He would direct the first plane in to the parking area.

“Hey, Cap! Thanks for letting me work the ’dozer,”

shouted Powder as Danny sat on one of the sandbag piles, the only available seating. “What I’m talkin’ about!”

“I’m surprised you gave it up,” Danny told him.

“Only until the planes land, Cap. Most fun I had with my pants on ever.”

“Yeah, well, keep them on,” said Danny, reaching into his pocket for a candy bar, which was all the dinner he’d have tonight.

Aboard Quicksilver , over southeastern Turkey 1730

“QUICKSILVER READS YOU FINE, HIGH TOP GROUND,” BREE

told the controller as she orbited the freshly meshed field.

“I have a visual on the field. Looks real pretty.”

“Ground acknowledges,” said the controller, all business. “Dreamland Hawk?”

“Dreamland Hawk One reads you fine, High Top ground,” said Zen. Unlike their usual procedure at Dreamland, here the Flighthawk would remain airborne RAZOR’S EDGE

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until the other planes were down, providing additional protection in case of an attack. While that was unlikely—two flights of fighters were patrolling the sky above and to the south—the apparent loss of two more F-16s over Iraq provided a potent reminder that nothing could be taken for granted.

CentCom had reacted to the loss of the two planes by ordering more retaliatory raids. But they were caught in a catch-22—more raids exposed more planes to danger.

Everyone was on edge, and even the Megafortresses had been challenged by fighter patrols as they flew into south Turkey.

The ground controller turned his attention back to Major Alou and Raven, which was up first in the landing queue. They ran through a quick exchange of vitals about the airstrip, wind, and weather conditions, along with the basic instructions on where the controller wanted him to put the plane once they landed. The exchange was somewhat pro forma, as the Megafortress could compute her own data and adjust accordingly, but the routine itself was comforting. The well-trained CCT on the other end of the radio did his job with the high precision a pilot could appreciate; it boded well if things got complicated down the line.

“Raven on final approach,” said Chris as their sister plane pushed in.

Quicksilver was about a mile away and roughly parallel to the runway, opposite Raven as it settled down. Zen had brought Hawk One into a chase pattern behind and above Raven to feed Alou additional video view if he needed it. Breanna had the feed displayed on her console; she watched as Alou came in a bit high to avoid the rocks at the approach end, then flopped down onto the mesh grid, chutes deployed, thrusters in reverse. Dust spewed as the plane shuddered onto the ground. Raven began 124

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

drifting to the left about ten yards after her wheels hit; Alou held it for the next twenty then seemed to overcor-rect. In the last fifty yards the plane moved sharply back to the left, jerked right, then disappeared beneath a massive cloud of dust and smoke.

“Shit,” said Breanna.

The video veered into the countryside as Zen brought the Flighthawk around quickly. Breanna jerked her attention back to the sky in front of her. The radar plot showed one of the Pave Hawks crossing ahead.

“Hold pattern, all aircraft,” said the controller sharply.

“We’re all right,” said Major Alou. “We’re okay.”

The Flighthawk video showed the dust clearing. The Megafortress had come off the far edge of the runway, clipping its wing against some of the rocks. The ground people were running toward it as Hawk One passed overhead.

“Raven, please hold your pattern,” said the CCT.

“Raven.”

“Going to have to recalculate our fuel,” said Chris Ferris.

Breanna grunted in acknowledgment as she widened their orbit, waiting for the people on the ground to sort things out. Two of Raven’s sixteen tires had blown and the wing had been lightly damaged, but otherwise the plane was fine. No one aboard had been hurt, assuming the pilot’s bruised ego didn’t count.

“My fault,” Alou told Breanna as the Megafortress was rigged to one of the bulldozers so it could be towed off the runway. “The wind kicked up crazy and pulled the drogue chutes. The computer didn’t know how to compensate and I had to fight it. Then the wind kicked out again and I lost the runway. That tooth to the east between the hillsides—it’s like a blowpipe.”

Breanna could imagine. Crosswinds were always a RAZOR’S EDGE

125

complication for any airplane when landing or taking off.

The Megafortress’s main asset was also its greatest weakness—it was an immense and heavy airframe. Sharp gusts of wind on landing could make a pilot’s life difficult even on the best runway.

“I say we dump the chutes,” said Chris.

“I don’t know if we can stop in time without them,”

said Breanna.

“Chop ’em at the tooth.”

They worked the numbers—they’d run off the end of the runway, maybe even the mountain.

“What if we drop the other Flighthawk?”

The lighter load would lessen the plane’s momentum as it landed, making it easier to stop. Still, the computer calculated they’d need another fifty yards without the chutes.

“Burn off more fuel. Dump it even,” said Chris, working the calculations. The most optimistic—which had them running out of fuel during the final approach—left them ten yards too long.

“We can all eject,” joked Breanna.

“Still leaves us ten pounds too heavy,” answered Chris.

“I think we’re better off just losing the computer,” said Breanna. “We’ll figure the chutes will pull us and compensate.”

“I don’t know, Bree. If they couldn’t handle the cross-wind with the computer’s help—”

“The computer routines weren’t set up with the chutes,” said Breanna. She’d made up her mind. “We can cut it lower too, so we don’t put quite as much strain on the tires. I think they lost them on the touchdown. That hurt their steering.”

“I don’t know, Bree.”

“I do. I’ve landed in forty knot winds in an old B-52.

It’ll be easier than that.” She clicked her com setting to 126

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

talk to Zen. “Jeff, we want to lighten our load. Can you launch Hawk Two?”

“What’s the game plan?”

Breanna explained quickly.

“I don’t know, Bree.”

“What don’t you know?”

“You guys are going to land on that postage stamp without any help from the computer?”

She’d expected Chris to object—though highly skilled, her copilot was by nature extremely cautious. But Zen was ordinarily the opposite, and routinely chafed against the computerized autopilot systems that helped him fly the U/MFs—even though he’d helped develop the damn things. If anyone should be in favor of turning off the training wheels, it should be him.

“I can do it with my eyes closed,” she said.

“Your call, Captain,” said her husband.

“Thank you, Major,” she said. “Tell me when you’re ready to fuel Hawk Two. I’d like to top off One as well.”

“Hawk leader acknowledges.”

ZEN CHECKED THE SITREP ON HIS VIEWER, WAITING FOR

Quicksilver to finish its climb to 26,000 feet. Before he started working with the Megafortress fleet, he’d had a typical fighter jock’s attitude toward big planes and their pilots: basically they were airborne trucks, slow and easy to control. But the airborne launches and refuels had taught him to appreciate exactly how difficult a large aircraft could be to control. Its vast weight and wing surfaces, complicated flight systems, and powerful engines made for a complicated minuet. The dancers at the helm had their hands full, even with the sophisticated flight computers that helped control the Megafortress. Landing the big jet on the smooth surface in the shadow of Glass RAZOR’S EDGE