by Dale Brown
Mack was so anxious to get back that he even accepted a C-130 flight into Nellis, sitting in steerage — that is, on the floor in the cargo hold of the notoriously loud aircraft. By contrast, the Dauphin helicopter that took him from Nellis to Dreamland was a sleek limo, and he found himself bantering with the pilots, telling them how great a place Diego Garcia was, with the sun always shining and girls fawning over him 24/7.
Half of the story was true, after all; how much more could they expect?
As he made his way over from the landing “dock” to the Taj, he developed a cocky spring in his step. Dreamland’s new commander wasn’t a fighter jock; he flew Boners, as the go-fast community disparagingly called the B-1B Lancer. But he was a general, and as such, Terrill Samson would have a lot more muscle than Lieutenant Colonel Bastian — a decent guy and a fellow fighter pilot, but when all was said and done, a lightweight in the political department. And politics was the name of the game these days.
Mack sailed into the base commander’s outer office, gave a quick wave to the cute secretary at the far desk, ignored the bruiser at the close one, and stuck his head into the open door, where Samson’s name had replaced Colonel Bastian’s.
“Hey, General,” he said. “Got a minute?”
“Thanks for the promotion,” said Chief Master Sergeant Terence “Ax” Gibbs, who was arranging folders on the general’s desk.
“Hey, Axy,” said Mack, sauntering inside. “Where’s the majordomo?”
Ax cleared his throat. “Major General Samson is on Diego Garcia.”
“No shit. I just left there. Well, not just.” Mack went around to the desk and plopped into the general’s chair. “So he already kicked Dog out of his office, huh? I figured he would. Too nice for a colonel.”
“Colonel Bastian has an office down the hall.”
“What’s that for, transition? Where’s the old Dog headed next anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Ax.
“Jeez, Axy, I thought you knew everything.”
“From what I understand, it hasn’t been decided. Is there something I can do for you, Major?”
“Just enjoying the view,” said Mack, spinning from side to side in the seat. “Not bad.”
Ax frowned.
“You know what your problem is, Chief?” Mack asked, getting up.
“I couldn’t guess.”
“All you chiefs — you think you outrank everybody, even a general. But don’t worry.” Mack slapped Ax on the back. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“I’m most obliged,” said Ax.
Tehran
0110, 21 January 1998
(1410, 20 January, Dreamland)
“You seem to have lost your spirit, General.”
Sattari blinked at the dark shadow in front of him. He wasn’t quite sure where he was.
In Tehran somewhere, of course, but where?
The seat he was sitting on was hard. There were several people in the room besides the man talking.
“You should be quite proud of what you accomplished,” continued the man. “Soon, you will have struck a blow against the Americans that will be remembered for all time.”
“Why did you not let me fly the plane?” said Sattari.
“General, a man such as yourself is very valuable. Our country needs you. And what do you think would happen when the Americans found out that a general of the Iranian air force — an important man in our country — was at the controls? We could say you were a rebel, but the Americans would not believe it. This will be much easier for them to accept. There will be trouble, of course, but we will overcome it.”
Sattari finally recognized the voice. It belonged to Ayatollah Hassan Mohtaj, an important member of the National Security Deputate, Iran’s national security council.
“My nephew,” said the general.
“Your nephew was proud to be chosen. He will be a great martyr. Of course, we will say he was crazy, but we will all know the truth in our hearts.”
“He’s too young.”
“You did not seem to feel that was a concern when you asked him to be your copilot.”
Sattari felt a stab of guilt. He should not have enlisted the young man. He shouldn’t have let Val lead the mission to provoke the Indians either.
So many things he shouldn’t have done. He should not have trusted Hassam, above all.
Sattari’s eyes finally came into focus. He was in a small basement room. He didn’t recognize it, but guessed it was in the government complex.
“Was I drugged?” he demanded.
Mohtaj waved his hand. “Do not concern yourself with the past. You must work for the future. You have many important tasks ahead. Many. You’re not an old man.”
“I want revenge against the bastards who killed my son,” said the general. With every breath, his mind became sharper.
“You will have it. And the longer you live, the more revenge you will have.”
It wasn’t going to be enough — this wasn’t going to be enough.
Sattari rose from the chair. The men behind the Ayatollah jerked forward, submachine guns suddenly pointed in his direction.
“He means no harm,” said Mohtaj calmly. “He is back among friends.”
“I need time to think,” said Sattari.
“By all means. As long as you need.”
Mohtaj smiled, then turned and left the room.
Sattari thought of Kerman, then of Val.
It wasn’t going to be enough, destroying Las Vegas and Dreamland. Someday, he would drink his enemy’s blood.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett, over the Pacific Ocean
1410, Dreamland
Dog folded his arms and leaned against the back of the ejection seat in the lower bay of the Bennett, trying to stretch a few kinks from his legs and neck. He’d thought vaguely about sleeping on the flight back, but the cots upstairs seemed almost claustrophobic, and his nervous adrenaline just wouldn’t let him rest.
That was the way his life ran: Every time he was really tired, he was too busy to sleep, and when he wasn’t busy, he wasn’t tired.
Starship seemed equally antsy, sitting in the seat next to him, monitoring the flight. Since it was highly unlikely they’d be needed, the Flighthawks were stowed on the wings to conserve fuel.
“Shoulda brought a deck of cards, huh?” said Starship as Dog settled back.
“That or a nice stewardess, huh?”
Starship laughed.
“You have a girlfriend, Starship?” asked Dog. He knew almost nothing about his junior officer’s personal life.
“Uh, no, sir. Not at the present time.”
“You can relax, Starship. I’m not going to bite you.”
“Yeah, Colonel. Um, no. I did. I mean I’ve had a couple, but things didn’t work out that well. You know, like, I was traveling and stuff.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I’ll probably get married someday,” added Starship. “But pretty far in the future, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t mind kids. But, in the future.”
“I know what you mean,” said Dog again. But what he was thinking was how small a place the future sometimes could be.
* * *
Englehardt had felt the crew’s resentment toward him from the moment he walked into the little room they used to brief the mission. None of them had the guts to say anything, but he knew what they were thinking. They thought he hadn’t made the best decisions under fire, hadn’t moved quickly enough, had hesitated a few times when he should have been aggressive.
But what the hell did they want? Look at Sparks and the Cheli. They were in deep, deep shit. Did his guys want security standing over them in the restroom everytime they had to take a leak?
Not likely.
Colonel Bastian’s presence downstairs made things ten times worse. In a way, he felt sorry for the colonel — everybody knew Samson was screwing him because he was jealous. Still, it was Bastian who had caused him so much trouble. The cr
ew compared them unfairly. Of course, Dog had done a great job when he piloted the plane; the man had been in combat countless times, and he was a colonel, for cryin’ out loud. He was supposed to be good.
Not that he wasn’t good, Englehardt thought. He was. And even if the nitpickers had problems with his mission, he knew he’d done a hell of a job — a hell of a job — getting the plane back on two engines.
One and a half, really.
More like one and a quarter.
“Waypoint coming up,” said Sullivan, his copilot.
“Noted,” said Englehardt quickly. He tried to get a little snap into his voice, a bit of professionalism, though it sounded a little hollow.
From now on he was going to do everything by the book. If his crew didn’t like him, at least they wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
Dreamland Command Center
1500
Under ordinary circumstances, tracking truck traffic through the Pakistani northeastern territories would have been close to impossible.
Fortunately, these weren’t ordinary circumstances.
Which wasn’t to say that the task was a piece of cake. Or a Yankee Doodle, which the head of the Dreamland photo analysis team was eating as he discussed the possibilities with his counterpart at the CIA.
“One of these six,” the techie agreed, stuffing the last of the snack in his mouth. “Gotta be.”
Ray Rubeo, standing behind his console, frowned. The scientist hated sweets of any kind, but most especially ones that threatened the equipment he had personally helped design. The Command Center’s no food rule had been eased by Catsman as a morale booster as the mission stretched on. Without any authority over operations or military personnel now, Rubeo couldn’t order it reinstated; the best he could do was frown.
“Problem is, so we see those two trucks together, so what?” said the analyst. “We can’t search every inch of Pakistan.”
“What you should do,” said Rubeo dryly, “is search the places where it’s possible to leave Pakistan.”
The techie looked up at him. “Excuse me, Doc, but, uh, I wasn’t talking to you.”
The expert was an Air Force captain, one of many Rubeo had never particularly cared for. The feeling was undoubtedly mutual.
“Whether you are talking to me or not, you have photos of every airport and dock in the country. You can judge how long all of these vehicles would have taken to get to those positions, and see if they are there.”
“Lot of work. And, you know, a pickup’s a pickup.”
“What else do you have to do?” snapped Rubeo. “And each pickup is different. Look at the bumper and the right side fender — you can use those to identify it.”
“Smudges.”
“Hardly.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it.” The captain pushed the rest of the Yankee Doodle into his mouth and went back to work.
Diego Garcia
0600, 21 January 1998
The sun blossomed on the horizon, throwing a reddish yellow stream of light on the long concrete runway and its nearby aprons. Major General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson, standing at the edge of one of the aprons in front of the Dreamland Command trailer, took a deep breath, as if he might suck in the sunshine and all of its energy.
He might need it. He’d spent half the night talking to the Pentagon, and nearly every friend he had in the upper echelons of the service. He told them about the incident, of course — the metal from the missile made stonewalling moot, even if he’d been inclined to try it. He’d put his best spin on the situation from a personal point of view, saying that he’d come to personally take charge and to get things in order.
The results had been mixed. The head of the Air Force was openly hostile, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Balboa, was almost sympathetic. Most of the rest were somewhere in the middle.
The administration, meanwhile, was obsessed with finding the last remaining warhead. That, at least, was out of his hands: Though ordered to continue providing “all due assistance,” the search had been turned over to the CIA.
Samson vowed that if he got through this—when he got through this — he would remake Dreamland in his image. No more EB-52s, and in fact, no more manned planes. They were going to concentrate on their robot and unmanned aerial vehicle technology. Improvements could be made to the Flighthawks so they could be flown remotely from Dreamland Command, just like the so-called UMB, or Unmanned Bomber, project. He’d push the remotely controlled B-1 bomber idea further along; Bastian seemed to have sidetracked it, probably because he had no feel for the aircraft.
As for some of the truly weird stuff going on at Dreamland — the Minerva mind thing, the plasma ray, the airborne laser project — they were on his short list to be axed.
As were the egghead scientists who went with them. Ray Rubeo would lead the parade out.
“Dreamland will be run like a military unit, not the personal toy box of its commanding officer,” said Samson to himself, the line suddenly occurring to him.
It would be the perfect opening sentence for the orientation speech he planned on giving when he got back to the States. He scrambled inside for a pen and paper to write it down.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett, over the Pacific Ocean
2000, 20 January 1998
(0900, 21 January)
Dog finally managed to drift off to sleep during the flight. The ejection seat at the Flighthawk station was about as comfortable as most ejection seats, which meant not at all. His head drooped to his chest and his shoulders tightened; when he woke he felt as if someone had him in a headlock.
Stretching helped a little, but not much.
“Couple of beef Stroganoffs in the galley,” said Starship, who was watching a video on his auxiliary screen. “Not too bad if you put Tabasco sauce in it.”
“Tabasco?”
“Just a little punch, you know?”
“Is that Batman you’re watching?” asked Dog.
“I’ve only seen it ten times,” confessed Starship. “Practically new.”
Dog laughed, then went upstairs. While his food was cooking in the microwave, he walked over to the pilots and asked them how they were doing.
“Just routine, Colonel,” said Englehardt. “Haven’t even hit turbulence.”
“Great,” said Dog. “How are you, Sully?”
“OK, Colonel,” said Sullivan.
The copilot’s tone seemed a little cold. Maybe that was the reaction he was going to get around the base from now on, Dog thought; no one would want to associate themselves with him. Senior officers would view him as a political pariah, and junior officers would figure he was washed up. No one wanted to be associated with a commander who’d been relieved.
Technically, he hadn’t been relieved for cause — not yet, at any rate. But Samson would undoubtedly go in that direction. While explainable and to some extent excusable on their own, taken together the baby incident and the airliner could easily be whipped into a case against him.
He’d have to get a lawyer if something like that happened.
The microwave began beeping, but Dog left his dinner inside and sat down next to Rager at the airborne radar station. The sergeant was considerably more relaxed now that they weren’t in combat; he had a dozen contacts on his scope, all civilian flights.
“Now that you’ve seen the system in combat, you have any ideas for improvement?” Dog asked.
“A couple, Colonel.” The sergeant ran Dog through some of the identification routines and the automated processes, which were supposed to reduce the operator’s workload by letting the computer take over. In theory, the system let one man do the work of six or eight in the “old” style AWACS. In practice, said Rager, the workload became overwhelming after a half hour in combat.
“Thing is, you just get tired after a couple of hours,” said the sergeant, who’d had extensive experience in AWACS and other systems before coming over to Dreamland. “It work
s fine in the simulations, but when we were getting shot at for over an hour, at the tail end of a long mission — I have to be honest with you, Colonel, I’m sure I made some mistakes. I haven’t had a chance to review the whole mission tapes, but I’m sure I could have done better. Adding two guys on the board during a combat mission makes sense, but it’s not just that. There are some software improvements you could make.”
Rager listed them. Surprisingly, at least as far as Dog was concerned, the improvements included several that would provide the operator with less information up front; details, he explained, could clutter the board and your head when things got heavy.
“Give it more thought, then write it down for me,” said Dog. “I mean — write it down for General Samson. And the techies.”
There was a flash of pity in the sergeant’s eyes before he spoke. “Yes, sir, I will.”
Dog got up and went to get his food. Best thing for everyone, he thought, would be to move on as quickly as possible.
Over the Pacific Ocean
2015, Dreamland
Kerman marked the distance in hours. He was now two hours away.
He put the aircraft on autopilot and got up from the plane to use the restroom.
The small closet smelled like a chemical waste dump. Kerman did his best to hold his nose. He washed his hands fastidiously, then returned to the flight deck, ready. Before taking his seat, he decided he should pray. He fell to his knees, but before he could say the simple prayer he had learned as a child, he was seized by an overwhelming sense of dread. It was not about his mission. He had always known that it was his destiny to strike a blow against Satan, and had known since before he learned to read that America was evil, an enemy not just to Iran but to Islam. It was an abomination, and any blow struck against it would be rewarded in the everlasting days that followed life on earth.