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‘I think he figured out how to control it,’ said Liu, who was next to Danny.
‘Or at least confuse it,’ answered Danny.
‘If he uses the Osprey to blast a path through the minefield, the computer simulators won’t understand,’ said Liu. ‘He’ll still be blown up by the proximity fuses. But you’d have to give him points for figuring it out.’
‘Sure, but that’s not what he’s doing,’ said Danny as Boston began running toward the rear of the Osprey.
‘Holy shit,’ said Liu.
Boston leaped into the air and caught the rear tail of the variable-rotor aircraft. His legs pitched forward and his ruck hung off his back, but the sergeant managed to hang on.
Even though the massive rotors were locked above the aircraft, they still kicked up a hurricane around the aircraft. Boston shook like the last leaf on a maple tree in a nor’ easter blizzard as the aircraft pushed ahead toward the apron area beyond the minefield.
The trooper felt his fingers numbing as the MV-22 moved ahead. They were cold, frozen even – his right pinkie began to slip, then his ring finger, then his thumb.
He leaned his head down, trying to see exactly where he was.
Not even halfway across.
Hang on, he told himself.
The aircraft bucked upward. Boston realized he’d miscalculated about how close to the ground it flew once it cleared the minefield – from where he’d stood, it didn’t seem as if it rose at all, but now he realized it must go up at least a few feet, and a few feet were going to make a very big difference when he jumped.
He could get it to dip again by tossing one of the reflectors. But to toss one – he had two more in his pocket – he’d have to hold on with one hand.
Could he?
No.
Besides, the shock of the guns would easily throw him off.
The Osprey began turning to the left. The shift in momentum was simply too much, and Boston lost his grip. He tried to relax his legs so he could roll when he landed, but it happened too fast; his heels hit the ground and he fell back hard. His backpack took a little of the sting out of the fall, probably just enough to prevent a concussion as it slipped upward on his back. He rolled and flipped over, then hunkered against the hard surface of the ancient lakebed, anticipating the screech and growl of the simulated mine.
But he heard nothing. Boston raised his head. Shit, he thought, I blew my eardrums out.
Then he heard the Osprey thumping in the distance. He saw one of the spiked balls lying about fifteen feet away – just far enough not to go off.
Slowly, Boston pushed up to his knees. He rubbed some of the grit from his eyes, then stood, trying to get his bearings.
The cone was ten feet away. He took a breath, and walked slowly toward it.
I could use some water, he thought as he put the ruck containing the soil sample next to the cone.
By the time Sergeant Liu appeared, Boston had stretched out on the ground, his body hovering just this side of consciousness.
‘Yo,’ said Liu. He turned and started walking away.
Boston rose and fell in behind, his limbs sore not just from the fall but from the last twenty-four hours. He managed to lean forward and break into a rough trot, catching up.
‘What’s next?’ he asked.
‘Nothing for you,’ said Liu.
‘Shit,’ said Boston, but he couldn’t figure out where he had screwed up.
The Osprey? But how else was he supposed to get across the minefield? He’d have had to leave the range, and even then, the entire cone was surrounded.
Liu didn’t explain. A GMC Jimmy, blue light flashing, appeared in the distance, kicking up dust as it sped across the open landscape. It whipped to a stop a few feet from him. Liu pulled open the front passenger door, waiting for Boston to get in.
There was no driver. Boston was only slightly surprised to see that – as the Whiplash veterans were fond of saying, This is Dreamland. Nor was he particularly surprised when Liu didn’t climb in after him.
As soon as the door was shut, the vehicle started up again, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed. It drove to a small building just beyond the old bone yard – a storage area for old planes at the eastern end of the base. Boston got out; when the door was shut, the vehicle backed up and drove away.
Captain Danny Freah was waiting inside. Like Boston, Freah was of African descent, though it was clear from his demeanor that any appeal to ethnic roots was not going to cut it.
Maybe, Boston thought, he could appeal to his mother’s side of the family. She was Sicilian. He could hint at a mafia connection.
Probably wouldn’t cut it either.
‘Who told you you could climb on the aircraft?’ demanded Captain Freah.
‘Sir.’ Boston snapped out the word, but he was too worn down at this point to play rogue warrior. ‘Uh, no one. I just did it.’
‘You know how much that aircraft costs?’
Visions of living on bread and water well into his retirement suddenly filled Boston’s head. He had heard stories about the military taking the cost of high-tech gear out of soldier’s pay, but had never believed they were true. Now he suddenly realized that they might be.
‘Um, I didn’t think I’d do any harm to it.’
‘You didn’t think?’ barked Freah.
Boston winced; he had given the classic – classic! – bad answer.
‘I thought incorrectly, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘I was focused on the objective, to the exclusion of other factors.’
He could practically feel the heat coming off Freah’s face. From the corner of his eye, he saw another member of the Whiplash team joining them in the building – Sergeant Liu. Behind him came the other Whiplash veterans.
Great, thought Boston, they’re all here for the hanging.
‘You only thought of the objective?’ said the captain.
‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid I did. I’m sorry.’
One of the Whiplash troopers – Bison – started to laugh.
‘Hang him by his toes,’ said Egg Reagan.
Boston felt the blood rushing to his face.
‘Are you blushing, Sergeant?’ asked the captain.
‘I, uh …’
‘Jeez, if I’d known he was a blusher, I woulda never voted for him,’ said Bison.
‘Me neither,’ said Egg.
‘We need a blusher,’ said Liu.
It was only then that Boston realized he was in.
Dreamland Flighthawk Simulation Hangar 6 September 1997, 0245
Zen knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and so didn’t even bother going home. He and Breanna had a small apartment – more like a dorm room with a kitchenette – on the base where he could crash when he ran out of energy. But that figured to be a long way off.
He sat in one of the simulation blocks, playing a loop the programmers had designed to mimic the engagement in which his wife and her plane had been shot down. The simulation was a subset of their normal tactical simulations, used not only to train pilots but to help refine the combat library that was an integral part of the Flighthawks’ control computer, C
. By jiggling the parameters a bit, the techies had given Zen a Flighthawk clone that could fly to within seventy-five miles of the Megafortress before being detected.
Actually, depending on the altitude, atmospheric conditions, and the orientation of the planes, it could make it to within fifty miles.
But that was as close as it could get. That meant that the ghost clone couldn’t target the Megafortress. That also meant it couldn’t possibly get much more information about the Megafortress than a standard aircraft would; in fact, almost certainly less.
Which meant that Quicksilver hadn’t been the target. Nor, from the configurations of the battle forces, were the Indians.
That left the Chinese.
So maybe the Indians were using it to spy on the Chinese.
Or attack them?
Zen played the simulation again. This time, he took control of the ghost clone and flew directly over the Chinese fleet. Antiair missiles flashed on, but he was able to drive his attack home. He rolled his wing at twenty thousand feet, slapping his nose down on a direct line for the flight deck on one of the two pocket Chinese carriers.
The mach indicator clicked upward; he nudged the stick and got the bridge in his pipper, fat in the gun sights.
Blam. No more bridge, no more radar, no more flight operations. The clone skipped away unharmed, tucking right as a simulated Chinese MiG launched a pair of heat-seekers in a belated and desperate attempt to extract revenge.
Zen stopped the program. If the clone was an Indian aircraft, then surely it wasn’t outfitted with a weapon. Even simply crashing it into the bridge would have dramatically altered the battle.
So the clone couldn’t have been an Indian plane.
Maybe it was Russian.
‘Or maybe the Chinese spying on themselves,’ he said aloud in derision, frustrated that he couldn’t figure out what was going on.
‘Possible, actually, though unlikely.’
Zen jerked away from the controls. Stoner walked down the long ramp at the far end toward him.
Zen wheeled his chair around. ‘What’s up?’
‘Want to get a beer or something?’
‘No.’
The CIA officer pulled out the chair from the main programmer’s station and sat on it, rolling it forward as Zen approached.
‘You don’t like me, Major,’ said Stoner.
‘Is that relevant?’
‘Probably not.’
Stoner and Breanna had lashed themselves together after bailing out, and it was probably because of that that they survived the fierce storm that had swallowed most of the rest of the crew. Zen didn’t begrudge Stoner that.
If anything, he should be grateful.
And yet.
And yet.
He just didn’t like him.
‘I don’t think it’s Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘Is that the flight where we got shot down?’
‘More or less.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘You’re not in the picture,’ said Zen, but he rolled back anyway.
The simulation area duplicated a Flighthawk control deck aboard an EB-52, with a double set of configurable displays and dedicated systems readouts. It wasn’t a perfect match – some of the equipment on the side racks was omitted, the floor was cement rather than metal mesh, and most importantly, the station never reacted to turbulence. The simulator that did, located down the hall, required at least one techie to run.
‘We didn’t go in like that,’ said Stoner, watching the screen that showed Quicksilver. ‘Breanna – your wife – held us up and got us away from danger before telling us to bail. There was some other stuff, self-destruct routines.’
‘We skip that. We’re not really interested in the accident, just the ghost clone.’
‘Where is it?’
Zen slapped at the keyboard. The sitrep showed it at seventy-five miles, to the northeast of the Chinese fleet.
‘It’s got to be spying on the Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘But it doesn’t really make sense that the Indians would send it that far around, does it?’
‘No,’ said Zen.
‘It could be another Chinese unit,’ Stoner said. ‘The admiral in charge of this fleet, Xiam, is not well-liked. But I still don’t think they have the technology.’
‘They spy on themselves?’
