Except he couldn’t cut a straight line and stay five miles from the Chinese ships.

“See if you can get me a better location, Bastian,” said Storm. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Aboard the Wisconsin,

over the northern Arabian Sea

0738

DOG BLEW A FRUSTRATED WAD OF AIR INTO HIS MASK AND

turned his attention back to the sea.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Mack Smith. Mack, the AbnerRead is on its way. We need to find your precise coordinates for them.”

“Not sure how I can help, Colonel,” snapped Mack. “Looks like they forgot to put lines on this part of the ocean.”

“Can you break out a signal mirror and flash my cockpit?”

There was no answer.

“Mack?”

A beam of light flashed on the port side of his aircraft.

“Keep flashing me,” said Dog. He gently nudged the aircraft in the direction of the light, then turned the radio to the Dreamland frequency. “Dreamland Command, this is Colonel Bastian. You reading me?”

“Spotty but we have you,” responded Major Natalie Catsman. Second in command at the base, Catsman was manning Dreamland’s situation and control room.

“Can you get my precise location from the sat radio?”

“Affirmative, Colonel,” she said after checking with one of the techs in the background. “The scientists tell me we can triangulate using your transmission.”

Dog heard Ray Rubeo objecting in the background that her explanation wasn’t precisely correct and the procedure 17

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would yield an error margin of plus-or-minus three meters.

“I’m going to overfly a spot and give you a mark,” Dog told her. “I’ll try it a couple of times and we can average out the location. I need it for the Abner Read. ”

“Roger that.”

Dog lined up the Megafortress for a run over the splotches of light. He got his nose directly on one of the beams and ran it down.

“Now,” he told Catsman.

He took the computed position and passed it on to Storm.

The navy captain grunted and told Dog it would take “a while” to get up there.

“How long’s a while?”

“A while is a while,” said Storm. “It may depend on the Chinese. They don’t appear to be in a particularly good mood.”

True enough, thought Dog. He switched back to the emergency frequency.

“Mack, can you hear me?”

“Just barely,” said Mack.

“Abner Read is on its way. It may take a couple of hours.”

“Tell those fuckers to get the lead out,” Mack replied.

“The water’s starting to get cold. And that ship on the horizon looks like it’s getting closer.”

“Roger that,” said Dog. The ship was a Chinese frigate, and it had in fact turned in the direction of the downed airmen.

Dog banked too aggressively and the Megafortress sent a rumble through her frame.

“Sorry about that,” he told the plane. “I don’t mean to take you for granted.”

Aboard the Abner Read,

northern Arabian Sea

0743

LIEUTENANT KIRK “STARSHIP” ANDREWS FINISHED THE

survey of the water around the Sharkboat and turned the 18

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Werewolf back toward the Abner Read.

“Sharkboat, Werewolf survey confirms no mines in the area,” he told the crew aboard the small vessel. Roughly the size of a PT boat, the Sharkboat looked like a miniature version of the Abner Read and was designed to work with the littoral destroyer. Lacking the bigger ship’s comprehensive sensors, the small vessels had proven susceptible to mines earlier in the deployment.

“Thanks much, Werewolf. We are proceeding toward rendezvous.”

Starship plotted the course back and let the computer take over the robot helicopter. Developed by Dreamland and originally intended to fight tanks and protected land positions, the Werewolf had been pressed into service as a naval helicopter gunship aboard the Abner Read. It proved remarkably adept at the job, so much so that Starship was now practically a regular member of the crew. The Navy people called him “Airforce”

because of his service affiliation; the nickname at first had a ring of derision to it, but had come to be a compliment.

Starship rose halfway in the seat and turned around, trying to twist some of the knots out of his neck and back. His station was at one end of the destroyer’s high-tech Tactical Warfare Center.

Lieutenant Commander Jack “Eyes” Eisenberg gave Starship a thumbs-up. Eyes was the Abner Read’s executive officer, second in command of the ship and the majordomo of Tac, as the Tactical Warfare Center was generally known.

Starship gave him a grin and turned back to his computer display.

“Object in water,” blurped the Werewolf computer.

“Identify,” Starship told the computer. He pointed at the touchscreen, obtaining a precise GPS reading as well as the Werewolf ’s approximation of its size.

“Unknown. Believed to be human,” said the computer.

“Tac—I have an object in the water. Could be a man over-board,” said Starship. He took control from the computer and pushed the Werewolf lower, slowing so he could focus the 19

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forward video camera better on the object.

The Werewolf looked like a baby Russian Hokum helicopter. Propelled by a pair of counterrotating blades above, the unmanned aerial vehicle had a stubby set of wings and jet engines whose thrust could be tapped to help push its top speed out to nearly 400 knots—roughly twice what a “normal” helicopter could do. It was quite happy to hover as well, though the transition from top speed to a dead stop could be bumpy. In this case, Starship rode the chopper into a wide arc, descending gradually around his target.

“Could be a pilot,” he said, studying the screen. “I think it might be one of the Chinese fliers.”

“Location,” said Eyes calmly.

Starship read the coordinates off. “Smile for your close-up, dude,” he told the stricken man, pushing the freeze-frame on the videocam.

“Airforce, what’s your status?” barked Storm.

“Downed flier, approximately, uh, let’s say ten miles southwest of us, Captain.” Starship was used to Storm’s gruff way of communicating, and his habit of interrupting after Eyes had already given an order. The captain could be a genuine, class one jackass, but he was a good leader when the shit hit the fan.

Not as good as Colonel Bastian, but few men were.

“How far is that Sharkboat from him?”

“Take them almost an hour to get to him, Captain,” Starship told him. “We’re a lot closer, just about ten miles, and—”

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Airforce,” Storm told him.

“The Sharkboat is going to take flyboy. You’re going to hover over him and make sure they find him.”

Storm snapped off the circuit. Starship, confused about why a vessel farther away was being tasked to make the pickup, turned around and saw Eyes looking over his shoulder at the Werewolf ’s video feed. Because of the ad hoc nature of the arrangement, the Werewolf ’s video and other sensor data was not available at the executive officer’s own station.

20

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

“Looks scared,” said Eyes, bending down.

“Probably in shock,” said Starship. Punching out of an aircraft at a few hundred knots took a lot out of the body.

And while the Arabian Sea was relatively warm—the surface temperature was no lower than 68 degrees—it was still cooler than a human body. “Sir, you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“How come the Sharkboat is taking him?”

“We’re heading north,” said Eyes. “Some of your Dreamland guys bailed and we’re going to pick them up, assuming we can get around the Chinese.”

Indian Ocean,

off the Indian coast

Time unknown

TIME PAST MIXED WITH TIME FUTURE, THE PRESENT A TANGLE