DANNY FREAH CAUGHT A RIDE OUT TO THE Megafortress hangar with Lieutenant Greenbaum, whom he was leaving in charge of base security in his absence. He spat out directions machine-gun style, warning Greenbaum about a dozen details that could snap up and bite him in the butt if he didn’t watch them. But all the time he talked, Danny was shaping his mission plan in his head. He had his go-bag in the back, along with a silenced MP-5 equipped with a laser sight. Four other members of his team would be similarly equipped; the other two carried M-16A2/M203 grenade-launcher combos.
The M40A sniper outfit had a special metal box all to itself. Along with a set of custom-tailored carbon-boron protective vests, it was waiting with the team in the hangar. There was also a line-of-sight discrete-burst com set developed by another of Dreamland’s experimental labs. While the gear technically wasn’t cleared for operational use, Klondike had cleared it for “field testing.”
She’d also warned there’d be hell to pay if they lost it. But Danny didn’t plan on letting that happen.
According to the orders he’d received, Whiplash’s prime duty would be to crew a Pave Low tasked to transport and support a Delta assault team. But the Whiplash operators were trained to crew everything Air Force Special Operations flew; they could eat snakes, jump from planes, and leap tall buildings with a single rappelling line. They might be called on to do any or all of those once the fun started.
Greenbaum pulled up in front of the hangar. A ground crew was already working furiously on the big black bomber inside.
“Okay, now as far the duty rosters go,” Danny told his lieutenant, “you do have some flexibility.”
“Captain, no offense, but you’ve gone over the rosters maybe five times already? Seriously, sir, I do think I can handle it. The only tough part is going to be controlling my jealousy.”
Freah laughed. “I hope you’ll still feel that way in a week.”
“I’m sure we will, sir.”
Freah looked at the young man’s face. Greenbaum looked like a jayvee kid who’d been told he wasn’t making the trip to the big bowl game. He also looked to be all of fifteen, not twenty-three.
Of course, Freah wasn’t much older. He just felt like he was.
“Okay, Greenie. Kick some ass.”
Freah’s men were waiting in the hangar. Lee “Nurse” Liu and Kevin Bison were at the entrance, copping smokes, while the others huddled near the big black plane’s tail, watching as the ground crew prepped the aircraft.
Freah had selected the Whiplash response team himself. All of the men were qualified as parajumpers with extensive SAR experience, cross-trained to handle each others’ responsibilities. Freah had organized them roughly along the lines of a Green Beret “A” team for ground operations.
“Looks like they lost two planes about twenty miles apart,” Perse “Powder” Talcom told him. Powder was the team point man and intel specialist; he had gathered satellite maps and some briefing information before reporting to the hangar. “One to MiGs and the other to ground fire. Roughly, they went down here.”
Talcom pointed to large swatches of the Somalian coast.
“Got to figure they got SAR units out there already,” he added. “Navy task force coming up from this direction. Few days away, though.”
Freah nodded. Talcom had recently been promoted to tech sergeant—obviously because he had relatives in the Pentagon, according to the others, who were all staff sergeants.
“What you’re saying is, fun’s going to be over before we get there,” said Bison, coming in from his smoke.
“There’s a lot of other shit going down,” said Freah. “Libya’s getting involved. There’s talk of Saudi Arabia being declared a no-fly zone.”
“Good,” said Jack “Pretty Boy” Floyd, the team com specialist. “I’m getting bored around here.”
“What’s a no-fly zone mean to us?” asked Liu.
“It means you don’t fly there, Nurse,” said Powder.
“Nurse was thinking of strapping on a rocket pack and taking on the ragheads by himself,” said Bison. Liu had earned the nickname “Nurse” because he was the team medic.
“I’d like to try a rocket pack someday,” said Geraldo “Blow” Hernandez. Hernandez was the tail gunner and supply specialist, as well as the team’s jumpmaster.
“Yeah, Blow, I bet you would,” said Freddy “Egg” Reagan, adjusting the elastic that held his thick eyeglasses in place around his bald head. Reagan was the squad weapons specialist, and could handle everything from a Beretta to an M-1 tank. Rumor had it he was learning to fly an Apache helicopter on the side.
“All right, we may end up with something important to do, but at the moment our assignment is straightforward,” Freah told them. “There’s a Pave Low en route from Germany. We take over for the regular crew, yada-yada-yada. You guys know the drill.”
“Hey, Captain, we invented the drill,” said Blow.
“Is it a DeWalt or a Bosch?” said Powder.
“That’s supposed to be a joke, right?” asked Liu.
“If I have to explain it, it’s not,” said Powder.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Egg.
“Captain, what are we really doing?” asked Blow.
“Whatever they tell us to do,” said Freah. “That good enough for you?”
“They wouldn’t call us out if they didn’t want us playing snake-eaters, right?”
“Maybe,” said Freah, who suspected that Madcap Magician did have some covert ground action—aka “snake eating”—in mind.
“Captain Freah?”
Freah turned to find Captain Breanna “Rap” Stockard standing in full flight gear behind him. She extended her hand and he took it.
She had her old man’s grip. “Looks like we have a problem here.”
“What would that be?”
“You have one man too many. I was told your team had six members.”
“It does.”
“I count seven.”
“Six and me.”
“We have only six seats in this aircraft, besides mine and my copilot’s,” she said. “And frankly, that’s not a particularly comfortable configuration, since it means I’m flying without a crew.”
“Major Cheshire said it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“I didn’t say it was a problem,” said Breanna. She had her old man’s snap as well. “I said it wasn’t comfortable. I’m traveling without a navigator or a weapons specialist a damn long way into a particularly difficult environment. What that means is—I’m in a pissy mood. Now, who’s staying behind?”
She was in a pissy mood, Freah thought, but there was no way he was backing down.
“Everyone’s coming,” he told her. “I’ll sit on the floor.”
“This isn’t a 707,” said Breanna.
“A plane this big can’t fit another person?”
“He could sit in the nav jump seat,” said one of the crewmen nearby.
Breanna shot him a drop-dead glance, then turned back to Freah.
He couldn’t resist smiling. “See?”
“If we were to set you up in a jump seat, there’d be no way to egress the plane,” she told him.
“You can’t just walk out the door?” asked Powder.
“If there’s an emergency, there’s no way to eject,” Breanna told the sergeant. She had her father’s anger, all right—it was barely under control. “Captain, come here a minute.”
Freah followed her outside the hangar.
“Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” she said. “Just pick one of your men to stay behind.”
“Major Cheshire said it was doable.”
“I’m sure Major Cheshire thought six meant six, not seven.”
“Look, I’ll take the jump seat,” said Freah. “The nav thing. I can bail out if there’s a problem.”
Breanna rolled her eyes. “You’re talking about a folding seat in the bottom of the plane. If there’s a problem, you’re going out a tiny hatch—or the bomb bay. And that’s if I can slow the plane to 275 knots. You know how fast that is?”
“It’s slower than I’ve done HALO jumps,” said Danny.