radio waves, there’s nothing to be detected.”
“I’d still like to get inside.”
“Fine by me,” said Danny.
“They make seats for aircraft,” said Stoner. “I have somebody working on getting us in as buyers. But it’s going to take a few days.”
“Is it big enough?” asked Liu.
“Could be,” said Danny. “We’ll see what the tech people say.”
“There’s a rail line that runs from the back over to the airport,” said Stoner. “Chun Sue owns some hangars there. That’s one of the companies Chen Lee owns. As far as I know, only one is occupied. I figure we hit the empties first.”
They uploaded the data on the way over. The Dreamland techies told Danny that he had only managed to see about eighty feet inside the building; a stock of insulation and fabric for the chairs blocked a deeper view. Everything they had been able to see was consistent with a seat factory — or something trying to look like one.
They didn’t need the viewer in the airport; all the hangars were open and unguarded. Stoner had prepared a story — they were looking to lease a facility — but no one seemed to even notice they were there.
Danny took a small scoop and wad of plastic bags from the attache case he’d brought, sampling some of the dust so the chemicals could be analyzed. He also took out the Geiger counter and took some readings; all were within background norms.
“Just a hangar,” said Stoner, walking to sit on an old crate in the corner.
“What’s the crate say?” Danny asked.
“It’s the name of a fish company. Heavenly Fish, along those lines.”
“Why would it be here?” Danny asked. He bent down to examine it.
“Shipped cargo in and out. Lost one of the crates,” said Stoner.
“The crate wasn’t used to carry fish. It’s too clean.”
Stoner shrugged.
Danny took a picture with his digital camera, then took out his knife and took a sample of the wood where it had been worn down. He took his rad meter out again, but found nothing special. Finally, he planted a pair of the video camera bugs near the doorway.
The cams were about the size and shape of three-quarter-inch bolts, the kind that might be used to secure a part on a child’s bicycle. There were two types, one with a wide-angle lens and the other more narrowly focused but able to work in near darkness. Each sent its signal to a transmitter the size of a nine-volt battery, which could be hidden anywhere with fifty feet of the cams. This transmitter in turn linked with a large base station — about the size of a cement block though nowhere near as heavy — that uploaded images either on command or in a random burst pattern that made it difficult to detect. The cameras and transmitters themselves used a similar random pattern with a very weak signal that would generally escape detection.
“You sure those things work?” asked Stoner as they got back in the car.
Danny turned to Liu, who gave him a thumbs-up. The sergeant was using his sat phone to talk to Dream Command, where the techies had just finished diagnostics on the gear, confirming there was a signal.
“Now I am,” said the captain.
The hangar that housed the airplane was open, and the four Americans managed to walk right in. The building was about twice the size of the others, and the Boeing 767-200ER it housed filled only about a third of the massive space. The wings of the large airliner were covered with large sheets of rolled cardboard, and the place smelled of fresh paint.
A pair of Chun Sue employees came over and told them that the company airplane was undergoing refurbishment. The men were very polite, and seemed flattered by the praise Danny threw at the airplane, which in fact was a beautiful piece of machinery. The 767 typically cruised between 35,000 and 40,000 feet; this model, optimized for the long-distance flights common in Asia, could clock close to six thousand miles before having to hit the gas pumps.
The experts back in Dreamland noted one other interesting fact about the airplane as they briefed Danny through the headset connecting to his sat phone — it was a bit large for the airport, which was generally used by smaller jets and turboprops on local hops.
Danny took several photos with his small camera for them, and planted a pair of video cams near the entrance.
“Those suckers cost a fortune,” he told Stoner as they left.
“The company is pretty rich,” said Stoner. “You notice anything funny about the paint?”
“Besides the fact that the plane doesn’t need painting?”
“The colors are used by the People’s Xia Airlines.”
“They own them too?”
“That’s a Mainland airline,” said Stoner. “They left off the symbols on the tail, but otherwise it’s a ringer.”
Zen took one look at Starship and rolled his eyes.
“Where the hell did you find alcohol in Brunei?”
“Excuse me, sir?” said Starship.
If Zen had had any doubts about Starship’s sobriety, the accent he put on “sir” would have dispelled them.
“Take the rest of the day off,” he told the lieutenant. “You were due rest anyway. I shouldn’t have called you back.”
“I can fly, Zen. Major — I can fly.”
“Go take a shower, Starship. That’s an order.”
Starship’s face turned red. He spun on his heel and retreated from the hangar.
“You and me, Kick, let’s go,” said Zen, backing his wheelchair away so he could go and get his flight suit and other gear. “
They launched the Flighthawk as soon as they were over water. Zen took the first leg of the flight, checking on some of the merchant ships that lay in their path. He wanted Kick to take the last half of the flight so he’d have the experience of landing at Tainan Air Base, their destination on Taiwan.
“See the ship there, Kick?” he asked his nugget assistant, who was monitoring the flight from the second station.
“Yes, sir.”
“Zero the cursor in, query it, get the registration data.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Relax, Kick, I’m not going to bite your head off. You don’t have to say ‘sir’ every ten seconds.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zen laughed.
Both Kick and Starship were excellent pilots and Flighthawk operators, but both men tended to be nervous around him. Was it because he was in charge of the program and therefore had a huge amount to say over their futures?
Or was it the wheelchair?
When he first came from his accident, he would have automatically assumed the latter. Lately, though, he’d become more discerning, or at least willing to let the complicated attitudes people had toward him ride.
Most days, anyway.
The wheelchair could get in the way. It had with Fentress — but that was Zen’s fault. He’d been jealous of the kid, or rather jealous of the fact that the kid could walk away from a session and he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“Got the data,” said Kick.
