by Dale Brown
“I’ll be on base,” he snapped.
Breanna’s face changed back to stone, eyes focused on a blank spot in the distance.
“I understand, Colonel,” she said. “No favors, please.”
He didn’t want to be mad at her—hell, if she were anyone else, he’d be joking, taking her under his wing. She was one of the future’s bright stars, the kind of officer he wanted working for him. “We’ll have dinner, okay?” he said softly. “Once I’m oriented.”
Either his words were too low or she simply ignored him.
“It was a hell of a speech. We’re pulling for you,” she said, turning away.
“And I’m pulling for you, Bree,” he said.
Dreamland
8 October, 0530
THERE WAS NO PRISON LIKE THE HUMAN BODY. IT clamped bars stronger than titanium steel around your chest, your legs, your head. It held you every waking moment; it mocked you when you slept. It infected time itself, poisoning both past and future.
There was no future for Captain Jeff “Zen” Stockard; there was only now. He sat in his wheelchair, long fingers wrapped stiffly around the spokes of the wheels, hard rubber against his palms. He stared directly ahead, eyes fixed on the closed door of the HH-53 as the big helicopter skirted the fringes of Nellis Air Force Base, rumbling toward Dreamland. The helo’s crew chief sat on a narrow bench seat a few feet away, having given up his attempts at starting a conversation.
Zen hated conversations, especially with strangers. There was always pity in their voices. The only thing worse was conversations with friends. He preferred not to talk at all. He preferred to be left to himself. He wanted…
What he wanted was to be able to walk. He couldn’t have that, so he didn’t want anything else.
He’d worked tremendously hard the past eleven months—nine actually, since most of the first two were spent mostly under sedation, in and out of operations. He’d built up his arms and upper body. He’d been in reasonably good condition before the accident, but the workout routines were a revelation. Zen welcomed the pain; he drove himself into the stinging bite of exhaustion, as if weariness were a physical place. He pushed weights around. He learned to swim with his arms and chest and head. He discovered the different balance of a body that couldn’t use its legs.
The humiliation was the hard part. Needing someone to open a door for him. Needing someone to lift him into the cramped backseat of a van. Needing someone to help him with a thousand things he used to take for granted in the course of a day.
Getting past the humiliation had been his first goal. He hadn’t totally accepted it, but he had at least gotten used to it.
Getting back to Dreamland was his next goal. And here he was, seconds from touching down.
It hadn’t been easy. Zen had had to call in every favor, and lean heavily on his family connections besides. He’d had to find a service lawyer who knew the Disability Act and could wangle and bluff its language into places where it didn’t belong.
Worse—much worse—he’d had to play the pity angle.
His lawyer, an Army captain wounded in Panama, was also in a wheelchair. Louis Whitson wasn’t so much an inspiration as a slap in the face. “The bottom line,” Whit-son had said one morning when things looked particularly crappy, “is this: We use whatever we can use. Pity, fear, ignorance, stupidity. If it’s to our advantage, we use it. Bottom line.”
Like almost everything Whitson said, it was useful advice. They found a sympathetic Senator and an important Congressman. And an Air Force general whose brother had been confined to a wheelchair since he was six. They built a case for remaining on active duty. Reed-thin—hell, thinner than air. But with favors and pity, they got him a chance.
Better than that. Brad Elliott, the former commander of Dreamland, was under a cloud. But he still had a lot of influence—and he also had an artificial leg. The general helped twist arms and bend ears for Jeff, who had been one of his “boys” before the accident. Elliott managed to find a way to use his dismissal and the resulting confusion at Dreamland to Jeff’s advantage. Technically, the general pointed out, Zen was still on the active-duty roster as a test pilot assigned to the Flighthawk program, which was one of the few Dreamland projects besides the F-119 not suspended in the wake of DreamStar. So technically, that’s where he had to report.
Air-thin.
But now, as the helo pushed through the thin desert air en route to its landing, Zen felt something he hadn’t had the luxury of feeling since his accident: fear. He realized he might not be ready to come back—certainly not here.
He slipped the chair backward against the restraining straps as the Super Jolly Green Giant began banking into its final approach. Earlier HH-53 types had been used as rescue choppers during the Vietnam War. More than likely somebody else with a broken spine had been sitting where he was sitting, staring at a door, wondering what he was going to do for the next fifty or sixty years, wondering if he was ready.
Wondering was a sucker’s strategy. Zen fixed his eyes on a bolt in the door handle, then bit his teeth together. The helicopter settled downward, the T64-GE-413 Turboshafts throttling back as the craft touched onto the long, smooth run of concrete. Zen kept his eyes pasted ahead as the crew chief kicked open the door; he waited without moving a muscle until the restraints on his wheelchair were removed. As the last belt slipped off, he pushed forward, rolling to the open portal.
There wasn’t a ramp. His choices were to banzai it, or wait for the crew chief and copilot to lift him down.
He waited.
“Here you go, Major,” said the copilot, a paunchy six-footer who strained as he took hold of the side of the chair.
Zen grunted. The sun threw its yellow arms from over the nearby mountains, greeting him. It would soon get warmer, but at the moment it was barely fifty. Zen felt cold despite his thick jacket as they released him onto the tarmac.
Two members of the security detail—specially assigned Air Force Spec Ops troops with rifles ready—stood a few yards away, near the entrance to Hangar One. There had been a few changes in his absence; he thought two of the hangars had been painted. Otherwise, it seemed very familiar.
Different, but familiar.
Zen waited as the crew chief retrieved his briefcase and bag from the helo.
“Sergeant. Put the bags on my lap, please.”
The sergeant looked down at him.
Pity. The worst thing.
“The guards won’t let you past them,” Zen said. “Let’s go.
“Sir—” The sergeant seemed to lose his voice for a moment. “Yes, sir,” he said finally. He placed the bag and briefcase on Zen’s legs, then stood back and snapped off a respectful and well-intentioned salute.
Zen was only vaguely aware of it. He’d turned his attention back to the guards, who had been joined by a third person just emerging from the hangar.
It was his wife.
SHE KNEW HE’D COME EARLY, TRY TO SNEAK IN without any fanfare. He’d been vague on the telephone, and that was a dead giveaway.
Breanna watched Jeff take the bags and wheel his way toward the security men. For a moment she twinged with anger that the crewman hadn’t carried the bags for her husband; then she realized Jeff had probably told him not to.
The Air Force security sergeants snapped to attention before challenging him. She’d stopped to talk to them earlier, warning them that Jeff would be arriving soon. She’d brought them coffee, then asked for a favor—treat him no differently than anyone. In fact, if they could be a little surly, that would be better.
He hated people treating him like a cripple. He’d told her that the very first night, when he regained consciousness—used that ugly word, “cripple,” before he even knew he was one.
It hurt to watch him wheel across the open cement. It made her want to cry, but that was the last, the very last thing she could do. It would be like kicking him in the face.
Breanna forced her arms to hang down at her sides. She cou
ld do this. She had to do this.
“Sir, your orders, sir,” snapped one of the two sergeants, his voice cold enough to chill the heart of a Russian paratrooper.
Zen scowled. The look was so familiar Breanna felt her heart snap. He placed the bag with his clothes and other personal items on the ground next to him. He undid the clasp on his leather attaché—an old gift from his mother before she died—and slipped out a small sheaf of paperwork. The routine was, of course, not necessary, since the captain was well known and in any event would soon have his identity checked at a retina scanner at their station inside the hangar. His status and orders, like those of everyone at Dreamland, were recorded on the security computer. But it was a good touch.
The first sergeant inspected the documents while the other sergeant remained watchful. “Sir, I have to ask you if you are armed,” said the man finally, holding the papers in his hand.
Before, Jeff would have smiled wryly and said something like, “The girls all think so.”
Now he stared straight ahead, his words snapping taut in the chilly morning breeze. “My personal weapon is in storage. I am presently unarmed.”
The guard handed him back his orders.
“Your bags, sir. I have to ask that you present them for inspection.”
Zen handed them over.
“If you’ll follow us, Major, we can complete the protocol inside. We require a retina scan. It’s a new procedure.”
The men turned smartly and began striding toward the hangar. One of them gave Breanna the faintest wink.
“Jeff.” The word slipped out faintly as he drew parallel to her. He didn’t answer; she put her hand gently on his upper arm, stopping him.
“I’m okay, Bree.”
“I know that,” she said.
She stepped back and watched him wheel into the hangar. An F-15C Eagle—coincidentally the one Mack Smith had been flying when the accident happened—sat at the far end. Jeff kept his head pointed straight ahead, following the two sergeants to the computerized security device.
Breanna held her breath as Greasy Hands—Chief Master Sergeant Clyde Parsons, the senior NCO in charge of the maintenance crews—ambled up with a cup of coffee in his fist.
“Yo, Zen. Good to have you back, Major. About goddamn time.”
Jeff snorted.
“Been a slew of changes around here during your R&R. Flighthawks only got back in the air two months ago. Civilian pilot—nice guy, but not for nothin’ his nickname’s ‘Rock.’ “ Greasy Hands offered Jeff the coffee. “Dab .a milk. Alzheimer’s hasn’t caught up with me yet.”
She couldn’t see Jeff’s face. He didn’t say anything, but did take the coffee. Jeff and Greasy Hands had gotten along particularly well before the accident, the sergeant looking after the pilot like a doting parent.
Parsons caught her gaze. “Megafortress’ll be ready for you in ten shakes, Captain. Just checked with the crew chief.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
The old geezer smirked. “Better watch out for Major Cheshire. Hear she’s on the rag today.”
Breanna wasn’t exactly sure how to take that; she was rarely sure exactly how to take anything Parsons said. Though Dreamland’s excellent work teams were a testimony to the first sergeant’s abilities as an organizer and mother hen, Parsons was old school and very uncomfortable with women being in the military. She thought that he was trying to treat her like one of the guys, which probably in his mind was a big honor. His approach to Cheshire—the senior project officer on the EB-52 Mega-fortress and Breanna’s immediate superior—was very different, stiff to the point of being overly correct.
“Your dad’s sure gonna stir things up,” added Parsons. “He’s a bee-whacker.”
“A bee-whacker?”
“Really likes to whack the old bees’ nest,” explained the sergeant. “Shake things up. Got all the officers jumpin’, even the pilots.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Bree.
“He’s a butt-kicker,” Parsons told Jeff. His admiration seemed genuine. “You best watch your fanny, Major. Place isn’t going to be the same with him in charge. Now I admired the general—a damn fine man. An excellent officer. But Colonel Bastian, hell, he’s a bee-whacker. Just what we need,” Greasy Hands added, shaking his head and grinning. “I’ve heard stories.”
“So have I,” said Breanna sharply. “Jeff, I have to go get ready for a mission.”
He ignored her. It was pretty much what she expected; pretty much what he’d done in the hospital and all during rehab, after the doctors had told him he’d never walk again.
Not sure what else to do, she turned quickly and started for the Megafortress’s underground bunker.
COLONEL BASTIAN LOOKED UP AS AX MADE HIS WAY across the office.
“Cup number two, not quite as strong,” said the sergeant, placing down the coffee mug. “As per request.”
Dog grunted and rubbed his eyes. He’d gotten less than two hours of sleep last night, spending the rest of the time reviewing project notes and trying to correlate some of the reports with the Pentagon data he’d come west with. His desk was littered with folders, printouts, white pads, photocopies, notes, index cards, Post-its, and even a few old-fashioned carbons.
“Sunday Times crossword puzzle in that mess somewhere?”
“Very funny, Ax.”
“You want to run through the day’s agenda yet, Colonel? I figure we wait any longer the day’ll be over and then we’ll be behind.”
“Yeah, okay.” Dog took the coffee and leaned back in the well-padded leather chair. One thing about Ax’s coffee: Even the weak cups were gut-burning strong. And hot—Dog backed his lips off without taking a full sip.
“It’ll cool down,” said the sergeant.
“Thanks for the advice. Well?”
“Okay, let’s see. Number-one priority—hire a secretary. Preferably one who can make coffee.”
“Agreed.”
“Number-two priority, we need some typists, clerks, etc., etc. I can’t be expected to do real work forever, you know.”
Ax folded his arms in front of his chest. He was joking. Dreamland had a full complement of military and civilian clerks, probably more than the ever-efficient Ax needed. But instead of giving himself away with a laugh as he usually did, his expression turned serious.
“You okay, Colonel? Usually, you’re rolling on the floor by now.”
“This is a worse mess than I thought, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” Ax ran his left hand up behind his neck, scratching an imaginary itch. Gibbs’s actual age was a closely guarded military secret, but he gave every impression of being old enough to be Bastian’s father. There were many times, like now, when he reminded Dog of the old man—kinder, without the temper. Maybe smarter, though Bastian’s father had been sharp enough to make admiral and get himself elected to Congress.
“Colonel, you’ve been in worse messes,” said the sergeant. “It’s just the paper-shuffling’s got you down.”
“Five of these programs have to go,” said Bastian, pointing to the papers. “Ms. O’Day is calling this morning for my recommendation.”
Deborah O’Day was the National Security Advisor and the reason Bastian was here.
“Eenie, meeney, minee, moe.”
Dog laughed.
“Finally,” said the sergeant. “I was beginning to worry you left your sense of humor back in Washington somewhere.”
Dog smiled and took a sip of the coffee. The problem wasn’t deciding which programs should be cut. The problem was that the programs that should be cut were exactly the ones the brass, the White House, and the Congress wouldn’t cut. Worse, by recommending they be cut, all he would succeed in doing was anger people and administer the final coup de grace to Dreamland.
An argument could be made to close the base. The spy scandal aside, in many ways HAWC belonged to an earlier era. Bastian realized that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War meant that big
-ticket development projects with almost unlimited budgets were a thing of the past. Without the constant threat of a high-tech arms race, Congress would be loath to approve the immense “black” budget lines that had funded Dreamland.
But on the other hand, the end of the Cold War didn’t remove the threats to national security; it just changed what they were. In Bastian’s opinion—and in the opinion of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and the President, as far as he could tell—cuttingedge technology would be even more important in fighting the sort of brushfire wars and terrorist actions America would face in the twenty-first century. With the future so unpredictably fluid and budget constraints the order of the day, high-tech weapons were going to be a critical force-multiplier. Delta Force was the model of the twenty-first-century Army—a highly trained, extremely mobile group ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The Air Force needed an equivalent. And it needed to multiply its limited resources with the country’s top asset—brainpower. That would be Dreamland’s role, providing cutting-edge technology to deal with a myriad of next-generation crises.
Bastian had written a briefing paper to that effect while working for the NSC under President Bush after the Gulf War. While it had gone largely unnoticed in the Administration at the time, it had attracted the attention of Deborah O’Day, a policy wonk and university professor doing consulting work for the NSC back then. O’Day had struck up a friendship with Bastian, even having him in to talk to her classes at George Washington University. Her appointment as National Security Advisor by President Lloyd Taylor had surprised a lot of people outside the government, but not Bastian, who realized she was as sharp as anyone in D.C.
Technically, Bastian was a long way down the chain of command from O’Day. But he’d worked for her in D.C. and she had personally pulled the strings to get him here.
“Assuming your phone call with Ms. O’Day is only its normal marathon length,” said Ax, “we can do this today like you wanted. You start seeing your section commanders, one by one, at 0800. Fifteen minutes a pop, that gets you to 1145, with a thirty-minute time-out for Ms. O’Day. Lunch at your desk. Senior scientists, two minutes apiece, you’ll be done by one.”