that many people in your office.”
“And you’re who?”
“I’m Dr. Rubeo, senior scientist.” Rubeo heaved his shoulders back like a skinny cock preening before a fight. His oversized nose dominated his bony face; though at least six-two, he looked to weigh maybe 150 pounds.
“And what do you suggest, Doctor?”
“Frankly, I would suggest you postpone you meeting until tomorrow,” said Rubeo. “Assuming it’s necessary.”
Dog pitched his arms onto his hips. “Unacceptable.”
“Colonel, let me suggest Conference Room Two,” said Freah.
Dog locked eyes with Rubeo, then slowly turned to Freah and nodded.
“You’ll be looking for Major Thomas, sir,” Danny added. “I can take you over to him myself.”
“Very good,” said Dog.
“Life support this way, sir,” said a young staff sergeant, indicating where he could leave his flight gear. The sergeant pointed toward the F-16’s large travel pod, lashed to the side of the fuselage. “We’ll get your bags.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Bastian, starting toward the hangar.
“Excuse me, Colonel,” Rubeo said the word ‘colonel’ as if it belonged to a foreign language.
“Yes?”
“You want staff at the meeting as well?
“I want all senior scientists there, yes,” said Dog, snapping each word from his mouth. “I believe that would include staff.”
“I don’t know about that. Most aren’t even on the base at this hour. They could be –”
“Thirty minutes,” said Dog, setting off to get out of his speed suit.
Danny Freah had first met Lieutenant Colonel Bastian during the planning session for a classified mission in Bosnia. Freah, then a lieutenant, had been tapped to help rescue a high-ranking Serbian defector, one of the Yugoslavian generals responsible for military planning during the Bosnia ethnic war. As originally drawn up. Freah’s job was minor; he was heading a security team on the second helo in the backup flight. But the primary helicopters had to be scrapped, and by the time the backups arrived at the pickup zone the insertion team was taking heavy fire. Freah and his men saved the day. Danny hoisted the wounded general on hi shoulders, and ran through a minefield with him to the MH-60K Pave Hawk just as the craft lifted off. The exploit had earned Danny a promotion and the right to wear a fancy medal on his dress uniform. It also got him assigned to the Pentagon, where he’d stayed just long enough to know he never wanted go back there again.
Bastian helped get him transferred into Special Operations – and then pulled some strings to get him out here just a few days ago.
A lot of guys pointed out that ‘Bastian’ sounded like ‘bastards.” A lot of other guys pointed out that the colonel’s nickname – ‘Dog’ – was ‘God’ spelled backward. But in Freah’s opinion, the colonel was just a no-nonsense ballbuster who wanted things done right and fast. More importantly, the colonel had treated him fairly and respectfully from day one.
Though he’d only been at Dreamland for a few days, Freah already knew the base as well as anyone. Showing the colonel into Main Building One – they mockingly called the bland rectangle ‘The Taj’ – he stepped quickly to the retina-scan device that stood in front of the elevator. Two of his men watched silently from a few feet away as the computer beeped clearances.
‘Elevator wont’ descend unless each passenger has gone through the device,” Freah told Bastian. “It’s brand-new. Installed after, uh, their problems.”
Bastian nodded. Like many pilots, Dog was barely average height, though his broad shoulders and squat legs betrayed the fact that he could probably out-bench Freah, who was no slouch himself. The forty-something colonel also ran five miles every morning, usually in just under thirty minutes.
The elevator arrived with a slow, pained hiss. It had never been exactly fast, but the addition of the security equipment made it excruciatingly slow. Having used the retina scan to identify them, the security system now reconfirmed its initial decision with an elaborate sensor array that measured fifteen physical attributes, from height to heartbeat. Any parameter that was out of line with recorded norms would cause an alert; the equipment was so sensitive that personnel were regularly briefed not to drink more than their usual allotment of coffee in the morning, for fear of pushing their heartbeat too high. In theory, the gear was supposed to make it impossible for an impostor to infiltrate the base. Freah was skeptical, to say the least.
“This thing taking us down, or what?” asked Bastian as they waited for the doors to close.
“Sorry, Colonel. The procedure takes a while.”
Bastian frowned as Freah explained how the device worked.
“We’ll have to find something better,” said Bastian as the doors finally closed. “With the amount of time this takes, people will be looking for shortcuts.”
“Yes, sir,” said Freah. He smiled – he had come to the same conclusion.
They had barely started downward when Bastian reached over to the panel and pulled out the stop button. The car halted immediately.
“How’s morale here, Danny?” asked the colonel.
“Colonel, I’ve only been here three days,” said Freah.
He could tell from the way Bastian pursed his lips that wasn’t going to do.
“To be honest, I’d say they’re waiting to be nuked or closed down. They’d probably prefer to be nuked.”
Bastian nodded. He might have wanted more, but Freah had nothing more to add. He honestly couldn’t blame the men and women assigned here for feeling so dejected. While the scientists were a bit flaky, by and large everyone at Dreamland ranked in the top percentiles of intelligence and ability. They were the elite, charged with an elite mission – take cutting-edge ideas and turn them into usable hardware. But in the last few months, they’d seen their ability, work, and even loyalties questioned. A spy had been discovered in one of Dreamland’s top projects.
They spy hadn’t been just anyone. He’d been the top pilot on the top project at Dreamland: the XF-34A DreamStar net-generation interceptor and flight-control system. He’d stolen the plane, doing irreparable damage to the program and the careers of maybe a hundred people, including the three-star general who had run the plane. As if the scandal and investigations weren’t enough, the budget cutters’ ax had arbitrarily slashed Dreamland’s funds so severely even toilet paper was in short supply. And things were bound to get worse. Rumor had it that Bastian had been tasked with slicing Dreamland’s budget even further – and ultimately closing it down.
But it wasn’t Freah’s job to complain, nor was it his way. And while he’d actually majored in math for a while as a college undergraduate, he’d just as soon let someone else put the numbers in a row. So he merely stood at attention, waiting for his boss to reset the elevator.
“Hal Briggs says hello,” Bastian told him when he finally pushed the button. “I saw him in Washington last week.”
Freah nodded. Briggs had headed security at Dreamland until the spy scandal. It was an ironic twist. Briggs had mentored his career, and Freah felt more than a little awkward succeeding him.
Typical Briggs: He’d found out about the offer somehow and immediately called Freah to urge him to grab it. “Even if they close the base,” Briggs had told him. “it’s a plum assignment. Go for it.”
Briggs had somehow landed on his feet after the DreamStar debacle, getting an assignment so classified he couldn’t even hint about it. They kept in fairly constant touch – especially during football season, when they traded weekly and sometimes daily predictions about games. Briggs had sent him a secure e-mail message about Bastian just yesterday, detailing an account he’d heard from someone in Washington about how many arms Bastian had had to break to get his personal ‘pilot-check’ F-16. It was thanks to that message that Freah was ready for the colonel’s early arrival.
“The major’s office will be this way,” Freah told them as the elevator stopped on Underground Level One, which was devoted to administration and support. “I’ll take you there, and then alert people about the meeting. Major’s a nice guy, but as you probably know, strictly a caretaker. He was about the only one left standing after the scandal and political BS, outside of the pilots and scientists.”
“Yes,” said Dog, stepping out.
“I expect a few of you have heard of me. I’m a pilot by avocation. A zipper suit. That means I don’t accept no for an answer. I have an engineering background, but I don’t pretend to be as scientifically adept as any of you.
