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He didn’t want revenge. Seeing Mack in the wheelchair hadn’t felt good at all. And the proof of the damn thing was that he’d helped the idiot walk again.
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The lucky SOB.
Zen was still mad, just not as mad as he had been. Or not mad in the same way. Because he couldn’t blame Mack Smith, much as he wanted to. And blaming God—well, you didn’t blame God. That wasn’t the way it worked. If you blamed God, if you thought God did it, well then logically the next thought, the next question was: Why? If God did it, he must have had a reason.
So maybe it was God and there was a purpose, or maybe it wasn’t—one way or the other, getting angry with him didn’t mean zip. It left you back at square one, having to deal with it.
Which was what he did. Again and again and again.
But he didn’t blame Mack anymore. Not in the same way.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” said Starship.
“This isn’t a good place for this kind of discussion,”
said Zen.
“I’m going to get a Bible, I think, and read it,” said Starship. “I haven’t read it really.”
“Go for it,” said Zen. “Let’s get to work, OK?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Zen—the submarine is moving!” said Ensign English, breaking into the circuit.
White House Situation Room
1515
JED PACED THE LENGTH OF THE OUTER CONFERENCE ROOM, waiting as the duty officers and a technician tried to clear the foul-up preventing them from tying into the Dreamland network. The secure co
The President and Freeman were en route to North Carolina, and Jed was to provide updates every fifteen minutes.
SATAN’S TAIL
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“The submarine is moving,” said Major Catsman over the speakerphone. They’d dedicated a phone line as a backup until the glitch was solved.
“Here we go,” said the technician.
A sitrep map of the northern African coast popped onto the main screen.
“No audio,” said the technician. “That’ll take another minute. I have to reboot the backup system so I can clear it.”
“Yeah, it’s all right,” said Jed.
“Admiral Balboa!” said the officer who’d been sitting at the control station, jumping to his feet as Balboa and the Secretary of State walked into the room, along with two aides and the head of the CIA.
“Hello, Jed,” said Secretary of State Hartman.
“Mr. Secretary, Admiral.”
“Jed.” Balboa’s pronunciation of his name made it sound almost like a curse.
Jed wondered why Balboa wasn’t at the Pentagon. He guessed it had something to do with Hartman, who wasn’t particularly welcome there.
Then again, the same might be said of Balboa here. Jed couldn’t remember the Secretary of State ever being friendly with the admiral.
“You have an image from the Gulf of Aden operation?”
asked the Secretary of State.
“It’s actually a plot of the area synthesized from different sensor views, like radar and infrared,” Jed explained. “It’s usually called a sitrep or a ‘situational representation.’ The computer imposes it on a satellite photo as its base image. In theory it’s what God would see if he were looking down at the earth. But of course we’re only seeing what the sensors can pick up. It’s in long-range view now, with the forces represented by bars and dots.”
“Which one of those dots is the Abner Read?” Balboa asked.
“That would be the rectangle to the right,” said the lieutenant.
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He might have added that it was the rectangle with the abbreviation abnr rd under it.
“That’s the target area?” asked Balboa.
“That’s the village near it. It’s empty, according to the infrared. These are the buildings they think the pirates are using,” said Jed. “There are two docks, two patrol craft twenty yards from shore, some other smaller boats all in this cluster here. Only some are probably used by the pirates. There are some defenses along the ridge, and there has to be some sort of entrance to the submarine area from the land, though we haven’t found it yet. They haven’t found it yet,” added Jed, correcting himself. “The submarine is moving. We can’t see it yet on this screen but the Piranha probe is tracking it. It’s roughly here. They’ll update the view at some point once they get all the sensors on line properly. They have some problems because of the co
“What kind of problems?” said Balboa.
“I don’t have all the technical details,” said Jed. “But part of the problem is probably the encryption system and the bandwidth the Abner Read uses. It’s apparently more, um, limited, than that used by Dreamland.”
Balboa frowned. “Inferior?”
Probably, thought Jed, but he didn’t say it.
“Worried?” Hartman asked.
“No, sir.” Jed shifted on his feet awkwardly.
“Jed, we’ve got the sound,” the technician told him. “You can select the circuits.”
“Thanks,” said Jed. He turned off the speakerphone and pulled the headset on.
“This is going to go well tonight?” said Hartman. He tried to smile, but his tone was less than optimistic.
Everybody in the room looked at Jed.
“I don’t know,” said Jed. “They’ll do their best.”
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Aboard the Wisconsin
2330
ZEN SLID THE FLIGHTHAWK TOWARD THE COASTLINE, LETTING
his speed drop below 300 knots. The infrared viewer painted the craggy cliffs different shades of green and black, a placid mottle. But as he approached the camp, a jagged set of sticks appeared in a black triangle on the left—a lookout post with three rifles positioned to fire. The men who belonged to the rifles weren’t nearby, nor was anyone in a similar post about a quarter mile on.
Two figures were moving down the cliff a few hundred yards away. Two patrol boats were idling their engines near the shore, and a third had started out of the harbor. The submarine wasn’t visible on the IR scan as Zen passed.
“Positions are open, Whiplash leader,” Zen told Da
“I’ve handed over the GPS data on the emplacements they have.”
“Roger that,” Da
Zen took Hawk One higher to avoid any stray incoming shells from the Abner Read. Then he settled the aircraft into an orbit over the camp so it could provide real-time images to the landing team and turned it over to the computer. Back in Hawk Two, he took a run to the east, making sure the teams securing the village area didn’t need any assistance.
Aboard the Abner Read
2335
THE SHUDDER OF THE GUN RATTLED STORM’S TEETH AS THE
155mm shells left the ship, begi
The shake relaxed him completely: It was all in play now, the attack under way. Storm put his hand over his ear, filtering 318
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out the sounds around him as he listened to the action on the Dreamland Command cha
“Ready, Cap,” said Eyes.
“Target the surface craft moving from the base. We’ll take them first.”
“Craft One is targeted,” reported Weapons. “Craft Two is targeted.”
“Fire Harpoons,” said Storm.