Retribution (21 page)

Jennifer didn’t have to go quite that far. With her chute and lines looking good, her course set, she enjoyed the view. There were small huts in the distance, a car on a road, the Osprey and work team.

The digital altimeter counted down her altitude: 200 feet…150…100…

The helmet blacked out.

Her legs locked. She tried to relax them, tried to relax everything, taking a deep, long breath.

The ground grabbed her before she could exhale. Jennifer tumbled hard to her right, skidding ignobly and twisting completely around three times before coming to a stop against a pile of very hard rocks.

D
ANNY
F
REAH SAW THE FLASH OF THE BRAKE LIGHTS JUST
as the first Whiplash trooper sailed across the landing zone toward his touchdown. The auto was a mile away, and slightly ahead of the parachutist as he landed, but Danny decided he just couldn’t take a chance.

“Nab him,” he told Gunny. “As gently as possible.”

“Will do,” said the Marine cheerfully.

Danny turned his attention to the team landing around him. Suddenly, the night was filled with the sound of a woman cursing her head off—Jennifer Gleason had come in
hard twenty yards away from him. Danny ran over and found her rolling up her parachute.

“Hey, Jen, you keep that up, the kids are going to learn a whole bunch of new words,” he said.

“Stinking fucking helmet.”

Danny couldn’t help but laugh.

A fresh string of expletives exploded from her mouth. “It’s not funny, Freah,” she told him. “The stinking helmet blacked out just before I landed.”

“Did you have it in default mode? If so, it reverted to standard view five seconds before you landed. You should have set it to a custom mode if you wanted it to continue counting.”

Jennifer expanded her vocabulary to include a description of what could be done to default mode. The description defied the laws of physics, though Danny made it a point never to argue science with a scientist.

“Where is the stinking bomb at?” she said finally.

“This way,” said Danny.

She seemed to be limping as she followed.

“You want an ice pack on that knee?”

“Just show me where the son of a bitch is.”

Danny got Jennifer over to the warhead, then went to check on the rest of his team. Liu and the others had landed about a quarter mile away, shading away from the car.

“Good to see you, Cap,” said Blow. “How’s Boston doing?” he asked, referring to Sergeant Ben Rockland. Boston had been hurt, though not seriously, apprehending the Iranian commandos who instigated the Indian-Pakistani nuclear exchange.

“He’s going to be OK,” said Danny. “Listen, there was a car stopped up the road.”

“We saw it coming in,” said Liu.

“Run up there and see if you can help the Marines with the language,” said Danny. “Link back to Dreamland and use their computer translators.”

“On it,” said Liu.

A few minutes later Sergeant Liu, Gunny, and two Marine privates returned with a skinny Pakistani man who looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

“You gotta hear his story, Cap,” said Liu. “Claims his wife is pregnant and he’s going to fetch her mother.”

“They don’t have doctors in Karachi?”

“Doesn’t live in Karachi,” said Liu. “Lives about five miles up the road. She sounds like she’s in serious labor, Captain. Kind of like that breeched birth we had on the Iranian mission?”

“You guys deliver babies?” asked Gunny.

“We do all sorts of things, Sergeant,” said Danny.

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett,
over Pakistan
2100

D
OG TURNED THE STICK OVER TO HIS COPILOT AND GOT UP
to stretch his legs. The crew’s resentment had diminished a bit, but he knew he still wouldn’t win any popularity contests.

Not that it mattered. He walked to the galley and started a fresh pot of coffee in the Zero Gravity Mr. Coffee. The sealed coffeemaker, which worked as advertised, was still rated by most of the technical people as their biggest contribution to mankind.

“Hey, Colonel, you got Ray Rubeo looking for you,” said Sullivan.

“Thanks, Kevin.”

Dog poured himself a half cup of the steaming java, then made his way back to his seat. Rubeo’s familiar frown was frozen on the screen.

“One of these days, Ray, you’re going to smile,” said Dog.

“It won’t be today. We’ve done some new calculations based on Ms. Gleason’s findings,” said the scientist, launching into an explanation of why the five missiles still missing
had not been found. They all belonged to a subtype of the Prithvi family that had not been previously identified. According to Rubeo, solenoid valves that controlled parts of the engine had been shielded sufficiently so they had not been destroyed by the T-Rays.

As Rubeo’s discussion veered toward the technical, Dog cut him short.

“Do we have new projections of where they came to earth?”

“We’re working on them, Colonel. There are several variables involved. At a minimum, we believe that all of the missiles went much farther north.”

Rubeo had a map ready. The search areas included Kashmir and the borders of Afghanistan and China.

“Ray, this map has to cover a hundred thousand square miles.”

“It’s 225, 963.” Rubeo’s scowl deepened. “We are working on reducing it. We don’t entirely understand why the solenoid valve—and it was only one—on the missile at I-17 wasn’t affected. We should have this quantified in a few hours, depending on how quickly Jennifer works.”

“I’m sure she’ll work as quickly as possible,” said Dog. “What did she do? Set up a simulator in the Command trailer?”

“No, we’ve done the simulations. She provided the measurements and electric readings. I would have preferred—”

“Wait a second. Are you telling me Jennifer Gleason is on the ground in Pakistan?”

“Yes. I assume she checked with you before going…or is that an invalid assumption?”

Southeastern Pakistan
2115

D
OG’S VOICE WOULD HAVE SHATTERED
D
ANNY’S EARDRUMS
if it weren’t for the special volume reducer built into the smart helmet’s headset.

“Why the hell did you let Jennifer jump into a battle zone?” demanded Dog.

“I didn’t let her do anything. Rubeo told me she was on the way. I thought you told her she could go.”

“Let me talk to her.
Now.
”

Danny walked over to the missile assembly. Jennifer was peering into the ruined and burned skeleton, examining bits of circuit boards with an oscilloscope.

“Colonel wants to talk to you,” Danny told her. “He’s hot. Real hot.”

“W
HAT EXACTLY IS YOUR OBJECTION
?” J
ENNIFER ASKED.

“You know very well what my objection is. You’re in a combat zone.”

“There’s no combat here.
And
I’ve been in combat zones before. We needed a specialist. I was available.”

“We have other experts. You’re a scientist, damn it.”

“I’m not made out of paper.”

“You’re more valuable back at the base,” said Dog. “You shouldn’t have gone to Diego Garcia in the first place.”

She could practically feel his anger in the long breath and pause that followed. Jennifer felt her own anger rise.

“I should have said something to you then,” Dog told her. “I was wrong not to send you back. But this—”

“Colonel, is there anything else?” she demanded.

“The next time…”

She waited for him to finish the sentence. Instead, he signed off.

Jennifer looked at one of the Marines standing nearby, a young private barely out of high school.

“Officers,” she said, shaking her head.

“Know what you mean,” said the man, nodding.

T
HE
P
AKISTANI WAS SO EXCITED
,
AND SO DISTRAUGHT,
that Danny decided his story
had
to be true. The question was what to do about it.

According to the man, his house had been without electricity,
telephone, or running water for several days. His wife had gone into labor and he’d left her to get her mother, who lived in the nearby village.

The man practically hopped up and down, pleading that he be let go so he could get his mother-in-law. He interspersed his English with long sentences in Punjabi, convinced that Danny would understand if he spoke slowly and distinctly. He seemed to take the appearance of the Americans in stride, as if they belonged there; Danny thought it better not to press the issue.

But what should he do with him? Releasing him was too dangerous. On the other hand, it seemed that if they did nothing, the baby and its mother might die.

“Ya don’t even know if this woman he’s going to get can help her,” said Gunny.

Danny nodded.

“We can deliver the baby,” said Liu. “We’ve done it before. The woman could die without medical attention.”

“We’re not exactly a maternity ward,” said Danny. “We have other things going on here.”

He turned around and walked down the hill toward the rutted area where the missile had come to rest. A set of tarps had been erected to shield the work lights from the roadway. Jennifer Gleason was hunched over a mangled part of the body and the engine in the first third of the debris field.

“How’s it going, Doc?” Danny asked.

“Slow, Captain. I’m not an expert on these systems.”

“I thought you knew everything, Jen.”

“Ha ha.”

“How much longer do you need?”

“Two or three hours at least,” she said. “Are we in a hurry?”

“I want to be out of here before daylight.”

“Then let me alone.”

Danny went back to the Pakistani and Liu. Gunny was standing with them, trying to engage the Pakistani in a con
versation about what was going on in the country. The man wasn’t interested in anything but his wife.

“Sergeant Liu, grab Blow and Jonesy and take this guy back to his house. Assess the situation and report back.”

“You got it, Cap.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” said Gunny.

“What’s up, Sergeant?” asked Danny, already suspecting the problem.

“Hey, no offense here, but, uh, sending those guys out there—you really think it’s a good idea?”

“It’s the best alternative.”

“I don’t know about that. For one thing, he may be lying.”

“I don’t think he is.”

“For another thing, Captain, what are you going to do if she is in labor? We going to deliver the baby?”

Danny shrugged. “Those guys have done it before.”

The Marine sergeant shook his head.

“Look, we’re not at war with these people,” Danny told him. “On the contrary, they’re our allies.”

“I don’t think I’d trust them much.”

“You don’t have to,” said Danny, turning to go check on the Osprey crews.

Dreamland 0815,
17 January 1998
(2115, Karachi)

S
AMSON FLATTENED THE PAPER ON THE DESK
,
SPREADING
his large hand across its surface. For all its high-tech gizmos, the Dreamland commander’s office still relied on a fax machine that used thermal imaging paper.

The letters were a little faint and the image crinkled, but he didn’t care. He could see what it said: The Whiplash order had been reissued, directed to Major General Terrill Samson, rather than Colonel Bastian.

Just in case.

He’d keep Rubeo through the deployment—being too vindictive would only hurt the mission. But once it was over, the egghead was history.

Samson got up from the desk. Bastian—or his predecessor, if the chief master sergeant was to be believed—had good taste in furniture, he decided. But the place was a little cluttered with chairs and files. The first thing he had to do was have them cleared out. He’d put them in the conference room next door, which he would now use as an office annex—a library.

He didn’t need a conference room. He wasn’t planning on doing much conferring.

“Begging the general’s pardon,” said Ax, still standing near the doorway, “but was there anything else this morning?”

“Yes, Chief, there is. I need a memo telling all department and section heads, all heads of testing programs, everyone from the head scientist to the janitor, that Dreamland’s entire agenda is now open for review.
My
review. Top to bottom. I want something that will convey urgency. I want it to sound…”

Samson drifted off, unsure exactly how he wanted it to sound.

“Like if they don’t do a good job you’ll sack them?” asked Ax.

“That’s it, Chief. Exactly.” Ax would definitely stay, Samson decided. “Have it on my desk before lunch.”

T
ECHNICALLY SPEAKING,
C
HIEF
M
ASTER
S
ERGEANT
T
ERENCE
“Ax” Gibbs was a bachelor. But in a very real sense, Gibbs was as married as any man in America. It’s just that his wife—his children, his relatives, his home, his family, his friends, his pets, his entire existence—was the U.S. Air Force.

But now it was time for a divorce. So as soon as he finished writing Samson’s memo—it took all of three minutes, and had
a much more balanced tone than the general wanted—he went online and obtained the appropriate paperwork to initiate a transfer back to his home state of Florida, in anticipation of a separation from the service in a few months. And just in case Samson objected—Ax sensed he would, if only on general principles—the chief sent out a handful of private messages lining up support. Among the recipients were two lieutenant generals and the Air Force’s commanding general, giving him a full house to deal with any bluff Samson might mount.

He had worked for people like Samson at numerous points during his career. But he’d been young then. Age mellowed some people; for others, it removed their ability to stand still for bullshit. He fell into the latter category.

Lieutenant Colonel Bastian wasn’t the perfect boss. He was occasionally given to fits of anger; however well justified, fits of pique in the long run could be counterproductive. The colonel also insisted on keeping things at Dreamland streamlined, which for Ax meant that he had to make do with about a tenth of the staff he would have at a “normal” command. But Dog respected, trusted, and related to his people in a way that Ax knew Samson never would.