Allah had delivered this vessel so he could strike the ArkRoyal. He wanted the devil’s own sword wielded in the name of justice.

No one was topside. The ship was about as long as his own patrol boats, sitting low in the water on two knife-shaped arms. The deck held a small cannon forward of a sloped and angled wheelhouse, the broad fantail at the rear dominated by two long rectangular boxes.

A hand grasped him. The others had arrived.

“Wait until we are all aboard,” said Ali. “God has brought us and will provide. We are in his hands and fight a holy war.”

DANNY WALKED DOWN TO THE WATER, HEART POUNDING HEAVily, afraid the grenade meant for him had killed or wounded the Marine hunched on the ground ahead. But the man wasn’t hurt, at least not physically—he was throwing up.

Danny knelt beside him and recognized the young man he’d been with earlier.

“I saw a head,” mumbled the kid. “Oh, God.” The Marine leaned over and puked again.

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Danny gripped the jacket of the bulletproof vest. After a few more heaves the Marine straightened, and Danny helped him to his feet.

“I’m OK, sir. I’m OK.”

“I know you are, guy. It sucks.”

The Marine looked at him for a second. “Does it get easier?”

Danny thought back to the first man he’d seen die—or rather, the first one he’d realized was a man, not a faceless enemy in the distance. He’d puked too.

In one sense, it did get easier—he didn’t throw up anymore. But in all the important ways, it didn’t get easier at all.

“You’ll get through it, kid. You’re doing your job.”

“Thank you, sir,” snapped the Marine, a bit of his strength returning.

Danny rapped his arm gently with his fist, then went to check on the others.

THE GUN AT THE FRONT OF THE ENEMY SHIP BEGAN TO FIRE.

The deck shook with it, and the boat started to roll.

The dark hatchway to the interior lay a few feet ahead. Ali could see the men moving inside, two of them—devil men with horns and spikes at their heads.

The knife burned hot in his hand.

“For the Glory of God!” he yelled, plunging into the darkness.

“HAVE SERGEANT LIU TAKE CHARGE OF SECURING ANY

documents and equipment from the headquarters building,”

Danny told Dancer over the team circuit. “We ought to try to evacuate it out to the Shark Boat as soon as we can, just in case the natives get restless. We’ll use the Navy SITT teams to conduct searches of the other buildings. They’re trained for that stuff. But I want them to go slow. There’s no sense tripping over more booby traps in the dark.”

“Agreed, Captain.”

Something flashed in the sky overhead. A loud clap of SATAN’S TAIL

359

thunder followed. There were two more bursts in rapid succession.

“Missiles,” Danny told the Marine lieutenant. “Being intercepted. Big ones.”

“Cap, Werewolf is trying to get ahold of you on the Dreamland circuit,” said Boston. “The most beautiful woman in the world wants to sing in your ear.”

“Boston, you would joke on the doorstep of hell,” said Danny.

“Aw, been there, done that, Captain.”

Danny clicked into the line. “Whiplash leader.”

“Danny, I have to pull Werewolf Two back to refuel. It’s going to be at least twenty minutes before I get back to you.

Werewolf One is being refueled but it may take a while to get back in the air.”

He could hear a lot of voices behind her on the ship, rushed, calm, nearly hysterical—the adrenaline-soaked sounds of battle.

“It’s OK, Jen. We’re secure here. What’s your situation?”

“We’ve sunk the submarine, but we’ve been targeted by missiles. Gonna be a few minutes before it sorts out and I can land to refuel—have to go.”

“Go.”

Dancer had climbed down the cliffside and was standing before him with one of her Marines—the one who had just emptied the contents of his stomach on the beach.

“Danny, I’m going to take Luke here and check on the search of the Osprey wreckage as we’d planned. I think it’s better to leave Liu and the others to help Boston sort out the situation in the hovel and then bring the papers or whatever’s in the headquarters’ stash down.”

“You sure you’re OK?”

“Hey, we’re Marines,” said Dancer. “Come on, Luke.”

The Marine had to scramble to keep up with the five-seven lieutenant as she strode toward the dock where the small boats were tied up.

“Just that old woman up here, Cap,” said Boston. “As far 360

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

as the sensors can tell, no mines anywhere. And no more booby traps.”

“All right. Sergeant Liu is organizing a team to take material out of the headquarters. If you’re secure up there and there’s manpower available, go down and help out. I’m going to see if I can find some sort of boat we can use to get the material out to the Shark Boat.”

A fresh set of explosions in the distance shook the ground.

“Sounds like we’re not the only ones having a party tonight,” said Boston.

Aboard Baker-Baker Two

0045

STARSHIP TURNED HAWK THREE TOWARD THE LEAD MIG THEN

jumped back into Hawk Four. He whirled the airplane toward the southeast, hunting for Baker-Baker Two.

“I have an idea, Bree,” he said. “I’ll hold them off with Three long enough to get a couple hundred pounds of juice into Four, then go back and finish them off.”

“I don’t know if we can complete a refuel under fire,” said Breanna.

“I think it’s worth a try,” said Starship. “It’s better than just running away and losing both U/MFs.”

“Agreed,” she snapped back. “Let’s try.”

Starship lined up Hawk Four, then told the computer to take the aircraft in for the refuel. The computer balked—its safety protocols would not allow it to refuel while the Megafortress was being targeted by the enemy. Both he and Breanna had to authorize the override. The extra step took only a few seconds, but by the time he got back into HawkThree, the computer had missed its shot. Rather than breaking and going for the other aircraft in the pack—a human’s natural choice, since there were no less than four targets within spitting distance—C3 had stubbornly stayed on the SATAN’S TAIL

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lead MiG. It led it to the very edge of the connection range with Baker-Baker Two. The computer backed off and banked around, taking itself out of the fight even though it had been ordered to stay with the other plane.

It was the first tactical flaw Starship had found in the programming. It disappointed him somehow, as if the computer should have known better.

He’d figure out how to use it in the next exercise to try and beat Zen, something no one had ever done.

Kick would have loved that. He was always talking about beating the master.

Starship pushed the memory of his friend away as he took control of the Flighthawk. The sky before him was studded with fighters. The MiGs stoked their engines, trying to close on the Megafortress—apparently they were all carrying short-range heat-seekers and needed to get up close to take a shot. He pulled to a half mile of the nearest aircraft and lit his cannon, tearing a long, jagged line through the fuselage and back into the tail plane. He kept moving forward, barely letting up on the trigger before finding his second target, another MiG-21. Before he could fire, a missile sprang from beneath the enemy’s wing. Cursing, Starship waited for the target cue to blink then go solid red.

“You better not hit me, you son of a bitch,” he said, dialing the enemy into oblivion.

“BREAK RIGHT, YOU HAVE TO TURN RIGHT!” SPIDERMAN YELLED

to Breanna.

“We need to stay straight for the refuel.”