DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Armageddon

WRITTEN BY DALE BROWN

AND JIM DEFELICE

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dreamland

Paradise

‘What Is Going on Here?’

World Gone Mad

High Stakes

Resistance

Snakes in the Jungle

‘Hang On’

Paradise Regained

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

DREAMLAND
DUTY ROSTER

LIEUTENANT COLONEL TECUMESH ‘DOG’ BASTIAN

Dreamland’s commander has been mellowed by the demands of his new command – but he’s still got the meanest bark in the West, and his bite is even worse.

MAJOR JEFFREY ‘ZEN’ STOCKARD

A top fighter pilot until a near-fatal crash at Dreamland left him a paraplegic, Zen runs the Flighthawk program and has now accumulated more air-to-air kills than any other active pilot in the air force. But he’s got a grudge bigger than the wheelchair life has confined him to.

CAPTAIN BREANNA ‘RAP’ STOCKARD

Zen’s wife has seen him through his injury and rehabilitation. But can she balance her love for her husband with the demands of her career … and ambitions?

MAJOR MACK ‘THE KNIFE’ SMITH

Mack Smith is the best pilot in the world – and he’ll tell you so himself. He left Dreamland to reshape the Brunei air force in his own egotistical image.

CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH

Danny commands ‘Whiplash’ – the ground attack team that works with the cutting-edge Dreamland aircraft and high-tech gear. Freah’s wife and friends want him to run for Congress. The war hero would be a shoo-in – but does he want to give up the excitement of Dreamland?

JENNIFER GLEASON

Computer specialist Jennifer Gleason is one of the creative geniuses at Dreamland, responsible for the multi-mode combat computer that helps control the Flighthawks. She’s also Dog’s lover – but her emotional and intellectual sides don’t always get along.

JED BARCLAY

The young deputy to the national security advisor is Dreamland’s link to the president. Barely old enough to shave, the former science whiz kid now struggles to master the intricacies of world politics. Zen Stockard is his cousin – and Zen still can’t figure out how the skinny kid who used to follow him around on a tricycle grew up and got a real job.

LIEUTENANT KIRK ‘STARSHIP’ ANDREWS

Starship flew through flight school and was on the fast track to a career flying the air force’s frontline interceptors, like the F-15 and F-22. But family commitments made him change his plans. Now he has a post at Dreamland flying the U/MF-3 Flighthawk robot planes, where he’s finding that no amount of training can prepare him for real combat.

AND IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC …

PRINCE PEHIN BIN AWG

The nephew of the sultan of Brunei and the unofficial protector of the air force, bin Awg has an enviable collection of Cold War aircraft – and a well-earned reputation as a partier. Can he mature in time to save his uncle’s realm … and his own neck?

CAT MCKENNA

A one time Royal Canadian pilot, McKenna has found work plying the skies for a shadowy Russian arms dealer. But when her paycheck bounces, she looks for a new job – and ends up locking horns with Mack Smith.

CAPTAIN DAZHOU TI

Years ago, Dazhou’s Chinese grandfather was disinherited by the sultan of Brunei. Now he wants revenge – and has a secret Malaysian warship to insure that he gets it.

SAHURAH NIU

A devout believer, Sahurah is convinced that he has a place in Paradise – and is willing to kill thousands to reach it.

I
Paradise
Malay, Negara Brunei Darussalam (State of Brunei, Abode of Peace) 6 October 1997, (local) 1302

Breanna Stockard tossed her backpack to the ground, put her hands on her hips, and took a deep breath. The Pacific Ocean spread out before her, a blanket of azure silk. A few white clouds wandered casually in the distance, drifting across the sky like a pair of vacationers easing across a solitary beach. Civilization might lay in the distance – there were oil derricks somewhere offshore, and merchant ships did a brisk trade at the nearby harbor – but from where she stood Breanna had no hint that she and her husband Jeff ‘Zen’ Stockard weren’t the only people in the world.

This is what God looks at everyday, she thought to herself. Paradise.

Breanna took another deep breath. A month ago, she had found herself stranded in the Pacific during a fierce storm, tossed back and forth in a tiny life raft. It seemed impossible that this was the same ocean now.

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that hadn’t even happened. Ten days here in the wonderful paradise of Brunei – helping train pilots to fly the EB-52 Megafortress ‘leased’ to the kingdom as part of an eventual three-plane arms deal – had purged her of all unhappy memories.

One more week and it might even be impossible to have an unpleasant thought ever again.

Zen had surprised her yesterday by turning up for a weekend visit. They had twenty-four more hours together before he had to return to Dreamland, their base back in the States.

Breanna smoothed out the blanket she’d borrowed from the hotel and spread it down on the white sand next to the path. She dropped her bag and Zen’s small backpack and turned to go back up the path.

‘I’ll bring down lunch, then I’m going to take a swim before I eat,’ she told her husband, who was negotiating the bumps down from the parking area in his wheelchair.

‘Yup,’ said Zen.

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic,’ she said.

‘Yup.’

‘Jet lag getting to you?’

‘I’m fine.’

She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then trotted up the hill for the rest of their things.

Before the accident that had cost him the use of his legs, Zen had considered going to the beach a useless waste of time and a dreadful bore. In his list of things to do, it ranked right above lying spread-eagle on Interstate 15 at rush hour.

Now it ranked somewhat lower.

He had tried talking Breanna out of the idea back at the hotel, when Prince bin Awg had called to say he and his family couldn’t join them on the planned picnic. His Royal Highness Pehin bin Awg was nephew of the sultan, a royal prince and government minister; he owned the beach and had insisted they use it. Zen liked bin Awg, the country’s unofficial patron of the Air Force – he had an enviable collection of Cold War aircraft and could talk about them entertainingly for hours and hours. Like many Bruneians, he was also generous to a fault. But his baby daughter was sick and he had been called away on government business. Zen loved Breanna and wanted to spend as much time as he could with her; he just would have preferred somewhere other than a beach.

A Lakers game, maybe.

It wasn’t so much the fact that beaches and wheelchairs didn’t go together. Truth be told, wheelchairs didn’t really fit smoothly anywhere. Much of everyday life in the A-B world – as in ‘able-bodied,’ a term not used by the handicapped without at least a touch of sarcasm – was a succession of physical barriers and dignity-stealing obstructions. Going to the beach was probably no worse than going to the grocery store. And the fact that this beach was a private, secluded refuge meant there were no people to gawk at the geek in the wheelchair – or worse, take pity on him by ‘helping.’

No, what bothered him was deeper than that. There just seemed to be no point, existential or otherwise, in lying on your belly and watching water lap against the sand.

‘My, but you’re a slowpoke,’ said Breanna, returning with their coolers. ‘Need a push?’

‘No,’ he said stubbornly, gripping the wheels of his chair and half-sliding, half-rolling off the hard-packed pathway and onto the sand. Surprisingly, the chair wheels sank only about a quarter of an inch, and Zen was able to pull over right next to the blanket. There he started a well-practiced if inelegant lift, arch, and twist routine, sliding himself down to the ground.

‘You coming in?’ asked Bree, kicking off her shoes.

‘Yup.’ Zen pulled himself up, sitting next to the cooler with the beer. He took out a Tetley’s Draught – an English ale that might be the last vestige of Britain’s influence on Brunei – and popped the top. A satisfying hiss and fizz followed.

‘“This can contains a floating widget,”’ he read from the top of the can. ‘What do you think a floating widget is, Bree?’

‘An excuse to charge two dollars more,’ said Breanna, who had complained earlier about the high price of beer. As an Islamic country, Brunei officially frowned on alcohol consumption, and between that and the fact that the beer had to be imported from a good distance, the six-pack Zen had purchased through the hotel concierge had cost over twenty-five dollars, American.

But some things were worth the price.

And others couldn’t be bought for any amount of money: Zen watched as his wife stripped off her jeans and T-shirt, revealing a red one-piece bathing suit that reminded Zen there were some good reasons for going to the beach after all.

‘Mmmm,’ he said.

‘Don’t get fresh.’

‘What? I’m talking about the beer.’

He ducked as Breanna tossed her T-shirt at him.

Despair’s black hands took his throat, and Sahurah Niu struggled to breathe.

The prince’s wife and infant daughter had not come to the beach. His informants had been wrong.

Sahurah pushed his fists into his arms, struggling to calm himself. It was of vital importance to remain in control in front of his men.

The commander had made clear that he must complete the mission today. They had discussed the possibility of taking other hostages if necessary; clearly that was his course now.

The two people on the beach were Westerners – Australians, he thought, though Sahurah Niu was not close enough to know for certain. Undoubtedly they were guests of the prince, or they would not have been allowed here on the private beach. They would do.

One was in a wheelchair. A pity.

Sahurah was not without a sense of mercy: he would be killed rather than taken.

‘What are we doing?’ asked Adi, the little one. He handled the Belgian machine-gun they had obtained two months before from their brothers across the border. Despite his small size, Adi had learned to handle the weapon and his body well enough so that he could fire the gun from his hip. This was not easily done; the others and Sahurah himself preferred to fire prone, as their instructor had first taught them.

‘We will go ahead with our plan,’ said Sahurah. ‘Tell the others be ready.’

The water felt like a mineral bath, balmy and thick against her skin. Breanna stroked gently across the small bay in front of the beach. The salt water tickled her cheeks, and the sun felt good on her back and shoulders. She took a few strokes parallel to the beach and looked back at Zen, who despite being crippled was a strong swimmer.

‘Are you coming in or not?’ Breanna yelled.

‘Later,’ he said.

‘Oh come on in!’ she yelled.

‘The water is fantastic.’

‘I’ll be in,’ he said, sipping his beer.

The shoreline was crescent-shaped and slightly off-center to the east, bordered on both sides by strips of jungle. To the west, a pile of rocks formed a small mini-peninsula about a hundred and fifty yards from the mainland. The rocks were just barely above the surface of the water, and they weren’t very wide; there looked to be just about the surface area of a good-sized desk there. Still, it was a destination and Breanna turned and began doing a butterfly stroke toward it, her old high-school swim team warm-up routine popping into her brain.

Zen dug through the cooler, sorting through the food they’d taken from the hotel, looking for something that might seem at least vaguely familiar. He took out what seemed to be a roast beef sandwich – meat stuck out from the edges – and then leaned toward the backpack to get a plate. As he did, he caught a glint of something in the trees to his right, well back in the jungle off the beach by fifty or sixty yards.

Zen put down the sandwich and opened the cooler again, pretending to fish for something else while looking surreptitiously into the jungle. He hoped he’d see a curious child, a teenager copping a cigarette or some such thing, looking at the intruders with curiosity. But instead he caught the outline of a short, squat man with a large gun.

Someone sent by the prince to protect them?

Zen closed the cooler. Sliding his arm through the strap of the backpack, he sidled to the edge of the blanket, estimating the distance to the water.

Twenty feet.

They didn’t have a radio or cell phone. The Brunei air force was so ill-equipped it barely had enough survival radios for its flight crews; American cell phones didn’t work here. And besides, this place was paradise – nothing ever went wrong here.

Breanna was about thirty yards out, stroking steadily for a little jetty or rock island at the edge of the cove.

‘How’s the water?’ he shouted. Then without waiting for an answer, he added, ‘Maybe I will come in. What the hell. Might as well have a quick swim before lunch.’

He twisted around on his elbow, turning to drag himself toward the water.

If he’d had his legs, Zen thought to himself, he’d have confronted the son of a bitch beyond the trees, gun or no gun. But he didn’t have his legs, and the worst thing he could do now was let the bastard know he saw him. He went slowly toward the water, lumbering like a turtle.

As he reached the water line, something crashed through the brush above. A strong shove brought Zen to the edge of the surf; a second got him into six inches of water.

On his third push he felt his body start to float. Salt water stung his face, pricking at his nostrils.

Something rippled near him. He heaved his body forward and dove beneath the waves.

As Breanna watched from the water, the brush behind the beach opened like a curtain. Three men came out from the trees, and then a fourth. Two had rifles.

Zen was at the water – Zen was in the water.

They were going to fire at him.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No!’

Sahurah Niu grabbed the tall one’s arm as he fired.

‘Wait,’ he told Abdul, first in his own Malaysian, then in Abdul’s native Arabic. ‘Don’t waste your bullets while he’s in the water.’

‘He’ll get away.’

‘This will not be so. He is a cripple.’ Sahurah Niu repeated his command not to fire so the others could hear. ‘Wait,’ he added, pointing to the horizon. ‘The boat is coming. Do you see it?’

Zen pushed his head up for a quick breath, then dove back down, stroking toward Breanna. The world had narrowed to a tiny funnel in front of him. He could see rocks on the bottom of the ocean, twenty or more feet below as he pushed downward.

Where was his wife? He pulled his body in the direction of the rocks she’d been heading for. In the back of his mind he heard himself yelling at his body, as if they were two separate people, coach and athlete:

You’ve gone further and faster than this in rehab. Push, damn it, push.

The pressure in his lungs grew and finally he came up for a gulp of air. Bree was a few yards away.

‘The rocks!’ he told her. ‘That island on my left!’

She hesitated.

‘The rocks,’ he repeated.

‘What’s going on? Who are they?’

‘Come on.’ He took hold of her, pushed her down under the water, then took a stroke away. When he was sure she was going in the right direction he dove down, following.

They reached it at the same time. The rock furthest from shore was shaped like a giant turtle shell and tottered at the top of a deep pile. Zen pushed around to the other side, opening the backpack as he did. He wedged his stomach against the side of the rock, balancing as he pulled the Ziploc bag with his service pistol out from the bottom of the knapsack.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Breanna asked.

‘Trouble in paradise,’ said Zen. He heard the sound of a motorboat. Turning, he saw a black triangle approaching from the eastern horizon.

‘You’re going to have to go for help,’ he told her.

‘I’m not leaving you.’

‘You have to,’ Zen told her. ‘Swim down the beach line to the spot where those houses we passed were. They can’t be more than a half-mile.’

‘God, Jeff, it’ll take me forever to swim a half-mile. They’ll get you.’

‘Get going then.’

‘Come with me.’

‘If we both go, they’ll just follow in the boat. Besides, I can’t get ashore.’

‘I’ll carry you.’

‘Just fuckin’ go, Bree. Now!’ He pushed her away awkwardly, holding the pistol, still in its plastic bag, up out of the water.

The look she gave him wounded him as badly as any bullet, but she ducked down beneath the water, stroking away. Zen pulled himself up against the rock, waiting to see what the men on the shore would do next.

Sahurah put his hand to his forehead, shading his eyes. The two tourists were huddled at the edge of the cove, foolishly thinking it would protect them.

They had rehearsed this. The next steps were easy.

‘Abdul, go through the trees and then to the first rock. Do not go into the water.’ It was necessary to tell the Yemen this because he was a very simple man. ‘When you see that we have them, come back and meet Fallah at the edge of the beach, there.’

Sahurah pointed to the eastern edge of the protected area. ‘Fallah, you will guard that side, in case they attempt to swim away. You may shoot them, but only if they are more than ten meters from us. Ten meters, you understand?’

‘Of course.’

Adi looked at him expectantly. The motorboat was now approaching, moving toward the beach at a good clip, precisely as planned.

‘You and I will go in the boat,’ Sahurah told the short one. ‘We will have to wade. Make sure the weapon does not get wet. If they do not come easily we will need it.’

Breanna pulled through the water, propelled by her fury. She was angry at Zen for sending her away, angrier still at whomever it was who was trying to kidnap or rob them.

Brunei was a paradise; how could this happen here?

The houses they had seen were no more than a mile away: 1,600 meters. One of her events in high school.

She’d never finished higher than third in it.

Breanna continued her stroke, falling into the rhythm, willing away everything, even her anger, as she plunged through the water.

Zen watched as the boat cut its engines and drifted toward the shore. The thugs on the beach had rolled up their pants and started to wade out. One of them had a largish rifle, possibly a machine-gun like the M249 or Belgium Minimi, a squad-level weapon that fired 5.56-millimeter ammunition from magazines or belts, which could be held in a plastic box-like container clipped beneath the chamber area just ahead of the trigger.

They moved almost lackadaisically, obviously not seeing him as much of a threat. More than likely they didn’t know he had a gun.

The closer they got, the better his chances at hitting them with the pistol. On the other hand, the closer they got, the more difficult it would be to swim away.

But that wasn’t an option. They had a boat. He’d never outswim it in the open water. Nor would there be much chance of surprising them from the sea.

His goal wasn’t to escape. It was to distract them long enough that Breanna could escape. He would let them get close, then take out as many of them as possible. He’d target the man with the machine-gun first.

Sahurah put his hand down on the gunwale of the speedboat as it came next to him in the water, trying to steady it before he pulled himself over the side. His ancestors had been fishermen, but Sahurah himself disliked boats; no matter how big, they seemed flimsy and unprotected against the awful power of the sea.

The two men in the boat looked at him with puzzled expressions, but did not speak. Unlike the others, the men who had been selected from the boat were Indonesians with a limited command of Malaysian and no knowledge of Arabic; he had to use English so they would understand.

‘There has been a change in plans,’ he told them, grabbing onto the back of one of the seats. ‘The people we have come for are there.’

He pointed to the rock. One of the tourists was treading water next to it; the other must have been hiding behind him.

‘There?’ asked the man near the wheel of the boat.

‘Yes,’ said Sahurah. ‘Take us there.’

He took the machine-gun from Adi’s hands, cradling it against his shirt. While it was heavier than the AK47 he had first learned to shoot as a boy, it was surprisingly small for a gun that could fire so rapidly and with so much effect. Sahurah had only a pistol himself, strapped in a holster beneath his shirt.

Adi took the gun back greedily as soon as he was in the boat.

‘We will not shoot them unless it is necessary,’ Sahurah reminded him.

Adi frowned, but then set himself against the side of the boat in a squat, holding the weapon’s barrel upward and protecting it from the spray as they turned and started toward the rock. The helmsman brought the boat around in an arc, circling around from the west.

The man at the wheel cut the engine when they were twenty meters from the rock. Sahurah reached to his shirt for his gun; he would fire a shot and then tell the tourists to surrender. He would use sweet words to make the idiots believe he meant no harm. The Westerners were, without exception, cowards, eager to believe whatever they were told.

Adi tensed beside him. Sahurah knew he was about to fire. He turned to stop him, but it was too late: the gun roared. Sahurah turned and saw Adi falling backward as the machine-gun fired – he thought the little man had been pushed back by its recoil and tried to grab him, but both Adi and the gun fell off into the water. Stunned, Sahurah reached for him when he felt something punch against him, a stone that tore into his rib. He grabbed for his weapon and found himself in the bottom of the boat, finally realizing that the man on the rocks had a gun.

Zen’s first shot missed, but his second and third caught the man with the machine-gun in the head. He fired three more shots; at least one struck the man next to the gunman. The boat jerked to the left and roared away out to sea.

Zen lost his grip on the rock as the wake swelled up. He couldn’t keep the gun above the water, let alone himself – he slid down and then pushed up with his left hand, clambering up on top of the rock.

The boat was headed off. Thank God, he thought to himself. Thank God.

Something ricocheted against one of the rocks about thirty feet from him. Zen threw himself into the waves, still clutching the pistol. He pushed around to the seaward side of the rock then surfaced.

There was a man on shore about fifty yards away with an AK47. Zen went down beneath the waves as the man aimed and fired again. The rocks would make it almost impossible for the gunman to hit him unless he came out on the isthmus. A second gunman stood near the brush on the eastern end of the beach; Zen paddled to his right, finding a spot where he couldn’t be seen from that angle. He was safe, at least for a while.

Then he heard the motor of the speed boat revving in the distance. They were coming back.

When Breanna saw the object in the distance, she thought at first it was a large crocodile. She stopped mid-stroke, frozen by fear.

Then she saw that it was bobbing gently and thought it must be a raft. She started toward it, and in only a few strokes realized it was part of a dock that had been abandoned ages ago and now sat forlornly in the water. Abandoned or not, it was the first sign of civilization she had seen since setting out and she swam with all her energy, kicking and flailing so ferociously that she reached it in only a few seconds. She pulled herself against it to rest. As she did, she saw a small skiff maybe seventy-five yards away, the sort of small boat a fisherman might use to troll a quiet lagoon on a hazy afternoon. An old American-made Evinrude motor, its logo faded, sat at the stern. Breanna threw herself forward, stroking overhand in a sprint to the boat. She got to the side and pulled herself up.

The boat sat about five or six yards offshore, a line at the stern anchoring her. The shore here was lined with trees; Breanna saw a path at the right side, though it wasn’t clear what was beyond it.

‘Hey! Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Help! Help!’

She couldn’t see anyone. Breanna turned to the motor. It was old, possibly dating from at least the 1960s, with part of the top removed. It had a pull rope.

She grabbed the rope and yanked at it. The engine turned itself over but didn’t start.

Breanna stared at the motor, which had been tinkered with and repaired for more than thirty odd years. The motor seemed to be intact, without any fancy electronic gizmos or cutoff switches; even the turn throttle seemed to work. She tried the rope again and this time the engine coughed twice and caught. The propeller growled angrily as Breanna got the hang of the jury-rigged replacement mechanism that set the old outboard properly in the water. The boat jumped and started to move forward; she just barely managed to turn it in time to keep the craft from sailing into the rocky shore. She realized she hadn’t released the anchor – the boat groaned, dragging the rock along. She couldn’t steer and reach the line at the same time; since she was moving forward at a decent pace she didn’t bother pulling it in, concentrating instead on getting her bearings as she sped back to rescue her husband.

Zen pushed himself backward from the rock, ducking down under the water and swimming to the west. He stayed below for as long as he could, the pressure in his lungs building until it became unbearable. As his face hit the air he heard a cacophony of sounds – the motorboat, guns firing, a distant jet. He gulped air and ducked back, pushing again. He didn’t last as long this time. When he surfaced the boat was nearly on top of him. He pushed down and waited, the wake angry but not as close as he feared.

When he resurfaced, the crack of a rifle sent him back underwater with only half a breath.

Where was the infidel bastard? Sahurah leaned against the side of the boat, searching for the tourist in the water. The man had gone beneath the waves somewhere around here; he couldn’t have swum too far away.

Sahurah knew that it was the cripple who was shooting at them. How exactly he knew that – and surely that was not the logical guess – he couldn’t say, but he was sure.

So the moment of pity he had felt on the beach had been a grave mistake. A lesson.

He heard one of his men firing from shore and turned toward the east. A head bobbed and disappeared in the water nearby.

‘There,’ shouted Sahurah, momentarily using Malaysian instead of English. ‘There, over there,’ he yelled. ‘Go back. Get the dog. Run him down!’

Breanna stretched forward, trying to grasp the knotted line holding the stone while still steering the boat. She was about three inches too short; finally she leaned her leg against the handle, awkwardly steadying it, and grabbed the rope, pulling it back with her as she once more took control of the motor. The anchor turned out to be a coffee can filled with concrete; she pulled it up over the side and let it roll with a thud into the bottom of the craft.

A boat circled in the distance offshore. Breanna bent down and held on, steadying herself as she made a beeline for it.

Sahurah brought up his pistol to fire. His first three shots missed far to the right. As he shifted to get a sturdier position he felt the pain in his side again; the bullet had only creased the flesh but it flamed nonetheless.

He would have revenge. He aimed again, but as he fired, the boat jerked abruptly to the north.

‘What?’ demanded Sahurah, turning toward the helm.

The men pointed toward the west. A second boat was coming.

For a long moment, Sahurah hesitated. He felt his anger well inside him. Unquenchable thirst – frustration – rage.

He had failed.

‘Get the others,’ he said finally. ‘Get the ones on shore. Quickly.’

This time the pressure to breathe was so fierce Zen started to cough as he broke water, his throat rebelling. His body shook with the convulsions and he found himself twisting backward in the water, unsure where he was.

He’d saved Bree, at least, he thought. They might have gotten him but his wife at least was safe.

Zen heard the boat behind him. Surprised that it was there, he pushed his tired arms to turn him in that direction. But instead he slipped beneath the waves, his energy drained.

Breanna saw that the other boat was going in to the beach. She cut the throttle back but even at its low idle setting it still pushed the boat forward. She dared not pull the ignition wire or fiddle with the eccentric controls too much; instead, she put the boat into a circle, taking some of its momentum away before approaching the rock, about two hundred yards away.

She didn’t see Zen.

Did they have him already? Was that why they were going to shore?

‘Zen! Zen!’

Something bobbed to the left, about thirty yards away.

‘Jeff! Jeff!’

It was him. He started to swim for the boat, but he was moving in slow motion, not swimming as strongly as he normally did. She maneuvered to the left and right, but couldn’t quite get close enough on the first pass and still didn’t dare to turn off the motor.

‘I’ll circle around. Grab on!’ she called. ‘This is as slow as I can go.’

Breanna pushed against the throttle switch on the engine, managing to slow the speed a little more but still not entirely cut it as she came around. Zen grabbed the side of the boat, clamping his arms against it like a hobo pulling himself onto the side of a freight car.

‘What are you doing?’ he yelled as she pushed at the throttle, trying to get it to increase speed gently. ‘Let me get in for cryin’ out loud,’ said Zen, pulling up against the side.

‘Wait,’ she told him, fighting to keep the boat balanced and moving in the right direction as the engine began churning the water faster.

‘They’re going away,’ Zen told her. ‘It’s all right.’

‘It’s all right,’ she repeated, not quite ready to believe it.

Brunei International Airport, military section 1830

Mack Smith looked at his watch again and shook his head. Everyone in the damn country ran at least a half-hour late.

It was bad enough that his pilots were cavalier about reporting on time, but now even Breanna had caught the bug.

Mack paced in front of the A-37B Dragonfly he was supposed to fly for the night exercise. He was so short of trained pilots that he had to take the plane up himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to – Mack loved to fly the old Cessna, which was similar to the T-37 ‘Tweet’ air force pilots cut their teeth on – but the fact of the matter was, as head of the air force, he should at least have had the option of assigning someone to go in his place, just in case he wanted to party or kick back a bit. He currently had only five other pilots with suitable ratings and training to fly jet aircraft, and he was training them all to handle the Megafortress as well as his four A-37Bs. Besides getting these guys up to speed, he needed to at least triple his stable of jocks before the two other Megafortresses arrived.

Hence the importance of tonight’s session.

Stinking Breanna. Where was she?

Come to think of it, he didn’t spend any time partying anymore. There was just too much to do to get this tin can air force in shape. New planes, pilots, ground people – he had a few kids who could strip a jet engine with their eyes shut and get it back together, but he needed more, more, more.

‘Excuse me, Minister.’

Mack turned to find one of his maintenance officers, a friendly but sad-sacked sort named Major Brown, who was descended from a nineteenth century British regent or some such thing.

‘You can just call me Mack. You don’t need to use my title,’ Mack told him for the hundredth time.

Brown’s attempt at a smile looked more forlorn than his frown.

‘We have only a week’s worth of fuel supply left, sir. You asked me to bring it to your attention.’

‘Did you put through that requisition or whatever the paperwork was?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did we get it?’

‘No, sir.’ Brown explained that simply forwarding a form into the morass that was the Brunei defensive forces purchasing system was hardly enough to elicit a yawn, let alone needed fuel supplies. Mack had heard some variation of this lecture three times a day since taking this job nearly a month ago.

‘I want you to go over there tomorrow and baby-sit the damn request,’ said Mack. ‘We need a ninety-day supply of fuel at a bare minimum.’

‘Where?’

‘Wherever you have to go. No – bypass the stinking bureaucracy. Go to the central defense ministry office and tell the chief of staff I sent you.’

Brown blanched. Things in the kingdom of Brunei were done by strict protocol. A mere major, or even a general of insufficient breeding, did not talk to the chief of staff, who like most people of importance was related to the sultan.

‘All right,’ said Mack, recognizing the look. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘If I go to the finance office, perhaps I can get an expeditious result.’

Two weeks ago, Mack would have asked why Brown would have to go to the finance office to get something as simple as a fuel order sent up the line. Now he knew that the explanation would not clarify anything.

‘Do your best,’ he told Brown. ‘We’re all set for the exercise, right?’

‘An hour ago, sir.’

‘You’re a good man, Brown,’ said Mack. ‘Do your best on the fuel thing.’

‘Perhaps if you spoke to the chief of staff yourself.’

‘I intend on kicking his butt if I ever see it,’ said Mack under his breath.

While Mack and Brown had been talking, two other members of Mack’s staff had approached. One was his administrative assistant, Suzanne Souzou, who had a thick wad of folders in her hand. The other was his director of operations, a Brunei of Chinese extraction named Han Chou.

‘Miss Souzou first,’ said Mack. He smiled at Han, who was offended by the fact that a woman was given priority. ‘Beauty before brains.’

‘You need to sign these,’ said his secretary. ‘The interviews are set up.’

‘Which interviews?’

‘The contract people to fill your temporary positions?’

‘Yeah, okay. Right. Good.’

‘You will need to sign these or the men won’t get paid.’

Mack flipped through the folders; it would take him more than an hour to sign them all. He’d tried telling her two weeks ago to sign for him, but that, too, was a major breach of Brunei etiquette.

‘All right. I’ll leave them on your desk first thing in the morning. Good night.’

Souzou flashed a big smile before turning and heading back to the car that had brought her. Mack admired her walking style before turning to Han, who bowed stiffly and handed him an envelope.

‘Uh, I don’t get it,’ said Mack, taking the envelope.

Han said nothing.

‘This isn’t a resignation, is it?’

Han still refused to speak.

‘Yo, Han, my man. My main man – you can’t leave. We’re just getting going. Come on. We’re going places, my friend. Going places.’

It was debatable whether Mack’s attempt at camaraderie would have worked in the States, where someone at least would have understood the expressions he was using. The only effect it had on Han was to confuse him. Mack opened the letter reluctantly.

‘You’re really leaving me?’

Han’s English was heavily accented, but Mack got the gist of it. The new regime – Minister Mack – had brought too much change.

Mack waved his hand. ‘You’re free,’ he told him. ‘Go. Hit the road.’

Han bowed again. Mack simply shook his head. He was now down to four legitimate pilots, plus himself.

Breanna’s SUV appeared at the far end of the road, heading toward him. Mack waited with his hands on his hips, frowning as he saw that Zen was sitting in the front seat beside her. He’d shown up unannounced yesterday, but Breanna had insisted his visit wouldn’t interfere with the training schedule.

‘Captain,’ he said as she rolled down the window. ‘We’re running a little late.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Breanna. ‘We were detained.’

‘I’ll bet,’ he said, interpreting her words as a euphemism for sex.

‘We were at the police ministry,’ she said. ‘We tried calling you.’

‘Police ministry? What’d you do? Get nailed for speeding?’

Mack listened, dumbfounded, as Breanna explained what had happened that afternoon on the beach. It seemed far-fetched. People here left their doors unlocked and keys in their cars.

‘This for real, Bree?’ he asked.

‘Bet your ass it was real,’ growled Zen from the other side.

‘Who were these jokers?’

‘Police weren’t sure,’ said Breanna. ‘Possibly guerillas from Malaysia trying to kidnap tourists. There are Muslim extremists trying to take over the Malaysian part of the island.’

‘Not on that beach. That’s the prince’s beach,’ said Mack.

‘Maybe they missed the sign,’ said Zen.

‘Maybe they were trying to get the prince,’ said Mack.

‘Police said that was impossible,’ said Breanna.

‘That’s because they don’t think it’s possible,’ said Mack. ‘They don’t think that way – they don’t think like you and me.’

‘Listen, about the exercise tonight, we’re going to have to call it off,’ said Breanna. ‘The State Department wants to interview me.’

‘What?’ said Mack.

‘They asked me to go over to see one of their intelligence people for a debriefing. I told them fine.’

‘Well, sure, after the exercise.’

Breanna shook her head. ‘Sorry. We’re already late. And I haven’t had anything to eat, either.’

Mack had enough experience with Breanna to know it was useless to argue. ‘How about tomorrow night?’

‘Fine,’ said Breanna.

‘Oh wait, I can’t do it tomorrow night. I have some dinner with the prince.’

‘Blow it off,’ said Zen sardonically.

Mack pretended he didn’t hear. ‘How about early the next morning, just before dawn? Say four or five?’

‘Dawn?’

‘Yeah, that would work,’ said Mack. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on, Bree. You owe me.’

‘Owe you? How?’

‘I got you that beach,’ said Mack.

‘Oh there’s a debt to be repaid,’ said Zen.

‘I’ll do it. We’ll set it up tomorrow,’ said Breanna.

‘Great,’ said Mack. ‘Just great.’

Washington, D.C. 6 October 1997 (7 October Brunei), 0743

‘Hey, Colonel,’ said Jed Barclay, pulling up in front of the suburban motel where Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh ‘Dog’ Bastian had been waiting.

‘Sorry I’m running a little late.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Dog, aware that his voice probably suggested the opposite.

‘Want to grab a coffee?’ asked Barclay.

‘I had breakfast.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Barclay pulled out into the traffic. Though he looked like he belonged in college – if that – Jed was the National Security Council’s assistant director for technology and the right-hand man for national security advisor Philip Freeman. He was the unofficial go-between used by the president and the NSC for directing Dreamland’s ‘Whiplash’ operations, and just about Dog’s only real ally in Washington. The colonel felt bad about snapping at him, but he was in a foul mood; his daughter and son-in-law had been involved in some sort of incident in Brunei, of all places. While they were fine, the call he’d gotten a few hours ago about it had cost him the last sliver of sleep he’d been counting on before this morning’s meeting with the president. Brunei and Washington were exactly twelve hours apart; when it was day there it was night here, and vice versa.

‘Hotel okay?’ asked Jed.

‘Fine. Listen, I didn’t mean to bark at you there. I just don’t want to be late for the meeting.’

‘Well, we won’t be,’ said Jed. ‘I got a heads-up. The president is running behind.’

‘I thought I was his first appointment.’

‘You were. But they slid in some domestic stuff and the chief of staff called last night to slide back the appointment. We’re not on until nine-thirty. And given the way things usually go …’

Dog curled his hands in front of his chest. The president was the president, and you waited for him, not the other way around. And surely there were many important things on his plate.

But this wasn’t a good sign.

‘I didn’t have time for breakfast myself,’ added Jed.

‘Let’s get something then,’ said Dog, acceding.

Jed described the restaurant as a ‘coffee place,’ but if that was true, it was the fanciest coffee place Dog had ever been in. A hostess greeted them and escorted them across a thick, plush carpet to a table covered with three layers of thick linens. Dog recognized two senators and one of the aides to the vice president at different tables along the way.

‘The NSC’ll pay, don’t worry,’ said Jed before Dog opened the thick, leather-bound menu.

That prepared him, somewhat, for the prices. Dog told the waitress he just wanted coffee. She nodded, then turned to Jed. ‘Feta omelet. Light toast. Right?’ she asked.

Jed nodded.

‘You come here a lot?’ said Dog.

‘Uh, Mr Freeman does. And so, because of that, I do.’

‘He’s going to drop in on us?’

‘He might,’ admitted Jed.

‘You might have warned me,’ said Dog, finally understanding that Jed’s delays and hunger were part of a prearranged plan.

‘I am warning you,’ said Jed. He closed his mouth as the waitress approached, not continuing until she left. ‘Look, the president has already made up his mind on Brunei.’

‘Brunei doesn’t need a fleet of fighter jets. Or Megafortresses, for that matter,’ said Dog.

‘The president isn’t going to reverse the Megafortress decision, Colonel. Not even for you. The two other planes are to go to Brunei as soon as they’re ready.’

‘With Flighthawks?’

The Flighthawks, or U/MF-3s, were among Dreamland’s most prized possessions. ‘U/MF’ stood for ‘unmanned fighters.’ The Flighthawks were highly capable interceptors, typically launched from the wings of the Megafortress and used for a variety of tasks, from defending the big plane to attacking ground targets. About the size of a Miata sports car, they could go nearly the speed of sound and could be controlled up to twenty miles from the mother ship.

‘That’s still to be decided,’ said Jed.

‘We have to protect our technology, Jed.’

‘I don’t disagree. But it’s not my call.’

‘You’re not in favor of any of this, are you? Rewarding their cooperation in dealing with China is one thing, but giving our technology away to countries that don’t need it and have their own agendas – ’

‘They are allies.’

‘For now.’

‘It’s not my call,’ said Jed. ‘I think we’ll hold the line on the Flighthawks. And probably the F-15s. But they do have a legitimate need for surveillance aircraft, and for more modern fighters. And they’ll buy from the Russians if not us.’

‘Did you try pushing LADS?’ asked Dog. ‘They could buy that system with the money they’ll spend on jet fuel for one Megafortress over the course of a year.’

‘I did. State did, too. Very hard.’

‘That’s what they need. It’s low-cost, and we could work with them. It’d be useful to us as well. Let them keep the one Megafortress for sea patrols, and use LADS to guard the kingdom’s borders.’

‘Blimps aren’t sexy,’ said Jed. ‘However much they make sense.’

Dog frowned, but he couldn’t argue. LADS stood for Lighter-than-Air Defensive Surveillance system, and at its heart it was simply a blimp – or more accurately, a network of blimps. Outfitted with millimeter and phased array radar as well as infrared and optical sensors, the small airships could be posted over the ocean and kept on station for weeks for about the cost of a Megafortress sortie. The system was scaleable – in other words, blimps could be added almost indefinitely, increasing the area to be covered without overly taxing the system. (The theoretical limit of inputs for the present system was 164°, far above the practical limitations that would be imposed by the coverage area itself.) The blimps could be pre-positioned to cordon off a patrol area several hundred miles wide, or deployed ahead of a mission team.

While LADS had several Dreamland-style features that made it unique, including technology that made its vehicles nearly invisible to the naked eye, it was only one of a number of lighter-than-air systems being developed by the U.S. military and defense contractors. Airships could handle tasks from cargo transport to geostationary surveillance. Relatively inexpensive and extremely dependable, the old technology had a bright future, except for one thing: blimps weren’t sexy.

‘I was thinking I might suggest F/A-18s if we turn down the F-15s,’ added Jed. ‘A package similar to Malaysia’s.’

‘It’s still overkill for their needs. What about selling them more A-37s?’ asked Dog. ‘Very versatile and reliable aircraft. Perfect for their needs.’

‘They’re pushing hard, and they have friends in Congress,’ said Jed. ‘Assuming we can stop the F-15s and the Flighthawks, do you think F/A-18s are too much?’

‘A dozen F/A-18s, along with three Megafortresses, would make them a pretty potent power,’ said Dog. ‘They could threaten Malaysia and Indonesia.’

‘Malaysia has F/A-18s and MiG-29s already,’ said Jed.

‘But they’re on the peninsula, more than a thousand miles away. Indonesia’s forces are also too far to threaten Brunei. Besides, they’re all allies.’

‘We want a counterbalance to the Chinese, and we have to reward the sultan,’ said Jed. ‘Those are the real issues.’

‘That sounds a lot like your boss talking, Jed.’

Jed glanced up, then held his coffee cup out for a refill as the waitress approached. Dog, sensing it was going to be a long morning, slid his over for a refill as well.

‘Tecumseh, get in here!’

The walls practically shook with the president’s loud greeting. Dog followed Jed and NSC advisor Freeman into the Oval Office, doing his best to guard against the schoolboy awe he inevitably felt upon meeting the president. He’d met Kevin Martindale twice since he’d been elected, and talked to him on average at least three times a month. But this did nothing to lessen the slightly giddy sensation he felt in the presence of the President of the United States.

Call it a by-product of military training, old-fashioned patriotism, or a side effect of his deep appreciation of the country’s history, but Dog still felt honored – deeply honored – to shake the president’s hand. He even blushed slightly as the president praised him in front of Arthur Chastain, the secretary of defense, and National Security Advisor Freeman.

‘What you did in China makes you a hero ten times over,’ said President Martindale. ‘And everyone in the world knows it. A million people are alive today because of you, Tecumseh. We won’t forget it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I have some good news. The Pentagon has worked things out with the bean counters. The Megafortress program, the Unmanned Bomber Program, and the airborne laser arrays will all be funded. As will the next generation Flighthawk program.’

‘That is good news,’ said Dog, who hadn’t expected all of the programs to survive.

‘You’ll have to nip and tuck here and there,’ added the president, ‘but Arthur will help you on that. Won’t you, Mr Secretary?’

‘Yes, sir, of course.’ The defense secretary smiled at him for the first time ever.

‘You’re here to tell me Brunei shouldn’t have Megafortresses and F-15s,’ said Martindale. ‘You’re mad about it, and you wanted to talk to me in person before the deal is finalized.’

‘Mad would be not the right word, sir,’ said Dog.

‘But you don’t approve.’

‘I just feel that giving Brunei – giving anyone – our technology, is a problem.’

‘Let’s stop right there,’ said Freeman, the national security advisor. ‘Because number one, we’re not giving them anything. They’re paying for the privilege. And that payment is going to help us develop the next generation of weapons and aircraft at Dreamland. It’s one reason we can go ahead with your work there.’

‘A small reason,’ objected Defense Secretary Chastain.

‘We’re not giving them our most advanced technology,’ said Freeman. ‘The basic structure of the EB-52 is older than I am.’

‘But sir, with respect, that’s like saying the basic structure of a newborn is older than its mother,’ said Dog. ‘The Megafortresses have been completely rebuilt. Their wings are different, the fuselage is more streamlined and stealthy, the engines, the control surfaces – a B-52 would never have made it that far into China.’

‘The Old Dog made it into Russia,’ said President Martindale. Years before Dog had joined Dreamland, a B-52 had helped avert war with the Soviet Union with a daring – and officially unauthorized – mission over the heart of Soviet defenses. Immortalized in the press as ‘The Flight of the Old Dog,’ the incident had been every bit as daring – and suicidal – as Bastian’s over China. Martindale had been a governor then, but it was well known that he admired the people who had pulled off the mission; he’d told Dog he kept a copy of the book detailing their exploits on his reading table upstairs in the White House.

‘You have reservations about Brunei?’ President Martindale asked Dog. ‘Can they be trusted?’

‘It’s a beautiful country,’ said Dog. ‘But it’s not a democracy.’

‘Give it time,’ said Freeman.

‘It’s not just that,’ said Dog. ‘If we give them Megafortresses and F-15s, then what do we give the Malaysians and Indonesians? They share that island. What about the Philippines?’

‘Those countries haven’t asked for EB-52s,’ said the national security advisor.

‘They will,’ said Dog. ‘What do we tell them? They’re not as important as Brunei? What if they ask for F-22s?’

‘They’re not getting F-22s. No one is,’ said the president. ‘They’re not getting F-15s, either. Not F-15Cs, or F-15Es. But if we don’t give them something, they’ll simply buy from the Russians. The world is becoming more complicated, Colonel. Very much more complicated.’

‘I appreciate that. I just don’t want my weapons systems making things worse.’

‘Neither do I,’ said the president. ‘We’ll have to work hard to see that they aren’t.’

Malay Negara Brunei Darussalam 7 October 1997, (local) 0802

In Zen’s opinion, the official Brunei reaction to the incident on the beach was schizophrenic beyond belief. On the one hand, they clearly didn’t consider it, or didn’t want to consider it, as anything but an isolated and freakish incident.

On the other hand, they considered it an insult to the country, which prided itself on being the perfect host. Because of this, the authorities felt obliged to apologize in person, and therefore Breanna and Zen had been invited to breakfast at the Royal House, an exclusive club used only by very high-ranking government officials just outside of town.

Zen might not have minded it except that he was due to catch a flight home at one o’clock, which meant rather than spending the next few hours alone with his wife he had to sit stiffly through a long and formal breakfast. He even had to wear a civilian jacket and tie, purchased specially for him by the State Department liaison, due to some obscure protocol that he didn’t understand.

‘Oh, you look handsome. Stop complaining,’ said Breanna.

‘I’m sorry, but it really is necessary to present the proper image,’ said Brenda Kelly, a state department liaison who had been sent over to help smooth the Stockards past the protocol hazards. It was at least the third time she’d apologized. ‘And wearing your uniform might have sent the wrong message.’

‘I wasn’t going to wear my uniform,’ said Zen.

‘You’ll have to excuse my husband,’ said Breanna. ‘He thinks wearing a clean T-shirt is dressing up.’

‘I’m on vacation, Bree. It’s not that advanced a concept.’

‘There are elaborate customs here,’ said Kelly. ‘Just as people in Brunei usually eat with their fingers – ’

‘Only the right hand,’ said Breanna in a stage whisper to remind him.

‘We have to follow their lead,’ finished Kelly.

Zen sighed. It was no use arguing; he was stuck in a tie, without hope for parole.

‘So are they going to catch these jokers or what?’ asked Zen.

‘Please don’t ask that when the minister comes,’ said Ms Kelly.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s insulting, Jeff. Of course they’ll catch them,’ said Breanna.

‘They were probably guerillas from across the border,’ said Kelly. ‘Islamic terrorists who want to disrupt the Malaysian government. Brunei itself doesn’t have an insurgent problem. There’s no poverty here. Everyone’s happy.’

Zen thought that was incredibly naive. People didn’t rebel against governments just because they were poor. The people who threw the tea into Boston Harbor weren’t starving.

‘I think it was a kidnapping for money,’ said Breanna.

‘Well they tried to get the wrong people then, obviously,’ said Zen. ‘They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by looking at our checking account.’

‘If they could figure it out,’ laughed Bree.

‘I think they were going after the royal family,’ said Zen. ‘It was their beach.’

‘Oh, my God, I was afraid of this,’ said Kelly. She pushed away from the chair and rose.

Zen looked up. The sultan himself had just come into the room. He wore a white Western suit, with no outward sign of his rank, but there was no mistaking his authority; a phalanx of aides followed in his wake, and they were trailed by a dozen soldiers. He strutted confidently across the room – the gait even seemed a bit arrogant, thought Zen, but then if he were absolute ruler of an oil-rich kingdom, he’d be a little arrogant, too.

The sultan smiled at Breanna and Kelly, waving his hands at them to make them sit in their seats. Zen watched him bow to the ladies, then bowed his own head as the sultan looked at him.

‘The heroes!’ exclaimed the ruler.

Attendants and restaurant staff swept in behind him, one pulling up an oversized chair and others appearing with trays of food. Zen’s coffee was refilled; the ladies were given fresh tea. Breakfast meats and sweets suddenly covered every inch of the table.

‘I apologize to you on behalf of the people of Brunei,’ said the sultan, looking at Breanna.

‘Oh, an apology isn’t necessary,’ Bree told him. ‘It was nothing.’

The sultan shook his head. ‘These criminals. They are outlaws before the eyes of God.’

‘Who were they, exactly?’ asked Zen, ignoring the evil-eye glare Kelly shot at him.

‘They came over from Malaysia, we believe,’ said the sultan, who did not seem offended. ‘Or they were Chinese criminals. We will catch them.’

‘Good,’ said Zen.

The sultan turned to Breanna. ‘You have been training our pilots.’

‘Yes. They’re very good students.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Your plane is a wonderful aircraft. I hope we will be able to purchase many.’

‘Maybe you should get more counter-insurgency aircraft, if guerillas are a problem,’ said Zen.

The sultan’s expression gave only the slightest hint that the comment was out of line. Kelly, on the other hand, seemed to be having a heart attack.

‘We have requested many aircraft to bring ourselves up to present standards,’ said the sultan, his tone slightly indulgent. ‘Fortunately, we ourselves do not have an insurgent problem. We need the aircraft to fulfill our role in ASEAN, the Asian alliance. Beyond that – well, you see for yourself. Everyone is happy here.’

The sultan rose. Kelly jumped up. Zen half expected her to beckon at him to rise out of his chair.

Hey, if the sultan had any real power, maybe Zen would be able to.

‘I apologize again, and I hope you will enjoy your stay,’ the sultan told Breanna. ‘Anything that can be done to make you happy, will be done.’

Then he held out his hand for her to kiss his ring. Zen rolled his eyes, but Breanna did it, as did Kelly. Then the sultan, trailed by his entourage, strutted his way out of the room.

‘You insulted him,’ Kelly said when they were gone.

‘Relax,’ Zen told her. ‘What’s he going to do? Nuke us?’

‘Jeff, that’s terrible,’ Breanna told her husband. ‘Really, hon. I know you’re still upset. But cut the guy some slack.’

‘Why? He’s the supreme ruler, right? He’s in charge. Who else should take the heat?’

Breanna rolled her eyes. It was always obvious when he was upset – he got even crankier than normal. She turned to Kelly. ‘I don’t think he really insulted the sultan. And he has a point about the aircraft. Megafortresses are overkill.’

‘The sultan was insulted,’ said the state department rep. ‘Believe me, I could tell. You don’t understand this country.’

‘I do understand that we almost got killed,’ said Zen.

‘Weapons procurement is none of your business.’

‘I know more about those weapons than the sultan ever will. And I’ll tell you – Brunei doesn’t need them. They do need counter-insurgency aircraft. That’s what you should be selling them. Those people who attacked us yesterday are just the tip of the iceberg, I’ll bet.’

Kelly got up. ‘Please contact my office if you need anything else. Have a good flight home, Major.’

‘You were really rude,’ Breanna told him when Kelly was gone.

‘Come on. Kelly forgets whose side she’s on.’

‘She’s just trying to do her job. And I meant to the sultan. He’s a very nice man. Very charming.’

‘Aw, come on, Bree. He’s a dictator. Just because he calls himself sultan, you’re going to let him off?’

‘He’s very educated and civilized. He’s a hereditary ruler.’

‘So was King George, the guy we kicked out of America two hundred years ago, remember?’

‘I forgot your ancestors came over on the Mayflower.’

‘It was the Guernsey,’ said Zen. He wasn’t joking – his relatives had come over in the 1600s, landing in Virginia.

‘It wouldn’t hurt you to be more diplomatic,’ she insisted, taking her cup of tea. ‘You’re going to have to be more diplomatic if you want to make colonel.’

‘Why? Your dad doesn’t kiss ass.’

Breanna put her hand out and touched his arm. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey yourself.’

‘Let’s not fight.’

‘Who’s fighting?’

‘Okay.’

‘Want me to cancel my flight?’

Breanna looked at him. She did, actually. Not just for this afternoon – for weeks and months. She wanted him to stay here with her, stay in paradise.

Or something less than paradise. As long as they were together.

She’d been scared yesterday, worried what she would do if she found him dead there. Breanna had faced that fear before, but that didn’t make it easier – if anything, it seemed to be getting worse.

She wanted to tell him to stay. But he had a job to do. He was due back at Dreamland for a VIP demonstration.

‘I do want you to cancel your flight,’ she admitted finally. ‘But you better not. I’m okay.’ She put her hand down on his. ‘We have some time left. Let’s go back to the hotel.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said, stroking her fingertips as if they were the soft petals of a flower.

Outside Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia 1400

Sahurah Niu waited outside the hut, trying to clear his mind of all distraction. The mission, so long in the planning, had been an utter failure. The operation – the first launched by their group against Brunei instead of Malaysia, their long-time enemy – had resulted only in their own losses. The corrupt sultan and his puppet government would now prepare themselves against further attacks, and perhaps even work in concert with the Malaysians.

There was no way to take it back now. Regrets were useless. He must face the punishment that awaited him like a man.

An aide emerged from the hut and beckoned to Sahurah. He lowered his head and stepped inside, preparing himself with a silent prayer. His head throbbed, but he sturdied himself against the pain; he would find redemption in punishment, he decided. He would accept his punishment gladly.

The Saudi visitor sat beside the imam, legs crossed on the rug covering the dirt floor. Sahurah had met the Saudi a year before at the training camp in Afghanistan; he was a devout, humble man filled with fire against the Western corruptors and devils, as holy in his way as the imam who had been the spiritual and temporal leader of the movement on Borneo island for more than a decade. Sahurah had seen him arrive yesterday, but it was clear that the Saudi did not recognize him; he said nothing then, and he said nothing now, lowering himself humbly. It was unusual that another witnessed their talks, but perhaps that was intended as part of the punishment. Sahurah bowed his head and waited.

But the imam did not berate him. He asked instead if he would like something to drink.

Sahurah declined, trying to hide his surprise. He glanced at the Saudi, but then turned his gaze back to the rug in front of him.

‘The next phase of struggle has begun,’ said the imam. He spoke in Arabic for the benefit of their visitor, who did not speak Malaysian. ‘You will go to Kota Kinabalu, and carry a message. It has been arranged.’

Kota Kinabalu, on the coast below them, was a stronghold of the Malaysian government. It contained a police station and a small naval base. Until now, the imam had forbidden operations there – it was considered too well guarded by the Malaysian authorities.

He was being sent to become a martyr. For the first time in months, Sahurah felt truly happy.

‘You will meet with a Malaysian, and you will bring back a message,’ added the imam. ‘Specific instructions will meet you near your destination, as a precaution for your security. Do this successfully, and much glory will come to you. There will be other tasks.’

Sahurah struggled to contain his disappointment. He bowed his head, then rose and left the hut.

Dreamland 7 October 1997, (local) 0432

‘Dream Mover is approaching target area, preparing to launch probe units,’ the airborne mission commander told Danny Freah over the command circuit.

‘Acknowledged,’ said Danny.

‘Software’s up and running,’ said Jennifer Gleason, hunched over a laptop next to Danny in the MV-22 Osprey. ‘Ten seconds to air launch.’

‘Let’s get it going,’ whispered Danny under his breath.

‘Launching One. Launching Two,’ said the pilot.

Two winged canisters about twelve feet long dropped off the wings of the C-17. Their bodies looked more like squashed torpedoes than aircraft, but the unpowered rectangles were a cross between gliders and dump trucks. The canisters – at the moment they did not have an official name – were the delivery end of the Automated Combat Robot or ACR system, a cutting-edge force multiplier designed to augment the fighting abilities of small combat teams operating in hostile territory. As the canisters fell from the aircraft, two mission specialists aboard the C-17 took control of them, popping out winglets and initiating a controlled descent onto Dreamland Test Range C, five miles away.

Jennifer, monitoring the software that helped the specialists steer the canisters, began pumping her keyboard furiously as the screen flashed a red warning.

‘Problem?’ asked Danny.

‘Ehh,’ she said. ‘Sensor read won’t translate quickly enough.’

‘Is it going to crash?’

‘Hope not.’

‘If he crashes it, three congressmen are going to tell everyone in America the system doesn’t work.’

‘Not everyone in America,’ said Jennifer, putting her nose closer to her keys.

Danny tried to relax. In his capacity as the head of the Whiplash ground team, he was responsible for the system being tested. It was his first – and so far only – program responsibility, and he shared it with two senior engineers. But as the ranking military officer on the project, he’d been the one to meet with the congressmen, the face VIPs liked to attach to a mission.

The congressmen were already in a bad mood. When they had insisted on seeing the Automated Combat Robot or ACR system in a ‘real live test,’ they apparently didn’t realize that it was meant to operate at such an ungodly hour.

The event scenario was straightforward. A downed airman had just been located behind enemy lines by a search and rescue asset. Danny and two of his Whiplash troopers, aided by the robots, would rescue him from the clutches of Red, the enemy patrolling all around.

In real life, such a rescue would probably have been done with considerable force, or at least as much firepower as possible. There was basically no such thing as too much muscle in that situation, and the more boots – and guns – available, the better. But the more people in the package, the more things that could go wrong. ACR could make it possible to limit the exposure of the rescuers and increase the odds of success.

‘They’re in. Okay,’ said Jennifer. ‘Deployment. You’re looking good, Danny.’

‘Ten minutes,’ he told his men.

Down on the ground, the two gliding canisters had landed on the scrubby desert. Their sides had fallen away, disgorging a trio of ACR robots. The units were roughly two feet in length and were propelled by articulated tractor treads at both sides, an arrangement that allowed them to get over obstacles two feet high and avoid anything larger. Besides the small infrared and video cameras studding the units, the ACR robots carried what looked like a bouquet of pipe organs atop their chassis. These were reworked M203 forty-millimeter grenade launchers, which could be equipped with a variety of grenades, making the ACR units weapons as well as scouts.

The units began fanning out to form a perimeter around the downed airman. ‘Deployed without a problem,’ reported Jennifer. ‘The Toasters are marching on.’

Danny winced at the nickname, hoping it wouldn’t catch on. He picked up his smart helmet and put it on, flipping down the visor, a display screen which could be tied into the ACR system, or any of several other sensor sets supplied through a special Dreamland system.

‘Gear up,’ Danny told his team. Then he began flipping through the ACR screens, looking for the four members of Red who were hunting his downed airman.

Sergeant Ben ‘Boston’ Rockland, the Red commander, smiled as he heard the drone of the approaching Osprey. Though it was still a good distance off, the aircraft had a very distinctive sound.

He turned and nodded to the ranger a few feet away. They’d decided not to use their radios, figuring that the Whiplash team might be able to home in on the signal. The ranger, another member of Red, lobbed a smoke grenade at the lumbering robot that was trundling toward them twenty yards away. As the grenade exploded, Boston saw that the ruse would work even better than he had hoped – the robot began peppering the air with its own smoke grenades, and provoked the robot to the north and south of it to start firing as well. The thick layer of smoke began drifting over the test range, obscuring the robots’ sensors.

‘Bonzai!’ yelled Boston, throwing off his vest and starting to run.

They used ropes to get off the Osprey quickly. The large blades of the aircraft’s engines whipped up the dirt, pelting the team with a mist of rocks. Danny got to the ground and spun to his right, hustling after his two men as they sprinted the fifty yards to their ‘airman.’ One of the ACR units had engaged the Red unit to the north; from this point out it was going to be a jog in the park.

The whirling sand blocked Danny’s optical image momentarily, but as it cleared he saw his man a few yards away, standing in his shirtsleeves and waving his hand. His other team members had apparently detoured to protect the perimeter, so Danny went to his airman to tap him per the exercise rules and call the Osprey in for the pickup.

Except it wasn’t his airman.

‘Bang bang, you’re dead,’ grinned Boston, producing a pistol from behind his back. Its laser dot settled on Danny’s bulletproof vest, officially killing him. ‘Gotcha, Captain. Boy, if I only had a camera right now …’

Off the coast of Brunei 8 October 1997, (local) 0502

The stars had begun to fade from the sky, and the ocean swelled with the mottled shadows of the approaching morn. A solitary merchant ship cruised in the darkness, heading toward the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, which lay upriver from the Brunei Bay on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. The ship rode low on the waves with a load of motorbikes and electric goods, along with a variety of items ranging from Korean vegetables to American-style jeans.

Arriving on the bridge from his cabin, the captain of the ship noticed a shadow on the southwest horizon. He stared at it a moment, trying to make sense of it. The dark smudge moved with incredible swiftness, riding so low against the water that it could only be a wave or some sort of optical illusion; still, the captain went to the radar himself, confirming that there was no contact. His thirty years at sea had made him wary, and it was only when he looked back and saw nothing that he reached for his customary cup of coffee. He took a sip from his cup and listened as the officer of the watch described the expected weather. A storm had been forecast but was at least several hours away; they would be safely in the harbor by then.

‘It is good that we are early then,’ he told the others on the bridge in Spanish.

It was the last thing the captain said on this earth. For as he raised his cup of coffee to his lips, the missile that had been launched from the shadow in the distance exploded five feet behind him.

The French-built Exocet missile carried a relatively small warhead at 364 pounds; while the explosion destroyed the bridge it would not by itself have been enough to sink the ship. The more damaging blow was landed by the second weapon, fired a bare second and a half after the first; this missile struck at the waterline just ahead of the exact middle of the ship. The warhead carried through the hull before exploding; the vessel shuddered with the impact and within moments began to settle. Nearly a third of the crew had been killed or trapped by the two blasts; the others were so stunned that it would be several minutes before most even got to their proper emergency stations. By then the ship would be lost.

Five miles away, the man who had given the order to launch the missiles stood over the small video screen, watching through a long-range infrared camera as the doomed merchant ship began to sink.

The attack had been an easy one; a bare demonstration of the Malaysian navy vessel’s capabilities. Named the Barracuda, the experimental high-speed craft was every bit the voracious predator, clothed in dark black skin made of metal and fiber-glass arranged in sharp facets to deflect radar waves. The craft used a technology known as ‘wing-in-surface-effect,’ which allowed it to skim over the water at high speed; it could reach over four hundred knots, though to fire effectively it had to slow to below one hundred, and had to go even slower in choppy seas and bad weather. A one-of-a-kind vessel built in secret as part of a concerted effort to upgrade the Malaysian military, the Barracuda heralded a new age for the nation that spread out over more than a thousand miles of the southeastern Pacific.

A new age, and new opportunities, thought the vessel’s commander, Captain Dazhou Ti. He had great wishes for the future, and above all a lust for revenge against the family that had wronged his ancestors. The Barracuda would make it possible to achieve all of his goals.

Dazhou straightened, then looked around the red-lit command area of his vessel. The space was barely ten by twenty feet, and every inch was utilized. Eight men and the captain worked here; another two were assigned to the rear compartment as weapons handlers to watch over the automated equipment and, if the need arose, to work the thirty-millimeter cannon.

‘A job well done,’ he told his men.

The crew was well disciplined, and not one man looked up from his station or said the slightest word. This pleased Dazhou greatly.

‘We will return,’ he announced. ‘To your course, helm.’

The vessel began picking up speed instantly, slipping into the morning mist that hugged the coastline. Dazhou returned to his station at the center of the deck, mindful that he fired but the opening salvo in a long, long war.

II
‘What Is Going on Here?’
Off the coast of Brunei 8 October 1997, (local) 0523

Mack Smith banked hard right, putting the A-37B Dragonfly at a right angle to the Megafortress’s radar. Had the radar been an older unit, he might have succeeded in confusing it. Pulse-Doppler radars had difficulty picking up returns from objects at a ninety-degree angle; many were the pilots who had managed to escape an enemy’s grip because of it. But the Megafortress unit wasn’t about to be fooled; the crewman aboard the EB-52 sang out loud and clear with his bearing and speed.

Hallelujah, thought Mack to himself.

It was probably the first time in his life that he actually wanted to be caught. Mack took a hard turn north and did a quick check of his instruments. The Cessna wasn’t a fancy beast, but it was sure and dependable, and the indicators showed she was in prime condition.

‘Dragon One, this is Jersey,’ said Breanna Stockard, who was aboard the EB-52. ‘Looks like we’re through with the low-altitude hunts. What’s your pleasure?’

Mack checked his watch and fuel. ‘Let’s move out to sea and practice some sea surveillance,’ he answered. ‘That okay with Deci?’

Deci Gordon was a Dreamland radar specialist who was aboard the EB-52 helping train Mack’s men.

‘Good for me,’ answered Deci. ‘Your people did very well on the low-altitude stuff. A-pluses all around.’

He was being kind. The two pilots who had taken stints at the stick had flown decently. But the equipment operators tasked with finding Mack while he flew at low altitude around the nearby mountains had batted only about .300 – great in baseball, fatal in war.

Mack knew that working the radar involved a heck of a lot more than hitting a few keys and jiggling some toggles, but his people had a long, long way to go before they would be competent enough to find a MiG hell-bent on nailing a real target.

Two weeks before, Mack would have vented his frustration at the poor score, or at least let the crew aboard the EB-52 know that they had to step it up. He was learning, however, to be more laid back, or at least more selective with his criticism.

He had to be. The two specialists aboard Jersey were the last two he had. The other two had quit.

As Mack adjusted his course and started to climb through five thousand feet, he saw something flare in the right side of his windscreen. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing a fire.

‘Jersey, this is Brunei Dragon One. I think I see a ship on fire. Stand by.’

Mack gave the throttle a shove and turned in the direction of the flames. From this distance, the fire looked more like the sparkle of a gem, glittering red. The ship itself was a gray shadow around it.

‘Mack, we see it,’ said Breanna. ‘We’ll have GPS coordinates in a second.’

‘You got a Mayday or something?’ Mack asked Breanna.

‘Nothing.’

Mack alerted his ground controller, who staffed a combat center at the International Airport control tower back in the capital. (As in many other smaller countries around the world, the International Airport or IAP handled military as well as civilian flights.) Besides calling out the navy and local harbor patrol, Mack told the controller to contact the Malaysian air force at Labuan. The small air station there – the only other air base besides Brunei IAP on the northern side of Borneo – operated a squadron of French-built Aerospatiale SA 316B Alouette IIIs for search and rescue.

‘We’ll stay in the area until rescue is underway, give ’em some hope, anyway,’ Mack added.

Breanna reported that the ship had not answered any of their hails.

‘Roger that,’ said Mack. He was now within two miles of the ship, and could see that the vessel had settled low in the water. ‘I’m going to get close and see what I can see.’

Low and slow was one thing the A-37B did really well. Mack decided to pop on his landing lights, not so much because it would help him see better, but because it would show survivors he was there and help was on the way. His speed notched down steadily until finally it seemed as if he were going backward.

As he approached, it looked to him as if there were two ships on fire. He banked, hand gentle on the stick as he slipped around for another look.

The ship had broken in half somewhere around the superstructure.

Must’ve been one hell of an accident for it to blow up like that, thought Mack, sliding around for another pass.

The Megafortress pilot had forgotten to tell the computer that the exercise was over, and so it kept blinking a warning at him that he was outside of the programmed flight area. It was nothing more than an annoyance, since the plane wouldn’t override the pilot’s commands, but the flash was driving Breanna crazy. Still, she avoided the temptation to turn it off herself, or even to bring it to his attention. In a few days she wasn’t going to be here to straighten him out; it was time to take the training wheels off.

But boy, it bothered her.

Finally, the pilot turned to her and announced: ‘I have a difficulty with the warning system.’

‘It just needs to be acknowledged. Tell the computer the exercise is over. You might check your course, as well,’ she added, noticing that he had allowed his heading to drift well to the west.

‘Right. Yes,’ said the pilot. He was in his late thirties, older than Breanna. Even so, he seemed nervous and jumpy; he didn’t have the been-there, done-that, I-remember-one-time-we-had-to-fly-backward-in-a-storm-with-one-engine calm most jocks pushing forty displayed. Not that he was a bad pilot; he just didn’t seem to have the hash marks his age implied.

Something else bugged her. The crew was, well, quiet.

In an American plane, certainly on a Dreamland crew, the specialists would be singing out, talking about contacts and the like. But the two men at the mission stations behind her on the flight deck were silent. Breanna’s copilot station allowed her to peek at their contact screens; she did so and saw that the men were refining their equipment and seemed to have a competent handle on things – they just didn’t talk about it.

By now, Mack had completed a third orbit of the stricken vessel and reported that he saw no boats in the water. He switched to a different frequency and began talking to the harbor patrol, which had been alerted by their ground controller.

‘Captain, what do you think of this?’ asked Deci. ‘Hit that two scan, low resolution. I’m feeding it.’

Enhanced by the computer, the image showed a dark blur in the left-hand corner of the screen, racing along the coast toward Malaysia.

‘Just a ghost?’ asked Breanna.

‘No. There’s something there,’ said Deci. ‘Moving real fast – out around three hundred knots.’

‘What boat goes that fast? Cigarette speed boat?’

‘Never heard of one even half that fast. Has to be a plane, but according to the radar it’s at three feet.’

‘Three feet?’

‘I know it’s weird,’ added Deci, ‘but it’s a live contact. The computer has never seen it before.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Breanna flipped into Mack’s circuit. ‘Brunei Dragon One, we have an odd contact you might want to know about,’ she said. ‘Indications are it’s a plane flying very low, but it may be a weird radar bounce off a boat of some sort. Moving to the east, northeast at a very good clip. You might want to check it out.’

‘Give me a vector,’ he snapped.

Clean, throttle lashed to the last stop, and a good wind at its back, the manual said the A-37B Dragonfly could do 440 knots.

Mack had it nudging 470 as he tracked in the direction Breanna had fed him, running up the coastline. He was about thirty seconds from the spot where she’d gotten the first contact – just a hair under four miles – but he had nothing on his radar and couldn’t see anything, either.

He leaned his head far forward, as if the few inches of extra distance would help his eyes filter away the shadows and mist.

‘Dragon One to Jersey – yo, Breanna, where is this thing?’

‘Stand by.’

She came back again with a GPS location.

‘Hey, I’m in the Stone Age, remember? I don’t have a GPS locator on board.’

‘Sorry – you look like you’re almost on top of it. Two miles.’

Mack reached for the throttle, easing off on his speed. The shoreline was an irregular black haze to his right.

Sixty seconds later, Breanna announced that they had lost it. ‘Stand by,’ she added.

Stand by yourself, he thought. He had let his altitude slip to two thousand feet. He was passing just over a marina, but moving too fast to sort out what he saw.

‘Pleasure boat,’ he said with disgust, snapping the speak button as he tucked into a bank to check it out. ‘Hey, Jersey girl – did you have me chase a pleasure boat? There’s a marina down here.’

‘You know a pleasure boat that goes three hundred knots? Stand by. We’re looking for it.’

Mack circled around. There were at least two dozen boats in the marina, but no airplanes.

‘Not a seaplane?’ he asked, though he didn’t see one.

‘Seaplane? If so the computer couldn’t find it on its index. Hold on.’

Mack pulled out the large area map from his kneeboard and unfolded it, checking to see where he was.

‘Dragon One, we have it twenty-five miles to your northeast, along the coast,’ said Breanna over the radio.

‘Your sure about that, Jersey?’

‘We’re as sure as – stand by,’ she added, a note of disgust creeping into her voice.

Mack started a turn in the direction she had advised, but as he came to the new course Breanna told him they had lost the contact completely.

‘Right,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We’re trying.’

‘I’m looking at empty ocean.’

‘You’re right on the vector.’

She added that the Brunei authorities had just reported a ship underway to rescue survivors at the stricken ship, which had now been identified as a freighter due to dock at 6 A.M. in Brunei. Mack flew about ten miles to the east-northeast, then banked into an orbit fifteen hundred feet over the waves, riding a curlicue as he looked for Breanna’s contact. He began heading toward the masts of a group of fishing vessels further northward on the shore.

‘Flight Jersey to Dragon One,’ said the airborne radar operator aboard the EB-52. ‘Report: Two Su-27s coming in your direction from the south. Report: bearing one-six-five. Report …’

Mack listened incredulously to the contact information. The two planes were over Malaysian territory, on a course that would take them out over Mack’s position. But Malaysia didn’t have any Su-27s, and all eighteen of their MiG-29s were over at Subang, a good thousand miles away. As the MiGs were the most capable planes in the region, two spies at the airport there were paid good money by the prince to keep them informed.

Two others were paid so-so money. All of the air bases operated by Indonesia and Malaysia, including the two Malaysian and one Indonesian fields on Borneo, were covered around the clock by spies. Mack surely would have known by now if these planes were operating there.

Whoever they belonged to, they were moving at a good clip – the radar operator warned that they were topping six hundred knots.

‘We’re sure they’re not MiGs?’ asked Mack.

‘Yes, Minister. We’re sure.’

‘Yeah, those are definitely Su-27s, and they’re hot,’ confirmed Deci.

‘Roger that,’ said Mack, pulling back on his stick and climbing off the deck.

Breanna did a quick run through the screens that showed how the Megafortress was performing, and then brought up the fuel matrix, which gave the pilots a set of calculations showing how long they could stay up with the fuel remaining in their tanks. The Megafortress computer system could make the predictions seem terribly precise – 42.35 minutes if they spent it doing these orbits and then headed straight home – but in reality fuel management remained more art than science. The screen gave the pilots several sets of reasonable guesses based on stock mission profiles as well as the programmed mission. It could also make calculations based on data inputted. Breanna brought a ‘profile map’ up at the side of the touchscreen and quickly built a scenario from it by tapping a few options. They could climb to twenty-five thousand feet, engage the two Sukhois, and then slide back home.

Just.

Not that they could actually engage the Sukhois. They weren’t carrying any anti-air missiles. They didn’t have any shells for the Stinger air-mine tail weapon; the shrapnel discs were in relatively short supply and weren’t needed for training.

‘Captain, what are your intentions regarding the Sukhois?’ she asked the Megafortress pilot.

He replied that he would remain on station until Mack gave him other orders. It wasn’t the wrong response, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of answer that was going to set the world on fire.

‘Should we take the initiative and ask the minister what he wants us to do?’ she said, her patience starting to slip a little. ‘Maybe suggest we try and establish contact with the bogeys and get them to declare their intent? Maybe prepare an offensive or defensive posture?’

‘By all means,’ answered the pilot. ‘But the minister may prefer to deal with them himself.’

‘The A-37B is a sitting duck,’ she said.

To her surprise, the pilot chuckled. ‘The minister would not lose an engagement,’ he said.

‘He’s unarmed.’

The pilot chuckled again, his laughter implying that she didn’t understand the laws of physics – or Mack Smith. The minister could not be shot down, and anyone foolish enough to attack him would get their comeuppance – even if they were flying cutting-edge interceptors and he was in an unarmed plane designed as a trainer.

Breanna, no longer able to contain her frustration, hit the talk button. ‘Dragon One, what’s your call on the Sukhois?’

‘I want to see what the hell they’re up to and where they came from,’ replied Mack. ‘Because there are no Sukhois on Borneo. Malaysia’s MiGs are way over in West Malaysia near the capital.’

‘Mack, I can assure you, those are Sukhois, not MiGs and not ghosts. Your people are not screwing this up. Those planes are coming hot. What are you going to do if they turn hostile?’

‘Hey, relax Bree. I’m cool.’

‘You’re a sitting duck. And they haven’t answered our radio calls. If they get nasty – ’

‘Oh, give me a break, will you? I can handle them.’

One’s loonier than the other, Breanna thought.

Mack continued his lackadaisical climb, trying to conserve his fuel while making sure the pointing-nose cowboys running for him knew he was here. They were now about eight minutes away, flying at roughly twenty thousand feet, separated by about a quarter-mile. Their radars were not yet in range to see the Dragonfly.

But given their speed and direction, it seemed highly coincidental that they were flying in his direction on a whim.

‘Mack, you’re in radar range of the Su-27s.’

‘About time,’ he said.

‘You want us to jam them?’

‘Hell no! I want to see who these guys are.’

‘They know he’s there,’ Deci told Breanna over the interphone. ‘Altering course slightly. They should be in visual range of Mack in, uh, thirty seconds,’ said Deci.

‘I’ll pass it along,’ said Breanna.

‘Radar – uh, they just turned on their air-to-air weapons,’ said Deci. ‘They may really want to shoot him down.’

Mack came out of his turn about three seconds too soon, and had to push into his dive before he saw the first Sukhoi. He got a glimpse of it in his left windscreen, then heard the RWR complain that one of the fighters had switched on its targeting radar.

‘I was afraid of that,’ he groused out loud, as if the device could do anything but whine. A second later it gave another pitched warning, indicating that the enemy’s radar had locked on him and was ready to fire.

Then the unit freaked out, obviously a result of Breanna’s ordering the Megafortress crew to jam the airwaves so he couldn’t be shot down.

Mack sighed. A completely unnecessary order, even if her heart was in the right place. Mack pulled his plane into a tight turn and put himself right below the Su-27s as they turned. Separated by ten thousand feet and a good bit of momentum, all he caught on the gun’s video camera – rigged for the training exercises – was a gray blur. He pounded the throttle but there was no hope of keeping up with the Su-27s. Within two minutes, they were beyond his radar.

And he was short on fuel.

‘Jersey, this is Dragon One. I’m bingo on fuel, headed for home.’

‘We’re close to our reserves, as well,’ replied Breanna.

‘Did you get any sort of IDs on those Sukhois?’

‘Negative,’ said Breanna. ‘They had old-style N001 radars. Seem to be Su-27S models.’

The N001 was a competent but older radar type, and no match for the Megafortress’s ECMs or electronic countermeasures. It meant the planes themselves were relatively old and had been purchased second- or even third-hand. But it didn’t say who they might belong to. For the moment, at least, their identity would have to remain a mystery.

‘Your seaplane didn’t show up?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think it was a seaplane.’

Probably not, thought Mack to himself. More than likely, his neophyte radar operators had bungled a routine contact with a speedboat, then sent him out on a wild goose chase.

He listened as Breanna updated the rescue situation – there were now two vessels conducting a search, with no survivors located as of yet.

‘Time to pack it in,’ he told the Jersey crew. ‘Head for the barn.’

He snapped off the mike, then did something that would not have occurred to him a few weeks ago.

‘Hey, crew of the Jersey – I mean, crew of Brunei Megafortress One,’ said Mack, touching his speak button. ‘Kickass job. Very, very good job. Attaboys all around.’

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia 0853

Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.

As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.

‘I was sent,’ said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have explained.

‘What is your name?’

Sahurah gave the name he had been told to use – Mat Salleh, a historical figure who had led an ill-fated uprising against the British on Borneo in the nineteenth century.

The soldier frowned and gestured that he should hold his hands out at his sides to be searched.

If I were carrying a bomb, Sahurah thought to himself, I would detonate it now and be in Paradise.

But he was not carrying a bomb, nor any weapon, and the search went quickly.

‘This way,’ said the guard, pointing to the gate. ‘The captain is waiting. You have a long journey ahead.’

Sahurah nodded, and followed along inside.

Flush with his victory at sea, Dazhou met the Muslim fanatic in his office.

‘Have a drink,’ he said to him, putting down a bottle on his desk. He laughed at the expression of horror on the man’s face. ‘It’s juice,’ he told him, ‘but you needn’t drink it anyway.’

He looked at him more closely. ‘You’re the messenger?’

The fanatic nodded. There was no possibility of mistake – no rebel would show up here on his own. Unlike many of the rebels in the movement, Sahurah appeared to be a native of Borneo, very possibly of Malaysian extraction, though with thirty-one different ethnic groups on the large island there were many who could claim to be native here. Dazhou’s own family had been on Borneo for centuries.

‘You know who I am?’ Dazhou asked.

The young man – he was surely in his late twenties, though his face showed the pain of someone much older – shook his head.

‘That is just as well,’ said Dazhou. ‘There is a bathroom there, if you need it. We will leave in five minutes. Once we start, we will not stop.’

Dreamland 7 October 1997, (local) 1630

After the botched demonstration of the robot warrior system, Danny’s day became an unrelieved series of frowns and down-turned glances. He avoided breakfast with the congressmen, claiming that he had to work with the technical team recovering the devices, and managed to skip lunch by tending to his normal duties as security chief on the base. But couldn’t avoid the afternoon debriefing sessions, which culminated in a show-and-tell session for the VIPs in one of the Dreamland auditoriums. Danny walked down the hallway to the room feeling like the proverbial Dead Man Walking.

The ACR robots had actually worked exactly according to spec. Unfortunately, they had been foxed by Boston, who exploited a weakness in the system to torpedo the mission. The inexpensive, off-the-shelf sensors in the units could not see very well through smoke. While the grenade that Boston’s team member had launched at the unit might not have blinded it for very long, once it started firing off its canisters the entire area was for all intents and purposes shrouded in an impenetrable fog. Boston had timed his intrusion just right, racing as fast as he could eight hundred and fifty meters to the downed airman, who by the exercise rules was unarmed and couldn’t hear him anyway because of the approaching Osprey. Armed with only his pistol – a rifle would have slowed him down – Boston incapacitated the airman, then waited for the rescuers.

It wouldn’t have worked in real life – the grenades would have been shrapnel rather than smoke, and presumably incapacitated or killed the intruders. But that distinction seemed lost on the congressmen who were watching the video feeds in the Dreamland conference center. And the army people present for the demonstration weren’t very happy about it either. The Army had supplied 90 percent of the development funding so far, and its contribution was up for review.

Danny stood gamely with the project officers and the science types as they opened the floor up to questioning. One of the congressmen started things off by asking where the man who had shown the way around the robots was.

‘Sergeant Rockland is probably enjoying a well-earned rest right now,’ said Danny, trying to force a smile. ‘One of my best men. We try to train them to think outside of the box.’

‘Or the robot,’ said the congressman.

Danny did his best to laugh along with them, ignoring the dagger eyes from the army people.

Boston was waiting for him in his office when he finally made it over there two hours later.

‘You were looking for me, Cap?’ asked the sergeant.

Something about his sophomoric smile burned right through Danny.

‘You blew the parameters of the test,’ Danny told him. ‘You screwed the whole stinking thing up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Those were supposed to be shrapnel grenades. Your team would have been dead.’

‘No, we were far enough away. I made sure of that.’

‘You ran right through the smoke,’ said Danny. ‘That wouldn’t have happened in real life. You would never have made it in time.’

Boston shrugged.

‘I don’t like your attitude, Sergeant,’ said Freah.

‘Captain – don’t you preach that we ought to use our heads?’

‘Go on. Dismissed. Go.’

‘But – ’

‘Out!’

Danny pretended not to see him shake his head.

Brunei 8 October 1997, (local) 0900

As Mack pulled himself out of the A-37B’s cockpit, the fatigue that had been trailing him the whole flight jumped out and wrapped itself around his neck. The sun beat down on the concrete apron, and the humidity hung around him like the thick steam of a shower room. Mack had originally planned to go home and take a nap after debriefing the training session, but the morning’s developments meant there would be no rest for the weary; quite the contrary. The sultan would undoubtedly be wondering what was going on and expect a personal briefing, as would Prince bin Awg. The central defense ministry – a collection of service heads and other military advisors, including Mack – would also be looking for information.

The EB-52 banked overhead, preparing to land. Mack turned back toward the runway, watching the big plane swing in. It wobbled slightly – obviously one of his people was at the stick. Still, the landing was solid. All in all, they were making progress.

Slow progress, but progress.

‘’Scuse me,’ said a woman’s voice behind him. ‘You Mack Smith?’

Mack turned, surprised to hear what sounded like an American accent.

‘You’re the minister of defense?’ said the woman.

‘Deputy minister of defense – air force,’ said Mack, giving his official title. ‘Such as it is.’

He might not have added the last comment if the woman had been anything other than, well, plain, though plain didn’t quite cover it. She was somewhere over twenty-one and under forty, five-four, on the thin side. Her short hair had a slight curl to it, and that was the nicest thing you could say about her looks. She wore a pair of jeans and a touristy blue shirt.

‘I’m McKenna,’ she said, thrusting out her hand.

‘McKenna is who?’ said Mack.

‘Pilot. You were looking for contract pilots? Does it help that I can speak Malaysian?’

She reeled off a few sentences in the native language, which was shared by Brunei and its island neighbors. Mack hadn’t been here long enough to understand more than a few words; he thought he recognized the phrase for ‘have a nice day,’ but that was about it.

‘I think you have the wrong idea,’ said Mack. ‘I’m putting together a combat air force. The civilian airline is still on its own.’

‘Well no shit,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve flown F/A-18s for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and for the last year I’ve been a contract pilot for a horse’s ass of an outfit trying to sell third-hand Russian-made crates of crap that I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in. That light your f-ing fire?’ said McKenna.

Well, she could talk like a pilot at least, thought Mack.

‘I don’t have any F/A-18s,’ he told her.

‘I can fly anything,’ she said. ‘Ask Prince bin Awg. He let me fly his MiG-19 and his Sabre last year. We went at it a bit and I waxed his butt good. I’d love to get behind the wheel of one of those,’ she added, thumbing toward the Megafortress, which was just heading toward its parking spot in front of the hangar on the left.

‘It doesn’t have a wheel. It’s got a stick, like a real airplane,’ said Mack. ‘They put it in when they upgraded it.’

‘Well kick ass then,’ said McKenna.

Mack started toward the hangar to change, and McKenna fell in alongside him.

‘So? Am I hired?’ she asked.

‘Hired for what?’

‘For a pilot.’

‘What Russian planes did you fly?’

‘Anything and everything.’

‘MiG-29s?’ asked Mack.

‘Do it in my sleep.’

‘How about Su-27s?’

‘One or two.’

‘You fly them around here?’

‘Nah.’

‘Out of Labuan?’

‘Are you kidding? The Malaysians don’t operate jets out of there.’

‘Ever?’

‘About six months ago we tried to sell a pair of MiG-29s,’ said McKenna. ‘We brought them to Kuching at the far south of Borneo from the peninsula to demonstrate some of the changes that extended their range. But no one was buying.’

‘What about the Indonesians? You fly Sukhois out here for them?’

‘For the Indonesians?’ McKenna laughed. ‘Malaysia, Indonesia – their governments aren’t on Borneo,’ said McKenna. ‘You have to sell where the money is.’

‘You haven’t flown Su-27s on Borneo at all?’

She shook her head.

‘You hear of either country having them?’

‘You’d know better than me, Minister.’

Mack stopped. ‘Yeah, cut the shit. They have them?’

McKenna examined his face for a moment before answering. ‘Indonesia doesn’t have anything newer than Northrop F-5s. The Malaysian Royal Air Force has MiG-29s and F/A-18s over in West Malaysia, near the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Most of what my boss sold was used and it’s hard to buy used when you’ve been buying new. Her dealings with the Malaysians were mostly for ammunition and some avionics spare parts.’

‘I was jumped by two Su-27s this morning,’ said Mack.

‘Get out of town.’

Mack smiled sardonically. ‘They came up out of the southwest, from Malaysian territory, turned on their targeting gear to scare me, and took off.’

‘They scared you?’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘What’d you do?’

‘Gave them the finger and took their pictures,’ he said. ‘I want to figure out who they are.’

‘I’ll look at it for you if you want.’

Mack shrugged. It couldn’t hurt, though most likely it wouldn’t help, either.

‘They could have come out of Kuching,’ admitted McKenna. ‘But it’s a good hike to get up here, over five hundred miles. And your spies would have told you they were there, wouldn’t they have?’

‘Who says I have spies there?’

‘You have spies everywhere,’ said McKenna. ‘Dragonfly, huh? You would’ve been dead meat.’

‘What, from a couple of Sukhois? Give me a break,’ said Mack.

‘Depends on the pilot,’ said McKenna, her voice only a bit conciliatory. ‘If it were me, I’d’ve waxed your fanny.’

‘If you were in the Sukhoi?’

‘Either way.’

‘If you fly half as good as you talk, McKenna,’ said Mack, resuming his stride toward the hangar, ‘you got yourself a job.’

Brunei 1600

The time difference between the States and Brunei made it difficult for Breanna to get any information without invoking official channels, which she didn’t want to do. Finally she thought of Mark Stoner, a CIA agent who’d worked with Dreamland on some recent missions and who was back east in D.C. By the time she tried him, however, it was midnight there, and when she got his machine she left a message, asking him to call ‘when he got a chance.’ Then she forgot about him until, to her great surprise, the hotel desk buzzed her room at 3 P.M. to tell her he was on the line.

‘Mark – what are you doing up at 2 A.M.?’ she asked.

‘It’s 3 A.M. here,’ said Stoner. ‘There’s a twelve-hour difference. No daylight savings. We’re a half-day behind you. You said you had a question.’

‘Couple of questions. Unofficially.’

Breanna told him about the aircraft, which according to the images captured by the Dragonfly had no identifying marks.

‘They came out of Malaysian territory?’ Stoner asked when she had finished her summary.

‘Looked like.’ She didn’t want to be too specific, worrying that anyone listening in would be able to gather information about the targeting system’s abilities – and she had to assume that might include Malaysian spies.

‘There are two Malaysian air bases, auxiliaries to civilian airports. Neither field is really set up to support military jets, at least not that I know.’

‘Can you check?’

‘Have you talked to the Department of Defense?’

‘I filed a report, but no one seemed particularly interested. A pair of Sukhois doesn’t really rock their world.’

Stoner was silent for a moment, then he asked, ‘If I gave you an address, could you get to it this afternoon?’

‘I think so.’

‘It’s in Kampung Ayer. Do you know what that is?’

‘The island city in the bay off the capital?’

‘Write this down.’

Breanna found Mack standing on the back of a pickup truck at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean several miles southwest of the airport. A British-built truck sat nearby, with two Brunei air force sergeants working an old field radio in the back. Below the cliff was a narrow plateau of rocks just out of the water’s reach. Several pieces of plywood were set up as targets for an A-37B.

Breanna watched as the airplane came around from the north and made a run parallel to the coastline. The rocks bubbled and one of the plywood panels split in two. The airplane then rose abruptly, its right wingtip no more than ten feet from the cliff edge.

‘I have to say, pretty good,’ said Mack. ‘Tell her to nail the last target any way she wants,’ he shouted to the men in the truck.

Not five seconds later, the Dragonfly rolled back toward land, heading dead-on for the beach – upside down. The last piece of plywood folded in half.

Not that anybody on land had seen. They’d all ducked for cover as she blew past, maybe six feet off the ground.

‘New pilot?’ Breanna asked.

‘Yeah. I’m pretty desperate,’ said Mack.

‘He looks pretty good,’ said Breanna. ‘Even if he is a show-off.’

‘It’s a she,’ said Mack. ‘And actually, her looks are, uh, not exactly on the measurable chart. But she’s a helluva pilot. Why are you here?’

‘I’m doing you a favor,’ said Breanna. ‘We need to go out to a place in Kampung Ayer.’

‘We? Listen Bree, I’m due back in the capital in an hour to explain to my fellow ministers of defense how aircraft that don’t exist may very well have sunk that merchant ship. I don’t have time for a boat ride.’

‘I called Mark Stoner and told him about your Sukhois. He told me to go out to see someone there.’

‘Stoner’s the CIA spook who’s an expert on South Asian weapons?’

‘One and the same.’

The A-37 buzzed back. Mack didn’t duck this time.

‘I hate show-offs,’ he said, jumping out of the truck. ‘Especially when they’re worth watching.’

Kampung Ayer was a water village in the bay outside the capital. Buildings rose on stilts from the murky water, whose pungent odor matched its mud-red tint. Until today, Breanna had seen the lagoon city only from a distance. She stared at the people as she and Mack passed in their water taxi, amazed at how ingenious humans could be.

‘There,’ said the man driving the water taxi. They pulled up against a planked walkway that led to what looked like a floating trailer. Its rusting metal roof was weighted down by satellite dishes.

‘You wait, right?’ said Mack, pointing at him.

‘I wait,’ said the man.

Mack jumped up and started walking toward the house. Breanna scrambled to follow. She barely kept her balance on the bobbing boards, and had to grab Mack’s arm just as she caught up to him.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Watch it or we’ll fall into that sewer water.’

‘Thanks, Mack.’

Mack pulled open the screen door and they walked into what could have passed for a doctor’s waiting room. A young Malaysian sat behind the desk, paging through a magazine.

‘Mark Stoner sent us,’ said Breanna.

‘Cheese is expecting you,’ said the man, gesturing toward an open doorway to his left. ‘Go in.’

‘Cheese?’ said Mack.

The only light in the room came from a large-screen TV, which was tuned to CNBC. Hunched on the floor in front of a leather couch was a man pounding a keyboard. A bottle of Beefeater gin sat next to him.

‘Hello,’ said Breanna.

The man put his hand out to shush them, then continued typing.

‘You’re Cheese?’ asked Mack.

The man picked up the Beefeater, took a swig, then held it out to them without looking away from his laptop.

‘No thanks,’ said Breanna.

‘I’ll pass,’ said Mack.

The man took another swig, still typing with one hand. In his thirties or early forties, he was obviously American, wearing a light blue T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans.

‘Stoner’s people, right?’ he asked, still tapping his keys.

‘Yes,’ said Breanna.

‘I want to know about some airplanes,’ said Mack.

‘I don’t want to know anything. Nothing. Zero.’

‘Mark told me to come here,’ said Breanna.

‘Yeah, but I don’t know anything about it, okay? I have a Web link for you to look at in the other room,’ he said. ‘I typed it in already. All you have to do is hit enter.’

The man typed one more thing on his laptop, then put it down and got up.

‘James Milach. They call me Cheese because I made a killing in the stock market involving Kraft. No shit,’ said the American. He shook Mack’s hand – then bent over and kissed Breanna’s. ‘Beefeater makes me formal,’ he said, sweeping away into the next room.

Mack thought for sure he’d stepped into an insane asylum. Stoner was a spook, and spooks knew weird people, but this character was – a character.

But then this had been a particularly perplexing day all around. The sultan had expressed some concern about the Sukhois, but discounted Mack’s theory that they had been responsible for the attack on the merchant ship. The spy network, meanwhile, reported that there had been no activity at any of the airports on Borneo or even nearby Indonesia or Malaysia.

The Brunei navy’s pet theory was that the ship had been sabotaged by Islamic terrorists, who had placed a bomb aboard. While Mack wouldn’t rule that out, it was a convenient theory in that it kept the navy from having any responsibility. The investigation was continuing; thus far, no survivors had been found.

‘You hit the button, and then you can take it from there,’ said Cheese, standing over a Sun Workstation. ‘You got it?’

‘Sure,’ said Breanna. ‘This is the Web?’

Cheese smiled at her. ‘Not exactly. But you don’t want to know too much, do you?’

Mack rolled his eyes, then hit the key and bent toward the screen. Brown and black shades slowly filled the screen. It took a few moments for Mack to realize he was looking at a satellite photo of the northern part of the island, which was Malaysian territory.

‘Some sort of Russian satellite,’ said Breanna, pointing at the characters on the side of the screen. ‘You think he’s tapped into their network?’

‘I don’t know,’ he told her, leaning down to squint at the screen. ‘But that looks like the outline of a Sukhoi on what looks like a highway in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to have to look at a map but I think that’s Darvel Bay, on the eastern side of Sabah province. That whole area is just jungle. Or at least it used to be.’

Dreamland 8 October 1997, (local) 1800

Dog hustled from the Dolphin shuttle helicopter that had dropped him off at Dreamland toward the black SUV waiting to ferry him over to his quarters. He was surprised to find Danny Freah behind the wheel.

‘Personnel shortage?’ Dog asked as he got into the passenger seat beside him.

‘Wanted to have a chat.’

‘Fire away,’ said Dog, bracing himself.

‘We had a problem with the demonstration this morning,’ started Danny.

Dog listened as the captain detailed what had happened. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel,’ said Danny as they arrived in front of the small bungalow that served as Dog’s quarters here. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

‘Well, the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped, I agree,’ said Dog. He wanted to sound philosophical without sounding as if he were making light of the situation – a tough balance. ‘But actually it doesn’t sound that bad. If the technical people explained about the smoke grenades, I’m sure it’ll be kept in perspective.’

‘We screwed up in front of a bunch of people who would like to chop off our heads,’ said Danny.

‘Congress doesn’t want to chop off our heads. Just our budget,’ said Dog.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s all right, Captain.’ Dog opened the door. ‘I’m going to just put this stuff inside and then head back over to my office. Can you stay a minute and give me a lift?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Danny’s mood was even more somber than before. Dog pulled his bag out of the truck, searching his mind for a better pep talk as he walked up the path to his quarters.

When Jennifer saw Dog finally coming up the walk, she leaned against the wall, knowing she’d be just out of sight when he came in. She listened to him fumbling with the key; as the door creaked open she heard her heart thumping loudly. She hesitated a second, suddenly feeling foolish for sneaking into his apartment to surprise him.

Dog, oblivious, closed the door behind him and took a few steps into the dimly lit cottage.

‘Hey,’ she said, staying back by the wall rather than going to him as she’d planned.

‘Jen!’

He sounded surprised, not shocked but taken off-guard, as if she were the last person in the world he’d expect here, the last person he wanted to find here.

‘What are you doing?’ Dog flipped on the light.

‘I was surprising you,’ she said.

‘Great,’ he said, but it sounded unconvincing to her.

‘Do you want some wine?’ she tried, struggling against her growing anxiety.

‘I would but I have to get over to my office and then look after the congressional delegation. Maybe later, okay?’

‘Oh.’

‘You all right?’ He put his arms around her but somehow it felt forced and unnatural.

‘I’m okay,’ she said.

‘I do have to go. I’m sorry,’ he said.

Kiss me, she thought. Kiss me. But even when he did, she thought he was distracted, and she felt worse than before.

‘Later?’ he said, letting go of her.

She forced herself to nod. But then she added, ‘I may have to work.’

‘Oh. Well. Try to come over.’

‘I will.’

Then he turned and, without bothering to change, went back out the door.

Sandakan, Malaysia (northern Borneo) 9 October 1997, 1053

The long ride across the island left Dazhou stiff and impatient, though he knew better than to show emotion, let alone physical discomfort, as he waited outside the general’s office. General Udara was inside, speaking on the telephone just loudly enough to make it clear to Dazhou that he was there; this was no doubt his intention, as the commander never lost an opportunity to demonstrate his superiority to his underlings. Finally, after he had waited for nearly twenty minutes, Dazhou was shown into the office. Udara pretended to be reading some report, making a show of frowning before looking up and pointing to the paper.

‘You exceeded your authority,’ said Udara.

‘The Barracuda had to be tested. The target presented itself. The opportunity was taken. It coincides with our greater plans and schedule.’

‘You think it is all that simple,’ snapped Udara. ‘You think you can use the cover of events to indulge your psychological needs. We had to divert two aircraft to take the attention away from you.’

‘Why?’ asked Dazhou.

‘The radio reports back to the Brunei air force center showed they were pursuing a craft. We could not afford discovery.’

‘Which aircraft?’ asked Dazhou.

‘Part of our project,’ said the general dismissively. ‘You do not need to know every detail.’

Dazhou held his tongue. He could easily guess that the general was referring to the Sukhois that had been brought three months ago to the base in the northern mountains; Dazhou had informers in the military who had told him how the planes had been purchased from the Ukrainians and then shipped in pieces and reassembled. They were necessary for the ‘project,’ as Udara dismissively termed it, but using them to cover the Barracuda’s escape had been unnecessary. Still, he knew better than to argue with the general, who commanded all Malaysian military forces on Borneo. While Dazhou had first suggested the alliance with the terrorists to achieve their common aim, it was General Udara who had made it possible, and he wielded such power that Dazhou could not cross him.

Yet.

‘I expect from the reports that the vessel worked,’ said Udara.

‘Precisely as predicted.’

‘You are ready to proceed?’

‘Upon your order.’

It was the note Udara had been waiting for. His manner changed; he smiled and leaned back in his seat.

‘You are tired after your journey?’ said the general.

‘No.’

‘Something to eat?’

‘No thank you, sir.’

‘How long will the sultan fend off the terrorists?’

‘Without our help, the terrorists will struggle for weeks,’ said Dazhou. ‘If we help them, the sultan and his puppet government may last twelve hours.’

Another smile. Udara rose. He took a few steps away from his desk, filling the room with pompous swagger. ‘The messenger is here?’

‘He is.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I do not know.’

‘The secretary said he was a child.’

‘He is young, but not that young. I would say in his twenties. With these fanatics, it is difficult to say sometimes.’

‘Does he have information about the connection to Afghanistan?’

‘I thought it best not to interrogate him without your authority,’ said Dazhou, who in truth was not in the least interested in the Islamic crazies and their network of madmen. He wanted only to eliminate the bastard sultan of Brunei, whose family had seized his ancestors’ property two generations ago, casting them into poverty. At long last, the wrong would be avenged.

‘If we give the terrorists Brunei, how long do you think they will be satisfied?’ the general asked.

‘I do not think it would be long,’ said Dazhou. ‘And it is irrelevant.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the general. ‘Quite irrelevant.’

Whether the terrorists would be satisfied with controlling Brunei or not, the Malaysian government would not allow the terrorists to control their neighbor for very long. On the contrary – one of the attractions of the plan was that it would allow them not only to crush the terrorists and seize oil-rich Brunei, but to receive ASEAN backing to do so. Once the sultan was kicked out and the terrorists in control, the Malaysian military would turn on its allies of convenience. Dazhou had already drawn up plans to do so.

But those operations were in the future. For now, they had to concentrate on Brunei.

Udara went back to his desk and picked up the phone. ‘Have our visitor fetched from the room and brought to me,’ he told his assistant.

Sahurah sat on the floor of the empty room, trying to keep his mind ready. Again and again it drifted. He saw the girl he had had in Beaufort, the other in Sandakan. Beautiful, beautiful girls – temptations from the time before his commitment, sins, and yet he couldn’t banish them.

He owed the true God his complete attention, especially now, especially here on this mission. He should see himself as God’s trusted messenger – for as the imam’s emissary what else was he? And yet the impure thoughts haunted him, hungry ghosts clawing to be fed. The flesh was a terrible chain, an awesome torment. He would be better to be rid of it, gone to paradise.

He was a coward, a coward and a failure. That was the lesson of the miscarried plans on the beach. He should have shot the infidel devils the moment he saw them, rather than hesitating.

Sahurah was not exactly sure where on Borneo he had been taken. The men who rode with him in the jeep had blindfolded him three separate times, including the last hour. He guessed he was on the northern part of the island, in the Malaysian region known as Sabah, but in truth he could have been in the south or in Indonesian territory as well. He thought he had detected the scent of seawater on the breeze as he was led from the Jeep, but it had been fleeting.

A soldier opened the door and nodded at him. Sahurah got up and followed him down the hallway. They went up two flights of carpeted stairs, past walls made of polished stone with elaborate inlays. The walls had once been lined with sculpture, but the niches were now bare.

The soldier stopped and turned in front of a wide doorway lined with an elaborate molding. Inside, Sahurah found a young man at the desk. He gave Sahurah a disapproving frown, then picked up his phone.

‘Go,’ the man at the desk told him in Malaysian. ‘And be quick about it.’

Sahurah gathered his dignity and walked into the room at his most deliberate pace. He was a messenger and a representative, not to be treated without respect.

Dazhou was inside, sitting in a simple wooden chair. Behind the desk was a short, skinny man in a military uniform. He was nearly bald, his face the red color of ruby glistening in the sun. Sahurah believed that the man was either the army general who commanded Malaysian forces on Borneo, or one of his immediate underlings. He had seen the pictures some time ago and couldn’t remember precisely which one he was. He stared at the man now, trying to memorize his features so he could describe them later.

‘You have been sent?’ said the officer.

‘I have been sent.’

‘And?’

‘I was told to come,’ said Sahurah.

‘That’s all?’

‘Perhaps you should begin by paying your respects to the general,’ said Dazhou from the side.

Sahurah bowed his head. ‘I am not here on my own, or I would offer profound apologies.’ The words came slowly at first, but as he found the formula they began to flow. ‘I am not worthy of the people who have sent me. They, however, are your equals, and should be treated with the respect due. As I am their representative, then I must also be accorded respect.’

‘Please, little puppy, don’t lecture me,’ said the general.

He glared at Sahurah. The general’s hostility stiffened Sahurah’s resolve – he was here not on his own but as the representative of his imam, of men who had the word of the Prophet deep in their soul and could pass it to others. He would not disgrace them.

‘I am not here on my own,’ repeated Sahurah.

Dazhou found the Muslim madman’s impertinence rather amusing, though of course he did not laugh in front of Udara. The terrorist was showing commendable backbone. Of course, there was always the danger that would provoke Udara into having him bound and taken to the basement; whatever amusements that provided, it would set back their plans several years, if not derail them completely. And so he decided finally to interrupt and move things to their conclusions.

‘No one is insulting your masters,’ said Dazhou. ‘The fact that you were brought into the general’s presence rather than being shot on the street – as any rebel is apt to be – proves that the general holds them in very high esteem.’

Dazhou glanced over at Udara. The general’s cheeks were a shade of bright red, and beads of perspiration were now arranged in a row on his forehead. Dazhou decided to proceed quickly.

‘Were you told to say anything?’ he asked the messenger.

‘Nothing.’

‘Then your master understands the gravity of the situation, and the generous concessions that the general has made to him.’

Dazhou turned and once more looked at Udara. For a moment, he feared all was lost, and decided he would have his revenge against Udara as well as the terrorist. But then the general spoke very calmly.

‘Tell him to proceed on the third day after your arrival,’ he told Sahurah. ‘The third day. Do you understand?’

The messenger might have been insulted – Dazhou surely would have been had the tone been used toward him – but all he did was bow his head.

‘Very good,’ said Udara, addressing Dazhou. ‘Let us have some lunch.’

Though he had not planned to stay, Dazhou thought it wise to agree.

Brunei, Office of the Defense Ministry 1100

Mack fought hard to control his temper, knowing from experience that displaying any emotion would only bring smiles to the lips of the others in the room. To a man, the other ministers hated him and would seize on any excuse to stab him in the back somehow.

There were fourteen different ministers and ‘realm advisors’ here, along with members of their staffs, crowded into a conference room that might make a good-sized closet back home. The air-conditioning didn’t work very well, and more than one of the gray faces around the table looked as if it were about to nod off into oblivion. The chief of staff – officially the sultan’s personal counselor for matters of defense – sat at the head of the table, eyes gazing at the ceiling fan. One of the navy ministers was explaining, for the third time, how it was impossible for the ship that sank to have been attacked by a ship.

The minister was speaking in Malaysian. A translator sat behind Mack, whispering the words in English. Everyone in the room could speak English perfectly; Mack suspected that they conducted the meetings in Malaysian simply to emphasize that he was an outsider.

When the navy minister stopped speaking, Mack put up his finger, though he knew from experience that he would not be recognized. Sure enough, the floor went to one of the army people, who began explaining why the Sukhois Mack had encountered did not exist.

That was it. ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Mack, standing up. ‘Enough.’

The translator looked at him, awe-struck. He thought he heard snickers as he walked out the door, but didn’t give them the satisfaction of looking back.

Prince bin Awg was somewhat more sympathetic than the ministers, or at least polite.

‘The Sukhois have to be dealt with,’ Mack told him over lunch at the prince’s palace a few miles from the capital. ‘It’s possible that they attacked the ship.’

‘I think a bomb planted aboard remains the most likely possibility,’ said the prince. ‘It would account for the total destruction. And your aircraft did not detect the attack.’

Mack couldn’t argue with that. It was possible that his crew, only rudimentarily trained, had missed it. But given the course and location of the aircraft when they were detected, it seemed to him unlikely that they were responsible for the attack. But perhaps they were part of a larger attack package, or a reconnaissance flight. In any event, they were still a threat.

‘The question in my mind,’ said Mack, ‘is why did Malaysia bring them onto the island secretly? What are they up to? How are the planes equipped?’

‘Very good questions,’ said the prince. ‘But you are assuming they are Malaysian. If so, where would they have flown from? I have checked with our sources myself – there are no jet fighters at any of the bases on the island.’

‘I think they built a strip near Kalabakan, as part of a highway,’ said Mack, ‘I want to fly over it and find out.’

‘Kalabakan?’

‘That’s my theory,’ said Mack. He’d decided it was best not to share the source of his information unless absolutely necessary – the back door might come in handy in the future.

‘Flying that far over Malaysian territory – it’s very far. It may be seen as provocative,’ said bin Awg.

‘I’ll take the Megafortress,’ said Mack. ‘They won’t see us.’

‘I don’t know, Mack. I will have to talk to the sultan personally.’

‘Okay,’ said Mack. ‘When?’

‘Tonight. Or perhaps in the morning. The timing needs to be right.’

‘Look, we have to deal with this, and we have to deal with it now,’ said Mack. ‘Even if they didn’t sink that ship, why are they sneaking interceptors onto the island?’

‘Perhaps they see the Megafortress as provocative,’ offered bin Awg.

Before Mack could respond, the prince raised his hand and signaled to the servant at the far end of the room. The man came over with two bottles of European mineral water, refilling their glasses.

‘The Sukhois were older models,’ said Mack. ‘They may have been purchased from Ivana Keptrova.’

‘No,’ said bin Awg.

‘No?’ said Mack, surprised by how quickly he had responded.

‘I asked her, and she gave me her word of honor.’

An arms dealer who gave her word of honor – Mack couldn’t decide whether that was quaint or naive. Ivana was a semi-official representative of the Russian government – she claimed to work for the Kremlin but seemed to be under no one’s direct control – and had arranged for several sales of naval equipment to Brunei. She’d also helped bin Awg buy old Cold War hardware and parts. McKenna, who’d worked for her, thought it unlikely she had supplied the Sukhois, but Mack refused to rule it out.

‘Maybe we can use this with Washington to get the F-15s,’ he said. ‘Their main argument was that there was no threat, right? Well, with a couple of Su-27s next door, you can shoot that argument down right away.’

‘The F-15s are going to be denied,’ said bin Awg.

Mack felt as if two of the legs of his chair had just been sawed off.

‘We have heard unofficially,’ added the prince. ‘The sultan is rethinking our arrangements.’

‘Totally denied?’ asked Mack.

‘We may be able to get F/A-18s. But now there are questions about the fiscal outlay.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Mack.

‘They are very expensive.’

‘Are you saying we’re not adding aircraft?’

‘Oh, no, no, no, Mr Minister. I’m not saying that at all. We of course are adding aircraft. Of course. Two more Megafortresses, some interceptors as well, as soon as it can be arranged. But the F/A-18s are not free, and the air force requires a great deal. I’m sure you agree.’

‘We need planes.’

‘Yes,’ said bin Awg. ‘We will get them. Eventually.’

‘Eventually better be pretty soon,’ said Mack.

‘Time moves more slowly in Brunei than in America, Mack. You must learn to relax.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ said Mack, picking at his lunch.

There were more problems to deal with when Mack got back to his office in the capital: the maintenance section had used its last spare part for the A-37B radios; the next one that broke would be out of action until replacement parts arrived in six to eight weeks.

‘You can’t just cannibalize them?’ Mack asked Brown, the officer in charge of the aircraft. ‘We have four that are stuck in the hangars permanently.’

‘We already have,’ said Brown.

‘What parts are you talking about?’ asked McKenna, who’d been standing near the door to Mack’s office waiting to come in to see him.

Brown explained, adding that he had been working on getting the parts ordered for weeks. McKenna waved her hand.

‘There’s a shop in Manila where you can get the radios if you want. Frankly, you can upgrade the whole avionics suite for just about the same price,’ she said.

Brown stammered something about protocols. McKenna shrugged.

‘You have anything else, Brown?’ Mack asked.

He shook his head.

‘Good. We get the jet fuel?’

‘Working on it.’

‘Well, work harder,’ said Mack.

Brown nodded, apologized, then left.

‘Why don’t we just buy off the civilian suppliers?’ asked McKenna.

‘Damned if I know,’ confessed Mack. ‘There’s a whole bureaucracy dedicated to making sure I can’t get what I need.’

‘The civilian suppliers are cheaper than the fuel Brown’s been getting.’

‘How do you know?’

She smiled. ‘It’s coming through the government, right?’

‘Yeah, we have some sort of contract or something.’

‘You’re pretty naive, Mack.’

‘What do you mean?’

McKenna explained that certain citizens have interests in certain businesses, which the old administration of the air force had been involved with.

‘Not crooked, exactly,’ she said. ‘Just a lot of back-slapping.’

‘So they want to be paid off now, is that it?’ Mack asked.

McKenna laughed. ‘What they want is for you to leave. You’re an outsider, Mack. They want you out of here. They’ll do what they can to make you look bad.’

Mack felt his face getting hot. ‘That’s a pretty dumb game. Dangerous.’

McKenna shrugged. ‘You can take care of most of them.’

‘How?’

‘Cut their balls off.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s easier than you think,’ she said. She pulled up a chair.

‘What do I do?’

‘Find another supplier. Then suddenly they’ll have plenty of fuel for sale.’

‘You know of one?’

‘I might be able to find some fuel, if you’re not too particular about where it comes from.’

‘All I’m particular about is if it works.’

‘It’ll work.’

‘That why you came in?’

‘Actually, no. I had an idea on how to flush those Sukhois out, if they’re there.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Requires practicing some air-to-air refueling between the Dragonflies and EB-52.’

‘Forget it, then. None of these guys are good enough to fly an A-37 Dragonfly behind the Megafortress. It kicks off some very wicked wind shears. It took a while for the computers to figure out how to do it with a Flighthawk.’

‘I could do it. If someone who knew what he was doing was flying the Megafortress.’

Mack listened as she detailed the plan. It involved a fly-around of the island by a Megafortress and two escorts two or three days in a row to establish a basic pattern. On the third or fourth day, one of the A-37Bs would pretend to have an air emergency. As it recovered, it would fly close enough to the airstrip to get a good look at it. An aerial reconnaissance pod under one of the wings would snap some pictures and they’d be set.

‘That airstrip is eighteen miles inland,’ said Mack. ‘You’re talking about overflying their territorial waters and then running in there – I don’t know. Those planes come up, you’re cooked.’

‘If you can handle them, I can.’

‘Too risky.’

‘Well, if you’re too chicken – ’

‘I’m not too chicken,’ snapped Mack. Then he smiled at her, and laughed at himself.

A little.

‘Don’t do that, McKenna,’ he told her. ‘Don’t try to out-macho me. Okay? Just be straight. No head games. You don’t need them.’

She shrugged, not particularly remorseful.

‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ said Mack. ‘That it?’

‘Breanna Stockard tells me she goes home Tuesday. What are the odds of me doing some time in the pilot’s seat before she leaves?’

‘Go for it.’

McKenna smiled, and got up.

‘There’s a tanker sailing to the Philippines with some jet fuel that’s supposed to be sold to a private investor there,’ said McKenna. ‘I may be able to find a phone number so you could put in a counter offer.’

‘That private investor wouldn’t be your ex-boss, Ivana Keptrova, would it?’

McKenna shrugged. She might not be much to look at, Mack thought, but she was one hell of an operator.

Just the sort of person he needed around here.

‘Do it,’ said Mack. ‘Buy it.’

‘How much?’

‘The whole thing. The ship if you have to. There’s this guy named Chia in the Finance Ministry – ’

‘That’s Gia,’ said McKenna. ‘Gee-uh.’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve heard of him.’

‘Yeah. He has this line of credit for us, operating money we can spend, but getting him on the phone is next to impossible so you have to go over there and see him in his office, buttonhole him, you know what I mean? And then on our side there’s Braduski – ’

‘Bradushi. Like sushi. He’s the guy who cuts the checks for you. I had to talk to him to get paid. He has a mother who needs an operation in Manila.’

‘Oh?’

‘He was on the phone when I came into his office,’ said McKenna.

‘Well, we can help him, right?’ said Mack, catching on. ‘We make sure we fly her over there, he makes sure we have our fuel.’

She just smiled.

‘You just got yourself a raise and a promotion, McKenna,’ said Mack. ‘Air Commodore McKenna, second in command.’

She started to laugh.

‘Hey, if I’m a minister, second in command can be a commodore,’ he told her. ‘Play your cards right and you’ll be “Air Marshal” at the end of the week. Take that office with the windows down the hall. You want a secretary? Take one of mine. The pretty one.’

‘No way. She can’t type and she can’t figure out the phone, let alone the computer. I want somebody who can do some work.’

‘How do you know she can’t type?’

McKenna rolled her eyes. ‘If I want something good to look at, I’ll get one of those buff boys pulling security in front of the office.’

‘They’re eighteen years old,’ said Mack.

‘And?’

‘Kick butt, Commodore.’

‘I intend to,’ she said, marching out.

With McKenna gone and his biggest logistical problem on its way to being solved, Mack began tackling the paperwork, signing his name with abandon. He was about a quarter of the way through the pile when the phone rang. Mack picked up the line quickly, only to find himself speaking to a woman with a thick Russian accent.

‘Mr Minister Smith, good afternoon; I am so glad to have this opportunity to speak to you,’ said the woman.

‘I didn’t quite catch your name,’ said Mack.

‘Ivana Keptrova. You have heard of me? I work with friends in the president’s office. The Russian president,’ she added.

‘Just the person I wanted to speak to,’ said Mack.

‘And I you. It appears you have hired an employee of mine.’

‘Problem?’

‘Not a problem perhaps,’ said Ivana. ‘An opportunity maybe. But I would watch her.’

‘Oh, I intend on it. Why are you calling?’

‘You are in the market for aircraft, are you not?’

‘I’m looking for a squadron of F-15s,’ said Mack. ‘You have any?’

‘You’re making fun. But if you were more serious, we could speak of the Sukhoi, a very excellent plane,’ she said. ‘With some adjustments here and there, they are twice the plane the Eagle is.’

‘Right,’ said Mack.

‘I can arrange a demonstration.’

‘I’ve flown Sukhois,’ said Mack.

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