Bronco, Garcia followed along behind him, waxing elo-quent about what the addition of five-bladed, infinite-pitch propellers and supercharged turbo engines would do to the aircraft’s performance. Mack had mustered gen-uine admiration for the OV-10, but it paled beside Garcia’s lust. The pilot would have liked nothing better than to help the techie try some of his improvements, but he was in something of a hurry to get going. He’d been ordered to return to Brussels posthaste and prepare a brief on the recent air campaign. This meant considerable work, though not necessarily the kind he enjoyed—he’d have to listen to CentCom commanders brag until his ears fell off. On the other hand, it also meant serious career chits. No doubt it would help push his campaign to win assignment as squadron commander back onto the fast track.
“A few tweaks here and there, Major, this becomes the best COIN aircraft in the world,” Garcia said as they walked toward the rear. “There’s an opportunity here. We stick some of the Flighthawk sensors on it, do a mondo 374
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
upgrade to the engines, telemetry tie-in with the Whiplash team. Add microrobots to extend real-time viewing. Gonna serve somebody—”
“Another song lyric, huh?” Mack ducked beneath the tail. The worn paint was becoming familiar. “Am I going to make Incirlik?”
Garcia looked at him as if he’d just asked if the world were flat. “Well, yes, sir.”
“How about Brussels?”
“Assuming you refuel, not a problem.”
Mack gave the crewman a thumbs-up. If no one at Incirlik actually asked for the aircraft, well, it wouldn’t be right to just leave it in a hangar there. He was personally responsible for its safety. That meant he’d have to take it with him, all the way to Brussels if necessary.
Maybe that French aerospace consultant would like a ride. He’d personally tuck her in.
Hell, at this point he’d settle for Patti Good Teeth.
Mack pulled himself into the cockpit. Helmet on and straps cinched, he gave Garcia the thumb and cranked the engines. The plane tugged at its brakes as he completed the preflight. He still had no weapons, but Garcia had wrung a few more RPMs out of the engines and, even more important, adjusted their whine so they sounded very much like a pack of vintage Harleys tearing down the highway. There was loud, and then there was loud; Mack never minded a few decibels as long as his eardrums got pounded in style.
Cleared by the tower, Mack began trundling toward the far end of the runway. Just as he made his turn and went to gun the throttle, a familiar voice broke over the long-range radio.
“We have a helicopter down by friendly fire,” said Breanna Stockard. “Repeat, Whiplash Hind is down.”
“Shit,” said Mack. He whipped the turbos and raced RAZOR’S EDGE
375
down the mesh strip. Climbing out swiftly, he banked south, veering off his flight plan.
“Quicksilver, this is Wild Bronco, ” he said. “What’s going on, Bree?”
“The Hind was hit about twenty miles south southeast of the border. Whiplash team is aboard.”
“You have a visual?” he asked.
“Negative. We don’t have an exact location. Just com-mencing a search.”
“Copy that. Give me what you’ve got, beautiful. I’m on my way.”
Aboard Raven , over Iran 1955
FENTRESS’S HEART POUNDED IN HIS EARS, BUT OTHERWISE
he felt almost relaxed, his hand moving the joystick smoothly left as he began the new search pattern. He had the infrared view selected; the sensors should have no trouble locating the warm body of the helicopter in the cold air. The computer had already been instructed to highlight possible wreckage “clusters,” as they were referred to by the programming.
Pushing the Flighthawk through the long, jagged valley, Fentress imagined he heard Zen telling him to slow down. The slower he went, the better the odds of seeing something or being seen.
As he neared the end of the search grid, Fentress pushed a bit farther west and made a wide, looping bank onto a new search track. He backed the throttle down, forward airspeed nudging toward 200 miles an hour. Flying the Flighthawks fast wasn’t very hard; they were bullets with stubby wings. Flying them slow, however, took patience and grace. You had to concentrate on what you 376
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
were doing, and yet you couldn’t get so caught up in the details that you started to fight the computer as you bucked through the eddies.
Fentress narrowed his eyes on the screen, trying to keep his concentration. He had to find his guys.
BREE PULLED ZEN TO THE FLOOR AND THEY STARTED TO
dance. His legs hurt but they kept dancing. He pushed his arms tighter around her, holding himself up, resting, but the music got faster and faster. She broke free and danced wildly. He did the same, though his legs were hurting.
It was good that his legs hurt. They hadn’t hurt for so long. He’d known in the hospital that they didn’t hurt, knew what that meant, though he’d tried not to face it.
Zen fought to walk. Giving that up—and yet not giving up everything else—that was the impossible thing. Accepting his paralysis without accepting that it doomed him—had he ever really done that?
It was only when he decided he wouldn’t walk, that he had to concentrate on getting back any way he could, that he made real progress.
He’d give up everything to walk again. Everything.
Bree? Not Bree. Bree he wouldn’t give up.
She danced in front of him. The dream began to fade.
His legs continued to hurt.
Dreamland Command Center
1055
DOG PUT HIS HAND ON THE LIEUTENANT’S SHOULDER, steadying the young man as he worked the com gear and flicked back and forth between the different feeds, trying to locate the helicopter wreckage. There wasn’t much more they could do from here.
RAZOR’S EDGE
377
“Feed pending from General Magnus,” the lieutenant told Dog.
“Yes, I see. Keep it there. Don’t open it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door to the secure room opened and Major Cheshire entered, carrying a tray of coffee and dough-nuts. “Hey, Colonel,” she said lightly.
“Major.” Dog stared at the screen.
“Lost the connection with the general,” said the lieutenant.
“What’s up?” asked Cheshire.
Dog took the coffee and filled her in. “We’re hoping they survived,” he said, his voice soft. “Only one missile at long range. It wasn’t even certain that it hit.”
“Friendly fire,” she said, a comment, not a question.
“Definitely.” Dog glanced back at the screen at the front of the room, which showed a satellite image of the mountainous terrain. At maximum resolution, the houses on the hillsides looked like small cubes of sugar.
“You okay, Colonel?” asked Cheshire.
“I’m fine,” he told her. “General Magnus needs to be filled in. Probably, he’s not going to like it.”
Cheshire nodded.
“Lieutenant, see if you can get that line open to General Magnus.”
“Trying, sir.”
Dog looked back at the screen. From the perspective of the mini-KH, it looked almost like a little piece of heaven.
Aboard Quicksilver , over Iran 2001
NO LONGER WORRIED ABOUT THE IRANIAN LASER OR IRAQI missiles, Breanna brought Quicksilver into an orbit at fif-
378
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
teen thousand feet, just high enough to avoid the mountain peaks. Chris worked the video cam in the nose, scanning for wreckage, while Habib snooped for Iraqi radio transmissions.
The Megafortress’s radar was not designed to sweep the ground, and even if it had been, the jagged peaks and cliffs would have made it difficult to sort through the clutter of irregular returns. Nonetheless, Torbin was giving it the old college try, routing the radar through his station and fiddling with the filters designed to find very low-flying planes in look-down mode. He was still somewhat tentative, unsure of himself in a non-Dreamland way, but Breanna saw that he seemed to be willing to try to figure things out; he flipped back and forth between override, manually tweaking the radar sweeps.