Текст книги "Strike Zone"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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But he had his orders.

“We’re going to use a variation of your plan,” Danny told Egg. “Post a flash-bang. When it goes off, I’ll toss in a smoke grenade. Nail the motherfucker with the tasers when he comes out.”

“You going down that close?”

“Bullet holes show where he can reach.”

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“Damn, Cap. Be careful he doesn’t shoot your hand off.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “Let’s go.”

The grenade rolled down to the end of the hall. Danny pushed his head down, waiting. The helmet took some of the loud impact away, but the charge was still unsettling; he swung up and popped the grenade into the hole, slipping and losing his balance as he did.

A shadow moved behind the doorway.

Danny saw the barrel of the Minimi inches away.

He pressed the trigger on his taser just as the first bullet flew from the Belgian-made gun. Something smacked him hard against the leg—then everything went blue, and he smelled fire.

“Shit, shit,” Egg cursed, running up. He fired his taser at the door two, three times without a target.

“He’s down, he’s down,” said Danny, seeing on his visor that his shot had knocked the Taiwanese guard back into the room. “I’m all right. Chill.”

BY THE TIMEStoner got in with the Marines, the technical experts back at Dreamland had finished a preliminary analysis of Building Two. Aided by the data on the computer as well as their physical analysis, they had no doubt that one or two devices had been stored and probably assembled here.

They also had no doubt that the devices were no longer in the building.

The next logical place on the site was Building One, and Stoner sent a team inside with their rad meters and a video cam. But even before the feeds from their gear started back through the mobile transmitters, Stoner had climbed to the top of the administrative building, trying to figure out where else on the site the bomb might be.

“How you doing?” asked Danny Freah, clambering up behind him.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah. I’m going to let Zen and Colonel Bastian know what’s going on.”

Stoner folded his arms, thinking.

“I say we stop that ship right away.”

Dreamland Command Center

14 September 1997

0935

JENNIFER JOINED THEothers in the command center after pulling an all-nighter working with the computer team on a Trojan horse virus to take over the ghost clone’s control system. Jennifer was convinced that the best bet was to simply block the communications, then try to insert some of the commands they’d intercepted. The problem was, they couldn’t be sure what those commands were, Page 193

which meant they might succeed in stopping the clone from doing what its masters wanted, but not be able to have the clone do what they wanted.

Jennifer took a seat at a station in the second row reserved for her use and began loading the necessary code into computer memory so it could be shipped out to Zen. As the CD-ROM spun, she popped open her notebook computer; she had some more code for the Flighthawk control computer aboard Raven, which would have to attempt the takeover.

“And?”

Jennifer looked up at Ray Rubeo, who was wearing his twenty-four-hours-with-no-sleep frown.

“And is a conjunction,” said Jennifer. “You can’t use it alone.”

“Can we take over the clone?”

“Probably not,” she said frankly.

Rubeo frowned.

“Yes. Come look at this,” he told her, starting for one of the stations at the very front of the room, just below the large display screen. The bomb experts were reviewing coding from a computer at the Taiwan base.

“It’s encrypted. We’re working with the NSA on it,” said one of the experts. “We’re feeding it back and forth. There’s a lot of technical data and inventory information. We want to see where to concentrate our resources; the encryption takes quite a while to get through.”

“This block here is email,” said Jennifer. “Look at the structure. Tell them to look for the dates and times.”

“Why?” asked Rubeo.

“Maybe they’re instructions on when to do something, like launch an attack.”

“They may just be love notes,” said Rubeo, scowling.

Even though he meant it as one of his acerbic remarks, the idea stung Jennifer.

“Maybe,” she said, looking over to the screen where the decryptions were appearing.

Aboard Raven

15 September 1997

0040

ZEN HAD H AWK Four posted to the north, ready to intercept the ghost clone if it got off. He swung Hawk Three down, readying a pass that would take him from bow to stern and give the people back at Dreamland a good view of the ship, which was about forty miles out of the harbor. The Navy destroyers, meanwhile, were still a good hour away to the south.

The E-bomb had successfully wiped out the radios back at the assault zone; Raven’s powerful sensors Page 194

had not picked up any transmissions from the Dragon Prince. It seemed clear that the ship did not know what was going on; its speed was below ten knots. Except for its normal running lights, the deck and the area where it launched the ghost were dark.

Zen checked his speed, nudging off the throttle slightly as the ship grew in the screen. The HUD ladder notched downward; he dropped through five thousand feet. The Flighthawk engines were relatively quiet, but at this altitude the aircraft could be heard; Zen figured that was a reasonable trade-off for the better images the lower altitude would provide.

As he closed to five miles off the bow, the water on the starboard side of the boat bubbled. His first thought was that the crew aboard the Dragon Prince had thrown the robot aircraft overboard; a few seconds later another geyser appeared on the port side, and Zen finally realized what was going on.

“Submarines,” he said over the Dreamland circuit. “Two of ’em. Those ours?”

Two people started to answer at once, and Dog said something over the interphone circuit. Zen kept Hawk Three on beam, riding in over the tanker.

There were people moving now aboard the ship. Something flashed at the stern—Zen saw a small rubber boat in the water near the bow.

“They’re being boarded,” he said. “The Chinese.”

Aboard Penn

0041

AS SOON ASthe Marines secured the wharf area, Kick took Hawk One over the water. He saw some flotsam where he’d sunk the boat earlier, and one body; as he began to bank for another run, he saw two small speedboats approaching from the distance. The dark, sleek hulls looked like very much like Mark V Special Operations Crafts (also known as SOCs), used to land SEALs.

“Two un-ID’d boats,” he said over the Dreamland circuit. He clicked into one of the frequencies the Marines were using. “I have two unidentified boats approaching from the harbor, moving at twenty-three knots, twenty-four. I want to make sure they’re not ours.”

“I’ll work on it,” interrupted Starship, buzzing in on the interphone circuit. “Take a pass and get some video back for Dreamland.”

“Yeah, good thinking,” said Kick. He pulled the Flighthawk around, accelerating as he set up a pass that would take him across their bows.

STARSHIP HIT THEkeyboard preset and brought up the infrared on the approaching boats. The heat signal from the engines was baffled—these were not pleasure cruisers, and they certainly weren’t Americans.

“I say we nail the mothers,” he told Kick.

“Marines are checking with their captain. What’s Dream Command say?”

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“Screw Dreamland,” said Starship. “They’re scientists back there. Get these guys.”

As he finished his sentence, a flare shot from the stern of one of the boats.

Not a flare—a shoulder-launched weapon.

KICK SAW THEmissile’s ignition and knew it was coming for him; as the thought formed in his head another jumped in—scumbag.

A jumble of other thoughts and images came in quick succession, the most important of which was the realization that the missile, fired at his nose, had no chance in hell of hitting him.

“Guns,” he told the computer, activating the gun radar. The screen blinked red—he had the small boat’s midsection fat in the claws of his targeting pipper.

The trigger on the Flighthawk stick had a long run, a precaution against it being fired accidentally. He nailed it all the way down, and a burst of 20mm shells punched a fat hole in the boat’s midsection.

“Get the other mother,” said Starship.

“Yeah, no shit,” said Kick. He tried pirouetting the Flighthawk on her wing but had too much speed to get the right position; he had to nose down and bank around, far out of position and cursing himself for trying to do too much.

Not too much for the plane. He’d seen both Zen and Starship pull that hard a maneuver several times during various flight exercises. He didn’t quite have the right feel for it; he wasn’t really sure where the performance edge was, and maybe hesitated a little as he got near it.

Not a problem, he told himself. He didn’t have to fly like Zen did, or even Starship. His job was to take the boat.

And that could be done very easily.

STARSHIP SNICKERED TOhimself as Kick tried to get on the second boat in the first pass; it was obvious from the screen that he hadn’t set himself up right for the hard slam downward that it would require to pirouette the Flighthawk back in that direction. Sure enough, Kick had to pull off and get into a wider approach.

Dream Command said something about the boat being ID’d as a Mainland commando group.

They had carte blanche to take it out.

About time, he thought.

“Sink the boats,” said Colonel Bastian, breaking in from Raven. “Take them.”

“Roger that,” said Starship. “We’re on it.”

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As he clicked off his mike, he realized he’d covered Kick’s own acknowledgment.

“Sorry about that, roomie,” he muttered as the cannon in the U/MF lit up.

Aboard Raven

0045

DOG STUDIED THEfeed on the small video screen as Zen finished his sweep. There was gunfire on the port side and stern of the Dragon Prince; two or more parties of commandos were aboard the ship.

Most likely they had launched their operation from some distance away, and then waited for the submarines to close in before going aboard. The effort appeared coordinated with an attack on the Kaohisiung plant; fortunately, Dreamland’s schedule had been a half hour ahead of the Mainlander’s.

Dog had no trouble giving approval to take out the Chinese boats attacking Kaohisiung himself; it was necessary to protect his people and clearly authorized by his governing orders. The situation below, however, was not quite so clear-cut. The Navy destroyers that were supposed to assist had been authorized only to stop the ship, with the minimal amount of force required to make it comply.

Given the circumstances, however, Dog decided he had to take out the clone and the ship or the UAV

would fall into communist hands.

“I can pepper the submarines with cannonfire,” Zen told Dog. “Get them to back off until the destroyers get here.”

“Negative, Hawk leader. It’s too late for that. We’re going to sink that ship. Stand off.”

Dog told Delaney to open the bay doors.

“Bays,” said the copilot, who functioned as a weapons officer in the slimmed-down crew structure.

The large rotating bomb rack in the bay of the aircraft spun around, preparing to launch one of the two Harpoon missiles aboard. While the AGM-84 (Block 1D) missile had been developed by the Navy, B-52s had actually carried the tried-and-true antiship missile for more than a decade. A noodge over twelve and a half feet long, the missile carried five hundred pounds of explosives in its nose. Designed as a fire-and-forget weapon that could be launched from at least seventy-five nautical miles away, the Harpoon would duck toward the waves and then skim the surface of the ocean, extremely hard to detect and even harder to stop.

“Ready to launch on your command,” said Delaney.

“Jed Barclay in the Pentagon situation room for you,” interrupted Major Catsman at Dream Command.

“You want Channel Two. It’s scrambled.”

“Jed, make it quick,” said Dog as the NSC aide’s face flickered onto the com screen.

“Colonel, we’re monitoring the situation here at the Pentagon.”

“Then you know I have two Chinese submarines taking over the ship that controls the ghost clone,” said Dog, trying in vain to muzzle his anger. “They have to be stopped now.”

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“Stand by,” said Jed.

“What the hell?” said Delaney.

The defense secretary came on the line.

“Colonel, we don’t want you to hit the Chinese submarines.”

“Understood,” said Dog. “That’s why we have to strike right away.”

Modern communications technology could be a blessing—he had a team of highly trained experts backing him up halfway across the globe at Dreamland. But it also gave the Washington types unprecedented ability to screw things up.

“We can’t afford collateral damage,” added Chastain.

“Look,” said Dog, his patience nearly gone. “I have about thirty seconds to decide whether to try to sink the tanker or not. If the robot plane is aboard, the communist commandos will grab it.”

“Colonel, we’re on their radar,” said Delaney, breaking in. “This may be some sort of unbriefed fire control radar—the computer is doping it out as an SA-6. Has to be a mistake … ”

The SA-6 was a Russian-made ground-based antiaircraft missile; there was no way it could be aboard the Chinese submarine.

Then again, this wasn’t a particularly good time to be wrong.

“You’re cleared to take down the Dragon Prince,” said the defense secretary.

“Fire the Harpoon,” Dog told his copilot. Then reached to the panel and killed the connection to Dreamland—and the Pentagon. “Missile status?”

“I’ve gone to ECMs. Computer says those subs carry no missiles.”

“Is it on the tanker?”

“Searching.”

“Zen, can you get a look at the decks of those submarines?”

“Roger that,” acknowledged the Flighthawk pilot.

“Watch out for the Harpoon,” warned Delaney. “It’s terminal.”

“No shit,” said Zen.

ZEN CHECKED H AWK Four as he banked Three back to– ward the tanker, making sure the computer was doing a good job flying the robot. Systems green, course perfect—he jumped back into Three, zooming in toward the ship. The right side of the tanker flared.

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“Harpoon hit,” he told Dog.

“Negative!” said Delaney. “It’s still en route.”

Zen saw the shadow streaking toward the middle of the tanker at the bottom of his screen, then realized what had happened as the tanker exploded.

“I have a launch. The ghost clone is airborne!”

“Take it out,” said Dog.

Dreamland

14 September 1997

0958

JENNIFER PUNCHED THEmike button again, trying to tell Zen that she was ready to upload the program. But they’d lost contact with the Megafortress.

Dog had punched it out, she knew, pissed at interference from the Pentagon people.

Just like him to shut off the rest of the world.

She slammed her hand down on the desk counter so hard it stung.

“Damn it,” she shouted. “I want to upload!”

“The telemetry circuits are open,” said Rubeo behind her, his voice soft and calm. “Go ahead. You don’t need to talk to them until the program is ready to run.”

Aboard Raven

15 September 1997

0058

ZEN SLAMMED THEthrottle against the stop, coaxing Hawk Three out past Mach 1. He glanced at the sitrep, making sure Four was positioned in case he couldn’t catch up. C3began calculating moves to stop the aircraft, its silicone brain prioritizing them according to the likely shootdown percentage.

Catching the clone from behind with Hawk Three rated only fifth on the list, with a 65.3 percent shot.

Zen laughed at the computer.

“You just want all the glory, my friend,” he said, momentarily baffling the verbal instruction interpreter circuits.

The clone had stopped accelerating. Its speed barely touched 200 knots. Zen gained rapidly and the targeting cue went to yellow as he started to close. But he had too much altitude and had to tug downward to get a better shot; his real danger was overshooting his target. One of the Elint operators upstairs started to tell him something, but just then the pipper went to red; Zen lit his cannon, riding a stream of hot lead down into the delta-winged aircraft.

Page 199

The clone shot left, zigging desperately out of the way. But it was already too late for the robot; the right wing had been hit in three places and now cracked under the pressure of the turn. A large hunk of metal separated as the UAV jerked back north; before Zen could squeeze his trigger again, the airplane exploded in a red fireball.

DOG WAS TOObusy getting the Megafortress north to keep up with the U/MFs so he didn’t see the Harpoon’s strike on the tanker. He heard his copilot’s “Wha-hoo,” however, along with his more sober and professional “Good splash” pronouncement a few seconds later. By then, Zen had taken out the ghost clone, which collapsed into the water in its own fireball.

“See if the experts back home can figure out if there was a bomb on it,” Dog told Zen.

“Lost my link,” said Zen.

Dog reached to the buttons and keyed it back, feeling somewhat sheepish. A cacophony of voices flooded into his ears over the circuit.

“We’re talking first,” he said, trying to clear the line and the confusion. “Splash one ghost clone. We have a good hit on the tanker, Dragon Prince. Returning to assess the damage now.”

“Was the bomb aboard the UAV?” asked Catsman, back in Dream Command.

“We’re looking for your assessment,” said Dog.

He noticed that the Pentagon people were quiet. He’d undoubtedly have to deal with them later. They would not be pleased that he had killed the link.

So be it.

“Colonel, this is Danny Freah.”

“Go ahead, Danny. How are we?”

“We have complete possession of the site. There are no nukes in Building Two or Building One. Repeat, we have found no devices.”

“None? Did they have a bomb or not?”

“They do,” said Stoner. “It must have been moved.”

“It’s possible it was aboard the ship already. We’ve just sent it and the ghost clone to the bottom,” said Dog.

“I say we keep looking here,” said Stoner.

“Authorities are approaching the gate,” said Danny.

“Hold them off until you’ve completed a thorough search,” said Dog. “Look under every pile of garbage there.”

Page 200

“That may take some time.”

“Understood.”

Chiang Kai-shek Airport, Hualin

0059

CHENLOFANNstrapped himself into the first officer’s seat of Island Flight A101, pulling on the headset. He had come from checking with Professor Ai in the back, making sure that the big jet was ready.

Discovering that the Americans had placed bugging devices in the hangar of his grandfather’s 767-200ER had caused him to move up his plans. But otherwise it had not complicated things too badly—his grandfather had apparently foreseen the possibility that the first plane would be discovered, and so had prepared a nearly identical 767 with the necessary launch and control apparatus, storing it in Hualin. Chen Lee must have suspected something himself, since he had ordered the UAV and the weapon moved from Taipei twenty-four hours before. Most likely he was only concerned about the possibility that security would be increased at the international airport when the president took off, but it was a fortuitous move.

Fate favored his plan. It was a sign that Chen Lo Fann had made the right decision to honor his grandfather’s wishes and fulfill his duty and destiny.

The only difficulty to be overcome was the length of the runway here. At roughly three thousand meters, it could not be called short. Nonetheless, it did present a challenge to the 767, which was not only fully loaded with fuel but had to take off with the UAV under its wing. Chen Lo Fann could not have gotten the plane up himself, and was only too glad to follow the exact command of the pilot in the captain’s seat as they completed their checklist and prepared to taxi to the runway.

Chen’s grandfather had disguised the aircraft well. It was a “combi” or combination passenger-cargo carrier; fake windows lined the fuselage, complete with lighting that helped simulate passengers moving around inside. The plane’s path from the hangar was obscured from the tower; the presence of the UAV

under the wing could not be detected until it was off.

And then it would be too late.

The tower granted clearance. Chen Lo Fann took a long breath. The plane turned from the ramp.

“Ready?” asked the captain.

“Absolutely,” replied Chen, and the 767 began rumbling down the runway.

V

Vaporized

Aboard Raven

15 September 1997

0100

Page 201

DOG DID EVERYTHINGbut call a time-out, trying to settle his people down so the situation could be sorted out.

Besides a thorough search of the harbor site and a look at the sinking ship, they needed to review all the data gathered during the exchange. Dog quickly confirmed that this was going on, then went to Jed at the Pentagon. Now was the time for Washington involvement, he thought, though he was far too tactful to say that.

For now, anyway.

“Looking good, Colonel,” said Jed. “We confirm the so-called ghost clone is down. Dragon Prince is split in half; bow is gone. Navy asset R-1 is arriving now.”

R-1 was a specially equipped A-6 Intruder that carried a sensor array beneath its belly that would send live video (including near-infrared) back to the fleet, and from there back to the Tank. The destroyers, meanwhile, were close enough to see the flames from the stern section in the distance. “We’re ready to alert the authorities,” added Jed. “The ambassador is en route to the airport to meet with the Taiwan president.”

“Why the airport?” asked Dog.

“The president pushed up his flight to Beijing,” Jed said. “They’re getting out early in case there are any protestors at the airport.”

Dog’s attention was diverted by the feed from Hawk Three, which showed that one of the Chinese submarines had begun to submerge.

“They don’t look like they’re carrying out rescue operations,” Zen said. “They took in a few commandos, that’s it. Other sub is still on the surface, but looks like they’re bugging out too. Nothing big came aboard either one.”

“Roger that. We’re alerting the civil authorities,” said Dog.

Dreamland

14 September 1997

1005

WITH THE CLONEdown, Jennifer went back to helping the team studying the data on the Taiwanese computer. She scrolled through the decrypted emails, trying to see if anything there might be useful.

The information had been translated by a computer program into English. It was not exactly perfect, but it saved considerable time and could highlight key words; anything of special interest could be reviewed by a language specialist, either at Dreamland or back East at the NSA.

Three emails spoke of packages, which an NSA analyst guessed meant bombs, though of course that was just speculation. The “meat” of the emails was simple:

Package checked

Package sent

Page 202

Package 3468×499986767×69696969

The last string of numbers appeared to be part of the encryption that the computer couldn’t unlock, though it was impossible to tell.

Jennifer began looking at more of the data on the computer. Apparently the men in the plant had initiated a scrubber program, and much of the drive had been erased. Danny’s team had located other computers, but they seemed to have been hit by the E-bomb. Data on all of them might be recoverable, but they would have to be analyzed back at Dreamland.

Package checked and sent. Probably the bomb.

Or the UAV.

Or lettuce.

She got up and went to look at the station where they were analyzing the video from Zen’s encounter with the UAV, checking pictures of the fuselage to see if a bomb had been carriaged below the fuselage.

One of the technical experts had enhanced the image of the Taiwanese plane being launched from the ship; the image had been generated completely from radar, in some ways a more interesting technical feat than the creation of the UAV itself. Jennifer watched in fascination as the techie put the display into freeze-frame, then dialed in a program that analyzed the structure of the aircraft.

“Are those vertical tabs?” Jennifer asked, pointing at two bars that protruded from the area near the top of the wing root.

“Probably just weird radar echoes,” said the engineer. The frame advanced; the pieces remained on the aircraft.

“If they weren’t echoes, what would they be?” Jennifer asked.

“Hooks to recover the aircraft or hoist it onto the catapult.”

“Or launch it from a plane,” said Jennifer. “Like the U/MF-3 Flighthawk.”

“Sure.”

Jennifer went back to her station. An NSA analyst looking at the data had just sent an instant message suggesting the number stream after “package” in the third email might be a key for a code to activate the bomb. Jennifer called it back.

The repetition at the end of the number stream looked familiar, though by itself it seemed to mean nothing. She pulled over her laptop and brought up the code they had prepared for taking over the UAV.

There were similar sequences in the tail of the communications streams, though she had no idea what they stood for.

¥69696969

A coincidence?

Page 203

If the NSA analyst’s guess was correct, then the intercepted communications might mean that the ghost clone had been carrying a nuke when they first encountered it.

But that was impossible—Jennifer turned to the screen on her right, clicking into the stored data to bring up the analysis prepared from the early intercepts. The performance seemed to rule out any bomb.

Unless the code unlocked something in the com stream. Maybe it was part of an encryption key.

What if the package was another UAV? Because maybe you’d want to know the key it used for communications.

Maybe. She needed to look through the rest of the data.

No time for that if there was another plane.

“Ray—I think there’s another clone, another plane,” she said aloud. “Look at this.”

On the Ground in Kaohisiung

15 September 1997

0109

DANNY WATCHED THEMarine teams checking in with their captain, listening as they reviewed their findings. The men worked smoothly, running through the different piles of recycled material as if they’d done this sort of thing a million times before.

“We’re getting some hits on one of the Geiger counters,” the Marine captain told Danny. “In the battery section.”

“Let me check it out,” said Stoner.

“You have to get the protective gear on,” said the Marine.

“Yeah,” said the CIA officer, walking toward the shed anyway.

Danny shook his head, then went over to check with Liu and Boston in Shed One.

“Never been in a nuke factory before,” said Liu as Danny poked his head through the hole at the back that the two troopers had cut for access.

“Looks more like a machine shop,” said Danny.

“I thought it’d at least look like a science lab or something,” said Boston. “We gonna glow when we get out of here?”

Danny laughed. They hadn’t detected any serious radiation levels; a visit to the dentist posed a greater health threat.

A pair of Marines had begun carting out computer equipment. Boston, helping them, picked up a large memory unit and brought it out to the Osprey.

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“The guys back at Dreamland say they assembled them right in this area here,” said Liu. “Didn’t even use a clean room.”

Danny looked around the building. It did look like a machine shop. Not even—an empty shed with a few large machines, bunch of computers.

Was it that easy to build a bomb?

He began walking around the shed, wondering to himself how difficult his job might be in five or ten years. If a private company could build a nuke, when would some crazy fundamentalist in the Middle East do so?

There were crates against the wall, vegetable crates.

“Bomb squad took out two five-hundred-pounders,” said Liu, referring to a small squad of demo experts tasked to deal with the weapons. “Said they didn’t have fuses and couldn’t go off, but nobody wanted to take any chances. Leave them for the authorities.”

“They came in these boxes?” said Danny, pointing.

“Don’t know. The boxes were there. I don’t know if they were crating them. Couldn’t figure it out.”

“I saw some boxes like that in Taipei,” said Danny. “In a hangar there.”

“Just vegetable boxes. Bring lettuce and stuff around, like that.”

“A lot of lettuce gets eaten in Taipei.”

“Tons.”

Danny flicked his com control to talk to Dreamland.

Aboard Raven

0120

WITH THETAIWANESEand American authorities now arriving on the scene of the sinking, Raven and its Flighthawks were reduced to the role of spectators. Zen let C3take both Flighthawks in a general patrol pattern; it was the down part of the mission, and once he had his own aircraft squared away, he turned his attention to his two young protégés aboard Penn.

Zen shook his head as Starship and Kick engaged in some good-natured banter over how close the Chinese Communist missile had come to splashing the Osprey before Starship managed to get his Flighthawk in the way. The joking started a bit off-color and then went quite a bit further; about the only word that could be repeated in polite company was “road.”

“All right guys, let’s not forget we’re working,” Zen told them finally.

He felt more than a little proud, as if he were a high school basketball coach whose team had just won the championship. It wasn’t that bad a metaphor, actually—they were clucking away like high school kids, their jokes on a sophomore’s level.

Page 205

At best.

“Check your fuel,” he added. “I don’t want you walking home.”

Starship’s retort was cut off by Dog on the interphone.

“Zen, I want you in on this. Go to the main Dreamland channel.”

He clicked off without saying anything else to the two Flighthawk pilots, listening as Ray Rubeo detailed an argument for another UAV.

“We’re trying to get a line on that plane,” added Rubeo. “The surveillance equipment that Captain Freah placed shows the other still in the hangar.”

“What plane?” asked Zen.

“Chen Lee’s companies have two 767s. One is in Taipei on the ground but we’re looking for another that they seem to have leased a few months back,” explained Dog. “The UAV has handles that could be used for an air launch. We have someone en route to the airport to take a look at it.”

“Let’s get north,” said Zen.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Dog.

Aboard Island Flight A101

0130

FANN CHECKED THEcourse marker. The UAV had a range just over fifteen hundred miles, but that was without the extra weight of a bomb, and flying at medium to high altitude. Professor Ai had calculated that its fuel would take it roughly a thousand as presently configured. They were just approaching the thousand-mile mark now.