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Taipei
1210
THE FIRST FACTORYStoner took them to lay about a mile and a half from Sungshan airport, in a crowded district of warehouses and industrial buildings. The roads were so thick with traffic that it took hours to get to the facility itself; when they finally did they found their way blocked by uniformed employees. The men were polite—the driver pretended to be asking for directions and they answered helpfully—but there was no way past them.
Da
He took out the IR device and slowly began sca
Every time the machine buzzed in his ear, he pushed the small trigger button on the top between the two barrels; the IR sensors adjusted themselves and took another “bite” at the building. As it moved further inside, the buzzes started to be punctuated by clicks; it was having trouble seeing. Da
“So?” asked Stoner as they drove away.
“We’ll see what the techies say. They can construct a three-D model when they look it over,” said Da
“That thing like a radar?” asked Stoner.
“No, it uses heat signatures so it can’t be detected. We call in IR or infrared, but the techies say it has a somewhat wider band. The sensors are here.” Da
“I’d still like to get inside.”
“Fine by me,” said Da
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“They make seats for aircraft,” said Stoner. “I have somebody working on getting us in as buyers. But it’s going to take a few days.”
“Is it big enough?” asked Liu.
“Could be,” said Da
“There’s a rail line that runs from the back over to the airport,” said Stoner. “Chun Sue owns some hangars there. That’s one of the companies Chen Lee owns. As far as I know, only one is occupied. I figure we hit the empties first.”
They uploaded the data on the way over. The Dreamland techies told Da
They didn’t need the viewer in the airport; all the hangars were open and unguarded. Stoner had prepared a story—they were looking to lease a facility—but no one seemed to even notice they were there.
Da
“Just a hangar,” said Stoner, walking to sit on an old crate in the corner.
“What’s the crate say?” Da
“It’s the name of a fish company. Heavenly Fish, along those lines.”
“Why would it be here?” Da
“Shipped cargo in and out. Lost one of the crates,” said Stoner.
“The crate wasn’t used to carry fish. It’s too clean.”
Stoner shrugged.
Da
The cams were about the size and shape of three-quarter-inch bolts, the kind that might be used to secure a part on a child’s bicycle. There were two types, one with a wide-angle lens and the other more narrowly focused but able to work in near darkness. Each sent its signal to a transmitter the size of a nine-volt battery, which could be hidden anywhere with fifty feet of the cams. This transmitter in turn linked with a large base station—about the size of a cement block though nowhere near as heavy—that uploaded images either on command or in a random burst pattern that made it difficult to detect. The cameras and transmitters themselves used a similar random pattern with a very weak signal that would generally escape detection.
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“You sure those things work?” asked Stoner as they got back in the car.
Da
“Now I am,” said the captain.
The hangar that housed the airplane was open, and the four Americans managed to walk right in. The building was about twice the size of the others, and the Boeing 767-200ER it housed filled only about a third of the massive space. The wings of the large airliner were covered with large sheets of rolled cardboard, and the place smelled of fresh paint.
A pair of Chun Sue employees came over and told them that the company airplane was undergoing refurbishment. The men were very polite, and seemed flattered by the praise Da
feet; this model, optimized for the long-distance flights common in Asia, could clock close to six thousand miles before having to hit the gas pumps.
The experts back in Dreamland noted one other interesting fact about the airplane as they briefed Da
Da
“Those suckers cost a fortune,” he told Stoner as they left.
“The company is pretty rich,” said Stoner. “You notice anything fu
“Besides the fact that the plane doesn’t need painting?”
“The colors are used by the People’s Xia Airlines.”
“They own them too?”
“That’s a Mainland airline,” said Stoner. “They left off the symbols on the tail, but otherwise it’s a ringer.”
Brunei IAP, Field Seven
Dreamland Temporary Hangar
1312
ZEN TOOK ONElook at Starship and rolled his eyes.
“Where the hell did you find alcohol in Brunei?”
“Excuse me, sir?” said Starship.
If Zen had had any doubts about Starship’s sobriety, the accent he put on “sir” would have dispelled them.
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“Take the rest of the day off,” he told the lieutenant. “You were due rest anyway. I shouldn’t have called you back.”
“I can fly, Zen. Major—I can fly.”
“Go take a shower, Starship. That’s an order.”
Starship’s face turned red. He spun on his heel and retreated from the hangar.
“You and me, Kick, let’s go,” said Zen, backing his wheelchair away so he could go and get his flight suit and other gear. “ Pe
THEY LAUNCHED THEFlighthawk as soon as they were over water. Zen took the first leg of the flight, checking on some of the merchant ships that lay in their path. He wanted Kick to take the last half of the flight so he’d have the experience of landing at Tainan Air Base, their destination on Taiwan.