Tommy Chu’s voice boomed in his ear. “We’re sixty seconds from drop,” said the Fisher’s pilot. “The Sharkboat is eight miles to the west. The targets are diving. I’m going to drop you approximately five hundred yards ahead of their route calculated by the computer.”
“What happened to Piranha?” Danny asked.
“We haven’t reconnected yet,” said Chu. “Ensign English is working on it. Things are pretty hot down there, Danny.
Are you sure you want to go ahead?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“All right. One of our Flighthawks will orbit to assist if you need it. Thirty seconds.”
“Boston, you ready?” Danny asked his sergeant on the other wing.
“Born ready, Cap. Can’t wait to get in the water. Goin’
stir crazy here. And freezin’ my nuts off.”
Danny switched the screen view to the manpod’s rear camera, figuring that would be the one he’d want to use after the drop. Then he took a long breath, gripped the rails near his head, and closed his eyes.
Aboard the Levitow ,
over northwestern India
0545
FLYING THE MEGAFORTRESS AT HIGH SPEED AND LOW ALTItude was the ultimate thrill ride, the sort of attraction roller coaster designers could only dream about. The scenery north of India’s largest city added to the sensation; exotic END GAME
345
rooftops flew by the windscreens, giving way to yellowish fields, then more houses and factory buildings.
Breanna wasn’t interested in the scenery, except as a reference point to make sure she was flying as low as possible.
The thrills she could take or leave, though at the moment she couldn’t live without them.
She hurled the Megafortress forward at 500 knots, counting on her reflexes to keep her out of trouble. They were less than fifty feet above ground level, so close to some of the buildings that if she extended her landing gear she could have scraped off shingles.
“Terrain rising!” warned Stewart.
“Thanks,” said Breanna, even though she was already pulling back. “Levitow to Hawk leader—we’re approaching Omega point.”
“Roger that, Levitow. We’re getting ready to say good-bye right now.”
UNLIKE THEIR MOTHER SHIP, THE FLIGHTHAWKS WERE NOT
shielded against the EEMWB’s electromagnetic waves. To avoid the effects of the blast, Hawk Four would be sent to a rendezvous point south, piloted completely by the onboard component of its C3 flight-control computer. The Megafortress would pick it up on the way back. If for some reason they were unable to return within an hour, C3 would fly the plane westward and ditch in the ocean.
The other aircraft, Hawk Three, would stay with the Levitow until the EEMWBs went off. That would leave the Megafortress temporarily without an escort, but in theory anything nearby would have been zapped out of order anyway.
“Thirty seconds to disconnect,” Dork told Zen.
“Hard to let go, huh?” Zen asked the other pilot.
“You got that, Major.”
Zen kept Hawk Three five miles ahead of the Megafortress, flying at thirty feet. He was so low not simply to avoid detection—the Flighthawk’s radar profile was con-
346
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
siderably stealthier than the Megafortress’s—but as a kind of terrain bird dog to alert Breanna to anything unexpected.
“Hawk Four is no longer under my control,” said Dork, sounding a little sad.
Zen leaned forward in his seat, eyes scanning the screen as the ground whipped by.
He’d made the right decision. This was exactly where he needed to be.
Northern Arabian Sea
0548
THE CONCUSSION THREW THE MIDGET SUBMARINE SIDEWAYS.
Sattari lurched against his seat belt, then fell back, suddenly weightless in the small craft.
He waited for a second blast, sure that the aircraft they had seen above would finish them off. He felt his heart pounding at the top of his chest, near his collarbone.
A minute passed, then another. There were no more explosions. Sattari bent his head and uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.
“Captain, we are losing power,” said the submarine’s commander. “We’re losing speed.”
The soft light from the instrument panel turned the man’s face a brownish red; he looked like a demon.
“We will wait, then.”
“If the Parvaneh has been seriously damaged, we may not be able to stay under very long.”
“Let us examine the damage and discover what else we can do. Trust yourself, and Allah.”
“Yes, Captain.”
THE MANPOD HIT THE WATER WITH A TEETH-RATTLING SMACK
and shudder. The nose—where Danny’s feet were—shot downward, then flipped abruptly toward the surface. Danny hung onto the handles near his head, expecting the pod to END GAME
347
spin or, worse, flip over. But it did neither. A buzzer sounded in the cabin as the pod’s automated raft system prepared to inflate. He didn’t override, and three seconds later a shrill hiss told him compressed air had filled the bladders at the sides, stabilizing the craft.
The feed from the rear cam showed nothing nearby.
Danny reached to the back of his helmet and cued in the front view. Water lapped the top two-thirds of the screen; he couldn’t see anything else.
Balling his hands into fists, he reached down and pounded the recessed handles above his stomach, blowing the top half of the pod off. He pulled himself upright, punching his visor into its low-light mode.
There was nothing nearby—including the other manpod.
“Boston?”
No answer.
“Boston?”
He was just about to switch back into the Dreamland circuit and make sure that Chu had dropped his sergeant when something broke the water a few yards away.
“Boston?” he yelled.
The figure waved. It had to be Boston, he decided, and reached down to his pants leg to take out the flashlight. He gave a quick flick of light to help the man find his way over, then pulled off his helmet.
“Boston?”
“Yo, Cap,” said the sergeant, grabbing onto the side of the pod. “Had a little trouble. The stabilizer raft didn’t inflate right, and I guess I blew the lid too soon.”
“Where’s your helmet?”
“Bottom of the sea. Lost the laughing gas too. Got my dive gear and weapons, though.” Boston hauled the waterproof sacks up to Danny.
“All right. Let me see where our submarine is,” Danny said, pulling his helmet back on.
348
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
Aboard the Abner Read,
in the northern Arabian Sea
0555
STARSHIP STAYED IN AN ORBIT BETWEEN THE SHARKBOAT AND
his last sighting of the submarines.
“Werewolf, the Dreamland team is in the water,” said Eyes. “Approach the area and give them cover.”
“Copy that. I see them. Do you have a location on the submarine?”
“Dreamland Fisher is still working on that.”
Starship sped forward. He saw a dark smudge in the water at about a mile. Thinking it was the Dreamland Whiplash team, he started to slow down, then realized it was one of the commandos’ empty rafts. Tracking north, he found a small missilelike raft nose down in the water—one of the manpods.
“Werewolf has Whiplash manpod in sight,” he told Eyes.
“I’m switching you over to the commander of SharkboatOne. You have a direct line on your channel two.”
Starship gave the commander the GPS coordinates for the manpod. One man clung to the side and the other was in the tiny vessel.
“Stand by for the location of the submarines, via Dreamland Fisher commander,” said Eyes, breaking in.
Northern Arabian Sea
0558
THE GLOBAL POSITIONING CUE IN THE SMART HELMET INDIcated that the submarine was four hundred yards almost directly south. It appeared to have stopped moving, drifting less than twelve feet below the surface.