ENGLEHARDT HAD FELT THE CREW’S RESENTMENT TOWARD
him from the moment he walked into the little room they used to brief the mission. None of them had the guts to say anything, but he knew what they were thinking. They thought he hadn’t made the best decisions under fire, hadn’t moved quickly enough, had hesitated a few times when he should have been aggressive.
But what the hell did they want? Look at Sparks and the Cheli. They were in deep, deep shit. Did his guys want security standing over them in the restroom everytime they had to take a leak?
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Not likely.
Colonel Bastian’s presence downstairs made things ten times worse. In a way, he felt sorry for the colonel—everybody knew Samson was screwing him because he was jealous. Still, it was Bastian who had caused him so much trouble. The crew compared them unfairly. Of course, Dog had done a great job when he piloted the plane; the man had been in combat countless times, and he was a colonel, for cryin’ out loud. He was supposed to be good.
Not that he wasn’t good, Englehardt thought. He was. And even if the nitpickers had problems with his mission, he knew he’d done a hell of a job—a hell of a job—getting the plane back on two engines.
One and a half, really.
More like one and a quarter.
“Waypoint coming up,” said Sullivan, his copilot.
“Noted,” said Englehardt quickly. He tried to get a little snap into his voice, a bit of professionalism, though it sounded a little hollow.
From now on he was going to do everything by the book.
If his crew didn’t like him, at least they wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
Dreamland Command Center
1500
UNDER ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, TRACKING TRUCK
traff ic through the Pakistani northeastern territories would have been close to impossible.
Fortunately, these weren’t ordinary circumstances.
Which wasn’t to say that the task was a piece of cake. Or a Yankee Doodle, which the head of the Dreamland photo analysis team was eating as he discussed the possibilities with his counterpart at the CIA.
“One of these six,” the techie agreed, stuffing the last of the snack in his mouth. “Gotta be.”
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Ray Rubeo, standing behind his console, frowned. The scientist hated sweets of any kind, but most especially ones that threatened the equipment he had personally helped design. The Command Center’s no food rule had been eased by Catsman as a morale booster as the mission stretched on. Without any authority over operations or military personnel now, Rubeo couldn’t order it reinstated; the best he could do was frown.
“Problem is, so we see those two trucks together, so what?”
said the analyst. “We can’t search every inch of Pakistan.”
“What you should do,” said Rubeo dryly, “is search the places where it’s possible to leave Pakistan.”
The techie looked up at him. “Excuse me, Doc, but, uh, I wasn’t talking to you.”
The expert was an Air Force captain, one of many Rubeo had never particularly cared for. The feeling was undoubtedly mutual.
“Whether you are talking to me or not, you have photos of every airport and dock in the country. You can judge how long all of these vehicles would have taken to get to those positions, and see if they are there.”
“Lot of work. And, you know, a pickup’s a pickup.”
“What else do you have to do?” snapped Rubeo. “And each pickup is different. Look at the bumper and the right side fender—you can use those to identify it.”
“Smudges.”
“Hardly.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it.” The captain pushed the rest of the Yankee Doodle into his mouth and went back to work.
Diego Garcia
0600, 21 January 1998
THE SUN BLOSSOMED ON THE HORIZON, THROWING A RED-dish yellow stream of light on the long concrete runway and its nearby aprons. Major General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson, 394
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standing at the edge of one of the aprons in front of the Dreamland Command trailer, took a deep breath, as if he might suck in the sunshine and all of its energy.
He might need it. He’d spent half the night talking to the Pentagon, and nearly every friend he had in the upper echelons of the service. He told them about the incident, of course—the metal from the missile made stonewalling moot, even if he’d been inclined to try it. He’d put his best spin on the situation from a personal point of view, saying that he’d come to personally take charge and to get things in order.
The results had been mixed. The head of the Air Force was openly hostile, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Balboa, was almost sympathetic. Most of the rest were somewhere in the middle.
The administration, meanwhile, was obsessed with finding the last remaining warhead. That, at least, was out of his hands: Though ordered to continue providing “all due assistance,” the search had been turned over to the CIA.
Samson vowed that if he got through this— when he got through this—he would remake Dreamland in his image. No more EB-52s, and in fact, no more manned planes. They were going to concentrate on their robot and unmanned aerial vehicle technology. Improvements could be made to the Flighthawks so they could be flown remotely from Dreamland Command, just like the so-called UMB, or Unmanned Bomber, project. He’d push the remotely controlled B-1
bomber idea further along; Bastian seemed to have sidetracked it, probably because he had no feel for the aircraft.
As for some of the truly weird stuff going on at Dreamland—the Minerva mind thing, the plasma ray, the airborne laser project—they were on his short list to be axed.
As were the egghead scientists who went with them. Ray Rubeo would lead the parade out.
“Dreamland will be run like a military unit, not the personal toy box of its commanding officer,” said Samson to himself, the line suddenly occurring to him.
It would be the perfect opening sentence for the orienta-
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tion speech he planned on giving when he got back to the States. He scrambled inside for a pen and paper to write it down.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett,
over the Pacific Ocean
2000, 20 January 1998
(0900, 21 January)
DOG FINALLY MANAGED TO DRIFT OFF TO SLEEP DURING THE
f light. The ejection seat at the Flighthawk station was about as comfortable as most ejection seats, which meant not at all.
His head drooped to his chest and his shoulders tightened; when he woke he felt as if someone had him in a headlock.
Stretching helped a little, but not much.
“Couple of beef Stroganoffs in the galley,” said Starship, who was watching a video on his auxiliary screen. “Not too bad if you put Tabasco sauce in it.”
“Tabasco?”
“Just a little punch, you know?”
“Is that Batman you’re watching?” asked Dog.
“I’ve only seen it ten times,” confessed Starship. “Practically new.”
Dog laughed, then went upstairs. While his food was cooking in the microwave, he walked over to the pilots and asked them how they were doing.
“Just routine, Colonel,” said Englehardt. “Haven’t even hit turbulence.”
“Great,” said Dog. “How are you, Sully?”
“OK, Colonel,” said Sullivan.
The copilot’s tone seemed a little cold. Maybe that was the reaction he was going to get around the base from now on, Dog thought; no one would want to associate themselves with him. Senior officers would view him as a political pa-riah, and junior officers would figure he was washed up.
No one wanted to be associated with a commander who’d 396
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been relieved.
Technically, he hadn’t been relieved for cause—not yet, at any rate. But Samson would undoubtedly go in that direction. While explainable and to some extent excusable on their own, taken together the baby incident and the airliner could easily be whipped into a case against him.