by Dale Brown
Danny got out of the truck and went around to the rear of the SUV. He took out the fuselage he’d retrieved and hoisted it onto his back. It was so light it felt as if it had been made out of Styrofoam, not high-tech carbon and metal fiber.
“You comin’?” he yelled to Gephardt, who was still in the vehicle.
“Coming where?”
“I’ll drop you back at the compound.”
“I gotta get the Escalade back.”
“You sure?”
“Jesus, man. Are you crazy? How are you getting out of here?”
Danny pointed toward the sky.
“Helicopter?” asked Gephardt.
“Osprey,” said Danny.
“Why the hell didn’t we take it out here in the first place?”
“I didn’t want to attract attention if I didn’t have to,” said Danny. “Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.”
“Man.”
“Are you coming?”
“I got the Caddy. I can’t leave it. The drive’s easy from here,” added Gephardt. “That’ll be the only checkpoint. The army’s about five miles down the road. Won’t even cost me anything.”
“OK.”
“You didn’t have to kill them.”
“I couldn’t take a chance,” said Danny. “You don’t have to wait,” he added.
Gephardt frowned. “Who are you really working for?”
“I told you. Fact-finding for the NSC.”
“The NSC doesn’t have magic bullets that appear out of nowhere.”
“Neither do I,” said Danny, starting into the field.
2
Florida
THE MONSTER LEERED at the base of the stairs, its mouth open wide enough to display its black teeth. Blood-edged eyes bulged from their sockets, hunting for prey. Suddenly its nostrils pinched together—the scent had been found. It bounded up the stairs with a deathly scream: food was at hand.
Turk Mako steadied his gun and shot the zombie square in the head.
One hundred thirty points floated onto the screen, increasing his score in the video game to 10,400. He was on level 12; things were just starting to heat up.
“Say, babe, are we going swimming or what?”
Turk turned and glanced at his girlfriend, Li Pike, who was standing near the door of the small hotel room suite. The oversized T-shirt she wore over her bikini somehow accented rather than hid her athletic frame. The curve of her breasts and hips teased desire into Turk. His eyes followed the hem of the shirt down her smooth legs, pausing over her sculptured calves and then wandering to her bare toes. She’d painted her nails last night, before they went out; the bright, glossy red seemed to glow.
“So, are we going?” she asked.
“I’m on level 12,” Turk answered.
“And?”
“Well, and—” He saw a zombie coming to the right of the screen, dodged the joystick left, spun and fired. As the zombie’s head shattered, he hit the key to pause the game.
“And you’d rather play a video game than hang out with me,” said Li.
He knew she was joking—Li had a way of exaggerating her smile when she was teasing or being ironic—but still there was the gentlest bit of an edge in what she said.
A small bit.
“No, no,” he said.
“What would Dr. Kleenex say?” Li teased.
“Avoidance therapy. I’m killing zombies because I can’t kill my boss.”
“The Iranians, you mean.”
“Them, too.”
No doubt Dr. Kleenex—Turk’s nickname for the counselor he’d been ordered to see as a mandatory “de-stress” from his last mission—would have read quite a bit into his absorption in the video game. But then, Dr. Kleenex read quite a bit into everything.
The counselor’s real name was Washington Galiopis, but he had earned the nickname by prominently stationing boxes of tissues near Turk’s chair every time the pilot reported to him. The man seemed to want him to break down and cry.
That wasn’t Turk. Nor did Turk feel that he had post-traumatic stress, though he would certainly admit to having been under a great deal of strain on the mission, which involved the secret destruction of two Iranian nuclear weapons bases.
As a test pilot, he was used to dealing with stress. Admittedly, having been on the ground and getting fired at—and firing at others—was a new and not entirely pleasant experience. And immediately upon his return, he had lost his temper, briefly, when confronting his boss, Breanna Stockard, the head of the military side of Whiplash.
The thing was, she deserved to be blasted. In his mind, telling her that she should have had more faith in him was the mildest possible thing he could do.
After all, she’d sent someone to kill him.
As things worked out, Turk had befriended his would-be assassin, Mark Stoner, by saving his life. Together they had escaped, thanks to a plan Turk concocted.
It was only when they were back in the States going through the debrief that Turk realized how close he had come to being assassinated, and why. He didn’t blame Stoner at all. On the contrary, Stoner had saved his life, and he had nothing but gratitude for him.
The same could not be said for Breanna. Until now he’d looked at her as a role model, almost an older sister. Her husband and her father were both war heroes and superb pilots, men Turk greatly admired. But now he knew that her kindness and concern toward him was fake. She didn’t care if he lived or died; she didn’t care about anything, except for the mission.
Turk, too, was dedicated to doing his duty. He had been prepared to die and even expected to many times, not only on that mission but during his entire service with Special Projects and with the Air Force in general. But the fact that he and Stoner had gotten out alive proved that he shouldn’t have been given up for dead. Breanna should have had a better contingency plan for getting him out.
Because she didn’t, some of the bravest men he’d ever known, all members of Delta Force, had died in Iran. They’d died protecting him, and helping him do his job. How the hell was he ever going to make up for that?
“So, are you coming or not?” asked Li.
“Just let me—”
She stalked over and kissed him on the lips, leaning her chest into his.
The kiss ended too soon.
“I’ll be downstairs.” She straightened. “Try to make it by lunch.”
Turk watched her walk from the room. Li was a pilot herself—she flew A-10s—but there was something about the way she filled a bikini that ought not to be allowed.
Kill zombies?
“Damn,” muttered Turk as the door closed behind her. He switched off the TV and tossed the controller on the bed.
“Wait up,” he called, hustling for the door.
3
White House, Washington, D.C.
Two days later
DANNY FREAH TOOK a deep breath, then rose from his seat and walked to the front of the secure conference room in the basement of the White House. He’d given a number of presentations in this room, yet he’d never felt quite the flutter in his chest that he felt today. Partly that was because the President herself was here; he’d never directly given her a briefing before.
And partly it was because he was afraid of the implications of what he was about to say.
He cleared his throat and positioned his thumb on the remote control for the laptop, which he’d already hooked into the projection system.
“Thank you,” said Danny, clicking through to the first slide in his PowerPoint. “Uh, first of all, I apologize for the, uh, primitiveness of this. I just got back from Malaysia, and uh, I pulled this together . . .”
God, he told himself, calm down. He glanced at Breanna Stockard, who was sitting near the end of the table. She gave him a grim nod, as if to say, Get on with it.
“For the past twelve months a small rebel group in Malaysia known as 30 May Movement has been active on the island of Borneo, which as you know Malaysia shares with B
runei and Indonesia. Their activities have been primarily in the state of Sarawak, which is the largest part of East Malaysia. You have three countries sharing that island, each encircling the other. Borneo is on the coast, East Malaysia is around it, then Indonesia. That’s, um, East Malaysia.”
Danny paused for a quick sip of water, then continued. “The 30 May Movement is named after an alleged massacre that occurred on the island, near the border with Indonesia. The group is relatively small, thought to number perhaps five hundred active fighters. That is dwarfed by the size of the other two main groups, which are primarily fighting in the eastern portion of the island, where we’ve had, uh, where we’ve sent Marine advisors.”
Danny caught a glimpse of Jonathon Reid’s bored face. Reid was the head of the CIA half of Whiplash. Skip over the background, he’d said earlier. They know it!
“So, as you know, the group has not been of much concern to anyone. But a few weeks ago something happened to bring it to our attention. This.”
Danny clicked to the first slide. Scratchy video began to play—it was from the camera of a Malaysian fighter-bomber, a Northrup F-5E, which was considered ancient even in Malaysia. The “Freedom fighter” had been pressed into a ground-support role, and at the start of the video was pulling up from a strafing run at a rebel stronghold.
Suddenly, a black shadow appeared on the right side of the screen, flashing toward the plane. It passed quickly overhead.
The object looked like a missile, and apparently the pilot of the F-5E thought that’s what it was, since he immediately rolled his plane and fired off chaff and flares—an unnecessary precaution, most pilots would have agreed, since the trajectory of the object made it clear that it had missed his plane. Nothing outside of the U.S. arsenal could change course quickly enough to give him a problem.
But the Malaysian pilot was right to be worried. As his plane rolled away, a warning sounded in the cockpit, announcing that he was being tracked by a weapons radar.
“The sound you’re hearing is a warning that the plane is being tracked at close range,” said Danny as the video ended. “The plane was subsequently shot down. There are a couple of things to note,” he added, “starting with the fact that the object was not detected at close range; there was no threat indicated. And that the shoot-down occurred within moments of the radar being activated.”
“What shot it down?” asked the Secretary of State, Alistar Newhaven.
“We believe the object that we saw at the beginning of the video. We think it is a combat UAV.”
He flashed a few images on the screen. All were artists’ concepts based on the extremely brief and blurry image in the video.
“A combat UAV?” asked the Secretary of State. “Whose? I thought we were the only nation that had them.”
“That’s why we’re here,” said the President. She nodded at Danny to continue.
“We don’t have enough data to say for certain,” admitted Danny. “The aircraft was pretty beat up. The damage is consistent with gunfire, but frankly it could also have been a missile, and whatever hit it, there’s no way now of knowing whether it came from the air or the ground. The Malaysians thought it must have been a ground-launched missile, as none of the rebel groups have been known to use aircraft. They dismissed the item in the video you saw as simply another missile that for some reason hadn’t been detected.”
Danny flipped the slide to a map of an area near the western coast of the island.
“The incident was pretty much dismissed until a group of four Su-29s were attacked in roughly the same area two weeks ago. They were shot down in the space of about ten minutes.”
“The Malaysians have Su-29s?” asked the vice president, Jay Mantis.
“Yes, sir, they do.” Danny nodded. While the Russian-made Su-29 was a few decades and at least a generation and a half old, it was still considered a front-line fighter, and Danny wasn’t surprised that some members of the government weren’t aware that it was in a third-world nation’s inventory. “They have a pretty unique mix of aircraft. The fortunate thing that happened here, and it seems by accident—as the UAV was engaging the last aircraft, it appears to have inadvertently been struck by debris from one of the planes it had fired on earlier. The debris sheered one of its wings; it went into a high speed spin and another of the wings came off. Part of the fuselage landed in this area here.”
Danny clicked on the slide showing where he had found the main part of the aircraft.
“I picked it up myself two days ago.”
“It’s been a hectic few days for you, I’m sure,” said the President, leaning forward in her chair.
“Yes, ma’am.” Danny nodded. “The Malaysians blamed the Indonesians. The two countries have a complicated history. The Indonesians weren’t backing the rebels, at least not these rebels—”
“The Indonesians have given us assurances,” said the Secretary of State.
“Yes, sir. In any event, the technology that would have to be responsible is far beyond anything the Indonesians are capable of. It’s on par with the early Flighthawks. Maybe beyond.”
“A group of guerrillas are flying UAVs that are more advanced than ours?” said the vice president incredulously.
“It looks like that,” said Danny.
MARY CHRISTINE TODD glanced at her watch. The meeting had gone five minutes longer than her aides had allotted; it was time for her to bring it to a close if she had any hope of staying on schedule for the rest of the morning.
“The bottom line is, we need more information about what’s going on here,” said the President. “Colonel, do you have a recommendation?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. I’d suggest we send a full team from Whiplash, try and capture these UAVs and find out what’s going on. We can have a team out there in three days.”
“What would that entail?”
Todd listened as the colonel outlined a plan to move a piloted and unpiloted aircraft as well as Ospreys and a ground team into the jungle. She knew what the objections would be well before he finished. And she knew that the colonel must know that as well.
“If we send that sort of firepower into the area, there’s bound to be a reaction from the Chinese,” said Newhaven. “Indonesia as well.”
China was key. Congress was pushing hard for a rapprochement, which even Todd admitted could benefit the U.S. Her administration was secretly negotiating with Beijing on a number of issues, including territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Chinese indicated they would renounce some of those claims if it could be done without losing face. The political dance was difficult: show too much force in the region, and the Chinese would have to reply with their own. Show too little, and the Chinese would have no incentive to back off their aggressive positions.
“The Whiplash team can operate discreetly,” said Danny.
“It hasn’t in the past,” said Newhaven pointedly.
That was out of line, and the President cut the Secretary of State off.
“I think the Office of Special Projects has an admirable record,” said the President quickly.
“You put high-tech gear in there and you might just as well tell the Chinese to triple their aid to the rebels,” said Newhaven. “Plus, if these things are being flown by the rebels, then they’ll be after them, too.”
“Assuming they don’t already belong to the Chinese,” said Reid.
“The CIA ought to know who owns them,” snapped Newhaven.
“I understand your point, Mr. Secretary,” said the President. “We have to find a way to get the job done without calling much attention to it. Even among our own people.”
That was a veiled reference to Congress, which was dead set against giving more aid to the Malaysians. If the oversight committees found out there was a full-blown Whiplash mission to the island, objections would be quickly raised. Todd was willing to deal with the political fallout, but it seemed premature at this point; there was no firm evidence that UAVs were even there—as she
understood the data, it could have been missiles.
“We have a small group of Marines set to support the Malaysians in that area,” said the National Security Advisor, Michael Blitz. “Can we fold this operation into them?”
“Any Whiplash presence is too much,” said the vice president.
Todd held her tongue. Her contempt for her vice president was well known. Nonetheless, it was obvious as the discussion continued that he was expressing a view that seemed to be shared by the rest of the council and the cabinet members present. The evidence didn’t seem to warrant the risks that a Whiplash deployment would entail politically.
“All right,” said the President after her scheduling aide pointed at his watch. “As I said at the outset, I have a breakfast meeting to attend. I expect a recommendation by the time I return to the White House.” She rose. “Colonel, thank you for coming. Ms. Stockard, perhaps you’ll walk with me upstairs.”
BREANNA, SURPRISED AT the invitation, felt her cheeks burn. She pulled her things together and waited in the hallway for the President, who was stopped by some aides just outside the door and given information about an explosion in a coal mine that morning.
Danny nodded as he passed; Breanna gave him a thumbs-up.
“Good job,” she said.
“Thanks.” He beamed. For some reason the colonel was more nervous about public speaking than facing combat.
“So, Breanna, how is your daughter?” asked the President as she sailed up the hallway. Breanna had to practically leap to stay up with her. Christine Todd was very much like a sleek sailboat when she moved. Whatever other effect the job had had on her, her energy was undiminished.
“She’s great.”
“If she’s half as smart as her mother and father, she’s got quite a future.” Todd smiled and stepped into the waiting elevator. She was alone with Breanna, except for her two Secret Service escorts. A man and a woman, they were well practiced at pretending not to hear what the President or anyone with her said.
