“Do you forget the places you’ve been?”

“I’d like to. Some of them.”

She laughed.

“Do you go back and forth a lot?” he asked her.

“I have been in Moldova for the past year. And on a few missions.”

Stoner wanted information about the missions, but didn’t press. It had grown colder, and the chill was getting to her. He pulled off his jacket, wrapped it around her.

“Are you married, Stoner?”

“No.”

“Would you like to be?”

“I never really thought about it,” he lied.

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“Are men really that different from women?”

“How’s that?”

She stopped and looked at him. “I can’t believe you never thought about getting married.”

Stoner suddenly felt embarrassed to be caught in such a simple lie. He was working here, getting close to her—and yet felt ashamed of himself for not telling the truth.

They walked some more. He asked about the missions, but she turned the questions aside and began talking about being a girl and visiting Bucharest. He tried gently to steer the conversation toward the guerrillas, but she remained personal, talking about herself and occasionally asking him questions about where he’d grown up. He gave vague answers, always aiming to slip the conversation back toward her.

After an hour they stopped in a small club, where a band played Euro-electro pop. Sorina Viorica had half a glass of wine, then abruptly rose and said she wanted to go to bed.

Stoner wasn’t sure whether it was an invitation, and he debated what to do as they walked back to the apartment.

Sleeping with her might help him get more information. On the other hand, it felt wrong in a way he couldn’t explain to himself.

She kissed him on the cheek as they reached the door of the apartment, then slipped inside, alone.

He was glad, and disappointed at the same time.

Iasi Airfield, northeastern Romania

2100

COLONEL BASTIAN SAT DOWN AT THE COMMUNICATIONS

desk in the Dreamland Mobile Command Center and pulled on a headset. He typed his passwords into the console, then leaned back in the seat, preparing to do something he hadn’t had to do in quite a while—give an operational status report to his immediate superior.

160

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

The fact that he didn’t much like General Samson ought to be besides the point, he told himself. In the course of his career, he’d had to work for many men—and one or two women—whom he didn’t particularly like. It wasn’t just their personality clashes, though. The truth was, he’d had this command, and now he didn’t. Even having known that Dreamland would either be closed or taken over by a general, he still resented his successor.

The best thing for him to do—and the best thing for Dreamland—was to move on. As long as he was here, the friction between him and Samson would be detrimental to the unit and its mission.

“Colonel Bastian, good morning,” Captain Jake Lewis, on duty in the base control center, said to him through the headset.

“It’s pretty late at night here,” said Dog. “Twenty-one hundred hours.”

“Yes, sir. You’re ten hours ahead of us. Soon your today will be our tomorrow.”

Dog frowned. Somehow, the captain’s joke seemed more like a metaphor of his career situation.

“Would you like to speak to General Samson?” asked the captain.

“Absolutely,” lied Dog.

“Stand by, Colonel.”

Dog expected Samson to be connected via the special phone up in his office. But instead the general’s face flashed on the screen. Obviously he’d been in the command center, waiting for Dog to check in.

You couldn’t blame him for that, Dog decided. He would have done the same thing. A lot of what Samson did, he would have done.

Differently. But what was bugging him was the fact that it was Samson doing it, not him.

Jealousy. Yes. He had to admit it.

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“This is Samson. What’s going on over there, Bastian?”

“Good morning, General. We’ve completed our first day of working with Romanian ground soldiers. There were some language glitches, but all in all it went well.”

“What kind of glitches?”

“Nothing critical. A little hard sometimes to understand what they’re saying, and I imagine vice versa.”

“That’s it?”

“No. I wanted to alert you to something that should be passed on to Jed Barclay and the White House.”

Samson’s scowl made it clear that he’d be the judge of that.

“While we were up, a flight of Russian MiGs flew over the Black Sea and part of the Ukraine. I believe they were shadowing us. They appear to have been working with one of their Elint planes to get an idea of where we were. I took a hard turn toward them and they vamoosed. I’m not positive, of course, but—”

“What do you mean, you took a hard turn toward them?

You went into Moldova?”

“No, General, I didn’t. I stayed inside the country’s boundaries and flew in the direction of the Black Sea. But they were watching me closely, and it seems to me they didn’t want to be noticed.”

“Don’t overanalyze it. What sort of planes?”

“Two MiG-29s, configured for air-to-air intercept. There was a Tu-135 just beyond them. We were too far to get comprehensive details. I didn’t want to go out of Romanian airspace.”

Dog watched Samson step over to one of the nearby consoles in the command center, consulting with one of the men there. Finally he looked back in the direction of the video camera attop the main screen in the front of the room.

“What else do you have?” asked Samson.

“Nothing else. I was wondering when the Johnson will arrive.”

162

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“Englehardt and his crew took off an hour ago,” said Samson. “They should be there tonight, our time.”

“Once they’re here, I expect to start running two sorties a day. We’ll stagger them—”

“I don’t need the details. Carry on.”

The screen blanked. Dog leaned back in his seat. He was sorry now that he’d agreed to take on the mission. He should just have gone on leave—he was more than entitled.

Rising, he took off his headset and pulled back the curtain to call the Whiplash communications specialist. As he did, the console buzzed, indicating an incoming communication.

It was Danny Freah.

“Colonel, we have something up,” said Danny as soon as he punched the buttons to make the connection. “Report of a possible attack in a village southeast of us. We could use some Flighthawk coverage.”

“We’re on our way.”

Allegro, Nevada

1105

BREANNA PULLED UP AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE POOL, catching her breath. Her heart was pumping ferociously, the beats so fast she didn’t count them. Fearing she was far over her targeted pulse rate, she took a deep, slow breath, savoring the oxygen in her lungs. Then she went to the side and pulled herself out.

“Hell of a workout,” said one of the club trainers, a white woman in her mid-thirties with the unfortunate nickname of Dolly, though she didn’t seem to mind it. “You were swimming up a storm.”

Breanna nodded, still catching her breath.

“You OK, girl?” asked Dolly.

“I’m fine.” Breanna forced a smile. She loved to swim, and REVOLUTION

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the water workouts were easy on her knee, but her ribs ached from the vigorous strokes.

“You trying to prove something?” asked Dolly.

“Why?”

Dolly laughed. “I think you just broke the record for the 10K free-style.”

“Just that I’m in good shape.”

“No doubts there.”

Breanna smiled, then grabbed her water bottle and the small towel she always took with her during a workout.

No doubt there.

All she had to do was convince the doc. Maybe she’d bring him along tomorrow.

She’d just reached the locker room when she heard her cell phone ringing. She opened the lock and took out the phone, opening it without looking at the number.