Mack got his gear and went to check with the acting head of the ground crew. They were just topping off the tanks, moving a little awkwardly, both because of the hour and the fact that the plane and its systems were still unfamiliar. Mack longed for the snap of the air force’s Dreamland maintainers — God protect the airman, let alone a sergeant, who wasn’t in exactly the right place when Chief Master Sergeant “Greasy Hands” Parsons was scrambling to get one of his aircraft ready. But you didn’t really appreciate the job Chief Parsons and his people did until they weren’t there to do it.
Mack went over to the crew with the idea of telling them to move faster. As he approached, a look of horror spread over the face of the sergeant supervising the fueling operation.
Yelling at the man wasn’t going to get the job done any faster or better, Mack realized as he opened his mouth. Once more, Dog popped into his head as a model. He changed his message to something he hoped was encouraging—”Let’s do it, boys” — and gave them a thumbs-up.
Whether that worked or not, Mack couldn’t tell. He walked under the big aircraft and went up the fold-down steps into the belly, landing on the stripped-out Flighthawk deck. Then he climbed up to the flight deck, where he was surprised to find Deci Gordon, the Dreamland radar expert, at one of the operator stations.
“Deci, you coming with us?” said Mack.
“Figured you’d want me to.”
“Yeah,” said Mack. He started toward the pilot’s seat, then stopped, realizing from Deci’s frown that he’d somehow managed to say the wrong thing.
How would Colonel Bastian handle it? Mack asked himself.
Just like that, or even simpler, with a nod. But somehow, what worked for Bastian didn’t work for Mack. Mack turned and saw Deci frowning at him.
“Listen, I’d appreciate it if you came with us,” said Mack. “I really would.”
Deci looked at him, as if expecting a trick. Not sure what else to do, Mack nodded and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
They were off the runway in twenty minutes, which would have been a decent time for a scrambling Dreamland crew, Mack thought. McKenna checked in a few minutes after Mack cleaned the landing gear and began a wide patrol orbit, climbing up through fifteen thousand feet, en route to thirty-five thousand.
“Dragon One to Jersey,” said McKenna. “We came up negative on our search. No speedboat, no nothing.”
“Roger that,” said Mack. His patrol circuit took him over the ocean; Deci and the radar operator handling the surface contacts ID’d a freighter approaching from the west about ten miles away; it was the only sizeable ship except for Brunei coastal patrols in the area.
“Say, Mack, I think I have the Sukhoi again,” said Deci. “Planes we picked up the other day. Coming up toward the coast.”
“Feed me a vector,” said Mack.
Chapter 28
Dog had planned it all out so well that the cab was just pulling up to the flight service building as he shut down the aircraft after their flight from Nevada. They got in, and arrived just in time for their reservation at Il Cenacolo, an Italian restaurant a few miles northwest of the city, which Jennifer had mentioned once during a date. The host greeted them by name; Jennifer seemed to float across the room, and Dog thought to himself that things could not be going more perfectly.
It was at that moment that he heard the voice from across the room.
“Tecumseh Bastian, what are you doing in San Francisco?”
He closed his eyes, but he knew it was useless. His ex-wife had somehow managed to ruin the one perfect romantic moment of his life.
“Karen, how are you?” said Dog, turning in the direction of the voice.
Dr. Karen Melenger was sitting with three other women at a table near the side of the room. She rose, came over, and made a show of kissing his cheek. Dog stepped back and, with as much politeness as he could muster, introduced Jennifer.
“Your girlfriend?” said Karen. She held out her hand as if she were the Queen Mother and expected it to be kissed.
Dog thought he saw a smirk in the corner of Jennifer’s mouth. She said hello, declining the handshake without calling attention to it, and said how nice it was to meet a person Dog spoke so highly of.
It was a remarkably smooth lie, thought Dog, and even Karen seemed taken in. But Jennifer then made the mistake of suggesting that they all get together for a drink sometime.
Dog cringed, knowing Karen would accept — sooner, rather than later.
“Tomorrow night would be perfect,” she said. “The convention ends in the afternoon, but I’m not flying back to Las Vegas until Sunday afternoon”
“How lucky,” said Dog, nudging Jennifer away.
“Where are you staying?” Karen asked.
“At a hotel,” said Dog. “We’ll call you.”
“We’ll I’m at the Max,” said Karen. It was naturally one of the most expensive hotels in the area. “You won’t forget?”
“No.”
“Jennifer, make sure he doesn’t forget.”
“Tecumseh is definitely responsible for his own actions.”
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” said Karen.
Chapter 29
“They’re still over Malaysian territory,” Deci told Mack as he turned the Megafortress in the direction of the Sukhois. “No indication they see us. Range is one hundred and fifty miles. They’re doing about five hundred knots, still at twenty-two thousand and twenty thousand feet, respectively.”
“You have that on your screen, Jalan?” Mack asked the copilot.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. What we’re going to do is run as close to them as we can but still stay over Brunei territory. It’s going to take us one loop down at the south before they’re in range to pick us up”
“You want them to pick us up?” asked Jalan.
“I want them to attack us,” said Mack.
“You think they’ll attack?” Jalan didn’t sound worried so much as surprised.
“Probably not,” said Mack. ‘But if they do, we want to be ready for them. And if they come over our border, we’ll have justification to follow them. I’d like to find out for sure where they’re operating from.”
“Yes, sir.”
One thing in Jalan’s favor, thought Mack: he didn’t point out that the only weapon the Meagfortress carried was the Stinger air-mine dispenser in the tail, which was designed to work against pursuing aircraft at close range.
“Be ready with the ECMs if we get close,” Mack told his copilot. The ECMs disrupted the guidance systems of enemy missiles, rendering them useless. “The computer can blind that sucker and any missile he’s carrying, don’t worry. These planes have done it a dozen times. It knows those avionics systems better than we know our names”
“Yes, sir.”
If the Sukhois were operating from the base Mack had seen on the satellite images, he’d have to fly fairly far from Brunei territory to get the proof he wanted. It was a calculated risk, given that he didn’t know whether or not there might be more aircraft. But he would have to take some risks to find out what the Sukhois were up to; ignorance was much more dangerous in the long run.
Mack checked back with his controller at the airport to see what the situation was. The controller had double-checked with the spy network to find out if there had been activity at any of the other airfields on Borneo; a few helicopters were missing from Kuching in the southwest, but otherwise the situation seemed to be status quo.