Текст книги "Retribution"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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“Still targeting you.”

“Just tell me if he fires.”

“Werewolf,” said Starship, acknowledging.

Dog began a bank, aiming to circle in front of the destroyer and make himself a more inviting target.

It was hopeless, wasn’t it? Sooner or later the captain of the frigate was going to figure out what he was up to, if he hadn’t already. And by now he’d have realized that the Megafortress was unarmed and impotent.

Well, he was weaponless, but was he impotent?

An hour and a half before, he’d been willing to give his life to keep the Chinese from launching a nuclear weapon and involving the world in a nuclear war.

He could do that now, he thought. If he hit the frigate right, he’d sink it.

He’d have to stay at the stick to do it.

Dog hesitated, then pushed the stick back toward the frigate. He reached for the throttle glide, ready to put the engines to the wall.

“Missile launch!” screamed Starship. And as he did, Dog saw two thick bursts of white foam erupt from the forward section of the Chinese ship.

Northern Arabian Sea

0908

MACK SAW THE MISSILES STREAK FROM THE CHINESE destroyer but couldn’t tell what they were firing at. The Wis-

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consin, he guessed, though he couldn’t see it in the sky.

The Werewolf was skittering around two miles to the east.

Cantor groaned.

“Maybe the chopper can take him back to the ship,” said Dish.

“Maybe,” said Mack, though he knew that the small helicopter wasn’t normally equipped with rescue equipment.

“Hey, kid, you still up there? Werewolf?”

“Werewolf.”

“We got an injured airman here. It’s Jazz—you think we can rig a stretcher up or something?”

“Uh, negative, Major. I have a line running down from the bird and there’s a collar attached, but I don’t know about hooking up a stretcher. It’s a long way back, and he’d have to hold on. I don’t think he could make it.”

“That’s it, kid. You just gave me a great idea. Get overhead right now,” he added, as two more missiles flew from the destroyer.

Aboard the Wisconsin,

over the northern Arabian Sea

0908

ONE HAND ON THE POWER CONTROLS AND THE OTHER ON

the stick, Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian goaded the Wisconsin to the southeast, urging her away from the missiles. The weapons were smaller and faster than the Megafortress, and didn’t have to worry about dealing with holes in their fuselage. On the other hand, the Megafortress had a five-mile head start and a human pilot guiding her.

Dog pushed the Megafortress toward the waves, trying to get as low as possible without turning his plane into a submarine. The radar in the Chinese destroyer, originally intended for tracking targets tens of thousands of feet higher, lost the aircraft at about a hundred feet, leaving both missiles to use their onboard infrared detectors to find the target.

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The first missile, either incorrectly believing it was near the Megafortress or simply deciding it had had enough of the chase, imploded a good mile from the Wisconsin, harmlessly showering the sea with shrapnel.

The second missile continued in the right direction. The launch trajectory had sent it climbing over the Megafortress by a few thousand feet. As it corrected, Dog pushed hard to the south, taking his juicy heat signature away from the missile’s sensor. The radar on the frigate picked up the plane as it turned, then lost it again, though not before its fitful guidance beam sent the missile into a half loop back toward the target.

Dog didn’t know what was going on behind him; he only knew that the farther he flew, the better the odds of survival.

He’d been chased by countless missiles, some radar guided, some infrared, a few like this one—a combination of the two. Even with countermeasures, it was always a question of outrunning the thing—“getting where the missile ain’t,” as an instructor had taught him a million years ago. Jink, thrash the pedals, lean on the throttle—just go.

Drenched in sweat, Dog felt the water rolling down his arms, saturating the palms of his hands. He slid his left hand farther down the stick, worried that his fingers would slip right off.

As he did, there was a low clunk behind him and the plane jerked forward, its tail threatening to rise. He used both his hands to keep control, but even as he did, he felt a surge of relief—the shock had undoubtedly come from the warhead’s explosion, and while it must have been close enough to shake the plane, he could tell it hadn’t done serious damage.

Leveling out, Dog took a moment to wipe the sweat from the palms of his hands, then pulled back to climb. He glanced over his left shoulder, looking for the frigate in the distance.

He didn’t see the ship. But he did see a silvery baseball bat, headed straight for him.

It was another HQ-7 antiair missile, and it was gaining fast.

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Northern Arabian Sea

0912

THOUGH IT WAS SMALL, THE WEREWOLF KICKED UP A PRETTY

good amount of wind from its props and engines. Mack had trouble keeping his eyes clear as the robo-helo edged in, its rope and sling swinging below.

What Starship had called a collar looked like a limp rubber band—a wet, slimy one that packed the wallop of a wrecking ball. As Mack reached for it, a swell pushed him forward faster than he expected and he was whacked in the neck. He grabbed for the rope but couldn’t quite reach it.

“Get that mother!” he yelled.

He put his left hand on the raft and lurched forward, jumping across the tiny boat for the collar. He managed to spear his arm through it and immediately began to spin to the right. T-Bone jumped at the same time and also grabbed part of the collar. Dish reached but missed, grabbing T-Bone instead. The three men crashed together, none of them daring to let go. The tied-together rafts twirled beneath them, one of them nearly swamping.

“I got it, I got it!” yelled Mack. He hung on as the rope bucked back and forth. “Just grab me. Grab onto me and hold onto the rafts. Stabilize them!”

Starship was trying to tell him something, but Mack couldn’t hear. He felt the helicopter pulling him upward and tried locking his grip by grabbing his flight suit, so that the sling was tucked under his arm. His right leg tangled in the line they’d used to lash the two rafts together, and he felt as if he was being pulled apart at the groin.

“Hold me and the raft! Hold me and the raft!” he shouted, though by now his voice was hoarse.

They were moving, though he had no idea in what direction.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d in mind, but it was something.

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Aboard the Abner Read,

northern Arabian Sea

0916

STARSHIP DIDN’T KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER THE MEN IN

the raft had snagged the line until he had to struggle to correct for a shift in the wind. He nudged the Werewolf forward and the rafts came with her, pulling through the water at about four knots.

The frigate was still coming toward them.

“Major, I’m going to try increasing the speed,” said Starship. “Are you guys all right?”

Mack’s response, if there was one, was drowned out by the roar of the Werewolf ’s blades directly overhead. The engineers who had advertised the chopper as “whisper quiet”

obviously had a unique notion of how loud a whisper was.

Starship notched the speed up gently, moving to six knots and then eight. He knew it had to feel fast to the men on the rafts, but it was less than half the frigate’s speed, and the ship continued to close. While the helo was too low to the water for an antiair missile, it was only a matter of time before the frigate’s conventional weapons could be brought to bear.

“Come to ten knots,” he told the computer, deciding to use the more precise voice command instead of the throttle.

As the computer acknowledged, a warning panel opened on the main screen—the frigate’s gun-control radar had just locked onto the helicopter.

Aboard the Wisconsin,

over the northern Arabian Sea

0916

DOG DROVE THE MEGAFORTRESS DOWN TOWARD THE

waves, hoping he could get low enough to avoid the radar guiding the missile toward him. He hung on as the Wisconsin shook violently, the aerodynamic stresses so severe that he 44

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

thought for a moment the missile had already caught up. He kept his eyes on the ocean as he slammed downward; when he thought it was time to pull up, he waited five long seconds more before doing so.

By then it was almost too late. The controls felt as if they were stuck in cement. He put his feet against the bulkhead below the control panel and levered his entire weight backward. The plane reluctantly raised her nose, and was able to level off at just over fifty feet, so close he worried that he was scooping the waves into the engines.

Dog’s maneuver had cost him so much airspeed that the missile shot past, still flying on the last vector supplied by the guidance radar. He saw it wobbling a few hundred feet overhead; instinctively he ducked as the warhead blew up two or three hundred meters in front of him.

Fourteen kilograms of high explosive was more than enough to perforate an aluminum can, even if that can was covered over with an exotic carbon resin material. But the truly deadly part of the HQ-7’s warhead was the shroud of metal surrounding the explosive nut; the metal splinters the explosion produced were engineered to shred high performance fighters and attack aircraft. Fortunately, the designers envi-sioned that the warhead would be doing its thing behind the plane it was targeted at, not in front of it, and the majority of the shrapnel rained down well beyond the Wisconsin.

Not all of it, however. The left wing took a dozen hits, the fuselage another six. A fist-sized slab of former missile punched through the top of the cockpit behind Dog. It crashed into the bulkhead at the rear of the flight deck, spraying more metal around the cockpit. Dog felt a hot poke on his right side, and winced as a splinter rebounded off one of the consoles and hit his ribs. It barely broke the skin, but still hurt like hell.

Clearly, the shrapnel had damaged the plane. He decided a poke in the side was a small price to pay for the near miss, and started to climb again, angling southward, well out of the frigate’s range.

RETRIBUTION

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Aboard the Abner Read,

northern Arabian Sea

0920

HANDS ON HIPS, STORM WATCHED THE VIDEO FEED FROM

the Werewolf in astonishment. The downed airmen seemed to have formed a human chain connecting their rafts with the robot helo. Any second now, he thought, one of them would suggest the helicopter turn around so they could try boarding the destroyer chasing them.

More guts than brains, that bunch.

He turned back to the holographic table, rechecking the positions of the Chinese ships. Then he reached to the com switch on his belt.

“Sickbay, how’s our guest?”

“Conscious, Captain. In shock, though. Looks like a concussion, but no other serious injuries.”

“Can he be transported?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, sir.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“If it were absolutely necessary.”

Storm flicked the controller. “Communications—send a message to the captain of the Khan. Tell him I have one of his pilots and I’m on my way to return him. Tell him I need to talk to him right away.”

THE WEREWOLF’S SMALL SIZE AND SHIFTING LOCATION

made it difficult for the gun radar to lock, but the Chinese were definitely out to earn an A for effort. The radar warning receiver kept flashing and then clearing, only to flash again.

Finally, a shell arced toward the helo. It missed by nearly a half mile, short and wide to the right. The 56mm gun at the bow was effective at about 10,000 meters; the computer calculated it would be within range of the rafts in another sixty seconds.

Starship notched the speed up to twelve knots.

“Mack, can you get the raft tied in better?” he asked.

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

When the major didn’t respond, Starship tried again, this time yelling into the microphone.

Still no answer. The frigate was now forty-five seconds from range.

“Fourteen knots,” Starship told the computer.

Northern Arabian Sea

0923

MACK’S LEGS FELT AS IF THEY’D BEEN PULLED FROM HIS

hips. The waves cracked across the bottoms of the two rafts, punching them up and down. This wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if they bounced together. Instead, they rumbled unevenly, thumping and jerking in a madly syncopated dance. It was as if he were standing on the backs of two ro-deo bulls, each of whom were riding in the back of a poorly sprung pickup truck.

T-Bone had his right leg and Dish his left. The others, except for Cantor, were holding onto them.

“Hey, this is fun, isn’t it?” yelled Mack, trying to cheer them up.

As if in reply, the Werewolf gave him a fresh tug. He suddenly jerked forward, the ride smoother—too smooth, he realized as he began to spin. He’d been pulled completely from the raft.

“Starship, get me back! Starship!”

Mack spun to his right. He caught glimpses of the destroyer as he spun. The Chinese warship seemed to gain a mile every time he blinked.

Dizzy, he closed his eyes, then quickly opened them as the ocean bashed against his leg. Something flew at him—a bullet from the frigate’s gun, he thought. But it was only Dish, leaping out to grab him as the Werewolf swung back with him.

The rafts twirled as the Werewolf once again changed direction.

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“Hang on, hang on!” Mack shouted to the others.

“Look!” yelled Dish, pointing behind him in the direction of the frigate.

Mack wanted to scream at him; there was no sense pointing out how close the frigate was. Dish turned around, then looked back up at Mack, a grin on his face.

What the hell are you smiling about? he wondered, then glanced over Dish’s shoulder and saw that the frigate had turned off.

Aboard the Wisconsin,

over the northern Arabian Sea

0925

“THE KHAN HAS TOLD THE FRIGATE TO KNOCK IT OFF,”

Storm told Dog. “They’ve turned away.”

“Why were they firing in the first place?”

“Why do the Chinese do anything?” said Storm. “They gave me some cock and bull story about the frigate captain believing he was rescuing Chinese pilots, but I don’t trust them to tell the truth. I don’t trust them at all.”

Dog wasn’t sure what to believe. It was possible that the captain of the frigate believed he was rescuing his own men; the Khan had lost most of its aircraft, and the frigate probably wasn’t aware that the crew of the Megafortress had jumped out—after all, the plane was still flying.

On the other hand, the transmissions on the emergency or guard band should have made it clear that the downed airmen were American.

Unless, of course, the captain suspected a trick.

“Now don’t you go screwing things up, Bastian,” added Storm. “Don’t use your weapons on the Chinese, as tempting as it may be. Don’t even power them up.”

“What do you think, I’m going to crank open a window and take potshots at them with my Beretta?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Dog snorted. All this time fighting together, and Storm was still a jerk.

“I’m going to have to go south real soon if I’m going to make that tanker,” Dog said. “Can you handle the pickup?”

“Go. We have the situation under control.”

Under other circumstances, Dog would have flown over the raft, dipping his wings to wish his men luck and let them know he was still thinking about them. But he didn’t want to press his luck with the plane.

As he found his course southward, he reached into a pocket on the leg of his speed jeans, fishing for a small pillbox he kept there.

He rarely resorted to “go” pills—amphetamines—to keep himself alert. He didn’t like the way they seemed to scratch his skin and eyes from the inside. More than that, he didn’t like the idea of them. But there was just no getting around them now. The long mission and the physical demands of flying the Megafortress without the computer or human assistance had left him drained. He worked up some saliva, then slipped a pill into his mouth and swallowed.

It tasted like acid going down.

“Dreamland Command, I’m heading south,” he told Major Catsman. “See if you can get the tanker to fly a little farther north, would you?”

II

Lost and Not Found

Indian Ocean,

off the Indian coast

Time unknown

IT HAPPENED SO GRADUALLY THAT ZEN DIDN’T NOTICE THE

line he crossed. One unending moment he was drifting in a kaleidoscope of shapes, thoughts, and emotions; the next, he was fully conscious, floating neck high in the Indian Ocean.

And very, very cold.

He glanced around, looking for his wife Breanna. They’d gone out of the plane together, hugging each other as they jumped through the hole left by one of the ejection seats in the Flighthawk bay of the stricken Megafortress. Eight people had been aboard the plane; there were only six ejection seats. As the senior members of the crew, they had the others bail first, then followed the old-fashioned way.

Ejection seats had been invented to get crew members away from the jet as quickly and safely as possible, before they could be smacked by the fuselage or sucked into a jet engine.

While certain aircraft were designed to be good jumping plat-forms, with the parachutists shielded from deadly wind sheers and vortices, the Megafortress was not among them. Though Zen and Breanna had been holding each other as they jumped, the wind had quickly torn them apart.

Zen had smacked his head and back against the fuselage, then rebounded down past Breanna. He’d tried to arc his upper body as a skydiver would. But instead of flying smoothly through the air, he began twisting around, spinning on both axes as if he were a jack tossed up at the start of a child’s 52

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

game. He’d forced his arms apart to slow his spin, then pulled the ripcord for his parachute and felt an incredibly hard tug against his crotch. But the chute had opened and then he fell at a much slower speed.

Sometime later—it could have been seconds or hours—he’d seen Breanna’s parachute unfold about two miles away.

His mind, tossed by the wind and jarred by the collision with the plane, suddenly cleared. He began shifting his weight and steering the chute toward his wife, flying the parachute in her direction.

A skilled parachutist would have had little trouble getting to her. But he had not done a lot of practice jumps before the aircraft accident that left him paralyzed, and in the time since, done only four, all qualifying jumps under much easier conditions.

Still, he had managed to get within a few hundred yards of Breanna before they hit the water.

The water felt like concrete. Zen hit at an angle, not quite sideways but not erect either. There wasn’t much of a wind, and he had no trouble getting out of the harness. As a paraplegic, his everyday existence had come to depend on a great deal of upper body strength, and he was an excellent swimmer, so he had no trouble squaring himself away. The small raft that was part of his survival gear bobbed up nearby, but rather than getting in, he’d let it trail as he swam in the direction of Breanna.

She wasn’t where he’d thought she would be. Her chute had been released but he couldn’t see her. He felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach with an iron bar.

As calmly as he could manage, he had turned around and around, looking, then began swimming against the slight current and wind, figuring the chute would have been pulled toward him quicker than Breanna had.

Finally, he’d seen something bobbing up and down about twenty yards to his right. It was Breanna’s raft. But she wasn’t in it.

She was floating nearby, held upright by her horseshoe 53

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lifesaver, upright, breathing, but out of it. He’d gotten her into her raft, but then was so exhausted that he pulled himself up on the narrow rubber gunwale and rested. He heard a thunderous roar that gave way to music—an old song by Spinal Tap, he thought—and then he slipped into a place where time had no meaning. The next thing he knew, he found himself here, alone in the water.

How long ago had that been?

His watch had been crushed during the fall from the plane.

He stared at the digits, stuck on the time he’d hit the airplane: 7:15 a.m.

The sun was now almost directly overhead, which meant it was either a little before or a little after noon—he wasn’t sure which, since he didn’t know which way was east or west.

Five hours in the water. Pretty long, even in the relatively warm Indian Ocean.

He reached to his vest for his emergency radio. It wasn’t there. Had he taken it out earlier? He had the vaguest memory of doing so—but was it a genuine memory or a dream?

A nightmare.

Was this real?

Breanna would have one. Bree—

Where was she? He didn’t see her.

Where was she?

“Bree!”

His voice sounded shallow and hoarse in his ears.

“Yo, Bree! Where are ya, hon?”

He waited, expecting to hear her snap back with something like, Right behind you, wise guy.

But she didn’t.

He thought he heard her behind him and spun around.

Nothing.

Not only was his radio gone—so was his life raft. He didn’t remember detaching it. His head was pounding. He felt dizzy.

Zen turned slowly in the water, positive he’d seen something out of the corner of his eye. He finally spotted something 54

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

in the distance: land or a ship, or even a bank of clouds; he was too far off to tell. He began paddling toward it.

After about fifteen minutes he realized it was land. He also realized the current would help him get to it.

“Bree!” he shouted, looking around. “Bree!”

He paddled harder. After an hour or so his arms began to seize. He no longer had the strength to swim, and simply floated with the tide. His voice had become too weak to do more than whisper. He barely had enough strength, in fact, to resist the creeping sense of despair lapping at his shoulders.

Diego Garcia

1600, 15 January 1998

DOG WATCHED THE TANKER SET DOWN ON DIEGO GARCIA’S

long runway, turning slowly in the air above the island as he waited for his turn to land. It had taken his damaged plane just under eight hours to reach Diego Garcia, more than twice what it had taken to fly north.

His body felt as if it were a statue or maybe a rusted robot that he haunted rather than lived in. His mind could control all of his body’s movements, but didn’t feel quite comfortable doing so. He was a foreigner in his own skin.

Eyes burned dry, throat filled with sand, Dog acknowledged the tower’s clearance and eased the Wisconsin into her final leg toward the runway.

Owned by the British, Diego Garcia was a desert island in the middle of nowhere, a sliver of paradise turned into a long runway, fueling station, and listening post. It was an odd mix of three distinct time periods—modern, British colonial, and primordial—all existing uneasily together.

The rush of air around him seemed to subside as he dropped toward the concrete. The wheels screeched loudly when he touched down, and the sound of the wind and the engines seemed to double. Dog had practiced manual-controlled landings many times in the simulator, and had had a few real ones 55

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besides. Even so, his hands shook as the Megafortress continued across the runway, seemingly moving much faster on the ground than she had been in the air. He had his brakes set, power down, and reverse thrusters deployed—he knew he should be stopping, but he wasn’t. He deployed the drag chute at the rear of the aircraft and held on.

The world roared around him, a loud train running in his head. And then finally the aircraft stopped—not gradually, it seemed, but all of a sudden.

The Wisconsin halted dead a good hundred yards from the turnoff from the taxiway. Dog let go of the stick and slumped back, too exhausted to move up properly. An SUV

with a flashing blue light approached; there were other emergency vehicles, fire trucks, an ambulance, coming behind it.

After he caught his breath, he undid his restraints and pulled himself upright. Embarrassed, he flipped on the mike for his radio.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Tower. Tower, you hearing me?”

“Affirmative, Wisconsin. Are you all right?”

“Get these guys out of my way and I’ll tootle over to the hangar,” he said, trying to make his voice sound light.

“Negative, Wisconsin. You’re fine where you are. We have a tractor on the way.”

“Welcome back, Colonel,” said a familiar gravelly voice over the circuit.

“Chief Parsons?”

“I hope you didn’t break my plane too bad, Colonel,” said Chief Master Sergeant Clyde Alan “Greasy Hands” Parsons.

Parsons was the head enlisted man in the Dreamland detachment, and the de facto air plane czar. He knew more about the Megafortress than its designer did. “I have only a skeleton crew to work with here.”

“I’ll take your skeleton over Angelina Jolie’s body any day,” Dog told him.

“Jeez, I don’t know, Colonel,” answered Parsons. “If that’s the lady I’m thinking of, I’m afraid I’d have to go with her.”

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* * *

LIEUTENANT MICHAEL ENGLEHARDT HOPPED FROM THE

GMC Jimmy and trotted toward the big black aircraft sitting on the runway in front of him. The right wing and a good part of the fuselage were scarred; bits and pieces of carbon fiber and metal protruded from the jagged holes and scrapes.

The engine cowling on the far right engine looked as if someone had written over it with white graffiti.

The ramp ladder was lowered from the forward section.

Colonel Bastian’s legs appeared, followed by the colonel himself. His face was drawn back; he looked a hundred years old.

“Colonel!” yelled Englehardt.

“Mikey. How are our people?”

“Mack and the others were picked up by the Abner Read several hours ago. They’re going to rendezvous with the Lincoln and get home from there.”

“Good. What about everybody else?” asked Dog.

Englehardt lowered his gaze, avoiding his commander’s stare.

“Dreamland Fisher was lost with all crew members,” he said. “Wreckage has been sighted. The Levitow is also missing,” he added. “It went down near the Indian coast. We’re not exactly sure of the location. A U-2 is overflying the route. The aircraft carrier Lincoln will launch some long-range reconnaissance aircraft to help as well, once they’re close enough.

They should be within range inside of twelve hours.”

Losing any aircraft and her crew was difficult, Englehardt knew, but losing the Levitow would be especially painful for Dog—his daughter Breanna was the Levitow’s pilot. Her husband Zen had been aboard, leading the Flighthawk mission.

“What about Danny Freah and Boston?” Dog asked.

“They were picked up by a Sharkboat after they disabled the Iranian minisub. The Sharkboat is due to rendezvous with the Abner Read and another Sharkboat in ninety minutes.”

“What’s the status of the Bennett?” Dog asked.

“Our engine has been replaced and we should be ready to 57

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launch within the hour,” said Englehardt. Mechanical problems had scratched the airplane from consideration for the original mission, and while they weren’t his fault, the pilot couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt. “I’ve prepped a Search and Rescue mission and would like to help join the search for our guys.”

“Are there still cots in the upper Flighthawk compartment?”

“Yes, sir, but we don’t have a backup crew.”

“I’m your backup crew,” said Dog. “Let’s get in the air.”

Ring E, Pentagon

0825, 15 January 1998

(1825, 15 January, Karachi)

AIR FORCE MAJOR GENERAL TERRILL “EARTHMOVER” Samson checked his watch. Admiral George Balboa, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nearly ten minutes late.

Admirals always thought they could be late for everything, Samson thought. But he forced a smile to his face and kept his grousing to himself.

As a younger man, the African-American general would have assumed it was because he was black. But now Samson realized the problem was more generic: no one had any manners these days.

Then again, that was one of the benefits of command: you didn’t need manners when you outranked someone.

“General, would you like some more coffee?” asked one of Balboa’s aides.

“Thank you, Major, but no, I’m fine.”

“There you are, Samson,” barked Balboa as he entered the office. “Come in.”

Balboa’s tone suggested that Samson was the one who was late. Samson hadn’t risen in the ranks by insulting his superiors. Especially when, as he hoped, they were about to deliver good news. So he stifled his annoyance and rose, thanked the 58

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admiral’s staff for their attention, and followed Balboa into his office.

“You’ve heard the news about India and Pakistan, I assume,”

said Balboa, sliding behind his desk. An antique, it was said to have belonged to one of the USS Constitution’s skippers—a fact Samson wouldn’t have known except for the brass plate screwed into the front, obviously to impress visitors.

“I read the summary on my way over,” said Samson.

“What do you think of the developments?”

Samson considered what sort of response to give. Though classified, the report hadn’t given many details, merely hinting that the U.S. had used some sort of new weapons to down the missiles fired by both sides. It wasn’t clear what was truly going on, however, and the way Balboa posed the question made Samson suspect a trap.

“I guess I don’t have enough details to form an opinion,”

he said finally.

“We’ve shot down twenty-eight warheads,” said Balboa.

“The Navy sank an Indian aircraft carrier and several Chinese ships that tried to interfere. The President is continuing the operation. He wants the warheads recovered.”

“I see,” said Samson.

“The Dreamland people were in the middle of things.

They fired the radiation weapons. Power is out throughout the subcontinent.”

“Uh-huh.” Samson tried to hide his impatience. A few months before, he had been mentioned as a possible commander for a new base that would have supplanted Dreamland, but the plans had never come to fruition—thankfully so, because he had much bigger and better things in mind.

Like the job he’d hoped Balboa had called him here to discuss, heading Southern Command.

“Some of the people in the administration didn’t understand the potential of the Whiplash concept,” said Balboa.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come.”

One of his aides, a Marine Corps major, entered with a 59