Target Utopia
Page 37
“Break right, break right,” Turk told him.
Cowboy managed to do so, temporarily breaking the lock. Turk fired several shots, even though he wasn’t lined up properly.
The Sabre ignored it.
“Left, left,” he told Cowboy.
This time the F-35’s maneuver brought the Sabre close enough to Turk’s line of sight for him to put a few slugs in its path. They didn’t hit, but the aircraft did break off.
Turk took that as a cue and veered right—barely ducking Sabre Two as it came up behind him.
Keep it up, keep it up, he told himself.
Rubeo’s voice came over the radio. “Turk, I need you to broadcast a command to the Sabres. It’s a code. It’s going to sound . . . ridiculous. But do it.”
“Go!”
“Give it as the command sequence.”
“All right. What?”
“‘Jennifer is your mother.’”
There was no time to argue. Turk keyed the mike, switching to the Sabre’s command channel.
“All Sabres, Command sequence: Jennifer is your mother.”
A legend flashed onto his screen.
SABRES REQUEST: RECONNECT AND SAFETY?
“Computer reconnect!” he said, his voice even louder than before. “Reconnect. Safety! Safety! Sabres knock it off. Sabres knock it off. Free flight pattern two! On my back.”
The UAVs abruptly began to climb. They were back under his control.
“They’re ours,” Turk told Cowboy. “They are ours! Let’s go home before they change their minds.”
34
Daela Reef
FROM THE MOMENT the two Sabres turned west rather than following the course he had programmed, Braxton knew he had lost them.
It was bitter. Years of work, and now failure.
Nonetheless, he had to think of the long term. He had to complete his getaway.
The Dreamland people were certainly watching the island by now. But that was just fine with him. Talbot was still with the Chinese, but he was of little value—muscle mostly, he couldn’t tell them anything important, certainly not about the long-term plans.
Braxton had lost today. Tomorrow he and the movement would be victorious. They had the force of history on their side.
He pushed the button to set the timer, then left for the west side of the island.
35
Daela Reef
WHEN DANNY SAW the black column of smoke in the distance as the Osprey approached the island, he leaned forward into the cockpit and asked if the pilots could get the Chinese PT boat commander back on the radio. A few seconds later he was greeted by the captain’s strained but polite English.
“What was the explosion?” Danny asked.
“We have lost several men,” said the commander. “The enemy appears to have blown himself and his installation up.”
That sounds pretty convenient, thought Danny.
“I have received orders to cooperate with you,” said the captain.
“As have I,” said Danny. “We have a common enemy.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll search the place as soon as we get there,” Danny told the captain. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“A little closer to ten, Colonel,” said the pilot.
“They’ll wait, I’m sure.”
TURK HAD NEVER refueled the Tigershark off an Osprey’s “buddy pack” system, but the basic procedure was the same as refueling from a regular tanker, assuming you adjusted for the speed, the lack of director lights, the turbulence, the strange looking gear, and most of all, the corny Marine jokes.
“Come on, Air Force, you can do it,” laughed Greenstreet. Depending on your point of view, he was either directing the refuel or harassing Turk from a short distance away.
“If a Marine can do it, I can do it,” answered Turk.
“Hell, if Cowboy can do it, anybody can do it,” answered Greenstreet.
“He just puts it on automatic and lets the computer do the flying,” said Cowboy.
“I wish.”
In fact, Turk could do that, and would have on a standard refuel. But he didn’t feel like taking any chances with computers at the moment, not even the Tigershark’s.
Sabre One and Two had just enough fuel to make it back to the airport; he would fly them there, and then land himself, if Danny’s search of the island didn’t turn up anything.
He thought about Cowboy as he unhooked from the Osprey. The mission had turned the tables on Turk—while he hadn’t ordered anyone to actually kill Cowboy, he’d certainly put him into very grave danger to accomplish the mission. It was different, he told himself, very different.
And yet in a sense it wasn’t. Because he knew that if getting the Sabres back meant killing Cowboy, he would have at least considered it.
Rejected it, probably. Definitely. But thought of it.
Breanna had sent him to near-certain death in Iran because he was the only person in the world who could have accomplished the mission. And it was her job to send him.
Actually, no: he’d volunteered. Just as Cowboy had. They had told him about the risks. He just hadn’t completely believed them.
When things went bad, Breanna did the only thing she could do: send someone after him.
Maybe saving him had been more of an option than Stoner had said. Maybe that was the real reason she’d sent Stoner: without a doubt, Stoner was the only person who could have pulled off that mission and gotten him back alive.
Or maybe not, Turk thought. The bottom line was the mission. It was Breanna’s job to think about it, to put it above her own wishes—and above his own life.
He still felt . . . not quite the same as he had felt about Breanna before. But he understood. In his heart, he understood.
“Hey, leave some for the rest of us,” said Greenstreet. “I’m into my reserves myself.”
“Roger that,” said Turk.
He dropped down from the Osprey.
“See you guys in town tonight,” he told the Marines. “We’ll settle up on who owes what beers.”
“Fine with me,” said Greenstreet. “As long as I have the first round.”
36
The White House
THE PRESIDENT CHECKED her watch, then got up from her desk.
“I’m going to go take a nap,” she told her scheduling secretary. “We have a bit of a lull.”
Her secretary looked shocked, as did the handful of aides standing nearby. Mary Christine Todd never took a nap in the middle of the day.
“It’s a new thing I’m trying,” she told them cheerfully. “I’ve been reading this book by Dr. Wayne Muransky on power naps. We’ll see if it works. Hold my calls.”
A succession of Yes, ma’ams followed her as she made her way to the residence. Her husband was waiting, as were her guests.
“There you all are,” she told the doctors and their two nurses. “I’m sorry I’m late. We had a bit of a . . . situation.”
“Of course,” said Dr. Chambers. “Are you ready to talk about the procedure?”
“Let’s have a little coffee first,” said Todd’s husband. She noticed that he looked worried. It was the first time in years—probably since the night she told him she was going to go ahead and run.
There was a good reason why—she’d already decided against the treatment, which had a minuscule chance of saving her life. The only reason she was taking the meeting was because he’d insisted.
Begged, really.
“Who wants coffee and who wants tea?” he asked. They’d dismissed the staff for the meeting.
“I’d love something stronger,” joked the President. “But I do have to get back to work.”
The others laughed. “Humor is a great weapon against cancer,” said Chambers.
Not really, thought Todd, going into the dining room, but it’s probably all I have.
37
The Cube
BREANNA NODDED AS Danny finished reporting on the situation at
the island. The bunker had been imploded, exactly like the one they had discovered earlier. The Chinese had lost several men, including a high-level intelligence agent who had been working for well over a year trying to track Braxton.
“The PT captain doesn’t appear all that broken up about it,” added Danny. “But he’s not going out of his way to cooperate.”
“And Braxton?” asked Breanna.
“No trace of him. Presumably he’s in the bunker somewhere. But . . .”
“But?”
“There are some bodies aboveground,” said Danny. “Possibly he escaped. I just don’t know.”
“All right. The Navy is sending a SEAL team to secure the island. As soon as they arrive, you can come home.”
“All the way home?” asked Danny.
“We have the Sabres back. We have the technology from the tugboat and the other base. Our mission is accomplished.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
Breanna smiled at him. Danny was tired—as tired as she’d ever seen him. But she suspected it was a good tired, the sort that came at the end of a job well done.
She signed off, momentarily basking in her own sense of accomplishment—they had gotten the Sabres back and closed down a powerful if quixotic conspiracy.
And her organization had been exonerated.
There was much work to be done—on business and personal matters.
She turned and walked back up the steps, looking for her father.
He wasn’t there. Ray Rubeo met her instead.
“Where—” she started to ask.
“He’s gone,” said Rubeo gently. “He’s not ready.”
“But . . .”
Rubeo grimaced.
Somehow, Breanna managed to keep her tears to herself until she was alone in her office.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photo by Joy Strotz
DALE BROWN is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, starting with Flight of the Old Dog in 1987, and most recently Starfire. A former U.S. Air Force captain, he can often be found flying his plane over the skies of Nevada.
www.dalebrown.info
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BY DALE BROWN
Also in the Dreamland Series
(with Jim DeFelice)
DRONE STRIKE • COLLATERAL DAMAGE
RAVEN STRIKE • BLACK WOLF
WHIPLASH • REVOLUTION
RETRIBUTION • END GAME
SATAN’s TAIL • STRIKE ZONE
RAZOR’S EDGE • NERVE CENTER • DREAMLAND
Titles by Dale Brown
STARFIRE • TIGER’S CLAW
A TIME FOR PATRIOTS • EXECUTIVE INTENT
ROGUE FORCES • SHADOW COMMAND
STRIKE FORCE • EDGE OF BATTLE
ACT OF WAR • PLAN OF ATTACK • AIR BATTLE FORCE
WINGS OF FIRE • WARRIOR CLASS • BATTLE BORN
THE TIN MAN • FATAL TERRAIN
SHADOW OF STEEL • STORMING HEAVEN
CHAINS OF COMMAND • NIGHT OF THE HAWK
SKY MASTERS • HAMMER HEADS
DAY OF THE CHEETAH • SILVER TOWER
FLIGHT OF THE OLD DOG
Coming Soon in Hardcover
IRON WOLF
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TARGET UTOPIA: A DREAMLAND THRILLER. Copyright © 2015 by Air Battle Force, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2015 ISBN: 9780062122865
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062122872
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