Satan's Tail

He went down the ladder to the Flighthawk deck, where Starship sat slumped back in his seat and Delaford reviewed the database of ship traffic.

“Wasn’t your fault, Starship. Their system should have picked up on the identifier and it didn’t,” Dog told the lieutenant.

“I know.”

There had been much worse accidents involving friendly fire; this involved only the loss of a robot, not a life. But Dog didn’t think pointing that out would console his lieutenant.

Instead he tried changing the subject.

“You ever been to Diego Garcia, Starship?” he asked.

SATAN’S TAIL

205

“No, sir.”

“It’s a pretty nice place.”

“We’re relocating because of me?”

“No. Not because of you. Because some of the Saudis don’t understand what it is we’re about. Orders from the White House and our current mission commander.” Dog tried to hold his face neutral as he mentioned Storm. “Nothing to do with you. Lighten up, Starship. Maybe you should try taking a nap.”

“I’m OK, Colonel,” said the pilot.

“Don’t get morose. You did a good job with that ship back there. Watch the tape. You did a good job.”

Delaford looked over at him. “Got a second, Colonel?”

“Plenty of them.”

“I was looking at our patrol route. I have a couple of places we can drop a buoy and recover the Piranha from automated mode ahead of schedule.”

“Sounds good. Transfer them to my station. We’ll do it, assuming our tail holds up and Storm doesn’t come up with something else for us to do.”

Khamis Mushait Air Base

0228

ZEN PUSHED THE DOOR TO THE ROOM OPEN AS QUIETLY AS

possible, but it had a spring on the hinge and there was no way to keep it open and get inside without a sound. The light snapped on just as he stopped to let it close behind him.

“Hey,” said his wife from the bed.

“Hey back.”

The room was set up like an oversized hotel room, with the bathroom and a closet off a very narrow hall near the door to the outside. This made it hard to get into the bathroom with his wheelchair, and Zen’s maneuvering was complicated by an inch-high piece of marble at the doorway. The marble looked real pretty, unless you had to roll over it.

206

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“How’d it go?” asked Brea

“We ran into some trouble.” He slid the chair near the toilet seat and levered himself over. Tired, he nearly flopped into the space between his chair and the commode, but managed to lean forward just enough to plop onto the porcelain seat.

“Communications system didn’t work?” asked Bree.

She stayed just outside the door, giving him privacy after a quick glance to make sure he was all right. It was one of the many dances they’d perfected since the accident.

“The communications worked. Dog spotted some fast patrol boats trying to sneak up on them from the east. While Xray Pop was dealing with that, an Oman ship launched missiles.”

“Oman?”

“Yeah. Supposed to be friendly to the West. Haven’t figured that one out yet. One of the Shark Boats got hit by a missile that the Abner Read was shooting down. They crossed too close because of the attack or something. Anyway, ship’s still afloat but it’s pretty badly beat up. They lost three guys. Then, just for good measure, Abner Read shot down Starship’s Flighthawk.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish. Their automated ship protection system thought it was a cruise missile. Starship thought he could get close to the ship because Werewolf was. Their system’s more sophisticated than that, though. Lucky for him.”

“What happened to the pirates?”

“Dog got the missile ship. We got some hits in—Navy battered one of the little boats pretty well, and I know I hit two—but as far as I could tell, they all got away. They were moving pretty fast. You can’t get much on the Werewolf radar beyond five or six miles, and the hook-in from the Megafortress isn’t operational.”

Brea

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207

“Keep going,” he urged when she stopped. “My neck is all whacked out. I had to stoop over the display.”

“Hop into bed and I’ll give you a full body massage.”

It was more a dive than a hop. Zen pulled himself over the mattress, sinking in. His wife’s hands felt fantastic.

“Admiral Storm still a jerk?” asked Brea

“Captain Storm. No worse than your dad.”

“My father isn’t a jerk.”

“Demanding.”

“Oh, he is not. He has standards.”

“He can be a prick.”

Brea

“I meant that in a good way,” said Zen. “It’s OK to be tough.”

“I doubt that Storm is anything like my father.”

“Probably not,” said Zen.

Brea

“Good idea,” said Zen. He felt his eyes closing.

“Jeff?”

“Good idea,” he mumbled, sliding into a dream.

Aboard the Wisconsin

0250

STARSHIP LOOKED AT THE MAIN SCREEN AS THE COMPUTER

replayed his flyover of the Oman missile boat, watching it as if it were a training video, not his own engagement. He saw someone standing on the upper deck of the missile boat, aiming at the ship with a gun. The gun sparkled as the Flighthawk passed.

He hit pause and backed up to the begi

208

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

atively small, designed primarily for use against other aircraft; in retrospect, he thought he should have been more selective in targeting the ship, looking for a vulnerable spot.

He slowed the action down, watching the line of slugs slanting into the hull as the attack continued. The holes were nothing more than specks on the screen.

The man stood there again. What he’d thought was a gun turned out just to be a shadow.

Starship saw the flash again, and this time realized that the man on the deck hadn’t been firing at him at all; he’d simply been ru

The man lay on the deck in the next pass. If his Flighthawk had done any other damage, it wasn’t visible.

So I killed him, thought Starship. He leaned back in the seat.

Good. Revenge for Kick.

He leaned forward, hit the button to play the rest of the encounter. Midway through he backed up and again ran through the attack where he had shot the man.

“Good,” he whispered, but he didn’t feel good at all.

DOG LET MCNAMARA HANDLE THE BUOY LAUNCH, DOUBLE-checking the plotted course and feeding him vital signs, but otherwise staying in the background as the copilot flew the plane. They slapped out the buoy and buttoned up, continuing their patrol. The Tac officer on the Abner Read gave them an update a short while later. A fleet ocean tug—basically an oceangoing tugboat large enough to pull an aircraft carrier by herself—had been dispatched from Bahrain to take the damaged Shark Boat under tow. The Navy was still undecided about where the Shark Boat would be taken for repairs.

“I’d like to have a word with Captain Gale,” said Dog when the update was done.

“All right,” said the Tac officer, with a tone that implied he was asking for trouble.

SATAN’S TAIL

209

“What is it, Bastian?”

“We should rendezvous to discuss the situation tomorrow,” suggested Dog.

“Rendezvous?”

“I think we can do things better.”

“You’ll have to come to me. I have no way of getting to you,” said Storm.