“Those were Russians that shot at us?” he managed.

Sorina was too far ahead even to hear. The pain flared.

Stoner hooked his thumb into his T-shirt and stuffed the end into his mouth, biting hard. He tried thinking of her breasts, tried thinking of anything but the pain. He knew he was going to make it, but he had to push through, keep his legs moving and his lungs breathing.

Sorina Viorica stopped about fifty feet from the road.

Stoner remembered his night goggles, but they were gone, along with his backpack. He rubbed his eyes, staring at the darkness across the road.

“You left them there?” Sorina said, pointing.

“Yeah.”

“What was your code?”

“There was none.”

Stoner gathered his strength, then whistled. There was no answer. He tried again.

“Maybe I’m not loud enough,” he said.

Sorina didn’t answer. She started to the right, trotting toward a small copse of trees that bordered the road. Stoner fell steadily behind.

“Wait here,” she said when he reached her.

“You can’t go alone.”

“I’ll be fine. You just wait.”

He slumped against one of the trees, too weak to protest.

Sorina ran to the right, starting to slide around the spot where he’d left his escorts, flanking them carefully.

Was it possible this was all an elaborate setup? But if so, to what end?

88

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Blame the Russians, not the guerrillas.

That made no sense.

So the Russians were involved.

Stoner had a satellite phone with him, a “clean” device that couldn’t be traced to the CIA. He took it out and waited as it powered up. A single number was programmed in: a voice mail box that the Agency could check for emergency messages. Otherwise there were no presets to give him away if captured.

He pressed the combination. The phone dialed itself. A voice in Spanish told him no one was home but that he was free to leave a message.

“This is Stoner. I’m over the border. There was an ambush.

I’m OK. I’m coming back. The Russians are involved somehow. My contact is a woman. Her name is Sorina Viorica.”

The words came out as a series of croaks, like a hoarse frog. He needed water. He pressed the End Transmit button and put the phone away.

A few minutes later a shadow appeared before him. He started to raise his rifle, then realized it was Sorina Viorica.

“They’re dead,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your men. And Claude. Come.”

Stoner followed her across the road. Claude, the guide who had met him at the barn, lay near the water. A bullet had shattered his temple. The two Romanian soldiers had fallen together a few yards away. Their bodies were riddled with bullets. Both of their guns were still loaded; they’d never had a chance to fire.

Or maybe they’d tried to surrender and the bastards killed them anyway.

Sorina was looking through the woods, examining the ground.

“There may be more than the three we killed. It’s hard to tell,” she said. “They usually work in three-man teams, but two together, so there would be six together.”

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89

“Spetsnaz?” said Stoner.

“I don’t know the name, just that they’re Russian.”

“OK.”

“If there is another team tracking us, they will be vicious.

Where’s your car?”

“On the other side of the border.”

“That far? You walked?”

“I didn’t want to get stopped.”

“You couldn’t bribe the guards?”

“It didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. Especially if I was coming back with you.”

She frowned at him.

“You wanted to talk. It’s not safe to do it here.”

“You think I’m going to let you turn me into the military?”

“I’m not going to turn you into the military.”

She was holding her rifle on him.

Stoner kept talking. “If I was going to do something stupid like that, I wouldn’t have come back to the house for you,”

he said. “Your message said that you had mutually beneficial information, and that we could work out a deal. That’s why I came.”

“With two soldiers.”

“I needed guides over the border. I don’t speak the language. I left them here—if I was going to ambush you, I would have.”

“I don’t know.”

“Your people killed two Americans,” added Stoner.

“Maybe you killed them yourself.”

“We haven’t killed any Americans. Not even spies. It is the Russians. They have taken over the movement.”

Stoner stared at the barrel of the AK-47. The moonlight turned the rifle’s black metal silver, as if it were a ghost’s gun, as if he were imagining everything happening.

“You didn’t patch me up to shoot me now,” he said.

“How do you know?”

90

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“You’ve already made your decision to help,” Stoner told her. “They’re after you. It’s all you can do.”

“I can do many things.”

“You have to trust me.”

“I trust no one.”

Stoner nodded. “But you take chances.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

She lowered her weapon. “I will go,” she told him. “But I will talk only to you, not the army, or to the government.

They are all corrupt.”

Stoner rose slowly. “What about them?”

She shook her head.

“You want to just leave them on the ground?”

“Of course.”

“Even your man?”

“Very possibly he was the one who betrayed me.”

Dreamland

22 January 1998

1700

ALL THAT REMAINED WAS TO TEST THE MESSKIT THE WAY

it was meant to be used—from an airplane.

A C-130 configured for airborne training and recertification was used as the test plane. Danny joked that they ought to requisition an office chair with casters and use it to launch Zen into the air: They’d push him off the plane’s ramp and see what happened.

Zen didn’t think the joke was particularly funny, but the actual jump was nearly that informal: He put one arm around Danny and the other around Boston, and the next thing he knew, he was flying through the air, propelled with the others as they leaped off the ramp.

Within seconds he was free. It didn’t feel as if he was fall-

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91

ing, exactly, nor with the MESSKIT not yet deployed could he say that he was flying. He was skydiving, something he’d never really done, even before he lost the use of his legs. His head seemed to be moving through a wind tunnel, with his arms and the rest of his body playing catch-up.

His heart was bringing up the rear, pumping furiously to keep pace.

A small light blinked at the left-hand side of his helmet’s visor. Activated by the abrupt change in altitude, the MESSKIT’s system monitor was sensing the external conditions. Zen had ten seconds to take control either by voice or manually, or the system would assume that its pilot had been knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection and would then automatically fly him to the ground.

“Zen zero one, MESSKIT override to manual,” he said.

The light stopped blinking. In its place, a ghosted grid appeared in front of his eyes. Numbers floated at the left, a compass and GPS coordinate points appeared on the right.

He was at 21,135 feet, and falling.

“Deploy wing kit at two-zero angels,” Zen said.

The computer had to calculate whether this was practical before answering. It was another safety measure to prevent the MESSKIT from opening in unsafe conditions. Zen was also wearing a reserve parachute with an automated activation device set to open if his rate of fall exceeded eighty-three feet per second.

deployment in 17.39 seconds flashed on the screen.

Zen pushed forward, doing his best to get into the traditional frog posture used by a skydiver. He spread his arms, as if trying to fly.

Unlike a parachute, the MESSKIT’s wing deployment did not jerk him up by the shoulders or torso. Instead of a tug, he felt as if the wind had suddenly filled in below him, holding him up. He reached his hands up, the handlelike holders springing open below his wrists.