“Ships are a good distance off,” said Garcia. “I think they know they hit it. Helicopter’ll keep them busy for a while.”
Liu nodded, then looked back to Jennifer.
“If the ships come close, or if the platform is too dangerous, we can leave,” she told him. “But we have to try.”
“All right. Let’s take a quick look,” said Liu, frowning as he turned the boat toward the shattered platform.
Southwestern Brunei, near the Malaysian border
1729
McKenna checked her instruments as the MiG-19 climbed. Not quite used to the old-style panel, she found herself staring at each of the round dial faces, making sure the information on rpms and pressures and the like registered in her brain. Four 250-pound bombs were strapped to the plane’s hardpoints, but the MiG seemed barely to know they were there, speeding through the air without a complaint.
“Brunei MiG to Brunei Army One,” McKenna said, trying to contact the ground controller in the column heading toward the capital. “How are you reading me?”
There was no answer. She tried again a few minutes later with the same result, and then twice more before getting a response.
“Brunei Army One reads you, MiG. What a glorious day to liberate our country.”
“Kick ass,” she replied.
The controller, an army major who had taken a course in working with aircraft from the U.S. air force, gave her a good brief on their present situation, then asked for intelligence on the capital.
“Give you a verbal snapshot in zero-five,” she said, double-checking her position on the paper map. “Hang on.”
Southeastern Brunei
Exact location and time unknown
As soon as Mack heard the pistol shot, he went to the side of the doorway, flattening himself against the wall. The woman who had spoken to him earlier handed off her child to another mother, then got up and went to the other side, reaching it just as the two men came in.
Mack hesitated for half a second—the smaller one was closer to him, but there was no way to change positions with the woman. He threw himself forward into the man and they crashed down to the floor, the terrorist’s pistol flying across the room. Mack’s fury erupted and he pummeled the man’s head with an insane, obscene rage, pounding the flesh with a ferocious force that rose not from him but from the earth itself. Mack’s bare fists crushed the bones of the man’s jaw and nose and even the side of his skull. Blood gushed as he leapt out toward the pistol, grabbing it and rolling backward in the same motion, crashing against the wall and firing into the two forms that appeared in the doorway with their rifles. He kept firing until he emptied the gun; it took that long for both men to totter backward.
Mack scrambled to get up. He reached his feet in time to see the last terrorist standing above the woman who had helped him, pistol drawn. Mack launched himself as the man began to shoot. His momentum took the man down and they tumbled against the wall. This time, rage wasn’t enough. Mack’s hands suddenly went limp, his fingers raw and his wrists sprained from his earlier assault. He struggled to hurt the other man, hitting him with his elbow and leg, rolling his body against him and trying to batter him with the side of his head. The man had lost his pistol but pounded him with the flat of his hands, the blows like the shock of an ice pick hitting Mack’s kidney. With a scream Mack tried to get his feet under him, levering himself away. He pulled the terrorist up with him, and they pushed each other against the side of the doorway. Mack felt something swipe him on the side—his enemy had taken out a knife.
Mack threw his head forward and bit at the side of the man’s face, wholly animal now, wholly a creature of violence determined to survive. He threw every part of his body against his enemy and the knife clattered away. But Mack tumbled down, out on the wooden walkway, thrown by the other’s fury. Mack’s face landed against something soft and wet; he smelled salt and sweat. Realizing he’d landed in the chest of one of the men he’d killed, he looked for a weapon; he found the hilt of a knife and pulled it from the man’s belt.
The other terrorist had recovered his knife and charged him. Mack thought he would impale him as he came but he missed, his enemy ducking away in a bizarre dance and toppling to the ground. Mack tried to jump on him but tripped, as well. The knife flew toward the other man, who managed to duck it.
As Mack sprawled he saw one of the rifles. He grabbed at it desperately, trying to swing it up and fire. But he couldn’t reach the trigger quickly enough and the terrorist kicked it away. Mack grabbed at the leg, pushing forward just enough to make the man lose his balance. As the terrorist’s knife waved in front of his face, Mack grabbed at it but missed. He was able to hit the terrorist’s leg and groin, but his blows were weakened by his injuries and pain and the terrorist fell back, regrouping.
The gun, thought Mack. The gun. He threw himself on it. His enemy came once more, diving toward him with the knife.
This time, Mack’s finger found the trigger. The rifle roared beneath his chest, and his whole body reverberated with its ferocious roar.
Aboard
“Penn,”
over Malaysia
1730
“Dreamland Command says the oil platform has been attacked,” Breanna told Zen. “I can’t get them on the radio.”
“Do they have a feed from the LADS?”
“Dreamland Command does, but they don’t have control of the blimps or the system”
Zen checked their position. They were about two hundred miles from the platform; it would take roughly twenty minutes to get out there.
“I say we have a look,” he told her. “Let’s launch Hawk Two.”
“I agree. I’ll inform Colonel Bastian.”
“Roger that.”
Off the coast of Brunei
1735
The dock floated serenely at the base of the platform, as if there had been no attack at all. Jennifer got out of the boat and lashed the line around the large steel hook.
“Wait!” yelled Liu as she reached for the ladder.
“I’m fine,” she shouted, starting up. “We don’t have much time.”
If he said anything else she didn’t hear it. The first ten feet or so up the ladder remained exactly as it had been, rising perpendicular to the waves. But at that point the ladder twisted with the structure and she found herself climbing on a slant and then twisting with it as it turned on its side. Jennifer was an experienced rock climber, but going up the off-kilter ladder was nonetheless an odd experience. She reached the. first deck and put her foot up, holding herself against the railing and then working to the second ladder, which rose up through a hatchway a few feet away.
The platform seemed to move as she got onto the deck, reverberating maybe with the footsteps of her companions who were just now coming up the ladder. Jennifer tried to ignore the gentle shaking, climbing up the second ladder to the charred and mangled upper deck. A large hole had been blown in the front of the deck to her right where the missile had hit. Metal twisted every which way, and she could see that the double-girdered pier no longer connected to the structure. The building looked as if it had been punched; part of the roof cantilevered up, almost like a baseball cap whose peak was pushed upright. A sooty black star with two dozen arms covered about half the front of the building, but the shock of the explosion had not mangled the interior, and as she crawled out on the sloping deck she could tell that the building itself had not caught fire. Two of the windows, in fact, had managed to somehow stay intact.
The floor of the building angled roughly thirty degrees to the side, sharper than the deck outside. One of the large suitcases that held the LADS control gear had been thrown against the rear wall so hard that it had embedded itself there. But the control panel itself—a pair of large LCD screens that folded out of a long trunk—sat on the desk where they had been mounted at the start of the mission. One of the feed windows on the left-hand screen was blank, but the other showed the ships approaching, with the Quick Bird dancing in front of them.
Jennifer hunched awkwardly in front of the station, one hand against the desk to keep her balance as she punched the keyboard with her right hand. She selected the handoff sequence from the command tree, but after she authorized it the screen seemed to freeze. Cursing, she was about to try again when the superstructure groaned, and the list increased five degrees. She lost her balance and slid all the way to the wall, smacking her head against the deck.
* * *
DAZHOU TI WATCHED THE HELICOPTER WITH HIS BINOCULARS, his anger growing with every second. The crew of the
Kalsamana
continued struggling with their sea-to-air missile battery, unable to lock on the target. The Aspide missile had an effective range of up to 18.5 kilometers; they were now within ten. Because of their incompetence, the gunship that had joined him was now coming under fire.
The
Gendikar
had been his last command before the
Barracuda;
his old executive officer was now its captain, and Dazhou knew he could count on his loyalty to the death. The ship had been instructed to stop him—and as soon as the radio instructions were received, its captain had radioed Dazhou to tell him that he wanted to join his crusade.
The Bofors cannon at the front of the other ship began to fire at the helicopter. Something flared from the chopper; it fired a salvo of rockets or missiles at the bridge area of the
Gendikar,
then bolted away.
“Have you locked the missiles on the helicopter yet?” demanded Dazhou.
“No, Captain”
“Do it quickly,” he said.
When he looked back, he saw that the other ship had stopped firing. The helicopter had managed to put it out of action, at least temporarily.
The American bastards! He would take revenge with his bare hands if necessary.
“Captain, we have a lock,” said one of the men behind him. “Fire, damn it!”
The Albatross Quad launcher shrieked and hissed as a pair of Aspide missiles flew upward. The missiles rose for a short distance, then began angling downward. The helicopter jerked to the right, firing flares and speeding away as the missiles flew toward it. Dazhou gripped his binoculars tightly as he watched first one and then the other missile veer off, exploding harmlessly. As he cursed, a second salvo was launched. This time, four missiles left the ship.
The helicopter seemed not to realize that it had been targeted again. It started back toward the
Gendikar,
firing another pair of its missiles. Suddenly it veered away, zagging left and right. It ducked the first Aspide but the second found its side, igniting with a red and white spark. The helicopter reared upward, then seemed to slide into another missile. It crashed into the sea, a white and black smear on the waves.
As Dazhou watched the steam and debris settle, he finally felt some of the satisfaction he had longed for. He scanned the ocean; they were now within sight of the platform area.
“It still stands,” he told his crew. “Ready another missile,” Dazhou said. “Strike it again. And let us see to
Gendikar.”
As the order was passed, the radar operator called over the other officer. The man looked down at the console and then over at Dazhou with a puzzled expression. “The radar detects something overhead,” he said.
“Where?”
The man pointed in the sky. Dazhou searched the area with his glasses but saw nothing.
“Where?”
He handed the glasses to the other man, who searched in vain. Dazhou stared with his naked eyes, but still saw nothing.
“It appeared immediately after the missile struck the platform. There may have been some sort of radar jammer there.”
“You’re sure it’s not a malfunction?” Dazhou asked.
“I don’t believe so. It’s hovering, like some sort of spy plane, but the signature is small.”
“Shoot at it. Target it and shoot it down.”
DOG WAS WAITING FOR HER IN BED, BECKONING TO HER.
“We should get married,”
he told her.
“Married? How?”
“We find a minister—”
“I mean, how would that work?”
“It would work, like now”
Like now? Not better?
Like now with her head slammed up against the wall, her legs tangled up, and the platform swaying?
I’m on the platform, she realized, not in San Francisco.
I have to get out of here!
Jennifer crawled back to the desk. The words CONTROL TERMINATED flashed in the center of the screen. Dreamland now had control of the blimps.
She collapsed the control box, pushing out the large cable that connected it to the power and antenna feeds. One of the de-tents at the bottom failed to clear; she leaned against the cable and the metal sheered off from the box. But though it looked light the control unit weighed nearly two hundred pounds; she tried to pull it off the desktop but it fell to the deck, the crash reverberating and the list increasing.
“We must go now,” said Liu, looming above her.
“Help me get this out.”
“We must go,” he said, taking one end of the control box and pushing it up toward the door.
Jennifer scrambled to follow. Outside, Liu struggled to get the control case up the inclined deck. Jennifer watched as he pushed it past the open hatchway.
“Where are you going?” she asked, and then she realized.
“Don’t!” she shouted, but it was too late—Liu pushed it over the side and the one-of-a-kind-control unit, built at a cost of at least a million dollars, fell into the sea.
“There’s no time,” said Liu. “The ships are coming. Come.”
He grabbed her wrist and pushed her down the hatchway.
Malaysian air base
1735
With their forces stretched thin, Dog oversaw the grim task of removing Major Alou’s body from the Megafortress himself, working with two of the Malaysian soldiers as the dead pilot was carried from the wreck to the bunker area. Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby had already been brought to the small, fetid underground room, along with a Malaysian who had been killed from fragments from one of the shells. Dog pressed his teeth together, ignoring the stench that had already gathered around the bodies; the odor was a final cruelty, depriving the dead men of their last scrap of dignity, reminding all who lived that they, too, would decay.