Dreamland
0523
“TEST CODE CHECKS, SIR,” SAID THE LIEUTENANT AT THE
communications desk in the secure situation room triumphantly. “You’re good to go.”
“Make the connection,” said Dog. He stood in the middle of the floor in front of the screen, waiting for the transmission from Turkey. The test pattern on the screen blipped blue. The words CONNECTION PENDING appeared in the middle of the screen.
He wanted to talk to Jennifer in the worst way. But of course that wasn’t what this was about.
“Hey, Colonel, good to see you finally,” said Danny.
The screen was still blank.
“Well, you can see me but—wait, there we go,” said Dog as the video finally snapped in. Danny Freah sat at the table in the Whiplash trailer. His eyes drooped a bit at the corners, but his face and hands were full of energy.
Before Dog could say anything, Danny launched into an argument for undertaking a ground recon of the Iraqi Razor clone.
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“And hello to you too, Captain,” said Dog when he finally paused for a breath.
“It’d be a real intelligence coup,” said Danny. “We could use the helmets to beam back video. Then we can take key parts back.”
“Do we know where it is?”
“No, sir. But the missions they’re on now—they’ll find them.”
“Assuming, of course, it exists.”
“Hell, if we can get some help, we could grab the whole thing.”
“Let me get Rubeo and our Razor people down here to talk about this,” said Dog. “It may be useful.”
“It’ll be damn useful.”
“Relax, Captain. From what I’ve heard out of CentCom, they’re not even one hundred percent sure it’s a laser. No one can explain how Saddam would have built it.”
“If it’s not—let’s say it’s a radar and missile setup we don’t know about—we should take a look at that too,”
said Danny. “See what they’re up to. Jennifer Gleason suggested that they may have some way of taking a lot of different inputs and cobbling them together. Software for that would be worth grabbing too, don’t you think?”
“Captain, while I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm,” said Dog, “why don’t we take this one step at a time. How about an update on your status?”
“Sure,” said Danny. He gave him a complete rundown, working backward from the last mission. Then he told him about the baby who’d been born the previous night. It sounded like just the thing the Pentagon PR people would eat up—except, of course, that the mission was code-word classified, and would undoubtedly remain so.
“Kinda makes you a grandpa, huh, Colonel?” said Danny.
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193
“I don’t think so,” said Dog. “What kind of shape are our people in?”
“Top notch, sir.”
Danny’s mention of Jennifer gave him the perfect excuse to talk to her—he ought to hear about her theory from her, he thought. Certainly if it were Rubeo or one of the other scientists, he’d ask to talk to him directly.
But Dog hesitated. He didn’t want to cross over the line.
Of course he should talk to her.
“Is Dr. Gleason there?” he asked, finally giving in. “I’d like to hear her theory on the radars.”
“She’s up with the Megafortresses, sir,” said Danny.
“She’s going on a mission.”
“Mission?”
“Yes, sir. They’re modifying the IR detection gear to search for lasers.”
Dog pursed his lips but said nothing.
High Top
1510
MISSION PREPPED, BREANNA GAVE IN TO AN IMPULSE BEfore heading back up to the Megafortress and jogged over to the baby’s tent after relieving herself in the Marines’
new latrine. She wanted to see the cute little guy before she took off.
For good luck. Just for good luck.
She expected mother and child would be sleeping, but as she neared the tent she heard laughter. The tent was crowded with Whiplash members and Marines, who were taking turns holding and cooing the infant.
“Guarding against a sneak attack?” said Bree, trying to squeeze inside.
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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“Can’t be too careful about colic,” said one of the men, deadly serious.
“Well, let me hold him for good luck,” she said, sliding near Sergeant “Powder” Talcom, who was holding him.
The sergeant gave the baby up very reluctantly.
“You’re a cute one,” she said, gently cradling the baby.
Little Muhammad Liu looked at her with very big brown eyes. Then he furled his nose and began to cry.
“Aw, Captain, you made him cry,” said Powder, immediately reaching for the infant. The other men closed in; Bree suddenly felt very outnumbered.
“There there,” she told the infant, rocking him gently.
“Aunt Breanna isn’t going to hurt you.”
The baby sniffed, burped, then stopped crying.
“You got the touch, Captain,” said one of the men.
“Well, I’m quitting while I’m ahead,” she said, handing the baby off.
Iraq Intercept Missile Station Two, northern Iraq 1510
MUSAH TAHIR ROSE FROM HIS PRAYER MAT AND BOWED
once more in the direction of Mecca before starting back to his post in the radar van. For the past three days Allah had been remarkably beneficent, rewarding his poor efforts at improving the Russian radar equipment with fantastic victories over the Americans. Volleys of missiles—a combination of SA-2s, Threes, and Sixes—had brought down several aircraft.
Or at least his commanders told them they had. Tahir was aware only of his own small role in the war as both technician and operator. He had studied engineering at MIT as well as the Emirates, and in some ways this job was a million times below his capability. But fate and Al-
RAZOR’S EDGE
195
lah had brought him here, and he could not argue with either.
Tahir settled on his narrow metal bench before the two screens he commanded and began his routine. First, he made sure that each line of the Swiss-made system in the console on the left was working, punching the buttons methodically and greeting the man on the other line with a word of peace and a prayer. When he reached the third line, there was nothing—Shahar, the idiot Shiite, no doubt a traitor, once again sleeping at his post. Tahir waited patiently, speaking the man’s name at sixty second intervals, until after nearly ten minutes the observer came on the line.
“Planes?” Tahir asked, cutting off Shahar’s apology.
He knew the answer would be no—he had not received the warning yet from the spies at Incirlik that the infidels’
planes had taken off. But the question would serve as a remonstrance.
“No,” said the man.
“Remain alert,” snapped Tahir, hanging up. He sat back at his console, frowning as one of the guards walked past his doorway. There was only a small security contingent here, a half-dozen men; anything larger might have attracted the Americans’ attention. Besides, so far behind the lines, there was no need for troops. Tahir several times had considered the fact that the men had probably been posted here to keep an eye on him.
That was hardly necessary. He went through the other lines quickly. When he had determined that all were operating, he proceeded to the next set of checks. These were more difficult, involving the buried cables that ran from the various collection sites. More than two dozen radars and six microwave stations were connected to Tahir’s post via fiber-optic cable that had been buried at great ex-pense, in most cases before the infidel war. If it were laid 196
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
out end to end it would no doubt reach Satan’s capital in Washington.
Only two of his sites had been hit in the morning’s bombardments. That was well within acceptable parameters. At this pace, it would take the Americans a full week to eliminate his radars. By then the army would be out of missiles anyway.