Текст книги "Dreamland"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

III

A matter of conscience

Two weeks later

Ethiopia

21 October, 0400

“ALL RIGHT MARINES, LISTEN THE FUCK UP.” GUNNERY Sergeant James Ricardo Melfi gave the small handpicked platoon one of his best sneers, even though it was difficult for them to see in the dim light from the nearby flare. “That means you too, Goosehead,” he told one of his sergeants. “Jack, you close your fuckin’ mouth or I’m puttin’ a boot in it. You want to yawn, you go to the dentist. All right, girls, here’s the deal. We come off the Chinook, we split into two squads, we hit the buildings the way we laid it out. We take out missile one and missile two, we call in the fuckin’ Air Force. We give the weenies two minutes to get here because they’re not Marine aviators.” He paused to allow his men the appropriate contemptuous snort, then continued. “At that point, we take the administration building, which should be defenseless, assuming the Air Force has done its job. If they have not, then Fire Team B, following my lead, will do it for them, wiping out the tank with their bare hands if they have to.”

Actually, they would be using a Russian-made SPG-9 piece of shit. The light antitank gun fired a 73mm missile that had a fairly good chance of destroying the ancient M47—but only if it hit it. The weapon wasn’t particularly known for its accuracy.

“Team A, meanwhile, will be taking care of the machine guns on the east side of the building. Prisoners and wounded to be evacuated to the Chinook rendezvous point, blah-blah-blah. You girls got that?”

“Oh, we got it, Sergeant Honey,” said the Team B point man, Jerry Jackson.

“Listen, Swishboy, you just make sure you don’t trip going out of the helicopter,” Melfi told him. “I’ll boot your black ass right into the sandbag post.”

“Oh, I wish you would, Gunny.”

The others laughed, and so did the sergeant, even as he shook his head. He thumbed toward the two green, unmarked Chinooks standing on the dirt pad behind him. The flare he’d lit behind him made the aircraft look almost purple in the early morning twilight. Looming beyond them were jagged hills, their sharp shadows and shapes making the place look like the far side of the moon, rather than the ragged hinterland of northeastern Ethiopia.

“Okay, let’s run this like we’re under fire, all right?” said Gunny. “Check your gear and move out.”

The Marines quickly gave their rifles and gear the once-over as they silently lined up to board the helicopters. They’d been issued plain-Jane M-16A1 rifles that had been bought on the black market. Besides the Russian antitank gun, they were carrying two French machine guns—AA52’s, which were actually quite good, though they used odd-sized bullets. The Chinooks that were to carry the Marines ostensibly belonged to Zaire. Their uniforms, which had an Army puke-green tint to them, bore no insignias or markings.

In Gunny’s opinion, these and a dozen other elaborate precautions designed to camouflage the group’s identity weren’t going to fool anyone if the Marines were actually called on to do the job they were practicing to do. In Gunny’s opinion, they’d be better off admitting they were Americans and, hot damn, taking a real Marine Expeditionary Force—Cobras, Harriers, CH-53’s, SAWs, M240’s, the whole shebang—against the damn Somalian SAM site and blowing the living shit out of it, foreign politics be damned.

But of course, Gunnery Sergeant James Melfi had been in the Marines long enough to not have an opinion in these matters. If Madcap Magician wanted to pretend they were merely pissed-off mercenaries hired by a pissed-off and jealous African dictator who wanted to get back in power in Somalia, so be it.

“All right, girls, let’s move it out,” said Melfi, prodding his men to board the double-bladed Chinook transport. Captain Peter Gordon, who’d been conferring with the pilots, frowned at him—he’d already bawled Melfi out twice today for using “inappropriate language.”

“Sergeant?” snapped the captain.

“Pussies are all hot and wet for you, Captain,” said Gunny with as straight a face as he could manage.

“HELOS BEARING THREE-NINER.”

“Confirmed.” Mack Smith glanced at the way marker on his INS and put his plane into a bank away from the path the two helicopters were taking. “Poison Flight, prepare to break. Let’s do this the way we drew it up.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

The four F-16’s now split into two different flights, Mack and his wingman staying southeast of the helicopters while the others flew north. Mack scanned the glow of instruments in the Viper cockpit, then snapped his APG-68 radar into ground-attack mode. He was ahead of schedule, but had had trouble picking out the target during last night’s exercise and wanted to take no chances this time.

“Helicopters should be putting down now,” he told his wingman, Captain Kevin Sullivan. Sullivan acknowledged. Packing a pair of HARM missiles, Sullivan was to watch for any radar indication that would indicate SAM activity. The HARMs, or High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, were designed to home in on the powerful radar systems used by SAMs. In this particular scenario, they were looking for an SA-3 battery, a medium-altitude, medium-range missile system protecting an installation on the northern coast of Somalia.

The simulated coast of Somalia. They were actually flying over Ethiopia.

“Ground team inbound,” snapped the Chinook pilot on cue. The secure, coded KY-58 com system rendered the voice almost metallic. “Taking fire. LZ is hot.”

“Poison One riding in,” said Mack. He snapped the sidestick hard, rolling into a dive from 18,500 feet. Mack gave a quick glance toward his radar-warning receiver, making sure he was not being tracked. He mimed hitting his master arm switch, working through his routine as if he were actually carrying the four GBU-24 laser-guided bombs and six five-hundred-pound “dumb” or unguided bombs they planned to use on the mission.

“SA-3 site is up,” said Sullivan. “Dotted. HARM away. You’re clean.”

In theory, the most serious antiair site Mack would face had just been taken care of before it could launch missiles.

Knife, meanwhile, had put his Viper into a steep dive toward the target. His targeting system in the HUD projected a diamond smack on the long wall at the base below; the wall was simulating a tank.

“Bombs away,” he said, pretending to pickle the iron off his wings. He jostled the wings up and down, as if simulating the g forces as three thousand pounds fell off, beginning to recover and position himself to fire the laser-designated GBUs on the ground team’s cue.

* * *

GUNNY FELT HIS KNEE TWINGE AS HE TROTTED TOWARD his two-man SPG team. He tried to ignore it, grumbling as the F-16 banked above.

“All right, tank is wiped out,” he told the men. “Get the machine gun. Come on, let’s go, let’s go. This ain’t a pleasure cruise. Move it!”

“Bam,” said the loader after the gunner mimed the weapon firing.

“Good, okay, okay,” shouted Gunny. The men were leaping over the wall, firing live rounds at the empty warehouse.

A fresh flare rose in the distance. Captain Gordon trotted up, a nightscope in his hand. There were only three night-vision binoculars assigned to the entire thirty-member assault team.

“Looking good, Sergeant,” said Gordon.

“Uh-huh,” said Melfi. His knee was really screaming now, but there was no time to baby it. With the first and second ring of ground defenses now wiped out, the six men on his right were supposed to move in and take out the surface-to-ship batteries installed along the railhead. The Silkworm missile launchers were being simulated by a pair of old Land Rovers at the far end of the warehouse complex. Gunny half-trotted, half-walked behind the fire team as they scrambled forward. As they bolted over the wall that had played the role of the tank, they suddenly stopped.

“What’s going on?” he yelled at them over the wall.

“Supposed to be an armored car,” hissed one of the men, reminding him of the scenario. “We’re hitting it with the LANTIRN for the F-16.”

“Shit. Right. Sony,” said Gunny, taking advantage of the break to walk around to the edge of the wall rather than struggling over it. Meanwhile, the fire team leader illuminated the pretend target so the F-16 above could hit it with GBU-24’s.

“Destroyed!” yelped the team’s corn specialist, who was communicating with the plane.

Gunny followed along as the team proceeded to the parking area where the Silkworms were supposed to be. The Marines moved quickly—a little too quickly, of course, since there was no one actually in front of them. The two demolition specialists set their charges on the Land Rovers.

“Move out, move out!” called the team leader.

Gunny retreated with the others. He barely made it back to the wall before the cars blew up.

“Okay, into the helicopter!” Captain Gordon screamed.

Gunny permitted himself a moment’s worth of satisfaction, staring at the flaming trucks. They’d made sure the gas tanks were full—might as well have one big boom. Then he walked back toward the LZ, where the helicopter was winding its props.

“HELO OUTBOUND,” SMITH TOLD HIS FLIGHT.

The other pilots checked in as the four F-16’s proceeded to their postattack rendezvous point. In theory, two HARM missiles, six five-hundred-pound iron bombs, and a total of eight GBU-24’s had been fired at the ground installation on the coast of Somalia, all scoring hits. Destroyed were two SA-2 and four SA-3 ground-to-air launchers, along with their radar vans and specialized crews. More importantly, two batteries of Silkworm antiship missiles had also been wiped out. Not to mention one tank, one armored car, and an unspecified number of Somies.

Fantastic. Now if the Iranians and Somalians would cooperate, the operation could proceed.

Smith squirmed in the F-16 seat. Canted back at thirty degrees to make it more comfortable in high-g maneuvers, it felt awkward to him, almost as if he were sitting in a dentist’s chair. He knew that eventually he’d get used to it, but that didn’t soothe the kinks in his shoulders.

Mack checked the time. Four-forty. They had plenty of time to go again, as planned. But before he could signal the helicopter, their ground controller broke in.

“Poison Flight, this is Madcap Magician. Return to base. Repeat, return to base.”

“One copies,” he said, recognizing the voice of ISA commander Major Hal Briggs.

Briggs ordinarily wasn’t up this early, let alone working the radio. And Mack knew the major was supposed to be in Saudi Arabia today, overseeing another operation only tangentially related to the crisis in Somalia.

Smith’s heart started double-pumping. “Okay, guys,” he told the others. “Let’s get back to base pronto.”

The White House

21 October, 0700 local

IN HIS SEVEN MONTHS AS SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE National Security Council, Jed Barclay had seen—seen, not met, not talked to—the President of the United States of America exactly twice before. And now today—now, this instant—he was giving him a personal briefing in the upstairs residence of the White House on the most important and dangerous international development since the Gulf War.

Hell, this was twenty times more dangerous, as he was endeavoring to point out between his nervous coughs and tremors.

The President’s Chief of Staff frowned as the word “hell” escaped from Jed’s mouth. Neither the President nor Ms. O’Day reacted. Jed pushed on.

“The Iranian mullahs have decided that the time is right for their Greater Islamic League. That is, of course, Islam as they interpret it, not as most of the rest of the world or even Iranians interpret it. But you’re all aware of that. The takeover of the Somalian government was the first step. Locating the Silkworm antiship missiles there was the second. They have a credible threat to shipping, and their ultimatum must be taken seriously. In a few months, they’ll have the aircraft carrier they’re building with the Chinese. Either the West—us basically—adds a one-hundred-percent tax to the price of oil and divides it among members of their alliance, or they will attack shipping. They’ve menaced two ships already.”

Jed paused, sensing that he was starting to hyperventilate. He had prepared a short sidebar to his presentation outlining the origins of some of the weapons systems known or suspected to have been shipped to Somalia and southern Iran, including a dozen improved SA-2Bs that seemed to have come from Yugoslavia. But it was superfluous and his audience was anxious; he took a long breath and moved on.

“We have several options. The first, of course, is negotiation—”

President Lloyd Taylor shifted in his seat. “Cut to the chase, son. The election will be over before your report is. What are the odds of the covert action working?”

Jed literally gulped as his mind shifted gears. He had prepared long arguments for and against each option, including the Madcap Magician operation the President had just referred to. That plan—removing the surface-to-ship and surface-to-air missiles in Somalia with a “sanitized” covert-action team—was, in fact, his recommendation. But he’d come expecting to have to argue for it, and only now realized that the President might actually already have discussed and considered it in great detail with Ms. O’ Day.

He coughed, then jumped to what he had planned as the conclusion to his presentation.

“By knocking out the missiles we can demonstrate a firm hand. Resolve, I mean,” said Jed. “At the same time, the diplomatic solution can proceed. The covert, I mean, Madcap Magician, is preferable because it can move quickly and provides at least a veneer of deniability. In any event, full military intervention would take days if not weeks to pull together, by which time the price of oil will have risen catastrophically. Madcap Magician has positioned and trained units under the Ironweed contingency; they need only a few hours’ notice. As far as negatives go, we’re working without real-time satellite coverage and the intel—”

“Odds of success,” prompted Ms. O’Day in a stage whisper.

“The simulations,” he said, “have shown a seventy percent chance of success.”

“Seventy percent?” said the President’s Chief of Staff. “I think it’s worth the risk,” said O’Day.

“What does our Harvard whiz kid think?” asked the President. He said Harvard the way someone who had graduated from Yale would.

“Well, sir.” Jed fumbled with his tie. He’d spent nearly as much time choosing the tie as memorizing the speech. “I, uh—I concur with Ms. O’Day. However, we have to—”

“However, you feel that the possibility of failure is higher than the models indicate,” said the President. “But that we should proceed anyway.”

“Well, see, it depends on what you’re measuring. There’s a built-in prejudice in any such model. I mean, I tried to keep it out of this one, but you have at least a three percent coefficient.” Jed gulped—Ms. O’Day had warned him, above all else, not to use the word “coefficient.”

“But the real issue here goes beyond the computer model.”

“I agree. Computer modeling of political situations is absurd,” said Taylor’s Chief of Staff.

“Well, that’s a bit far,” snapped Jed, momentarily forgetting where he was. “I mean, the thing is, we do need tools to quantify certain factors. See, my point is, Mr. President, we have to meet this aggressively. To a certain extent, we have to be willing to risk partial military failure. And we also have to anticipate adverse reaction from the other Arab states. Saudi Arabia will feel particularly vulnerable, as will Egypt. They’ll definitely bar their bases to us. We’ll end up having to rely on Israel for the military buildup, and that will have even more consequences. But if we do nothing—if we fold—the results will be disastrous. We should be prepared for a measured but aggressive response. When Libya joins the coalition—and I say when, not if—we should attack with everything we’ve got. There are a dozen contingency plans drawn up for that. At that point, the Greater Islamic League folds. I’m certain of that.”

“Where’d you get this punk kid?” Taylor growled to O’Day. “Excuse us,” he said harshly, dismissing Jed.

Confused and impotent, Jed slipped out of the room. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach.

Worse. Maybe hit in the head with a baseball bat.

He walked down the hallway in a daze. Ms. O’Day somehow materialized behind him. With a stern look, she motioned for him to follow her downstairs. He did so, despite the searing pain of his insides. Never in his life had he screwed up so badly.

And the thing was, he wasn’t even sure precisely how he had screwed up.

Too many coughs and stutters. Not enough respect. Mentioning the computer simulations, even though they were one of the reasons he was here. And above all, using that damn word “coefficient.”

Neither Jed nor his boss spoke until they were back in the NSC basement, walking toward her office.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry? For what?”

“I didn’t mean to, uh, make the President angry.”

O’Day laughed. “Jed, you may be a genius at foreign policy and computer science, but you have a lot to learn about Washington.”

“Washington?”

“There’s an election in three weeks, remember?”

“Well, yeah.”

Ms. O’Day shook her head.

“Was I supposed to check this with polls or something?” Jed asked. He had a vague notion that military action would hurt the President’s chances at getting reelected. On the other hand, rising gas prices would effectively kill them.

Wouldn’t they?

“Jed, Ironweed is proceeding,” said O’Day. “Madcap Magician has already gotten the okay to move. We’re ratcheting up for the reaction. Two carrier groups are moving into the Mediterranean for training missions. Everything you suggested is proceeding. Hopefully, it won’t be needed,” she added. The National Security Advisor pursed her lips. “But if it is, we’ll deal with it the only way possible—aggressively, but with a measured response. In the meantime, Cascade is being detailed to the Middle East to keep an eye on things.”

“Cascade?”

“My personal representative. Unofficially, of course. His assignment is to observe the routine training procedures, familiarizing himself with them.”

“But the President was angry. And he certainly didn’t authorize—”

“Keep that in mind,” she said sternly. “And forget about the election, okay?”

She glanced at her watch. “Your flight leaves from Andrews in a half hour. If you hustle, you may be able to hitch a ride on Marine One with the President’s wife.”

“The President’s wife?”

“Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t make the flight,” added O’Day, “even though she’s the only one on the passenger list. Probably just as well. She would definitely want you to change that tie. Good God, Jed. We have to go shopping when you get back.”

Dreamland

21 October, 0700 local

ORDINARILY, COLONEL BASTIAN DIDN’T HAVE MUCH USE for donuts, especially the crème-covered, choke-your-arteries kind. But Ax had insisted that they were mandatory morale boosters for early morning staff meetings, especially when the people gathering were going to hear things they didn’t like hearing. And so he’d let the sergeant go ahead and bring the damn things to the conference room, along with the coffee tankers and an oversupply of semi-hard bagels. It was a good thing too—they’d been going at this now for nearly an hour without letup.

Long enough for Dog to concede, if only to himself, that the donuts weren’t that bad an idea.

“Colonel, I’ve gone over the numbers at least ten times with the contractors,” pleaded Major Cheshire. “There’s just no way we can sustain the EB-52 project with this little money. The flight-computer system for the three new planes alone will cost ten million dollars.”

“There’s got to be a way,” said Bastian. “The budget committee is reluctant even to grant that much.”

“What’s another ten million to them?” groused Rubeo. “They probably spend more than that on lunch.”

“Each computer has to be designed specifically for the individual plane,” explained Cheshire. “The gallium-arsenic chips that control flight functions are made by the NSA plant, which sets the price. That’s where the expense comes in. It’s absurd, I know, but they’re padding their own budget.”

“Then do it another way,” said Bastian. “Can’t you use off-the-shelf parts?”

Cheshire shook her head.

“Can we make the chips ourselves?” he asked.

“Not without a fab,” said Rubeo, “which will cost billions. Colonel, you can’t nickel and dime Dreamland. It won’t work.”

“I wouldn’t call ten million dollars nickels and dimes,” said Bastian. “That’s a hell of a lot of money.”

“Colonel, wouldn’t it make more sense to tell the Congressmen these are the weapons systems that we need?” asked Cheshire.

Bastian sighed. She was right. On the other hand, that wasn’t the way this was going to work. The Air Force and DOD had already done that.

And under their scenario, Dreamland hadn’t made the cut.

O’Day wanted program figures and a new base budget so she could reinstate HAWC on a black line, with help from her Congressional allies. If Bastian had had more leverage—if he’d been a three-star general instead of a lowly lieutenant colonel—he’d be able to fight on a few other fronts and maybe get Dreamland back in the big game. But he simply didn’t have enough weight to counteract the generals who wanted Dreamland closed down because of the Ken James affair; O’Day’s strategy was the only play.

“Look, I’m recommending we proceed with the Mega-fortress program, which calls for developmental trials of several models,” Bastian told them. “But realistically, the only portion of the program that we can count on will be the tanker, because of JSF.”

“That’s the project that should be discontinued,” said Rubeo.

“Well, Professor,” Dog said, “if you want to call your local Congressman and tell him that, be my guest.”

“One Megafortress could do the job of four JSFs,” said Cheshire.

“Can it land on an aircraft carrier?” Bastian said.

“It wouldn’t have to. Its unrefueled range—”

“Look, I’m not going to argue about the JSF design. I agree with everything that’s been said. But I have to deal with reality.” Dog pushed himself back in his chair. “Now let’s get back to our agenda.”

ZEN TURNED THE CORNER INTO THE FLIGHTHAWK ground-level hangar so sharply he practically ran down Jennifer Gleason, who was making some adjustments to the on-board computer in the Hawk Two. She was bending over the front of the aircraft, her back to him; he found himself gazing at the soft, perfect curve of her hips.

“Hey, Zen,” she said, still bent over the U/MF-3. His chariot made it impossible to arrive anywhere incognito.

“Hey, yourself,” he said.

“Back from the colonel’s meeting so soon?”

“I sent Mike,” he told her.

“Poor Mike.”

“Yeah.” Mike Janlock, the resident BMI resins and airfoil-design specialist, was the senior scientist on the Flighthawk project and had been in charge of it before Bastian’s reorganization. Even if Zen hadn’t begged out of the colonel’s budget session because of the morning’s test flight, he probably would have asked Janlock to go along in his place. Jeff didn’t want to spend the time ducking the pitying glances everyone else would be throwing toward him. Besides, word was Bastian had already made his final decision on the Flighthawks—they weren’t making the cut. No amount of meetings or reports or well-reasoned arguments or even pity would change his mind about “robot” planes.

“Well, we’re not closed down yet,” said Gleason. “No, not yet.” Jeff grabbed the wheels of his chair. “You’re blowing off the preflight briefing?”

“No, sir,” said the young computer scientist. She glanced back at him. “We had the discrete-burst module reengineered last night, and I’m getting it in place. I’m almost finished.”

“You did it again?”

“The last one failed the shock test after you, uh, went home.”

“You should have called me.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, we did.”

“I was over in the visiting officers’ hall. I didn’t feel like going all the way out to Ewen,” he added lamely.

“Anyway, I’m just about done. Everybody else is inside.” Jennifer smiled at him, then went back to whatever it was she was doing. She’d tucked her long hair up under a white smock cap; a single strand draped down across her neck, hanging down over her shoulder. Her breasts pushed against her lab coat as she leaned into the machine; he could see the outline of her nipple against the fabric.

Stop, he warned himself, rolling forward to the small room they used to brief their missions.

Everyone was there—including Breanna, who was sitting at the far end of the table talking to Lee Ong. Ong was responsible for the Flighthawks’ physical systems and acted as the “mission boss,” coordinating the many details involved in the airborne tests.

So why was Bree here?

“Good morning,” said Zen, wheeling himself toward the front of the room. “Jennifer should be in shortly.”

He glanced around the room, carefully avoiding Breanna’s gaze. “Where’s Bobby?” he asked, referring to the usual pilot of the E-3 mother ship.

“Captain Fernandez has the flu,” said Breanna. “So does Kathy. I volunteered to fly Boeing in their place.” Zen snapped his head toward her.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” she said defensively. “Pete Brinks is coming over to copilot.”

“No, of course not, Captain,” he said. He turned to the others. “Captain Stockard flew Rivet intercept flights in RC-135’s when she was a teenager,” he told them. “Maybe she’ll entertain us with stories about eavesdropping on Russian air defenses if things get boring.”

“Maybe I’ll just roll Boeing through an invert if things get boring,” she said.

Zen felt his face starting to flush as the others laughed. He turned the floor over to Ong, then rolled along the far side of the room toward the coffeepot at the back. Coffee was one of the things he’d all but given up since the accident, but he didn’t want to sit out at the front where Breanna could stare at him.

It was possible that the two pilots assigned to fly Boeing were actually sick. And Breanna was at least arguably the next best choice on the base to take the mission: she had a lot of experience in the large jets. But it seemed to him like a hell of a coincidence.

Not to mention the fact that he should have been consulted about who would replace the other pilots. He hadn’t seen Mike this morning, nor had he talked to Ong. One of them must have made the call.

If Zen asked—when Zen asked—undoubtedly they’d give him the same line Jennifer had used. They’d tried calling him at home, blah-blah-blah.

And maybe they had. They could have called and gotten Bree. She would have instantly volunteered. That was Bree.

So maybe they weren’t conspiring against him. Even if it seemed that way.

He hadn’t gone home last night, and in fact hadn’t gone home for the past few nights. He was, in fact, avoiding her, trying to figure out what to do—or rather, how to do it.

Ong laid out the mission succinctly, setting the overall objective. They were going to put the Flighthawk through a series of low-altitude maneuvers to simulate a low-level penetration during an attack mission. The mother ship would follow behind it, first at five miles, then ten miles, then fifteen, and finally twenty. The extended distances were the point of the exercise; the Flighthawks had never been successfully controlled beyond seven miles while operating in Combat One, the secure communications mode.

Breanna then stood and reviewed her flight plan. Ordinarily this was, at best, a perfunctory part of the session. But Rap gave a precise, detailed briefing that covered everything from expected wind to fuel burn to radio rescue frequencies. She even included information about simulating an airdrop launch for the U/MFs, which the Boeing could not in fact handle. Jeff could tell the others were impressed that she’d done her homework.

Tough act to follow. He put down his coffee and began wheeling himself toward the front as she finished. With all the details already presented, his job was basically to ask if there were any questions and then give them a rah-rah to hit the door with.

He didn’t feel very rah-rah, though.

“We’ve gone over the courses and the distances,” he told them, faltering. “We, uh, we have complete satellite clearance through the morning. The Devil Canyon portion at the end of the flight is trickiest, because at twenty miles we have physical obstructions between the Boeing and the Flighthawk, assuming we’re at proper altitude—which of course we will be,” he added quickly, glancing toward Bree.

She was looking at him attentively, not glaring, not accusing, just watching.

“Look, I know it’s likely the project is going to be cut,” he said, looking back at the others. “There’s no reason to bullshit you guys. You’re too damn smart. There’s no political backing for the Flighthawks. You guys have been dealing with it for a hell of a lot longer than I have.”

He noticed one or two heads going up and down, saw a few frowns. Jennifer put her hands in front of her face as if she were going to cry.

“The thing is, we’re right. I know we’re right. The Flighthawks, UM/Fs, are the way of the future,” Jeff said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, as we all know, but somewhere down the line, these guys are going to be saving a hell of a lot of lives. They’re going to keep pilots from getting their butts blown off.” He laughed. “Not every pilot. But a lot of them. And this is what’s going to happen. They’ll mothball us, close us down. We’ll all go on to better jobs. Me, I’m thinking McDonald’s. Can I supersize that for you, sir?” he mocked.

They laughed.

“But I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Zen continued. “Few years from now, maybe two, maybe ten, maybe twenty—hell, I don’t know, the future. Somebody’s going to find our work on a shelf somewhere, and they’re going to realize we were right. They’re going to pull our reports out and they are going to save themselves a ton of work. Probably enough work to save one or two pilots in the process. So we have to get as much done before they pull the plug. Bastian’s going to save Dreamland,” he added, “by doing what he has to do. So we have to hang tough and do what we have to do.” Zen wheeled backward, starting for the door. “Let’s go kick some butt out there today, huh?”