Dreamland: Piranha

by Dale Brown

  But the colonel didn’t see much reason for adding that.

  “You have a nice little operation here, Colonel. No reason for us to be enemies,” said Allen as they walked back to the SUV that would take the admiral to his plane, which had returned after being refueled at Edwards.

  “I didn’t realize we were,”

  Allen only smiled.

  Zen pulled his wheelchair toward Hangar A, where the UMB’s control unit was housed. Bree had promised to meet him there for lunch. He was running his standard ten minutes later—the only place he was punctual was in the air—so it was somewhat surprising when she was not standing impatiently outside the door.

  Zen breathed a reassuring sigh, since she was sure to get on him for being late. Instead of justifying his tardiness, her absence presented a perfect opportunity for turning the tables on the notoriously punctual captain; he could claim he’d been here the whole time, waiting outside. He stopped a few feet from the doorway and pulled his paperback from the corner of his seat, starting to position himself as if he’d been reading in the shade.

  “More Roosevelt!” said Bree behind him.

  “More Roosevelt,” he said, closing the biography of the President. “Where you been?”

  “I was necking with Chief Parsons around the corner,” she said. Chief Master Sergeant “Greasy Hands” Parsons was in charge of the maintenance team and old enough to be her father—or grandfather.

  “I’ve been waiting,” he said.

  “Oh, baloney. I saw you come up.”

  “Musta been some other pimp in a wheelchair.” Zen smiled at her.

  “So which book is this?”

  Bree reached down and picked it up; Zen saw the opening and snuck in a kiss.

  “Heavy reading,” she said. The book was Geoffrey Ward’s A First Class Temperament. “Whatever happened to Sports Illustrated?”

  “I only get it for the swimsuit issue,” said Zen. His interest in Roosevelt had started by accident during his flight home from Turkey, and now he was truly fascinated by the only man to have been elected President four times—all the time confined to a wheelchair. He’d worked through several FDR volumes, and was now eyeing Kenneth Davis’s five books, the definitive tome on Roosevelt’s life. While he joked that he wanted to see how a “fellow gimp made good,” what truly fascinated Zen was Roosevelt’s ability to get along with so many people.

  His charm certainly was innate. As Undersecretary of the Navy, well before being crippled, Roosevelt had practically started a war with Mexico—against the Administration’s wishes and the country’s interests. Still, his boss had treated him like a son.

  How did he manage to get on with so many people after polio took his legs? Wasn’t he bitter? Why didn’t bitterness come out in his relationships, which seemed to show no trace of anger or frustration? Zen didn’t fool himself that his own relationships were on nearly so lofty a plain; at least privately, he railed about his condition every day.

  “Ready for lunch?” Bree asked.

  “Starving.”

  “Red Room?”

  “Nah, Admiral Allen’s there, and Ax says stay away.”

  “Allen? Is that who landed on my runway?”

  Zen gave her the gossip he’d heard from Chief Gibbs: Apparently the admiral was on a tear because his people had gotten their fannies waved during the Piranha exercises. One of Allen’s favorite commanders, Admiral Woods, had pulled some strings to alter the parameters of the test in his favor—and still lost. There was justice in the world, Zen concluded. They Navy being so damned concerned about their little egos being crushed that a top admiral had to come and personally try to soothe things over gave Zen immense satisfaction.

  It wasn’t until they were at their table with full trays of food that Zen realized Bree was distracted. He made a joke about her choice—salad with a side of yogurt—then one about his—a double helping of homemade meat loaf, with extra gravy. She hardly snickered.

  “Bad flight?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Something up?”

  “I fly every day,” he said.

  “You know what I mean. Flying a robot. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He missed a lot more than flying.

  “I don’t know if I can do it, Jeff,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” he told her.

  “It’s a promotion. It’s important.”

  Zen slid back a little in his seat, looking at her face. Breanna was not by any definition, a worrier. Her eyes were fraught with it now.

  “Hey.” He paused, not really sure what to say. After an awkward silence, he stumbled on. “There’re plenty of different projects out there. You don’t have to take something you don’t want. But if you do take it, I know you can do it,” he added quickly. Her lips had pursed—a bad sign. “I mean you’re beyond capable of it. I mean, that’s why you got it.”

  “The Megafortresses.”

  A sore subject, he knew, since she had hoped to inherit Major Nancy Cheshire’s place when she left. But Merce Alou, who outranked her, had been tagged.

  “To be honest with you, Bree, the EB-52, not that it’s a dead end or anything, but it’s now, uh, mature.” Zen hated using the bureaucratese, but it did essentially describe the program. The EB-52 was now a production aircraft; the advances were sure to be incremental. “The UMB. Hell, that’s the future. Or something that comes out of it. Ask anybody. But if it’s not what you want to do, don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s a big adjustment, that’s all,” she said, poking her salad. She frowned, but this time at him. “You’re not going to eat all of that, are you? It’s pure fat.”

  He laughed and reached for his soda—then yawped with pain.

  “Problem?” she asked.

  “Tooth. Geez.”

  “Are you going to get it fixed or what?”

  “This afternoon.” The cold soda had shot through the nerve into every cell in his skull, and his head reverberated with pain. He put down the glass and rubbed the back of his jaw on both sides hoping to ease it somehow.

  “Not going to cancel this time?”

  “I didn’t cancel on purpose,” he mumbled.

  Bree’s manner had brightened; in fact, she seemed to be suppressing a giggle.

  “I’m glad my misery is entertaining,” he told her.

  “Don’t be a sissy.”

  “You filled it with extra ice,” he said. “You knew I had the appointment.”

  “Just a coincidence,” said his wife.

  Freed from his onerous escort duty, Danny Freah took a tour of his perimeter, checking on the security post. His body still felt the lingering effects of his “visit” to Turkey, Iraq, and Iran a few months before; he’d been injured in a mission that recovered data and parts from an Iranian antiaircraft laser facility. His legs were especially bothersome—Danny had stretched and partially torn ligaments in his right knee.

  Not that he’d taken any time off to mend. You had to break something for that. Like your neck.

  Danny eyed the fence along the road, looking at the video cameras posted at irregular intervals. The entire base was constantly watched. Not just by human eyes, but computer programs, which searched for spatial anomalies, as the programmers stubbornly referred to intruders. Additional sensors were buried in the perimeter area. Mines and remote-controlled ground defenses—basically old M2HB machine guns with massive belts of ammunition in modified fifty-gallon drums—were webbed around the fences. A generation ago, it might have taken the better part of an army regiment to provide as secure a perimeter, Dreamland could, at least in theory, be secured with only six men, though Danny’s security squadron was considerably larger and growing every day.

  He turned off the perimeter road, driving up a short hill toward a bunker halfway between the underground hangars and the main gate. A brown slant of cement marked the entrance to the hardened security monitoring station. Lieutenant William McNally and two
airmen were inside, reviewing the security feeds and drinking coffee, not necessarily in that order.

  “Hey, Boss,” said McNally as Danny came through the doors. “How’s the admiral?”

  “Looked like he was searching for a boat.”

  “Can we shoot down his plan next time? Razor guys say they had it nailed at twenty miles.”

  Danny grunted. He checked through the logs, then told McNally he was going over to the weapons lab to check on his gear. His smart helmet and body armor had been damaged in Iran; its custom-fitted replacement was due for a final fitting.

  McNally stopped him, saying a message had come for him while he was with the Admiral.

  “Just leave it in my cue,” Danny told him.

  “Actually, it was a voice message, uh, your wife,” said McNally. “She decided to talk to me.”

  “And?”

  “Says she’ll be out here this afternoon, Said something about a hotel.”

  “Okay,” Danny told him. Jemma knew exactly what Danny did, and had gone through her own security check before Danny was allowed to take his post. Technically, she could come to Dreamland and stay at his quarters on the base. However, the procedure were elaborate, and it was much easier all around to put her up in a nice hotel for a few days.

  Put himself up too.

  “Surprise that she’s coming?” McNally asked.

  “Not a surprise, no,” Danny said. “You have a handle on things?”

  “Boss, you can take off for the next few months as far as I’m concerned. You earned it.”

  “Thanks, Billy.” He tapped his radio and then his beeper, wordlessly telling his lieutenant to call if needed, then headed toward the handheld-weapons lab.

  Annie Klondike sat hunched over a desk, starting at a small, liver-shaped piece of metal. Her think white hair had been pulled back into a tight ball, enhancing her school-marm look.

  “Hey, Annie, whatcha got going?” asked Danny.

  “Hmmmpphhhh,” she said without looking up.

  Danny bent over and inspected the metal. “New explosive?”

  “Hardly.” She pushed herself up from the chair. “You’ll want your helmet, I suppose.”

  “If its convenient.”

  “Convenient? Captain, you’ve added a new word to your vocabulary.”

  “I even used it in a sentence,” said Freah.

  “I’d be curious as to your definition,” she said, beginning her shuffle toward one of the back areas. “We took the liberty of adding upgrades,” said Annie, opening the door to a storage closet. “Try the vest first.”

  The carbon-boron vest that Danny pulled over his chest was no thicker than a good-quality goose-down ski vest, and weighed nearly the same. The side that nestled against his ribs had a crinkly feel; pressing it against his side felt a little like squishing the Styrofoam of a packing peanut.

  “What’s the cushion?”

  “Styrated aluminum,” said Klondike. “Actually a carbonized alloy, but mostly aluminum.”

  “Aluminum?”

  “It bears only a passing resemblance to the material used in soda cans, Captain, not to worry,” said Annie. “I’m told a bullet from a M60E1 at five yards won’t leave a bruise, though I haven’t found a volunteer willing to demonstrate.”

  “Does the next upgrade come with a built-in nurse?”

  “Your helmet is this way,” said the weapons expert tartly. “Have I ever told you, you have a big head?”

  “All the time.”

  Danny’s smart helmet and its connected Combat Information Visor included a display shield with Video, low-light, infrared, and radiation-detection modes. When plugged into its com modules—these were generally carried in a small pack on the wearer’s back or belt—it could tie into Dreamland’s secure satellite communications system. But that system required coordination back at Dreamland, as well as being in line of sight of the satellite—fine in some situations, not in others. Team members on the ground communicated through a discrete-mode unit that was also line-of-sight—again, fine in some situations but not in others.

  “We have bowed to popular demand and added a standard radio link,” announced Annie. “I would caution you: The encryption is merely based on a 128-byte key on a random skip; it can be broken easily.”

  “By anyone outside of the NSA and Dreamland?”

  Annie smiled—slightly. “A simple beacon detector could be used to locate the transmissions, which, as requested, have a range of five miles. We are looking at a complementary-wave transmitter that would interfere with the transmissions beyond an operator-specified range, but alas, it remains to be perfected.”

  “This’ll do,” said Danny. “It beats having to stand up under fire.”

  “I imagine it would.”

  Danny took the new helmet and fit it onto his head. it felt just like the old one—way too tight and far too heavy.

  “Yes, I know,” said Klondike, sighing though Danny hadn’t said anything. “We balance function and utility. We are scientists of the possible, Captain. If we could shave off another pound while not giving up protection or functionality, we gladly would.”

  “You’ll get it right, Annie,” he said.

  “Hmmmph. The shape-recognition program is finally operational and so we have added it. It defaults to ‘on.’ I find it annoying myself, though the weapons detector is useful.”

  “If we can trust it,” said Danny.

  “Yes. Well, Captain, you’ve seen the tests yourself.” The device used pattern recognition to check shapes in the screen against a library of weapons and “suspicious polygons.” It was excellent against the obvious—like tanks and artillery pieces—but tended to be overly suspicious about things like bulges in pants and pockets. On IR mode, however, it could tell the difference between a toy gun and the real thing, which was potentially valuable in certain situations.

  “Let’s go test the targeting screen,” said Annie. There was almost a suppressed cackle in her voice as she said that, and Danny knew he’d find a surprise in the weapons locked at the firing range. Sure enough, the weapons scientist presented him with a new gun.

  “Silenced MP-5,” he said admiringly, taking it from her hands.

  “Hardly,” said Annie. “Try it.”

  Danny studied the stubby wire at the end. On the other systems that worked with the visor targeting system, a thin wire ran from the gun to his helmet.

  “No, there’s no connection. Just point it at the target and shoot,” insisted Annie.

  As Danny pointed the business end of the German submachine gun down the alley, crosshairs appeared in the middle of his visor.

  “Please, I have work to do,” said Annie.

  As Danny pressed the trigger, he unconsciously raised his shoulder to brace against the recoil. For a submachine gun, the MP-5 was famously easy to handle; unlike many predecessors that justly earned the moniker “spray guns,” this was a precision weapon in the hands of a trained and experienced professional. It was, however, still a submachine gun, and all the brilliant engineering in the world could not completely remove the barrel’s tendency under automatic fire to kick a bit.

  Or could it? For the gun in Danny’s hands was not only exceedingly quiet—quieter by far than even the silenced versions of the MP-5 he’s used—but it spit through its fifteen-bullet magazine with less recoil than a water pistol.

  And continued to do so. Though it appeared no larger than the standard box, somehow the magazine contained twenty bullets.

  “Heh,” said Annie. She took another clip from her lab coat and gave it to him. Danny realized it was slightly longer and just a hair fatter than the standard box. The addition of five bullets didn’t sound like much—until you had to use them.

  “You might try aiming this time,” added Annie.

  “I hit the target square on, bull’s-eye.”

  “You should have put all the bullets through the same hole.”

  “You want to try?”

  He’d b
een set up. She took the gun with a smile and pressed the button on the wall to send the paper target back another fifty feet. Without bothering to take his visor, she blew a rather narrow and perfectly round hole through the “100” at the center of the head area.

  “It’s the bullets. Primarily,” she said. “Though I must say our German friends were quite ingenious with the improvements they suggested to the gun. We’re still working on them, of course. But we should have enough to outfit your entire team in a month.”