into the room. “I’m all right. Chill.”
By the time Stoner got in with the Marines, the technical experts back at Dreamland had finished a preliminary analysis of Building Two. Aided by the data on the computer as well as their physical analysis, they had no doubt that one or two devices had been stored and probably assembled here.
They also had no doubt that the devices were no longer in the building.
The next logical place on the site was Building One, and Stoner sent a team inside with their rad meters and a video cam. But even before the feeds from their gear started back through the mobile transmitters, Stoner had climbed to the top of the administrative building, trying to figure out where else on the site the bomb might be.
“How you doing?” asked Danny Freah, clambering up behind him.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah. I’m going to let Zen and Colonel Bastian know what’s going on.”
Stoner folded his arms, thinking.
“I say we stop that ship right away.”
Jennifer joined the others in the command center after pulling an all-nighter working with the computer team on a Trojan horse virus to take over the ghost clone’s control system. Jennifer was convinced that the best bet was to simply block the communications, then try to insert some of the commands they’d intercepted. The problem was, they couldn’t be sure what those commands were, which meant they might succeed in stopping the clone from doing what its masters wanted, but not be able to have the clone do what
Jennifer took a seat at a station in the second row reserved for her use and began loading the necessary code into computer memory so it could be shipped out to Zen. As the CD-ROM spun, she popped open her notebook computer; she had some more code for the Flighthawk control computer aboard
“And?”
Jennifer looked up at Ray Rubeo, who was wearing his twenty-four-hours-with-no-sleep frown.
“And is a conjunction,” said Jennifer. “You can’t use it alone.”
“Can we take over the clone?”
“Probably not,” she said frankly.
Rubeo frowned.
“Yes. Come look at this,” he told her, starting for one of the stations at the very front of the room, just below the large display screen. The bomb experts were reviewing coding from a computer at the Taiwan base.
“It’s encrypted. We’re working with the NSA on it,” said one of the experts. “We’re feeding it back and forth. There’s a lot of technical data and inventory information. We want to see where to concentrate our resources; the encryption takes quite a while to get through.”
“This block here is email,” said Jennifer. “Look at the structure. Tell them to look for the dates and times.”
“Why?” asked Rubeo.
“Maybe they’re instructions on when to do something, like launch an attack.”
“They may just be love notes,” said Rubeo, scowling.
Even though he meant it as one of his acerbic remarks, the idea stung Jennifer.
“Maybe,” she said, looking over to the screen where the decryptions were appearing.
Zen had
The E-bomb had successfully wiped out the radios back at the assault zone; Raven’s powerful sensors had not picked up any transmissions from the
Zen checked his speed, nudging off the throttle slightly as the ship grew in the screen. The HUD ladder notched downward; he dropped through five thousand feet. The Flighthawk engines were relatively quiet, but at this altitude the aircraft could be heard; Zen figured that was a reasonable trade-off for the better images the lower altitude would provide.
As he closed to five miles off the bow, the water on the starboard side of the boat bubbled. His first thought was that the crew aboard the
“Submarines,” he said over the Dreamland circuit. “Two of ’em. Those ours?”
Two people started to answer at once, and Dog said something over the interphone circuit. Zen kept
There were people moving now aboard the ship. Something flashed at the stern — Zen saw a small rubber boat in the water near the bow.
“They’re being boarded,” he said. “The Chinese.”
As soon as the Marines secured the wharf area, Kick took
“Two un-ID’d boats,” he said over the Dreamland circuit. He clicked into one of the frequencies the Marines were using. “I have two unidentified boats approaching from the harbor, moving at twenty-three knots, twenty-four. I want to make sure they’re not ours.”
“I’ll work on it,” interrupted Starship, buzzing in on the interphone circuit. “Take a pass and get some video back for Dreamland.”
“Yeah, good thinking,” said Kick. He pulled the Flighthawk around, accelerating as he set up a pass that would take him across their bows.
Starship hit the keyboard preset and brought up the infrared on the approaching boats. The heat signal from the engines was baffled — these were not pleasure cruisers, and they certainly weren’t Americans.
“I say we nail the mothers,” he told Kick.
“Marines are checking with their captain. What’s Dream Command say?”
“Screw Dreamland,” said Starship. “They’re scientists back there. Get these guys.”
As he finished his sentence, a flare shot from the stern of one of the boats.
Not a flare — a shoulder-launched weapon.
Kick saw the missile’s ignition and knew it was coming for him; as the thought formed in his head another jumped in — scumbag.
A jumble of other thoughts and images came in quick succession, the most important of which was the realization that the missile, fired at his nose, had no chance in hell of hitting him.
“Guns,” he told the computer, activating the gun radar. The screen blinked red — he had the small boat’s midsection fat in the claws of his targeting pipper.
The trigger on the Flighthawk stick had a long run, a precaution against it being fired accidentally. He nailed it
