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End Game
Dale Brown
Jim DeFelice
The eighth in the series of high-tech thrillers centred on Dreamland – a top-secret USAF weapons research centre – from the acclaimed author of ‘Act of War’ and ‘Plan of Attack.’While the Dreamland team is perfecting their latest weapon, code-named ‘End game’, an electromagnetic bomb that can knock out any electric device for miles, an Islamic terrorist cell is conducting covert attacks in the Arabian Sea. Targeting Indian ships and oil facilities, the terrorists seem to be escaping into thin air. India suspects that their long-time enemy Pakistan is behind the attacks and tensions between the two nuclear powers reaches breaking point. Meanwhile China is patrolling the sea, eager to flex the muscle of its new fleet of warships, and is drawn into the mix when one of its ships is mysteriously attacked. All-out war between the three countries appears imminent unless the Dreamland team can find out who is really behind the attacks. And their new End Game weapon may be the only hope of avoiding catastrophe.
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
End Game
WRITTEN BY DALE BROWNAND JIM DEFELICE
Contents
Cover (#ub64f5ee8-ee8e-58da-a5b3-347c1cf2890c)
Title Page (#u5f769a22-7e4a-5c72-9e06-58dde3b90c0b)
Prelude: Dreams (#ulink_a0f6a815-5980-5dc6-9bd9-e65165a32bcd)
I: Test Run (#ulink_aa5b7fe9-281f-5768-8b00-1e3f8d1d1ee4)
II: Impossible! (#ulink_037eedd7-b3e1-576d-a68d-3bc381ca5d70)
III: Be Boarded, or Be Sunk (#litres_trial_promo)
IV: Monkeys in the Middle (#litres_trial_promo)
V: Fires of Hell (#litres_trial_promo)
VI: Catastrophic Events (#litres_trial_promo)
VII: Coming to Their Senses (#litres_trial_promo)
VIII: Inevitability (#litres_trial_promo)
IX: End Game (#litres_trial_promo)
X: Tai-shan (#litres_trial_promo)
XI: Fates Unknown (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Dreamland
Duty Roster
LIEUTENANT COLONEL TECUMSEH ‘DOG’ BASTIAN
Dreamland’s commander has been mellowed by the demands of his new command – but he’s still got the meanest bark in the West, and his bite is even worse.
MAJOR JEFFREY ‘ZEN’ STOCKARD
A top fighter pilot until a crash at Dreamland left him a paraplegic, Zen has volunteered for a medical program that may let him use his legs again. Can Dreamland survive with a key member away?
CAPTAIN BREANNA ‘RAP’ STOCKARD
Zen’s wife has seen him through his injury and rehabilitation. But can she balance her love for her husband with the demands of her career … and ambitions?
MAJOR MACK ‘THE KNIFE’ SMITH
Mack Smith is the best pilot in the world – and he’ll tell you so himself. But filling in for Zen on the Flighthawk program may be more than even he can handle.
CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH
Danny commands Whiplash – the ground attack team that works with the cutting-edge Dreamland aircraft and hightech gear.
JED BARCLAY
The young deputy to the National Security Advisor is Dreamland’s link to the President. Barely old enough to shave, the former science whiz kid now struggles to master the intricacies of world politics.
LIEUTENANT KIRK ‘STARSHIP’ ANDREWS
A top Flighthawk pilot, Starship is tasked to help on the Werewolf project, flying robot helicopters that are on the cutting edge of air combat. Adjusting to the aircraft is easy, but can he live with the Navy people who are in charge of it?
CAPTAIN HAROLD ‘STORM’ GALE, USN
As a young midshipman at Annapolis, Gale got Army’s goat – literally: he stole the West Point mascot just before the annual Army-Navy game. Now he’s applying the same brashness to his role as commander of the Abner Read. An accomplished sailor, the only thing he hates worse than the enemy is the Air Force.
Dreamland
Weapons Systems
MEGAFORTRESS
Refurbished B-52s, complete with new skin, new wings and tail section, new engines and new sensor systems. Besides generic versions, Dreamland flies EB-52s that carry AWACS and ground-surveillance radar, and others that carry electronic warfare and snooping equipment.
FLIGHTHAWK
Unmanned fighter aircraft typically flown from the lower weapons bay of the Megafortress. Depending on its configuration, a Megafortress will carry two or four of the robot aircraft.
WEREWOLF
Robot helicopters capable of being controlled from long-range through Dreamland’s dedicated satellite system. The versatile Werewolves look like miniaturized versions of the Russian Kamov Ka-50 Hokum helicopter gunship.
PIRANHA
A joint Navy/Air Force unmanned underwater probe, typically launched from a Megafortress on an ocean surveillance mission. Difficult to detect, the Piranha is often used to shadow enemy submarines.
DESTROYER – LITTORAL DD(L)
The Navy’s experimental destroyer, designed for warfare near coastlines. Considerably shorter than a conventional destroyer, the ship lies low in the water, its hull and superstructure angled to deflect radar waves. DD(L)s carry a lethal combination of Harpoon and Standard missiles, along with torpedoes and a sophisticated canon.
SHARKBOAT
The modern version of the classic PT boat, designed to operate with littoral warships such as the DD(L) 01 Abner Read.
Prelude: (#ulink_44f5684c-565e-5cba-820f-ac1ceea2eb2e)
Dreams (#ulink_44f5684c-565e-5cba-820f-ac1ceea2eb2e)
Allegro, Nevada (outside Las Vegas) 5 January 1998 0310 (all times local)
He’d had the dream so many times it was more something he remembered than something he invented. Tiny bits of reality blurred into a jumbled progression that began and ended the same way. The beginning: running up Meadowview Street back to his condo, pursued by the sun. This was not a normal sun – he felt its stretching fingers grope his body, burning holes in his arms, neck, and face.
The end: the black wing of a redtail hawk sailing suddenly across and through the windscreen of his aircraft.
Neither of those things had an exact parallel in real life, even when the grotesque distortions were stripped away. Zen had gotten back to the house from his run well before the sun rose, and the robot plane that caused the air accident struck well behind the cockpit, snapping off his tailplane. But the logic of the dream crowded out history, sometimes even when he was awake.
The middle of the dream was always different. It usually involved bits and pieces of recent events, sometimes from sorties he’d flown for Dreamland, but more often just things that happened during the day. Often his wife Breanna was in the dream, talking to him or flirting or even making love. Today she was cooking him breakfast and complaining about the people who owned the condo downstairs. Their baby was screaming at the top of its lungs, keeping them awake.
‘How can you let a baby cry like that?’ she asked. ‘Let’s have a barbecue.’
The scene changed from their kitchen to a friend’s backyard patio. Instead of working the stove, Breanna was working the grill. When she turned away from it, Zen saw that it was piled high with wood.
‘Too smoky,’ he said, sitting in the cockpit of his F-15 rather than his wheelchair.
It’s too soon for the dream to end, he thought. But he coughed, and he was awake.
He still smelled smoke. Real smoke, from burning wood. The baby was still crying.
A baby the people downstairs didn’t have.
Not a baby, the smoke alarm.
‘Bree!’ he yelled, jerking up.
She wasn’t beside him.
‘Bree! Breanna!’
Zen started to get out of bed. His dazed brain forgot he was paralyzed, as if that fact belonged only to the dream. He tumbled to the floor.
Just as well – thick smoke curled above his head. He coughed, nearly choking.
Someone else coughed in the bathroom down the hall.
Breanna, his wife. ‘Help me!’ she cried.
Flames shot up from the floor ahead, illuminating the pitch-black condo. Zen pushed forward despite the heat and flames jumping in front of his face.
Part of his mind was still back in the dream. Was he dreaming? What was dream, and what was real?
He remembered getting into the airplane on the last day he walked, whacking his shin on the side of the cockpit as he got in, thinking the bruise was going to hurt for weeks.
‘Help me!’ cried Breanna.
He pushed his head next to the carpet and kept going. The bathroom door was closed.
‘Open the door, open the door!’ he yelled.
He heard a sob, but the door remained closed. Pitching himself to the right, he reached up with his left hand and pulled down on the handle. Smoke flooded into the room. It smelled like metal being incinerated. Zen started to cough and couldn’t stop.
‘Breanna!’ he yelled. ‘Where are you? Bree? Bree? Bree?’
He lay on his back as the flames climbed over him. He felt himself falling as the room collapsed.
Zen woke with a shudder so violent the bed rattled. It had been a dream, a new variation of the familiar nightmare.
He reached instinctively for his wife, but she wasn’t there. He remembered now: She was in Chicago with relatives; she’d intended on flying back last night but had been snowed in, her flight canceled.
Just as well, Zen thought, squirming to get himself upright in the bed. He was still shaking from the dream. He wouldn’t have wanted her to see him like this.
But she’d seen him worse, much worse. He wished she were here, to touch.
To save.
If there had been a real fire, she would have been the one saving him, a notoriously deep sleeper.
And a cripple. A fact that didn’t vanish when he opened his eyes.
That would change. He’d walk again. He was starting his treatments today, experimental treatments, but they would give him his legs back.
Maybe that was what the dream meant, why the ending had changed. He needed his legs back to save his wife, to be with her for real.
Zen ran his fingers over his scalp and glanced at the clock at the side of the bed. It was only a few minutes past three. But there was no way he was going back to sleep now. If Breanna were beside him, he might have managed it, might have hugged her warmth and shaken off the memory of the nightmare, but without her, the only thing to do was get out of bed and get some coffee, check the overnight sports scores and get a jump on the day.
I (#ulink_84db9a24-cd33-5e97-86b8-441488e3b0f4)
Test Run (#ulink_84db9a24-cd33-5e97-86b8-441488e3b0f4)
Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia 5 January 1998 1914
