Текст книги "Dreamland"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Magnus especially was angry. “I spoke to you less than twenty-four hours ago,” said the general who’d earlier congratulated him for his JSF report. Though influential, he was actually the junior member of the chew-out team. “You sure as hell could have given me a heads-up.”

“I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“You, Colonel, should not think,” Magnus snapped.

Bastian was being treated as if he were a green-gilled tadpole airman, not the commander of the country’s most advanced weapons-testing facility. He bridled, but he kept his cool, holding his tongue as the generals continued to berate him. Because he knew—and they knew—that in the end, he’d been right. The Megafortress had made it possible for the downed F-117 to be destroyed. And, according to preliminary intelligence, Whiplash had just barely missed snatching the pilots back—again, thanks largely to the Megafortress. One major Somalian base had been smashed, two Iranian MiGs had been shot down, and two others apparently forced to ditch. The Iranian plan for a pan-Islamic rebellion against the West was falling apart, largely because he’d decided to send an “experimental” aircraft as a transport.

Well, more or less.

“The bottom line here, gentlemen,” said Ms. O’Day, finally rejoining the conference call after the others had vented for nearly twenty minutes, “is that we have a continuing situation. Colonel Bastian has helped us considerably. You and I may not approve of what he has done—and undoubtedly we may consider sanctions in the future. But at the moment, well, let’s make some lemonade here. His aircraft and personnel are under operational control of the Madcap Magician commander. I believe that’s where they should stay—with the local commanders, who are in the best position to know what they need to get the job done. Now if you want to reverse that, it’s possible. I will carry the recommendation personally to the President. I won’t support it, but I will relay it.”

“We can relay it ourselves,” snapped General Gold, the Air Force Chief of Staff.

“Your call, Martin,” said O’Day.

Dog wished the conference call had been made via video. He’d give anything to see his bosses fuming at O’Day.

On the other hand, they might see him gloating. And that would be fatal. Assuming he wasn’t already cooked.

“I don’t think we should reverse it,” said Magnus. “Frankly, between you, me, and the lamppost, Tecumseh, I would have done the same thing.”

“Then you’d be out of line,” snapped General Alcane.

“In line, out of line, the bottom line is results. We’ve got them,” said Magnus. “What we need now is for Madcap Magician to pull the pilots out. If that takes Mega-fortresses and robot planes, I’m all for it.”

“What we need now is to nuke Iran,” said Alcane.

“If that’s your recommendation, I’m sure the President will want to hear it personally,” said O’Day coolly.

“Gentlemen, Ms. O’Day, there’s no need to discuss this further with Colonel Bastian,” said Gold. “Colonel, you have a difficult assignment at Dreamland. You’re trying your best and doing better than expected, but I realize that you may be slightly in over your head.”

“I hope not,” said Bastian.

“Brad Elliot is still well thought of around here,” continued Gold. “And he supports you.” Gold laughed. “Hell, he thinks you should have sent more. But—and this is an important but—we have a chain of command that must be followed. Granted, your situation is special. But from this moment on, you are to report directly to General Magnus. That pertains to everything—testing, operations, budget, latrines. Keep him informed. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Dog. Before he could say anything else, his end of the call was shut down.

“How’d you do?” asked Ax, barging in a millisecond after Bastian hung up.

“Well, I got my head chewed off and threatened with unspecified sanctions. Then about twelve layers of bureaucracy above us were cut away, and the only general in the Air Force who thinks I’m worth anything was just made my boss. The Chief even said I was doing a good job.”

“Not bad,” said Sergeant Gibbs. “You’re learning. Keep going and in a couple of weeks you may be ready to take over for me when I go on vacation.”

Ethiopia

23 October, 1820 local

THEY USED AN OLD SAC TRICK TO HELP RAVEN GET airborne with a full load of fuel, firing the Flighthawks in sequence with the main engines, as if the UM/Fs were rocket-assist packs. They then refilled the Flighthawks’ fuel tanks in-flight, siphoning off fuel from the Megafortress. Between the takeoff and the tanking procedures, Jeff felt drained; fortunately they had a lull before he was due to drop the Flighthawks.

“It’ll be easier next time,” said Gleason as he pulled off his heavy helmet. She was sitting next to him in the converted weapons station.

“You think so, don’t you?” Zen joked.

“I hope so.” Briggs had tried to keep Jennifer from flying the mission because she was a civilian, but her protests and Cheshire’s insistence had kept her aboard. Zen was glad she’d come.

“We are twenty minutes from Alpha,” said Cheshire. “You want to break open your snacks, go for it.”

“I thought I’d grab a brewski,” said Zen.

“Make mine a Sam Adams.”

“I’m in for a Chardonnay,” said Gleason.

Zen reached for his mission folder, laying out the latest overhead photos and the grid map that showed the area they would be surveying. Their search pattern looked like an upside-down W with a backward Z on the last leg; they would start about ten miles northwest of Malakal, heading for the Libyan border. The Flighthawks would fly ahead roughly five miles, about seven miles apart. While the Flighthawks would vary their altitudes between six and twelve thousand feet depending on conditions, Raven herself would stay above 25,000 in a warm and dry layer of air unlikely to produce contrails. The altitude would give the plane a considerable buffer against triple-A and shoulder-fired SAMs likely to be in the area. Anything larger would have to be jammed once detected; until then, they would fly without the powerful radars activated, hoping to get in and out unnoticed.

“Zero-five to Alpha,” announced Cheshire.

Zen looked up in shock—had he just dozed off? He glanced at his controls; they were indeed five minutes from the drop point.

“Initiate C3 self-test sequence on Hawk One,” he told the computer as he pulled on his helmet.

“Test sequence begun. Test sequence complete,” announced the computer.

“Initiate C3 self-test sequence on Hawk Two.”

The computer came back quickly, showing all systems in the green. Cheshire had already pushed the nose of the Megafortress upward; they would launch in a shallow dive, the pilot initiating a zero-alpha maneuver at release. The wind shear across the Megafortress wing surface would help accentuate the separation. They’d then repeat the process again for the second plane. Although technically it was possible to launch both at the same time, Stockard had never done so.

Zen selected Hawk One’s infrared view for his main visor screen, ghosting the flight instruments and data in it as if it were a HUD. The world looked dark and cold from the UM/F’s nose.

“Alpha,” said Cheshire.

“Computer, launch sequence on Hawk One. Countdown from five.”

The computer took up the chant, counting down in its mechanical voice as the engine ignited. Prodded by the Megafortress’s 480 knots of airspeed, the turbine spun hot and ready. Zen let the computer proceed as it automatically released Hawk One.

“Maintain programmed course,” he said after a quick review of the instrumentation indicated all systems were good. “Main viewer optical from Hawk Two. Begin Hawk Two launch sequence. Countdown from five.”

Hawk Two’s turbine stuttered. Zen nearly pulled the trigger button on his left joystick, which in launch mode automatically stopped the takeoff. But the graphics hit green and he let the Hawk go, this time maintaining personal control over the plane.

Good launches, quick and smooth. Better by far than either of his drops at Dreamland.

It was like flying, and it wasn’t. It was like riding in the back of a roller coaster, imagining you had control. In the dark, the total dark.

Plus with your left hand.

“Infrared view, Hawk Two,” he said, staying in Hawk Two’s cockpit. The screen snapped into a yellowish red haze. Hawk One’s tailpipe glowed at the top of the left end of the screen. Zen prodded Hawk Two gently to the right, gliding and quickly building momentum. He checked the instruments, then gave control to the computer, skipping over to UM/F. It was easier there, maybe because he was right-handed. Like playing baseball and batting from the right side, even though you’d learned to switch-hit.

“Computer, split top viewer, add optic feed from Hawk Two on left.”

The computer complied. He now had a panoramic view of the twilight. Both planes descended at near-Mach speed, running through clear, dry air.

“We’re green and growing,” he told Cheshire.

“Roger that.”

“Feeding infrared views to flight deck,” said Jennifer. The Flighthawk feeds came through the test system. She punched something on her console. “They’ll get the FLIR no matter what you select. I can feed them radar and optics too, if they ask.”

“Looking good back there,” Cheshire told them.

Baseball. This was ten times more difficult than switchhitting—you were going at it from both sides of the plate at once, facing two different pitchers. Zen felt as if his mind were splitting in half; sweat began creeping down his neck.

A Sudanese city—or what passed for one—loomed in the view projected from Hawk One as Zen began leveling the planes off at ten thousand feet. A group of low-slung concrete buildings sat above a shantytown of trailers, discarded metal containers, and ancient vehicles. The computer, working with parameters programmed by Jennifer, studied the different shapes for the possibility of an aircraft. Meanwhile, Raven’s weapons officer scanned for transmissions that might indicate their quarry’s presence.

“You have a shape on that northwest quadrant,” Jennifer said. “The computer’s not flagging it as hostile. Grid AA-4.”

“Yeah, I have the quadrant,” said Zen. Holding Hawk One steady toward the Sudanese city, he moved Two lower to check out the unexpected contact off its left wing. The sweat now began to pour in buckets as he rolled the plane into a tight dive, dropping it quickly to five thousand feet. The Hawk’s radar transmitted a detailed image back to the mother ship; Jeff left it to Jennifer to examine as he flew the plane low and fast across the edge of a Sudanese settlement that apparently had been obscured by clouds on the photos. He brought the Hawk lower, picking up speed; he straightened his wings now at five hundred feet, three hundred, sensors blazing.

RWR clear. No SAMS, no defenses.

A building and a shed, if you could call them that. Neither was as big as a cottage back home.

A bus lumbered ahead. Zen began to pull off, then saw something flash to his left. Not sure what it was, he stayed on his course, accelerating.

Another vehicle, this one an ancient pickup. He nailed his throttle down, streaking past before rocketing back upward, hewing right. He pushed his left hand toward him, riding Hawk Two closer to the other half of his mind, which was just passing the Sudanese city.

“Whoo, that was fun,” said Jennifer. “Initial analysis clean. I’m playing the optical sensors back to recheck those buildings.”

Zen shut her out. It was difficult enough being in the Flighthawks.

It hadn’t seemed this hard when he flew them before the accident. And yet he’d been controlling three planes then—his own as well as the two UM/Fs.

His head felt like it was going to break in half.

“Clean,” announced Jennifer. “No visible life-forms, Dr. Spock.”

When Zen didn’t respond, she added, “Our ten-year mission, to explore new worlds—”

“Yeah, I got the joke,” he snapped.

“Sorry.”

Zen saw a small truck off the side of the road, then another.

Hawk One screen, right? They were starting to blur together, despite the purple separator line.

The trucks weren’t significant, he decided. The Hawks crossed the Wadi al Madi, a trench that emptied into the Nile much further to the east. He couldn’t tell if there was water in it or not as he passed, holding both Flighthawks at eight thousand feet.

They were invisible, dark birds in the desert night, riding the wind. He selected both FLIRs in the top screen, trying to get more comfortable. They came up toward the east-west railroad line that perforated Sudan; he took the Flighthawks down it to nearly the limit of their safe separation distance before edging back.

Maybe he shouldn’t think of them as if they were two planes. Maybe they were really one, a coordinated being, an extension of himself. Like his arms or eyes, working together.

There was a rhythm; once he found it he’d be fine. Once he found it.

“We’re coming to Bravo,” Cheshire told him. “We’ll follow your turn.”

“Roger that, thank you, Raven,” Jeff said.

“Hawk Two at Bravo,” the computer told him.

Though a basic element of formation flying, coordinating a parallel turn was tricky, and even experienced pilots could have trouble doing it. It was not easy to hold position, and the pilots had to coordinate their maneuvers carefully. In some ways it was even harder with the Flighthawks, since he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—use the throttle to cover any mistake. But Zen didn’t need to; he had the planes moving in tandem, perfectly balanced against each other, working like the hands of a prizefighter prodding his enemy. He came around to the new bearing southeastward with the Hawks nailed on beam precisely seven miles apart. He allowed himself a brief exhale of congratulations and relief.

A boxer probing his opponent. This one was a cipher, without noticeable weaknesses. The desert went on forever, admitting no secrets. Finding Smith in it would be impossible.

If it weren’t for the fact that there were other people with Knife, Zen wouldn’t mind missing him completely.

The idea snuck up from behind, curling around his spine as if it had risen through the sweat beneath his flight suit.

He hated Smith.

Because of the accident? Or because of Bree?

He wanted her back. And not to be friends. He was wrong about the divorce. He had to fight for her.

How the hell did you do that in a wheelchair? He couldn’t even do his goddamn job without sweating buckets.

A herd of cattle materialized on the right side of the viewer, crowding out his thoughts about his wife, bringing him back to the Hawks. The warm bodies milled back and forth in the rapidly cooling desert air. There were some tents, a vehicle.

“Nomads,” said Jen.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged.

Something moved in the far corner of the left end. Zen pushed his attention toward it, realized he was seeing a gun emplacement.

“Ground intercept radar active,” warned the computer. Information spat at him—ID’ing a pair of twin 35mm GDF antiaircraft weapons controlled by a Contraves Skyguard system. The Swiss-built system was relatively sophisticated, though its maximum range was well under twenty thousand feet. According to the threat screen, the Flighthawks had not been locked, though the radar was active.

“I’m going to get close and personal,” he told Cheshire after filling her in.

“Copy. We’ll hold to our flight plan.”

Zen looped Hawk Two into a turn about three miles from the radar source. He changed the main viewer from optics to FLIR. It was a military installation. The guns were mounted at the northern edge of a complex that included several dug-in shelters and four tanks. Several vehicles were parked at the southern end; the Flighthawk camera caught a soldier on guard duty smoking a cigarette. The UM/F passed within two miles of the radar unit without being detected.

“No aircraft,” said Jennifer.

“Yeah,” said Zen, concentrating on returning the Flight-hawk to its briefed flight path. The fact that the antiaircraft weapons used a Western-made radar could mean that it was a rebel unit opposed to the pro-Libyan government—or not. In any event, their Anotonov didn’t seem to be there.

Exhausted, Zen returned to the programmed course. He had to have a break; reluctantly he turned the controls over to the computer and reached down for his Gatorade. He was so thirsty he drained it and had to reach for his backup, sitting in a case on the floor by his feet.

“Hard work, huh?” asked Jennifer.

“Yeah.”

“You’re doing good.”

“Yeah.”

“You want some advice?”

“Advice?”

“You’re doing a lot of the routine stuff the computer can handle,” said Gleason.

Anger welled inside, but before he could say anything, Gleason reached over and touched him on the shoulder. It felt electric, almost unworldly—his mind was still out with the Flighthawks, as if he were actually in their cockpits.

“You’re doing fine, Major,” she said. “Let the computer do the routine stuff. That’s what it was designed for. You do what’s important. You’re trying to control both planes at the same time.”

Zen glanced at the instrument screens, making sure the UM/Fs were operating fine, then pushed up the helmet to see her.

“It’s almost like you’re afraid the computer’s going to take your job,” Jennifer said. “I know we haven’t had a chance to run many flights with two planes since you’ve been back, but you’re getting twitchy. You’re not letting the computer fly like you used to.”

“It’s my job to fly them,” he told her.

“Absolutely,” said the scientist. “But you can’t split yourself in half. You can trust the computer.”

“I do trust it,” he said.

Jennifer smiled. Jeff wasn’t sure what to say. In the old days, before the accident, had he let the computer do more?

Maybe.

Maybe he didn’t trust it because of the accident. And maybe she was right—maybe he was worried it would take his job, leave him with nothing to do but sit in a corner and gather dust all day.

Wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t a fucking cripple, legs be damned.

“Zero-ten to Delta,” said Cheshire, announcing the upcoming turn.

“Flighthawks acknowledge,” he told her, pulling the visor back on. “Zero-ten to Delta.”

“Scopes are clean, everything is looking very good,” said Cheshire. “Flighthawks are doing a slam-dunk job, Zen.”

“Yeah.”

“I know it’s needle-in-a-haystack country down here,” she added. “But the Navy planes have the most likely territory. Nothing lives down here except sand.”

Zen got ready for the new turn. Cheshire was right—the ground they were covering hadn’t seen rain in eons. Devoid of water, there were only a few sparse settlements, and no nomads to speak of.

Except for the ones they’d seen a short while before, who’d been parked in the middle of sand.

Grazing animals over sand?

“Bobby, do me a favor, would you?” he asked the navigator. “Look at where our nomads were. They over a water hole?”

The navigator took a few minutes to get back to him. “Not on the map, but maybe those guys know where the water is.”

“Yeah. We got a satellite map that detects underground water sources?”

“What do you think this is, the library?” said the navigator with a laugh.

“Just checking.”

“There’s got to be water there,” said Bobby. “The cattle have been there for at least two days.”

“Two days?”

“More. They’re on the U-2 photo and the satellite image Madcap Magician gave us, which is at least three or four.”

Stationary nomads over a dry patch of land.

“Computer, hold Hawk One on the preset course,” said Zen. “Hawk Two, power to ninety percent.”

“What’s up, Zen?” asked Major Cheshire, who’d heard his conversation with Bobby.

“Stationary nomads—sounds odd to me,” Jeff told her. “I think I can just skirt close enough to them on your programmed course.”

“I’ll shift two degrees and it’ll be easy.”

“Make it one and I can keep Hawk One where it is.”

“I told the computer to plot a new one,” said Jennifer. “Just in case.”

“Input it,” Zen told her.

“I-Band interceptor-type airborne radar detected, active, source beyond range,” yelped Bobby over the aircraft’s interphone. The Megafortress’s passive detectors had picked up two MiG-25’s at nearly fifty thousand feet. “These babies are running, not walking,” he warned. “Mach 2. We’ll be within their theoretical detection envelope in thirty seconds. We can jam at will.”

The Soviet-era active radars on the MiGs had a detection range of roughly fifty miles. But with its stealthy profile, it was likely—though not certain—that the MiGs wouldn’t pick up the Megafortress until they were less than ten miles away.

Which would happen in two minutes at present course and speed. The Flighthawks, on the other hand, were too low and too small to be detected. Their own threat screens, powered by less capable sensors, were blank; they hadn’t picked up the MiGs.

The I-band radars used by early models of the Soviet-era MiG-25 had been compromised years before; Raven’s ECM gear would have no problem defeating them. But that would alert not only the MiGs, but potentially the people they were looking for, that they were in the air. It was better to try to pass undetected.

“Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” ordered Cheshire. “We’ll hold on to our ECMs and missiles until they’re necessary. Bobby, watch their detection envelope for us.”

“Bandits are positively ID’d as MiG-25’s, probably with Acrid AA-6’s,” he reported. “They’ll be in range to see us—let’s call it ninety seconds. Ducking them’s a crapshoot, Major.”

“Hawk Leader?”

“I say duck them,” Zen said. “Get down in the ground clutter and odds are they’ll go right by. Even if they catch a sniff, it’ll take them time to find us, let alone lock. In the meantime, I can check that camp.”

“I agree. We’ll chance it. Hang tight,” said Cheshire, rolling the Megafortress. “Way down.”

Zen told Hawk One to double back and initiate one of its preset routines, closing on Raven to fall into a trail off the mother plane’s right wing. Then he concentrated on Hawk Two.

Nothing but desert showed in the FLIR screen. His body started to shove sideways with the Megafortress’s evasive maneuvers; it felt odd with the Flighthawk flying level. His bearings started to slide out of whack, his equilibrium upset.

Zen fought the creeping dizziness, pushing the nose of the Flighthawk down. As he dropped below three thousand feet, voices began shouting above and behind him—Cheshire and the crew barking instructions back and forth, the MiGs coming on. The UM/F’s threat screen plotted the I-band radar’s detection envelope as a wavy line of yellow floating above it.

An ocean of hot orange appeared in front of him, the cattle or whatever in the camp moving around. The shadows moved like silent eddies.

A trio of tents sat to one side. Something else, relatively hot, was half buried in the sand, or maybe behind the sand.

Or sandbags with a tarp.

Optics. Nada.

Back to FLIR. A truck motor maybe?

He was past it. One of the MiGs was almost directly overhead. The threat screen went completely red, then blank.

He could pop up behind the SOB and nail him. The Libyan would never know what hit him.

“Alert—approaching maximum operational range,” warned the computer.

Zen pitched the Flighthawk back toward the Megafortress. He lost sight of the camp.

“They’re turning. They’re behind us,” Bobby warned. “They may know we’re here. We were close. Suggest we break and run.”

“Negative,” said Cheshire calmly. “Staying on course.”

Zen pushed the others away, pushed himself back into his own cockpit—he banked hard in the direction of his target.

Nothing. The FLIR blanked with interference—sand or something, a fog of some type, was being kicked up, and that was all he could see.

An aircraft?

“Zen!”

Something edged out of the sandstorm, lumbering into the air.

He pushed to follow. He was the Flighthawk now, not its pilot—his body moved with the plane, his head, his eyes, his hands, even his dead legs.

“Alert—approaching maximum operational range,” warned the computer.

“Radar to scan and search, low-altitude, maximum aperture,” demanded Zen. “Synthetic radar view.”

“ Disconnect in five seconds at present course. Auto-recovery to mother ship. Fail-safe level one. Three seconds to level two. ”

He saw it for a second, the heat source hot now, then buried in the cloud of dust. An aircraft, definitely an aircraft.

“ Two, one— ”

Zen pulled the joystick back, ducking just close enough to the Megafortress to retain control. He lost the aircraft that had taken off from the Bedouin camp in the ground haze. The Flighthawk was barely twenty feet from the ground and the computer began spitting error codes.

“You have to get higher and closer,” Jennifer broke in. “We’ve lost the laser-communications mode completely, and the radio error coefficient’s climbing. Jeff! Jeff!”

He was out there with it, beyond the tether. He went back to the FLIR view screen and saw the Pchelka dead ahead, its two antiquated engines churning a whirlpool of dust as it lumbered over the dunes.

His thumb clicked on the weapon-select button, toggling over to arm, then designate.

He didn’t want to shoot it down.

Fly over it. Force it down.

Zen eased back on the throttle, nudging the weapon-select toggle back to safe as he began to pull the stick back, gaining altitude even as his forward airspeed slowed.

And then everything went blank, the command link snapping.

“Shit!” he cursed.

“I know, I know,” yelled Jennifer. “It’s okay, it’s okay; it dropped into fail-safe. Damn. We’re maneuvering too violently at too far a distance. We’re under attack.”

Zen pushed his head back, realizing for the first time that they were under fire.

“TAKE THE SON OF A BITCH THAT FIRED THE MISSILES OUT,” Cheshire ordered as she snapped the Megafortress onto a new course heading. The Libyans were somewhat better armed than they had been led to believe—semiactive radar missiles and Lark look-down radar. But they had no clue what they were up against; Raven’s ECMs quickly jammed the four missiles that had been fired—and every radar within two hundred miles for good measure.

She still had her hands full. The interceptors could go nearly three times as fast as the Megafortress with its antique power plants. And they were behind her—if they closed fast enough, they could use their heat-seekers, which were immune to Raven’s ECMs.

As the lead MiG closed, Cheshire swooped to the left, hoping to get the enemy planes to overtake her and provide an easy rear-quarter shot for her own weapons officer.

No dice. One of the MiGs dropped back while the other cut south. Cheshire tried turning into the second interceptor, only to nearly collide with one of the Flighthawks.

“Zen, Jesus!” she managed as she punched the plane lower.

“Targeting MiG. Bay,” called the weapons officer. “Fox One!”

He’d launched a Scorpion radar missile.

ZEN CURSED TO HIMSELF AS HE BROUGHT HAWK ONE back under control. The flight computer had become confused by the mother ship’s maneuverings, almost fatally. He had to go to bird’s-eye view on the main screen to sort it all out, dropping speed on both planes. To make things worse, his left forefinger began to cramp; he went to voice control on the throttle for Hawk One. He needed the computer’s help to get both planes in their set positions, a half mile behind the Raven’s wings. By that time, the Pchelka was well off the screen.

“Splash one MiG!” declared the weapons officer. His nickname was “Deadeye,” the kind of moniker often applied ironically. From today on, it’d be said with respect.

“Second MiG going west. He’s running hot. My guess is he’s turning tail back for Libya,” reported the radar/ navigator. “Whoo—looks like he’s got some friends. More contacts, well north. Unidentified, but definitely not friendlies.”

“Okay, folks, this is where we round up our horses and head out of town,” said Cheshire.

“Major, that was the Pchelka,” said Zen.

“I’ve already radioed their location and direction,” replied Cheshire. “They’re headed into the Navy search sectors.”

“Shit. They’re miles from the nearest patrol route.”

“I have no control over that, Jeff.”

“We can’t leave them now.”

Cheshire didn’t answer. But he could tell she wasn’t turning the plane around either.

“Nancy, damn it.”

“Zen, at this point, there’s nothing we can do. Now get those UM/Fs in tow. They’ve got to be at bingo by now. You run out of fuel and there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” said Zen.

“Like what?”

Like I’m a moron and a fucking cripple, he thought—but he kept his mouth shut. She was right about the planes being at “bingo”—a theoretical turnaround point computed to give them enough fuel to return home without running the fuel tanks dry.

“Bandits have turned around. They’re going north. Still looking for us. We’re clean,” reported Bobby. “That Pchelka’s off my screen too.”

“Computer, combat trail, standard offset,” Zen told the Flighthawk computer.

Sudan

23 October, 2000 local

“SO, MAJOR, IT IS YOU AND I THEN,” SAID THE IMAM, standing at the edge of the camp. The Pchelka, with Gunny and Howland, had vanished in the distance. Overhead, the warplanes rumbled; Mack saw a flash in the distance.

“Have you ever been to Tripoli, Major?” asked the Imam. “It is a beautiful city, looking out on the ocean.”

“That where we’re going?”

“Our journey is long,” said the Imam. “That is but one stop.”

“I hope we’re not walking.”

The Imam said nothing. As the jets above cleared,

Mack heard the low drone of a helicopter approaching. “What’s going to happen to them?” Knife said. “They will be put on trial, then shot.”

“Same as me?”

“Not yet,” the Imam said. “My superiors have taken an interest in you.”

“Why?” Knife’s ears started to ring—this didn’t sound good.

“At first it was suggested you be punished for attacking one of our soldiers while a prisoner in captivity, which, as you know under the Geneva Conventions, is attempted murder, a serious offense. But then we received some interesting information. For some unknown reason, Major Mack Smith, you seemed to disappear from the Air Force roster for a long time. You were flying F-15’s for a time, then you disappeared, then you reappeared flying F-16’s. Odd.”

The Iranian delighted in seeing Knife swallow nervously.