“Are you sure?”
Kerman nodded.
“I am very proud of you,” Sattari said. He tapped Kerman on the shoulder, then quickly turned and walked out of the cockpit, not wanting the younger man to see the tears welling in his eyes.
He found someone waiting at the base of the boarding ladder. It was Hassam, the spy who had helped arrange the refueling.
“What is it?” said Sattari.
“General, I trust all is well,” said Hassam, coming up a few steps.
“Yes.” They met halfway.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“What is it you need?” said the general harshly. He had an impulse to reach for the gun in his belt and shoot the man, but that might ruin everything.
“The flight plan that was filed. It indicates you are going to America.” Hassam was grinning.
“Flight plans do not necessarily tell the entire truth,” said Sattari.
“Still, that is curious.”
“What is your point, Hassam?”
The general placed his hand closer to his gun.
“I took the liberty of finding alternate identifiers and RETRIBUTION
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flights for you, in case you are tracked once you take off,”
said Hassam.
Sattari’s hand flew to his gun as Hassam reached to his jacket. Hassam smiled, opened the coat to show that he had no weapon, then took out a wedge of papers.
“I assume you want no questions asked when you appear at the airport to refuel,” said Hassam. “But in the meantime, these may help you.”
Sattari stood speechless on the tarmac, eyeing the folded documents. The smuggler’s plane could send false ident signals, but he had not had time to research other IDs or flight numbers. These would very useful.
And yet, he didn’t trust Hassam. There was something in the man’s manner that kept Sattari from reholstering the gun as he took the papers.
“You’ll find they’re in order, I’m sure,” said Hassam.
“How?” Sattari asked.
“Do you think the leaders of our country are blind and ignorant?”
Sattari felt his face flush.
“General, there is another question I must ask, though.
Going to America—do you really feel that is wise?”
Sattari was once more on his guard. “If you know everything, then you know why I am going.”
“Such an important man as yourself. It would be a shame to lose you. Especially when there is someone much younger ready to take your place.”
Sattari heard something behind him. As he turned to glance up at the ladder, he realized his mistake. Before he could react, Hassam had leapt at him.
The general was still strong, but he was tired from his exertions over the past few days. He tried to bring his pistol around to shoot Hassam but couldn’t manage it. Then there were others—someone stomping on his arm, kicking. Sattari’s finger squeezed on the trigger. The loud pop of the pistol so close to his ear took his hearing away for a moment, 382
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and with his hearing went the last of his strength. The others continued to wrestle with him, but he was done, drained—angry and humiliated, a failure, a man who could not even get justice for his son.
“Wait! He has been injured!” yelled Hassam. “Careful!
Take the gun.”
Sattari’s body had become a sack of bones. The gun was taken from him. Hassam got up; one of the men who’d come to his aid pushed the general onto his back.
“Gently,” said Hassam. “He is a general.”
Sattari could not see who he was speaking to. His eyes were focused on the face that appeared above him: Kerman.
In the darkness, he looked like his son, gazing down on him from Paradise.
“I will not fail you, Uncle.”
“YOU SAID HE WOULD NOT BE HURT,” KERMAN TOLD HAS-sam after Sattari had been carried to one of the cars. “Your thugs knocked him unconscious.”
“He’s not unconscious,” said Hassam. “A few bruises.”
“He wasn’t talking.”
“Don’t worry so much about your uncle. Worry about yourself.”
Kerman felt a surge of anger. But who was he really mad at—the spy or himself? He had told the ayatollah what Sattari was up to, knowing what the result would be.
“Nothing more to say, young man?” Hassam sounded almost as if he was jeering.
“Give me the papers.”
“Can you be trusted? Ayatollah Mohtaj says yes, but I am not sure.”
Kerman took the documents with the false IDs.
“You’ll find out in less than twenty-four hours,” he said, jogging toward the airplane’s ladder.
X
The Long Ride Home
Aboard the Poughkeepsie,
Indian Ocean
0700, 20 January 1998
DANNY FREAH STRUGGLED TO SHUT OUT THE NOISE FROM
the ship as he continued reviewing the mission with Major Catsman back at Dreamland. The Dreamland people had reviewed the available satellite and aerial reconnaissance data, looking for whoever might have been to the final warhead site before the Whiplash team. There were gaps of several hours in the records, but Catsman seemed fairly confident that the photo analysts would have been able to spot a Pakistani task force somewhere in the mountains. Trucks just couldn’t move that quickly on the roads.
“There were tribespeople through the area on horseback two days before,” said Catsman. “Then we think there was a Chinese reconnaissance flight, though we can’t be sure it went over that area.”
It still wasn’t clear that the Chinese were actually working with the guerrillas Danny had encountered, or were competing with them to recover the weapon—a claim the Chinese ambassador to the UN had made when pressed about encounters in the area.
The politics didn’t concern Danny much; he wanted results.
“The specialists have gone back and analyzed the satellite imagery,” said Catsman. “They think the warhead was removed sometime after 1600 yesterday. They’re going by some changes in the shadows on the ground. There is some 386
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
debate on it—a lot of debate. They’re comparing the satellite image to the Global Hawk image, and there’s a large margin of error. The warhead itself was obscured; it was the missile’s engines it focused on.”
“Maybe some of the guerrillas got away while we were fighting,” said Danny. “Maybe I missed them.”
“We’ve gone over all the data, the Global Hawk feed, the video from the Flighthawk—none of them got away.”
“I want to check it out anyway,” said Danny.
“Fine. We’ll stream it all back to you.”
Danny moved the rolling chair he’d borrowed back against the wall of the communications compartment, watching the footage after it finished loading. In the earli-est images it looked as if the guerrillas were just arriving, securing lookout positions and then moving down toward the warhead.
The rest of the video showed the battle. He saw his people come under fire, and could even make out himself in a few frames. It was odd to watch a replay of something that had been so intense—the tape seemed several times faster than real life, cold and quick, without any of the real emotion. Or fear.
“You have anything earlier than this?” he asked.
“We have the satellite shots. I’ll download them.”
“Instead of looking at the site, what if we looked at the major roads through the area?”
“The major road is a cow path,” said Catsman.
“Well, any truck on it would be significant.”
“Sure. We’ve checked the area,” added Catsman. “And the photo interpreters at the CIA and Air-Space Command have been all over it.”
“What if you look at the grids around it?”
“Just because we see a truck on the road doesn’t mean it was at the site. The CIA has taken over the search—”
“Look, I’ll do it. I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”
“We’ll look at it and get back to you.”
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Dreamland
1100, 20 January 1998
MACK SMITH HAD BEEN TO GERMANY EXACTLY THREE
times, and each time it had been far less than exciting. It was the fräuleins; they just didn’t appreciate American men. And the police lacked a sense of humor.