Retribution (43 page)

“What you should do,” said Rubeo dryly, “is search the places where it’s possible to leave Pakistan.”

The techie looked up at him. “Excuse me, Doc, but, uh, I wasn’t talking to you.”

The expert was an Air Force captain, one of many Rubeo had never particularly cared for. The feeling was undoubtedly mutual.

“Whether you are talking to me or not, you have photos of every airport and dock in the country. You can judge how long all of these vehicles would have taken to get to those positions, and see if they are there.”

“Lot of work. And, you know, a pickup’s a pickup.”

“What else do you have to do?” snapped Rubeo. “And each pickup is different. Look at the bumper and the right side fender—you can use those to identify it.”

“Smudges.”

“Hardly.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it.” The captain pushed the rest of the Yankee Doodle into his mouth and went back to work.

Diego Garcia
0600, 21 January 1998

T
HE SUN BLOSSOMED ON THE HORIZON, THROWING A RED-
dish yellow stream of light on the long concrete runway and its nearby aprons. Major General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson,
standing at the edge of one of the aprons in front of the Dreamland Command trailer, took a deep breath, as if he might suck in the sunshine and all of its energy.

He might need it. He’d spent half the night talking to the Pentagon, and nearly every friend he had in the upper echelons of the service. He told them about the incident, of course—the metal from the missile made stonewalling moot, even if he’d been inclined to try it. He’d put his best spin on the situation from a personal point of view, saying that he’d come to personally take charge and to get things in order.

The results had been mixed. The head of the Air Force was openly hostile, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Balboa, was almost sympathetic. Most of the rest were somewhere in the middle.

The administration, meanwhile, was obsessed with finding the last remaining warhead. That, at least, was out of his hands: Though ordered to continue providing “all due assistance,” the search had been turned over to the CIA.

Samson vowed that if he got through this—
when
he got through this—he would remake Dreamland in his image. No more EB-52s, and in fact, no more manned planes. They were going to concentrate on their robot and unmanned aerial vehicle technology. Improvements could be made to the Flighthawks so they could be flown remotely from Dreamland Command, just like the so-called UMB, or Unmanned Bomber, project. He’d push the remotely controlled B-1 bomber idea further along; Bastian seemed to have sidetracked it, probably because he had no feel for the aircraft.

As for some of the
truly
weird stuff going on at Dreamland—the Minerva mind thing, the plasma ray, the airborne laser project—they were on his short list to be axed.

As were the egghead scientists who went with them. Ray Rubeo would lead the parade out.

“Dreamland will be run like a military unit, not the personal toy box of its commanding officer,” said Samson to himself, the line suddenly occurring to him.

It would be the perfect opening sentence for the orienta
tion speech he planned on giving when he got back to the States. He scrambled inside for a pen and paper to write it down.

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett
,
over the Pacific Ocean
2000, 20 January 1998
(0900, 21 January)

D
OG FINALLY MANAGED TO DRIFT OFF TO SLEEP DURING THE
flight. The ejection seat at the Flighthawk station was about as comfortable as most ejection seats, which meant not at all. His head drooped to his chest and his shoulders tightened; when he woke he felt as if someone had him in a headlock.

Stretching helped a little, but not much.

“Couple of beef Stroganoffs in the galley,” said Starship, who was watching a video on his auxiliary screen. “Not too bad if you put Tabasco sauce in it.”

“Tabasco?”

“Just a little punch, you know?”

“Is that
Batman
you’re watching?” asked Dog.

“I’ve only seen it ten times,” confessed Starship. “Practically new.”

Dog laughed, then went upstairs. While his food was cooking in the microwave, he walked over to the pilots and asked them how they were doing.

“Just routine, Colonel,” said Englehardt. “Haven’t even hit turbulence.”

“Great,” said Dog. “How are you, Sully?”

“OK, Colonel,” said Sullivan.

The copilot’s tone seemed a little cold. Maybe that was the reaction he was going to get around the base from now on, Dog thought; no one would want to associate themselves with him. Senior officers would view him as a political pariah, and junior officers would figure he was washed up. No one wanted to be associated with a commander who’d
been relieved.

Technically, he hadn’t been relieved for cause—not yet, at any rate. But Samson would undoubtedly go in that direction. While explainable and to some extent excusable on their own, taken together the baby incident and the airliner could easily be whipped into a case against him.

He’d have to get a lawyer if something like that happened.

The microwave began beeping, but Dog left his dinner inside and sat down next to Rager at the airborne radar station. The sergeant was considerably more relaxed now that they weren’t in combat; he had a dozen contacts on his scope, all civilian flights.

“Now that you’ve seen the system in combat, you have any ideas for improvement?” Dog asked.

“A couple, Colonel.” The sergeant ran Dog through some of the identification routines and the automated processes, which were supposed to reduce the operator’s workload by letting the computer take over. In theory, the system let one man do the work of six or eight in the “old” style AWACS. In practice, said Rager, the workload became overwhelming after a half hour in combat.

“Thing is, you just get tired after a couple of hours,” said the sergeant, who’d had extensive experience in AWACS and other systems before coming over to Dreamland. “It works fine in the simulations, but when we were getting shot at for over an hour, at the tail end of a long mission—I have to be honest with you, Colonel, I’m sure I made some mistakes. I haven’t had a chance to review the whole mission tapes, but I’m sure I could have done better. Adding two guys on the board during a combat mission makes sense, but it’s not just that. There are some software improvements you could make.”

Rager listed them. Surprisingly, at least as far as Dog was concerned, the improvements included several that would provide the operator with less information up front; details, he explained, could clutter the board and your head when
things got heavy.

“Give it more thought, then write it down for me,” said Dog. “I mean—write it down for General Samson. And the techies.”

There was a flash of pity in the sergeant’s eyes before he spoke. “Yes, sir, I will.”

Dog got up and went to get his food. Best thing for everyone, he thought, would be to move on as quickly as possible.

Over the Pacific Ocean
2015, Dreamland

K
ERMAN MARKED THE DISTANCE IN HOURS.
H
E WAS NOW
two hours away.

He put the aircraft on autopilot and got up from the plane to use the restroom.

The small closet smelled like a chemical waste dump. Kerman did his best to hold his nose. He washed his hands fastidiously, then returned to the flight deck, ready. Before taking his seat, he decided he should pray. He fell to his knees, but before he could say the simple prayer he had learned as a child, he was seized by an overwhelming sense of dread. It was not about his mission. He had always known that it was his destiny to strike a blow against Satan, and had known since before he learned to read that America was evil, an enemy not just to Iran but to Islam. It was an abomination, and any blow struck against it would be rewarded in the everlasting days that followed life on earth.

His dread came from the way his uncle had been treated, used and then tossed aside. Hassam had said he was too important for the country to lose, something that Kerman completely agreed with. But the image of his uncle on the pavement haunted Kerman now. If he was so valuable, why was he treated like a piece of dirt?

The general had always had his trouble with the religious
leaders. Kerman had always regretted that—secretly, of course; he would not criticize his uncle to his face or even behind his back, not seriously at least, for whatever else, the general was a great man.

Perhaps, thought Kerman, his uncle had reason to denounce the clerics.

He struggled to put the idea out of his mind. It was a distraction: He had to focus on his mission.

“I will pray,” he told himself, as if chiding a small boy. “I will pray for success.”

Dreamland Command
2038

“I
T WAS THE DOC’S IDEA
. H
E WAS RIGHT,” SAID THE PHOTO
interpreter. “Look—same pickup trucks at the airport.”

Rubeo scowled. The analysts had found a pair of pickup trucks in the region where the warhead was found—albeit miles away, and at roughly the same time that the attack was going on—in some of the shots taken by the Global Hawk as it circled away. The same truck showed up on an access to the airport at Rawalpindi.

“So it must’ve left from this airport,” said Catsman. “Have you checked the flight plans?”

“I turned that part over to the CIA. They said it could take anywhere from hours to a couple of days to get the information.”

Catsman looked up at Rubeo. He frowned again. “Days?” she asked.

“If they keep the information on a computer,” said Rubeo, “I believe we should be able to shorten the time considerably. Unless you insist on working through channels.”

“Do it,” answered the major.

Aboard Dreamland Bennett,
over the Pacific Ocean
2047

“U
RGENT INCOMING MESSAGE FOR YOU,
C
OLONEL
,
ON THE
Dreamland channel,” said Sergeant Daly, descending from the flight deck. “They need to talk to you right away.”

Dog authorized the communication at the Flighthawk station.

“Colonel, we think we may have traced the missing warhead,” said Ray Rubeo from the Dreamland Command Center.

“I’m afraid you have to give that information to General Samson,” Dog said.

“Yes, well, Major Catsman is attempting to contact him through channels. In the meantime, I thought I would tell someone who could do something about it.”

That was, by far, the highest compliment Ray Rubeo had ever paid him.

“What’s the story, Doc?”

Rubeo explained about the pickup trucks and how they were tracked to an airport near Pakistan’s capital. A number of aircraft had taken off since, including several that were somewhat suspicious because of their registry or stated cargo.

“Apparently a popular stop for the nefarious of the world,” said Rubeo. “But there is one in particular that is interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because after flying to Malaysia, its pilot filed a new flight plan that said it was heading to McCarran International Airport. Since then, it has disappeared.”

Over the Pacific Ocean
2115

K
ERMAN CHECKED HIS WATCH, THEN UNDID HIS SEAT BELT
and walked to the back of the flight deck. The cargo area was not pressurized, but at the moment they were low enough that
he did not need an oxygen mask.

The pilot could see his breath as he opened the door. A bank of overhead lights illuminated the warhead’s crate, strapped to the floor about a third of the way back.

The timer was wrapped in a towel and tucked beneath the strap. As he got down on his hands and knees to remove it, he began to shiver. He put his hands together for warmth and blew into them.

Was he shaking from cold or fear? Did he have the courage to do this?

For Allah, blessed be his name, he could do anything.

He pulled the towel out and unwrapped it carefully. His uncle’s expert, Abtin Fars, had preset the timer for exactly one hour; all he had to do was push two small toggle switches.

He pushed the first. A small LED light lit on the device, showing it was working.

As his hand touched the second switch, it began to tremble so badly that Kerman dropped the timer onto the blanket. He thought he had broken it and for a moment was overcome with grief. All his plans, his entire life, completely in vain. To fail now, so close—it was the most unimaginable disaster. He closed his eyes, cursing himself. He could have remained silent, not called the Ayatollah; his uncle would then still be here, helping him, guiding him. Together they would have carried out the mission—the general to revenge Val’s death, Kerman to fulfill God’s plan.

The pilot felt a burst of warm air flow around him. It was a draft, he knew—and yet part of him thought it was another presence, his cousin perhaps, coming to reassure him.

Or his uncle.

Kerman opened his eyes.

The light was still lit.

He turned the trigger over gently and pushed the second switch. The numbers on the display began to drain away slowly: 59:59, 59:58, 59:57…

“Thank you, Lord, thank you,” whispered Kerman, nest
ling the timer on the towel and tucking it beneath the strap before retreating to the cockpit.

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett,
over the Pacific Ocean
2115

D
OG CALLED THE
N
ORTH
A
MERICAN
A
EROSPACE
D
EFENSE
Command himself so they understood the situation. An air defense order had already been issued, thanks to Major Catsman, but he wanted to make sure the pilots knew that shooting down the aircraft over a populated area would be problematic—the bomb could easily be set to detonate via a barometric fuse.

His preferred solution would have been to explode an EEMWB in the plane’s vicinity. But Dreamland had used all of the weapons over India.