by Dale Brown
Get out of the aircraft, he heard his old instructor say.
One Eye’s voice screamed at him.
Save yourself. Fly and fight another day.
Vahid’s hand wavered over the handle as his mind battled. He thought of his mother, who would love him no matter what. He saw his father again, as he had known him as a young man, before the injury.
And then it was too late: a fireball erupted, consuming the MiG-29 and Iran’s finest pilot.
STONER FOLDED HIS ARMS, WATCHING OUT THE SIDE of the cockpit as the Phantom leveled off and continued north over the sea. The plane flew steady; bullets no longer coursed over the wings or exploded in the distance. Whatever had been chasing them was gone.
So they were getting out. That was all right, wasn’t it? He didn’t have to kill Turk if he got him home.
The memories poking Stoner earlier had receded. They were like booby-traps in the jungle, waiting to swallow him if he stepped wrong. But he didn’t know how to excise them.
Maybe one of the shrinks back home would.
The mission had been a good one. He liked it tremendously. Everything about it, the sensation of adrenaline in his body, the feeling in his stomach when he ran, the crush of his fist against an enemy.
He hated the enemy. He hated people who wanted to hurt him, or hurt his people.
That was who he was. Whatever else they had done to him, whatever the drugs and biomechanical devices they’d put into him, that part was definitely his.
CLEAR OF THE ENEMY PLANE, TURK TOOK OUT THE SAT phone. He pushed the power button. Nothing happened. The damn thing was dead.
He reached into his pants pocket for Grease’s. He remembered taking it from Grease’s ruck. But he found the GPS, not the sat phone.
He reached into his other pocket, feeling a little desperate. The phone was there.
But it was a cell phone. Grease had the sat phone in his pocket or somewhere else, and he had missed it.
Have to do something else. Don’t fall apart now.
Turk held his course due north for another five minutes before turning westward. He had only the vaguest notion where he was. While he still had a reasonable amount of fuel, he began to prepare a mental checklist of what he would do if Baku didn’t turn up very soon. He would hunt for another airstrip. If he didn’t see one, he could land on a highway—supposedly the Russians had built them long, straight, and wide for just such a contingency.
Better to find Baku. Much, much better.
A small fishing boat bobbed in the distance. The coast was just beyond it.
Another plane was coming down from the north. It looked like a civilian aircraft, an airliner. As it came closer, he saw that it had four engines—an MC-130.
Oh baby, he thought, changing course to meet it.
SURVIVOR
1
The White House
CHRISTINE MARY TODD PUT DOWN THE PHONE AND looked over at her visitor.
“Our last operatives are out of Iran,” she said. “It’s a great day.”
“Yes.”
“We had to make the strike,” continued the President. “It’s too bad that so many Iranians had to die, but they were all involved in the program—the vast majority were involved in the program,” she added, correcting herself. A handful of people had died on the ground during the team’s attempts to get out. Some were undoubtedly civilians.
A number of Americans had also died—the entire team that had escorted Captain Mako, who by some miracle and his own ingenuity, along with the heroic efforts of Mark Stoner, managed to survive.
Truly, considering all that was at stake, the toll was extremely light.
“Are you going to explain how we did it?” asked her visitor.
“Absolutely not. Some will figure it out eventually. The Chinese, I’m sure, will have their suspicions. And the Russians. They’ll be doubling their investment in nanotechnology, and UAVs, I’m sure. The Iranians, though—they haven’t a clue. Why they wasted their resources in this way, building weapons they not only can’t use but can’t completely perfect—”
“I meant are you going to explain it to us.”
“Eventually.” Todd smiled. “Yes. In general terms, of course.”
“There will be blowback,” said her visitor.
“I expect it. We’ve already seen an uptick in communications traffic among the usual suspects.” Todd glanced at the phone on her desk. Nearly every button was lit, even though she had told her operator and the chief of staff that she wouldn’t be taking calls for an hour. The world, it seemed, was determined to spin on, with or without her.
“But back to the matter at hand,” said Todd. “The presidency. Given everything I’ve said—would you consider running?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you’d make a great President. And, since my medical condition will be . . . tiring, I don’t think I should run for reelection. So, you would have a wide-open shot.”
“I see that.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“You don’t want the job?” Todd asked.
“I’m, uh—I hadn’t realized you were sick.”
“Nor did I. And I don’t feel it either.” Todd smiled. Not today anyway.
“Why back me? We’ve never completely gotten along.”
“Oh, I think we have, in the important areas. And frankly, I liked your opposition. It kept me honest. Besides, I think you’d make a great President.”
“Well, thanks.”
Todd rose. “Think it over, Senator. There’s no need to give me an answer, but you will want to start getting your ducks quietly in place. These things take an enormous amount of energy and time.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Zen, wheeling forward to shake her hand.
2
Fort Benning
TURK MAKO REMAINED AT ATTENTION AS THE BUGLER’S notes faded. The ceremony honoring Grease and the rest of the team had come to an end.
Their bodies hadn’t been recovered. The Iranians had been curiously silent so far, despite the President’s statements and numerous analysts’ pronouncements that the U.S. had managed to destroy the Iranian bomb program with weapons that it steadfastly refused to describe. Todd had promised that the details would be revealed when appropriate; Turk understood that to mean never.
They’d given him a place of honor at the front. He remained standing as the others left, nodding as people looked at him but remaining in his own cocoon. Soldiers, civilians, filed by silently.
Turk glanced at Stoner, standing toward the back. He hadn’t seen him since the hospital in Bethesda when they’d returned. Stoner hadn’t said much. Turk couldn’t tell whether he was fighting some inner demon or simply a very quiet man.
Stoner had saved his life, not least of all by disobeying orders to kill him.
No one said those were the orders, but Turk knew they were. He wasn’t sure exactly how to treat Breanna. She’d known all along that he was to be killed.
It was her job; he knew that. It was his job; he knew that, too. But it was hard to know what to feel about a person after that.
Turk’s body had taken a beating, but the mission had done more than that to him. He’d changed. He’d been a cocky pilot when he started, sure of himself in the air. On the ground, he’d been a bit of a dweeb, awkward and timid at times.
Now he wasn’t.
A pair of jets passed overhead. Turk glanced upward. They were F-35s, the latest multirole fighters in the U.S. inventory.
And maybe the last. A lot of people thought manned combat flight was over. Machines could now fill the gap, making their own decisions, flying more reliably than men ever could.
Had he proven them wrong? If he hadn’t been there, the nano-UAVs wouldn’t have succeeded. A human was still needed in the mix, and a good one.
Or was this just one last gasp? The next generation of aircraft, surely only a few years away, might have enough processing power to handle all decisions on their own.
Turk wasn’t sure. He liked to fly, and he was very good at it, and that colored his opinions.
One thing he did know: true courage would never go out of style. It would just be harder to find.
About the Author
DALE BROWN is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, starting with Flight of the Old Dog in 1987, and most recently, Tiger’s Claw. 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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Also in the Dreamland Series
(with Jim DeFelice)
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
RAVENSTRIKE
BLACK WOLF
WHIPLASH
REVOLUTION
RETRIBUTION
END GAME
SATAN’S TAIL
STRIKE ZONE
RAZOR’S EDGE
NERVE CENTER
DREAMLAND
Also 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
HAMMERHEADS • DAY OF THE CHEETAH
SILVER TOWER • FLIGHT OF THE OLD DOG
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s 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.
DRONE STRIKE: A DREAMLAND THRILLER. Copyright © 2014 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780062122834
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062122827
FIRST EDITION
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