Retribution

ask.

“And Jennifer?” he said, biting his lip. “How bad—”

“She’s going to be OK, they think,” said Danny. “She got hit in the knee, but she’ll be OK.”

The rest of what Danny said didn’t register — she was going to be OK. That was the only information he wanted. Danny mentioned the others who’d been wounded, the plan to get back to the base camp — none of it registered.

She’ll be OK.

Jennifer shouldn’t have been there in the first place, he thought. It was his fault. He should have ordered her home.

“You OK, Colonel?”

“I’m all right,” Dog told him. “Take care of your wounded. And get back in one piece.”

“Absolutely.”

Dog closed the transmission. There was another one waiting to connect — Starship, aboard the Bennett.

“Bastian.”

“Colonel, I think I heard a broadcast from Zen. I haven’t been able to get him back. We’re under fire,” added the pilot, almost as an afterthought.

“Give me the position.”

The Flighthawk and Bennett were considerably farther south than the crew members who had already been rescued. Was that an odd quirk in the radio waves? Or had Zen and Breanna parachuted out much farther south than anyone thought?

“Were you over the water?”

“The Flighthawk was. It was a faint signal, Colonel. I’m sorry I can’t be more definitive.”

“That’s OK. Are you guys all right?”

“Oh, yeah, Colonel. We’re great.”

“Take care of yourself. Dreamland trailer out.”

Dog switched over to the fleet liaison and told them he had important information about the search for his people. He was quickly relayed to one of the wing commanders aboard the Lincoln. The commander thanked him for the information — then told him it would be hours before they could respond.

“I know how important it is, Colonel,” the man said before Dog could protest. “Right now, though, we’re covering the evacuation of the warheads from the desert. The Indians are throwing everything they have in the air, and the Pakistanis and Chinese look like they’re going to respond. The warheads are our priority.”

“Switch me to Admiral Woods’s staff,” said Dog.

“If it were my people, I’d do the same thing,” the commander replied before making the connection.

The lieutenant who came on the line was considerably less sympathetic.

“The carrier cannot be in two places at one time. That position is nearly twelve hours from where we are. And the entire task force is needed to shelter the warheads and get them away safely. You have your own people involved,” said the lieutenant. “You don’t want us to abandon them.”

“I’m not talking about abandoning them,” said Dog. “I’m talking about recovering two of my people.”

“I’m sympathetic,” said the lieutenant, sounding anything but. “For now, this is what we can do.”

Dog smacked the connection button, killing the line. He was about to call General Samson, then thought better of it. From the remarks he’d heard Woods’s staff make earlier, Samson had even less influence with Tex Woods, who saw him as a rival for a future command appointment.

And the truth was, all Dog had was a single radio transmission, without a real location.

He laid out the paper map on the large table in the trailer’s common area. He plotted the point where the others had been picked up and where the Flighthawk heard the call. The area to the north had been searched. So it could be that Zen was even farther south, near the small islands off the Indian coast.

Maybe he could have the Cheli come south along the coast on its way back to Diego Garcia.

He got up and went to the communications area, located just behind the large open room.

“Things are hot down there,” Brad Sparks told him. “A couple of guys took hits. They’re going to evac any second. We’ll shadow them to Base Camp One. A lot of action up here, Colonel.”

“Right. Stay with it.”

“Colonel, did you want something specific?”

“Just making sure everything is OK.”

“Hey, not a problem, Colonel. We were born ready.”

Dog checked back with the Bennett. “Englehardt, what’s your situation?”

“I’m down to one and a half engines, but clear of the Indian defenses.”

Dog listened soberly when Englehardt explained the extent of the Bennett’s damage. He figured they could make it back to Diego Garcia, but it would take an extremely long time.

And maybe a little luck.

He wished he’d taken the plane himself.

“All right, Mike. I know you can do it.”

“Thanks, Colonel.”

Dog rose. If Zen’s transmission was going to be checked out, he’d have to do it himself.

VIII. Homecoming

Diego Garcia

0155, 19 January 1998

Dog had only one airplane at Diego Garcia that was both available and had sufficient range to get up to the area where the communication had been received—Quickmover, Dreamland’s MC- 17.

Based on the McDonnell-Douglas Globemaster III C-17, Quickmover had been specially upgraded by the Dreamland design team to act as a front-line, combat cargo ship. Equipped with state of the art avionics and locating gear that would allow the aircraft to drop supplies and paratroopers deep inside hostile territory, Quickmover had proven herself in combat several times. But she was still a cargo aircraft with no offensive capability; if things got nasty, her only option would be to run away. The ship would have virtually no chance of surviving a gauntlet like the one the Bennett had just gone through.

But that didn’t prevent the crew from volunteering for the mission as soon as Dog told them what was going on.

“Let’s get the hell in the air,” said Captain Harry “Whitey” Golden, the pilot, when Dog told him about the transmission.

Whitey — his premature gray dome made the nickname a natural — spoke for the entire crew. The aircraft was airborne and winging north inside of twenty minutes.

As in a standard C-17, the flight crew worked on a deck at the front of the aircraft, sitting above the auditorium-size cargo area. Automation allowed the aircraft to operate with only three crewmen: a pilot, copilot, and combination loadmaster/crew chief.

Dog sat in one of the auxiliary crew seats, studying a set of paper maps of the western shore of India and trying to puzzle out what might have happened to the Levitow after its crew had bailed out. The first six members of the crew had been rescued about 160 miles west and twenty south of Vera-val; according to the copilot, the plane was flying due west at the time and the search had concentrated in that general area.

They’d widened the search, of course, but among the assumptions they’d made were that the plane had continued roughly on the course and that Zen and Breanna had gone out within two or three minutes of the others — reasonable guesses, especially as the plane had been descending rapidly before the others bailed.