But how did they know? They all had perfect spines, working legs. None of them had been top-dog test pilots with blue-sky careers ahead of them.

He suspected her of seeing Knife? Jesus. Where the hell did that come from?

Major Cheshire hadn’t said what was up, but she did promise a helicopter would be waiting to whisk Bree from Nellis to Dreamland. Obviously something big was brewing.

Thank God. She needed a diversion.

MS. O’DAY HERSELF WAS ON THE LINE WHEN DOG picked up the phone.

“Colonel, I think you’ve lost your mind.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Madame Advisor,” he replied.

“Don’t Madame Advisor me. I read your e-mail. Do you know what you’re up against on the JSF?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He heard a loud sigh from the other end of the line. He imagined the petite woman shaking her head back in her office, rolling her eyes before scrunching herself over the desk. She’d pull up the sleeves of her white blouse—O’Day always wore white blouses to work.

“Dog, are you damn sure about this?”

“The F-119 is not a workable design as presently configured,” said Bastian, repeating the bullet line of his memo. “It can be, but the changes it needs will mean missing the interservice target.”

“They’re going to come after you on this, Tecumseh,” O’Day said. Rarely if ever did she—or anyone, for that matter—use his given name. “Wait until morning.”

“I know.”

“I’ll back you up, if this is your considered opinion.”

“It is.”

“It may mean Dreamland closes.”

“I weighed the consequences.”

“All right. You’ve heard about Somalia?”

“Yes. We have a team getting ready for transport.” Dog debated whether to tell her exactly how he intended on supplying that transport, but decided it was best not to. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t order him not to.

Not that she could order him to do anything, at least not directly.

If he was so afraid of telling her, why do it in the first place?

“I may call on you to look over some estimates. It will have to be back-channel,” she said.

“Understood.”

“This is going to dominate things around here for a few days,” she added. “It will take some of the heat off you and the JSF. I suggest you use it to line up the ducks.”

“The ducks?”

“And next time my office calls, Colonel, don’t keep me on hold,” she said, hanging up.

DANNY FREAH CAUGHT A RIDE OUT TO THE Megafortress hangar with Lieutenant Greenbaum, whom he was leaving in charge of base security in his absence. He spat out directions machine-gun style, warning Greenbaum about a dozen details that could snap up and bite him in the butt if he didn’t watch them. But all the time he talked, Danny was shaping his mission plan in his head. He had his go-bag in the back, along with a silenced MP-5 equipped with a laser sight. Four other members of his team would be similarly equipped; the other two carried M-16A2/M203 grenade-launcher combos.

The M40A sniper outfit had a special metal box all to itself. Along with a set of custom-tailored carbon-boron protective vests, it was waiting with the team in the hangar. There was also a line-of-sight discrete-burst com set developed by another of Dreamland’s experimental labs. While the gear technically wasn’t cleared for operational use, Klondike had cleared it for “field testing.”

She’d also warned there’d be hell to pay if they lost it. But Danny didn’t plan on letting that happen.

According to the orders he’d received, Whiplash’s prime duty would be to crew a Pave Low tasked to transport and support a Delta assault team. But the Whiplash operators were trained to crew everything Air Force Special Operations flew; they could eat snakes, jump from planes, and leap tall buildings with a single rappelling line. They might be called on to do any or all of those once the fun started.

Greenbaum pulled up in front of the hangar. A ground crew was already working furiously on the big black bomber inside.

“Okay, now as far the duty rosters go,” Danny told his lieutenant, “you do have some flexibility.”

“Captain, no offense, but you’ve gone over the rosters maybe five times already? Seriously, sir, I do think I can handle it. The only tough part is going to be controlling my jealousy.”

Freah laughed. “I hope you’ll still feel that way in a week.”

“I’m sure we will, sir.”

Freah looked at the young man’s face. Greenbaum looked like a jayvee kid who’d been told he wasn’t making the trip to the big bowl game. He also looked to be all of fifteen, not twenty-three.

Of course, Freah wasn’t much older. He just felt like he was.

“Okay, Greenie. Kick some ass.”

Freah’s men were waiting in the hangar. Lee “Nurse” Liu and Kevin Bison were at the entrance, copping smokes, while the others huddled near the big black plane’s tail, watching as the ground crew prepped the aircraft.

Freah had selected the Whiplash response team himself. All of the men were qualified as parajumpers with extensive SAR experience, cross-trained to handle each others’ responsibilities. Freah had organized them roughly along the lines of a Green Beret “A” team for ground operations.

“Looks like they lost two planes about twenty miles apart,” Perse “Powder” Talcom told him. Powder was the team point man and intel specialist; he had gathered satellite maps and some briefing information before reporting to the hangar. “One to MiGs and the other to ground fire. Roughly, they went down here.”

Talcom pointed to large swatches of the Somalian coast.

“Got to figure they got SAR units out there already,” he added. “Navy task force coming up from this direction. Few days away, though.”

Freah nodded. Talcom had recently been promoted to tech sergeant—obviously because he had relatives in the Pentagon, according to the others, who were all staff sergeants.

“What you’re saying is, fun’s going to be over before we get there,” said Bison, coming in from his smoke.

“There’s a lot of other shit going down,” said Freah. “Libya’s getting involved. There’s talk of Saudi Arabia being declared a no-fly zone.”

“Good,” said Jack “Pretty Boy” Floyd, the team com specialist. “I’m getting bored around here.”

“What’s a no-fly zone mean to us?” asked Liu.

“It means you don’t fly there, Nurse,” said Powder.

“Nurse was thinking of strapping on a rocket pack and taking on the ragheads by himself,” said Bison. Liu had earned the nickname “Nurse” because he was the team medic.

“I’d like to try a rocket pack someday,” said Geraldo “Blow” Hernandez. Hernandez was the tail gunner and supply specialist, as well as the team’s jumpmaster.

“Yeah, Blow, I bet you would,” said Freddy “Egg” Reagan, adjusting the elastic that held his thick eyeglasses in place around his bald head. Reagan was the squad weapons specialist, and could handle everything from a Beretta to an M-1 tank. Rumor had it he was learning to fly an Apache helicopter on the side.

“All right, we may end up with something important to do, but at the moment our assignment is straightforward,” Freah told them. “There’s a Pave Low en route from Germany. We take over for the regular crew, yada-yada-yada. You guys know the drill.”

“Hey, Captain, we invented the drill,” said Blow.

“Is it a DeWalt or a Bosch?” said Powder.

“That’s supposed to be a joke, right?” asked Liu.

“If I have to explain it, it’s not,” said Powder.

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Egg.

“Captain, what are we really doing?” asked Blow.

“Whatever they tell us to do,” said Freah. “That good enough for you?”

“They wouldn’t call us out if they didn’t want us playing snake-eaters, right?”

“Maybe,” said Freah, who suspected that Madcap Magician did have some covert ground action—aka “snake eating”—in mind.

“Captain Freah?”

Freah turned to find Captain Breanna “Rap” Stockard standing in full flight gear behind him. She extended her hand and he took it.