“Great.”
“Which means you should be getting some sleep,” added Danny.
“Yes, Dad.”
Danny smiled sardonically. He was tempted to give Turk a lecture about the need for him to be in top condition mentally and physically, but held back; he didn’t like being a hypocrite.
“What do we do in the meantime?” asked Turk.
“You’re going to sleep.”
“The Malaysians have another platoon coming up this morning,” said Turk. “They have a target to hit tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“They managed to get some intel off one of the prisoners. They want to keep up their momentum. They think they have the rebels on the run.”
“Where’s this target?”
“They say there’s a village about twenty miles southwest of where they were that the rebels are using. It’s close to the border with Indonesia. It may even be over it.”
“If it’s over the border, we’re not helping them,” said Danny. He didn’t add that they might not help in any event; the UAVs were now the Marines’ top priority as well as his.
“Captain Deris says he knows. They’re going to deal with it themselves, if they have to.”
“Can they handle coms with the Marines?”
“Captain Deris can talk well enough to get a target nailed down. Thing is, Colonel, the Marines may not be able to support them at all, even if the target is approved,” added Turk. “Colonel Greenstreet is out with the flu, and so are Rogers and Haydem.”
“I knew about Rogers,” said Danny, “but not the others.”
“Both of the guys were throwing up like crazy in the air. Only Cowboy’s good to go.”
“So the Malaysians have to go without air.”
“If necessary,” said Turk.
Danny suspected that Turk was hinting that he should go, but he didn’t rise to the bait; he wasn’t sure whether he wanted him to or not. “Can the Marines get other pilots in from the assault ship?”
“They’re heavily committed at the eastern part of the island. Big assault under way. I had an idea,” Turk added. His voice dropped a few decibels; Danny had to lean closer to hear. “I was thinking I’d volunteer to fly with them.”
“I don’t know, Turk. The colonel wasn’t crazy about you flying earlier. He’s kind of proprietary.”
“Is that a new word for a jerk?”
“Even so—”
“Cowboy’s all for it. And it makes a lot of sense — if the UAVs come back, we’ll be able to shoot them down.”
“In the Tigershark, not an F-35B.”
“I could shoot them down in a Fokker triplane,” said Turk.
Danny was no pilot, but he recognized the aircraft as a WWI fighter. He also recognized Turk’s statement as typical fighter jock bluster — rare in Turk, though not in the breed.
“I’d prefer to wait until the Tigershark gets here,” said Danny. “And I have the rest of the team in place.”
“What happens if the UAVs come back?”
“We’ll take that as it comes.”
Turk rose without saying a word.
“Get some sleep, Captain,” said Danny sharply as the pilot sulked away. “That’s an order.”
Turk stalked out of the mess tent, angry with himself as well as Danny. He’d gone about asking to fly on the mission all wrong, dancing around the subject until the very end, and then blurting rather than calmly laying out all the reasons he should.
The hell with it.
Cowboy met him a few yards from the tent.
“What’s he say?” asked the Marine.
“That I should go to bed.”
“No shit.” Cowboy laughed.
“We have more assets coming so the operation is in a holding pattern,” Turk said, trying to calm down. “And the colonel’s worried about the border.”
“We aren’t going over the border. I can guarantee that.”
“Whatever.”
“Maybe I should talk to him,” said Cowboy. “I’m definitely doing that mission. Greenstreet’s OK’d it. And I need a wingman.”
“Good luck.”
“What are you going to do?”
Turk shrugged and stalked off.
If he’d been in any other place in the world, Turk probably would have hit a bar. He thought of calling Li but decided not to. He’d have to explain why he was mad and would probably end up sounding like a cranky baby. And besides, talking to her would only make him miss her more.
Frustrated and bored, he headed back to his room in the trailer, where he took out his e-reader to read a book on World War II.
He fell asleep within five minutes.
“The thing is, Colonel, I don’t one hundred percent know that I’d survive another encounter with the UAVs,” Cowboy told Danny. “I do know I wouldn’t have made it out of that last one without Turk telling me what to do.”
“I agree Turk is a great pilot,” said Danny. “It’s a question of priorities.”
“The priority is getting information on the UAV, right? You’re not going to be able to do that if it shoots me down.”
“I’m sure that would give us plenty of information,” said Danny sarcastically.
“Maybe.” Cowboy smiled. “That was a bad example. I’m just saying, we need another pilot, there’s another pilot here. It would be great if we could use him.”
“What’d Greenstreet say about it?”
“Haven’t asked him yet. Figured there be no use dealing with him unless you were good with it.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” said Danny. “When I know about the Malaysian plans. And when your squadron commander says he’s good with it.”
“Great!” Cowboy jumped up from the table. “Thanks, Colonel.”
Why do I think I’ve just been had? wondered Danny.
14
The security encryption and procedures Kallipolis employed imposed a significant performance penalty on real-time communications; it split the video and audio streams, and so there was always a slight delay between the video and the sound during the best of times, and at sea the additional security and network overhead made it even worse. It was so bad tonight that Lloyd Braxton had to look away as Church Michaels spoke; the audio was nearly a full second ahead of the visual.
“You shouldn’t have launched the attack,” continued Michaels. “We aren’t prepared.”
“I have four bases. I have a dozen aircraft. I have ships, I have submersibles. We’re making more UAVs and weapons. I need the structures for the distributed intelligence units. When do I wait for? The next millennium?”
“The involvement of the Dreamland people makes things much more… difficult,” said Michaels. “They’re not going to back down. It’s a vast escalation.”
“On the contrary. The fact that they’re involved means there will be no escalation,” said Braxton. “And besides — they are the ones who have the computing technology. This is the best way to get it. And we need it. Or else we have to hire an army and become a government. Which none of us want.”
“I don’t see them backing down.”
“You’re in the Ukraine. I doubt you have much to worry about.”
“The bribes are killing me.”
Braxton snorted. Michaels had sold his carbon-fiber fabrication business to General Electric for roughly $3 billion worth of GE stock. He had numerous other investments, and had bankrolled at least one black hat hacker operation specializing in credit card theft. He could certainly afford whatever trivial amount the authorities were holding him up for; it was cheaper than legitimate taxes.
“You have all these high-minded ideals,” countered Michaels, obviously wounded by Braxton’s response, “but how much of this is because you had the hots for Jennifer Gleason and she dissed you?”