they were interacting with something else. If this were the case, it could take years before the problem was actually solved. In any event, she had to gather as much data as possible.
The Osprey jerked as it hit a bit of turbulence, and the Marine sitting next to her brushed against her. Jennifer shot him a glance. His eyes were fixed on the mesh deck between his combat boots. He looked young, nineteen or twenty at most, and very tired.
None of the men aboard the aircraft — she was the only woman — had slept much in the last forty-eight or seventy-two hours. Even Captain Freah, who ordinarily never looked tired, seemed beat.
She knew there was a good chance she looked as tired as they did. She brushed back a strand of hair from her ear, then turned her attention back to the laptop, bringing up another technical paper to read.
Sergeant Liu glanced around the cabin, nervous for the first time in as long as he could remember.
The sergeant didn’t consider himself a particularly brave man. On the contrary, he thought of himself as prudent and careful, not much of a risk taker. While others might view his job as exceedingly risky, in Liu’s view, working special operations was a good deal less hazardous than most combat jobs in the service. He continually trained and practiced, and worked with only the most qualified people. Missions were generally carefully planned and laid out. As long as you remembered your training and did your job, the odds were in your favor. There was no reason to be scared.
But he was nervous tonight, very nervous.
The image of the little kid being born stayed in his head. Possibly — probably — the child was dead before he was born, but he had no way of knowing.
Why had God sent them to the house if He intended on letting the child and its parents die?
A Catholic Chinese-American, Liu had always felt some solace in his faith, but now it seemed to raise only questions. He knew what a priest would tell him: God has a plan, and we cannot always know it. But that didn’t make sense in this case — what plan could He accomplish by letting a child die? Why go to such extraordinary lengths to send help to the baby, then snuff its life out? And the lives of its parents?
Liu looked up. Captain Freah was staring at him.
“You ready, Nurse?” Danny asked.
“Ready and willing,” said Liu, shrugging.
When the Osprey was ten minutes from the landing zone, Dog gave Starship the order to take out the guerrillas on the ground.
Starship had the two Flighthawks moving in figure eight orbit over the lake. He took them over from the computer and brought them down so they could make their attacks from opposite sides, catching the men on the ground in the middle. With a split screen and left and right joysticks, he felt briefly as if he were two people, each a mirror image of the other.
Green sparkles flashed on the screen of
The targeting box on the screen for
The effect was brutal and efficient, lead pouring into the men who’d tried to shoot him down little more than an hour earlier. Only two of the men on the ground seemed to escape the first pass, running to the north and throwing themselves on the ground as the Flighthawks passed east and west.
Starship cleared both of the robot planes upward, circled them around, and then pushed into a new attack, this one with the two aircraft in a staggered trail, so that
“Ground attack preset mode one,” he told the computer. “
He handed
Starship nudged his stick gently right, moving
As good as the Skyraider was, it could never have turned as quickly back to the left as he did when he finally saw his targets hiding near a rock formation. He let off a pair of long bursts, then rocketed upward, getting out of the way for
The targeting box was flashing red, but Starship couldn’t find the soldiers. Finally, he saw something moving at the very left edge of the target reticule. He kissed the stick gently with his fingers, holding his fire even though the computer declared he couldn’t miss.
When he finally did shoot, the nose of his plane was about a half mile from his targets. He walked the bullets left and then right, pulverizing the rocks as well as the men who’d tried to hide in them.
“Hawk leader to
“Roger that, Hawk leader. Good going, Starship.”
Danny Freah leapt from the Osprey and ran behind the Marine pointmen as they raced toward the men the Flighthawk had gunned down a few minutes before.
Twenty millimeter shells did considerable damage to a body, and even battle-hardened Marines didn’t linger as they surveyed the dead.
If they had been farther west, Danny would have thought the mangled bodies belonged to Afghan mujahideen. He had briefly worked as an advisor with mujahideen fighting the Russians a few years before, instructing them at a small camp in northern Pakistan. Some of those same men, he believed, were now sworn enemies of the U.S. They or their brothers had participated in a number of attacks against the U.S. military, including a suicide bombing of the USS
“Looks like they were using sat phones to communicate,” he told Colonel Bastian after the remains had been searched. “I have two of the phones. One of them is pretty shot up, but maybe the CIA can get something off of them.”
“Anything else?”
“Negative,” said Danny. “I’d sure like to know if they’re working with the Chinese.”
“For the moment, we have to assume they are,” said Dog. “Did Dreamland Command give you possible search coordinates?”
“Northeastern quadrant of the lake. We’re on it, Colonel.”
“Big package coming for us Colonel,” warned Sergeant Rager at the airborne radar station. “I have six Su-27 interceptors, Chinese, on their way from the north, 273 miles. Two aircraft, currently unidentified, behind them. Large aircraft,” he added. “Maybe transports, maybe bombers. Can’t tell.”
Dog keyed the Dreamland channel to contact the
“Dreamland
“Roger that, Colonel. We’re ready.”
Dog scowled, now a little suspicious of Captain Brad Sparks’s overarching optimism. He told Sparks that he
