Razor's Edge

“Hey,” he said to Brea

“Hey there, robot brain,” said Mack. “Have fun this morning?”

182

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“I always have fun, Mack.” Zen pushed his chair as close to the end of the table as he could get it, but that still left a decent gap between his chest and the surface.

He had to lean forward to put his soda and sandwiches down.

“Those sandwiches are about a week old,” said Mack.

“Check ’em for mold before you take a bite.”

Zen bit into them defiantly. He was halfway through the second when Da

“Majors, Captain,” said Da

“Is that what got the Tornado?” Zen asked.

“No one’s sure,” said Da

“How close were the MiGs Major Stockard saw?” Brea

“It’s possible they could have gotten the RAF flight if they were using very long-range missiles,” said Chris Ferris, answering for the radar specialist. “But we didn’t sniff anything in the air, and as far as we know, the AWACS didn’t have any contacts either. Not even the Eagles could find them.”

“Nothing,” added O’Brien. “If they fired Alamos, we would have known it. Their guidance systems would have given them away.”

“Alamos with heat sensors,” suggested Zen. The Alamo missiles—Russian-made AA-10s—came in at RAZOR’S EDGE

183

least three varieties, including a heat-seeker. But the longest-range version known to the West, the AA-10C, had a range of roughly twenty-two miles and used an active radar, which would have been detected. The infrared or heat-seeking version would have a much shorter range.

“Million-in-one shot,” said Ferris.

“Alamos at twenty-five miles?” said Mack. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

As Ferris explained, Zen looked at Brea

“Had to be a laser,” said Mack when he heard the details. “Only explanation.”

“So where is it, then? With the SA-2s?” said Ferris.

“Shit, they’d hide it in a mosque or something,” said Mack. “You know these ragheads.”

“That might be right,” said Da

“Maybe it’s with one of these radars that flicks on and off,” said Zen.

“Possible,” said Ferris. “On the other hand, none of the sites seem large enough to house an energy weapon.”

“It doesn’t have to be that big,” said Zen. “Razor’s not big at all. It moves a tank chassis.”

“I don’t think the Iraqis could make it that small,” said Ferris.

“I bet it’s in a mosque,” said Mack.

“Whatever size, they’d try to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible,” said Bree.

“There—we look for what’s inconspicuous,” said Mack.

He meant it as a joke, but nobody laughed.

“Our best lead is the radars,” said Zen. “Because even if it were mobile, it would have to be getting a feed from them somehow. Maybe it can go from one unit to another.”

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“Or they have a dedicated landline, with high speed co

“You really think the Iraqis can do that?” said Ferris.

“They’re doing something,” said Mack.

“I think I can narrow the area down on where that Slot Back radar was if you give me a half hour,” said O’Brien.

“It wasn’t briefed. There may even be another one down there, though the signal was really weak. I’ll tell you one thing,” he added, “either the operator is damn good or they’ve got some sort of new equipment down there, because the computer couldn’t lock it down.”

JENNIFER GLEASON FOLDED HER HANDS OVER HER MOUTH

and nose almost if she were praying. She had only a rudi-mentary notion of how the coding for the program governing the IR detection modes worked, and without either the documentation or the raw power of Dreamland’s code analyzers, she could only guess how to modify it. The secure data-link with Dreamland was still pending; once it was in place, she would be able to speak with the people there who had developed the detector. But the pilots wanted the plane to fly before then, and she thought it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. She replayed the EB-52’s recorded inputs from the last mission, watching the coding to see how she might tweak the IR detector to find a momentary burst in the infrared spectrum.

Shorter than a launch, but stronger?

Je

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screens; it was monstrously complex because it had to accept data from a number of different sensors, which had been designed without a common bus.

Her laptop flagged a bug in the interface that had to do with an errant integer cache. It was minor—the interface program simply ignored the error.

Odd. It should have been trapped out by the interface.

The error handling section was comprehensive, and in any event included an “if all else fails” section where anything unexpected should have gone.

But it hadn’t. Je

An error in the sensor that hadn’t been caught during the rigorous debugging of the interface at Dreamland?

Certainly possible. Happened all the time.

Except …

Je

But if it wasn’t a mistake, it would be what they were looking for.

Well, no, it could be anything. But anything wasn’t what she was interested in. She needed a theory, and this was it.

She could get a base line with some flares, see what happened, try to screw it up. Use those numbers to compare to the error, calculate.

Calculate what, exactly?

Something, anything. She just needed a theory.

If Tecumseh were here, she thought, he would tell her to figure it out. He would fold his arms around her and rub her breasts and tell her to figure it out.

186

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Je

Incirlik, Turkey

1230

TORBIN FINISHED HIS TAE KWON DO ROUTINE, BOWING TO

the blank wall. He was alone in the workout room, still a leper despite the semiofficial admission from General Harding that his gear and the mission tapes checked out; he wasn’t at fault in the shoot-downs.

Not at fault, but impotent nonetheless. The Phantom remained grounded until further notice. Its next flight would undoubtedly be to the boneyard.

Torbin folded his arms at his sides, trying to maintain his composure. He belonged back in the rear seat of the Weasel, back over Iraq. They could nail the damn radars one by one, no matter what bullshit tactics they were pulling. Hell, maybe he could jimmy around with the gear somehow and scope out their tactics.