Armageddon (17 page)

“We—our fuel is gone.”

“Send the trucks over to the civilian side of the airport and take what we need,” said Mack.

“But—”

“Give them a chit or whatever paperwork you want. Get the fuel.”

“Yes, sir, Minister.”

“What’s our weapons situation?”

Brown stuttered but managed to report that they had four five-hundred-pound bombs and exactly two dozen smaller 250-pounders, along with some rockets and flares.

“What happened to our request for Sidewinders and AMRAAMs?” Mack asked.

“You made it only last week, Minister.”

“We need those weapons now. Why did they take McKenna?”

“Commodore McKenna? Who took her?” Brown’s face blanched.

“Look, Brown, here’s the situation. Whether the sultan likes it or not, whether Brunei likes it or not, some serious assholes have decided to shoot up the country. I think Malaysia’s helping them. We’re going to need everything and anything we can get our hands on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look, if you’re not up to this, you tell me now, because I’m relying on you here,” said Mack. “I need that Megafortress ready to fly as soon as possible. The same with the Dragonflies. Can you do it?”

Brown nodded. “Yes, Minister.”

“They’re trying to take over your country, Brown. I’m telling you. That’s what this is about. We’re not going to let them, right?”

Finally, he’d struck the nerve.

“No, Minister,” said Brown, his face flushing with anger now. “No, we will not.”

“Damn straight, Jack.”

“Damn straight, Jack,” repeated Brown.

Mack almost smiled. Two members of his security team were standing near the aircraft.

“Yo!” he called to them. “Get over here”

The two men, neither older than nineteen, double-timed across the concrete.

“You locked and loaded?” Mack asked.

The men looked at each other.

“Jesus, even I know you look at the gun for the answer, not each other, damn it!”

The two men snapped to, holding their rifles at the ready.

“That’s what we want. Come on,” said Mack. “Let’s go see the prince.”

Dreamland
0200

Every fifth weekend, Danny Freah took a turn in the rotation as the duty officer in the Dreamland command center, an important though not exciting responsibility. Not that it was particularly onerous. It entailed staying on base from 4 P.M. Friday afternoon until 8 A.M. the following Monday. He had to periodically check in with the command center, which was a high-tech situation room linked to similar facilities at the various military commands, the Pentagon, and the White House. It also had high-speed satellite links to deployed Dreamland units.

Danny generally spent his time catching up on his official reading and, nearly as important, his sleep, sacking out in one of the small “ready rooms” located off the corridor of the center. The rooms were more like mini-dorm rooms; each had a bunk bed, a small television that had cable TV access, and a computer loaded up with games. Because they were located in a subbasement away from any machinery, the rooms were dark and quiet, and in Danny’s opinion by far the best places to catch real rest on the base.

Assuming no one woke you up.

“Sir!” shouted a voice somewhere in the blackness beyond his dreams. “Sir!”

“Boston, is that you?”

“Sir! An alert from Washington, D.C.”

Danny started to curse and roll out from under the blanket. As he did, the lights snapped on. The room was not locked and the standing orders called for the officer to be awakened personally.

“Center is requesting your presence,” said Boston, much louder than Danny thought necessary.

“Yeah, I’m coming, Sergeant. Relax.”

Danny stood up and pulled on his shirt. He slept in his pants, belt and all; he figured it was easier and saved potential embarrassment when the night people were women, which was occasionally the case.

Danny walked out to the command center, hoping whoever was on duty there had a full pot of coffee going. Unfortunately, that was not the case. He went over to the main communications console, typed in his password, and squinted into the retina scanner. The machine hesitated for a second, and Danny wondered if his fatigue might confuse it.

It didn’t, at least not fatally. The screen blinked, allowing the connection.

“Freah,” said Danny, picking up the secure phone.

“Captain, this is Jed Barclay over at the White House.”

“Jed? What’s up?”

“We’ve been tracking developments at Brunei and the national security advisor was wondering, uh, hoping he could get a direct report from your people there.”

“Right, yeah,” said Danny. “Uh, Breanna Stockard is on her way back to the States.”

“Can you locate her?”

“Yes, sir,” said Danny.

“Are there other personnel there now?”

He thought they had at least one technical expert there. Danny bent to the keyboard of the computer at his right, hunting and pecking his way to the information.

“Deci Gordon. He’s a wizzo—a radar intercept officer who handles the gear in the AWACS versions of the EB-52s,” said Danny. “We had some maintainer types over there until last week,” he added.

“We’d like to talk to anyone who might be able to give us on-the-spot insight,” said Jed.

“Zen was there,” said Danny. “He’s at home right now.”

“I know the number,” said Jed. “Can you get a hold of Mr. Gordon?”

“Will do. And I’ll track down Breanna, if I can.”

“Thanks. We’ll be waiting.”

Bandar Seri Begawan (capital of Brunei)
11 October 1997, 1710

“Mack, I agree this is a difficult situation, but we must use patience.” Prince bin Awg paced the length of his office in the modern-high rise overlooking the bay, the soles of his Italian shoes squeaking softly on the polished marble floor. “But it is a time for diplomacy, a delicate time.”

“Look, Prince, you know airplanes pretty well,” said Mack. “You’ve got a great collection of Cold War hardware over in your hangars. Those aren’t just pretty planes. The Russians and the Americans—the reason there wasn’t a nuclear war was that we were both matching each other. Those were serious war machines, and both sides had to be careful of the other.”

“What’s your point, Mack?” asked the prince.

“It means you have to show your resolve, not just to these terrorist punks, but to the Malaysians.”

“The Malaysians say they weren’t involved,” said bin Awg. “The helicopters were on a routine training mission.”

“Aw, that’s bullshit and you know it. They were clearly in our territory. And their Sukhois would have hit the police station if we didn’t stop them. You have to help me clear the red tape away so we can get missiles to shoot them down,” said Mack. “And we need F-15s. Or something. Hell, I’ll settle for the Sukhois Ivana Keptrova was peddling.”

“The sultan does not want to upset the current equilibrium?’ said bin Awg. “He’s put all our purchases on hold for the time being.”

“He better change his mind damn quick,” said Mack. “Or he’ll be the ex-sultan. Now where’s my pilot?”

“She was taken over to the central ministry to be interviewed. I’m sure she’ll be released after a few hours.”

Mack had already spun around and headed for the door.

“Mack!” said the prince.

Against his better judgment, Mack stopped.

Confusion and fear mixed in equal parts of the prince’s face. Bin Awg had not impressed Mack as a great statesman; it was clear he was used to the finer things in life and was a bit too fond of pleasure to make the personal sacrifices you needed to make to be a great leader, even in peacetime. But neither had he thought he was a coward or fool.

“Mack, listen,” said the prince, his voice firmer than it had been earlier. “I want you to succeed. Take the steps necessary, and I will do what I can. But there are procedures that we all must follow, even myself.”

Mack glanced at bin Awg’s hands, curled together in tight fists. He wants to be brave, Mack thought to himself, and he knows he has to be. But he’s used to having things laid out for him, and letting other people do the dirty work.

At least his heart is in the right place. That’s going to have to be enough.

“Just back me up, okay?” said Mack.

Bin Awg hesitated, then nodded.

“I’ll keep you informed.”

THE FACT THAT MCKENNA WAS AT THE CENTRAL DEFENSE ministry allowed Mack to kill two birds with one stone. He and his two security men, weapons ready, marched up the steps and through the reception area, pausing at the desk where two Brunei policemen looked at them with jaws just about on the floor.

“Your country is under attack,” Mack told them. “And we’re kicking butt to protect it. I need more security people. So if you get tired of this bullshit desk job, you come see me. We’ll pay twice what they pay you here, and you’ll be patriots besides.”

Mack then spun and walked up the grand stairway before either man could manage to gather his wits. He marched to the office of the central minister, in theory his boss; the man was gone for the day.

Just as well, thought Mack, who then proceeded back downstairs, this time to the basement where McKenna was being interviewed about the helicopter incident. As they came down, one of the young men who had been in the lobby began tagging along. Mack looked at him for a moment, saw the man nod, and nodded back.

A guard stood outside the interrogation room. Mack walked up to him.

“Soldier, you’re at war. At a minimum, your sidearm should be ready to be used,” said Mack, pointing at the buttoned holster. “If you want to see real action, you join us at the airport.”

He slapped the door open and walked into the room, where McKenna sat behind a long table across from two white-haired officers.

“About freakin’ time, Mack,” said McKenna, pushing up.

The two officers looked at Mack in disbelief. One of them started to say something, but stopped as Mack’s soldiers came in behind him.

“Come on, McKenna, we got a ton of work to do.” said Mack, spinning around. “Can’t have you lolling around on your pretty butt all day.”

“Pretty butt? I think that’s sexual harassment,” said McKenna, hustling to keep up with him as he strode out of the room.

New Lebanon, Nevada
0400

Though he would have flown past a dozen anti-aircraft batteries in a Sopwith Camel before admitting it, Zen slept very poorly when his wife was away. In fact, he hardly slept at all most nights. He was watching
ESPN SportsCenter
when the phone rang, and he snagged it on the first ring.

“Yeah?”

“Zen, it’s Jed. Hey, you awake?”

“Well no, I’m sitting here talking to you in my sleep, cousin. What’s the story?”

Jed brought him up to date on the situation in Brunei, where there had been somewhere around a dozen terrorist attacks over the course of the day. Zen flipped over to CNN as they talked, hitting the mute; there was no mention of the attacks.

“I’ll tell you, that place is a lot more dangerous than people think,” Zen told his cousin. “And something’s going on with Malaysia. Bree said they picked up two Sukhois the other day that supposedly don’t exist.”

“Yeah, we’ve been looking into that. We think the Malaysian government may have purchased them from the Ukraine roughly a year ago, then had them shipped into the country. I won’t know for sure for a while.”

“You think they’re working with the terrorists?”

“I don’t know. There’s no evidence. As a fellow member of ASEAN, they should be allies.”

“Being allies hasn’t stopped people from going to war before,” said Zen.

“Agreed. If we had evidence that they were cooperating, we might be able to pressure them to stop.”

Good luck, thought Zen. He glanced over at the clock on the night table, hoping Breanna was long gone from there.

Brunei
1910

The back of Sahurah’s head continued to pound as he got out of the car and walked slowly to the house. The pain had been with him since yesterday evening, a dull throb that receded at times, but never fully lifted.

A woman with her face covered met Sahurah at the door, staring at him a moment before removing the chain to open it fully. She had a machine pistol in her hand, similar to the one Sahurah had given the boy yesterday. Sahurah frowned at the weapon as he passed into the house. Women were useful in some situations, he believed, and certainly the faithful might follow the dictates of the Prophet, but to arm them was close to folly, and to depend on them at a moment of stress surely desperation.

The two young brothers at the end of the foyer, both equipped with AK47s, were much more reassuring. Sahurah recognized one—he had been in the boat for the beach mission—and nodded before passing by them to go upstairs to the room he had been given. Inside, he closed the door and lay down on the wide bed. He spread his arms out as if supplicating the angels for relief of his headache and tried to sink into the mattress beneath his back.

Just as the pain began to ebb, a sharp knock on the door brought it crashing back.

“Commander Sahurah?” said a voice he did not recognize. “Yes.”

“Commander Besar wishes to discuss the day’s events with you”

Sahurah opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling another moment, then closed them again. He pushed his right leg down so that it bent to the floor, and rolled his body to its side, rising like a wounded animal struggling to its feet. He went to the door, and was surprised to see that the messenger was a man nearly three times his age, with hair whiter than bleached cotton.

Sahurah followed him back down the stairs, through a pair of empty rooms, into a hallway that led to a suite at the back of the house. There was a pool and a patio to the left; the old man led him outside through a pair of French doors, gesturing to the semicircle of chairs just beneath the roof.

Besar sat with his back to him, flanked by a pair of women in Western-style bathing suits. The women were of Chinese extraction—no Muslim would dress so outrageously, surely. They sipped from tall glasses of liquor, both of them obviously drunk.