by Dale Brown
"Champagne," repeated Stoner. He curled his finger against the AK's trigger, slowly starting to apply pressure.
"Parlez-vous frangais?" said the shadow. Do you speak French?
That wasn't the agreed upon phrase, and the accent was so un-French that Stoner had trouble understanding it.
"Champagne," he said again.
"Vin blanc," answered the shadow. White wine.
That was the right answer, but the delay made Stoner wary. Had it been just a human mistake, or a giveaway that something was wrong?
"I don't speak French," said Stoner in very slow Russian.
"Anglaise?" responded the man.
Was it a trick? The contact would surely expect him to speak English. It had to be a trick.
"You don't speak Russian?" said Stoner. The man again asked, in English, whether they could use that language.
Stoner exhaled very slowly. He had to either trust the man — or shoot him. Doing nothing was more dangerous than either.
"I can speak English," said Stoner.
The shadow took two steps forward. Though his voice was deep, he stood barely five feet tall, and had a scraggly beard that matched his thin body. He stopped abruptly, spotting the other two men a few yards behind Stoner.
"They're with me." Stoner gestured with his left hand. His right continued to hold the gun, his trigger finger still ready to plunge.
"This way, we go," said the man, pointing to his right.
Stoner let him start. His stomach had tightened into a boulder. They walked eastward across the field, down to a narrow creek, then began following it northward. His escorts fell farther and farther behind; twice Stoner stopped for them.
"You trust him?" asked Deniz when he caught up the second time.
Of course not, thought Stoner. But he only shrugged. After about a half hour of walking, the stream entered a culvert under a paved road. The stream was wider here; and while it remained shallow, it was more than four feet across.
"Wait," said the man who had met them. He put up his hand.
Stoner nodded. The man went up the embankment to the road.
"I don't trust him," said Deniz when he caught up again. "What is he doing?"
Stoner shook his head. The elaborate precautions made sense — if a man was going to betray his comrades, he would have to expect himself to be betrayed.
"Maybe we should find some cover," suggested Deniz. "To cover you."
"Do it," said Stoner.
He'd already spotted two good places on the right bank of the stream, both protected on three sides by large rocks or thick tree trunks. The Romanians saw them as well and moved toward them.
"Where are your friends?" the man asked when he returned. He looked around nervously.
"They're here. Where is the man I'm to meet?"
"A house. Two hundred meters." He pointed to the right.
"Lead the way."
The man shook his head. "I'm not to go. Not your friends either. Only you."
Stoner looked into his face. He had the face of a man who'd been beaten many times. He seemed more nervous than before.
"All right," said Stoner. "Deniz, I'm going up the road. Stay with our friend."
"Yes," Deniz called out from his hiding spot.
Stoner began walking. The setup seemed too elaborate for an ambush, but he couldn't be sure. He tried focusing on his mission, tried pushing away the fear.
He dropped to his knee when he reached the road, scanning carefully. The house stood very close to the road, just beyond a curve ahead. It was tiny, barely bigger than a garden shed would be back in the States. The woods thickened to his right, but there was a hill on his left and a clear field. He went up the hill, approaching the house from the back.
The cold ate through his coat. He opened his mouth, flexing his jaw muscles. The tendons were so stiff they popped, as if he were cracking his knuckles.
A dim light shone through the two rear windows of the house. Stoner walked up slowly, moving his head back and forth as he tried to see through them.
Nothing.
He was almost to the back of the building when he heard a footstep on the gravel in front of him. Dropping to his knee, he waited.
"Who's there?" said a woman's voice.
"Champagne," said Stoner, trying not to sound surprised that his contact was a woman.
"Vin blanc."
"Take two steps forward."
The woman did so, walking out from the path near the corner of the building. She had a submachine gun in her hands.
"Why are you armed?" Stoner asked. His own rifle was aimed at her chest.
"It is not safe here to be without a weapon. Not for me. Nor you," she added.
"Put your gun down," he told her.
"And you yours."
"All right." But he waited until she had placed hers on the ground and stood again.
"You are the American?" asked the woman. Her English was accented, but not as heavily as Deniz's or the man who had led him here.
"Yes."
"You're more than an hour late."
"It took a while to get across the border."
The woman's answer was cut short by a scream and the sound of gunfire back near the road.
Stoner scooped up his rifle. The woman already had her gun and was running. He aimed at her, then realized she was running toward the field.
"This way!" she yelled. "Come on!"
Before he could answer, a hail of bullets rang out from the woods, whizzing over his head.
Dreamland
1434
Annie Klondike bent over Zen as he finished his checks. He was sitting on a folding metal stool, which had been pressed into service as a kind of launching pad so he didn't have to start by sitting on the ground. His wheelchair was unsuitable, and the standard suits were always used standing up.
"Now listen, Jeff, no kidding," said Annie in her sternest voice. "We've done a lot today. If you're the least bit tired—"
"I'm fine," he told her, pulling on his Whiplash smart helmet, equipped with full communications gear and a video display in the visor. He reached back near his ear to the small set of controls embedded in the base, activating the integral communications set.
Danny Freah was standing a few feet away, wearing his own exoskeleton test unit. The Exo3 was fully integrated with a battle suit; its bulletproof armor was twice as thick as the regular units used by the Whiplash troopers, enough to prevent penetration by 35mm cannon rounds, though a round that large was likely to cause considerable internal damage since the suit wasn't big enough to diffuse all of the shell's kinetic energy. Some facets of the suit had not yet been implemented; it would eventually be equipped with LED tech nology to make its wearer invisible in the sky. But otherwise it was very similar to MESSKIT. Danny had taken it for over a dozen flights already. "Helmet on," he said.
Zen could tell he was getting a kick out of playing pilot. "Hat's on," he replied.
"Go to ten percent," Danny told him.
Zen looked down at his right hand, then pushed the button he was holding with his thumb. The microjet engines in the back of the MESSKIT powered to life. They were relatively quiet, making a sound similar to a vacuum cleaner at about fifty paces.
Zen slowly twisted the control, moving the engines carefully to five percent total output, then to seven, and finally to ten. As the number 10 flashed in his visor indicator, his wings tugged him gently off the stool.
"You're looking good," said Danny. "Let's go to seventeen."
As he said that, Danny pushed his throttle and held out his arms. He rose abruptly. Zen tried the same thing, but without Danny's experience, he started moving backward rather than up. He pitched both hands down, as he'd practiced in the gym. This brought him forward abruptly, but he was able to back off into a hover without too much difficulty.
The designers had worked hard to make the unit and its controls as intuitive as possible, but the feel of flying still took some getting used to.
Zen slipped his power up two degrees and found that pushing his head forward helped him stay in place as he rose.
His helmet's visor projected an altitude reading in the lower right corner, showing that he was 4.112 meters off the ground.
"How's it feel?" asked Danny.
"Like I'm on an amusement park ride."
Danny laughed.
The sensation also reminded Zen of the zero gravity ex ercises he'd gone through early in the Flighthawk program, when the developers were trying to get a handle on how difficult it would be for someone in a plane maneuvering at high speed to control the Flighthawks. He didn't feel exactly weightless, but the exoskeleton relieved what would have felt like a great deal of pressure on his shoulder muscles. He thought about this as he and Danny rose to fifty and then a hundred feet, practicing emergency procedures. Zen had a small, BASE-style parachute on his chest, just in case; the chute was designed to deploy quickly at low altitude if anything went wrong.
Confident that he could handle an emergency, he started putting the MESSKIT through its paces, accelerating across the marked course, then gliding into a circular holding pattern.
"You're getting pretty good with this," said Danny as they completed a figure eight. "You sure you haven't flown before?"
"Ha ha."
"How are your arms?" "They don't feel bad at all."
"The thing to worry about are cramps," said Danny. "When we were first starting the experiments, Boston cramped up so badly we had to replace him in the program."
Danny was referring to Sergeant Ben "Boston" Rockland, another member of the Whiplash special operations team. Zen got plenty of upper body exercise, and felt confident that whatever strain the MESSKIT was putting on his shoulders was minimal. His real concern was what he would do if he had a bad itch.
"All right, let's do a few sprints, then see how you are at landing," said Danny.
"Last one to the flag is a rotten egg," said Zen.
He leaned forward and twisted his throttle. The wind rushed passed his helmet — but so did Danny. Zen pitched his body down farther, then felt as if he was going to fall into a loop. He backed off, slowing immediately. He looked up, and saw that Danny had already crossed the finish line.
But Danny didn't have any time to gloat.
"Captain, we have an automated alarm going off on Access Road 2," said one of the security lieutenants, breaking into the frequency. "I have an aerial en route and hope to have a visual in thirty seconds. Maybe a car accident."
An "aerial" was a small UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle, used for surveillance.
"Go ahead and scramble the response team," said Danny.
"They're out at Test Area 12, covering a broken leg."
"Call Team 2," said Danny.
"They're standing by for the fighter exercises. They're already covering three ranges."
Because of the distances involved, not to mention the danger inherent in the base's experiments, Dreamland procedures called for a pararescue team to stand by near the range whenever live exercises were being held. The recent deployment and a ramp-up in Dreamland's research activities had stretched the available personnel, and there were times, such as now, when only two full teams were immediately available.
"Stand by," said Danny.
"Problem?" asked Zen, who'd heard the conversation over the radio.
"Maybe a car accident out on Road 2."
"Why don't we go check it out?" said Zen.
"Just what I was thinking. But—"
Zen knew what that but meant. He didn't bother to answer, pushing his head forward and sliding the power reading to 15.
"Major, I really believe you should wait until you're fully checked out," said Annie from the ground.
"Thank you," Zen replied, as if she'd paid him a compliment.
There were four access roads to Dreamland, but only Road 1, which ran from Nellis Air Base, was paved. The others were hard-packed dirt, or as his wife Breanna liked to say, hard-packed holes with rocks scattered in between. But even though it was about as smooth as a battered washboard, Road 2 was often used by base personnel as a shortcut. Not only was it a few miles shorter than Road 1, but its horrible conditions restricted traffic to those in the know, lowering the wait at the security post where it entered the main road. That could save as much as an hour during the busy times of the day.
Road 2 came off the southeastern end of the base perimeter and ran due south for a mile and half before jogging lazily east. Zen started in that direction, then increased his speed as Danny shot ahead.
"Security Command, this is Freah. I'm on my way via Exo3. Major Stockard is with me. Alert the perimeter system — I don't feel like being shot down."
Friend or foe identifiers in the gear would prevent the Razor antiair lasers from firing on them, but any uncleared flight over the perimeter fence would elicit an armed response from the robot Ospreys, which would force them to land or simply shoot them down.
The surveillance UAV zipped ahead from the west, dropping into a hover over the road three miles from the perimeter fence. The small aircraft — its rotors would have tucked neatly under the deck of a household lawn mower — was flying about twenty feet below Zen. It looked like a hive supported by a swarm of bees.
"Car is upside down," reported the security supervisor.
"Roger that, I see it on my screen," said Danny. "I have a smart helmet. Have the aerial back off."
"McDaniels and Percival are en route from the guard station. They're ten minutes away."
"Roger that."
* * *
A Ford Explorer lay on its roof about thirty yards from the side of the road.
"Zen, check your fuel," said Danny as they approached.
"It says ten minutes, plus reserve."
"When you hit reserve, go back."
Of course Danny wanted him to go back, Zen thought — he couldn't be useful on the ground. "We'll take it as it comes," he replied. "I'm going to check the area and see if anyone was thrown out."
"Roger that. Good idea."
* * *
Danny waited for the UAV to back off before tucking his arms into a U-shape and sliding his power down. He settled onto the dusty road about fifteen feet from the spot where the Explorer had gone off. The truck had traveled a good distance before stopping, and the marks in the desert made it look as if it had flipped at least twice.
Dropping to his knees, Danny unlatched the wing assembly to keep it from getting damaged. Then he hopped up and ran to the wreck.
The front of the SUV was crushed. He could smell gasoline as he got down on his hands and knees to peer inside. The driver was suspended in her seat, wedged against the roof and wheel, a deflated air bag wrapped against her face and torso. He couldn't tell if she was alive.
The driver's side window had been smashed, but the metal was so mangled it was impossible to reach her. He went around to the other side. There was a bit more room there, but it was still a very tight squeeze just to get his hand in.
Danny smelled gasoline as he groped with his fingers, trying to reach her neck and get a pulse. He snaked his arm back out, then took off his helmet, hoping he could reach in farther without it. As he started to slide his hand inside the car, he saw the woman move her head.
Alive!
He grabbed his helmet.
"Security Command, this is Danny Freah. I have a very injured woman trapped in the vehicle. Send Team 2 immediately. Order the test ranges closed down."
"Roger that, Captain."
"Give them a sitrep. Tell them to be ready with the Jaws of Life."
"Yeah, roger, roger, Cap. I'm on it."
The Jaws of Life was a special tool that worked like a hydraulic pry bar; in this case, it would be used to pull the squashed door away from the cab so the victim could be extricated. Danny took a step back from the wreck, frustrated that he had to wait, even for a few minutes, and worried that the gasoline he smelled meant there was a dangerous leak.
H
e could use the exoskeleton to help him open the door. He crouched back down by the vehicle, trying to find a grip.
"What's going on?" asked Zen, who was hovering above.
"Trying to get her out," grunted Danny.
His first try failed: The mechanical hand gripped the metal of the crushed door so hard that it gave way as he pulled it off.
"Need help?" asked Zen.
"If I can figure out how to open the car without breaking it into pieces, I'll be fine."
"Maybe I can hold one side," suggested Zen.
"I'm afraid that we'll end up jostling it too much," said Danny. "Hang on."
He pushed his left arm against the crushed top of the car, and then positioned his right against the door. The smell of gasoline was strong now. The car radio was on — he worried that the slightest spark would set off a fire or explosion.
"One, two, three, push," he told himself aloud, flexing his arms. The sensors in the exoskeleton felt the resistance and ramped up the power to help. It was designed to supply a slow, gradual push — moving too fast under certain circumstances could pull his body apart.
The crushed car parts moved about eight inches apart before the carbon skeleton began to pull through the metal.
"I think I'm almost there," Danny said, repositioning himself. ***
What Zen thought was a body turned out to be a tire, which had left the SUV as it careened off the road. He turned to the north and did a slow circuit around the wreck, making sure he hadn't missed anything. The bumper and part of the fender had fallen off, and there was glass back near the road. A man's jacket had tumbled out as well.
Hearing Danny talking to himself, Zen came back over the SUV.
"Danny, you need help down there?"
"Think I got it," grunted the captain.
Zen saw the security team's black SUV driving up the road in the distance, dust spewing behind it. A moment later he heard the heavy beat of an Osprey approaching. He backed off, watching cautiously as the aircraft landed on the other side of the road and disgorged its team of pararescuers. He'd never felt quite so intimidated by the aircraft's huge rotors before.
* * *
By the time the PJs reached the truck,Danny Freah had pried the vehicle open enough to lean in and examine the driver. She was breathing, with an irregular though strong pulse.
