by Dale Brown
An atoll off the Indian coast
Date and time unknown
Zen’s island was shaped like the sole of a shoe. He and Breanna had come ashore near the toe. Roughly fifty yards wide, it was crowned by a large bald rock. It was cracked and pitted severely, but porous enough that the rain that fell soon after he arrived had drained away from the narrow holes./
The rock was the high point of the island, about twelve feet above sea level. Perched atop it, Zen could see more land in the distance to the east. Whether this was another island or part of the mainland, he couldn’t tell. Nor was he sure how far off it was. He guessed it was four or five miles, though it might just as well have been fifty since they were in no shape to swim it.
The heel of the atoll looked like a rock pile that had been disintegrating for decades, tumbling toward the middle of the island. It resembled a swamp, but one made of loose stone. Rocks parceled the saltwater into irregular cavities, none deeper than two feet.
Seeing some large pieces of wood on the northern shore, Zen began crawling toward them. By now his hands were covered with small scrapes and cuts. The grit on the rocks ate at his skin as he went, and he had to stop every few minutes to gather his strength and let the stinging subside.
The first piece of wood was too well wedged in the rocks for him to pull away, and he had to settle for some smaller pieces, sticks actually, that had landed nearby. He wedged them in his flight suit and crawled along the shoreline to a piece about as long as he was. There was another piece, thicker but shorter, beneath it. All of the wood was bleached white and appeared to have been there a long time.
The sun had begun to set. Zen decided it would be faster and easier for him to swim back. He dragged the wooden sticks with him but soon realized he couldn’t hold it and swim at the same time. Returning to shore, he sat himself upright and reached down to his pants leg, thinking he could tear off some of his flight suit to use as a crude rope. But the flight suit was too strong to rip, so he had to resort to his knife, poking it gently against his calf and auguring a hole.
His lower leg had turned deep purple, covered almost completely by bruises.
The color shocked him. He couldn’t feel anything there, but thought his legs must have been badly damaged in the crash. Deciding they needed whatever protection they could get, he pushed the pant leg down and instead undid the top portion of his flight suit so he could use his T-shirt. This was easy to rip, and he soon had the sticks tied to his wrist.
Swimming on his back, he had no trouble at first; the heavy eastward current was mitigated by a long length of stone that jutted from the atoll and formed a protective arm. But as he tried to turn toward the west beach where he’d left Breanna, he found the current hard to fight. Within seconds he was being pushed away from the island. Turning over, he began swimming with all his strength, pushing through the swells as they beat rhythmically against his face. He managed to push himself back to the edge of the island, clinging to a rock until he recovered enough strength to pull himself up onto shore.
By now the sun had set. In the fading twilight, he dragged himself up the hill, trailing the wood behind him. He’d gotten no farther than halfway before it was pitch-black and he could barely see in front him. But he wasn’t about to stop. He felt his way forward, pushing up slowly and trying to be gentle on his legs.
It seemed to take hours before he found himself moving downhill. The sticks made a scratching sound that was almost funny, or at least struck him that way.
Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh—a witch’s broomstick dragging along the ground because she was afraid of heights.
Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh—the Jolly Green Giant, ripping his pants as he walked.
Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh—the sound seemed outrageously funny, and he began to laugh. He was still laughing when he reached the rocky part of the atoll, where the shadows made it almost impossible to see where the tent was. He stared at the darkness, hoping to find some hint of the spot before pushing down. Thinking he finally spotted it, he set out, only to reach the water ten minutes later. He dragged himself back up in a diagonal without any better luck.
“Bree!” he called before starting a third pass. “Bree — hey, babe, where’s our tent?”
There was no answer. Though he hadn’t expected one, he felt disappointed.
“Bree? Bree!”
Nothing.
Zen resumed his crawl. The sticks tumbled and occasionally snagged alongside him. They were no longer amusing, and he even thought of letting them go. But he kept dragging them, and finally found the pile of rocks he had set at one edge of their shelter.
Breanna was still unconscious inside. He put his head next to her face, close enough to feel her breath on his cheek. He thought she was breathing better, more deeply.
“Hey, Bree. You awake?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer.
Zen laid the wood out near them. It was wet from having been in the water, and he was too tired anyway to try and start a fire; he’d do it in the morning. He made a broadcast on the radio but got no response. He repeated it again and again, but still no one answered.
It was amazing how long it had taken him to get the wood. He thought about it, trying to analyze what he might have done faster and better. Exhausted, he tried another broadcast, then crawled under the shelter, curled himself around his wife, and fell asleep.
Southeastern Iran, near the coast
1800 (1900, Karachi)
“The United States and several other members of the United Nations have launched a massive diplomatic effort aimed at both sides, trying to convince them the futility of war—”
General Mansour Sattari flipped off the television. Somehow, the Americans had actually succeeded. The Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons had not exploded. The Americans had vaporized them without a trace!
The end of war — or so the idiotic news commentator said.
“It is good that you turn that drivel off,” said someone behind him.
Surprised, Sattari turned and found Jaamsheed Pevars standing in the doorway. Pevars’s face was ashen.
“I don’t trust the western media,” Sattari said. “It is full of lies.”
Pevars waved his hand, as if warning the general away from something. Then he turned and walked from the room. Sattari followed.
Jaamsheed Pevars was the country’s oil minister, and usually a most happy fellow — but then who wouldn’t be if he could divert a portion of Iran’s oil revenue to his own accounts? While he served the black-robed imams who ran the country, Pevars was enough of a maverick to back several alternatives, including Sattari.
The fact that the two men had gone to school in England together was, to Sattari’s way of thinking, more a coincidence than a help, but it had made a certain level of intimacy possible between them.
“The American super weapon will change everything,” said Pevars when they reached the small but luxuriously furnished office he kept near the front of the building. “The black robes are quaking in their shoes.”
“What?”
“How does one go to war with a nation that can pulverize your weapons in midair?” Pevars shook his head. “One of the imams has already asked if you were involved.”
“Me?”
Pevars shrugged. “Perhaps word of your son’s operation leaked.”
Sattari knew there was only one possible source of the information — Pevars himself. Undoubtedly, he had leaked word out when things looked to be going well, hoping to capitalize on the connection. Now his braggadocio and conniving meant trouble.
Not for Pevars, though. He was able to slither out of everything.
“How did the black robes find out about this?” demanded the general. “What do they know? The submarines? The aircraft?”
“Who knows what they knew? They seem to have heard…rumors.”
Sattari felt his anger growing. Rumors? Pevars was the only possible source.
“If the Americans have a weapon like this,�
�� Pevars continued, “the balance of power will shift again. The Chinese—pffft, they are nothing now.”
“I would rather die than join an alliance with the Americans,” said Sattari.
“Who said anything about an alliance? An alliance? No, that is not possible. Peace, though — that is a different story.”
Sattari choked back his anger, trying to consider what Pevars had said. Peace with America — what did that imply? An oil agreement possibly, the sale of petroleum at some guaranteed rate.
Pevars would not be concerned about that.
Did the black robes intend to offer someone up as a chip for a new business agreement?
“I have information from the fisherman,” added Pevars.
“Finally,” said Sattari. The “fisherman” was one of their spies. “But why did he not send word directly to me?”
Pevars grimaced. “The submarine was captured. Two men were taken prisoner. All the others perished.”
“Which others?”
Pevars did not answer.
“The fisherman said all this?”
Pevars nodded.
Was that possible? The fisherman worked for him, not Pevars.
“You’re lying,” said Sattari.
“No. He was afraid to tell you because it involved your son.”
“You’re working with the Americans, aren’t you?”
“General, take hold of yourself. I know the loss of your son is a great blow. But surely he is in paradise now.”
General Sattari had realized this as soon as Pevars mentioned the submarine, but the words severed the last threads of restraint on his emotions. He threw himself at Pevars, launching his body at the other man as if it were a missile.
Pevars was slight, barely over 120 pounds, and much of that weight was concentrated in a potbelly. The general weighed twice what he did, and while no longer young, his daily regimen of exercise, along with the hardships he’d endured with his soldiers over the past decade, had kept his body tough and fit. He began pummeling the oil minister, smashing his head against the thick rug and lashing it again and again with his fists. If Pevars offered any resistance, it had little impact on Sattari. He punched the oil minister over and over, beating him as a hurricane beats the shore.
Blackness filled the room. It was not darkness but the opposite — a light so harsh that it blinded Sattari. He continued to flail at Pevars, emptying decades worth of rage from his body.
When the rage lifted, Sattari found himself sitting in the hallway, his hands and clothes covered with red blood.
“The Americans did this to me.” Sattari’s words echoed through the marble hall. “The Americans.”
He would find them, and take his revenge.
IV. New Sheriff in Town
Dreamland
1600, 16 January 1998
Even for a major general, getting to Dreamland was not an easy task. General Samson had to first fly to Nellis Air Base, and from there arrange for a helicopter to ferry him several miles to the north. A pair of Dolphin helicopters — Americanized versions of the Aerospatiale Dauphin — were tasked as Dreamland “ferries” and used regularly by personnel trekking to the base. But Samson couldn’t make the trip with the assortment of engineers and other riffraff who used the Dolphins. So a helicopter had to be found for him and the three staff members traveling with him. The chopper, in turn, needed a crew. Much to Samson’s surprise, it turned out that not just any crew could be used to fly to the base; Dreamland’s security arrangements were so tight that only personnel with a code-word clearance were allowed to land at the base’s “dock.”
The official reason for this was that planes had to cross two highly classified testing areas to get to the dock. But since clearance came from the colonel’s office at Dreamland, Samson was convinced that the actual reason had to do with a personal power play on Lieutenant Colonel Bastian’s part. He simmered while a crew with the proper clearance and training were found.
The idea that a lieutenant colonel — a mere lieutenant colonel — could effectively hold up a major general fried Samson’s gizzard. He knew Bastian wasn’t at the base, of course, but that was irrelevant. The lieutenant colonel undoubtedly knew that he had a good thing going here and had instituted a series of bureaucratic hurdles and practices to keep anyone from getting too close a look.
Samson’s mood deepened when the helicopter ferrying him to the base was ordered to halt about fifty meters over the perimeter. And halt meant halt, not hover — the helo pilot was told to put his chopper down on the desert floor and await further instructions.
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Samson as the old Huey touched down.
“Orders, sir.”
Samson was about to express his opinion concerning the validity of the order with several expletives when he spotted a jet making what looked like a bombing run in the distance. At first he thought the aircraft was very far away. Then he realized it was actually a miniature aircraft. It carried diminutive bombs—125-pound so-called “mini-munis” being developed to help ground soldiers in urban settings where larger bombs might cause civilian casualties.
The attack aircraft was a sleek, wedge-shaped affair, with air intakes on the top of the body and what looked like fangs at the front. These were apparently some sort of forward wing or control surface, and Samson guessed that they accounted for the airplane’s twisting maneuver after the bombs were dropped — the jet veered almost straight up, dropped suddenly, and ended up backtracking on the path it had taken to the target area.
Remarkably, it seemed to do this without a noticeable loss of speed. Samson knew this was probably mostly an optical illusion — the laws of physics and aerodynamics made it impossible to completely change direction like that without losing speed — but even allowing for that, the airplane was several times more nimble than anything he had ever seen.
“General?”
Samson turned his attention back to the front of the Huey just as a mechanical voice broke into the helicopter’s interphone system.
“Huey 39, you are ordered to follow Whiplash Osprey 5. No deviation from your flight path will be tolerated.”
“What the hell?” said Samson. “I thought we were cleared.”
“We were, but it’s the way they do things,” said the pilot. “Security is tight.”
“Tight security is one thing—” Samson began, but before he could say anything else, a shadow descended over the front of the aircraft and their path was blocked by a black Osprey.
This was Whiplash Osprey 5, which differed from standard-issue Ospreys in several respects. Besides the black paint scheme, most noteworthy were the twin cannons mounted under the rear of the fuselage, pointed ominously at the Huey’s cockpit.
A second Osprey zipped in from the rear, pulling alongside the Huey just long enough for Samson to see that it had heat-seeking missiles on its wing rails.
“Follow him,” snapped Samson, folding his arms angrily.
Base Camp One, Great Indian Desert
0600, 17 January 1998
Danny Freah pushed back the soft campaign cap the Marines had loaned him and surveyed the base area. In less than twenty-four hours the makeshift camp had swelled from a few tents in the rocky hills to a small city. Six Ospreys sat in formation on the nearby plain. Across from them, three sideless tents housed the fifteen warheads that had been recovered thus far. Two different teams of scientists and military experts were going over the weapons, examining them before crating them for transport to the USS Poughkeepsie. The ship was still a good distance away, but making decent speed. Present plans were to start shipping the warheads around midnight, though there were contingencies for an earlier evac if necessary.
The nuclear devices represented a variety of technologies. Pakistan’s eight were all of similar design; according to the experts, they were relatively straightforward and not large, as nukes went, though fully capable of leveling a city.
The rest of the weapons were Indian,
with warheads ranging in yield from five kilotons — very small, as nukes went — to 160 kilotons, roughly the same class of explosive power as the W62 on the U.S. Minuteman III ICBM. The discovery of the latter surprised the experts; until then, it was believed that India’s biggest warhead was in the fifty to sixty kiloton range.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Lieutenant Dancer as Danny contemplated how many lives the warheads would have claimed had they gone off.
“I usually get a whole dollar,” he told her.
“Have to wait for payday for that.” Dancer smiled at him, then shaded her eyes from the sun. Her skin looked as soft as a rose petal’s. “We have the last two Pakistani warheads secured. The Ospreys are en route. Any sign of activity to the south?”
“Negative,” said Danny. “Radio traffic is picking up, though.”
“Mmmmm,” said Dancer. She gazed toward the coast, probably thinking it would be a good thing to get the warheads out as soon as possible.
He was thinking about other things — none of which were military.
Dancer unfolded a small sketch map with an X drawn at each of the verified warhead locations. Four more warheads, all Indian, had been spotted; Dancer reviewed their locations, pointing to two at the very northern edge of her map. Six more missiles had to be found.
“The warheads at I-6 and I-8 are going to be much harder to retrieve,” she told Danny. “I wonder if you’d lead that team.”
“Be glad to.”
The warheads she’d referred to had crashed about two hundred miles to the east in Pakistani territory. The Pakistani army had a decent-sized military post less then thirty miles away, and the Indians had an unmanned listening post ten miles south. The electronic surveillance equipment there was thought to have been fried by the T waves, but a truck was spotted in the area, and it was suspected that the Indians were working hard to get it back on line.
“You coming with us?” asked Danny.
“I have my work cut out for me here,” Dancer told him. “And hopefully we’ll be launching another mission as soon as the other warheads are found.”