Текст книги "Revolution"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

With the mission scratched, fatigue mixed with an unspoken malaise aboard the Megafortress. Dog’s crew did their jobs dutifully, but they were clearly disappointed in the out-come of the mission.

And with the decision not to attack over the border to support the Romanians.

“Romanians are shutting down,” said Sullivan. “All troops are back over the border. Except for those in the helicopter.”

“Thanks,” said Dog. “Set a course for Iasi.”

Sullivan worked quickly and without his usual wisecracks.

They landed a short time later, and after securing the plane, headed to the Dreamland Command trailer for a postflight debriefing.

Though he’d already informed Jed Barclay at the NSC

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about the MiGs and helicopter, Dog retreated to the com room to give a written brief. He knocked out a few sentences, inserted the location of the helicopter as well as the MiGs, then joined the others to review what had happened.

Ordinarily, the debrief would devolve into a bit of a bull session after fifteen or twenty minutes, with Sullivan making jokes and cracking everyone up. But tonight no one joked at all. Each of the men typed quietly on laptops, recapping the mission from their perspective.

Sullivan was usually the last to leave—he was a notoriously poor speller and could puzzle for hours over his punctuation—but he was done in five minutes, his report the barest of bare prose. As soon as he was finished typing his summary into the laptop computer, he rose and asked to be excused.

“You can go, Sully, if you’re done,” Dog told him. “You don’t have to ask for permission.”

The normally cheerful Sullivan nodded, rubbed his eyes, and left Dog and Zen alone in the front of the trailer.

As Zen hunt-and-pecked his report on the laptop’s flat keyboard, Dog cracked open the small refrigerator.

“Beer?” he asked.

Zen didn’t answer.

“Zen?”

The pilot pretended he was absorbed in his work. Dog popped the top on his beer, closed the refrigerator and sat down in the seat farthest from the one where Zen was working. Though still angry at the way the major had snapped at him during the flight, Dog decided it was a product of fatigue and anger at losing Stoner, and that it wasn’t worth making an issue of it, especially given the fact that his stay with Dreamland was coming to an end.

Dog leaned back in the seat, gazing at the trailer ceiling and the wall of cabinets at the side. It was a silly place to grow nostalgic over, yet he felt the pangs growing. He’d spent a lot of time here—difficult time, mostly, but in the 350

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end what he and his people had accomplished had been worth the effort.

“How’s it coming?” he asked Zen after a while.

“What do you care?” snapped Zen, without looking up.

“What’s wrong with you, Zen?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what the hell is wrong with you? You’re not like that.”

“Like what?”

“A jerk.”

Zen put his hands on the wheels of his chair and spun to the side to confront Dog. His face was shaded red.

“Maybe I think you did the wrong thing,” Zen said. “Maybe I know you did the wrong thing.”

“By not disobeying an order from the President?”

“Sometimes … ”

“Sometimes what, Jeff? It was a lawful order.”

“It was a stupid order. It killed two dozen men, one of them a friend of ours. A guy that saved your daughter, my wife, a year ago. You don’t remember that?”

“We have to do our duty,” said Dog softly.

“Our duty is saving people, especially our people. You could have. A month ago, you would have.”

“I have never disobeyed a direct order,” said Dog.

Zen smirked.

“I have never disobeyed a direct, lawful order,” repeated Dog. He felt his own anger starting to rise.

“You were always damn good at finding a way around them, then,” said Zen. He spun back to his computer.

Dog didn’t want to let him have the last word. He wanted to say something, anything, in response. But his tongue wouldn’t work.

Maybe Zen was right. Maybe, with Samson taking over, he’d lost a bit of his initiative.

Or maybe heroes started to fade the moment they were called heroes.

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Dog couldn’t think what to say. That the country’s needs were greater than the individual’s? Honor and duty were important, but there were situations where fulfilling your duty and maintaining your honor were not the same—were, in fact, mutually exclusive.

Zen finished his report, closed the program and the laptop, then backed away from the table.

“Good night,” Dog told him as he rolled past.

Zen didn’t answer.

When he was gone, Dog sighed heavily, then took a sip of his beer.

It tasted bitter in his mouth.

“Hey, Colonel, something’s going on with the Romanian command,” yelled Sergeant Liu from the communications shack at the back of the Command trailer. “They’re issuing all sorts of orders, and units are moving all over the country.”

Dog emptied the beer in the sink and went back to see what was going on.

“Some of Locusta’s units are moving toward Stulpicani, way up in the mountains,” Liu told him. “They’re talking about guerrillas.”

Liu brought a map up on the screen. Stulpicani was a quiet town in the Suceava area of Romania, about eighty-five miles northwest of Iasi. There had been no guerrilla attacks that far north or west, as far as Dog knew.

“They’re talking about a presidential retreat,” said Liu. “A villa or something.”

“Call the NSC right away. Tell them something big is going on. I’ll go wake up General Samson.”

White House Situation Room

1325 (2325 Romania)

BY NOW THE NSC STAFF HAD ARRANGED A LIVE FEED FROM

two Romanian news organizations via their satellites. One 352

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feed showed a news program in progress, and since it had not yet been translated, wasn’t of immediate use. The other was a frequency used by reporters in the field and at stations around the country to upload raw video and reports to their national headquarters in Bucharest. Jed watched as one feed showed at least a dozen troop trucks moving out of the capital.

The NSC’s Romanian translator was sitting at a nearby station, scribbling notes from the video. Jed went over and took a peek at them. The reporter was talking about unexplained troop movements near Bacau.

When the transmission ended, Jed tapped the translator on the shoulder. The woman, a Romanian-American in her thirties, pulled her headphones back behind her raven black hair and turned toward him.

“Have they said anything about guerrilla attacks or the president?” Jed asked.

“No.”

“They report on the operation in Moldova?”

She shook her head.

“Watch some of the live broadcast and see if that comes up,” he told her. “As soon as the CIA transcripts come in, give them to me, OK?”

Then he went back to his desk and called the National Reconnaissance Office—the Air Force department that supervised satellite surveillance—to see how long it would be before a satellite was available. He was still on the phone with them when Freeman called in.

“The president of Romania thinks the army is staging a coup,” Jed told him. “Our ambassador is in contact with him.

The Dreamland people just heard that there was a guerrilla attack near the president’s house in the mountains. There are reports that the Romanian army is moving in the capital. Big movements, enough to get the attention of the media.”

“Is it the guerrillas or the army that’s moving against Voda?”

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“We don’t know. We haven’t monitored any official reports of an attack on the president’s house and the Dreamland units were not notified.”

“What does the defense minister say?”

“We’re still trying to get in touch with him.”

“You think it’s a coup?” Freeman asked.

“Um, I wouldn’t, um,” Jed stumbled, his stutter returning.

“It’s too early to say what I think. But it, uh, has that feel.

Like in Libya last year.”

Jed ran down some of the other developments. Freeman listened without interrupting, then told him to have Dreamland get a plane aloft to monitor the troop movements on the ground and see if they could find out what was going on.

“CIA director was trying to set up a phone conference for 1330,” added Jed. “White House chief of staff already knows some of what’s going on.”

“Where’s the President?”

“A reception at the Smithsonian,” said Jed. “Secretary Hartman’s there too. Due to end at three. Are you going to call him?”

“We’ll wait until after the phone conference. I may break away. Alert the chief of staff that we’ll need to talk.”

Iasi Airfield, Romania

2325

WHEN HE HAD DECIDED TO COME TO ROMANIA, GENERAL

Samson had somehow forgotten that the troops were sleeping on cots in a large hangar. Clearly this was not going to be a workable arrangement in his case.

For this one night, however, there was no other choice.

Good for esprit de corps, he reasoned, though his back muscles might never be the same. Worse, he had trouble falling asleep, even though he was dead tired. He’d had one of the bomb handlers rope off a little section for him, stringing 354

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blankets as a temporary barrier for privacy, but they did nothing to shut out the noise. The hangar’s metal walls and ceiling amplified every creak and cough.

Samson lay awake for hours, staring at the bluish black ceiling high above his head, breathing the stale air that smelled vaguely of exhaust, trying to fall asleep.

And now that he had finally drifted off, some jackass was shaking him awake.

Who?

“Who the hell is it?” he grumbled, trying to unstick his eyes.

“It’s Dog.”

Bastian! It figured.

“What the hell, Colonel?”

“General, something’s up,” Dog told him. “Troops are mobilizing. There’s a report of a guerrilla attack on the Romanian president’s house about a hundred miles east of here.”

It took Samson a second to process the words. Then he sprang up.

“An attack on the president? By the guerrillas?”

“It may be.”

“Get a plane in the air.”

“The Johnson just took off.”

DOG TOLD SAMSON ABOUT WHAT HAD HAPPENED ON THE

mission as they walked to the Command trailer. Samson, who didn’t know Stoner, did not seem particularly bothered by the loss of the helicopter.

He also wasn’t impressed by the downing of the MiGs, which Dog assured him had taken place inside Romanian territory.

“As long as you obeyed orders and didn’t go over the border,” he muttered, trotting up the trailer steps ahead of Dog.

Sergeant Liu had just gotten off the phone with the Romanian Second Army Corps headquarters. The sergeant con-

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firmed that there was “some action taking place,” but told them there was no need for Dreamland units at the present time.

“The hell with that,” said Samson. “We should have more than the Johnson up. Get the B-1s ready. And your plane, Bastian.”

Dog nodded. “The Bennett should be ready in an hour. I sent someone to wake up the crew.”

“Make it thirty minutes.”

Dog couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” snapped Samson.

“If I said five minutes, you’d say one.”

Samson frowned—but then the corners of his mouth twisted up.

“You expect anything less?” the general asked.

“Jed Barclay on the line,” said Liu.

Out of habit, Dog took a step toward the communications area, then stopped. Talking to Washington was Samson’s job now.

Bacau, Romania

2335

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, YOU CAN’T FIND THE PRESIdent?” thundered General Locusta over the phone line.

“Where is he?”

Major Ozera did not answer.

“Voda’s house is not that big,” continued the general.

“Where the hell is he?”

“There was considerable damage from the mortars,” said the major. “We think he was in the basement somewhere.

Some of the timbers have fallen and there was—”

“Find the body. Find the body,” repeated Locusta. “What about the bodyguards?”

“They’re all accounted for. We think.”

“You think? ”

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Even though Locusta was alone in his office, using his private satellite phone rather than his regular line, he knew he had to restrain himself. As thick as the walls were, there was always the chance that he might be overheard if he raised his voice. And besides, a temper tantrum would not help him in the least.

If Voda had escaped, things would be very complicated indeed. But Locusta was in too far now. He’d already given orders mobilizing his units, had instructed his network to begin spreading rumors that the president was dead, and had called his ally in the capital, telling him to call his men out as well.

“Make sure your men are in charge,” he told Ozera. “You conduct the search personally.”

“Yes, of course. The regular troops have only just gotten here.”

“Keep them in the dark. Order them to shoot at anything that moves.”

“Yes, General.”

“Keep me updated,” Locusta said. He hung up the phone.

It rang immediately. “Locusta.”

“Bucharest,” said a male voice. “Done.”

The line clicked dead. Locusta hung up again, feeling much more confident. The defense minister had been assassinated. An irritant had been removed.

This was a time for action, not doubt. Locusta rose from his desk, grabbed his satellite phone and strode from the office.

“I am going to the president’s house,” he told his staff in the conference room. “I will personally take charge of the situation there. Nothing to the media,” he added, turning to his public relations officer. “Nothing, official or unofficial, without my express approval.”

The man’s face paled. Locusta guessed that he had already started feeding tidbits to favored reporters.

The general savored that look of fear as he walked to his car.

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Dreamland Command trailer,

Iasi, Romania

2345

DOG FROZE THE INFRARED VIDEO FEED FROM THE JOHNSON’S

Flighthawk showing the back of the president’s house.

“Serious munitions hit that house,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Maybe mortar shells, maybe RPG rounds. At least a half dozen.”

“The guerrillas could have either,” said Samson.

“True.” Dog hit the Play button, letting the image proceed.

“Are you seeing this, Mr. Barclay?” asked Samson.

“We see it,” said Jed Barclay, speaking from the White House Situation Room. “Please continue the feed. We want to see the area.”

More Romanian troops were arriving at a command post set up on the road below the house. From the looks of things, the Romanians believed some of the guerrillas had escaped and they were trying to seal off the area.

“That’s what we have, Jed,” said Dog. “Anything else new on your end?”

“We’re sorting through everything. The CIA station chief reported rumors that the president was dead. We’ll be back on with you in a few minutes.”

Dog leaned back from the console and glanced at Samson, who was standing against the partition of the communications area. The general’s stubble and his combat fatigues were almost jarring; for the first time since they’d met, Samson didn’t look like an actor playing the role.

“You think it’s a coup?” Samson asked.

“If I had to bet, that’s where I’d put my money,” said Dog.

“So would I,” said Samson.

Dog pulled off his headphones and rose. “Want some coffee?” he asked Samson.

“Yes,” said the general.

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There was almost always fresh coffee on the sideboard of the trailer’s main room, but tonight was an exception. Dog started hunting through the cabinets, looking for the filters and coffee. He was just filling the pot with water when Samson emerged from the communications shack.

“I thought maybe you went into town for it,” said the general.

From anyone else, the comment would have seemed a good-natured rib. Samson, however, looked serious.

“Coffee is not my specialty,” said Dog.

“Relax, Bastian. That was a joke.”

Dog held the pot up, squinting at the numbers to make sure he had the right level of water.

“I hope your eye exam isn’t due soon,” said Samson.

This time Dog laughed.

Samson, though, had apparently meant the comment in earnest, and gave him a puzzled stare. “Sometimes I don’t know how to take you, Bastian,” he said.

“Well, General, pretty much what you see is what you get.”

Dog poured the water into the machine. “If it is a coup, we have to stay out of it.”

“I don’t know that we have any choice.” Samson came over as the coffee dripped through and took a cup down from the cupboard. Then he got one for Dog. “Damn cot wrenched my back.”

“I think the beds in Diego Garcia permanently twisted one of my vertebrae,” said Dog.

“Good coffee, Bastian,” said Samson, taking a cup. “Now let’s get those planes in the air.”

White House

1345 (2345 Romania)

PRESIDENT MARTINDALE SWIVELED HIS CHAIR TO THE LEFT

to get a better view of the video screen. The flat panel screen, some eighty-four inches diagonally, was a technical marvel, REVOLUTION

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thin and yet capable of supplying a picture several times sharper than a cathode ray tube.

Martindale’s main technology advisor predicted it would be standard fare in American homes within a decade, but for now, the secure conference room in the White House basement had the only one in existence.

A feed from Romanian television played on the screen, reporting that the defense minister had been gunned down in Bucharest. The body of his assassin—the newscaster called him “a criminal,” implying that he was a guerrilla—had been found nearby, apparently shot by the defense minister’s bodyguards.

“It’s a military coup,” said Secretary of State Hartman as the broadcast continued. “There’s no other explanation.”

He and Martindale had come directly from the reception, and were both still wearing their tuxedos. They were alone in the room with Jed Barclay, who was briefing them on the situation. Defense Secretary Chastain and Admiral Balboa, representing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were at the Pentagon, linked via a secure video conference line. National Security Advisor Freeman was across the hall in the Situation Room, trying to reach the Kremlin to get an explanation for the interference in Moldova.

“Are you sure the phone call the embassy received is le-gitimate?” said Chastain. “Anyone could have pretended to be Voda.”

“It came on the ambassador’s personal line,” said Hartman.

“And I trust his judgment implicitly. One hundred percent.”

“I didn’t mean he was lying, just mistaken.”

The embedded encryption mechanism made Chastain’s voice sound slightly tinny.

“But Art’s point is well taken,” said Martindale. “We have to keep it in mind as we proceed.”

The President rose and took a short stroll behind the large table at the center of the conference room, trying to focus his thoughts and work off his excess energy. His shoulder grazed 360

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the wall as he walked. At the beginning of his term, a set of photographs showing his predecessor at work had adorned the paneled walls. Martindale had had them removed, not because they were a distraction or even because of professional jealousy, but because the space was so narrow behind the chair that he often bumped into the photographs when taking walks like this.

“We have to help Voda,” said Hartman. “We simply have to.”

“Anything we do will be seen as interfering in Romania’s internal politics,” said Chastain. “And as a practical matter, there’s probably nothing we can do.”

“We can share the information that he’s alive,” said Hartman.

“If it’s him.”

Under other circumstances, the President might have been amused by the role reversal that his two cabinet ministers had undergone: Ordinarily, Chastain was in favor of intervening no matter how complicated the situation, and Hartman was for sitting on the sidelines no matter how clear the case for action. But over the last few days, Romania and the gas line had become so critical to Europe’s future that Martindale was hardly in a mood to be anything other than worried.

While he believed that all countries were best governed by democracies, he knew foreign democracies would not always act in America’s best interest. It could be argued that a stable Romania was much more important to the United States, and to Europe, than one with a weak and divided government. In the long run a takeover by the military might not be bad; for one thing, it would probably bring a change in spending priorities that would fund better defense to protect the pipeline.

Still, a military coup in Romania would kill any hope for NATO and EU membership, and add greatly to the sense of instability currently sweeping the continent. The new regime might also veto Martindale’s tentative arrangements with Voda to utilize bases in the south of the country, where Mar-

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tindale hoped to shift some forces from Germany to bring them closer to the Middle East and Iran.

“If we say Voda is alive and he turns up dead, we’ll be crucified,” said Chastain.

“But if he is alive and he needs our help,” countered Freeman, “we should give it.”

“How?” said Chastain.

“Dreamland.”

“Even Dreamland can’t take on the entire Romanian army.”

“Maybe not,” said Martindale, rejoining the conversation.

“But they could rescue Voda. If he’s alive. If they found him.”

Philip Freeman came into the room. He shook his head—the Russians had refused to communicate with him so far.

Martindale explained what he was thinking.

“Very dangerous, Mr. President,” said Freeman.

“Worth the risk,” said Hartman immediately. “We take him out of harm’s way, then let the Romanians sort it all out.

We’ll be the heroes.”

“Or the people caught in the middle, catching hell from both sides,” said the President. “But let’s see if we can do it.

Jed. Put us through to Dog.”

“General Samson is in charge of the detachment now,”

said Admiral Balboa, speaking for the first time since joining the conference.

“Yes, my mistake,” said Martindale. “Jed, get me the general. But make sure Bastian is there too.”

The Russian Embassy,

Bucharest

2345

“LOCUSTA HAS FINALLY MADE HIS MOVE,” SVORANSKY SAID

into the phone. “Now is the time to strike.”

The Russian military attaché put his elbow on the desk 362

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and reached for the vodka he had poured earlier. The only light in his office was coming from the flickering LEDs on his computer’s network interface, and from the machine that scrambled his telephone communications to Moscow.

“We have lost two planes already to the Americans tonight,” replied Antov Dosteveski. “Your entire program was too provocative.”

“The program came from the president, not me,” said Svoransky. “I am telling you—if we are ever to strike a lasting blow against the pipeline, the time is now. The country is in confusion. General Locusta has launched his coup and will not be in a position to stop your attack.”

“And the Americans?”

“Shoot them down! I cannot fly the planes for you!”

Svoransky slammed the phone down angrily. Dosteveski was a general in the Russian army, detailed by the Kremlin specifically to work with him on the project to disrupt the gas line. Like all too many generals these days, he seemed particularly risk adverse.

Svoransky took a strong swig of his vodka. In the old days, generals gave brave orders: shoot down American planes when they violated Soviet air space, sink a submarine in revenge for sinking one of theirs, crush piddling governments when they stood in the way. Now the men leading the Russian army were afraid of their own shadows.

Dreamland Whiplash Osprey

2347

THE OSPREY FERRYING DANNY FREAH AND SERGEANT

Boston back to Iasi was about twenty minutes from touchdown when the call came through from General Samson.

Danny took a headset from the crew chief and sat in one of the jump seats next to the cabin bulkhead.

“This is Freah,” said Danny, suppressing a yawn.

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“Captain, we have a particular tactical situation you may be able to assist with,” said Samson. “We’re going to need your input on it.”

“Sure,” said Danny. “We’re about twenty minutes shy of landing.”

“We want your ideas right now,” said Dog, coming onto the line. “Can you talk?”

“Um, sure. Why not?”

Danny listened as Dog described the situation. The president of Romania had apparently been attacked by troops posing as guerrillas and was believed to be hiding somewhere on his mountain property.

“President Martindale wants us to rescue him, as discreetly as possible,” said Dog. “But we don’t know exactly where he is. And the place is ringed by Romanian soldiers.”

“Can you formulate a plan to extricate him?” asked Samson.

“If I knew exactly where he was, maybe.”

“The ambassador is working on that,” said Samson. “In the meantime, prepare a plan.”

“Tell us what you need,” added Dog. “Equipment, other information. We’ll have it waiting for you when you land.”

Presidential villa,

near Stulpicani, Romania

2354

THE PUMP HOUSE WAS MORE OVERGROWN THAN VODA REmembered. Brambles covered about three-quarters of the front and side walls. A tree had grown so close that it appeared to be embedded at the back. Hiding here was out of the question.

“We’ll rest behind the tree,” he told his wife and son.

“We’ll rest, and then we’ll find another place.”

“Where, Papa?” asked Julian.

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“On the other side of the hill,” said Voda. He glanced at his wife. Her expression, difficult to make out in the shadows cast by the trees, seemed to border on despair.

“I’m going to scout ahead. Stay here with your mother,”