Retribution

“Is that real time?” shouted Jeffrey Hartman, who’d just entered the room.

“No, Mr. Secretary,” said Jed Barclay, the National Security Council deputy responsible for liaisoning with Dreamland during Whiplash missions. “It’s three minutes old.”

“Jesus. Did the plane crash or what?”

“Um, it made it, sir. The video cut out as a latent effect from the, uh, T-Rays. S-S-Scientists say it’s kinda like a sunspot effect. This is the airplane over here.”

Barclay pointed to the smaller screen at the front of the situation room. Centered on the Arabian Sea, the screen mapped the waters off the coast of India and southwestern Pakistan. A bright red blip headed southward; this was the Megafortress that had just narrowly avoided diving into the Chinese aircraft carrier. The time flashed at the bottom, indicating Washington, D.C., and the time in Karachi, Pakistan — an arbitrary point selected as a reference for the operation, which was taking place across several time zones.

“The Chinese stood down?” said the Secretary of State. “They didn’t launch their nuke?”

“Yes, sir. The President managed to convince the government, and Dog must’ve gotten through to the captain of the carrier. They sent the nuke plane back into the hangar.”

“Dog?”

“Um, that would be Lieutenant Colonel Bastian, Mr. Secretary.”

“Oh, yeah, the Dreamland flyboy.”

President Kevin Martindale, who’d stripped off his jacket and tie, looked up from the secure communications console at the far end of the room. He’d just finished a conversation with the Russian prime minister, explaining that the U.S. had intervened in a three-way conflict between Pakistan, India, and China, arresting a nuclear exchange with the help of newly developed terahertz radiation weapons called EEMWBs — Enhanced ElectroMagnetic Warfare Bombs, generally pronounced as “em-web.” The missiles — the word bomb in the title was a misnomer — the “T-Rays” fried most electronic devices within a five hundred mile radius of the explosion.

“About time you got back, State,” said Martindale.

“The Pakistanis were quite difficult and—”

“Never mind. Get over here. I need you to talk to the Indian prime minister.”

“On my way.”

Hartman turned to Jed. In a whisper he asked if they’d gotten them all.

“All of the nukes both the Indians and the Pakistanis fired were neutralized,” said Jed.

“Good work.”

Hartman patted Jed’s shoulder, as if Jed had personally knocked all of the missiles down.

Jed pulled over a chair and dropped down into it. The Dreamland force had averted a nuclear war. But at what cost? Power failures were cascading across the subcontinent; it was likely that power would be disrupted throughout Pakistan and in India at least as far south as Hyderabad. It would take weeks, perhaps even months, to restore it all.

Meanwhile, all but one American spy satellite in the area had been disabled. And contact had been lost with two of the Dreamland aircraft, one of which was almost certainly shot down.

That aircraft happened to contain Jed’s cousin, Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard, the head of Dreamland’s Flighthawk program.

“Young Jed,” said the President, “get over here and help me again with these projections.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jed, getting up from his console. Then, glancing again at the frozen main screen, he whispered a prayer. “I hope you’re OK, Jeff. Jesus, I just hope you’re OK.”

I. Downed Airmen

Aboard the Wisconsin, over the northern Arabian Sea

0725

Wind whipped through the Megafortress cockpit as Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian leaned the plane as gently as he could onto her left wing, aiming to take a slow circle north of the Chinese aircraft carrier Khan and its escorts. He’d ordered his five crew members to eject when it looked as if he’d have to crash the Megafortress into the Khan to prevent it from launching its nuke- laden bomber against the Indians’ capital. Now that the Chinese had stood down, he turned his attention to his people in the water.

Ordinarily, the Megafortress’s flight computer would have recorded the plane’s position when the crew bailed, and then computed their likely landing area. Slapped into Search and Rescue mode, the computer would have projected a likely search area on the windscreen, along with convenient markers showing Dog where to look. He could have switched the Megafortress’s sensor inputs over to infrared and in a few moments picked out the bobbing bodies of his crew.

That wasn’t going to work now. Pressed into service to prevent a world war, Wisconsin had not been shielded against the T-Rays. Its brains had been fried over northern India; the only electronic device still working was a satellite radio that had been kept in a shielded box until after the explosions. Dog knew he would have to find them the old-fashioned way, with a pair of Mark 1 human eyeballs, now seriously derated due to fatigue.

Flying the EB-52 without a copilot was generally not difficult, but flying it without its computer was an entirely different story. Add the fact that his joystick, pedals and throttle were now connected to hydraulic backups, and the plane demanded every bit of his considerable piloting skills. The fuselage, ordinarily a slick, carefully streamlined airfoil, had five holes in it where the ejection seats had gone out. Dog had to alternately wrestle and baby the aircraft to get it to do what he wanted.

He found a patch of air around 2,500 feet that the Megafortress seemed to like, and rode it around in an elongated circle, looking for the orange life rafts that should have inflated as his crew descended.

“Dreamland EB-52 Wisconsin to crew — Mack, Dish, Cantor, where are you guys?” he asked over the shielded radio.

There was no answer. The survival radios the crew members carried had been in cases shielded against the T-Rays, but the otherwise stock devices had relatively limited ranges, and it was likely they were having trouble picking up Wisconsin’s transmission.

At least Dog hoped that was the case. He didn’t like the alternatives.

He pushed the plane lower and slower, trying for a better view. Displeased, the Wisconsin responded by literally flapping its wings — the flexible carbon-composite extensions at the very ends of the slicked-back wings began to oscillate.

The effect felt like a stutter in the stick. After a few hairy seconds, Dog realized that the shudder wasn’t a prelude to a nose dive; the Wisconsin chugged away at a hair under 200 knots, level as a laser beam and precisely 753 feet over the waves, according to the old-style analog altimeter.

A test pilot undoubtedly would have made a note of the phenomenon so he could discuss it with the engineers when he got home. Dog, a fighter pilot by training and inclination, did what most fast-jet jocks would do — he pushed the plane another notch, taking her down to five hundred feet and slowing her to 160 knots.

He trimmed the control surfaces like a yachtsman tacking into the final leg of the America’s Cup. The plane bucked, but then smoothed out as he reached five hundred feet. He found he had to keep a good deal of pressure on the stick to keep the nose up, but the plane felt stable. The ocean spread out before him like a smooth blue carpet, with the faint pattern of dark blue seashells arrayed shoulder-to-shoulder, uninterrupted as far as the eye could sight.

Not what he wanted to see.

He broadcast again on the emergency channel.

Still nothing.

He reached across the console, inadvertently changing his pressure on the stick. Immediately the Megafortress dipped to its left. He quickly added power and began to climb.

Something glinted to his left as he went to back the throttle off.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to crew — Mack? Anybody?”