Retribution

of the ship, the communications specialist buzzed in with a new call.

“Cap, we have Dreamland Wisconsin on the Dreamland channel. It’s Colonel Bastian. The signal’s not the greatest; he’s using a backup radio.”

Storm fumbled with the control unit on his belt. Squelch blared into his headset before he clicked into the right frequency.

The funny thing was, it seemed to clear the ringing in his ears.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Abner Read. Can you hear me?”

“This is Storm. Dog, are you there?”

“I thought I’d lost you,” said the Dreamland commander.

“I’m here,” Storm told him. “We’ve sustained light damage. We’re rendezvousing with one of our Sharkboats and then sailing south.”

“Five of my people parachuted into the water near the Khan,” said Dog. “I need to arrange a search.”

“Give me the coordinates,” said Storm.

“I’m afraid I can’t. My locator gear was wiped out by the T-Rays. They’re roughly twenty miles due north of the Khan.”

Storm bent over the holographic chart, where the computer marked the ships’ positions with three- dimensional images. He was about sixty nautical miles away; cutting a straight line at top speed would get him there in two hours.

Except he couldn’t cut a straight line and stay five miles from the Chinese ships.

“See if you can get me a better location, Bastian,” said Storm. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Aboard the Wisconsin, over the northern Arabian Sea

0738

Dog blew a frustrated wad of air into his mask and turned his attention back to the sea.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Mack Smith. Mack, the Abner Read is on its way. We need to find your precise coordinates for them.”

“Not sure how I can help, Colonel,” snapped Mack. “Looks like they forgot to put lines on this part of the ocean.”

“Can you break out a signal mirror and flash my cockpit?”

There was no answer.

“Mack?”

A beam of light flashed on the port side of his aircraft.

“Keep flashing me,” said Dog. He gently nudged the aircraft in the direction of the light, then turned the radio to the Dreamland frequency. “Dreamland Command, this is Colonel Bastian. You reading me?”

“Spotty but we have you,” responded Major Natalie Catsman. Second in command at the base, Catsman was manning Dreamland’s situation and control room.

“Can you get my precise location from the sat radio?”

“Affirmative, Colonel,” she said after checking with one of the techs in the background. “The scientists tell me we can triangulate using your transmission.”

Dog heard Ray Rubeo objecting in the background that her explanation wasn’t precisely correct and the procedure would yield an error margin of plus-or-minus three meters.

“I’m going to overfly a spot and give you a mark,” Dog told her. “I’ll try it a couple of times and we can average out the location. I need it for the Abner Read.”

“Roger that.”

Dog lined up the Megafortress for a run over the splotches of light. He got his nose directly on one of the beams and ran it down.

“Now,” he told Catsman.

He took the computed position and passed it on to Storm. The navy captain grunted and told Dog it would take “a while” to get up there.

“How long’s a while?”

“A while is a while,” said Storm. “It may depend on the Chinese. They don’t appear to be in a particularly good mood.”

True enough, thought Dog. He switched back to the emergency frequency.

“Mack, can you hear me?”

“Just barely,” said Mack.

“Abner Read is on its way. It may take a couple of hours.”

“Tell those fuckers to get the lead out,” Mack replied. “The water’s starting to get cold. And that ship on the horizon looks like it’s getting closer.”

“Roger that,” said Dog. The ship was a Chinese frigate, and it had in fact turned in the direction of the downed airmen.

Dog banked too aggressively and the Megafortress sent a rumble through her frame.

“Sorry about that,” he told the plane. “I don’t mean to take you for granted.”

Aboard the Abner Read, northern Arabian Sea

0743

Lieutenant Kirk “Starship” Andrews finished the survey of the water around the Sharkboat and turned the Werewolf back toward the Abner Read.

“Sharkboat, Werewolf survey confirms no mines in the area,” he told the crew aboard the small vessel. Roughly the size of a PT boat, the Sharkboat looked like a miniature version of the Abner Read and was designed to work with the littoral destroyer. Lacking the bigger ship’s comprehensive sensors, the small vessels had proven susceptible to mines earlier in the deployment.

“Thanks much, Werewolf. We are proceeding toward rendezvous.”

Starship plotted the course back and let the computer take over the robot helicopter. Developed by Dreamland and originally intended to fight tanks and protected land positions, the Werewolf had been pressed into service as a naval helicopter gunship aboard the Abner Read. It proved remarkably adept at the job, so much so that Starship was now practically a regular member of the crew. The Navy people called him “Airforce” because of his service affiliation; the nickname at first had a ring of derision to it, but had come to be a compliment.

Starship rose halfway in the seat and turned around, trying to twist some of the knots out of his neck and back. His station was at one end of the destroyer’s high-tech Tactical Warfare Center.

Lieutenant Commander Jack “Eyes” Eisenberg gave Starship a thumbs-up. Eyes was the Abner Read’s executive officer, second in command of the ship and the majordomo of Tac, as the Tactical Warfare Center was generally known. Starship gave him a grin and turned back to his computer display.

“Object in water,” blurped the Werewolf computer.

“Identify,” Starship told the computer. He pointed at the touchscreen, obtaining a precise GPS reading as well as the Werewolf ’s approximation of its size.

“Unknown. Believed to be human,” said the computer.

“Tac — I have an object in the water. Could be a man overboard,” said Starship. He took control from the computer and pushed the Werewolf lower, slowing so he could focus the forward video camera better on the object.

The Werewolf looked like a baby Russian Hokum helicopter. Propelled by a pair of counterrotating blades above, the unmanned aerial vehicle had a stubby set of wings and jet engines whose thrust could be tapped to help push its top speed out to nearly 400 knots — roughly twice what a “normal” helicopter could do. It was quite happy to hover as well, though the transition from top speed to a dead stop could be bumpy. In this case, Starship rode the chopper into a wide arc, descending gradually around his target.

“Could be a pilot,” he said, studying the screen. “I think it might be one of the Chinese fliers.”

“Location,” said Eyes calmly.

Starship read the coordinates off. “Smile for your closeup, dude,” he told the stricken man, pushing the freeze-frame on the videocam.