“We can’t stay here. It’s too easy to see us,” said Mircea, reaching them.
“We’re not going to stay,” he told her. “Come on.”
He grabbed her side and pulled himself up, thumbing for the number of the ambassador while they started down the hill.
REVOLUTION
405
Aboard EB-52 Bennett,
over northeastern Romania
0110
“ROMANIAN AIRCRAFT ARE RETURNING SOUTH, COLONEL,”
said Spiff. “No more Russians. I think we’ve seen the last of them.”
“Don’t place any bets,” said Dog.
The Dreamland channel buzzed. Samson was on the line.
“Bastian.”
“Locusta claims he’ll the shoot the Osprey down if it flies over the hill,” said Samson. “He implied that the guerrillas have the president’s son and wife as hostages, and that they’ll kill them if we get too close. I think it’s a bunch of bull.”
“All right.”
“What the hell do we do now, Bastian?” Samson asked. “If we can’t use the Osprey, how do we get him out? How do we get our people in there?”
“Let’s ask them,” said Dog.
“What do you mean?”
“Conference everyone in and see what they think.”
Samson didn’t say anything. He was used to working from the top down—he came up with ideas, and people genuflected.
Dreamland had never worked that way. Neither had Dog.
“All right,” said Samson finally. “How the hell do we do that?”
THE PROBLEM WASN’T JUST GETTING THE PRESIDENT OUT—they had to find him first. The Bennett’s radar couldn’t spot him because of the trees, which would also block the infrared sensors aboard the Flighthawks unless the aircraft descended low enough to be heard.
Zen took Starship onto another channel to give him some pointers for tweaking the filters the computer used to interpret the infrared, even though he knew it was a long shot.
The sensors’ long-range capabilities were designed primarily 406
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
to find objects in the sky; they simply couldn’t do what they wanted.
By the time they went back on the conference line, Danny was suggesting that he and his men parachute into the hill.
“Even with the moon out, it’s still dark enough to jump without being seen,” he said. “If we take the Osprey to 25,000
feet, it won’t be heard.”
“How do you get out of there?” Dog asked.
“There’s a spot at the base of the back hill that’s not covered by the patrols the troops have set up,” said Danny. “We can come down the hill, work our way across and then out.
We get across the road, then we have the Osprey pick us up on the other side of this second hill here.”
“That’ll take hours,” said Dog.
“I don’t think he’s getting out on his own,” said Danny.
“General Samson, incoming message from the ambassador,” said Breanna.
“Good. Stockard, can you plug me into him?”
It took Zen a moment to realize Samson was talking to his wife. No one spoke, waiting for the general.
“I want this on line. Can you get it on line?”
Zen could hear Breanna explaining in the background that they could conference it, though the quality would be poor.
“Well, do it,” said Samson gruffly. “Is everyone listening?”
“We’re here,” said Dog.
“Stockard, can you get us on line?” Samson asked again.
“It’s on.”
Zen heard someone breathing in the background.
“President Voda, are you there?” said Samson.
“Yes. The men with the dogs are on the other side of the hill,” answered a soft, distant foreign voice. “But there are many soldiers around.”
“Where exactly are you?” asked Danny.
“We’re on the other side of the hill from my house.”
“Below the bald rocks?”
REVOLUTION
407
“The rocks? Yes, yes. About twenty feet below them, in the center.”
“Good.”
“They’re coming!” Voda shouted, his hushed voice rising.
There were muffled sounds.
Oh God, thought Zen, we’re going to hear him get killed.
But they didn’t.
“I have to leave,” whispered Voda a few seconds later. “We have to move.”
The phone dropped off the circuit.
“Stockard, get Dreamland Command to call him back,”
said Samson. “Osprey—get moving. We’ll have him vector you in.”
“If we call him and they’re nearby, they’ll hear and kill him,” said Dog.
“Holding made sense earlier,” said Samson. “Now we’re ready to grab him.”
“General, there are Zsu-zsu’s lined up all along the roads around the property,” warned Spiff, the ground radar operator aboard the Bennett, referring to the antiaircraft guns the Romanians had moved into the area. “They’ll shoot the Osprey to pieces on the way in, or the way out.”
“We’re just going to have to risk it,” said Samson. “Osprey—we’ll help you plot a path.”
“I have a better idea,” said Zen. “I’ll get them.”
VII
Flying Man
Aboard EB-52 Bennett,
over northeastern Romania
29 January 1998
0112
TO ZEN’S SURPRISE, IT WAS DANNY WHO RAISED THE MOST
strenuous objections.
“The MESSKIT was designed to get you out of the aircraft, not haul people around,” Danny said.
“No, it was designed to help you guys get around,” said Zen.
“Annie adapted it to use as a parachute. It’s still basically the same tool you started with. Which means it’s a lot more than a parachute. We picked that car up the other day, General,” he added, making the pitch to Samson himself. “The exoskeleton is extremely strong. To conserve fuel, I’ll glide all the way down to the mountain. I fire it up when I get there.”
“How do you get out of the plane, Jeff?” asked Breanna.
There was fear in her voice—she was worried for him.
“He goes out from one of the auxiliary seats up here,” said Dog. “Right, Zen?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking, Colonel. What do you say?”
“I say it’s up to General Samson,” said Dog. “But I think it may be our best bet.”
“Get moving,” said Samson. “Let’s do it now.”
IN OUTLINE, THE PLAN WAS SIMPLICITY ITSELF. ZEN WOULD
eject at 30,000 feet, five miles from the hill, far from sight 412
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
and earshot of the troops below. He’d then glide down to the president and his family, and use the MESSKIT to fly them to another spot four miles away, where the Osprey would arrive to pick them up.
The details were where things got complicated.
Because Zen couldn’t walk, he’d to have to land as close to the president as possible. The large bare spot near the crest of the hill would be the easiest place for a rendezvous; if that didn’t work, there were two places farther down that might.
One was an elbow turn in a dried-out creek bed about halfway down the hill; the opening was roughly thirty by twenty feet. The other was a gouge close to the base of the hill, fifty yards in from the road. The gouge was probably the remains of a gravel mine, and was much wider than either of the other two spots. But it was also very close to a makeshift lookout post set up by the soldiers surrounding the area.
To make the pickup, Zen would need to be in direct communication with the president. The technical side of this was difficult enough: Zen would trade his Flighthawk helmet for a standard Dreamland flight helmet, swapping in the MESSKIT guidance and information system, a piece of soft-ware that connected to the helmet’s screen functions via a program card about the size of a quarter. He would then hook the helmet into a survival radio to communicate with the Johnson rather than the Bennett, since it would be easier to coordinate communications aboard the pressurized ship. The Johnson, meanwhile, would capture the president’s mobile phone call through the Dreamland channel and then relay it to Zen. The need to communicate presented an inherent risk: While they would use an obscure frequency rather than the emergency band commonly monitored, there was nonetheless a chance that it could be intercepted. Its sixty-four-bit encryption would be difficult to decipher, but the radio waves could be tracked.