If the encounter with the Chinese aircraft had softened Greenstreet’s attitude toward Turk, it hardly showed once they landed. All three pilots debriefed the mission together, recording what had happened and filing reports and mission tapes; under other circumstances the squadron leader might have been expected to put in a few words of encouragement if not praise for the pilots he was flying with, but Greenstreet did neither. Not that he said Turk or Cowboy did poorly; he just didn’t comment. But that was the way he was — Cowboy seemed surprised when Turk brought it up on the way back to the trailers.
“He’s not a rah-rah guy,” said Cowboy, shrugging.
“I can see that,” said Turk.
“Flies damn well,” said Cowboy. “Guy you want on your back in the shit.”
“Sure. He could be a little more cheery about it, though.”
“I think he’s pissed that we weren’t allowed to engage the bastards,” added Cowboy. “You could have shot them down.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re just too much, Air Force. I heard your voice — you were dying to take those guys out.”
“Maybe, I guess.”
Cowboy laughed. They’d reached the trailers. “You can admit it. It’s our job.”
“True.”
Cowboy gave him a shoulder chuck that nearly sent him into the wall. “Catch you later,” he said, sauntering off to his room.
Twenty minutes later, lying on his cot drifting toward sleep, Turk thought about what Cowboy had said. Was he right? Had he been itching to take the other pilots down?
Maybe he had.
What was wrong with admitting it? Was he worried that it would make him seem too cold-blooded?
He’d been in combat before, killed people, on the ground and in the air. He wasn’t jaded about it, or complacent; he didn’t take it lightly. It was, as Cowboy said, his job.
And his duty. Just as it was his duty this morning not to shoot.
Turk’s head floated between sleep and consciousness. He’d never angsted over his job before, and the whole idea of whether he should like shooting down people hadn’t really occurred to him. Or if it did, it hadn’t been something he spent a lot of time worrying about.
Not that he was worrying now.
I need sleep, he told himself. Enough of this.
And just like that, he dozed off.
Six hours later, refreshed by a nap, Danny Freah took one of the Ospreys to Tanjung Manis Airport to meet the incoming Whiplash MC-17. Located near the northeastern coast, the civilian airport was virtually deserted. The MC-17 had just come in, carrying not only the Whiplash troopers but the Tigershark II and eight Dreamland aircraft specialists. After unloading the diminutive Tigershark, they were waiting for a second cargo plane carrying four escort Sabre UAVs.
“There’s a sight for sore eyes!” said Chief Master Sergeant Ben “Boston” Rockland, striding toward his boss as he hopped off the Marine Osprey.
“How was the flight?” asked Danny.
“Wouldn’t know, Colonel. Slept the whole way.”
“How’s the team? Will they be able to go out on a mission tonight?”
“Try and hold them back. What do we got?”
As always, Boston’s enthusiasm energized Danny. The chief master sergeant was a short, pugnacious, and high-energy veteran. Once one of the few African-Americans trained as a parajumper, Boston had mellowed a bit around the edges over the years — and lost most of the hometown accent that had given him his nickname — but he was still the sort of combat leader Danny found indispensable on an op. He filled Boston in on the latest intel from the Cube: two new bases had been located; each had underwater gridwork similar to the site Danny had been to earlier. One seemed to have been abandoned recently, the other was much farther north, in territory watched over by the Chinese. There was an old merchant ship there, with six Filipino marines who’d been parked there in a somewhat quixotic attempt by the Philippines to stake a claim to the territory.
“The Filipinos are helping them?” asked Boston.
“Officially, no,” said Danny. “But they talk to them once a day. No one seems to be sure what’s going on out there. That’s why we have to take a look.
“And there’s the Chinese,” added Danny. “Their carrier task force has moved south, closer to that site. What their interests are, no one seems to know. They sent a pair of planes to check us out earlier, then skedaddled when the Marines got tough.”
“Smart move on their part,” said Boston.
“What I’m thinking is we use our Marine friends to hit the island I think was abandoned,” said Danny. “They go in with their Osprey and support aircraft. Meanwhile, we do a night HALO jump from the MC-17 onto the merchant ship, check it out. We have Turk and the UAVs to back us up, and we run the Ospreys for firepower and to get us out.”
“We need permission from the Filipinos?”
“I don’t think asking them what’s up is a good idea,” said Danny.
“How heavily armed are they?”
“We don’t know. The only weapons we’ve seen on the old merchant ship are M-2 machine guns. Ma Deuces,” added Danny, using the American nickname, “probably from World War Two. I’d expect they still work, though.”
“What about the guys with the UAVs?”
“Not clear.”
“But their planes had a laser,” said Boston.
“That’s right. There may be all sorts of defenses. We have to be prepared for anything.”
A roar in the distance announced the pending arrival of the two Whiplash Ospreys. They had rendezvoused north of the island just an hour before. WhipRey One came down from Okinawa, where it had been parked since Danny’s first mission here. The second had flown all the way from Hawaii, a trip that involved nine in-air refuels and just under eighteen hours of straight flight time. Though flown entirely by computer, two full crews had accompanied the MV-22/W aircraft from Hawaii; both aircraft would be fully manned for the op.
“So how do the UAVs operate off a reef?” Boston asked.
“We’re not sure.” Danny shook his head. “They seem to have some sort of launching system that can be easily hidden — one of the theories is that’s like a rocket. I’m afraid this is one case where we’re going to have to play it by ear and see what happens.”
“One case?” Boston rolled his eyes. No Whiplash mission was ever straightforward, by conventional standards.
“I’m not worried about the UAVs,” continued Danny. “Turk seems pretty confident that he can handle them.”
“I’d bet on that.”
“We want the guys who are behind this. And they have to have some large computer operation somewhere.”
“One question, Colonel — UAVs, small submarines — sounds almost like a Dreamland setup.”
“You don’t know how right you are, Boston.”
2
She was there in the dream as she always was, long hair draped back behind her ears, eyes penetrating, her smile so casual and confident. She was as tall as him, though that didn’t say much. Braxton stood only five-six, his height an issue and an impediment when he was young — and surely an issue in his personality, a reason he felt the need to prove himself to every human being he met, except Jennifer Gleason.
In the dream, he saw her get up from the console in the Dreamland operations center, tired after watching the progress of a long night’s experiment. She walked toward his station, then leaned over his shoulder. He felt her warmth in the cool room, the light press of her breast against his back.