Her legs locked. She tried to relax them, tried to relax everything, taking a deep, long breath.
The ground grabbed her before she could exhale. Jennifer tumbled hard to her right, skidding ignobly and twisting completely around three times before coming to a stop against a pile of very hard rocks.
Danny Freah saw the flash of the brake lights just as the first Whiplash trooper sailed across the landing zone toward his touchdown. The auto was a mile away, and slightly ahead of the parachutist as he landed, but Danny decided he just couldn’t take a chance.
“Nab him,” he told Gunny. “As gently as possible.”
“Will do,” said the Marine cheerfully.
Danny turned his attention to the team landing around him. Suddenly, the night was filled with the sound of a woman cursing her head off — Jennifer Gleason had come in hard twenty yards away from him. Danny ran over and found her rolling up her parachute.
“Hey, Jen, you keep that up, the kids are going to learn a whole bunch of new words,” he said.
“Stinking fucking helmet.”
Danny couldn’t help but laugh.
A fresh string of expletives exploded from her mouth. “It’s not funny, Freah,” she told him. “The stinking helmet blacked out just before I landed.”
“Did you have it in default mode? If so, it reverted to standard view five seconds before you landed. You should have set it to a custom mode if you wanted it to continue counting.”
Jennifer expanded her vocabulary to include a description of what could be done to default mode. The description defied the laws of physics, though Danny made it a point never to argue science with a scientist.
“Where is the stinking bomb at?” she said finally.
“This way,” said Danny.
She seemed to be limping as she followed.
“You want an ice pack on that knee?”
“Just show me where the son of a bitch is.”
Danny got Jennifer over to the warhead, then went to check on the rest of his team. Liu and the others had landed about a quarter mile away, shading away from the car.
“Good to see you, Cap,” said Blow. “How’s Boston doing?” he asked, referring to Sergeant Ben Rockland. Boston had been hurt, though not seriously, apprehending the Iranian commandos who instigated the Indian- Pakistani nuclear exchange.
“He’s going to be OK,” said Danny. “Listen, there was a car stopped up the road.”
“We saw it coming in,” said Liu.
“Run up there and see if you can help the Marines with the language,” said Danny. “Link back to Dreamland and use their computer translators.”
“On it,” said Liu.
A few minutes later Sergeant Liu, Gunny, and two Marine privates returned with a skinny Pakistani man who looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“You gotta hear his story, Cap,” said Liu. “Claims his wife is pregnant and he’s going to fetch her mother.”
“They don’t have doctors in Karachi?”
“Doesn’t live in Karachi,” said Liu. “Lives about five miles up the road. She sounds like she’s in serious labor, Captain. Kind of like that breeched birth we had on the Iranian mission?”
“You guys deliver babies?” asked Gunny.
“We do all sorts of things, Sergeant,” said Danny.
Dog turned the stick over to his copilot and got up to stretch his legs. The crew’s resentment had diminished a bit, but he knew he still wouldn’t win any popularity contests.
Not that it mattered. He walked to the galley and started a fresh pot of coffee in the Zero Gravity Mr. Coffee. The sealed coffeemaker, which worked as advertised, was still rated by most of the technical people as their biggest contribution to mankind.
“Hey, Colonel, you got Ray Rubeo looking for you,” said Sullivan.
“Thanks, Kevin.”
Dog poured himself a half cup of the steaming java, then made his way back to his seat. Rubeo’s familiar frown was frozen on the screen.
“One of these days, Ray, you’re going to smile,” said Dog.
“It won’t be today. We’ve done some new calculations based on Ms. Gleason’s findings,” said the scientist, launching into an explanation of why the five missiles still missing had not been found. They all belonged to a subtype of the Prithvi family that had not been previously identified. According to Rubeo, solenoid valves that controlled parts of the engine had been shielded sufficiently so they had not been destroyed by the T-Rays.
As Rubeo’s discussion veered toward the technical, Dog cut him short.
“Do we have new projections of where they came to earth?”
“We’re working on them, Colonel. There are several variables involved. At a minimum, we believe that all of the missiles went much farther north.”
Rubeo had a map ready. The search areas included Kashmir and the borders of Afghanistan and China.
“Ray, this map has to cover a hundred thousand square miles.”
“It’s 225, 963.” Rubeo’s scowl deepened. “We are working on reducing it. We don’t entirely understand why the solenoid valve — and it was only one — on the missile at I-17 wasn’t affected. We should have this quantified in a few hours, depending on how quickly Jennifer works.”
“I’m sure she’ll work as quickly as possible,” said Dog. “What did she do? Set up a simulator in the Command trailer?”
“No, we’ve done the simulations. She provided the measurements and electric readings. I would have preferred—”
“Wait a second. Are you telling me Jennifer Gleason is on the ground in Pakistan?”
“Yes. I assume she checked with you before going…or is that an invalid assumption?”
Southeastern Pakistan
Dog’s voice would have shattered Danny’s eardrums if it weren’t for the special volume reducer built into the smart helmet’s headset.
“Why the hell did you let Jennifer jump into a battle zone?” demanded Dog.
“I didn’t let her do anything. Rubeo told me she was on the way. I thought you told her she could go.”
“Let me talk to her.
Danny walked over to the missile assembly. Jennifer was peering into the ruined and burned skeleton, examining bits of circuit boards with an oscilloscope.
“Colonel wants to talk to you,” Danny told her. “He’s hot. Real hot.”
“What exactly is your objection?” Jennifer asked.
“You know very well what my objection is. You’re in a combat zone.”
“There’s no combat here.
“We have other experts. You’re a scientist, damn it.”
“I’m not made out of paper.”
“You’re more valuable back at the base,” said Dog. “You shouldn’t have gone to Diego Garcia in the first place.”
She could practically feel his anger in the long breath and pause that followed. Jennifer felt her own anger rise.
“I should have said something to you then,” Dog told her. “I was wrong not to send you back. But this —”
