip through nine hundred feet.
Aboard M-6
8 March, 0930
BASTIAN HEARD DREAM TOWER CLEAR BREANNA TO land.
“I thought you had a bomb aboard,” he said, trying—and failing-to keep his voice calm.
“Probably.”
“Well, what the hell are you doing?”
“Landing.”
“Wait. We can figure something out,” he said. “Maybe we can get some parachutes into your plane.”
“No time. Relax. We’ll be okay.”
“Breanna Rapture Bastian Stockard—”
“Close your eyes, Daddy.”
Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0935
HIS DAUGHTER WOKE HIM WITH HER WAIL. KEVIN JERKED back to consciousness.
He’d fallen asleep downstairs again. He had to get up and get her, before she woke Karen.
No.
He was in the Megafortress.
Zen had taken control of the Flighthawks.
They’d take him prisoner, make him go back into Theta, have ANTARES suck what was left of his mind away.
He couldn’t let that happen. He pushed to get up out of the seat, got tangled in the restraints. He fell and rolled onto the deck.
JEFF’S HAND WAS SO WET WITH SWEAT THAT THE STICK slipped as he approached. He wrapped both hands around it, eyes and consciousness riveted on the screen.
He had Gal’s speed nailed. The computer kept warning about proximity, which was good.
A quick plunge to the right, snap off half the tail on Bree’s count.
“Okay. Ten, nine,” said Breanna.
“Jeff.”
Zen looked up. Madrone stood over him with his gun. “Seven, six.”
Jeff put his right hand up, his other on the stick. He felt Kevin pushing the gun down into the back of his neck. “Five, four, three.”
Madrone ripped the headset away. Zen took a breath, then bent the stick downward.
DREAMLAND’S EB-52 SIMULATOR WAS VERY, VERY realistic. But it couldn’t begin to approximate what it felt to lose your tail at 140 knots, 347 feet above the ground.
The Megafortress lurched upward, then flopped down like a flat stone, losing 150 feet of altitude in the blink of an eye. Breanna and the computer struggled to compensate for the ravaging forces of gravity and momentum.
She held the plane steady, but it slid sideways through the air. One of the flaps, damaged earlier by the Scorpion, flew off the plane. Something exploded behind them, kicking at the fuselage, pushing the nose upright at the last second.
They hit the ground rather slowly, at ninety-two knots. But they struck at an angle. The leading gear collapsed; the right-side gear twisted off, but remained under the plane. Gal spun wildly. Breanna felt something hot in her face, then lost consciousness.
Dreamland
8 March, 1008
CAPTAIN BREANNA “RAPTURE” BASTIAN STOCKARD woke up in her father’s arms. Her body felt as if it were encased in cement. Her arms hurt. Her fingers fluttered.
Her toes were numb. She tried to bend her knee, felt nothing.
“Breanna. Bree.” He spoke to her in his strong voice from far away, beyond the mountains.
Whose voice was it? Jeff’s?
Bree opened her eyes.
“I can’t move my legs,” she said.
“You’ve been immobilized,” he said. “Bree. You’re okay.”
“I’m okay?”
“You’re alive.”
She remembered Zen in the hospital. She’d said the same thing to him.
Breanna started to cry.
“The doctors say you’re okay. We’re going to put you in the ambulance.”
The tears flowed. God. To lose her legs.
“Yo. Good landing.”
She turned her head. Jeff lay on a stretcher next to her.
“Jeff—”
“Kevin’s dead,” he said. “He got slammed in the landing.
Minerva bashed her head too. They don’t think she’ll make it.
She didn’t care about the others. She pushed her head up, looking toward her feet.
You’re okay, she’d told Jeff. You’re fine.
What a Goddamn lie.
Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.
Then she saw her right boot move, ever so slightly. She pushed her left foot. It moved as well.
Thank you, God, oh, thank you, she thought as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
* * *
DOG STEPPED BACK FROM THE STRETCHERS AS THE medics packed Breanna and Jeff into the ambulance.
“We made it,” said a sweet, soft voice in his ear.
“Yes,” he said. Then he turned and took Jennifer Gleason into his arms, his mouth finding hers in a long, glorious kiss.
VIII
“ON REVIEW”
Dreamland
8 March, 1300
COLONEL BASTIAN SLID THE THIN YELLOW PAPER OVER the center of his desk. His fingers brushed so gently along the tissuelike surface, he might have been touching a baby’s cheek, afraid that if he pushed too ha
rd he would somehow damage it.
He had no memory of Breanna as a baby. He had pictures of her mother pregnant, but no memory of her in a crib or in his arms.
The report said she’d be fine—minor scrapes, a few bruises, some smoke inhalation, nothing that would keep her off active duty. She’d been lucky.
Lanzas had been killed. And Madrone, his unrestrained body tossed and broken by the crash.
More than luck had saved his daughter. There was the structural integrity of the plane, its ability to absorb massive shock and trauma, the computer that had helped her manage a semistable landing, the magnificent airfoil that had somehow kept the Megafortress from becoming simply a rock.
The guts to try an outrageous solution. The skill to pull it off.
Not luck at all.
His own decision not to shoot them down.
The right decision, because everything had worked out. But if the nukes had been launched, and part of Dreamland had been obliterated, if the nuclear fallout was now drifting over Las Vegas?
“Colonel?”
Dog looked over at the door. Sergeant Gibbs grinned wider than a jack-o’-lantern. “You’re going to want to take this call right now, sir.”
Bastian picked up the phone.
“Stand by for the President,” said a woman’s voice, so cold and quick it might have been an automated operator.
Before Dog could react, President Martindale came on the line.
“Colonel Bastian, damn good to be talking with you,” said the President. The warmth in his loud voice stunned Bastian momentarily. “Damn good job out there. Damn good.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bastian.
“Tecumseh, I’m afraid I don’t have much time to talk right now, but one of my aides will set up a visit.”
“A visit here?”
The President laughed. “Unless you’re thinking of going somewhere?”
“No, sir.”
The President laughed again and hung up the phone. Bastian wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to wait for someone else to come on. After two minutes with the dead phone next to his ear, he finally hung up.
The phone rang almost immediately. But instead of the White House, it was his boss—General Magnus.
“You disobeyed a direct order,” said Magnus without any preliminaries.
“I did not,” said Bastian.
“You were in the cockpit of that EB-52. Don’t bullshit me, Dog. You had express orders not to be in a Megafortress.”
“I was the most qualified pilot at the—”
“Just because you have your nose up the President’s ass doesn’t make you immune, Bastian,” snapped Magnus. “And just because Keesh was man enough to say you opposed ANTARES when he resigned won’t get you off the hook. That was still your man who almost fried San Francisco.”
“I said from the get-go the project was ill-advised,” said Dog, his anger stoking to match the general’s. “I was under direct orders to proceed.”
“That’s the only reason you’re still in the Air Force at all,” said Magnus. “The only fucking reason.”
Bastian had never heard Magnus curse or use an obscenity. It drained his anger away.
“Your status is under review,” said the general.
“I’m being relieved?” Bastian said softly.
“Under review,” repeated the general. “We’ll see what the new Defense Secretary thinks,” Magnus added. “Arthur Chastain is the likely replacement.”
“I don’t see how you can discipline a pilot for flying an airplane,” said Bastian.
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
“You’re taking away my wings? I can’t fly?”
“Of course not. But you’re not a pilot, Dog. That’s not your job. You’re the commander of the most important weapons-testing facility in the country, as well as Whiplash. When the shit hits the fan, your job is on the ground where you can control things, not in the air getting shot at.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You bet your ass there’s going to be a full-scale investigation.”
“I welcome it,” Dog said.
“You don’t have to lie.” Magnus snorted. He too seemed to have spent most of his fury. “Get your p’s and q’s in line. The fallout on this one is going to be heavy.”
The line snapped dead before Dog could say anything else.
Did the President’s phone call mean he would survive this no matter what? Or did it simply mean the brass would stack the odds monumentally against him?
Dog got up from the desk. He felt depressed and tired. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d work off the cloud by hopping into a cockpit and getting some flying time. Throw himself into the sky, clear his head.
He glanced down at Ax’s neat piles of paperwork and the reports waiting for his inspection.
He wavered. He was no good when feeling like this, out of sorts—how could he command anyone?
How could he expect others to follow orders if he disobeyed his?
Magnus hadn’t said he couldn’t fly. He’d said when the shit hit the fan, he belonged on the ground.
The general meant he belonged where he could control things. Truth was, with a fleet of Megafortresses, that might very well be in the air, not on the ground.
There was work to be done. Bastian sighed and pulled out his chair.
Then he pushed it back and went to find a plane in need of a check-flight.
Table of Contents
Dreamland Duty Roster
LT. COLONEL TECUMSEH “DOG” BASTIAN
CAPTAIN BREANNA BASTIAN STOCKARD
MAJOR JEFFREY “ZEN” STOCKARD
MAJOR MACK “KNIFE” SMITH
MAJOR NANCY CHESHIRE
CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH
Titles by Dale Brown
I Premonition
Allegro, Nevada 1 January 1997, 0410 (all times local)
II Night moves
Bunker B, Air Force High Technology Advanced Weapons Center (Dreamland), Nevada 9 January, 1405
Aboard EB-52 BX-2 “Raven” Range 2, Dreamland 9 January, 1415
Bunker B, Dreamland 9 January, 1415
Aboard Raven 9 January, 1415
Dreamland Shuttle Dock 9 January, 1745
Allegro, Nevada 9 January, 1913
Dreamland 9 January, 2104
Las Vegas 9 January, 2250
Dreamland Perimeter 10 January, 0455
Dreamland Aggressor Project Hangar 10 January, 0905
Dreamland Security Office 10 January, 1015
Dreamland Range 2 10 January, 1054
Dreamland Commander’s Office 10 January, 1205
Dreamland, Range 2 10 January, 1205
Dreamland Briefing Room 1 14 January, 1005
III Head games
Dreamland, Taj Suite 302 23 January, 0750
Aboard EB-52 BX-4 “Missouri” Range 2, Dreamland 23 January, 0807
Dreamland Handheld Weapons Lab 23 January, 0807
Dreamland, Aggressor Hangar 23 January, 0182
Aboard Mo 23 January, 0915
ANTARES Bunker 27 January, 0755
Dreamland All-Ranks Cafeteria 27 January, 1230
ANTARES Bunker 27 January, 1555
Dreamland Commander’s Office 29 January, 1705
Allegro, Nevada 29 January, 2034
IV Brainstorm
Aboard Hawkmother (Dreamland Boeing 777 Test Article 1) Dreamland Range 23 West 18 February, 1007
Aboard Raven 8 February, 1123
Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1137
Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1141
Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1145
Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1153
Aboard Raven 18 February, 1213
Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1227
Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1250
Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1257
Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1301
Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1307
Aboard Raven 18 February, 1313
Dreamland Security Office 18 February, 1315
Flighthawk Control Bunker 18 February, 1400
Dreamland Administrative Offices (“Taj”), Level 1 18 February, 1545
Dreamland Bunker B, Subbasement 18 February, 1545
Dreamland Bunker B, Computer Lab 18 February, 1600
Dreamland Dorms, Pink Building 18 February, 2345
Allegro, Nevada18 February, 2352
Dolphin Helicopter Transport Approaching Dreamland 19 February, 0600
Dreamland Flighthawk Hangar 19 February, 0630
Dreamland Dorms, Pink Building19 February, 0806
Hawkmother Cockpit19 February, 0840
Sharkishki 19 February, 0950
Hawkmother 19 February, 0954
Rave19 February, 1005
Hawkmother 19 February, 1015
Sharkishki 19 February, 1019
Raven 19 February, 1021
Hawkmother 19 February, 1021
Sharkishki 19 February, 1025
Hawkmother 19 February, 1028
Sharkishki19 February, 1038
Raven 19 February, 1050
V The rain forest
Aboard Hawkmother Over Sierra Nevada Mountains 19 February, 1110
Pej, Brazil 19 February, 1510 local