“Oh, not a salesman,” said Valenz. He reached into his pocket and took out a leather case. “Smoke cigars, Major?”

“Not really,” said Mack.

“Pity.” Valenz opened the small case, which held three cigars. “Cubans.”

“Thanks, I’ll pass,” said Mack. In the reflection of glass he saw several good-looking young women staring at them. Fully clothed—but interesting nonetheless.

“We need pilots who can talk to other pilots. My own country, for example—the Navy is thinking of buying MiG-29’s from the Russians. Someone like yourself, with your experience, could help quite a bit.”

Mack felt his heartbeat double. Did this SOB know he was working on the MiG-29 project? Or was that just a coincidence?

“What we do is all perfectly legal,” said the Brazilian. “We have several Americans on our payroll. We obtain the necessary approvals. Some even remain with the Air Force.”

Time to leave, thought Mack. He stood.

“You know what, I just remembered something I have to do.”

“Take my card,” insisted Valenz, standing. “A man like you appreciates the finer things in life. As I say, nothing illegal.”

“Thanks,” said Mack gruffly. But he did not remove the card from his pocket as he headed for the elevator.

Dreamland Perimeter

10 January, 0455

HIS LUNGS FROSTED WITH EACH BREATH, THE COLD morning air poking icy fingers inside his chest as he ran. Bastian struggled onward, flexing his shoulders and pushing his calf muscles deliberately, trying to flex his muscles to the max. It wasn’t the cold so much as fatigue that dogged him as he ran the perimeter track; his body moved like a car tire breaking through a pile of icy sludge, each joint crackling and complaining. He’d gotten less than two hours sleep and his body wasn’t about to let him forget it.

Dog was thinking about shutting his workout down at the three-mile mark—ordinarily he did five—when a lithe figure poked out of the shadows ahead. The runner trotted in place a second, still trying to get limber in the cold air.

“You’re up early,” said Jennifer Gleason, falling in alongside him as Dog drew up. He’d recognized her from her bright-red watch cap, which this morning was augmented by a set of blue ear muffs. Gleason was a serious runner, and wore a nylon shell workout suit over what seemed to be several layers of T’s and sweats.

“So’re you,” grunted Bastian. He turned to follow the left fork of the path, even though that meant he’d be stretching his workout to six miles.

“Did you shut everything down when you left?” she asked.

“I did, Doc. I did.”

Their running shoes slapped in unison against the macadam, a steady rap that paced their hearts. They ran in silence for nearly a mile. They crested a small hill overlooking the boneyard beyond Dreamland’s above-ground hangars. The fuselages of ancient Cold War warriors and failed experiments lay exposed in the distance, sheltered only by the lingering shadows of the night.

Seeing the hulking outlines of the planes always spurred Dog on; he couldn’t help but think of the inevitableness of time and decay. How many other commanders had run—or perhaps walked—across this very spot, their minds consumed by the problems of the day? The A-12 had done some testing here. Northrop’s Flying Wing had pulled more than a few turns around the airspace. It wasn’t Dreamland then; it wasn’t even a base, just a long expanse of open land far from prying eyes.

Some of the Cheetah sleds, earlier variants of the hopped-up Eagle demonstrator, lay in the bone pile. At least one DreamStar mock-up sat beneath a wind-tattered tarp. It was a 707 whose nose had grown fangs, the early test bed for the forward airfoil of the plane destined to succeed the F-22. Or rather, the plane that had been intended to succeed the F-22. The fiasco that had brought Bastian to Dreamland had shelved DreamStar. And ANTARES, though obviously not for good.

“Let me ask you a question,” said Dog, pulling up suddenly and putting his hand out in front of Jennifer.

His hand caught the soft looseness of her chest. In the dim light he saw surprise in her eyes.

“ANTARES,” said Dog, dropping his hand awkwardly. “What do you—tell me what you think about it.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was thin and low, out of breath.

Dog leaned his body forward and fell back into an easy jog. “Your opinion on it.”

“It was never my project per se,” said Gleason, quickly catching up. “Bio-cyber connections aren’t my thing.”

“What about Nerve Center?”

“Some thing. It’s part of ANTARES. It is ANTARES. No one here spoke of them separately.”

“You say that like you don’t like it.”

“No. Not at all. I mean, eventually fluid organic interfaces will be part of the mix. It’s inevitable. You’ve heard about the experiments that have brought sight to people with certain types of blindness.”

“Sure.”

She picked up the pace. Dog felt himself starting to strain now to keep up. Gleason’s words came almost in staccato, pushed out with her breaths.

“That sort of thing—of course it’s not as advanced as AN-TARES. Well, ANTARES is a different model altogether technically.”

Her voice either trailed off or her words were swallowed in a hard breath of air. Dog waited for her to continue or explain, but she didn’t.

“Can ANTARES work?” They were really running now; Bastian had to struggle to get the words out.

“It did.”

“For the Flighthawks?”

“Of course.”

They took a turn to follow the fence. One of the security team’s black SUVs approached slowly on its rounds. Dog waved, then realized he was falling behind. He tried lengthening his stride, pushing to catch up.

The fence tucked to the left up a very slight rise. Bastian’s quarters were down a short road to the right. He goaded his legs to give him one last burst, but barely caught her as he reached the intersection. He slowed, walking, warming down; Jennifer circled back.

“It does work, Colonel. No question about it,” she said, trotting backward in front of him as he walked, catching his breath. “Major Stockard already passed the first set of protocols and controlled one of the Phantoms using the Flight-hawk protocols.”

“You have—” His breath caught. He stopped and leaned down, hands on hips. “You have reservations.”

“Not about the concept. I’m not an expert,” she added.

“You’ve worked on the gateway translation computers and you know as much about AI and computers as anyone on the base, including Rubeo.”

“ANTARES isn’t a computer. That’s the difference.”

She trotted back and forth, a colt eager to get on with her workout. Her body swayed—even in thick warm-up gear, she was beautiful. If he hadn’t been so exhausted from that sprint at the end, he might have grabbed her to him.

Thank God for exhaustion then. She was just a kid, the age of his daughter.

Ouch.

“I’m not an expert,” she insisted. ‘The program was ready for the Flighthawks when it was shelved. Phase One testing with a Phantom was completed about a month before Major Stockard’s accident. Nerve Center would have been the next step. We rewrote some of the hooks into the flight-control computers and tested them. We dropped some of the code in C3 covering simultaneous flights for memory space, but with some of the changes we’ve made recently I doubt it would be a problem loading them back in.”

“How long?”

“How long are they?”

“How long to load them back in?”

Jennifer shrugged. “Not long, if it’s a priority.”

“It may be.”

“Your call.”

Her whole manner toward him had changed. Damn his clumsiness for grabbing her chest. Damn—he could kick himself for being such a klutz.

“You don’t like ANTARES, do you?” he said.

She started trotting away, resuming her workout. “Not my area of expertise.”