Danny told him. “I’m going to go with Pretty Boy and see what Dancer has.”

“She’s hot,” said Boston. “For a Marine.”

“I’ll forget you said that, Sergeant,” snapped Danny.

Aboard the Wisconsin

0015

AS THE SITUATION ON SHORE SETTLED DOWN, ZEN TURNED HIS

attention to the water and the spot where the Osprey had crashed, about a half mile west from the mooring area. He crisscrossed as slowly as possible overhead, hoping the infrared sensors would pick up something in the water he could direct the Shark Boat’s crews to. The Navy craft had sent two small inflatable boats to the area; Zen could talk to them by communicating with the ship’s commander via one of the portable Dreamland communication systems. He took a first pass at three thousand feet, circling back and dropping lower, working the Flighthawk down through two thousand.

He activated the C3 search-and-rescue mode, directing the Flighthawk’s computer to look for men in the water. The computer began beeping immediately, drawing a box about three hundred yards from the northernmost boat.

Zen vectored the rescuers toward them and pushed the Flighthawk even lower, edging down close to five hundred feet. His airspeed bled off and he got a stall warning, C3 getting nervous.

“Boat Two has recovered one body,” reported the Shark Boat captain after he passed along the coordinates. “Pretty mangled.”

“Flighthawk leader.”

DOG LOOKED AT THE RADAR PLOT FROM BAKER-BAKER TWO

showing the two flights of Yemen MiGs. The aircraft had SATAN’S TAIL

341

been flying on the same course for nearly five minutes; there seemed no doubt they were flying toward the assault area.

“Baker-Baker Two, this is Wisconsin. Bree, intercept those MiGs. I don’t want them in the assault area.”

“And if they don’t turn back?”

“Direct them to. If they arm their weapons, engage and shoot them down.”

“Baker-Baker. Will do.”

“You don’t think that’s too aggressive, Colonel?” asked the copilot.

“I’ve already lost an aircraft and its crew,” replied Dog. “I don’t intend on losing any others.”

Northern Somalia,

on the ground

0021

DEAD BODIES LAY ON BOTH SIDES OF THE WOODEN PLANKS ON

the rock-strewn coastline. More than three dozen pirates had been killed, many by the bombardment. Several corpses were missing large parts of their anatomy. A head had landed on the rocks, eyes open, face contorted with pain, as if the man were emerging from hell below.

Danny stared at it, not unnerved exactly, but arrested by the grotesqueness of war and death. The man was his enemy, and surely would have killed him without remorse. Yet Danny felt a stab of pity for him. The absurd futility captured by the man’s death stare reached through the body armor Danny wore, reached past the tough shell he donned to do his job. The Air Force captain had seen much brutality in the past few years—he’d been in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia before joining Whiplash, and had come to know the many ways a corpse could be mangled. But each time he faced death again, there was something fresh, something un-expected, something still capable of eliciting pity and even sorrow.

342

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

He reminded himself what his job was and plunged on, following the Marine private across the wooden planks that formed a narrow and crude boardwalk to the main area of the compound. There were more bodies here, including two that belonged to Americans. Danny saw the young man who’d been ahead of him stop, then pitch forward to his hands and knees.

Danny gave him a moment, then leaned down close to his ear.

“Take a second,” he told the young Marine. “But then you have to move on. For yourself. You can’t do anything for them now. We’ll grieve later.”

“Yes, sir,” said the Marine, voice choked with tears.

Danny rose and walked alone toward the corner of a nearby building, where another member of the team crouched with an M249 machine gun. Calling the structure a building was optimistic; it was more a hovel that leaned against the side of the hill.

“Down here, Danny,” said Dancer.

He spotted her near the largest of the buildings, on the side overlooking one of the docks. He made his way down quickly.

“We have no more resistance, or at least they’ve stopped firing,” she said. “There are two speedboats, some other small open boats tied up in the water on that side there. The Abner Read has taken care of the hulks. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in them.” She turned and pointed to the boats in the water. “This building looks like a command post. There’s radio equipment and other gear inside. We didn’t see any booby traps.”

“It’s clean,” Liu said behind her.

“All right,” said Danny. “Next objective is the cave where the submarine was, beyond that dock and the breakwater there.

Piranha reports no vessels inside, but there may be people.”

“I’d like a chance to help in the search for our people on the Osprey,” said Dancer. “I think we should do that first.”

“I think we can assist the search while we’re looking for SATAN’S TAIL

343

an entrance to the pen,” Danny told her. “We need to get the divers in before we take on the cave. The Shark Boat too. I don’t want to start an assault, or a possible assault, until we have all the possible entrances covered anyway. I’ll check on what the possibilities are while you take charge of the search. Why don’t you take Sergeant Liu and two of your Marines with you?”

“Thank you, I will,” said Dancer. “And I’m holding on to your sergeant’s hat. Does this thing get baseball games?”

“Only Yankee games.”

“Those are the only ones I watch.”

“Hey, Captain! I got people! Up here in the second tier of hovels.”

Dancer and a Marine trailed Danny as he trotted up the hill and then climbed a short set of rock steps to Boston. The sergeant was holding his M4 on a pair of frail-looking women. One was middle-aged, the other in her early twenties. They wore heavy black clothes with veils drawn over their faces.

“I have a couple of civilians,” Danny said over the Dreamland Command circuit. “I need the Arabic translator.”

“He’s on the line,” said Major Catsman.

As Danny started to ask for the words “We mean no harm,” the younger woman jumped up.

“Grenade!” yelled Boston.

Without thinking, Danny threw himself at the woman.

Boston tried to grab the grenade, which flew up into the air.

Twisting back, Danny saw it hover a few inches above his head, an old Russian-style weapon.

He also saw very clearly that its pin had been pulled.

Aboard Baker-Baker Two

0025

STARSHIP TOOK HAWK THREE DOWN TO 25,000 FEET, RUNning head-on at the first element of MiG-29s. The aircraft 344

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

were moving fairly quickly, around 600 knots. They were fifty miles away from his nose; the combined speeds of the aircraft meant they’d run through each other’s windshields in a little more than three minutes if nothing changed.

Hawk Four paralleled Three by two and a half miles. Starship took control of the plane directly and started a slight turn farther east. “Intercept doublet pattern Zen-Two,” he told the computer, naming a preset tactical maneuver that Zen used so often it had been named after him. While the contingencies of the encounter could immensely complicate what happened, the outline of the plan was simple: HawkThree would engage the flight nearly head-on, attacking the lead plane, which was running a bit farther west and higher than the second MiG. Hawk Four would angle in from the east, aiming for a tail attack on the second MiG as it broke and ran or moved to help its mate.