DALE

BROWN’S

Dreamland

RETRIBUTION

DALE BROWN and JIM DEFELICE

Contents

Dreamland: Duty Roster

v

From the Authors: The Story so Far …

vii

Prelude: Annihilation Averted 1

I: Downed Airmen 7

II: Lost and Not Found 49

III: Finders Keepers 91

IV: New Sheriff in Town 137

V: Long Day’s Night 197

VI: Borrowed Time 243

VII: No Chance to Survive 287

VIII: Homecoming 327

IX: Payments Due 347

X: The Long Ride Home 383

About the Authors

Praise

Other Books in the Dreamland Series

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dreamland: Duty Roster

Lieutenant Col o nel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian Dreamland’s commander has been mellowed by the demands of his new command—but he’s still got the mean-est bark in the West, and his bite is even worse.

Major Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard

A top fighter pilot until a crash at Dreamland left him a paraplegic, Zen has volunteered for a medical program that may let him use his legs again. Can Dreamland survive with a key member away?

Captain Breanna “Rap” Stockard

Zen’s wife has seen him through his injury and rehabilitation. But can she balance her love for her husband with the demands of her career … and ambitions?

Major Mack “The Knife” Smith

Mack Smith is the best pilot in the world—and he’ll tell you so himself. But filling in for Zen on the Flighthawk program may be more than even he can handle.

Captain Danny Freah

Danny commands

Whiplash—the ground attack team

that works with the cutting-edge Dreamland aircraft and high- tech gear.

vi

DREAMLAND: DUTY ROSTER

Jed Barclay

The young deputy to the National Security Advisor is Dreamland’s link to the President. Barely old enough to shave, the former science whiz kid now struggles to master the intricacies of world politics.

Lieutenant Kirk “Starship” Andrews

A top Flighthawk pilot, Starship is tasked to help on the Werewolf project, flying robot helicop ters that are on the cutting edge of air combat. Adjusting to the aircraft is easy, but can he live with the Navy people who are in charge of it?

Captain Harold “Storm” Gale, USN

As a young midshipman at Annapolis, “Storm” Gale got Army’s goat—literally. He and some compatriots stole the West Point mascot just before the annual Army-Navy Game, earning instant acclaim in the Navy. Now he’s ap-plying the same brashness to his role as commander of the Abner Read. An accomplished sailor, the only thing he hates worse than the enemy is the Air Force.

From the Authors:

The Story so Far …

Two weeks ago tensions began building between Pakistan and India after a series of guerrilla attacks against Indian oil terminals and other assets. The Indians blamed the strikes on Pakistan and threatened to retaliate; the Pakistan government believed that India had staged the attacks as a pretext for making its own raids on Pakistani facilities. With both countries edging toward war, the Chinese sent their new aircraft carrier, the Khan, into the Arabian Sea to protect its ally Pakistan and shipping. Within days the three countries stood at the brink of a nuclear exchange.

The United States, with friendly relations toward both Pakistan and India, was caught in the middle. Convinced that the acts of sabotage stoking the tensions were being launched by a third party, the President sent the Dreamland team to monitor the situation. And when war seemed inevitable, he came up with a novel idea to stop it—radiation-emitting weapons called

“EEMWBs,” whose E wave radiation would paralyze electronic devices for miles and miles, effectively neutering any nuclear bombs or warheads.

With help from the cutting-edge littoral attack destroyer Abner Read, the Dreamland team discovered that the war was being provoked by a private Iranian force headed by Val Muhammad Ben Sattari. The son of a powerful Iranian general who had clashed with Dreamland some years earlier, Sattari believed that Iran would benefit from a conflict that destroyed its main competitors in the region. But before the Dreamland team could apprehend the Iranians, disaster struck—the Indians launched their nuclear missiles, and the Pakistanis retaliated. Colo nel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian immediately ordered viii

FROM THE AUTHORS: THE STORY SO FAR …

his aircraft to intercept the missiles over India. They were successful, knocking out not only the weapons but all electronic devices over a wide swath of the subcontinent. Bastian then led his own suicidal attack on the Chinese aircraft carrier Khan. Out of missiles, he threatened to crash his Megafortress into the Khan’s V-shaped flight deck if it didn’t put its nuclear bomber back in its hangar deck. After ordering his crew to eject, Dog aimed the nose of his plane at the carrier. Bare seconds before he would have crashed, the Khan stood down.

Nuclear war had been prevented.

But things were hardly finished for the Dreamland team.

Indian antiaircraft missiles had seriously damaged the plane containing Bastian’s daughter, Captain Breanna “Rap” Stockard, and her husband, Major Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard. Breanna managed to get the plane over the ocean, where most of the crew parachuted into the sea below. Then she and her paraplegic husband prepared to bail out together as the plane augured in.

War may have been prevented, but with the sun coming up, more than two dozen nuclear weapons were scattered around the Indian subcontinent, and a host of Dreamlanders were in the ocean, hoping to be rescued …

Prelude:

Annihilation Averted

White House Situation Room,

Washington, D.C.

2125, 14 January 1998

(0725, 15 January, Karachi)

THE V-SHAPED DECK OF THE CHINESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER

Khan grew in the screen as the plane approached, its color fading from dark black to gunmetal as the focus sharpened.

There was an aircraft at the catapult launcher on the right side of the screen; on the left, an antiair missile foamed and flew out of the frame. The deck continued to get closer and closer, until the shadow of the approaching aircraft, an American EB-52 Megafortress bomber, appeared directly below. The early morning sun rode almost on the plane’s back, and the shadow engulfed the aircraft carrier’s deck, as if the plane were swallowing the ship, not the other way around.

Red, computer-generated letters flashed at the bottom of the image.

COLLISION IMMINENT.

COLLISION IMM

The image went black.

“Is that real time?” shouted Jeffrey Hartman, who’d just entered the room.

“No, Mr. Secretary,” said Jed Barclay, the National Security Council deputy responsible for liaisoning with Dreamland during Whiplash missions. “It’s three minutes old.”

“Jesus. Did the plane crash or what?”

4

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“Um, it made it, sir. The video cut out as a latent effect from the, uh, T-Rays. S-S-Scientists say it’s kinda like a sun-spot effect. This is the airplane over here.”

Barclay pointed to the smaller screen at the front of the situation room. Centered on the Arabian Sea, the screen mapped the waters off the coast of India and southwestern Pakistan. A bright red blip headed southward; this was the Megafortress that had just narrowly avoided diving into the Chinese aircraft carrier. The time flashed at the bottom, indicating Washington, D.C., and the time in Karachi, Pakistan—an arbitrary point selected as a reference for the operation, which was taking place across several time zones.