Strike Zone

by Dale Brown

  One of the Whiplash troopers—Bison—started to laugh.

  “Hang him by his toes,” said Egg Reagan.

  Boston felt the blood rushing to his face.

  “Are you blushing, Sergeant?” asked the captain.

  “I, uh… ”

  “Jeez, if I’d known he was a blusher, I woulda never voted for him,” said Bison.

  “Me neither,” said Egg.

  “We need a blusher,” said Liu.

  It was only then that Boston realized he was in.

  Dreamland Flighthawk Simulation Hangar

  6 September 1997

  0245

  ZEN KNEW HE wouldn’t be able to sleep, and so didn’t even bother going home. He and Breanna had a small apartment—more like a dorm room with a kitchenette—on the base where he could crash when he ran out of energy. But that figured to be a long way off.

  He sat in one of the simulation blocks, playing a loop the programmers had designed to mimic the engagement in which his wife and her plane had been shot down. The simulation was a subset of their normal tactical simulations, used not only to train pilots but to help refine the combat library that was an integral part of the Flighthawks’ control computer, C3. By jiggling the parameters a bit, the techies had given Zen a Flighthawk clone that could fly to within seventy-five miles of the Megafortress before being detected.

  Actually, depending on the altitude, atmospheric conditions, and the orientation of the planes, it could make it to within fifty miles.

  But that was as close as it could get. That meant that the ghost clone couldn’t target the Megafortress. That also meant it couldn’t possibly get much more information about the Megafortress than a standard aircraft would; in fact, almost certainly less.

  Which meant that Quicksilver hadn’t been the target. Nor, from the configurations of the battle forces, were the Indians.

  That left the Chinese.

  So maybe the Indians were using it to spy on the Chinese.

  Or attack them?

  Zen played the simulation again. This time, he took control of the ghost clone and flew directly over the Chinese fleet. Antiair missiles flashed on, but he was able to drive his attack home. He rolled his wing at twenty thousand feet, slapping his nose down on a direct line for the flight deck on one of the two pocket Chinese carriers.

  The mach indicator clicked upward; he nudged the stick and got the bridge in his pipper, fat in the gun sights.

  Blam. No more bridge, no more radar, no more flight operations. The clone skipped away unharmed, tucking right as a simulated Chinese MiG launched a pair of heat-seekers in a belated and desperate attempt to extract revenge.

  Zen stopped the program. If the clone was an Indian aircraft, then surely it wasn’t outfitted with a weapon. Even simply crashing it into the bridge would have dramatically altered the battle.

  So the clone couldn’t have been an Indian plane.

  Maybe it was Russian.

  “Or maybe the Chinese spying on themselves,” he said aloud in derision, frustrated that he couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  “Possible, actually, though unlikely.”

  Zen jerked away from the controls. Stoner walked down the long ramp at the far end toward him.

  Zen wheeled his chair around. “What’s up?”

  “Want to get a beer or something?”

  “No.”

  The CIA officer pulled out the chair from the main programmer’s station and sat on it, rolling it forward as Zen approached.

  “You don’t like me, Major,” said Stoner.

  “Is that relevant?”

  “Probably not.”

  Stoner and Breanna had lashed themselves together after bailing out, and it was probably because of that that they survived the fierce storm that had swallowed most of the rest of the crew. Zen didn’t begrudge Stoner that.

  If anything, he should be grateful.

  And yet.

  And yet.

  He just didn’t like him.

  “I don’t think it’s Chinese,” said Stoner. “Is that the flight where we got shot down?”

  “More or less.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “You’re not in the picture,” said Zen, but he rolled back anyway.

  The simulation area duplicated a Flighthawk control deck aboard an EB-52, with a double set of configurable displays and dedicated systems readouts. It wasn’t a perfect match—some of the equipment on the side racks was omitted, the floor was cement rather than metal mesh, and most importantly, the station never reacted to turbulence. The simulator that did, located down the hall, required at least one techie to run.

  “We didn’t go in like that,” said Stoner, watching the screen that showed Quicksilver. “Breanna—your wife—held us up and got us away from danger before telling us to bail. There was some other stuff, self-destruct routines.”

  “We skip that. We’re not really interested in the accident, just the ghost clone.”

  “Where is it?”

  Zen slapped at the keyboard. The sitrep showed it at seventy-five miles, to the northeast of the Chinese fleet.

  “It’s got to be spying on the Chinese,” said Stoner. “But it doesn’t really make sense that the Indians would send it that far around, does it?”

  “No,” said Zen.

  “It could be another Chinese unit,” Stoner said. “The admiral in charge of this fleet, Xiam, is not well-liked. But I still don’t think they have the technology.”

  “They spy on themselves?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I know how we can settle it,” said Zen. “We go back, buzz their coast, see if it comes out.”

  Stoner shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Zen had thought of the idea earlier and been ready to reject it because it didn’t seem as if the clone could be Chinese. But if what Stoner was saying was true—that one unit might spy on another—then the clone’s location made perfect sense.

  “We fly over their coast, try to get them to come out. If it’s Chinese, eventually they’ll come and take a look. In the meantime, we can adjust our Elint gear to look for their transmissions,” added Zen. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, our range will be wider. They won’t know it.”

  “I guess.”

  “You have a better idea?” Zen asked.

  “Actually, I came down to suggest it myself.”

  Dreamland Perimeter

  0525

  JENNIFER GLEASON TOOK the last turn and broke into a sprint as she headed up the hill back toward the low-slung building that housed her small apartment. As she ran, she glanced in the direction of Dog’s small bungalow, hoping he might appear. The fact that he didn’t probably meant he was already over at his office. She channeled her disappointment into her legs, pushing out long strides as she finished her daily run.

  One brief warm-down and shower later, she grabbed breakfast from her tiny refrigerator—strawberry-banana yogurt—then headed over to the computer labs located below the main Megafortress hangars. Jennifer liked the feel of the empty lab around her early in the morning; she generally had the large underground complex to herself for at least a few hours and could walk around talking to herself as she figured out problems. That would be especially important today; she had an idea on how they might be able to break into the ghost clone’s coding and take it over, assuming they could get close to it again.

  Jennifer got off the elevator and punched her card into the reader next to the door, fingers slipping to the side to hit the number combination to clear the lock while she stared down the retina scan. Inside, she got a pot of coffee going, then went back to kick her computers on so they’d be ready when the coffee was.

  Except nothing came up.

  Jennifer stared at the blank screens, then reached down to the keyboards and gave her access codes again, directing the terminals to boot into the main system housed in a shielded bunker two floors below. The coffee hissed at her from the bench at the side of the room.
She hit Enter and went back for a cup, expecting the screens to be blinking their hellos when she returned. But they were still blank.

  Kneeling at her station, she keyed her passwords one letter and number at a time. The system allowed only three tries, so she had to get it right.

  She did.

  But there was still nothing.

  The computers were operating—there was a cursor on the fifteen-inch network screen, and the two larger CRTs had their indicator lights on.

  The bungled attempts at signing on locked her out as a user, but not as system administrator. She went to the network bench, where the operating system—which she had helped tweak—was controlled. The monitor flashed to life, reported that the system was in perfect shape—and then refused her password.

  “You get up early,” said Ray Rubeo, coming into the lab.

  “Something’s wrong with the system,” said Jennifer.

  “Hardly. Miss Spanish Inquisition has temporarily locked us out of the system.”

  “What?”

  Rubeo went to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. He drank the whole cup, black and steaming, in two gulps, then poured himself another one.

  “We’re under suspicion of being spies,” said Rubeo.

  “No, that’s not true,” said Danny Freah, entering the room. Cortend was right behind him.

  “Danny, did you lock me out of the system?”

  “I did it,” said Rubeo. “We’re all out.”

  “We’re just following standard procedure,” said Freah. “Just until we can go through some more interviews.”

  “I thought this was an informal inquiry,” said Jennifer.

  Danny didn’t answer.

  “When is this lockout going to end?” asked Jennifer.

  “When you pass a lie detector test,” said Cortend.

  “What?”

  “Are you refusing?” said Cortend.

  Jennifer had taken several lie detector tests before, but the implication of it—that she was suspected of being a traitor—floored her. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.

  “You don’t have to take the test if you don’t want, Jen,” said Danny.

  “Oh, please,” said Rubeo. “If we don’t take the test, we won’t be restored to the system. And you’ll consider pulling our clearance permanently.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Danny.

  Cortend said nothing. Jennifer thought she saw the faintest outline of a grin at the sides of the colonel’s lips.

  Where was Dog in all this?

  No wonder he hadn’t run with her this morning. Danny wouldn’t have gone ahead with all this unless he’d cleared it with the colonel first.

  What, did he think she was a traitor too?

  How could he?

  She clamped her mouth shut, stifling a string of curses. But her anger had to come out somehow—she batted her coffee cup to the floor, sending the hot liquid streaming onto the industrial carpeting.

  “Jen, where are you going?” asked Danny as she brushed past.

  “I’m going to go get some breakfast. Then I’ll take your fucking lie detector test. What a bunch of bullshit.”

  Taj

  0800

  STONER COULD FEEL his eyes drooping as he stepped off the elevator and headed for the commander’s suite. He’d pulled an all-nighter, working out a plan with Zen to provoke whoever was flying the ghost clone into appearing again. The Air Force officer clearly didn’t like him, but Stoner admired him even so. Zen had lost the use of his legs in a flying accident; rather than dropping out he’d fought his way back into the Air Force and actually onto the front lines.

  Stoner would have liked to think that he’d have done the same thing—but he was smart enough to realize he would more likely have succumbed to the inherent bitterness of the situation. While Zen did seem to approach the world with a chip on his shoulder, he didn’t let the chip keep him from getting things done.

  That alone made him worth watching.

  Chief Master Sergeant Terrence “Ax” Gibbs popped up from a desk near the side of the room as Stoner entered.

  “Stoner, right?” asked the chief.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jackie, go get Mr. Stoner some coffee. He likes it on the weak side. Grab some sticky buns too. The cinnamon ones.” The chief master sergeant turned to him and grinned. “It’s okay, Mr. Stoner, one or two buns isn’t going to hurt your girlish figure.”

  Stoner had never met him, much less told him what he liked to eat or drink, but somehow the chief had nailed it.

  “Thanks, Chief Gibbs,” he said.

  “We take care of people here. Zen’s inside already, along with the colonel. You call me Ax,” added the chief. “You need something around here, you get ahold of me. You got that?”

  Ax reached back to his desk and hit an intercom buzzer, then stepped up to the door.

  “We all know what you did to save Captain Stockard,” said Ax. “We appreciate it.”

  “She saved me as much as I saved her,” said Stoner.

  The chief smiled and pointed at him, then opened the door.

  DOG NODDED AS the CIA officer entered his office, listening to Zen as he continued laying out the game plan—two Megafortresses, one to act as agent provocateur and the other hanging back to gather information. When the clone showed itself, Flighthawks from the second EB-52 would come forward. Operating at the far end of their range, they would gather information on the clone without its being able to detect them.

  “We could even turn them loose,” said Zen. “We could program them to home in on their own, gather whatever information they can get, then return.”

  “No—too risky,” said Dog. “I don’t want to chance losing one. But otherwise, this makes sense.”

  “We need a remote base,” said Stoner. “I’d recommend the FOA in the Philippines we used last month.”

  “It’s a good distance from the area you two have mapped out,” said Dog.

  “We’re not quite sure where exactly the clone is flying from,” said Stoner. “If it’s China, this is far. But if it’s Thailand, say, or even off a ship—”

  “The Philippines also limits our exposure,” said Zen. “We’ve been there already. And in terms of the operating radius, it’s the same.”

  “Still a stretch,” said Dog.

  “Better than locating in a country that has the clone,” said Stoner.

  “As unlikely as that may be,” said Zen.

  “Start working on a detailed deployment plan,” said Dog, ignoring the bite in Zen’s voice. “I’ll talk to Jed and get the wheels in motion. It may take a while to get approval.”

  “This may not work,” said Stoner.

  “Don’t be a pessimist,” said Zen. He wheeled himself backward and spun toward the door at the right side of Dog’s office, which had been widened so his wheelchair could easily fit through.

  “I’m just being realistic,” said Stoner, standing.

  He went to open the door for Zen, but the major had already gotten it himself.

  “Play nice, boys,” said Dog as they disappeared.

  Dreamland Visiting VIP Office Two

  1350

  “NAME.”

  “Minnie Mouse.”

  The technician handling the lie detector suppressed a grin.

  “Name,” repeated Colonel Cortend.

  “Jennifer Gleason.”

  “Age?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Um—” said the technician, raising his finger.

  “I’ll be twenty-five next month.”

  “The needle was okay, but I saw the, I mean I knew the answer was wrong,” said the technician.

  Cortend folded her arms. “Continue.”

  “This needn’t be an adversary procedure,” said Danny, standing near Cortend.

  “Thank you for your advice, Captain. Miss Gleason—”

  “Ms.
Gleason.”

  “Miss Gleason, how long have you been at Dreamland?”

  “You could at least call her by her proper name,” hissed Rubeo. “She’s a doctor. Her Ph.D. was a brilliant piece of work. Classified need-to-know, I might add.”

  Rubeo had passed his own lie detector test earlier, which obviously had put Cortend in a bad mood. The colonel ignored him.

  “Miss Gleason,” insisted Cortend, “how long have you been at Dreamland?”

  Jennifer realized that Cortend was trying to rattle her. She also knew the best thing to do was simply answer the questions and get on with her life. But something inside wouldn’t let her do that. She was just so put out, so angry with it all, that she had to fight back somehow.

  “I’ve been here too long, obviously,” she said. Then she answered the question, remembering the day in 1993 when as a freshly minted computer Ph.D.—she would go on to get another degree in applied micro circuitry, her weaker discipline—she had come off the Dolphin transport. General Brad Elliott had taken time from his schedule to show her around some of the base, and it was his tour that had cinched her decision to come here.

  Poor General Elliott. A brave man, a true hero.

  He’d been persecuted by people like Cortend. He was honored in the end, but it was too late for him by then—the brass had kicked him out.

  The brass and people like Cortend.

  “I asked, what is your specialty?” said Cortend.

  “Long or short version?”

  “Short.”

  “Just the unclassified portions, Jen,” said Danny, clearly trying to play nice guy. “Just sum it up.”

  “Computers. Mostly software, but on occasion I do hardware. I could have gotten around the lockout easily. If I were a scumbag traitor.”

  “Just answer the questions, Miss Gleason.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Cortend asked a short series of questions regarding Jennifer’s education background and her contributions to the Flighthawk program. The questions skipped around, but none was particularly difficult, and in fact Jennifer had answered all or almost all the day before for one of the technical people assigned to Cortend’s team. But yesterday they had seemed informational; now even the simplest question felt like an accusation.