“Working on it, Colonel.”
The course plugged into his screen. Dog compensated—he needed to get ahead of the missile and use the Stinger air mines.
“Get on the horn to the Brits and tell them not to shoot us down,” said Dog. “They might miss the Harpoon, but we’re a hell of a lot bigger target.”
THE BODIES LAY WHERE THEY FELL—FIFTEEN TERRORISTS AND
five American sailors. The ship was theirs.
Danny pulled his helmet off and looked around the bridge. Blood was everywhere. What drove people to be so crazy?
“Tired, Captain?” asked Dancer.
“A little,” Danny admitted.
“That was something you did with that helicopter.”
“Stupid, huh?”
“Yeah. But we couldn’t have gotten on the ship if those men had made it onto the deck. You took them out just in time. We owe you a beer.”
“Yeah, well, I owe you two. That shotgun would have pen-etrated the visor.”
“I intend on collecting,” said Dancer. She smiled at him.
“Let’s see about getting this thing back. Dad said I was sup-
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posed to be home before midnight, and he’s got a hell of a temper.”
DOG COULD SEE THE ARK ROYAL IN HIS WINDSCREEN AS HE
pushed the stick of the Megafortress forward.
“Antiaircraft system is coming up,” said McNamara.
“Tell them we’re friendly.”
“I keep telling them that.”
“They’re still not locked on the Harpoon,” said Dish, disgusted.
“Stinger,” Dog told McNamara.
“Stinger ready. Seeking.”
Dog pushed the Megafortress down. To strike the Harpoon he had to get almost right in front of it and pull up abruptly. The missile skimmed along the ocean only a few feet above the waves; Dog basically had to walk his air mines right in front of it.
The ocean loomed in front of the windscreen. The altimeter in the heads-up display tumbled lower and lower—nine hundred feet, eight hundred, six hundred, five hundred …
Even in a small aircraft, pulling up from a power dive at precisely the right spot at very low altitude was not as easy as it looked. It pitted two different forces—gravity and aero-dynamic lift—against each other. Often gravity won. In fact, gravity never really lost; engineers and pilots just figured out a way to hold it at arm’s length.
Four hundred feet, three hundred …
The Megafortress screamed a proximity warning.
“Got it! Locked!” shouted McNamara.
“Fire,” said Dog calmly, pulling back on the stick.
The nose of the Megafortress scraped the waves and the rear of the aircraft rumbled—though whether from the sound of the tail smacking against the water or the air mines exploding in the face of the Harpoon missile, who could say? The B-52’s toughness was legendary, and the Wisconsin added to the legend that day, pulling herself through the air 396
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
like a pogo stick as the 215 pounds of explosives in the Harpoon detonated. Dog was so busy trying to hold the plane in the air that he didn’t realize at first that the Ark Royal had begun firing her Goalkeeper antiaircraft weapon at them.
“ECMs,” he said, banking away.
Though adopted from the American Phalanx system, the British implementation fortunately was not yet as deadly as its cousin. The Megafortress managed to escape without serious harm.
“They’re apologizing profusely,” said McNamara as the Megafortress cleared the cloud of bullets. “They claim they didn’t see us.”
“Tell them we’ll send them the repair bill,” said Zen from the Flighthawk deck. “And if they care to say thank-you for saving their butts, I know a base that would greatly appreciate a lifetime supply of British ale.”
X
Conspiracy Theories
White House
11 November 1997
1000
IT WASN’T HARD FOR JED TO SEE THE PRESIDENT—HE AND THE
entire cabinet wanted a briefing on the gulf situation. The trick was to talk to him alone.
Jed could feel Balboa and Hartman staring at him during the whole briefing. He expected them to mention that he had pulled the plug on them, but they didn’t. The Secretary of State seemed subdued, and while Balboa blustered as usual, it was more about the combined group concept and how the Navy had shown the way once again. Jed knew that wasn’t exactly true—but he did think the idea of the littoral warfare craft working together with cutting-edge technology, whether from Dreamland or somewhere else, was a good one, and had been validated by the mission.
The pirate operation that had supported terrorists in the Gulf of Aden had been smashed completely. The funds to overthrow the government in Eritrea and wreak more havoc in Somalia were gone, at least temporarily. Ethiopia had been chastised. Yemen declared that the air force had mutinied and “appropriate steps” would be taken. The response was about the only comic relief the situation provided.
Unfortunately, as Hartman pointed out, a large number of people in the Horn of Africa were starving and weren’t likely to get aid anytime soon. The UN didn’t want to get involved; without them, organizations such as the Red Cross and UNICEF were also reluctant. No one in the room could 400
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
blame them, not after what had happened in Mogadishu a few years before.
“The choices are never good choices in places like these,”
said Freeman, but even he couldn’t make a case for mounting a major relief effort in the Horn of Africa, especially not with the situation in China and Korea still incredibly tense.
“We’ll have to deal with it, sooner or later,” said Martindale finally. “I want a plan, at least.”
“We’ll draw up something,” said Hartman.
Jed didn’t say much as the discussion turned to India and Pakistan, the next exploding hot spot. He felt tired, ready for a vacation—a long one. Very long.
And he was about to get one.
“I wonder if I could talk to you, Mr. President,” he said as the others started to leave the cabinet room.
“As a matter of fact, I’d like to talk to you, young Jed,”
said Martindale. “In my study.”
Freeman gave Jed a warning glance, but Jed ignored it.
He’d made up his mind, and for better or worse, he was going to do the right thing.
That was all you could do in the end—the right thing as you saw it. Then face the consequences.
“So is it true that you told Balboa to get bent?” said the President as he sank into his leather chair.
“Um …”
Martindale laughed. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Jed.
You surprise me every day.”
“I wrote a letter, sir.”
Jed reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his resignation. Martindale smiled at the envelope but didn’t open it.
Instead he reached into his desk and took out a copy of the Sunday Daily News.
“Tell me about this photo,” said the President. “It looks like a real work of art.”
“It is,” said Jed, and he explained what had happened.
“You don’t know the entire story, I imagine,” said Martindale when Jed finished. “You know how the photo came to SATAN’S TAIL
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be on the disk—it was in your folder with the others—but I’ll bet you’re wondering why just the Daily News printed it.”
“I am.”
“Ambassador Ford would like very much to be the Secretary of State.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You gave the disk to one of Ford’s assistants. He printed it out, and noticed the photo that hadn’t been part of the presentation. He took it to the ambassador, who decided to give his friends at the News an exclusive. A favor that he can call in later.”
“Really?”
“That’s his version. And I don’t lie—about that.” Martindale folded his arms. “Why were Hartman and Balboa together in the Situation Room yesterday?”
“I was wondering that myself.”