Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (24 page)

 
          
The
line went dead.

 
          
Philippines

 
          
August
25, 1997, 0600 local

 
          
From
the way he looked at him, Zen could tell Stoner was wondering how he managed to
get from his wheelchair to inside the airplane, and how he maneuvered once
there. It was the sort of question everyone had, though almost no one asked.

 
          
There
were a lot of things no one asked. At first, this was fine with Zen—he couldn’t
stand bullshit sympathy, which was always in the air whenever an AB—an
able-bodied person—asked about his useless legs. Gradually, however, people’s
avoidance of the topic began to annoy him, as if by not saying anything they
were pretending he didn’t exist. Now his attitude was complicated. Sometimes he
thought it was funny, sometimes he thought it was insulting, sometimes he
thought it was ridiculous, sometimes he thought it was almost endearing.
Watching how a person handled the awkwardness could tell you a lot about them,
if you cared.

 
          
In
Stoner’s case, he didn’t. he didn’t like the CIA agent, probably because he’d
copped an attitude toward Danny. He was one of those “been-there, done-that”
types who spread a know-it-all air everywhere he went. Stoner had suggested he
come along to get a firsthand look at things; Major Alou and Bree had thought
it a good idea.

 
          
“We
go up the ramp, Stoner,” Zen told him, pushing his wheelchair toward the ladder
that led down from the crew area of the Megafortress. When Zen reached the
stairway he swung around quickly, backing into the attachment device the
Dreamland engineers had added to all of the Flighthawk-equipped EB-52’s. The
Zen Clamp, as they called it, hooked his chair into an elevator they’d rigged
to work off electricity or stored compressed air, so no matter what was going
on with the plane he had a way in or out. Two small metal panels folded down
from the sides of the ladder; Zen backed onto them and then pulled thick
U-bolts across the fronts of is read wheels.

 
          
“Gimps
going up,” said Zen, hitting the switch. He had to push back in the seat to
keep his balance and avoid scraping his head; there wasn’t a particularly huge
amount of clearance and, once moving, the elevator didn’t stop.

 
          
His
greatest fear was falling out onto the runway. While it might be more
embarrassing than painful, it was one bit of ignominy he preferred to avoid.

 
          
At
the top, he backed onto the Flighthawk deck. He’d put on his speed-suit
already, but Stoner would have to take one of the spares they kept during
Whiplash deployment. He unlatched the wardrobe locker at the back of the
compartment—an Eb-52 special feature—then wheeled back as Stoner came up.

 
          
“You
have to put on a suit,” he told the CIA officer. “We pull serious Gs. Helmet
too. I’ll show you how to hook into the gear when you sit down.”

 
          
Stoner
selected the suit closest to his six-foot frame, pulling it over his borrowed
jumpsuit. Zen stopped him when it was done, inspecting to make sure it was
rigged right. It was, and he knew it was since he’d watched him suit up, but
something about the spook’s presumption ticked him off.

 
          
“Life-support
guy will be here by tomorrow,” said Zen, clearing Stoner to pass. “He’ll
measure you up for a suit if you’re going to be flying with us.”

 
          
“This
is fine.”

 
          
“Your
seat’s on the left. Don’t touch anything.” Zen watched Stoner slip into the
straight-backed ejection seat and begin to snap up. Ordinarily, he sat first—it
was easier to maneuver into his seat if he could lean all the way over into the
other station, but he could do it just as well with someone sitting there.

 
          
“Incoming,”
he said, backing his wheelchair against his own seat. He set the wheel brake on
the left side, then pushed his weight forward, beginning the pirouette into his
seat. The techies had tried several modifications, including an experiment with
a sliding track that let the ejection seat turn. They’d also played with a
wheel-in arrangement that allowed Zen to use a special wheelchair during the
mission, but they couldn’t make it
ejectable
.

 
          
Of
course, he wouldn’t stand much chance going out. Unless, ironically enough, it
was over water, where he could use his upper body to swim—something he did a
lot during rehab.

 
          
He
swung into place, curling his chest across and landing slightly off-kilter, but
it was close enough. He wedged himself into place and pulled on his straps,
then turned to Stoner, who’d already worked out the oxygen and com hook-ins on
his own.

 
          
“All
right,” Zen told him over the interphone. “Preflight’s going to take a while.
You’re just a spectator.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said the CIA officer.

 
          
“You
see how to adjust your headphones?”

 
          
“Got
it.”

 
          
“You
can check the oxygen hookup—”

 
          
“Yes,
I know.”

 
          
Been-there-done-that.
Right.

 
          
Zen
punched up C³ and went to work.

 
          
Upstairs
on the flight deck, Breanna finished going through the main preflight
checklist, then stretched her neck back and turned to Chris, who was doing
another double check of the mission course they’d programmed earlier.

 
          
“So?”
she asked.

 
          
“Ready
to rock, Boss. You think we ought to give these atolls names?”

 
          
“Numbers
are fine.”

 
          
“I’m
thinking rock songs with a common theme. Say all Rolling Stones songs. Get it?”

 
          
“No,”
she said.

 
          
“First
up, ‘Angie.’ A, Angie. Get it?”

 
          
“Chris,
maybe we should do the preflight again.”

 
          
“Your
call. Next rock would be ‘I
Wanna
Hold Your Hand.’ ”

 
          
“That’s
a Beatles song.”

 
          
“You
are into this, huh?”

 
          
“How’s
the weather?”

 
          
“Still
sucks,” said Chris. “At least it’s not raining here.”

 
          
As
he said that, lightening flashed in the distance.

 
          
“Somebody
heard me,” said Chris.

 
          
“That
or they’re reacting to your song titles.”

 
          
“Hey,
I could do puns. Do not ask for whom the a-toll tolls. John Donne,” he added,
giving the name of the poet for the butchered line of verse.

 
          
They
came off the runway swift and smooth, the big plane’s wings catching a ride on
the stiff breeze blowing the storm front in. Breanna felt the wheels push up,
the engines rumbling easily as they headed over the storm front. They got clear
of the clouds and turbulent air, rising swiftly and then tracking toward the
atoll.

 
          
“Angie
in fifteen,” said Chris as they hit their
waymarker
.

 
          
“Quicksilver,
this is Hawk Leader. Ready to fuel and prepare for launch,” said Zen.

 
          
“Copy
that,” she said. “How’s our passenger?”

 
          
“Breathing.”

 
          
Zen’s
voice told her Stoner had rubbed him the wrong way. The feeling seemed to be
unanimous among the Whiplash people who’d dealt with him. Breanna was trying to
withhold judgment. So far the only trait she’d formed an opinion on was his
eyes—they were nice.

 
          
“Begin
fuel sequence on Flighthawks,” she said. “Prepare for launch.”

 
          
The
gear blew Stoner away. The video being fed from the robot plane onto the large
tube in front of him looked remarkably clear and focused, even though the
aircraft feeding it was moving at nearly five hundred knots.

 
          
Barclay
had been right; the Dreamland people did know what they were doing. Touchy
bastards, full of themselves, but at least they were competent. He could live
with that.

 
          
Zen
had said the large display was infinitely configurable, but it wasn’t clear
exactly what that meant. Though it was intended as a second Flighthawk station,
its flight-control section had been locked out, and there was no joystick or
any switch gear to control the robot. He had figured out how to stop, slow, and
replay the main video feed on a second, dedicated screen on his left. A slider
and a small panel very similar to standard VCR controls worked the tube; he
could also select a bird’s-eye or sitrep view and a map overlay. Undoubtedly
the damn thing made coffee too, if you hit the right combination of switches.

 
          
An
atoll began to grow in the left-hand corner of the main screen. Stoner heard
the pilot grunting and groaning as he flew. He ducked his body with the
aircraft, as if he were in the cockpit, not sitting here miles away.

 
          
Stoner
wanted to ask him about his nickname, Zen. Practitioners of the way were rare
in the military, and it was possible, maybe even likely, it was just a
nickname. It seemed an improbably one, unless it had come before the pilot had
lost the use of his legs. Jed Barclay was his cousin, but hadn’t said very much
about Zen on the way out.

 
          
“Slowing
for our run,” reported Zen. “No radar spotted, nothing active.”

 
          
“I
have nothing,” said Torbin, whose gear scanned for radar emissions.

 
          
“Negative
as well,” said Collins, who was essentially an eavesdropper on radio
transmissions.

 
          
“Rain’s
moving in pretty fast,” added the copilot. “Wet down there, Zen.”

 
          
“I
brought my umbrella.”

 
          
The
storm front a few miles to the north covered the rest of the atolls with heavy
rain and fog. Even their high-tech gear would have trouble seeing through it.

 
          
“Looks
like a lean-to on that northern end,” said Zen. “Stoner?”

 
          
He
turned to the smaller screen, rewinding and then magnifying. Three trees had
been laid across a large rock near the water.

 
          
“Might
shelter a canoe, swimming gear,” Stoner told him. He worked the slider, getting
a wide-angle view. “Don’t see anything else.”

 
          
“Stand
by for a second run-through.”

 
          
“Hawk
Leader, we have an unidentified flight one hundred-twenty miles southwest of
our target atoll, very low to the water,” said Ferris. “Course unclear at the
moment. Not getting an identifier.”

 
          
“Hawk
Leader.”

 
          
“Hold
that—positive ID. U.S. Navy flight. An F/A-18,” said the copilot, who had used
special gear designed to “tickle” an unknown plane and find out if it was
friend or foe.

 
          
“Hawk
Leader. We’re done on Angie. What’s next—Bella?”

 
          
“That
would be Atoll Two,” snapped the pilot. “Jeff, I’m going to take it up another
five thousand feet over this storm. It’s pretty fierce.”