“You talk like a sailor, you know that?” Dog said. Jennifer shrugged. “My bag is packed.”

If she were a man—hell, that was impossible to even imagine.

They did need a support staff. But a girl?

She wasn’t a girl, damn it.

“I want to talk to Cheshire before I make a decision,” said Bastian finally.

“Good,” said Jennifer, jumping up. “Should I send her in right now, along with Major Stockard, or do you want us to keep going the way we planned?”

Shaking his head, Bastian went to the office door and looked out into the reception area. Cheshire and Parsons were there, along with three other Flighthawk specialists.

“Where’s Stockard?”

“Making sure the Flighthawks are prepped,” said Cheshire.

“Everyone in here,” he told the conspirators.

In the end, Dog had no choice but to agree that if it made sense to send the Flighthawks, it was logical to send a support team as well. Parsons could probably build the damn things from balsa wood and speaker wire. Gleason made the most sense as a technical expert, since she knew both the software and the hardware used by the Flight-hawks’ control system. No way he was sending Rubeo—it would undoubtedly be too tempting for him to be left behind.

Sending a high-tech team halfway around the world with untested weapons was exactly what he had called for

in the white paper he’d written so many years ago. So why did his stomach feel so queasy?

“You’re good with this, Major?” he asked Cheshire. “If the Flighthawks are going, and I think they should, we have to support them.”

He nodded. “This is my responsibility,” he told her. “I’m ordering you to do this.”

Her face flushed, probably because she knew that the Band-Aid he’d just applied to her culpability wouldn’t cover much of anything if things went wrong.

“I have some phone calls to return,” he said. “I’ll try to be there for your takeoff.”

“Fourteen hundred hours sharp,” said Parsons as they exited.

“That soon?”

“We’ll kick some butt for you, sir,” said the sergeant.

Bastian returned the wily old crew dog’s grin, then pulled over his mountain of pink phone-message sheets. Every member of the JSF Mafia wanted to take a shot at chewing off his ear today; might as well let them have a go.

“Lieutenant General Magnus, please,” he said, connecting with the first person on his list. “This is Colonel Bastian.”

“Oh,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Dog was more than familiar with the tone. It meant, “Oh, so this is the idiot my boss has been screaming about all day.”

As he waited for the connection to go through, Dog fingered the official Whiplash implementation order, which had come through earlier in the day.

YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO IMPLEMENT WHIPLASH AND SUPPORT SAME WITH ALL APPROPRIATE VIGOR.

“Appropriate vigor” could mean Megafortresses. It could mean Flighthawks.

Not if people like General Magnus didn’t want it to. Magnus was close to the Air Force Secretary; word was he was being groomed to be Chief of Staff. Dog knew him largely by reputation. An able officer, Magnus was a good man, unless you disagreed with him.

Then he was the devil’s own bastard.

“Bastian, what the hell are you doing out there in Dreamland? You sleeping?”

“No, sir, General,” said Dog.

“I understand you’ve been there for two weeks.”

“It’s about that.”

“You took your goddamned time.”

Well, thought Dog, at least he has a sense of humor. “Well, I do my best, General, as pitiful as it may be.”

“I don’t think it’s pitiful at all, Colonel. I think it’s goddamn time somebody had the balls to say what a piece of shit this JSF crate is.”

Dog looked at the phone, waiting for the punch line. “You still there, Bastian?”

“Yes, sir,” said the colonel.

“Good. We’re going to take a hell of a lot of shit on this, I guarantee. But I’m behind you. You bet your ass. I read the whole damn report. Ms. O’Day made sure I got a copy. And a friend of hers. Brad Elliott. I didn’t think you and Brad were pals.”

“We’re not.”

“Oh? He talks about you like you’re his son. Says you’re right on the mark.”

“Well, uh, I’m flattered. To be candid, General, I thought you were a supporter of the JSF.”

“What? Did you read that in the Washington Post?”

“No, sir.”

“I expect you’re taking a lot of shit,” said Magnus.

“That’s an understatement,” said Dog, not entirely convinced that Magnus was on the level.

“Well, hold tight. And keep your nose clean. Some of these pricks will use anything they can against you. The Congressmen are the worst.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dog. “Thank you, sir.” But his line had already gone dead.

Somalia

23 October, 0100 local

MACK WOKE TO FIND THE IMAM STARING AT HIM. Sergeant Melfi and Jackson were gone; perhaps he’d only dreamed they were here with him alive.

“Major, very good,” said the Iranian. “Come now. We must meet our fate.”

The Imam straightened, then gestured at him to rise. Though still groggy, Smith felt almost powerless to resist. “What’s going on?” Mack asked.

“You are going to stand trial,” said the Imam. “Justice will be swift.”

He turned and walked back to the steps. Someone behind Mack pushed him; he stumbled over his chains, but managed to keep his balance.

Goddamn. Mack Smith. The hottest stick on the patch. Damn Iranians were going to make him the star of “don’t let this happen to you” lectures for the next hundred years.

The man behind him pushed again. Knife’s anger leaped inside him; he spun and grabbed the startled soldier by the throat, pushing him to the floor with surprising ease. He smashed the bastard’s head against the concrete. The chain of his handcuffs clanked against the man’s chest as he grabbed the guard’s ears, pulling them upward to smash him again, then again, feeling the thud of the floor reverberating across the Somalian’s skull.

He knew he was being foolish. The best thing to do was go along, resist, yes, but not so overtly, not so crazily. Doing this was like committing suicide, or worse.

And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Blood spread out behind the man’s face as Mack pounded again and again, screaming, shrieking his anger.

Then a sharp light erupted from behind his ears. Then his head seemed to collapse. He blanked out.

“YOU SCREWED UP THEIR PLANS, MAJOR,” GUNNY WAS saying. “You really threw them for a loop. I don’t know what you did, but it messed them up. Kept us here for hours. And they didn’t want that, I can tell you.”

Mack waited for the hunched shadow to come into focus. They were moving, in a train—no, a bus, an old school bus with half of its seats removed. Gunny, the Marine Corps sergeant, was kneeling next to him in the back aisle. There were stretchers on the wall of the bus next to him, empty.

“What do you think, Sarge?” said another Marine. Jackson. He was leaning over a seat a few feet away. “I don’t know. I’d say he took a slam to the noggin.

You with us, Major?”

“Yeah,” groaned Knife.

“You have blood on your flight suit,” said Gunny. “Don’t look like yours.”

“No?”

Mack struggled to sit up. He was still chained at the hands and the feet. “I hit somebody,” he told them.

“No shit?” said Gunny. “Way to go, Major. Dumb, but way to go.”

“Yeah, it was dumb,” agreed Mack.

“You messed them up,” added the sergeant. “Put them on notice that we’re no pushovers.”

The bus lurched off the side of the road, coming to a stop.

“City,” said Jackson, looking out the window. “By their standards anyway.”

“Where are we?” Mack asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Gunny. He went to the window and looked outside. “Pretty damn dark.”

“Think it’s Mogadishu, Sarge?” asked Jackson. A few years before, several U.S. soldiers had died there in an ill-fated relief operation.