Текст книги "Revolution"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Danny grabbed his arm and spun him back toward him.

“Listen, Lieutenant. You can’t just let your men push around civilians.”

Roma looked down at his hand, then back at him.

“I’ll ask what happened,” Lieutenant Roma said.

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“Good.”

Danny got into the back of the jeep. Sitting there, he started to doubt that Roma would actually ask his men what had happened. Even if he did, it was likely nothing would come of it.

Yes, he had pushed the woman himself—but only to protect the lieutenant, who would have been hurt otherwise.

Everything else was an accident.

Maybe it didn’t look like that from Roma’s perspective.

And maybe the lines he was drawing were too fine to be practical.

Aboard the Bennett,

above northeastern Romania

2201

“TWO MORE CONTACTS OVER THE BLACK SEA, SAME AS

before,” Rager told Dog as they circled above the area where the guerrillas had attacked.

“MiGs?”

“MiG-29s. Configuration: two AMRAAMskis, four small missiles, probably infrared AA-11 Archers,” said Rager.

AMRAAMski was slang for the Russian R-77 radar-guided antiair missile, a weapon somewhat similar to the American AMRAAM. AA-11 Archer was the NATO designation for Russia’s R-73 short-range heat-seekers. “They’re running a racetrack pattern 263 miles to our east.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“We going to take another run at them?” asked Sullivan.

“We have better things to do,” Dog told him. “We’ll ignore them as long as they keep their distance.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Then that will be their problem.”

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Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2207

THE NEXT BARN THEY CAME TO LOOKED AS IF IT DATED FROM

the medieval ages. One of its stone walls had caved in, and the rear of the roof was gone. The soldiers searched it anyway, using flashlights to sort through the shadows.

A smaller outbuilding sat behind it. This too was made of stone—large, carefully cut rocks the size of suitcases, piled like a complicated jigsaw puzzle beneath a sharply raked wooden roof.

The door, though, was metal. And new. And ajar.

Danny knelt down near the entrance, covering the soldiers as they went inside. The building wasn’t big enough to fit a car, yet it reeked so badly of gasoline that his nose stung.

One of the soldiers emerged from the shed holding a small gas can. It was empty, as were the dozen others scattered inside. One had apparently spilled; the dirt floor was still muddy.

“Pretty recent,” said Danny, toeing his boot through the residue.

Back outside, the soldiers had finished going through the main building without finding anything and were now fanning out to search the nearby area. The yard was rutted with tire tracks, but there was no way to tell how recent they were.

A stream ran at the edge of the property, thirty feet from the building. Danny walked over to the shallow water, examining the rock-strewn bed. Though only an inch or so deep, the creek was nearly eight feet wide, more than enough for a car or small truck to drive down.

Were there tracks in it? He couldn’t be sure.

“Where does this go?” Danny asked Roma when the lieutenant came over to see what he was doing.

Roma shook his head and took out a map. Danny reached to the back of his helmet and clicked his radio on.

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“Zen, that streambed behind the buildings where we are—can you check it out?”

“Stand by, Groundhog.”

Roma located it on his topo map and showed it to Danny.

The stream ran about a hundred yards before swinging by another road.

“I’d better send some men around to cut anyone off,” said the lieutenant, picking up his radio.

“Groundhog, this is Flighthawk leader. The stream runs down near a road that parallels the road you’re on.”

“Roger that. We’re looking at a map right now.”

“There’s a culvert farther up and then it goes back to the highway. I’ve looked up and down, can’t see anyone nearby.”

“You think a car could drive down it?” Danny asked.

“Hard to tell. It looks relatively level. There are a half-dozen properties along the way that have buildings the size you’re looking for.”

“Can you get low and slow and give me a feed?” asked Danny. “The stream first. The lieutenant’s going to send some men up it.”

“Yeah, roger that.”

Zen took two passes as Danny watched. It looked clear to him, though there were one or two places where someone might have been able to hide in the thick vegetation. Danny told Roma about them and started up with the men.

His suspicion that the guerrillas had used the creek as a road cooled as they went. While it looked flat from above, it gradually grew rockier and deeper, harder and harder for a car to pass.

The point man halted, then pointed to something on the bank.

Tire tracks veered up along the side.

“Flighthawk leader, we think we found the spot where they came off,” said Danny.

“Roger that, Groundhog,” said Zen.

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A second or so later Zen came back on the line, his voice tight.

“Four, five figures coming through the field to your north.

They have a heavy machine gun. Twenty yards.”

A split second later, the machine gun began chewing up the night.

Aboard EB-52 Johnson,

above northeastern Romania

2210

ZEN’S MOMENTUM TOOK HIM PAST THE GUERRILLAS BEFORE

he could fire. As he turned back, he launched an illumination flare to silhouette the attackers for the Romanians. Then he pushed the Flighthawk’s nose down, zeroing in on the machine gun. He sent a stream of 20mm rounds into the machine-gun spot. Two or three shadows began moving to his left, apparently running away.

“Bennett, we have contact on the ground,” Zen told Dog over the interphone.

“Copy that, Flighthawk leader.”

“Spiff, you see any vehicles moving on the roadway or behind that field anywhere?” Zen asked the radar operator.

“Negative.”

Turning back for another run, Zen realized he had lost track of where the Romanian soldiers were. Danny’s GPS

unit showed his location just south of the now mangled machine gun, but tracers were flying in every direction around him.

“Groundhog, I can’t get a good fix on your team’s position,” said Zen. “Where do you want me?”

“Stand by.”

“Roger that,” he answered, frustrated that he couldn’t do more.

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Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2213

ONE MOMENT DANNY HAD EVERYTHING SORTED OUT IN HIS

head—where the guerrillas were, where the soldiers were, where he was. Then it was as if the world had spun upside down. Everything around him was jumbled. He couldn’t tell who was firing at whom. Both the guerrillas and the Romanian soldiers had AK-47s, and even in harsh light thrown by the Flighthawk’s illumination flare, telling the running figures apart was next to impossible.

Someone ran up from the stream and yelled at him in Romanian. Danny yelled back in English, not understanding a word.

The soldier twisted toward the barn and began firing.

Danny couldn’t see his target, but apparently the soldier hit it, because he jumped up and started running in that direction.

Following, Danny got about four or five yards before tracers zipped so close he could practically feel their tailspin.

He threw himself down, then crawled to the soldier he’d been following. The man had been hit in the head four or five times. The bullets had ripped most of his skull apart.

A fresh salvo of gunfire flew from the barn. Danny flattened himself against the ground, using the dead man’s body as cover. The bullets were heavy caliber, and they tore up the ground in little clumps as they sprayed across the field.

“Zen, you see that machine gun twenty yards from the barn?” said Danny.

“I’m on it. Keep your guys away.”

Inaudible above the din and rendered invisible because of its black skin, the Flighthawk seemed to be a lightning bolt sent by God Himself. The earth reverberated as a tornado of dirt and lead swirled in a frantic vortex where Danny’s enemy had been. Gun and gunner disappeared in the swirl, consumed by its fury.

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The ricochets and shrapnel missed him, but not by much.

A few hit the dead man in front of him, ripping his already torn body still further. Bits of cloth and flesh splattered over Danny, sticking to his uniform.

The gunfire across the battlefield abruptly stopped. Danny turned toward the stream and yelled for the lieutenant, whom he thought would be there by now, but he didn’t get an answer.

He began making his way toward the barn, moving cautiously. He came upon another soldier, facedown in the field.

As he checked to see if the man was alive, a shadow moved to his right. Danny raised his submachine gun to fire, stopping only at the last second when he saw what he thought was a helmet, the sign of a soldier.

“I’m Captain Freah!” Danny shouted. “The American observer. The American!”

The figure answered with gunfire.

Two bullets hit Danny’s side. He spun to his right, sprawling on the ground. Though the carbon-boron cells in his body armor gave him considerably more protection than a standard bulletproof vest would have, he could practically feel the welts rising at the side of his chest.

Danny pulled himself around, catching his breath and trying to think of something he could say to get the man to stop firing.

He couldn’t return fire—he’d lost his MP5 when he fell.

Finally, the bursts stopped.

Danny watched as the shooter rose and began moving across the field, apparently thinking he’d killed him. As the man passed close by, Danny realized it wasn’t a helmet he’d seen; the man was wearing a watch cap.

Danny waited, not daring to move until the man was behind him. Then he leaped up, twisting around and throwing himself on the guerrilla’s back. He rode the man to the ground, then grabbed the man’s rifle and began battering his head with the stock. The man tried to roll and fend off the 178

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blows, but Danny swung harder. He battered away, anger and adrenaline fueling a bloody revenge.

By the time he got control of himself, the guerrilla was dead, his face a bloody pulp.

Danny knelt next to him, watching as someone ran up from the direction of the stream. It was Lieutenant Roma.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Danny got up. “If you pull the men back, I can have the Flighthawk hit the barn.”

“There may be hostages,” said the lieutenant. “I don’t want to strike blindly.”

As if on cue, another machine gun began to rake the field from the second story of the barn. Danny put a fresh box of ammo in the gun he’d taken from the guerrilla and began moving to his right.

“Where are you going?” yelled Roma.

“I’ll flank it, get an angle. You draw his fire from here.”

“No. You stay. My men will take care of it.”

“Draw his fire,” insisted Danny. “I only need a few seconds.”

Danny leapt up, charged to his right a few yards, then dove back to the ground before the machine gunner could bring his weapon to bear. In the meantime, Lieutenant Roma had begun firing. As the bullets swung back toward Roma, Danny lurched up on all fours and scrambled along the ground until he came to a slight rise. He crawled behind it and crept up along a narrow rift formed by a tiny stream that ran only after very heavy rains. He could see the machine gun’s tracers, but not the gunner inside the building, hidden by the angle.

Before he could decide whether to go back a little and try from another spot, Danny heard a loud hiss in the field. He threw himself back down into a ball, rolling into a fetal position as a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the machine-gun post.

He stayed like that for a full minute before he unfolded REVOLUTION

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himself. The Romanian soldiers began moving forward in the dark.

“American!” yelled one.

“I’m over here!” answered Danny. A sergeant ran toward him. Danny saw three or four figures running past the barn; by the time he realized they were guerrillas, it was too late to shoot.

Lieutenant Roma joined him as his men worked their way toward the barn. There was still sporadic gunfire, but nothing as intense as it had been just a few minutes before.

“We have reinforcements on the way,” Roma said, his voice tight with anxiety. “We’re cutting off the road near the highway. Then we’ll tighten the noose.”

“How many troops are coming?” Danny asked.

“A company. Two. Whatever can respond. I don’t think there are many more guerrillas,” he added. “And those who are left may not have the stomach to keep fighting.”

“They have plenty of stomach from what I’ve seen.”

Aboard EB-52 Bennett,

above northeastern Romania

2217

ZEN SPOTTED TWO FIGURES RUNNING FROM THE REAR OF

the barn toward a building across a dirt road a hundred yards away. As he circled around, he saw someone else near the building. Suddenly, one of the walls seemed to give way. A small pickup truck emerged—it had broken through a garage-style door—and headed toward the road. The man nearby threw himself into the back. The two others ran and did the same. Another vehicle, this one a car, followed.

“Danny, I have a pickup truck and a sedan, mid-size, coming out of one of the buildings across the road, about a hundred and fifty yards north of your position,” said Zen.

“Roger, we heard it.”

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“I can nail them.”

“Negative. They may have hostages. Follow it for now.”

Zen slipped the Flighthawk farther along the road. The Romanians had forces on the highway about three-fourths of a mile away, though there were several places the guerrillas could turn off. He tucked back, then decided to try and spook them by flying toward them low and fast, pickling a few flares into their windshields as he pulled up.

As he came out of the turn and started in, he spotted a small bridge over a stream ahead of the vehicles and got a better idea.

The bridge was little more than a few wooden planks over a culvert pipe. He climbed a few hundred feet, then pushed in, twisting the Flighthawk so its nose pointed almost straight down at the road surface. He mashed the trigger of his cannon, then waggled his plane left and right, chewing the wood up with his bullets.

The pickup appeared as Zen cleared. His attack had damaged the bridge so severely that it slid sideways as soon as the truck started across. The vehicle skidded but managed to get to the other side as the bridge collapsed behind it.

The car that was following, however, was stranded. Seven men hopped out and ran across the culvert to the truck. From the air, it looked like a circus routine, though without the humor.

“Truck got across the little bridge,” Zen told Danny. “Six, seven guys getting out of the car, crossing. They’re in the back of the pickup.”

“Stand by.”

The pickup drove about ten yards and then stopped. Everyone spilled out and began running toward a nearby house.

“Danny, they’re going toward a building. I see no one that looks like he might be a hostage.”

There was a pause as Danny conferred with Roma.

“See if you can stop them,” Danny said finally.

Zen laid down a spray of cannon fire across the lawn of the REVOLUTION

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house. Three or four men fell, but the others were too spread out for him to target in a single run. He circled back quickly, but by the time he brought his guns to bear, all but two had made it into the house.

Whether they had hostages before, Zen thought bitterly, they had them now.

Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2220

THE POLICE CAR AND AN AMBULANCE WERE IN THE BARN.

So were two policemen. Both had been shot through the head.

Lieutenant Roma quickly regrouped his men, organizing them so he could surround the house where the guerrillas had gone. He seemed to realize that his fears about hostages had probably led to others being taken. Or maybe his somber mood came from the fact that the guerrillas had killed two and wounded four of his men in the field outside the barn.

Danny remained silent as they drove to the house. Half a dozen soldiers had already set up positions near it without drawing fire, but when the guerrillas saw the truck, they began shooting ferociously.

“Time is on our side,” said Roma after they took cover.

“We will have them surrounded as soon as our reinforcements arrive.”

Had the guerrillas mounted a concentrated attack on one of the flanks, they might have been able to break through. But within ten minutes another platoon of soldiers arrived; a few minutes later, another.

The house sat in the middle of well-cleared plot of land, with good lines of fire for the army soldiers as they clustered behind vehicles and other cover. There would be no way for the guerrillas to escape this time. Their only hope would be some sort of negotiated surrender.

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Along with the reinforcements, senior officers began to arrive: first a company captain, then a major; before an hour passed, a colonel arrived and took charge.

Roma introduced him to Danny as Oz, without reference to his rank. He had a brush mustache and eyes that sat far back in his skull.

“This is something new,” Oz told Danny. “Ordinarily they don’t take prisoners. But then we usually don’t catch them like this. We are grateful for your help.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“There are five girls in the house,” said Oz. “The neighbors say they have a grandmother and an uncle living with them as well. From five to fifteen. Girls.” The colonel shook his head. “Innocent people.”

“Maybe you can get them to release them.”

Oz frowned. “One of my men has already tried calling the house. No answer.”

“Can we wait them out?”

“What other choice do we have?”

About a half hour later two armored personnel carriers arrived. Oz climbed into the rear of one, then the two trucks slowly advanced onto the front lawn, stopping about twenty yards from the house. The guerrillas made no effort to stop them, and, as far as Danny could tell, didn’t appear at the windows.

The rear ramp of the vehicle Oz had gotten into slammed open. The colonel emerged, a microphone in his hand.

“What’s he saying?” Danny asked Roma as Oz began to broadcast a message.

“Telling them they have to surrender,” said the lieutenant.

“He’s giving them a phone number they can call to talk to us.”

The colonel paused, evidently waiting for an answer. When none came, he repeated his warning and plea.

This time there was an answer—an explosion so violent it knocked Danny to the ground.

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Aboard EB-52 Bennett,

above northeastern Romania

2235

EVEN THOUGH ZEN KNEW BETTER, THE EXPLOSION THAT

rocked the house was so intense that for a second he thought the Bennett had unleashed a missile on the building. The fireball rose over the Flighthawk.

“Colonel, you see that?” Zen asked.

“I have it on screen,” said Dog dryly.

“They blew themselves up. Shit.”

“All right, Zen. Tell Danny we’re standing by.”

Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2237

BY THE TIME DANNY RECOVERED, THE FIREBALL HAD FALLEN

back into the ruins. Smoke and dust filled the air. All he could hear was the low rumble of the motor from one of the personnel carriers; the other had been choked and stalled by the air surge of the explosion.

Then the screaming began. A loud wail went up, as if all the world had begun to cry at once. A dozen men had been hit by shrapnel and were seriously wounded. Another two or three had been killed outright.

What remained of the house was on fire. The glow turned the night orange, casting long shadows around the yard. The Romanian soldiers began to move toward their comrades who had been wounded.

“Groundhog, are you all right?” asked Zen.

“Groundhog. Affirmative.”

“What the hell happened? It looked like a piece of hell opened up.”

The only thing Danny could think of was that the guerrillas had been carrying plastique explosives with them, and 184

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augmented their power with something they found in the house, natural gas, maybe.

“I heard there were kids in the house,” Danny told Zen, still in disbelief.

“God.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Though he didn’t have a med kit, Danny was a trained paramedic and realized he could be of more use helping the wounded than lamenting what had happened. He threw off his helmet and ran toward the bodies scattered along the lawn. Most were near the armored personnel carriers, lulled by the bulk of the big trucks into thinking they were safe behind them.

The first man he reached had been hit in the leg by a large piece of metal. The wound wasn’t deep. Danny checked for little shards or metal splinters up and down his thigh; when he didn’t find any, he made a bandage from the man’s handkerchief and had him press down on it to stop the bleeding.

The next man was dead, killed by a large piece of wood that had slit his neck and its arteries wide open.

Oz was sitting on the ground behind the APC, dazed.

The shock had thrown him off the open ramp of the carrier and he’d struck his head. His pupils seemed to react to the flashlight Danny shone in his eyes, but that didn’t necessarily rule out a concussion, and Danny told him he’d have to be checked by a doctor. Oz nodded, but still seemed dazed.

Lieutenant Roma walked up as Danny rose.

“You see what kind of people we’re up against, the criminals,” said Roma. He had tears in his eyes. “Devils. Worse.

Killers of children.”

“It’s horrible.”

“They’re slime,” said Roma. “Cowards.”

“Yes,” said Danny.

Roma crumpled.

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Danny knelt and saw that he’d been struck by something hard, a brick maybe, that had caved in the right side of his head. Blood trickled from his ear.

“Roma? Roma?” he said.

The lieutenant didn’t answer. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse.

Danny started CPR. A Romanian medic ran up; they worked together for a minute, two minutes, then five.

When ten minutes had passed and both men could no longer pretend there was still hope, they looked at each other for a moment. Then slowly Danny rose and went to see if there was someone else he might help.

IV

Burnt Wood and Flesh

U.S. Embassy, Bucharest

26 January 1998

0410

STONER RUBBED THE SLEEP FROM HIS EYES AS HE LOOKED

at the photo of the house and the aftermath of the guerrillas’

explosion. There was a torso in the foreground. The other photo showed a baby’s arm clutched around a doll.

The American ambassador to Romania pushed the rest of the photos toward the far side of his desk, no longer able to look at them. The ambassador, rarely seen in public without a tie, wore a hooded yellow sweatshirt and a pair of old jeans, as if he were going to work on his car when they were done.

“Pretty gruesome, I’d say.” The ambassador shook his head. “Bastards.”

“Yeah,” said Russ Fairchild, the CIA station chief. “This is what they’re up against.”

“Was it the Russians or the guerrillas?” asked the ambassador.

“Had to be the Russians,” said Fairchild. “That much explosives?”

Stoner leaned forward and took the rest of the photos.

Fairchild was probably right about the source of the explosives. But the description of the operation he’d heard from the Dreamland people made it sound too amateurish for Spetsnaz.

He flipped through the pictures, which had been taken 190

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by the Romanian army on the scene. The guerrillas were in pieces, their bodies shattered when the explosives blew.

Stoner found a severed leg. He slipped the picture onto the ambassador’s desk.

“They were guerrillas,” he told the others. “See the shoes?”

“God,” said the ambassador, reacting to the gruesomeness of the shot.

“An old Puma,” said Fairchild.

“The Spetsnaz people who came after me had new boots,”

explained Stoner. “Besides, the Russians would have tried to shoot their way out.”

Fairchild nodded. The ambassador seemed to be in shock.

“Can I have these?” Stoner asked, rising.

“By all means,” said the ambassador. “We can print more.”

“Mark?” Fairchild called after him as Stoner started down the hall. “Stoner—where are you going?”

“I should be back tomorrow,” he said.

Dreamland

25 January 1998

1810 (0410 Romania, 26 January 1998)

SAMSON PACED BEHIND THE CONSOLE NEAR THE FRONT OF

the Dreamland Command Center, impatiently waiting for the connection to the White House Situation Room to go through. He’d put the call in ten minutes earlier, and had been standing by ever since.

Dealing with the National Security Council and the White House was still new to him, and try as he might, Samson couldn’t help but feel a little excited. And nervous. He’d had Mack Smith prepare a PowerPoint presentation, complete with images from the explosion. The photos were dra-

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matic, illustrating again what the Dreamland people– his people—were up against.

And by extension, what a good job he was doing commanding them.

“Connection with the White House,” said the specialist at the station to his right.

Samson raised his chin and looked at the main screen. Instead of a video feed of NSC head Philip Freeman, however, Jed Barclay’s face came up.

“General, sorry I was late. The President called me into a meeting.”

“Yes,” said Samson, trying to hide his disappointment that he was dealing with a kid barely out of his teens instead of Freeman himself.

“Do you have an update?”

“I have the report from Colonel Bastian regarding the guerrilla attack,” said Samson. “The Dreamland units tracked the guerrillas and helped detain them. As a matter of fact, I have a presentation—”

“Yes, sir. I was wondering if there was an update on the Russian aircraft. You’d told me about that earlier.”

“There’s not much more to tell,” said Samson. “They had contacts at a very long distance. Bastian believes there are spies in Iasi that watch them take off.”

“OK.”

“I have images from the Flighthawk of the guerrillas exploding the house,” said Samson. “I had them prepared for the President. If you’d like to see it—”

“We got some photos from the embassy an hour ago,” said Jed. “So I think we’re good. They came from the army. Pretty gruesome. That’s pretty much all we need.”

“OK.”

“I’m sorry, I’m late,” said Jed. “If you want to upload the report, I can check it out when I get back.”

Samson fumed. What was the kid late for? A date?

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“I’ll have my aide do it,” said Samson frostily.

“Oh, there was something I wanted to mention to you,”

added Jed. “Kind of on down low.”

“Down low?”

“Between us. There was a discussion today relating to the B-1 laser project. Apparently some members of Congress were asking the Pentagon what was going on with it.”

“What questions?”

“You’ll have to sweat the specifics through channels, General. I didn’t get the details myself, but the tone was, uh, um, hard-nosed. Like they wanted to kill the plane completely.

Seems the B-1 has a bad reputation.”

“Unjustly.”

“Well, the reason I’m mentioning it is, the President was looking for an update.”

“It’s right on schedule,” said Samson. Then he remembered that in fact it was a few weeks behind. “More or less on schedule. What is the President’s concern?”

“I really can’t speak for him,” said Jed. “But, uh, you know with the way Congress is, um, funding … ”

Samson got the message. Well, at least Jed was good for something. And maybe Freeman had purposely had the kid talk to him, so his “fingerprints” weren’t on the warning.

“I just thought you’d like the heads-up before someone from the Pentagon calls,” added Jed.

“Yes, yes, actually—thank you, Jed. Good information. I owe you one.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” Jed signed off.

“Where the hell is Mack Smith?” Samson thundered.

MACK SMITH STARED AT THE MOUNTAIN OF FOLDERS ON HIS

desk for a moment, then picked up the phone.

“Mack Smith.”

“Is this General Samson’s chief of staff?”

“Yes, sir.”

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“I figured you’d be working late. This is Robbie Denton.

Colonel Denton.”

“Oh yes, Colonel Denton.”

The name was vaguely familiar. Mack quickly flipped through the folders. Darby, Denton … ah, Denton was the man General Samson had tapped to take over Combined Air Wing 1, the new designation for the Megafortresses and other aircraft and personnel when on a Whiplash deployment.

“Colonel, good to hear from you,” bellowed Mack. “All right. Glad I happened to be working late tonight. A real fluke. Now, as far as security procedures go, I’m afraid we’re a little anal about the process. The first thing you need to do—”

“Listen, Major, I’m going to save you a little time here. I’ve had second thoughts on the job.”

“S-Second thoughts, Colonel?”

“Actually, I never really wanted to take it in the first place.

I love what I do now. It’s the best job in the world. I just had a hard time telling Terrill that the other day.”

“Um—”

“He’s a force of nature,” Denton told Mack. “That’s why they call him Earthmover.”

“Colonel, you really want to tell him this yourself.”

“No, no, that’s why I asked for you. I was his chief of staff back when he was in Strategic Air Command,” added Denton. “I don’t envy you.”

“Oh.”

Mack dropped the handset on the cradle. Samson wasn’t going to be happy; by Mack’s count, Denton was the third person he’d offered the job to. Part of the problem was that Samson only wanted proven overachievers, all of whom already had high-profile jobs to begin with. But they were also men he knew personally, which meant they’d served time under him … and therefore knew that working for Samson wasn’t exactly a holiday.

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As he could testify firsthand.

He got up from his desk. There was no question of going home—he had a week’s worth of work that had to be finished by the morning. But he was hungry and could use a break.

The phone rang again. He started to leave anyway, thinking he’d let it roll over to voice mail, then saw that the light indicated it was an internal call.

“Mack Smith,” he said, picking it up.

“General wants you down in Dreamland Command ASAP,” said Lieutenant Stephens, the com specialist on duty there. “Actually, faster than ASAP.”

“Tell him I’m on my way,” said Mack.

Maybe he’s going to compliment me on my PowerPoint presentation, he thought as he walked briskly down the hall to the elevator.

Perhaps. But “good” and “job” were two words that Samson rarely put together, except as a preface to an order for more work. If Samson did like the report, he would probably tell him to make a hundred copies each with personalized comments and have them sent out by midnight to everyone in the Pentagon.