“And the Republican party is wide open. Believe me, Captain, you have a real future. An important future. The country needs a wide base of people in government. Congress. There are too many lawyers and milquetoasts there now. We have a duty to straighten it out.”

Stephens sounded sincere; he probably was sincere, 82

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Danny thought. And the duty card, if not the race card, did resonate with him.

But he wasn’t quitting the Air Force, certainly not to become a politico.

Could he stay in here forever? Away from Jemma?

It was important, and it was thrilling, but it was dangerous, very dangerous. And it made it very difficult to raise kids.

Which he did want.

“A job in D.C. helping a committee make the right choices for the military, hop from that into an election inside a year,” Stephens continued. “Fast-track to Congress if we pick the right district. From there, who knows? The sky’s the limit.”

“Yeah,” said Danny finally. “You know what? You got me at a bad time.”

“Oh, not a problem, Captain. Not a problem at all. We should talk in person sometime. Have lunch. No pressure or anything like that—this is a thing you’d want to think about for a long time. Talk with Jemma about, of course.”

“Yeah. Well, listen, I have your number here. I’ll give you a call soon.”

Stephens hesitated ever so slightly, but remained up-beat. “Great. Think about it, Captain.”

“I will,” said Danny, hanging up.

Dreamland

1357

COLONEL BASTIAN SAT BACK FROM HIS DESK AS GIBBS

barged into the office.

“Your meeting, sir,” said Ax. “Everyone’s down in the torture chamber wondering where you are. But you didn’t sign my papers.”

RAZOR’S EDGE

83

“I’ll get them later, Ax.”

A frown flew across the chief master sergeant’s face.

“Let’s take them in the elevator,” offered Ax. “You can sign them on the fly and be done.”

“I have to read them.”

“Ah, these aren’t reading ones. I didn’t read half of them myself.”

Dog pushed his chair back and rose, shaking his head.

But instead of picking up one of the three piles of forms and files on Bastian’s desk, the chief put up his hand.

“Colonel, a word.” Gibbs’s voice suddenly became uncharacteristically officious. “I have the identity of the F-15 pilots. Back channel, of course.”

Bastian nodded.

“Both on temporary assignment with the 10th. Major Stephen Domber.” Ax paused to let Bastian run the name against his mental file of friends and comrades without finding a match. “Wing Commander Colonel Anthony Priestman. They call him—”

“Hammer,” said Bastian.

“Yes, sir,” said Ax. “Looks like DIA.”

Bastian walked quickly out of the office suite, nodding at the secretaries outside but not pausing to say anything.

Ax followed him out. Inside the elevator car, the chief held up papers, pointing to where they should be initialed. Bastian gave each only a cursory glance before signing off.

Dreamland

1412

THE SECOND ZEN TOOK A SIP OF THE SODA, HE KNEW IT

was a big mistake. The ice cold soda hit the filling in the back of his mouth like a Maverick missile unbuttoning a 84

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

T-72 main battle tank. Trying to stifle his yelp of pain, he ended up coughing instead, sending a spray of soda over the video display at the console in Dreamland’s secure center. Fortunately, Major Cheshire had just begun her presentation, clicking a large map of northern Iraq onto the screen at the front of the room. She swung the combination remote-control laser pointer around, flashing its arrow at the upper-right-hand corner of the screen.

“The first aircraft went down in this vicinity,” said Major Cheshire. “The pilot was recovered approximately here. The F-15s were struck while they were following this route. Barrage-launched SAMs, at least some of which were unguided at launch, are thought to have taken them out. The missile bases on the next screen have been struck.” A political map with a half-dozen radar dishes covered by explosions appeared. “You’ll have to forgive the graphics. Our friend Jed at the NSC prepared them for, uh, for some VIPs,” she added tactfully. “I won’t run through the entire radar sets or the missiles, but SA-2s, some Threes, and a Roland launcher were struck this afternoon, their time. Iraq is ten hours ahead,” she added,

“which makes it an hour after Turkey.”

“It’s midnight in Baghdad,” said Danny Freah dryly.

“In more ways than one.”

Zen had flown over Iraq in the war and knew exactly how dangerous it could be. The fact that there was still some doubt about what had shot down the fighters bothered him, as well as the others, even though that sort of thing sometimes took days to figure out. Obviously the Iraqis had some sort of new strategy or missile, or maybe both. The Flighthawks would be close to immune, but there had been no time to complete the complicated painting of Quicksilver’s nose necessary to help deflect radar.

While the plane would still be comparatively stealthy, he knew that Bree would be in that much more danger.

RAZOR’S EDGE

85

So would he, of course, flying the U/MFs in their belly.

But he ordinarily didn’t think of himself as even aboard it—he was in the Flighthawks. Besides, he didn’t worry about himself.

“There will be an additional round of strikes in the morning. CentCom is ramping up,” said Cheshire. “An operation to recover the two Eagle pilots is ongoing.

There was no word at last report.”

“The prospects aren’t very good,” said Danny.

“This operation may continue for quite a while,” continued Cheshire. “Iraq has ordered UN weapons’ inspectors out of the country, and the President is considering a wide range of options. In the meantime, we’ve been asked to deploy two Elint-capable Megafortresses to provide CentCom with round-the-clock real-time surveillance of the Iraqi radio net, command communications, and other electronic transmission data. Two specialists familiar with Rivet Joint missions have been detailed to join us in-country; we’re hoping to get two more. Jennifer Gleason and Kurt Ming will accompany us to help facilitate their familiarization with the gear, which of course they’re not up to speed on. Let me cut to the chase,” she said, pressing the small clicker in her hand.

A large map of southeastern Turkey appeared on the screen.

“To the extent possible, we’d like to preserve operational secrecy regarding our deployment. Additionally, from a strategic intelligence perspective, the Elint-capable model of the Megafortress remains highly classified. As such, we’d like to find another base to operate from besides Incirlik. Danny Freah and I, along with Colonel Shepherd from the Material Transport Command, have come up with a solution involving a small, disused airstrip twenty miles from the Iraqi border.”

Cheshire clicked her remote again. An arrow appeared 86

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

in the right-hand corner of the map—extremely close to a wide line showing the Iraq-Turkey border.

“There’s a village nearby, connected by a donkey road through the hills. It’s called Al Derhagdad. We’ll designate it ‘High Top,’ unless someone comes up with something better.”

Zen and some of the others snickered when Cheshire said “donkey road,” but she wasn’t making a joke.

“We’re close to the border, but the terrain is almost im-passable except by foot,” said Cheshire.

“Or donkey,” said Danny—he wasn’t joking either.

“Security will be provided by a Whiplash team, to be supplemented by a detachment of Marines from the 24th MEU(SOC) available for reinforcement. We’re still hanging on the Marine timetable. They may come with us, they may not; we’re still working that out.”