Dreamland

“Ax—who sent this report?” he asked his sergeant.

“Came eyes-only, without any ID,” replied the sergeant. “I thought Ms. O’Day had forwarded it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Don’t know what to tell you, Colonel,” said the sergeant, slipping out the door.

“You put him up to this?” Bastian asked Zen.

“I haven’t a clue what that paper says,” said Zen.

“All right. See if it’s doable. I haven’t approved anything yet,” he added harshly as Stockard started to smile. “I want to talk to Cheshire and Rubeo about this first.”

“No sweat. I’ll round them up,” said Zen, spi

Picking up the phone to ask Ax to come back in, Bastian couldn’t help but wonder if he would have said something different if Bree weren’t piloting Fort Two.

* * *

WAITING FOR THE ELEVATOR TO ARRIVE, ZEN wondered if he ought to get word to his cousin Jed Barclay that he had inadvertently squealed on him. But it might be easier for Jed if he didn’t know—Jed had a natural deer-in-the-headlights look about him, except when he tried to lie.

Then the boy genius who’d gone to Columbia at sixteen and moved on to take two doctorates at Harvard looked like a third-rate car thief.

Slotting himself inside the elevator car, Zen felt a twinge of doubt—not about the Flighthawks, not even about himself, but Bree. If the Colonel was willing to send the Flighthawks, what did it say about what was going on over there?

Better to focus on his own problems, he thought, worrying about how long it would take to get the Flighthawks on the Megafortress.

Somalia

22 October 1996, 1900 local

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, MACK HAD LOST TRACK not only of where he was and what time it was, but of how many people were swirling above him. In the past few hours, Smith had been carried beneath a pole suspended between two soldiers like a piece of game, packed into the back of a pickup, shoved into the back of a sedan, placed gently in another pickup, and marched several miles—more or less in that order. Manacled and blindfolded the whole time, he had been offered water but no food, and three times allowed to pee. He hadn’t been beaten, not even at first. In fact, he’d probably give his captors three stars in the Mobil Guide to African Kidnappers.

Actually, they weren’t kidnappers. Third World or not, they were members of a serious army. They had a command structure and obvious discipline. Smith was the intruder and criminal; it was very possible that they had legal grounds to execute him.

Not that they needed legal grounds. They had more than enough weapons, one of which poked itself now into the side of his neck.

“You, Captain, you will come this way,” said a voice with what sounded to him like a British accent. Smith followed the prods, quickening his pace as a hand gripped his sleeve. He tripped over a low riser and heard his feet echoing over a porch of some sort. A door opened ahead of him. Two men shouldered him down a hall to a set of carpeted stairs. They started him upward slowly, but then another hand pushed from behind. With his legs chained, he flailed for balance; the guards on either side picked him up by his elbows and carried him to a landing.

Down another hall, into a room, into a seat—hands grabbed at his face and his eyes flooded with light.

“You will tell me your name,” said the blur in front of him.

“Why?” said Smith, trying to focus.

“Because at the moment your status is quite in doubt. Spies are shot without trial.”

The man was short, a bit on the round side. He wore a long, coatlike gray garment. He had a beard; his face was white. A small turban, gray, topped his head.

“I’m a prisoner of war,” said Knife.

“Then you will tell me your name and rank, and we will go on from there,” said the man, his English softened by a vaguely Middle Eastern accent. He did not smile, but he spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were dealing with a young child.

“Major Mack Smith.”

“You are with the U.S. Air Force,” said the man. “You were flying an F-16. What is the name of your unit?”

Smith didn’t answer.

“Your call sign was Poison,” continued the man. “You bombed an installation of the Somalian government.”

“It was an Iranian base.”

The man finally smiled. It was faint and brief.

“Major, the base is under the control of the Somalian government. The men who captured you and brought you here were Somalian. I assure you, there are no Iranian soldiers in Somalia, or anywhere in Africa.”

“What about you?”

“I am an ambassador,” said the man. “An advisor. Nothing more.”

“I’m your prisoner?”

“No. You are no one’s prisoner. You don’t exist.”

“I’m free to go then,” said Smith. The pain in his ribs stoked up as he mockingly jerked his body upright.

“If you were to leave here now, you would be shot.”

Middle-aged and obviously a cleric of some sort, the Iranian exuded calmness, as if he were projecting a physical aura of considered peacefulness. Two men stood in plain brown uniforms behind him; neither uniform had insignias or other marks of rank, and they were not carrying weapons. About a dozen troops, Somalians apparently, stood near the door and the sides of the room. It seemed to be a classroom; a blackboard filled the wall in front, its shiny surface glaring with the reflected overhead lights. There were several rows of seats, though no desks that he could see, behind him.

“Are you hungry?” asked the Iranian.

“No,” lied Smith.

“I would suggest it is in your interest to be truthful,” said his captor. He turned to one of the men in the uniforms and said something. The man nodded, then left.

Knife gazed around the room, trying to memorize details. Yellow parchmentlike shades were drawn down over the windows on his right. The floor was covered with seemingly new linoleum, the kind that might be used in the kitchen of a modest American home. A crucifix was mounted above the middle of the blackboard.

Maybe he was in an old mission school? Or certainly some building that didn’t specifically belong to the government.

Or maybe it did. He wasn’t in Boise.

The aide returned with a tray. A large bowl of rice and some sort of vegetable sat in the middle. There were no eating utensils. Smith looked at it doubtfully as the tray was placed on a wooden chair and set down in front of him. A thick reddish brown liquid covered the rice.

His manacled hands moved toward the bowl. Stopping them seemed to require more energy than he had. Smith scooped a few fingers’ worth of food into his mouth, then quickly consumed the contents. The liquid was sweet and sticky in his throat; the rest of the food was bland.

“And get him some water,” added the Iranian.

Two other Iranians in plain brown uniforms came in with the man with the water. One of the men had a small Sony video cam, the kind a family might use to record their child’s first steps. Smith held his head upright, staring blankly into the lens.

“State your name, please,” said the Iranian cleric. “Mack Smith,” he said, taking the metal cup of water. “Are you injured?”

He considered what to say. “I think one of my ribs is broken.”

“How did that happen?”

He hesitated again. If he said they had beaten him, they would simply erase that portion of the tape. Besides, it wasn’t true.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“Good question.”

The Iranian cleric smiled and nodded. Finally he said something to the man with the camera, apparently telling him to turn it off, since he did so.

“The bruises on your face—did they come from the ejection?” asked the Iranian.

“What bruises?” asked Knife. He hadn’t realized his face was injured.

“The, force of the ejection would have been severe. Your parachute was found near where you landed, on the side of a sheer cliff. You are fortunate that your legs were not broken.”