Zen hated conversations, especially with strangers. There was always pity in their voices. The only thing worse was conversations with friends. He preferred not to talk at all. He preferred to be left to himself. He wanted…
What he wanted was to be able to walk. He couldn’t have that, so he didn’t want anything else.
He’d worked tremendously hard the past eleven months—nine actually, since most of the first two were spent mostly under sedation, in and out of operations. He’d built up his arms and upper body. He’d been in reasonably good condition before the accident, but the workout routines were a revelation. Zen welcomed the pain; he drove himself into the stinging bite of exhaustion, as if weariness were a physical place. He pushed weights around. He learned to swim with his arms and chest and head. He discovered the different balance of a body that couldn’t use its legs.
The humiliation was the hard part. Needing someone to open a door for him. Needing someone to lift him into the cramped backseat of a van. Needing someone to help him with a thousand things he used to take for granted in the course of a day.
Getting past the humiliation had been his first goal. He hadn’t totally accepted it, but he had at least gotten used to it.
Getting back to Dreamland was his next goal. And here he was, seconds from touching down.
It hadn’t been easy. Zen had had to call in every favor, and lean heavily on his family connections besides. He’d had to find a service lawyer who knew the Disability Act and could wangle and bluff its language into places where it didn’t belong.
Worse—much worse—he’d had to play the pity angle.
His lawyer, an Army captain wounded in Panama, was also in a wheelchair. Louis Whitson wasn’t so much an inspiration as a slap in the face. “The bottom line,” Whit-son had said one morning when things looked particularly crappy, “is this: We use whatever we can use. Pity, fear, ignorance, stupidity. If it’s to our advantage, we use it. Bottom line.”
Like almost everything Whitson said, it was useful advice. They found a sympathetic Senator and an important Congressman. And an Air Force general whose brother had been confined to a wheelchair since he was six. They built a case for remaining on active duty. Reed-thin—hell, thinner than air. But with favors and pity, they got him a chance.
Better than that. Brad Elliott, the former commander of Dreamland, was under a cloud. But he still had a lot of influence—and he also had an artificial leg. The general helped twist arms and bend ears for Jeff, who had been one of his “boys” before the accident. Elliott managed to find a way to use his dismissal and the resulting confusion at Dreamland to Jeff’s advantage. Technically, the general pointed out, Zen was still on the active-duty roster as a test pilot assigned to the Flighthawk program, which was one of the few Dreamland projects besides the F-119 not suspended in the wake of DreamStar. So technically, that’s where he had to report.
Air-thin.
But now, as the helo pushed through the thin desert air en route to its landing, Zen felt something he hadn’t had the luxury of feeling since his accident: fear. He realized he might not be ready to come back—certainly not here.
He slipped the chair backward against the restraining straps as the Super Jolly Green Giant began banking into its final approach. Earlier HH-53 types had been used as rescue choppers during the Vietnam War. More than likely somebody else with a broken spine had been sitting where he was sitting, staring at a door, wondering what he was going to do for the next fifty or sixty years, wondering if he was ready.
Wondering was a sucker’s strategy. Zen fixed his eyes on a bolt in the door handle, then bit his teeth together. The helicopter settled downward, the T64-GE-413 Turboshafts throttling back as the craft touched onto the long, smooth run of concrete. Zen kept his eyes pasted ahead as the crew chief kicked open the door; he waited without moving a muscle until the restraints on his wheelchair were removed. As the last belt slipped off, he pushed forward, rolling to the open portal.
There wasn’t a ramp. His choices were to banzai it, or wait for the crew chief and copilot to lift him down.
He waited.
“Here you go, Major,” said the copilot, a paunchy six-footer who strained as he took hold of the side of the chair.
Zen grunted. The sun threw its yellow arms from over the nearby mountains, greeting him. It would soon get warmer, but at the moment it was barely fifty. Zen felt cold despite his thick jacket as they released him onto the tarmac.
Two members of the security detail—specially assigned Air Force Spec Ops troops with rifles ready—stood a few yards away, near the entrance to Hangar One. There had been a few changes in his absence; he thought two of the hangars had been painted. Otherwise, it seemed very familiar.
Different, but familiar.
Zen waited as the crew chief retrieved his briefcase and bag from the helo.
“Sergeant. Put the bags on my lap, please.”
The sergeant looked down at him.
Pity. The worst thing.
“The guards won’t let you past them,” Zen said. “Let’s go.
“Sir—” The sergeant seemed to lose his voice for a moment. “Yes, sir,” he said finally. He placed the bag and briefcase on Zen’s legs, then stood back and snapped off a respectful and well-intentioned salute.
Zen was only vaguely aware of it. He’d turned his attention back to the guards, who had been joined by a third person just emerging from the hangar.
It was his wife.
SHE KNEW HE’D COME EARLY, TRY TO SNEAK IN without any fanfare. He’d been vague on the telephone, and that was a dead giveaway.
Breanna watched Jeff take the bags and wheel his way toward the security men. For a moment she twinged with anger that the crewman hadn’t carried the bags for her husband; then she realized Jeff had probably told him not to.
The Air Force security sergeants snapped to attention before challenging him. She’d stopped to talk to them earlier, warning them that Jeff would be arriving soon. She’d brought them coffee, then asked for a favor—treat him no differently than anyone. In fact, if they could be a little surly, that would be better.
He hated people treating him like a cripple. He’d told her that the very first night, when he regained consciousness—used that ugly word, “cripple,” before he even knew he was one.
It hurt to watch him wheel across the open cement. It made her want to cry, but that was the last, the very last thing she could do. It would be like kicking him in the face.
Breanna forced her arms to hang down at her sides. She could do this. She had to do this.
“Sir, your orders, sir,” snapped one of the two sergeants, his voice cold enough to chill the heart of a Russian paratrooper.
Zen scowled. The look was so familiar Breanna felt her heart snap. He placed the bag with his clothes and other personal items on the ground next to him. He undid the clasp on his leather attaché—an old gift from his mother before she died—and slipped out a small sheaf of paperwork. The routine was, of course, not necessary, since the captain was well known and in any event would soon have his identity checked at a retina scanner at their station inside the hangar. His status and orders, like those of everyone at Dreamland, were recorded on the security computer. But it was a good touch.
The first sergeant inspected the documents while the other sergeant remained watchful. “Sir, I have to ask you if you are armed,” said the man finally, holding the papers in his hand.
Before, Jeff would have smiled wryly and said something like, “The girls all think so.”
Now he stared straight ahead, his words snapping taut in the chilly morning breeze. “My personal weapon is in storage. I am presently unarmed.”
The guard handed him back his orders.
“Your bags, sir. I have to ask that you present them for inspection.”
Zen handed them over.
“If you’ll follow us, Major, we can complete the protocol inside. We require a retina scan. It’s a new procedure.”
The men turned smartly and began striding toward the hangar. One of them gave Breanna the faintest wink.