Then something smacked him on the top of the head. His arms and legs fell limp. He tried to breathe, and found he couldn’t; in the next moment he felt himself falling, the black sky descending over him.

V

R ESISTANCE

Washington, D.C.

11 October 1997, 2345

JED BARCLAY PUT THE PHONE DOWN AND STARED AT THE desk. He felt a little like a diver who’d come up from a great depth a touch too quickly; the events unfolding in Brunei had left him slightly disoriented. Islamic rebels were in control of the capital and at least two other cities; the sultan was missing, the military was in disarray. The Brunei navy’s two new patrol ships, purchased from Russia within the last six months, had been sunk overnight. There was no word on the whereabouts of the Brunei’s Megafortress. Officially, Malaysia claimed that it had not helped the guerilla forces, but that seemed highly unlikely.

The CIA was preparing a brief on the Islamic terrorists, citing evidence of a new organization involved behind the scenes known as al Qaeda. Funded by a Saudi millionaire, the group was closely connected with the government of Afghanistan, where it had established training camps for terrorists. The head of the group was a man named Osama bin Laden, a fanatic millionaire dedicated to wiping out the Great Satan—America, of course.

Jed had heard of al Qaeda before, of course, and even knew that it had connections with Islamic extremists in Indonesia and Malaysia, but the collapse of Brunei had been nothing short of remarkable. It seemed impossible that a relatively small band of outsiders, no more than ten thousand according to the CIA estimate, had taken over the country. And yet they appeared to have done just that, perhaps succeeding largely because the idea was so outlandish that it didn’t appear possible.

“Jed? Are you ready?”

Jed looked up and saw his boss, Philip Freeman, standing in the doorway.

“Yeah,” said Jed, standing. “I have the latest from Brunei. It’s pretty ugly.”

“How ugly?”

“Capital has definitely fallen. Sultan is missing,” said Jed.

“Sultan is dead?”

“Unsure. Just missing, at this point.”

“Where’s the Megafortress?”

“Not clear. We’ll have a satellite over the country in about thirty-five minutes. The NSA is working on some intercepts as well.”

Freeman nodded grimly. “Come along.”

Jed followed the national security advisor as they walked over to the White House situation room, where the president had asked his military and national security advisors to meet. President Martindale had not yet arrived, and Jed started talking to some of the Pentagon staffers who were standing along the back wall. He quickly realized that he had much more up-to-date information than they did, and one or two had only a vague notion of where the tiny nation was located. Brunei had been far down on nearly everyone’s priority list until today.

“Gentlemen, ladies, thank you for coming at such an ungodly hour,” said the president as he strode abruptly into the room. “I realize I’ve destroyed the weekend for most of you and I apologize. Let’s get started.”

Brenda Kelly, a State Department aide who had just flown back from Brunei, gave a brief overview of the situation there. Several times she emphasized the kingdom’s importance as an oil producer. Jed took over with details about the government’s collapse, finishing with the fact that an ASEAN emergency meeting scheduled for the next morning Brunei time had been postponed an hour ago because of the rapidly changing situation.

“The question is, do we care about Brunei?” said Arthur Chastain, the secretary of defense. Chastain could be blunt, but the comment was brutal even for him. “Brunei is a minor country in a small corner of the world, certainly not worth the expenditure of our blood.”

“You’re wrong,” blurted Jed. “Aside from its importance as an oil producer, it’s important b-both strategically and as a sy-symbol,” said Jed. His stutter had a habit of appearing at the worst possible times; he sped on, knowing the best strategy for dealing with it was to ignore it. “Brunei helps balance Malaysia and Indonesia in the region. It provided a base during the operations against China. It’s been a more stable ally than the Ph-Ph-Philippines, all things considered. And also, these terrorists have to be taken seriously. This is just the start for them. We have to beat them here.”

“They’re just poor rabble-rousers,” said Chastain. “Poverty’s the problem with all of these people.”

“No one is poor in Brunei,” said Kelly.

“And they have the Megafortress,” added Jed. “It is not a weapon we’d want in terrorists’ hands.”

“Absolutely not,” said the president. “At the minimum, we want to take it back or destroy it.”

“And the maximum?” asked Chastain.

“The maximum is what we’re here to discuss,” the president told him.

Dreamland

11 October 1997, 2203

The new orders came just as they were boarding the planes. Dog pulled Danny aside on the apron near the hangar a few feet from the MC-17. Danny’s men—along with two small scout helicopters and Dreamland’s mobile command trailer—were already aboard Dreamland’s version of the versatile McDonnell Douglas cargo plane.

“Brunei’s going all to hell,” Dog told him. ‘The Megafortress is at the International Airport in the capital. Mack Smith can’t be located at the moment. The president wants to make sure the terrorists don’t operate the aircraft.”

“We going to blow it up?” asked Danny.

“It may come to that, depending on the situation,” said Dog. “There’s been some contact with Prince bin Awg, who’s asked for the aircraft to be preserved if not recovered. The president wants us to scope out the situation and destroy the plane only if necessary. I’d like to see exactly what’s going on.”

“What about Deci Gordon?”

“He’s hiding with some people outside the capital. He called into our center a while ago. He seems okay for now. I’ve spoken to Breanna by phone,” Dog added. “She’s in Tokyo. She’ll be joining us in the Philippines.”

Dog explained that, rather than going to Brunei International Airport as they had planned, the Megafortresses and MC-17 would land at a Philippines airfield, using it as a temporary base.

“I’ll take Pennsylvania and do a survey of Brunei as soon as we arrive,” continued Dog. “We’ll check the oil platform we were going to use as the LADS base, double-checking that it’s okay. If possible, we’ll operate the helicopters out of there.”

“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” said Danny. “The platform doesn’t have a dedicated helipad.”

“Then we may have to improvise. You told me the structure of the building had been designed for a landing deck, it just wasn’t installed.”

“The plans say that. We’ll have to get in and check it before we can land.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“If we’re going to get people off the island, we should land directly at the airfield,” said Danny.

“Not until we know what the situation is,” Dog told him. “And I doubt we could hold it with just the Whiplash team”

“Where’s the navy?” asked Danny.

“There’s a carrier group several days away. They won’t be offshore and in a position to conduct operations until the end of next week. This has caught everyone by surprise, including us.

“We’ll get some satellite intelligence over to the MC-17 via the Dreamland network,” added Dog. “It’s daytime over there right now. By the time we get over there with the travel time and time change, it’ll be late at night.”

“Understood,” said Danny. “We’ll try to sleep on the flight over”