Текст книги "Razor's Edge"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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“My control. We’re on hydraulics,” she told Ferris.

She wrestled the plane for a few seconds, momentum and gravity working against her. The EB-52 began to shudder—the plane was approaching the speed of sound.

The rocks below grew exponentially.

Breanna felt herself relax as the pedals jerked against her feet. She ignored the panel of instruments, ignored the warning lights, ignored everything but the immense aircraft. It became part of her body; her face was squashed by gravity, her sides compressed by the buffeting wind. She brought herself to heel, leveling off at a bare two thousand feet, clearing a mountaintop by thirteen feet.

It was only when she came level that she realized they were on fire.

“Chris?” she said calmly. “Chris?”

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When he didn’t respond, she turned and saw him slumped forward against his restraints. Bree looked over her shoulder—O’Brien was fighting off his restraints.

Long, thin ribbons of smoke filtered from one of the panels at the rear of the flight deck.

“Stay where you are,” she told O’Brien over the interphone circuit.

Either the circuit wasn’t working or he didn’t understand. Breanna waved at him emphatically; he saw her finally and settled back down.

The Megafortress was equipped with two fire suppression systems. One injected high-pressure foam into non-crew areas of the aircraft; this worked automatically. The other, a carbon-dioxide system designed to deprive a fire of oxygen, required a positive command from the flight deck, since anyone not on oxygen would be smothered along with the flames. Breanna could see that everyone was okay on the flight deck, but she had no way of checking downstairs. Zen would certainly have on his gear, but the techies who flew with him almost never did. Which meant that fighting the fire might very well kill Jennifer Gleason.

Her father’s girlfriend.

“Jen—get on oxygen,” she said. “Everyone—now! We have a fire.”

There was no acknowledgment. The plane’s com system was dead.

Breanna pressed the manual warning switch. The cockpit was supposed to flash red but it didn’t.

Smoke was now pouring into the cockpit. She had to put it out.

“Fire suppression!” she shouted as she reached over and thumbed the guard away from the button.

*

*

*

222

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

JEFF HEARD THE METALLIC HUSH OF THE CARBON-DIOXIDE

fire suppression system, then felt his teeth sting—the sound was remarkably similar to the sound of a dentist’s suction tool, amplified about a hundred times. The sudden change in the pressure as the gas whipped in made the cabin feel like a wind tunnel.

There’d been no warning light or tone.

Jennifer—she never wore the gear. She’d be breathing pure carbon dioxide.

“Trail Two,” he told the Flighthawk computer. He pushed up his visor and turned toward her station.

She wasn’t there.

Something cold hit him on his right shoulder. He turned and saw her standing there, shaking her head vig-orously up and down, a mask on her face.

BREANNA RESTABILIZED THE PRESSURE IN THE CABIN, REstored the normal airflow, then began dealing with the caution lights on her panel, assessing the damage. Fuel tanks were intact. Environmental controls—the AC system—was on backup. Oil pressure in the number four engine was now high, but just barely in the yellow. The flight computer was off line, as were the interphone and the radios. All of her backup instruments were operating.

The flight controls felt a bit kludgy on hydraulic backup, but otherwise were fine. The interface with the Flighthawks, which forwarded data from the robots’ sensors, was out.

Small bits of shrapnel had burst through the cockpit; one had apparently hit Ferris in the helmet, knocking him unconscious. There was some blood on his arm, but judging from his breathing, he was okay. Habib and O’Brien both gave her thumbs up.

When Breanna pulled off her mask to talk to her two RAZOR’S EDGE

223

crewmen, her nose tingled with the metallic smell that lingered from the CO2 system. Power to the radar tracking station had been cut completely; Habib’s eavesdrop-ping gear had been knocked off line, but some circuits still had power. Breanna told O’Brien to go downstairs and see about the others while Habib worked to see if he could get something from the radio.

“God, let Jeff be okay,” she found herself saying as she ran a quick self-check on the INS. “Don’t let him die. Not after everything else.”

JENNIFER HELD HER MASK TO THE SIDE TO TELL JEFF WHAT

she’d found at the circuit locker at the rear of the Flighthawk deck. The breaker on the lines regulating the com link between the Megafortress and the Flighthawks had blown out and wouldn’t reset, but otherwise they had full power. Whatever had hit the Megafortress seemed to have taken out the right underfuselage quadrant of the Flighthawk’s wide-band antennas, but his backups should be sufficient.

“We have full power on the monitoring suite, but the interphone system is off line,” she told him. “I think they’re on backup.”

“The fire,” he yelled, still facing forward and controlling the U/MFs.

“I think it’s out.”

“It is if you can breathe.” Zen pulled his mask off and looked up at her. “What the hell hit us?”

“No idea. Should I go up and see if they’re okay on the flightdeck?”

“Yeah,” he told her. “Tell them I’ll survey the outside and pipe it up. Something hit the fuselage on the right side—I saw the fire. Jen—” He grabbed her arm as she started for the ladder. “It may be pretty brutal.”

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“No shit.” She pulled free, then bolted for the ladder.

Someone was coming down. “Hey!” Jennifer yelled, stepping aside.

“Hey, yourself,” said O’Brien. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah—what’s going on up there?”

“My gear’s out. Captain Stockard’s okay. Captain Ferris got hit by something, knocked cold.”

“Radio?”

He shook his head.

“Where was the fire?” Jennifer asked.

“Not sure.”

“Come on, we have to check the gear in the rear bay.”

“I’ll go,” said O’Brien, spinning around and charging up the ladder to the rear area.

Jennifer clambered after him, reaching the top in time to hear him scream in agony.

“My hand! My hand!” he yelled, rolling on the metal grate of the floor and cursing in agony.

One of the equipment panels was open; Jennifer guessed that a short had juiced the panel. She reached into the small passage between the bay and the flight deck, grabbing the first aid kit off the wall. O’Brien writhed in pain so badly the first thing she did was stab him with the morphine syringe. She rammed it into his leg, right through his uniform. Then she dug into the box for the burn spray—a high-pressure can of antiseptic solution that was so cold as she sprayed, her own hands turned to ice. By the time she had gauze on his hands, O’Brien had calmed down. She helped him back onto the flight deck and got him strapped into his seat as his eyes closed.

“What happened?” asked Breanna.

“One of the panels is hot—there’s a short. Maybe if I had a schematic—can you access the on-line manual?”

RAZOR’S EDGE

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“Negative—everything associated with the computer is out.”

“If you have control of the plane, we shouldn’t mess with it,” said Jennifer. “I don’t want to screw up something else.”

“Agreed,” said Breanna. “How’s Jeff?”

“He’s fine,” said Jennifer. “He should be giving you a visual.”

“I have no feed from him,” said Breanna. “The computer’s out.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, he’s fine. He was worried about you,”

she added. Jennifer thought of Breanna’s father, worried about him for a moment, even though he wasn’t the one in danger. “I’ll find out what it looks like and come back.”

“Good luck,” said Breanna. “We’re about ten minutes out of High Top. If the damage is too bad, we’ll have to go on to Incirlik. I don’t want to mess with a short-field landing.”

IT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT HAD STUCK HIS THUMB ONTO

Quicksilver’s fuselage just before the wing on the right side. The center of the thumbprint was dark black; streaks of silver extended in an oblong starburst toward the rear where bits of the radar-evading hull had been burned away. There were one or two long lines extending toward the back of the plane, along with a small burn mark on the panel where the rear landing gear carriage folded up.

There were some other pockmarks, including a large dent on the cover to the chute they needed to deploy to land on the short field.

“The thing looks bad, but it looks intact,” Jeff told Jennifer. “I don’t know about the chute, though.”

“Okay.”

“Tell Bree I think I should land the Flighthawks at High Top and we should go on to Incirlik. I should be 226

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

able to talk to the AWACS through Hawk One in about thirty seconds. I’ll have the controller about a minute after that. You’ll have to play messenger.”

“Not a problem,” she said, starting back.

He checked his instruments. The U/MFs themselves were in good shape.

The only thing that could have done this sort of damage was a laser. Maybe they’d believe Brad Elliott now.

High Top

1830

CAPTAIN FENTRESS DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON UNtil he saw Major Alou hustling toward his plane, followed a good ten yards back by the rest of his crew. He ran after them, shouting for information. Kevin Marg, the copilot, explained that Quicksilver had been hit by a SAM.

Zen and Bree and the others—oh God.

Zen.

“The Flighthawks—they’ll be in a fail-safe orbit if the control unit was blown out,” Fentress told them. “They can help us find them if they go down. Let me come with you?”

Alou yelled something that he took to be a yes. But as he ducked under the plane he heard the soft whine of a Flighthawk in the distance. Fentress trotted back out in time to see the robot tilt her nose up above the far end of the runway, skimming in like a graceful eagle hooking its prey. The second plane came in two seconds later, just as smoothly.

Would he ever be able to land like that?

He had fifty times—on the simulator.

“Hey, Quicksilver’s heading over to Incirlik,” yelled RAZOR’S EDGE

227

the copilot from the ladder. “We’re going to fly shotgun—

Major Alou wants to know if you’re coming aboard or not.”

“I better look after the Flighthawks,” said Fentress.

“You got it, Curly.”

“I’m not Curly,” he shouted, starting to trot toward the robot planes.

Aboard Quicksilver , on the ground at Incirlik 1905

ZEN WATCHED FROM HIS WHEELCHAIR AT THE BACK OF THE

Flighthawk deck as they carried O’Brien and then Ferris out. Jennifer had already gone down to see if Alou was landing or if she could talk to him over the radio; Raven had escorted them here but there had been no way to communicate outside of hand signals.

After he landed the Flighthawks, he’d had plenty of time to go back over the video. There was only one site in the area they had flown over that could have possibly held a laser—a dilapidated factory a half mile off a highway, a mile and a half from a fair-size town in northeastern Iraq.

Two trailers were parked outside of it. There were no defensive positions that they could see, but there was a long trench running between the trailers into the building. Cables might be buried there.

While the fire had cost them the data needed to coordinate it positively, it was at least roughly where the cell phone calls and radio transmissions had originated from.

It had to be where the laser was.

“Hey,” said Breanna, coming down the ladder. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

She glanced back upward, as if she’d forgotten no one else was aboard. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she told him.

228

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“What for?”

“We haven’t—you and I have been kind of off kilter lately. I don’t know why.”

Zen shrugged.

“I love you,” she said.

“Yeah, I love you too,” he said. The words sounded odd to him, too rushed or too quick, not as sincere as he meant. But if she noticed, she didn’t say.

High Top

2010

DANNY FREAH GLANCED OVER FROM THE COMMUNICAtions section in the Whiplash trailer, making sure he was still alone; the HQ had become something like a rec room for the base personnel. Ordinarily he didn’t mind, but the conferences with Dreamland Command and Raven were to be conducted in total secrecy.

Bison was at the door, enforcing the secure protocol with his M16A3, full-body armor, and a day and a half’s worth of unshowered B.O. Danny gave him a quick wave, then turned back to the main com screen, adjusting the volume on his headset. The excitement of the rescue—and the harried ride back on only one engine—had been eclipsed by news of what happened to Quicksilver.

“The damage was done by some sort of energy discharge weapon,” said Alou, who was en route back to High Top Base in Raven. “I saw it myself. Had to be laser.”

“We concur,” said Dog.

“The radio transmission data points to a small warehouse complex, more like a building and some trailers in Box AB-04,” said Alou. “It should be just about big enough for a laser.”

“Give me the coordinates and we’ll look at it,” said RAZOR’S EDGE

229

Dog. “The mini-KH is now on line. We can have it maneuvered into place by morning.”

“I want to move right away,” said Alou. “I say we return to refuel, and go.”

“The colonel and I have been discussing another option,” said Danny before Dog could answer. “I’d like to get us in there and take a look at it before we blow it.”

“Why?” asked Alou.

“Because if we just destroy it, we’re not going to settle any of the questions,” Danny said. His words raced from his mouth. “I say we get on the complex ASAP, Colonel.

From what Jennifer Gleason relayed, it’s an easy shot.”

“You don’t know that the laser itself is there,” said Alou. “It’s probably mobile.”

“It may be mobile,” said Dr. Rubeo, who was in the secure room with Colonel Bastian. “If it’s as advanced as Razor. If—a big question.”

“See—we have to get that question answered,” said Danny.

“There’s no way you’ll have the Osprey repaired in time to join us,” said Alou.

“We’ll find other transportation,” said Danny, who already knew it would be several days before they had a new engine to replace the damaged one. “If this map is right, there are no defenses whatsoever. Nearest armed units would be in a town a mile and a half away. We’re in and out before they know what hit them. Ten minutes of video on the ground, maybe grab some pieces—that would be invaluable.”

“Big risks,” said Bastian. “Even just a bombing mission. Granted that Quicksilver was more vulnerable to radar, but Raven will still have to open its bomb bay to fire. That would make even a B-2 visible, at least in theory.”

“I concur,” said Rubeo.

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“One thing I noticed,” cut in Alou. “And maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe it has to do with the radars, but the altitude of all the planes hit was at least twenty thousand feet.”

“And?” said Dog.

“Maybe it can only hit aircraft at that altitude or higher.

Maybe it’s optimized for that.”

“If this is a laser, it can strike anything from five centimeters to thirty-five meters off the ground,” said Rubeo.

His face filled the screen as he spoke, the video feed automatically concurring with the active voice feed. “I suggest we wait and plan a full raid,” added the scientist. “I agree with Captain Freah about the utility of a close inspection, but the operation should be properly planned.

We’ll have the mini-KH positioned in six hours.”

“They may move it by then,” said Alou.

“Unlikely,” said Rubeo.

“Razor’s mobile.”

“Pul-ease. We are dealing with Iraq,” answered the scientist. “Even if this is mobile, they can’t go scurrying around the countryside with it. They’ll hide it in a building.”

“I agree with Merce,” said Danny. “The sooner the better. They won’t be expecting it.”

“We’re not sure if this is the site, though,” said Dog.

“It’s got to be, right, Doc?” asked Danny, sensing the scientist would back him.

“Possibly. It’s within parameters. Even if they were a full generation behind—and let us say that is more likely—the building needed for the director would not have to be very large,” said Rubeo. “I believe anything above two thousand square feet would do, assuming some of the equipment were contained on a second level or even in an auxiliary station. The director itself is not particularly large, and at least a portion of it has to be ex-

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posed so it can fire. Razor, of course, can be mounted on a large tank chassis. That greatly increases the possible number of sites.”

“What the hell is the director?” asked Danny. “The command post?”

Rubeo gave him one of his best “what a bonehead I’m dealing with” expressions.

“The director focuses the laser or high energy beam,”

explained Colonel Bastian. “It’ll look a little like a very large searchlight. It will have some baffling on it to prevent ambient light from changing the focus during daylight.”

“Precisely,” said Rubeo. “We will feed you some con-ceptual drawings that you can use for a target. It’s the easiest part to destroy. Now, if the Iraqis are more than a generation behind—”

“Then it wouldn’t work at all,” said Colonel Bastian.

“Precisely,” said Rubeo. “Thank you, sir.”

“Good,” said Danny.

“The director itself is interesting, but not the highest priority for intelligence,” said Rubeo. “The software that controls it would be extremely interesting. We’d want to ID the gas makeup, of course. An exact signature could help us determine who built it and—”

“I’ll get you everything you want,” said Danny.

“The chemical warfare sniffers you carry can be modified to give us a reading,” said Rubeo. “You’ll have to find Sergeant Garcia and tell him to follow the directions I send.”

“Whoa, not so fast boys,” said Dog. “You haven’t outlined the risks, and we haven’t solved the problem of getting there, or of grabbing intelligence for the strike.”

“We can use the Flighthawks for intelligence,” said Alou. “They’re at High Top.”

“Zen isn’t.”

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“Captain Fentress is there. He’ll fly them,” said Alou.

“The risks are worth it, Colonel,” said Rubeo. “If this is a laser, intelligence on it would be overwhelmingly valuable.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Dog. “What are the risks?”

“Well, the risks—we could fail,” said Danny, leaving it at that.

“And you get there how?” asked Dog.

“I was hoping to chop one of those Marine transports, but we won’t have any inbound until daybreak,” said Danny, who’d checked twice. “But I have something else in mind, something much better, that we could use right away.”

“YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND, FREAH. OUT OF

your fucking mind.” Mack Smith shook his head, then slapped the side of the OV-10. “You want to ride in the back of this?”

“Plenty of room. Garcia tells me four or five guys can fit, with full gear.”

Garcia, who had been hovering nearby, tried to inter-ject. Danny waved at him to be quiet.

“The Marines did this all the time in the Gulf War,” he told Mack. “The building isn’t ten feet from the highway, which is long and flat, plenty enough for you to land. You come in, zip around, take off. Easy as pie.”

“Pie, huh? Apple or peach?”

“You’re awful touchy today, Major,” said Danny. “You were looking for action—well, here it is.”

“Action and suicide are different.”

“You don’t think you can do this?”

“I can fuckin’ do it. There is nothing I can’t fly. This—this is a piece of cake.”

“Great. How long before we’re ready to take off?”

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Dreamland Command Center

1315

COLONEL BASTIAN WALKED BACK AND FORTH BEHIND THE

console, waiting for the connection to go through. He’d decided to give CentCom’s commander a heads-up about the Razor strike.

Like all of the U.S. joint service commands, CentCom was headed by a four-star general, in this case Army General Clayton Clearwater. He was an old-line soldier with a reputation both for daring—he’d been with an airborne unit in Vietnam—and stubbornness. Dog had met him exactly once, during a three-day Pentagon seminar on twenty-first century weaponry. Clearwater had given a short address during one of the sessions, talking about force multipliers and asymmetric warfare. While the speech had been aimed at the Joint Services Special Operations Command, his ideas were in line with the Dreamland/Whiplash concept.

Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t view the Razor mission as interfering with his domain. But his reaction was beside the point. Bastian wasn’t calling him to ask for permission—the Whiplash order clearly gave him the authority to proceed.

Still, touching base was politic.

“Nothing?” Dog asked the lieutenant handling the center communications board.

“Just getting through now, sir.”

The lieutenant spent a minute haggling with his equiv-alent at CentCom’s communications center before being transferred to the general’s line. A tired-sounding Marine Corps major—CentCom didn’t have the high-tech secure video gear Dreamland used—finally came on the line.

“Bastian?” he said curtly.

“I need to talk to General Clearwater.”

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“You’ll have to talk to me,” said the major. He was an aide to the general’s chief of staff—pretty far down the totem pole and undoubtedly lacking code-word clearance to talk about Whiplash, let alone any of Dreamland’s weapons.

“I need to talk to the general himself,” Dog told him.

“I’m sorry, Colonel, I can’t put you through.”

Dog folded his arms in front of his chest, trying to mar-tial his patience. “This is a top priority item. It involves a matter of immediate importance,” Dog told him.

“Then explain it to me,” said the major.

“I can’t,” said Bastian.

“Then this conversation is over,” said the major, who snapped off the connection.

“Asshole,” said the lieutenant in a stage whisper.

Dog began pacing again. In fairness to the major, he probably didn’t understand why a “mere” lieutenant colonel would need to speak right away to a four-star general, especially since that colonel was ostensibly calling from Edwards Air Force Base, where the duty roster showed he was assigned to support squadron.

Ordinarily a good cover, but in this case perhaps a bit too good.

Magnus could get through to Clearwater, he thought, and would appreciate the heads-up himself. But Dog hadn’t been able to hunt him down in D.C. He’d had to use the secure e-mail message system to tell him about the damage to Quicksilver and the fact that it had been forced to land at Incirlik, and still didn’t have an acknowledgment.

Dog glanced at his watch. Less than fifteen minutes until takeoff for the mission.

No way he was going to delay it.

“Listen, Lieutenant, I’m going to go catch a breather.

Page me if General Magnus or General Clearwater RAZOR’S EDGE

235

calls, and if there’s anything from Whiplash or the Megafortresses. Otherwise, I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

High Top

2302

“YOU TAKE THAT KNEE OUT OF MY SIDE RIGHT NOW, POWder, or I’m going to twist it back behind your head.”

“If you had room to twist it behind my head, Bison, it wouldn’t be in your goddamn side.”

“That ain’t his knee,” said Liu.

“Real funny, Nurse,” said Powder.

“We taking off today or what?” said Egg, the fourth member of the Whiplash team crammed into the rear of the Bronco. He wagged his flashlight toward the roof, throwing bizarre shadows across the M-4 carbines, grenade launchers, and MP5s they’d lashed there.

The Marine Corps had outfitted several OV-10s for special operations, turning the rear area into a passenger compartment. While no Marine was ever heard to complain—at least not within earshot of his commanding officer—the accommodations hardly fit the definition of spartan, let alone cramped. And that was in a plane specifically designed, or at least modified, to their specifications. This aircraft made the Marine versions seem like 747s. Sitting on their rucksacks, each man had his helmet and backup oxygen in his lap. There was no light, and no communication with the cockpit.

“Which one of you didn’t take a shower?” Bison asked.

“Hell with that,” said Egg. “Liu had some of that soup.”

“Jesus,” groaned the others together.

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“About time,” said Powder as the airplane’s engines started up with a roar. The vibration from the engine worked into his spine and skull.

“Man, this is nuts,” said Bison. “Powder, take your damn elbow out of my ribs.”

“Where do you want me to put it?”

“You want me to tell you?”

“You don’t watch yourself, I will.”

The plane jerked forward as the engine noise jumped fifty decibels.

“Man, I gotta go to the can,” said Egg.

“I think we’re taking off!” yelled Bison. He dropped his flashlight as the plane stuttered upward, and the Whiplash assault team was left in temporary darkness.

Just as well, thought Powder. Dinner roiled in his stomach. He’d gone over to the Marine mess and scoffed up a few helpings of roast beef and mashed spuds. He thought now the gravy had been a mistake.

“Whoa—we’re up,” said Bison.

“I been in trucks smoother than this,” said Egg.

“Sixty-seven minutes away,” said Powder.

“Hey,” said Egg. “Anybody smell roast beef?”

DANNY BRACED HIMSELF AS THE BRONCO PULLED NEARLY

four g’s, turning around a sharp crag in the mountains en route to their target.

“Captain, are you still with us?” asked Dr. Ray Rubeo over the Whiplash circuit, which was being fed by the tactical communications satellite into his smart helmet.

“Yes, sir.”

“As we said before, video of the director unit would be very useful. We want measurement of the focusing appa-ratus, but you needn’t bother with taking parts from it.

Simply blow it up.”

“Right.”

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“The chemical samples, the readings—those are higher priorities. The disk array is what we specifically want. Now, if the weapon is Razor size, you can expect the computer gear to be fairly small. On the other hand, if it’s stationary, I would imagine you’ll be hunting for something about the size of a large cabinet, similar to some of the memory devices we use here with the work stations.”

“Gotcha,” said Danny. They had already gone over the priority list and the likely layout of the weapon and any facility housing it twice.

“We’ll be right here, watching what you do,” added the scientist as Mack warned that he was going to take another sharp turn.

“Great,” groaned Danny as gravity knocked him sideways.

MACK SMITH CHECKED THE ENGINE GAUGES AGAIN. THE

turbos were maxed out, but with all the extra weight, they were barely doing 190 knots. Fortunately, they didn’t have to climb; he’d laid out a zigzag course through the passes and then a straight run down to the site. The night was dark, with only a small sliver of moon, but he figured that was in their favor—the darkness would make it tough for anyone on the ground to hit them.

Once past the last peaks ahead, he’d have a clear shot.

Landing on the road, though, was going to be a bitch—he figured he’d have to drop a “log” flare on a first approach to see the damn thing, then hustle back in before the light burned out or anyone on the ground nailed him.

At least he wasn’t flying completely naked. He’d managed to talk Alou out of a pair of Sidewinders. Garcia had mounted them on the OV-10’s launcher.

He almost hoped he had a chance to use them. This sucker turned on a dime. He’d lure a MiG onto his butt, 238

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

turn quick, then slam the two heat seekers right down his tailpipe.

All in all, he had to admit the Bronco was a lot of fun to drive.

Drive, not fly, he thought. You couldn’t really call moving under 200 knots flying.

“We’re running behind,” said Danny, who was sitting in the copilot-observer’s seat behind him.

“Really?” he replied over the Bronco’s interphone circuit. “Well hold on while I hit the rocket power.”

Aboard Raven , over Iraq 2320

FENTRESS FELT HIS CHEST IMPLODE AS MAJOR ALOU

counted down the seconds to launch, taking Raven through the alpha maneuver to exert maximum separation force on the Flighthawks.

People’s lives depended on him doing his job without fucking up. That had never been true before.

Alou thought he could do it. To Alou, there wasn’t even a question.

And Zen?

Fentress hadn’t asked. As far as he knew, no one had.

Alou was in charge of the mission. He thought he could do it. He would do it.

“Alpha,” said Alou.

Fentress’s pinkie jerked with some kind of involuntary reaction on the joystick controller, even though he’d turned the launch over to the computer.

“Flighthawk launched,” confirmed the computer.

Though it was night, the view from the robot was as clear and defined as if it were day. In fact, he could tell the computer to present it as a cloudless sky at high noon RAZOR’S EDGE

239

and it would do so. It was best to keep it in the greenish starlight-enhanced mode, however; it helped keep him oriented.

Zen’s advice.

“You’re looking good, Hawk leader,” said Major Alou.

“Wild Bronco is twelve minutes from target.”

He hesitated before acknowledging—it felt odd to be called Hawk leader; that was Zen’s title.

“Twelve minutes,” he said. He was going to overfly the building, check for last second developments. The Megafortress was five miles from the building, the Flighthawk now a little closer.

“Low and slow like we planned,” said Alou.

“Low and slow,” he repeated.

“Gun radars two miles ahead of you, just came on,”

warned the radar operator a second before the warning flashed in the Flighthawk screen. “North of that town.”

“Got it.”

Incirlik

2320

TORBIN DOLK HAD JUST CLIMBED INTO BED WHEN THE

knock came at his hotel room door. He thought about pretending he was already sleeping but figured that wouldn’t save him; though nominally a private hotel, the building was reserved for military use, and the only person knocking this late would be here on official business.

“Yup,” yelled Torbin, still hesitating to get out of bed.

“Captain Dolk?”

“The same.”

“Lieutenant Peterson, sir. General Paston sent me over.”

Paston was a two-star Army general, the ranking Cent-

240

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Com officer at Incirlik. Dolk realized he was about to be fried big-time.

Very big-time.

Shit. Harding had told him he was in the clear.

Worse thing was, they didn’t even have the decency to hang him in daylight.

“Give me a minute.” He slid out of bed and got dressed, fumbling as he pushed both feet through the same pant leg. His eyes were a little fuzzy and he had to tie each shoe twice.