by Dale Brown
But this was very different.
“You’re sure it was a civilian plane?” Samson asked Bastian.
“Dreamland Command says there’s no doubt. It’s a small airline that flies in northern India. This wasn’t a scheduled flight,” added Dog. “It apparently was some sort of relief plane or charter flying workers north to do electrical repairs.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t they have had a working transponder?”
“I don’t know. We’ve encountered plenty of planes that haven’t. Usually, though, it’s because they’re up to something they shouldn’t be. This might just have been a malfunction.”
“Why the hell wasn’t it visually identified before they fired?” Samson asked. “That’s standard procedure.”
“There wouldn’t have been time to visually check before the Osprey was in danger.”
“That’s their excuse?”
“That’s my assessment. They haven’t offered an excuse.”
“That’s not going to be good enough, Bastian.”
Dog didn’t reply. Samson rubbed his forehead.
There must be some way out of this, he thought. Forget the damage to his career—this was going to make the Air Force look bad. Very, very bad.
“What’s the status of the plane?” snapped Samson.
“I have it under guard.”
“All right. Dismissed.”
“That’s it?”
“Of course that’s not it. But at the moment, Bastian, I don’t want to see your face. And let me make one thing perfectly clear: You have no command. Do you understand? You are not in charge here. You cannot give an order relating to Dreamland, not even for coffee,” he said. “Got me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Catch the first flight you can back to Dreamland. I’ll deal with you there.”
“Remember what I said about standing up for your people,” said Dog.
“When I want advice from you, I’ll ask for it.”
Aboard the Abner Read
1900
THE ABNER READ’S SICKBAY HAD SOME OF THE MOST MODERN medical equipment in the world, crammed into a space that would have made a broom feel crowded. Zen and Breanna occupied exactly fifty percent of the beds.
Zen had cuts all over his body. Acting on the advice of a doctor aboard the Lincoln, the Abner Read’s medical officer had started him on a course of intravenous antibiotics to combat any infection. Otherwise, his main problem was dehydration.
Breanna’s case was more difficult to diagnose. Besides her broken bones, there appeared to be some light internal bleeding in her chest cavity. After consulting with a doctor on the Lincoln, the Abner Read’s medical officer decided to have her moved to the aircraft carrier, where the larger facilities would make it easier to monitor her condition and operate if necessary.
Breanna was awake when the helicopter arrived. Zen, exhausted, was snoring loudly.
“Don’t wake him,” Breanna whispered to the doctors when they came in to examine her. “He needs to sleep.”
“A good prescription,” said the doctor.
“I’ll see you later, babe,” Breanna told her sleeping husband as her cot was gently lifted. “Pleasant dreams.”
“I HEAR SAMSON’S A REAL PRICK,” SAID JONES AS THEY waited in the dark.
“I don’t think it matters whether he’s nice to us or not,” said Liu. “The facts are the facts.”
“I wish I could be as calm as you,” said Blow. He rubbed his hands together; the night had turned chilly. “Look at these arrangements—we gotta fly halfway around the world, land in Germany, catch a plane to D.C., then over to who knows where before we go home.”
“’Cause he’s keeping us away from the Navy,” said Jones. “That might be a good sign.”
“It’s not going to be bad,” said Liu calmly.
“Man, I can still see that baby.” Jones pounded his eyes with his fist. “I can’t stand it.”
“It’ll be OK,” said Liu. He touched the other man’s back. “The baby’s in heaven.”
No one said anything else until Blow pointed out the Osprey in the sky, its searchlight shining through the darkness.
“That’s ours,” said the sergeant. “Coming for us.”
HE WAS IN THE AIR, TUMBLING AND FALLING. BREANNA WAS there too, but just out of reach. He kept trying to get her, though, throwing his hands out, grabbing for her.
Then suddenly she stopped. He continued to fall, plummeting toward the sea.
“Breanna,” he called. “Bree. Bree.”
The water felt like cement as he hit. His legs were crushed beneath him.
“Breanna!” Zen cried, and he woke in the sickbay.
He knew where he was, knew they were OK, but whatever part of his consciousness controlled his emotions was stuck back in the frightful dream. When he finally caught his breath, he turned and looked for Breanna.
The cot was empty.
“Bree!” he shouted. “Breanna!”
He pushed to get up, but couldn’t. There were straps across his chest.
“Breanna!” Zen bellowed.
“Major Stockard, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” said a corpsman, running in.
“My wife. Where is she?”
“She’s OK, sir. They’ve taken her to the Lincoln.”
“Why?”
“The aircraft carrier, Major. It has better facilities. She’s fine, believe me. They’ve got great doctors. We just want to make sure there’s no bleeding. If there is any, if by any chance they needed to operate, they have the facilities.”
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”
“She said not to.”
Zen dropped his head back on the bed. His whole body felt cold, and bruised.
“Can you undo me?” he asked the man.
“Don’t want you falling out of bed, sir.”
“Just undo me. I’m not going for a walk.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zen pulled his hands free but couldn’t reach the strap over his chest. As soon as he was able, he pushed himself into a sitting position.
“You know what the weird thing is, sailor,” he said as he sat up.
“You can call me Terry, sir.”
“I’m Zen.”
The sailor smiled, and pushed a pillow behind his patient’s back.
“The weird thing is that I could swear I actually feel pain in my legs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I haven’t walked in a couple of years. I don’t feel anything.”
“Doctor said it’s like a normal thing. Phantom pain.”
“Yeah. But I haven’t felt it in years. Sure feels real.”
Zen stared at his legs, then did something he hadn’t done in a long, long time—he tried to make them move.
They wouldn’t. But they did hurt. They definitely did hurt.
“Yeah. Weird thing, the body,” said Zen. “Real weird.”
Diego Garcia
2350
“MS. GLEASON IS SLEEPING,” SAID THE NURSE ON DUTY in the Lincoln’s sickbay when Dog finally managed to connect with the carrier. “Even if I was allowed to wake her, she’d been pretty incoherent with the painkillers. She’ll be OK,” added the nurse, her voice less official and more emphatic. “All her vital signs are stable and she’s headed toward a full recovery.”
“How is her knee?”
“The primary problem is her kneecap, or the patella. They’ll have to replace it. But there’s a lot of work with prostheses over the last ten or twenty years. She’ll definitely walk again, after rehab.”
“Will she run?”
“Did she run before?”
“Yeah,” said Dog. “She’s pretty fast.”
“Then, maybe. The doctors will have a lot more information. You’re her commanding officer?”
“I’d like to think I’m more than that,” said Dog.
“Encourage her. The rehab can be very difficult.”
“She’s up to it,” said
Dog. “If there’s one thing I know about Jennifer Gleason, she’s up to it.”
RELIEVED OF COMMAND AND CLEARLY UNWANTED, DOG saw no point in hanging around Diego Garcia. Responsibility for locating the last warhead had now been shifted to the CIA; with more Navy assets on the way, Dreamland’s help was no longer needed. The entire Dreamland team would be shipping back to base within the next few days; better to leave sooner rather than later, he decided.
The Bennett was the first aircraft scheduled to go home, once her damaged engines were replaced and the others repaired. Pending completion of the work, the plane was tentatively scheduled to take off at 0400, and Dog decided he’d hitch a ride.
He stayed up the rest of the night, slowly sipping a beer as he stared at the stars. Once or twice he tried thinking about his future in the Air Force, or rather, if there was a future for him in the Air Force, but he quickly gave up. That was the sort of thinking that required a quiet mind, and his was anything but. A million details, a thousand emotions, battled together below the surface of his consciousness, ready to interfere with any serious thought. The only way to hold them at bay was to stare blankly at the sky, just watching.
Just before 0200 he found Englehardt and his crew briefing their flight. He interrupted them and, calling Englehardt out into the hall, asked permission to grab a flight home.
“Um, you don’t need my permission, Colonel.”
“Well, as it happens, I do,” said Dog.
He told Englehardt that Samson was reorganizing things and at the moment he didn’t have any authority concerning Dreamland.
Pride kept him from saying he’d been shafted, though that’s what it was.
“It’s OK with me, Colonel. It’d be fine with me.”
“Great. I’ll meet you and the crew at the plane with my gear.”
Malaysia
0600, 20 January 1998 (0400, Karachi)
GENERAL SATTARI TWISTED ANOTHER PIECE OF BREAD FROM the loaf and pushed it into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he still was until he began nibbling on one of the loaves he’d bought for his nephew at the airport workers’ cafeteria.
The refueling was nearly complete. Sattari paced on the tarmac as the men finished, waiting, impatient to be gone.
There were voices in the darkness beyond the plane. Some trick of the wind or his brain transformed them, made them seem familiar: his son, Val Muhammad Ben Sattari, speaking with his wife in the family garden many years before, when Val was just a boy.
Oh, Val, the loss, the loss of your precious life. What would I tell your mother, after my promises to see you happy, and with many children on your knee?
Sattari took a step in the direction of the voices, but they had faded. The fuel truck was finished; a worker recoiled the hose on the spool.
General Sattari thought back to the time when his son told him he wanted to be just like him. He’d been very proud—too proud.
How much would he trade to have that moment back?
He climbed up the steps to the cockpit. His nephew was just finishing the dinner he had brought.
“Are you ready?” Sattari asked.
“Yes, General.”
Though they were cousins, Habib Kerman bore little resemblance to Val; he was flabbier, shorter. But for some reason he now reminded Sattari of Val, and the general felt a twinge of guilt.
“Habib, I have been thinking,” he said, and put his hands on the back of the first officer’s seat. “I think I will take the plane myself.”
“You can’t fly it by yourself, Uncle.”
“I can. You saw yourself.”
Kerman stared at him, his front teeth biting into his lip. Then he shook his head.
“I want to do this,” he told Sattari. “Since my wife died, I have looked for a way to make my life meaningful. Allah has given me this chance, praised be his name.”
“Once we take off, Habib, there can be no turning back.”
“I wish to do it.”
If it were Val, Sattari thought, would he let him go? It was one thing to undertake a hazardous mission, and quite another to face certain, absolute death.
“Are you sure?”
Kerman nodded.
“I am very proud of you,” Sattari said. He tapped Kerman on the shoulder, then quickly turned and walked out of the cockpit, not wanting the younger man to see the tears welling in his eyes.
He found someone waiting at the base of the boarding ladder. It was Hassam, the spy who had helped arrange the refueling.
“What is it?” said Sattari.
“General, I trust all is well,” said Hassam, coming up a few steps.
“Yes.” They met halfway.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“What is it you need?” said the general harshly. He had an impulse to reach for the gun in his belt and shoot the man, but that might ruin everything.
“The flight plan that was filed. It indicates you are going to America.” Hassam was grinning.
“Flight plans do not necessarily tell the entire truth,” said Sattari.
“Still, that is curious.”
“What is your point, Hassam?”
The general placed his hand closer to his gun.
“I took the liberty of finding alternate identifiers and flights for you, in case you are tracked once you take off,” said Hassam.
Sattari’s hand flew to his gun as Hassam reached to his jacket. Hassam smiled, opened the coat to show that he had no weapon, then took out a wedge of papers.
“I assume you want no questions asked when you appear at the airport to refuel,” said Hassam. “But in the meantime, these may help you.”
Sattari stood speechless on the tarmac, eyeing the folded documents. The smuggler’s plane could send false ident signals, but he had not had time to research other IDs or flight numbers. These would very useful.
And yet, he didn’t trust Hassam. There was something in the man’s manner that kept Sattari from reholstering the gun as he took the papers.
“You’ll find they’re in order, I’m sure,” said Hassam.
“How?” Sattari asked.
“Do you think the leaders of our country are blind and ignorant?”
Sattari felt his face flush.
“General, there is another question I must ask, though. Going to America—do you really feel that is wise?”
Sattari was once more on his guard. “If you know everything, then you know why I am going.”
“Such an important man as yourself. It would be a shame to lose you. Especially when there is someone much younger ready to take your place.”
Sattari heard something behind him. As he turned to glance up at the ladder, he realized his mistake. Before he could react, Hassam had leapt at him.
The general was still strong, but he was tired from his exertions over the past few days. He tried to bring his pistol around to shoot Hassam but couldn’t manage it. Then there were others—someone stomping on his arm, kicking. Sattari’s finger squeezed on the trigger. The loud pop of the pistol so close to his ear took his hearing away for a moment, and with his hearing went the last of his strength. The others continued to wrestle with him, but he was done, drained—angry and humiliated, a failure, a man who could not even get justice for his son.
“Wait! He has been injured!” yelled Hassam. “Careful! Take the gun.”
Sattari’s body had become a sack of bones. The gun was taken from him. Hassam got up; one of the men who’d come to his aid pushed the general onto his back.
“Gently,” said Hassam. “He is a general.”
Sattari could not see who he was speaking to. His eyes were focused on the face that appeared above him: Kerman.
In the darkness, he looked like his son, gazing down on him from Paradise.
“I will not fail you, Uncle.”
“YOU SAID HE WOULD NOT BE HURT,” KERMAN TOLD HASSAM after Sattari had been carried to one of the cars. “Your thugs knocked him unconscious.”
“He’s not unconscious,” said Hassam. “A few bruises.”
“He wasn’t talking.”
“Don’t worry so much about your uncle. Worry about yourself.”
Kerman felt a surge of anger. But who was he really mad at—the spy or himself? He had told the ayatollah what Sattari was up to, knowing what the result would be.
“Nothing more to say, young man?” Hassam sounded almost as if he was jeering.
“Give me the papers.”
“Can you be trusted? Ayatollah Mohtaj says yes, but I am not sure.”
Kerman took the documents with the false IDs.
“You’ll find out in less than twenty-four hours,” he said, jogging toward the airplane’s ladder.
X
The Long Ride Home
Aboard the Poughkeepsie,
Indian Ocean
0700, 20 January 1998
DANNY FREAH STRUGGLED TO SHUT OUT THE NOISE FROM the ship as he continued reviewing the mission with Major Catsman back at Dreamland. The Dreamland people had reviewed the available satellite and aerial reconnaissance data, looking for whoever might have been to the final warhead site before the Whiplash team. There were gaps of several hours in the records, but Catsman seemed fairly confident that the photo analysts would have been able to spot a Pakistani task force somewhere in the mountains. Trucks just couldn’t move that quickly on the roads.
“There were tribespeople through the area on horseback two days before,” said Catsman. “Then we think there was a Chinese reconnaissance flight, though we can’t be sure it went over that area.”
It still wasn’t clear that the Chinese were actually working with the guerrillas Danny had encountered, or were competing with them to recover the weapon—a claim the Chinese ambassador to the UN had made when pressed about encounters in the area.
The politics didn’t concern Danny much; he wanted results.
“The specialists have gone back and analyzed the satellite imagery,” said Catsman. “They think the warhead was removed sometime after 1600 yesterday. They’re going by some changes in the shadows on the ground. There is some debate on it—a lot of debate. They’re comparing the satellite image to the Global Hawk image, and there’s a large margin of error. The warhead itself was obscured; it was the missile’s engines it focused on.”