Major Alou brought up a few practical issues about which non-Dreamland frequencies would be used during the operation, as well as the availability of refueling assets that were being chopped from Pacific Command. Zen found his mind drifting as the discussion slanted toward minutiae; he worried about Kick and Starship, who’d be working without a net.
And then he remembered he’d still forgotten to call his wife.
What was up with that?
He eyed his watch, waiting for the briefing to end.
Bright Memorial Hospital, Honolulu
1800
(Dreamland, 2100)
BREANNASTOCKARD HADjust finished packing her things when the phone on the bedstand rang.
Thinking it was probably her mother—her mother had taken to calling her every hour on the hour—she blew off the first few rings. Finally, she reached for it, grabbing it just in time to hear whoever had been calling hanging up.
Probably Zen, she thought, instantly angry with herself for not picking up the phone. She took her bag and went out, glad to finally be out of the small whitewashed space.
As she rode the elevator downstairs, Breanna felt a surge of concern for her husband. She knew he’d deployed on a mission somewhere, but security concerns had prevented him or anyone else from saying exactly where he was or what he was doing. As a member of the military—not to mention the same elite unit—Breanna was expected to understand that there would be times when duty demanded she not speak to Zen. But it wasn’t easy, just as it wasn’t easy for the literally thousands of other men and women—and children—who found themselves in similar situations around the country. Breanna accepted this as a given, a part of her life. Even so, as she made her way to the elevator, she felt an undeniable ache, a longing to be near her husband.
The ache turned into something else in the elevator downstairs, something sharper, a jagged hole.
Fear. She was worried about him, afraid that something was going to happen.
She was sure of it. Convinced. Her hands began to tremble.
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The door opened. Bree’s mother stood a few feet away, talking to some other doctors. Breanna managed to bite the corner of her lip and pushed herself out of the elevator. She forced a smile and suffered through her mother’s greeting and introductions, looking toward the floor not out of modesty as her mother bragged, but hiding the emotion suddenly washing through her. She signed herself out, the words on the papers at the desk invisible behind a thick fog.
Spotting a phone nearby, she gave in to the temptation to call Dreamland, even though she knew she wouldn’t get Zen himself. She dialed the number, her finger sliding off the keys.
No one would be able to talk to her anyway. It was an open line. All she’d do was make other people nervous.
The phone rang and was answered before she could hang up.
“This is Breanna Stockard,” she told the airman handling the phone. “I—”
“Captain, how are you?” said the operator, and before she knew it she was talking to Chief Master Sergeant Terrence “Ax” Gibbs.
“Everybody’s who’s anybody is out seeing the world,” Ax told her. “If you know what I mean.”
The twinkle in the chief’s eyes translated somehow into his voice. Breanna’s apprehension didn’t melt—it was too deep for that—but her hand stopped trembling and the ground beneath her feet felt solid again.
“Something up?” asked the chief.
“No, chief, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Sure I can’t do anything for you?”
“You have, kinda,” she said. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
“Red carpet’ll be waiting.”
Taichung Air Base
2300
BOSTON HAD NEVERworn one of the fogsuits before, and Sergeant Liu had to help him into it.
Covered with a thin layer of LEDs, the suit was designed to emit light in a pattern that blended with the surroundings. In pitch black, of course, it was completely dark. But in a grayish setting it would appear gray, and on a splotchy brown background it would look splotchy brown. The technology was still being worked on at Dreamland, and the scientists predicted that within a few years, new versions would make foot soldiers practically invisible to the naked eye.
For now, they were just extremely hard to see, especially at dark.
Sergeant Liu unfurled the hood from the back of the suit, covering all but the visor area of Boston’s helmet. The six Whiplash troopers looked like aliens, ready to take over the earth.
Or at least a small part of it.
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“Check your tasers,” said Liu.
Because of the political ramifications of operating without authorization in an allied country, the White House had ordered the Whiplash team to use nonlethal weapons “to the extent practical and possible” to take down the factory. Each team member carried a special Dreamland shotgun taser as his primary weapon. The gun looked like an Olin/HK CAWS RHINO (Repeating Hand-held Improved Non-rifled Ordnance) Special Forces shotgun with a large box in front of the trigger area. Traditional tasers fired two darts at a target that were connected to the weapon by a wire, allowing the shock to be administered. While potent, the need for the wire limited most tasers to relatively short range—fifteen yards was an industry standard. That was perfect for many police applications, but would put a Whiplash trooper at a severe disadvantage.
The Dreamland gun—officially known as T-3, though the troopers usually just called them tasers or sometimes phasers after the weapons used in the Star Trek sci-fi series—fired a shell containing two bullets that looked like the jacks used in a child’s game, except that their points were considerably sharper. The bullets housed capacitors charged as the gun was fired; the shock when they contacted a target was enough to put down a horse.
While the weapon could fire its cartridges beyond a hundred yards, technical difficulties with the separation of the bullets meant the team had to decide between short or long-range cartridges, with effective ranges between five and fifty yards or forty and one hundred yards. In both cases, the bullets would not separate or set the charge properly before the minimum range, and beyond the maximum they tended to be wildly inaccurate. All team members carried clips packed with both sets of ammo, color-coded and notched so they were easily ID’d.
The team members also carried standard-issue M-4s—shortened M-16s favored by Airborne and SF
troops—or MP-5s beneath their fogsuits; they were intended only as weapons of last resort.
“We’re ready, Captain,” said Liu over the shared team frequency in the Smart Helmet as the last trooper signaled he was good to go.
“Good.” Captain Freah’s rich baritone reverberated in Boston’s helmet. “Now remember, the E-bomb will go off just as we hit the ground,” he added. “It may not get everything, and they may start looking for us once their lights go out. Questions?”
Bison made a lame joke about plugging his taser into an outlet and charging the city for electricity.
“Any real questions?” asked the captain, and the silence told Boston they were ready to board the plane.
Aboard Penn , over the Taiwan Strait
2335
STARSHIP TOOK THEFlighthawk from the computer as the launch sequence completed, tucking the U/MF down toward the water as Kick authorized his own launch. It was damn good to be back in action.
He wasn’t feeling any jitters, and the pressure wasn’t even up to football game levels. The fact that Kick had his hands full with his own aircraft reassured him somehow.
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Bottom line, Starship knew he was twice the pilot Kick was. Having his rival next to him in the Flighthawk bay flying his own aircraft seemed easier to deal with than having him hovering over his shoulder.