End Game

“Lost them, Captain.”

“Where are you?”

The captain knew precisely where he was. It wasn’t a question but an accusation: Why didn’t you do what I wanted you to do? Starship read off the GPS coordinates, then translated them into a rough position off Somalia.

“According to the computer, the aircraft are about a half hour from Somalia. Among the possible targets—”

“Somalia’s not my problem,” answered Storm. “Go back north and find that smuggler.”

END GAME

17

“Your call.”

“Excuse me?”

“Aye aye, Captain. Werewolf turning north.”

Las Vegas University of Medicine,

Las Vegas, Nevada

5 January 1998

0825

“YOU’RE EARLY!”

Zen shrugged as he wheeled his way across the thick rug of Dr. Michael Vasin’s office. “Yeah, figured I’d get it over with.”

“Tea?”

“Coffee if you have it, sure.”

Vasin picked up the phone on his desk and asked his assistant to bring them some. Then he got up and walked to the nearby couch, shifting around as Zen maneuvered his wheelchair catty-corner to him. Indian by birth, the doctor spoke with a pronounced accent, even though he had been in America since college.

“And everything square with work?”

“Squared away,” Zen told him. The doctor did not know the specifics of what Zen did, officially anyway. But he was friends with one of Dreamland’s most important sci-entific researchers, Dr. Martha Geraldo, who had referred Zen to him for the experimental program. So he probably knew a little, though neither man tested the specifics of that knowledge.

Vasin’s assistant came in with a tray of herbal tea, coffee, and two small cups. She was a petite, older woman, efficient at handling minutiae and thoughtful enough to ask after Zen’s wife, whom she had never met. When she left, Zen found Vasin staring out the large windows behind his desk.

The Vegas Strip lay in the distance.

“The desert is not a good place for gamblers,” said the doctor absently.

18

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Unsure how to respond, Zen said nothing.

“Jeff, I want you to understand, there are no guarantees with this. It may have absolutely no effect on you. Absolutely no effect. Even if regenerating nerve cells in the spine is possible, it might not work in your case for a million different reasons.”

“I understand.”

Vasin had already told him this many times.

“And, as we’ve discussed, there is always the possibility there will be side effects that we don’t know about,” continued the doctor.

“I read everything you gave me.”

“I’m repeating myself.” Vasin turned around, smiling self-deprecatingly. “I want you to understand it emotionally. There’s always a possibility—unforeseen—that things could be worse.”

Zen had already sat through two long lectures from Vasin and another by one of the researchers on his team outlining the potential pitfalls and dangers of the technique. He had also signed a stack of release forms.

“I’m about as aware of the dangers as I can be.”

“Yes.” Vasin rose. “Ready to get the ball rolling?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Air Force High Technology Advanced Weapons Center (Dreamland)

1100

LIEUTENANT COLONEL TECUMSEH “DOG” BASTIAN CHECKED

his altitude and location, then radioed to the event controller, who was sitting inside a highly modified Boeing RC-135, circling above at forty thousand feet.

“Dreamland Raptor to Event Command—Jerry, are we firing this missile today?”

“Event Command to Dreamland Raptor, we’re still hanging on Dreamland Levitow,” answered the controller, END GAME

19

referring to the EB-52 that was to fire the target missile.

“Colonel, you sound like you’re anxious to get back to your paperwork.”

Not at all, thought Dog, who greatly preferred his present office—the cockpit of Dreamland’s experimental long-range attack version of the F-22 Raptor—to the one with his cherrywood desk twenty thousand feet below. Flying cutting-edge aircraft was undoubtedly the best part of Dreamland.

The F-22 bore only a passing resemblance to the “stock”

model. Its wings had been made into long deltas; in the place of a tailfin it had a faceted quadrangle of triangles over the elongated tailpipe. The plane was twenty feet longer than the original, allowing it to accommodate an internal bomb bay that could be filled with a variety of weapons, including the one Dog was waiting to launch. The length also allowed the plane to carry considerably more fuel than a regular F-22.

“All right, Dreamland Raptor, we’re proceeding,” said the event controller. “Dreamland Levitow is on course.

They are firing test missile one… . Test missile has been launched. We are proceeding with our event.”

Test missile one was an AGM-86C whose explosive warhead had been replaced with a set of instruments and a broadcasting device. Also known as an Air Launched Cruise Missile, or ALCM, the AGM-86C was the conventional version of the frontline nuclear-tipped cruise missile developed during the 1980s and placed into storage with the re-organization of the nuclear force in the early 1990s. In this case, the missile was playing the role of a nuclear weapon.

The missile in Dog’s bomb bay was designed to render such weapons obsolete. The EEMWB—the letters stood for Enhanced ElectroMagnetic Warfare Bomb, but were generally pronounced together as “em-web”—created an electronic pulse that disrupted electric devices within a wide radius. Unlike the devices that had been used against power grids in Iraq during the 1992 Gulf War, the EEMWB used 20

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

terahertz radiation—known as T-Rays or T Waves—to do its damage. Conventional electronic shielding did not protect against them, since until now there had been no need to.

Occupying the bandwidth between infrared and microwave radiation, T-Rays were potentially devastating, yet extremely difficult to control and direct. While their potential had long been recognized, their use remained only the wishful daydream of weapons scientists and armchair generals.

Until now. The Dreamland weapons people had found a way to use carefully fabricated metal shards as ante

There were two likely applications. One was as a weapon to paralyze an enemy’s electronics, a kind of super E bomb that would affect everything from power grids to wrist-watches. The other was a defense against nuclear weapons such as the one the AGM-86C simulated. The EEMWB’s pulse went through the shielding in conventional nuclear weapons that protected them from “conventional” electromagnetic shocks. By wiping out the nanoswitches and all other control gear in the weapons, the EEMWB prevented the weapon from going off.

It was possible to shield devices against the T-Rays—both Dreamland Raptor and Dreamland Levitow were proof. But the process was painstaking, especially for anything in the air.

Dog’s EEMWB had a fifty-mile radius. If successful, tests would begin in the South Pacific two weeks from now on the larger, five-hundred-mile-radius designs.

“Dreamland Raptor, prepare to fire EEMWB,” said the event controller.

“Dreamland Raptor acknowledges.” The EEMWB’s propulsion and guidance units came from AGM-86Cs, and it was fired more like a bomb than an antiair weapon, with the extra step of designating an altitude for an explosion.

END GAME

21

“Launch at will,” said the event coordinator.

“Launching.”

JAN STEWART GLANCED AT THE SCREEN AT THE LEFT SIDE OF