Dreamland

The desert before them gave little hint of the battle raging seventy miles away. The sand seemed permanent, uncaring; the only sign of mankind was a highway about twelve miles to the northeast, as barren and destitute a stretch as Da

“Captain Freah, Raven is hailing you,” said the Osprey pilot over the com set.

“Patch me through.” Freah stood and looked directly down over the side of the cliff, as if that would somehow help the pilot turn the switch and allow the co

“Raven proceed.”

“Da

“Affirmative,” said Freah. He could feel his heart pounding now in every part of his body, worried that the Megafortress had been hit.

“Stand by for Major Stockard,” Bree told him.

“Captain, we have an encrypted microwave signal being beamed to a satellite from a grid in B-2, we think about eight miles east of you. What do we have there big enough to house a transmitter?”

“Stand by.”

Freah dropped to his knees, carefully pulling the maps and satellite images from his rucksack. There were only two candidates. One was a small military post, the other an abandoned railroad depot with some old warehouses and support buildings. The sites were separated by about a mile and a half. He gave the positions.

“What do you think of checking them out?” Zen asked. “We’re en route,” said Da

THE BROADCAST HAD ENDED A FEW MINUTES AGO, before they were able to pinpoint it; both sites were close enough to have been the source. Zen worked Hawk Two ahead toward the the coordinates of the military base that Freah had supplied. It seemed logical to start there.

The threat screen was blank. Gray asphalt rose beyond the desert sand, bounded by trenches and a ramshackle fence. Two long, dull yellow buildings stood at the far right; a pair of ancient antiair guns were behind sandbags in the middle of the installation. Behind one of the buildings was an earth station, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.

“Losing command link!” warned the computer.

“Jen, I thought you said we increased our control distance.” Zen throttled back. The signal-indicator bar slowly began to climb. “I’m having trouble at seven miles now.”

“I’m not sure what the problem is,” she yelled, working over the control. “We should be fat.”

“Yeah. Raven, can you bring our distance parameter on the UM/Fs to within five miles?”

“Affirmative,” said Cheshire. “We’re dropping to ten thousand feet, staying on your programmed flight path. Cascade is trying to hail us. What should I tell them?”

“The truth—we’re on a wild-goose chase.”

Jeff started Hawk Two on a slow orbit around the base perimeter. Hawk One, meanwhile, was approaching the abandoned railroad warehouses. He toggled the view, saw nothing, went back to Two.

This sure did look like a wild-goose chase. Dust blew across the military base. Place looked like it hadn’t been occupied since World War Two. He sca

Hawk Two’s indicated airspeed dropped past two hundred knots, still falling. Zen walked over the gun emplacements. Damn things looked like they were rusted. Good trick in the desert.

Probably left by the Germans. Rommel had been out here, right?

He told the computer to take Hawk Two back to trail, and flipped back into Hawk One just as it closed to within two miles of the old railroad depot. He slipped down the throttle. Raven was five miles away, closing fast.

The terminal building’s roof was missing, but the warehouses looked intact as he approached. One of the smaller buildings was just a collection of debris. There were two fairly large ones, maybe a hundred feet long apiece, at the edge of the track area. Between them there was a smaller, gray building, low-slung in the desert. It seemed to have collapsed or been swallowed by the terrain.

But was that a microwave dish next to it?

Zen pushed the throttle to close in. As he did, the roof of the nearest warehouse began to disintegrate. The thing seemed to be alive.

The radar-warning indicator flashed red. In the next instant, the sky perforated with explosions. Zen had walked into a minefield. A bank of antiaircraft artillery weapons had been hidden beneath the carefully camouflaged fake roofs of the warehouses.

“Whiplash, Target Two is hot. Hotter than hell!” yelled Jeff, goosing the throttle.

* * *

THEY RODE TOWARD THE VOLCANO, WATCHING THE massed fury of two dozen antiaircraft guns erupting upward. Raven jammed the radars, but the gu

“Ten seconds,” said the Osprey pilot. “Target building is dead ahead. I see a stairway down. Shit! I’ll get you as close as I can.”

“Okay! Okay!” Da

“Vehicles coming up out of a ramp near the warehouses!” yelled the copilot.

“Get us down! Get us down!” Da

“TV time!” yelled Da

“Take him out! Take him out! There’s a machine gun on the steps! Shit! Duck! Duck!” Powder screamed.

GUNNY HEARD THE RUMBLE OF THE ANTIAIRCRAFT batteries above. The entire complex shuddered.

“About fucking time,” he said to the pilot on the metal chair next to him. “Hey, you got any more questions before we go?” he called to the disembodied voice that had been questioning them from unseen speakers.

In the next second, the complex went dark. One of the camera technicians screamed.

“Hit the deck!” shouted Gu

“What now?” said Howland.

“Find a Sommie and get his gun,” said the Marine, crawling toward the door.

RAVEN TOOK OUT THE FIRST BATTERY WITH A PAIR OF JSOWs, even though they were nearly on top of it. Zen barely managed to get Hawk One away from the second bank of ZSUs as the roof of the warehouse opened and the flak dealers began peppering the air.

“Wing damage, Hawk Two,” warned the computer.

Zen could feel it. Hawk Two began to wobble, threatening to yaw out of control.

Time to eject.

Shit, he yelled at himself. I’m half a mile away.

The computer helped stabilize the plane, but the damage was severe, and went well beyond the wing. Zen opened the warning/status screen; he had multiple hits, pending systems failures in the control and engine sections. Power was dropping rapidly.

Destroy the Flighthawk?

Better to land if he could. Whiplash could take it with them, lashing it beneath the Osprey.

He could always hit the self-destruct switch later.

Jeff did a quick check on Hawk One, just to make sure the computer had it under control; then he jumped back into Hawk Two. She was jerking up and down, wrestling with the air instead of gliding through it. He fought the wings level and aimed toward a nice flat piece of sand a quarter mile ahead. As gently as he could, he put her down on her belly, skidding and then spi

“We have the location marked,” Je

“Yeah,” said Jeff.