Dreamland

“Stand by to contact Vector flight,” she told Chris. “We’re looking good.”

“Hell of a moon,” he said.

Brea

“Border,” said Brea

“Preparing to launch cruise missiles,” said Chris, selecting the weapons-control module on his computer display. “Bay.”

The Megafortress was equipped with a rotary launcher in the bomb bay similar to the devices installed in B-52Hs. In a stock B-52, up to eight cruise missiles could be mounted, rotated into position, and then launched. Fort Two’s launcher allowed for a variety of weapons besides the cruise missiles; in this case, two Scorpion AMRAAMplus air-to-air missiles and four JSOW weapons, which had imaging infrared target seekers. The AGM-86c cruise missiles had to be preprogrammed, a relatively laborious task for someone like Chris who wasn’t used to doing it. But once they were launched they did all the work.

“Bomb bay is open,” the computer reported to Brea

“Launch at will,” Brea

The computer made the process almost idiot-proof, but Chris worked through the procedure carefully, making sure they were at the preprogrammed launch points and altitudes before pushing each of the large missiles off. The twenty-foot-long flying bombs lit their engines as they slipped below the Megafortress, popping up briefly before descending even lower, guided by radar altimeters and sophisticated on-board maps.

“No turning back now,” said Chris as he closed the bomb bay door.

“We can always turn back,” said Bree. “Let’s hope we don’t have to.”

DANNY FELT THE REST OF HIS ASSAULT TEAM STARTING to tense as the Osprey passed over the border into Somalia. Talk had gotten sparser and sparser since takeoff; no one had spoken now for at least five minutes.

No matter how much you trained for combat, or thought about it, or dreamed about it, you were never ready for it when it arrived. You punched the buttons like you were trained to, reacted the way you’d taught your body to react. But that didn’t mean you were really, truly ready. There was no way to erase the millisecond of fear, the quick surge of adrenaline that leaped at you the instant you came under fire.

These guys knew it. They’d been there before.

“Vector One has peeled off. We’re ten minutes from our target,” said the pilot.

Some of the others tried peering out the windows, craning their heads toward the front. The cruise missiles would be finding their targets any second now; in theory they’d see the flashes.

Da

Good to go.

* * *

CHRIS HAD HIS FACE PRACTICALLY PASTED TO THE screen, which was projecting an infrared image of the Somalian base, now just over twelve miles away.

“Nothing,” he said. “I see the SA-6’s, that’s all. But we’re still a good way off.”

“No Zeus?”

“No antiair guns at all. No other defenses.”

“AGMs to target, ten seconds,” said Bree. “Nine, eight, seven—”

“Wow, I see it!” shouted Chris, and in the next second the horizon lit with a yellow-red explosion. “Got him!”

The second cruise missile splashed five seconds later. Both completely obliterated their targets.

Brea

Nada.

She activated the nightscope viewer panel. The view was limited to twelve degrees and Brea

“We’re going to be overhead in about sixty seconds,” she told Chris. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have a target,” he said. “Looks like the place is deserted. Shit, there are no secondaries. I think those SAMs were decoys.”

“Or we missed.”

“No.” Chris played with the resolutions on the screen. “I saw them. They’re gone. No related vehicles. I’m thinking decoys, Bree. Or they left. Place is deserted.”

“Vector Leader, this is Fort Two,” said Brea

“Roger, copy,” returned the ground mission commander from the Osprey. “We’ll proceed as pla

“Fort Two,” said Bree. She turned to her copilot. “Chris, pull out the satellite maps. Give me the heading of that east-west road.”

“I can see it on the screen,” he told her. “What are you thinking?”

“Let’s see where it goes,” said Bree. She selected the FLIR imaging for her MUD, then banked the Megafortress to follow along the roadway. It rose through the hills toward northern Ethiopia, with a new leg skirting Hargyesa, a relative megalopolis. The road seemed deserted—or at least there were no warm engines or bodies on it, according to the FLIR.

“They could be anywhere, Bree,” said Chris. “We don’t want to get out too far from Vector, in case they run into problems.”

“I’m not intending on getting too far away, Chris,” she told him. “Relax.”

“I’m relaxed,” he said defensively. He checked his screen. “They’re thirty seconds away.”

Brea

“Dead as a doornail,” said Chris, who was using the infrared to monitor the scene. “Nothing moving. Nothing hot.”

“You’re ready with the JSOWs just in case?”

“Now who’s getting tense?” asked Chris.

“Let’s open the bay doors just to be sure.”

“Roger that,” he snapped. She couldn’t quite tell if he was being sarcastic.

* * *

THEY’D PLANNED TO RAPPEL, SO HITTING THE GROUND behind the swirling motors was a bit of a letdown, but Da

It wasn’t much of an assault. The Delta troopers had lowered themselves from their Osprey to the roof of the main building, working down to the main floor in about a fifth of the time a training exercise would have taken—less actually, since any training exercise would have used another Spec Ops team as enemies.

“We’re clear, Captain,” said the Delta commander over the corn set. The lightweight Dreamland gear made him sound as if he were standing at Da

“Shit. We’re too late.”

“All right. We’ll search and secure,” said the commander.

Da

AS SOON AS THE GROUND TEAM CONFIRMED THAT THE school was deserted, Brea

“I don’t know, Bree,” said Chris. “They could be anywhere. I’m thinking Mogadishu.”