The B-5 Unmanned Bomber Platform was wide-open, a vast cloud of potential waiting to be shaped, like the Megafortress had been when Bree joined the program. It was also the sort of program a captain could ride to a colonelcy and beyond.

Was that important? Was that what she was worried about?

No way. She wanted to be promoted.

Even though it would strain her marriage.

Zen was due for promotion soon, and with his record no one was going to stand in his way. That would almost certainly mean going to Washington. He hadn’t served in the Pentagon, and for someone like Zen the Pentagon was a necessary and expected ticket to be punched. He’d be there already if it hadn’t been for his accident.

What did that have to do with anything? She’d be at Dreamland and he’d in D.C., one way or the other.

Give up the B-5? Why? Because it wasn’t a “real” plane?

Maybe she was worried about something else. Maybe there wasn’t room to have a two-career family.

So she’d do what? Quit? Play Suzy Homemaker?

Bullshit. She was to Suzy Homemaker as Zen was to …

A Pentagon paper-pusher. He’d never last a week there, even in a wheelchair.

“Coming up to Cathay,” said Chris Ferris. His voice had a cackle to it, accented by the interphone circuit shared throughout the airplane. He’d spent considerable time coming up with an elaborate list of code words for the various coordinates on their mission chart and, for some reason, thought they were amusing as hell. “Cathay” was the release area for the Flighthawks. “Byzantium” was the southernmost point of their patrol orbit; “Confucius” was the northern point.

It could have been worse. Bree had put her foot down on a list of kung-fu heroes.

“Ten minutes to launch area,” she told Zen, who was below on the Flighthawk deck.

“Ready to begin fueling, Quicksilver,” he told her.

“All right. Chris?”

“As Li Po would say, ‘The sun rises with anticipation.’ ”

“Li Po would be a Chinese philosopher?” Bree asked innocently.

“My barber,” he answered, guffawing.

Zen watched the countdown impatiently, waiting for the Megafortress to being the alpha maneuver that would increase the separation forces and helped propel the Flighthawk off the wing of the big plane. The vortices thrown off by the Megafortress were a complicated series of mini-tornadoes, but the computer and untold practice sessions made the launch almost routine. As the Megafortress dipped and then lifted away, Zen dropped downward with the Flighthawk, hurtling toward the sparkling ocean; the plane’s engine rippled with acceleration. He pulled back on the stick, rocketing ahead of the Megafortress. No amount of practice, no amount of routine, could change the thrill he felt, the electricity that sparked from his fingers and up through his skull as gravity grappled for the plane, losing—temporarily at least—the age-old battle of primitive forces.

And yet, he was sitting in an aircraft more than three, now four miles away, flying level and true at 350 knots.

“Launch procedure on Hawk Two at your convenience, Hawk Leader,” said Bree.

“Ready when you are, Quicksilver.”

They launched the second Flighthawk, then worked into their search pattern, a 250-mile narrow oval or “race-track” over the ocean. The earlier spin around the surveillance area had shown there were a half-dozen merchant vessels in the sea lanes but no military vessels. Likewise, the sky was clear.

“We have a PS-5 at seventy-five miles,” said Chris, reading off the coordinates for a Chinese patrol plane coming south from the area above Vietnam. Known to the West as the PS-5, the flying boat was designated a Harbin “Shuishang Hongzhaji,” or “marine bomber,” SH-5 by the Chinese; the SH-5 had limited antiship and antisubmarine capabilities. With a boat-shaped hull and floats beyond the turboprops at the ends of its wings, the PS-5 belonged to an early generation of waterborne aircraft.

Anything but fast, the PS-5 was lumbering about three thousand feet above the waves at 140 knots. Zen noted the location, which was fed from Quicksilver’s radar systems into C³. the long-range sitrep map showed the patrol aircraft as a red diamond in the left-hand corner of his screen, moving at a thirty-degree angle to his course.

Just beyond it were two circles, civilian ships on the water, one a Japanese tanker, the other a Burmese freighter, according to a registry check performed by Lieutenant Freddy Collins. Collins handled the radio intercept gear, and had been tasked with keeping tabs on ship traffic as well. The other specialist, Torbin Dolk, handled the radar intercepts and advanced ECMs, backing up and feeding Chris Ferris, the copilot.

“Getting some hits just beyond our turnaround point,” warned Torbin. “Radar just out of range.”

“Unidentified ship at grid coordinate one-one-seven-point-three-two at two-zero-zero-one,” said Collins. “Could be a warship.”

“Roger that,” said Zen. He pushed the Flighthawks further ahead of the Megafortress, running close to the edge of their control range at ten miles.

“Looks like a destroyer,” said Collins.

“On its own?” asked Bree.

“There may be something beyond it but I can’t pick it out.”

“Definitely something out there—I have two Su-33’s at two hundred thirteen nautical miles right on our nose,” said Chris. “They don’t see us—turning—looks like they’re high cap for somebody.”