there too, but just out of reach. He kept trying to get her, though, throwing his hands out, grabbing for her.
Then suddenly she stopped. He continued to fall, plummeting toward the sea.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“Breanna,” he called. “Bree. Bree.”
The water felt like cement as he hit. His legs were crushed beneath him.
“Breanna!” Zen cried, and he woke in the sickbay.
He knew where he was, knew they were OK, but whatever part of his consciousness controlled his emotions was stuck back in the frightful dream. When he finally caught his breath, he turned and looked for Breanna.
The cot was empty.
“Bree!” he shouted. “Breanna!”
He pushed to get up, but couldn’t. There were straps across his chest.
“Breanna!” Zen bellowed.
“Major Stockard, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” said a corpsman, running in.
“My wife. Where is she?”
“She’s OK, sir. They’ve taken her to the Lincoln.”
“Why?”
“The aircraft carrier, Major. It has better facilities. She’s fine, believe me. They’ve got great doctors. We just want to make sure there’s no bleeding. If there is any, if by any chance they needed to operate, they have the facilities.”
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”
“She said not to.”
Zen dropped his head back on the bed. His whole body felt cold, and bruised.
“Can you undo me?” he asked the man.
“Don’t want you falling out of bed, sir.”
“Just undo me. I’m not going for a walk.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zen pulled his hands free but couldn’t reach the strap over his chest. As soon as he was able, he pushed himself into a sitting position.
“You know what the weird thing is, sailor,” he said as he sat up.
“You can call me Terry, sir.”
“I’m Zen.”
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377
The sailor smiled, and pushed a pillow behind his patient’s back.
“The weird thing is that I could swear I actually feel pain in my legs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I haven’t walked in a couple of years. I don’t feel anything.”
“Doctor said it’s like a normal thing. Phantom pain.”
“Yeah. But I haven’t felt it in years. Sure feels real.”
Zen stared at his legs, then did something he hadn’t done in a long, long time—he tried to make them move.
They wouldn’t. But they did hurt. They definitely did hurt.
“Yeah. Weird thing, the body,” said Zen. “Real weird.”
Diego Garcia
2350
“MS. GLEASON IS SLEEPING,” SAID THE NURSE ON DUTY
in the Lincoln’s sickbay when Dog finally managed to connect with the carrier. “Even if I was allowed to wake her, she’d been pretty incoherent with the painkillers. She’ll be OK,” added the nurse, her voice less official and more em-phatic. “All her vital signs are stable and she’s headed toward a full recovery.”
“How is her knee?”
“The primary problem is her kneecap, or the patella.
They’ll have to replace it. But there’s a lot of work with pros-theses over the last ten or twenty years. She’ll definitely walk again, after rehab.”
“Will she run?”
“Did she run before?”
“Yeah,” said Dog. “She’s pretty fast.”
“Then, maybe. The doctors will have a lot more informa -
tion. You’re her commanding officer?”
“I’d like to think I’m more than that,” said Dog.
“Encourage her. The rehab can be very difficult.”
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“She’s up to it,” said Dog. “If there’s one thing I know about Jennifer Gleason, she’s up to it.”
RELIEVED OF COMMAND AND CLEARLY UNWANTED, DOG
saw no point in hanging around Diego Garcia. Responsibility for locating the last warhead had now been shifted to the CIA; with more Navy assets on the way, Dreamland’s help was no longer needed. The entire Dreamland team would be shipping back to base within the next few days; better to leave sooner rather than later, he decided.
The Bennett was the first aircraft scheduled to go home, once her damaged engines were replaced and the others repaired. Pending completion of the work, the plane was tentatively scheduled to take off at 0400, and Dog decided he’d hitch a ride.
He stayed up the rest of the night, slowly sipping a beer as he stared at the stars. Once or twice he tried thinking about his future in the Air Force, or rather, if there was a future for him in the Air Force, but he quickly gave up. That was the sort of thinking that required a quiet mind, and his was anything but. A million details, a thousand emotions, battled together below the surface of his consciousness, ready to interfere with any serious thought. The only way to hold them at bay was to stare blankly at the sky, just watching.
Just before 0200 he found Englehardt and his crew briefing their flight. He interrupted them and, calling Englehardt out into the hall, asked permission to grab a flight home.
“Um, you don’t need my permission, Colonel.”
“Well, as it happens, I do,” said Dog.
He told Englehardt that Samson was reorganizing things and at the moment he didn’t have any authority concerning Dreamland.
Pride kept him from saying he’d been shafted, though that’s what it was.
“It’s OK with me, Colonel. It’d be fine with me.”
“Great. I’ll meet you and the crew at the plane with my gear.”
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379
Malaysia
0600, 20 January 1998 (0400, Karachi) GENERAL SATTARI TWISTED ANOTHER PIECE OF BREAD FROM
the loaf and pushed it into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he still was until he began nibbling on one of the loaves he’d bought for his nephew at the airport workers’
cafeteria.
The refueling was nearly complete. Sattari paced on the tarmac as the men finished, waiting, impatient to be gone.
There were voices in the darkness beyond the plane. Some trick of the wind or his brain transformed them, made them seem familiar: his son, Val Muhammad Ben Sattari, speaking with his wife in the family garden many years before, when Val was just a boy.
Oh, Val, the loss, the loss of your precious life. What would I tell your mother, after my promises to see you happy, and with many children on your knee?
Sattari took a step in the direction of the voices, but they had faded. The fuel truck was finished; a worker recoiled the hose on the spool.
General Sattari thought back to the time when his son told him he wanted to be just like him. He’d been very proud—too proud.
How much would he trade to have that moment back?
He climbed up the steps to the cockpit. His nephew was just finishing the dinner he had brought.
“Are you ready?” Sattari asked.
“Yes, General.”
Though they were cousins, Habib Kerman bore little resemblance to Val; he was flabbier, shorter. But for some reason he now reminded Sattari of Val, and the general felt a twinge of guilt.
“Habib, I have been thinking,” he said, and put his hands on the back of the first officer’s seat. “I think I will take the plane myself.”
“You can’t fly it by yourself, Uncle.”
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“I can. You saw yourself.”
Kerman stared at him, his front teeth biting into his lip.
Then he shook his head.
“I want to do this,” he told Sattari. “Since my wife died, I have looked for a way to make my life meaningful. Allah has given me this chance, praised be his name.”
“Once we take off, Habib, there can be no turning back.”
“I wish to do it.”
If it were Val, Sattari thought, would he let him go? It was one thing to undertake a hazardous mission, and quite another to face certain, absolute death.