Текст книги "Strike Zone"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Tell them to do so,” said Martindale. “Quietly. Very quietly.”

“If the Taiwanese have such a weapon, what do we do?” asked Freeman.

“We worry about it when we’re sure they have it,” said Martindale.

IV

Duty

Dreamland Visiting VIP Office

12 September 1997

1200

RUBEO LAID THEprintouts flat on the table, pulling the two pages close together so that the lines he had highlighted were next to each other.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he told Cortend. “But to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the systems involved, it’s obvious what’s being done. There’s a repeater system that takes bits of captured information and rebroadcasts it. You can see here, here, and here. That’s why the signal seems to be ours. It is ours. This”—he took the two sheets from the folder, laying them side by side—“shows the intercepts and our own flight communications from the other day. Incontrovertible. That word is in your vocabulary, is it not?”

Cortend glared at him. Rubeo realized that he had made exactly zero progress with the old witch.

Then again, he hadn’t come here to convince her. He’d come for the satisfaction of showing her to her face that she was an idiot. And he had accomplished that.

“Now that I know what’s going on, we can easily strip out the signals that are being beamed back, and then determine the actual signals. I would explain how we do it,” he said, gathering up the pages, “but you don’t have the clearance to hear it. Let alone the IQ to understand it.”

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He had nearly reached the door when Cortend spoke.

“Just a minute, Doctor,” she said.

Rubeo couldn’t resist one last look at her constipated face writhing in the torment of ignorance unmasked. He turned around. Cortend pointed at her two assistants, dismissing them with flicks of her finger. The lieutenants scurried away.

“You think I enjoy questioning the integrity of your people?” she said.

“In a word, yes.”

Cortend said nothing for a moment. “My father’s name was Harold Bernkie. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Hardly,” said Rubeo.

For the first time since she had come to the base, Cortend smiled. “It shouldn’t. In the 1950s, he was a very promising scientist. And then his name was linked with the Communist Party. He was blacklisted and couldn’t get work. He’s my father, so obviously I think he was a genius, but of course that really isn’t for me to say. I only know that he eventually became an electrician. A very good one, in my opinion, though I suppose that too is neither here nor there. This hasn’t been a witch hunt. I’ve been extremely fair.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

Cortend shook her head. “No. I believe that you will find that I have been thorough, that I have been a stickler for details, and I have pursued any and all leads. Those were and remain my orders. As far as your Miss Gleason goes, I never charged her with a crime or recommended any disciplinary action against her.”

“That’s because your investigation wasn’t complete,” said Rubeo. “Don’t banter definitions around.”

“You are a scientist. You’re precise in your work. I am precise in mine,” said Cortend. “No charges were filed against your coworker. I was here on an informal basis precisely to spare you and your people the ordeal of a full-blown inquiry. Believe me, it would have been ten times worse.”

“I doubt that is possible.”

Cortend took a long, labored breath. “I’ve been informed that there are explanations for what appeared to be omissions concerning the conferences. Given those explanations, I see no need to make any recommendation concerning her to the commander.”

Rubeo wasn’t sure exactly what to say. He remained angry—extremely angry. This idiot had cost him one of the top scientists in the world, who even now refused to get out of bed, claiming to be sick.

“The data that you have gathered would appear to exonerate Dreamland completely,” said Cortend.

“Coupled with the information about the aircraft’s physical characteristics, it would appear very convincing.”

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“You’re not going to imply that we created it,” said Rubeo.

“I’m sure you’re clever enough to do so,” said Cortend. “But no, Doctor, I don’t believe that for a moment. And more importantly, there is no evidence suggesting that you did. There is no evidence suggesting that anyone at Dreamland is anything less than a dedicated and patriotic American. Good day.”

That was it? She was giving up?

She was giving up.

Truth and reason had won?

Truth and reason had won. The Inquisition was over.

Rubeo, unsure exactly what to say, turned and left the room.

Approaching Chiang Kai-shek Airport, Taipei

13 September 1997

0600

“ARE YOU AWAKE?”

Danny Freah floated for a moment, caught in dream limbo between sleep and waking. He saw his wife, he saw the hard-assed Colonel Cortend, he saw two brown eyes staring down at him asking whether he was awake.

“Yeah,” he said, pushing up in the seat.

“The pilot is asking everyone to put their seat belts on,” said the stewardess.

“Oh. Thanks.” Danny smiled and pushed his head forward, as if trying to swim away from the back of the seat. Bits and pieces of the dream fluttered away, just out of reach of his conscious mind.

Jemma and Colonel Cortend—God, what a combination.

“It’s beautiful from the air, isn’t it?” said the woman next to him. Her name was Alice something-or-other, and she was a programmer for a computer firm who traveled a lot between LA and Asia.

No, she worked for a company that manufactured rubber boots. The programmer thing came from his dream.

“Yeah,” said Danny, leaning forward to see past her. Their arms touched and he felt a shock go through his body; he jerked back, as if the touch had been something else.

“Temperature’s only eighty degrees, Fahrenheit,” said Alice. “Humidity is supposed to be pretty low. I don’t remember the percentage.”

“That’s good.”

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Danny avoided her eyes, inexplicably feeling guilty about sitting next to her, as if he were somehow being disloyal to his wife.

He’d spoken only briefly to the woman before falling asleep—the civilian flight had proven to be among the most comfortable he’d ever taken—and their conversation had hardly been intimate: he’d given his basic cover story, claiming that he was working for a banking company as a security consultant, and then spoke of New York City as if he lived there.

Which he did, since his wife had their apartment there.

Alice was a middle-aged businesswoman, nice enough, but not really attractive to Danny. He was impressed that even though she was white, her voice didn’t have the forced tone white strangers sometimes took with him, the “I’m really not a jerk and please let me prove it by being nice to you” tone that the best-intentioned stranger sometimes betrayed. But no way was he having sexual fantasies about her, not even if she had been ten years younger and maybe twenty-five pounds lighter.

So why was he feeling guilty about Jemma?

Because he’d changed his mind about leaving the Air Force to run for Congress?

He had changed his mind, hadn’t he? Even though he hadn’t really thought about it.

The plane rocked slightly as it settled into its final approach. Danny felt his neighbor’s arm jostle against his and once more thought of his wife. He was still thinking of her a few minutes later when they parked at the terminal and passengers began disembarking. He waited for the others nearby to clear out, then rose and pulled open the overhead compartment where his suit jacket and carry-on were. He took out his seatmate’s as well.

“Thanks. Don’t forget, if you need a guide, give me a call,” said Alice.

“Right,” said Danny. He gestured toward his shirt pocket, remembering that he had put her card there hours ago. She gave him a smile, then bumped her way toward the front of the plane with her heavy carry-on.

Danny’s civilian sport coat was a little tight at the shoulders, and he felt the squeeze as he waited in the terminal to complete the arrival processing. He eyed the line behind him as he approached the clerk, professional paranoia suddenly kicking in. By the time he made it through the passport check his heart had started to beat double-time, and he sensed he was being shadowed. He turned left in the large hallway, then saw the row of limo drivers holding signs up for arriving passengers.

And there was Liu, holding up his placard as if he were a driver.

“Mr. Freah?” asked Liu as Danny stood in front of him.

The sergeant was of Chinese extraction, but even Danny could tell that he looked different from the other drivers. He wore the right clothes, his short hair and smile seemed to fit, but there was something American about the way he filled the space—his shoulders rolled as he moved, as if he were a linebacker waiting for a blitz.

“This way,” said the sergeant, starting to the left.

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“Should have insisted he take your bag,” said someone behind him.

It was Stoner.

“Hey,” said Danny.

“If you guys are going to play spy, you got to work on the routine,” said Stoner, moving ahead briskly.

Stoner had an overnight bag under his arm, as if he were an arriving traveler. In fact, Liu and Stoner had come up from Brunei the night before on a leased airliner, bringing along some of Dreamland’s high-tech gear with them. They had landed at a military base, which allowed them to move their equipment in without much notice. Still, as a security precaution Liu had brought along only a few essential items, including a short-range communications unit that could upload surveillance information to Dreamland.

Danny had more gear and men en route to Brunei in case things got more interesting.

The muggy outside air felt as if they’d stepped into a shower room, even though it was balmy by local standards. He followed as Liu and Stoner turned left, continuing past both the taxis and the rentals. A small blue Toyota darted through the lot and headed toward them as Liu stepped off the curb; Danny grabbed for his sergeant.

It was just their driver pulling up. Stoner smirked and got into the front seat; Danny and Liu took the back.

“Jack is from the American-Asian Business Coalition,” Stoner told them. “That’s where he learned to drive.”

The driver, who looked no more than fourteen, turned and grinned. He seemed to be Chinese, though obviously in the employ of the CIA. Since America did not officially recognize Taiwan, there was no embassy; interests were handled at the American Institute. Danny gathered that the American-Asian Business Coalition was a “trade” organization that was one of several fronts used by the CIA in Taiwan.

“We have a few places to check out,” Stoner said. “I’d like to get started right away.”

“Fine with me,” said Danny.

“Satellite transmitter is in the trunk,” said Liu. “We ran a diagnostic on the way over. Sat phone connects without a problem.”

“Good,” said Danny. The phone and transmitter tied into the Dreamland system normally used by the Smart Helmets and Dreamland aircraft to communicate. The transmitter took information from a variety of sensors and sent it back to Dream Command for real-time analysis.

“Colonel Bastian is working on getting a Megafortress up here as part of the ASEAN exercises,” added Liu. “They want to keep the cover story intact, so he sent us ahead while he worked on it.”

“That’s fine,” said Danny. The captain smiled to himself, thinking there was little need for a Megafortress, though it was just like the colonel to line one up. No self-respecting zippersuit could stand to see an operation under way without air support.

Danny reached into the bag for the viewer he’d brought from Dreamland. Shaped like a large pair of opera glasses, the device could present different “slices” of heat at a depth up to roughly one hundred Page 146

meters. The information from these views would be analyzed by specialists back at Dream Command, who could use them to draw a diagram of a building’s interior and what was going on inside. But the device’s sensor plane had to be kept cool for it to work properly; he slid it into a bag that looked like a collapsible lunch bag and twisted a plastic container at the bottom that released liquid nitrogen into the cooling cells.

Danny also had a Geiger counter and radiation analyzer, which measured alpha, beta, and gamma radiation and could identify fifty-five isotopes. He also had a number of self-activated bugs, video spy devices, and motion detectors.

“First target is near Sungshan, the domestic airport not far from here,” said Stoner. “The others are in the south on the coast near Kaohisiung. We’ll drive over to the site near the airport, look around. Then we’ll arrange for a helicopter at the airport. All the easy spots have been looked at already by my associates, and I don’t know how close we’re going to get to the ones that are left on our list, so this may all take a while.”

Taipei

0805

WITH EVERY SECONDthat passed waiting for the elevator in the lobby of his grandfather’s building, Chen Lo Fann felt the weight against his chest grow. He could not avoid his solemn duty to tell his grandfather that he had failed, even though the disappointment his grandfather would feel would surely hurt the old man as gravely as any injury he had ever felt.

Surely, his grandfather already knew that he had failed. The communists had not attacked the Americans or the ASEAN fleet, despite their rhetoric. Nor had they called off the summit.

The criminals were cowards at heart. That was why they picked on lesser nations instead of facing truly worthy opponents. Chen Lee no doubt knew this.

But that did not remove his grandson’s duty to inform him.

Chen Lo Fann had rehearsed what to say for hours, thinking of it the whole way back to Taiwan aboard the helicopter, as if the right phrase might save him. But finally he’d conceded to himself that the words themselves were insignificant.

Professor Ai had taken the helicopter back with him, and offered to come along to talk to Chen Lee, perhaps thinking he could soften the blow. But Chen Lo Fann had politely declined. There were other things the professor must see to in Kaohisiung; facing the old man was Fann’s duty.

The elevator opened. Chen Lo Fann stepped in.

He remembered jumping up to tap the button as a child. The memory pushed down against his shoulders as the car slowly made its way upward.

The secretaries stared at him as he got off. Chen Lo Fann lowered his gaze toward the carpet, walking the familiar steps to his grandfather’s office suite. The two security guards stepped aside as he approached, as if they didn’t want to be polluted with his failure.

It wasn’t his failure, it was the communists’. And most especially the treacherous president’s, their supposed leader. A coward, a quisling, a traitor.

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Chen Lee’s secretary nodded. He could proceed.

Chen Lo Fann went to the door to his grandfather’s office, his hand hesitating on the knob. He opened it with a burst of resolve; he would face his grandfather like a man.

Chen Lee sat at his desk, his back to the door, staring out the window. Chen Lo Fann stepped forward, waiting for the old man to turn around. He waited for nearly five minutes, until the clock struck the quarter hour.

“My plan has failed, Grandfather,” he said, no longer able to bear the weight on his chest. “The mongrels will not make war and the president will go ahead with his meeting.”

The old man said nothing.

Chen thought of what to suggest. Assassination had been debated; as desperate as it was, perhaps it was the best option now. The only option.

But there would be other traitors. The people to strike were the communists, the usurpers. Chen had suggested bombing the capital with the UAV, but they did not possess a strong enough weapon to guarantee the death of all the thieves.

“Grandfather?” he said, when the old man failed to respond. “Grandfather?”

As unbearable as the weight had been before, now it increased ten times. Chen flew across the room, turning the chair roughly.

His grandfather’s slender body slid from the chair into his arms. His pale skin was cold; the old man’s heart had stopped more than an hour before.

Chen Lo Fann trembled as he put the old man back in his chair. There was a note on the desk, the figures drawn in Chen Lee’s shaky hand.

“The weapons are in place,” said the note.

Chen stared at the ideograms. He was not sure what weapons his grandfather was talking about, or even where they might be. Silently, he folded the paper and placed it back in his pocket. And then he went to find out.

Club Lion, Brunei

1205

ALL HIS LIFE, Starship had been on top of the wave. He’d ridden it to the State Class A Football Championship in junior year as all-league quarterback; the next year he’d taken the state trophy in wrestling. The Academy—more success in football, of course, where his exploits against Notre Dame were still the talk of the place. Pilot training, F-15 squadron. The assignment to Dreamland was supposed to be another notch in the belt.

It was. But it wasn’t going precisely as he had planned.

For one thing, he hadn’t planned on joining the Flighthawk program—he’d been shooting for one of the Page 148

manned fighter programs but discovered the only open pilot slot was in the Megafortress, and with all due respect to the monster craft, no amount of Dreamland gadgets could turn it into an exciting ride.

He’d managed to finesse a slot with the Flighthawks and figured he’d be in a good position to transition eventually—though eventually might be far down the road.

But what Starship hadn’t counted on was the pressure. Because even though he was good—better than good—he’d felt unbelievable stress ever since the start of the deployment. He wasn’t sure why—was it because he was so far from the plane he was flying? Was it the fact that Kick was looking over his shoulder? Was he intimidated by Zen, a pilot so tough he could lose the use of his legs and still come back for more?

Or was it fear?

He slid another ten-dollar bill on the bar of the club.

Eating at the palace last night with Mack Smith had been a revelation. He’d thought the job proposal was complete BS, but the sultan turned out to be serious. He wanted to take Brunei into the twenty-first century—even beyond. He wanted frontline fighters and Megafortresses. Mack Smith could build an empire here.

And it looked like he was going to take the job.

If he did, Starship would be in line to help. Major Smith had said so. More than likely, much of the work at first would be staff BS and PR, but he would have the pull to fly whenever he wanted.

Those little trainer jobs they flew at first, but eventually, real planes.

A week ago, he’d have laughed out loud about the whole idea. But now he wasn’t sure.

Starship took his drink and slid around in his seat to watch the girl dancing on the stage. The girl started to slide her skirt down.

Someone shook Starship from behind.

“What’s the story?” he said angrily, turning.

“So this is where you’re hiding,” said Kick. “I can see why.”

“Hey, roomie. Pull up a stool. How’d you find me?”

“Mack Smith suggested I look here.”

“Yeah, good ol’ Major Smith. Have a drink.”

“Thanks but no thanks. Zen wants us ASAP.”

“What for? It’s our day off. Besides, we’re still grounded, right? Because of the Chinese baloney?”

“Not anymore. Colonel Bastian arranged for Pennsylvania to fly up to Taiwan as part of the ASEAN

exercises. You’re supposed to leave right away.”

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“Damn,” said Starship.

Kick stepped back. “I’ll tell him I couldn’t find you.”

“Screw that,” said Starship, sliding off the barstool.

“I’m serious, man. You can’t fly.”

“Better than you.”

Kick looked at him. “Not at this moment.”

“I can fly better than you in my sleep, Kick boy.”

Taipei

1210

THE FIRST FACTORYStoner took them to lay about a mile and a half from Sungshan airport, in a crowded district of warehouses and industrial buildings. The roads were so thick with traffic that it took hours to get to the facility itself; when they finally did they found their way blocked by uniformed employees. The men were polite—the driver pretended to be asking for directions and they answered helpfully—but there was no way past them.

Danny eyed the fence, which was topped with barbed wire; there were also video cameras. Besides the two men at the gate he saw another patrolling down the way.

He took out the IR device and slowly began scanning the building. A small wire connected to the side; it was an earphone that buzzed as soon as the reading was complete and logged. The data were ferried via a small antenna to the transmitter unit in the trunk, though at the moment they weren’t broadcasting to Dreamland because of the small possibility that it might be detected.

Every time the machine buzzed in his ear, he pushed the small trigger button on the top between the two barrels; the IR sensors adjusted themselves and took another “bite” at the building. As it moved further inside, the buzzes started to be punctuated by clicks; it was having trouble seeing. Danny tried holding it at different angles and jostling it; finally he decided they had gotten everything they could.

“So?” asked Stoner as they drove away.

“We’ll see what the techies say. They can construct a three-D model when they look it over,” said Danny.

“That thing like a radar?” asked Stoner.

“No, it uses heat signatures so it can’t be detected. We call in IR or infrared, but the techies say it has a somewhat wider band. The sensors are here.” Danny pointed to the top rim of the glasses. “They have to be kept fairly cool to work right. But they have better range than the viewers on our Smart Helmets, and since there’s no radio waves, there’s nothing to be detected.”

“I’d still like to get inside.”

“Fine by me,” said Danny.

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“They make seats for aircraft,” said Stoner. “I have somebody working on getting us in as buyers. But it’s going to take a few days.”

“Is it big enough?” asked Liu.

“Could be,” said Danny. “We’ll see what the tech people say.”

“There’s a rail line that runs from the back over to the airport,” said Stoner. “Chun Sue owns some hangars there. That’s one of the companies Chen Lee owns. As far as I know, only one is occupied. I figure we hit the empties first.”

They uploaded the data on the way over. The Dreamland techies told Danny that he had only managed to see about eighty feet inside the building; a stock of insulation and fabric for the chairs blocked a deeper view. Everything they had been able to see was consistent with a seat factory—or something trying to look like one.

They didn’t need the viewer in the airport; all the hangars were open and unguarded. Stoner had prepared a story—they were looking to lease a facility—but no one seemed to even notice they were there.

Danny took a small scoop and wad of plastic bags from the attaché case he’d brought, sampling some of the dust so the chemicals could be analyzed. He also took out the Geiger counter and took some readings; all were within background norms.

“Just a hangar,” said Stoner, walking to sit on an old crate in the corner.

“What’s the crate say?” Danny asked.

“It’s the name of a fish company. Heavenly Fish, along those lines.”

“Why would it be here?” Danny asked. He bent down to examine it.

“Shipped cargo in and out. Lost one of the crates,” said Stoner.

“The crate wasn’t used to carry fish. It’s too clean.”

Stoner shrugged.

Danny took a picture with his digital camera, then took out his knife and took a sample of the wood where it had been worn down. He took his rad meter out again, but found nothing special. Finally, he planted a pair of the video camera bugs near the doorway.

The cams were about the size and shape of three-quarter-inch bolts, the kind that might be used to secure a part on a child’s bicycle. There were two types, one with a wide-angle lens and the other more narrowly focused but able to work in near darkness. Each sent its signal to a transmitter the size of a nine-volt battery, which could be hidden anywhere with fifty feet of the cams. This transmitter in turn linked with a large base station—about the size of a cement block though nowhere near as heavy—that uploaded images either on command or in a random burst pattern that made it difficult to detect. The cameras and transmitters themselves used a similar random pattern with a very weak signal that would generally escape detection.

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“You sure those things work?” asked Stoner as they got back in the car.

Danny turned to Liu, who gave him a thumbs-up. The sergeant was using his sat phone to talk to Dream Command, where the techies had just finished diagnostics on the gear, confirming there was a signal.

“Now I am,” said the captain.

The hangar that housed the airplane was open, and the four Americans managed to walk right in. The building was about twice the size of the others, and the Boeing 767-200ER it housed filled only about a third of the massive space. The wings of the large airliner were covered with large sheets of rolled cardboard, and the place smelled of fresh paint.

A pair of Chun Sue employees came over and told them that the company airplane was undergoing refurbishment. The men were very polite, and seemed flattered by the praise Danny threw at the airplane, which in fact was a beautiful piece of machinery. The 767 typically cruised between 35,000 and 40,000

feet; this model, optimized for the long-distance flights common in Asia, could clock close to six thousand miles before having to hit the gas pumps.

The experts back in Dreamland noted one other interesting fact about the airplane as they briefed Danny through the headset connecting to his sat phone—it was a bit large for the airport, which was generally used by smaller jets and turboprops on local hops.

Danny took several photos with his small camera for them, and planted a pair of video cams near the entrance.

“Those suckers cost a fortune,” he told Stoner as they left.

“The company is pretty rich,” said Stoner. “You notice anything funny about the paint?”

“Besides the fact that the plane doesn’t need painting?”

“The colors are used by the People’s Xia Airlines.”

“They own them too?”

“That’s a Mainland airline,” said Stoner. “They left off the symbols on the tail, but otherwise it’s a ringer.”

Brunei IAP, Field Seven

Dreamland Temporary Hangar

1312

ZEN TOOK ONElook at Starship and rolled his eyes.

“Where the hell did you find alcohol in Brunei?”

“Excuse me, sir?” said Starship.

If Zen had had any doubts about Starship’s sobriety, the accent he put on “sir” would have dispelled them.

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“Take the rest of the day off,” he told the lieutenant. “You were due rest anyway. I shouldn’t have called you back.”

“I can fly, Zen. Major—I can fly.”

“Go take a shower, Starship. That’s an order.”

Starship’s face turned red. He spun on his heel and retreated from the hangar.

“You and me, Kick, let’s go,” said Zen, backing his wheelchair away so he could go and get his flight suit and other gear. “ Pennsylvania is taking off in an hour. We’re way behind schedule.”

THEY LAUNCHED THEFlighthawk as soon as they were over water. Zen took the first leg of the flight, checking on some of the merchant ships that lay in their path. He wanted Kick to take the last half of the flight so he’d have the experience of landing at Tainan Air Base, their destination on Taiwan.

“See the ship there, Kick?” he asked his nugget assistant, who was monitoring the flight from the second station.

“Yes, sir.”

“Zero the cursor in, query it, get the registration data.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Relax, Kick, I’m not going to bite your head off. You don’t have to say ‘sir’ every ten seconds.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zen laughed.

Both Kick and Starship were excellent pilots and Flighthawk operators, but both men tended to be nervous around him. Was it because he was in charge of the program and therefore had a huge amount to say over their futures?

Or was it the wheelchair?

When he first came from his accident, he would have automatically assumed the latter. Lately, though, he’d become more discerning, or at least willing to let the complicated attitudes people had toward him ride.

Most days, anyway.

The wheelchair could get in the way. It had with Fentress—but that was Zen’s fault. He’d been jealous of the kid, or rather jealous of the fact that the kid could walk away from a session and he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“Got the data,” said Kick.

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“So? What do you think?” Zen asked.

The information was already on Zen’s screen—the ship was a Malaysian freighter.

“Looks pretty straightforward. Carrying tea. My thinking is we go over low and slow, find out. No big deal.”

“No big deal.” Zen nudged the Flighthawk toward the ship. The computer already had a dotted line plotted for the recon run; he authorized the flight and gave control to C3.

“You know how I got crippled?” he said to Kick.

“I heard some sort of accident.”

“Mack Smith and I were having a mock dogfight with the Flighthawks. I got too close to one of them.

Sawed me in half. I was below five hundred feet. A lot below, actually. I don’t even remember bailing out.”

Kick was silent. Finally, he said, “Sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. But you move on. You have to.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hey, you know, just call me Zen. You take the stick after this run, all right? I’m going to roll back on the deck there and grab myself a soda.”

“I can get it.”

Pity? Or just a young officer trying to please his superior.

Zen opted to believe it was the latter. He’d give the kid the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong.

Same with Starship.

“That’s okay, Kick. I want you to get as much practice in the air as possible. Okay?”

“Great,” said the other pilot. “I appreciate it.”

Kaohisiung

1650

THE ISLAND OFTaiwan measures only 396 by 144 kilometers. While Kaohisiung was on the opposite end of the country from Taipei where Danny and the rest of the team were, the flight south in a rented Sikorsky took less than an hour.

The first site they had to check was a large office building near the center of the city off Kusshan-1

Road. Danny took out his fancy opera glasses and slowly scanned the interior. Liu, once again acting as the liaison with the Dreamland team, declared the basement nearly empty; the only machinery on the floors above related either to the cooling system or to the elevators. Twenty-something stories filled with office workers and nothing more lethal than a letter opener.