“This is Breanna.”
“I got those tickets. Meet me over at the county airport at four.”
“Tickets?”
“To the Lakers, remember?”
“Oh, Sleek. Um, OK. Sure. Where?”
Sleek Top leased part of a small Cessna that was kept at the Las Vegas airport; they’d take it to L.A., where the Lakers were facing Kings later that evening. He told her where to meet him.
“We’ll grab something to eat at the game,” he said. “I’ll have you back home before midnight.”
“Great,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2115
THE ROMANIAN PLATOON TRAVELED IN FOUR 1980S VINTAGE
Land Rover III three-quarter-ton light trucks, and a pair of 164
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
much older UAZ469B jeeplike vehicles. The former were badly dented and the latter were rusted, but their engines were in good order and the troops wasted no time moving out, driving down the highway in the direction of the reported guerrilla sighting. The gas pipeline was about fifteen miles to the northwest, and Danny wondered if the report wasn’t the result of a mistake or perhaps hysteria until he saw the glow of a fire in the distance.
“It’s the local police station,” Lieutenant Roma told him, leaning back from the front seat of the UAZ. “They make these kind of attacks all the time.”
The police station was located across from a church in a cluster of six or seven buildings just off the main road. The station was one of three wooden buildings nestled together, and the flames that had been started by an explosion had set the other two buildings on fire.
The Romanian lieutenant split up his force, using about half to secure the road on both sides of the hamlet. The rest came with him as he went to investigate the attack.
The men leaped out of the trucks as they arrived, shouting at the people in front of the burning buildings and telling them to get back. Everything was chaos. There were a dozen civilians, some crying, some screaming, others stoically using pails in a vain attempt to put out the flames.
A man in a soot-covered police uniform materialized from the right of the buildings, his face burned to a bright red by the heat. He had something in his arms—a doll, Danny thought at first. And then as he stared, he realized the doll was a human child who’d been pulled out of the building too late.
Tears streamed from the policeman’s eyes, and Danny felt his stomach weaken.
Lieutenant Roma was talking with an older man near the steps to the church. The man spoke in almost a whisper, his head pitched down toward the ground, as if speaking to his shoes.
REVOLUTION
165
Roma listened for a while, then nodded. He moved away from the church, toward Danny.
“There were twelve,” he told him. “They may have taken a policeman hostage. They blew up the building with no warning.”
“Where’d they go?”
Roma shook his head. “They have the police car, the ambulance, and may have taken a truck as well. Someone heard tires screeching on the back road there.” He pointed to the side street, which ran to the southeast. “It would make sense that they would go that way. They’ll avoid the highway.”
“Let’s get after them.”
The lieutenant frowned. Danny realized he wasn’t hesitating out of cowardice—there was no local fire department, and he was debating whether anything could be done to stop the fire.
It was already far too late. Fed by the wood that had dried for more than a hundred years, the flames climbed into the night sky. The back of one of the buildings crumbled to the ground. The fire flared, but without wind to spread it across the street, it would soon run out of fuel, choked by its own ravenous hunger.
Thicker, heavier parts of the buildings—rugs, appliances—began to melt rather than burn. Acrid smoke spread across the road, stinging everyone’s nose and eyes.
“Yes, let’s go.” Roma turned to the man and told him in Romanian that they would be back. Then he looked at Danny.
“Are your people ready to help us?”
“They should be in the air any second.”
Aboard the Bennett,
above northeastern Romania
2124
ZEN TOOK OVER THE FLIGHTHAWK AS SOON AS IT WAS
launched, juicing the throttle and heading toward the GPS
166
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
reading from Danny Freah’s radio. The infrared camera in the Flighthawk’s nose showed a docile, almost dreamlike landscape of empty fields broken only occasionally by small clusters of houses. It seemed impossible that there was a war here, but Danny’s voice when he checked in sounded as grim as if he were in the middle of hell itself.
“We’re traveling on local Road 154,” said Danny. “They have a police car, an ambulance, and maybe a pickup truck.
There may be a hostage.”
“Roger that,” said Zen. His rules of engagement required him to get permission not just from Dog, but the Romanian Second Army Corps commander before firing—unless the guerrillas were shooting directly at a Whiplash team member.
In that case he’d obliterate whatever he felt was a danger and ask questions later.
“Check the highways nearby, just in case,” added Danny.
“But we think this is the road they took.”
“Yeah, we’re on it.”
Romanian road maps had been uploaded into the computer’s memory. Zen gave a verbal command and the computer projected the map on the screen. After highlighting his position, it flashed an arrow on the highway Danny had mentioned, a long, winding road that ran from the larger highway to the south.
The road was about thirty miles away. Zen adjusted his course, turning so he would bring the road into view just south of Danny’s location. Then he pushed the plane lower, his eyes locked on the view in the screen.
The road ran for about three miles, taking a few gentle S-turns past farm fields and ending at a shallow creek and woods. There were no vehicles of any kind along it. The infrared camera didn’t show anything warm in the vicinity. Zen rechecked his position, then took another pass, slowing the Flighthawk down to get a better look.
Spiff, operating the ground radar, reported that the high-
REVOLUTION
167
way was clear, except for a fire truck responding from a neighboring town.
“Danny, are you sure this is the road?” Zen asked as he flew the Flighthawk north, passing over the army vehicles.
“It’s their best guess.”
Zen pulled up, taking a moment to consult the radar image of the ground. The odd thing about this road was that it didn’t connect to any other roads; it was essentially a dead end, albeit a very long one, flanked by numerous barns and some isolated farmhouses. If the guerrillas had used it, they were almost certainly hiding somewhere.
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2131
ADRENALINE WAS BOTH A CURSE AND A BOON. TOO MUCH
and you started to lose your sense of judgment, rushed into things without taking the wisest approach. Too little and you lost your edge, holding back when you should attack.
Even for Danny Freah it was a difficult balance. The dark night, the unfamiliar territory, and most of all his role as an observer rather than a leader, made it more difficult to walk the tightrope. His heart sped; his head told it to slow down.
Even though Zen had said the road was empty, Lieutenant Roma insisted on driving to the very end. When they reached it, he got his troops out and had them cross the creek, searching the woods and nearby fields. Danny, watching the infrared feed from the Flighthawk on his smart helmet’s visor, could tell that the woods were too sparse to hide any of the vehicles. When he told the lieutenant, the Romanian replied that a few months back after a similar attack the troop had chased a small unit of guerrillas across a stream nearby and trapped them in the woods.