Strike Zone (29 page)

“Grandfather?” he said, when the old man failed to respond. “Grandfather?”

As unbearable as the weight had been before, now it increased ten times. Chen flew across the room, turning the chair roughly.

His grandfather's slender body slid from the chair into his arms. His pale skin was cold; the old man's heart had stopped more than an hour before.

Chen Lo Fann trembled as he put the old man back in his chair. There was a note on the desk, the figures drawn in Chen Lee's shaky hand.

“The weapons are in place,” said the note.

Chen stared at the ideograms. He was not sure what weapons his grandfather was talking about, or even where they might be. Silently, he folded the paper and placed it back in his pocket. And then he went to find out.

Club Lion, Brunei
1205

A
LL HIS LIFE
, Starship had been on top of the wave. He'd ridden it to the State Class A Football Championship in junior year as all-league quarterback; the next year he'd taken the state trophy in wrestling. The Academy—more success in football, of course, where his exploits against Notre Dame were still the talk of the place. Pilot training, F-15 squadron. The assignment to Dreamland was supposed to be another notch in the belt.

It was. But it wasn't going precisely as he had planned.

For one thing, he hadn't planned on joining the
Flighthawk program—he'd been shooting for one of the manned fighter programs but discovered the only open pilot slot was in the Megafortress, and with all due respect to the monster craft, no amount of Dreamland gadgets could turn it into an exciting ride. He'd managed to finesse a slot with the Flighthawks and figured he'd be in a good position to transition eventually—though eventually might be far down the road.

But what Starship hadn't counted on was the pressure. Because even though he was good—better than good—he'd felt unbelievable stress ever since the start of the deployment. He wasn't sure why—was it because he was so far from the plane he was flying? Was it the fact that Kick was looking over his shoulder? Was he intimidated by Zen, a pilot so tough he could lose the use of his legs and still come back for more?

Or was it fear?

He slid another ten-dollar bill on the bar of the club.

Eating at the palace last night with Mack Smith had been a revelation. He'd thought the job proposal was complete BS, but the sultan turned out to be serious. He wanted to take Brunei into the twenty-first century—even beyond. He wanted frontline fighters and Megafortresses. Mack Smith could build an empire here.

And it looked like he was going to take the job.

If he did, Starship would be in line to help. Major Smith had said so. More than likely, much of the work at first would be staff BS and PR, but he would have the pull to fly whenever he wanted.

Those little trainer jobs they flew at first, but eventually, real planes.

A week ago, he'd have laughed out loud about the whole idea. But now he wasn't sure.

Starship took his drink and slid around in his seat to watch the girl dancing on the stage. The girl started to slide her skirt down.

Someone shook Starship from behind.

“What's the story?” he said angrily, turning.

“So this is where you're hiding,” said Kick. “I can see why.”

“Hey, roomie. Pull up a stool. How'd you find me?”

“Mack Smith suggested I look here.”

“Yeah, good ol' Major Smith. Have a drink.”

“Thanks but no thanks. Zen wants us ASAP.”

“What for? It's our day off. Besides, we're still grounded, right? Because of the Chinese baloney?”

“Not anymore. Colonel Bastian arranged for
Pennsylvania
to fly up to Taiwan as part of the ASEAN exercises. You're supposed to leave right away.”

“Damn,” said Starship.

Kick stepped back. “I'll tell him I couldn't find you.”

“Screw that,” said Starship, sliding off the barstool.

“I'm serious, man. You can't fly.”

“Better than you.”

Kick looked at him. “Not at this moment.”

“I can fly better than you in my sleep, Kick boy.”

Taipei
1210

T
HE FIRST FACTORY
Stoner took them to lay about a mile and a half from Sungshan airport, in a crowded
district of warehouses and industrial buildings. The roads were so thick with traffic that it took hours to get to the facility itself; when they finally did they found their way blocked by uniformed employees. The men were polite—the driver pretended to be asking for directions and they answered helpfully—but there was no way past them.

Danny eyed the fence, which was topped with barbed wire; there were also video cameras. Besides the two men at the gate he saw another patrolling down the way.

He took out the IR device and slowly began scanning the building. A small wire connected to the side; it was an earphone that buzzed as soon as the reading was complete and logged. The data were ferried via a small antenna to the transmitter unit in the trunk, though at the moment they weren't broadcasting to Dreamland because of the small possibility that it might be detected.

Every time the machine buzzed in his ear, he pushed the small trigger button on the top between the two barrels; the IR sensors adjusted themselves and took another “bite” at the building. As it moved further inside, the buzzes started to be punctuated by clicks; it was having trouble seeing. Danny tried holding it at different angles and jostling it; finally he decided they had gotten everything they could.

“So?” asked Stoner as they drove away.

“We'll see what the techies say. They can construct a three-D model when they look it over,” said Danny.

“That thing like a radar?” asked Stoner.

“No, it uses heat signatures so it can't be detected. We call in IR or infrared, but the techies say it has a somewhat wider band. The sensors are here.” Danny pointed to the top rim of the glasses. “They have to be
kept fairly cool to work right. But they have better range than the viewers on our Smart Helmets, and since there's no radio waves, there's nothing to be detected.”

“I'd still like to get inside.”

“Fine by me,” said Danny.

“They make seats for aircraft,” said Stoner. “I have somebody working on getting us in as buyers. But it's going to take a few days.”

“Is it big enough?” asked Liu.

“Could be,” said Danny. “We'll see what the tech people say.”

“There's a rail line that runs from the back over to the airport,” said Stoner. “Chun Sue owns some hangars there. That's one of the companies Chen Lee owns. As far as I know, only one is occupied. I figure we hit the empties first.”

They uploaded the data on the way over. The Dreamland techies told Danny that he had only managed to see about eighty feet inside the building; a stock of insulation and fabric for the chairs blocked a deeper view. Everything they had been able to see was consistent with a seat factory—or something trying to look like one.

They didn't need the viewer in the airport; all the hangars were open and unguarded. Stoner had prepared a story—they were looking to lease a facility—but no one seemed to even notice they were there.

Danny took a small scoop and wad of plastic bags from the attaché case he'd brought, sampling some of the dust so the chemicals could be analyzed. He also took out the Geiger counter and took some readings; all were within background norms.

“Just a hangar,” said Stoner, walking to sit on an old crate in the corner.

“What's the crate say?” Danny asked.

“It's the name of a fish company. Heavenly Fish, along those lines.”

“Why would it be here?” Danny asked. He bent down to examine it.

“Shipped cargo in and out. Lost one of the crates,” said Stoner.

“The crate wasn't used to carry fish. It's too clean.”

Stoner shrugged.

Danny took a picture with his digital camera, then took out his knife and took a sample of the wood where it had been worn down. He took his rad meter out again, but found nothing special. Finally, he planted a pair of the video camera bugs near the doorway.

The cams were about the size and shape of three-quarter-inch bolts, the kind that might be used to secure a part on a child's bicycle. There were two types, one with a wide-angle lens and the other more narrowly focused but able to work in near darkness. Each sent its signal to a transmitter the size of a nine-volt battery, which could be hidden anywhere with fifty feet of the cams. This transmitter in turn linked with a large base station—about the size of a cement block though nowhere near as heavy—that uploaded images either on command or in a random burst pattern that made it difficult to detect. The cameras and transmitters themselves used a similar random pattern with a very weak signal that would generally escape detection.

“You sure those things work?” asked Stoner as they got back in the car.

Danny turned to Liu, who gave him a thumbs-up. The sergeant was using his sat phone to talk to Dream Command, where the techies had just finished diagnostics
on the gear, confirming there was a signal.

“Now I am,” said the captain.

The hangar that housed the airplane was open, and the four Americans managed to walk right in. The building was about twice the size of the others, and the Boeing 767-200ER it housed filled only about a third of the massive space. The wings of the large airliner were covered with large sheets of rolled cardboard, and the place smelled of fresh paint.

A pair of Chun Sue employees came over and told them that the company airplane was undergoing refurbishment. The men were very polite, and seemed flattered by the praise Danny threw at the airplane, which in fact was a beautiful piece of machinery. The 767 typically cruised between 35,000 and 40,000 feet; this model, optimized for the long-distance flights common in Asia, could clock close to six thousand miles before having to hit the gas pumps.

The experts back in Dreamland noted one other interesting fact about the airplane as they briefed Danny through the headset connecting to his sat phone—it was a bit large for the airport, which was generally used by smaller jets and turboprops on local hops.

Danny took several photos with his small camera for them, and planted a pair of video cams near the entrance.

“Those suckers cost a fortune,” he told Stoner as they left.

“The company is pretty rich,” said Stoner. “You notice anything funny about the paint?”

“Besides the fact that the plane doesn't need painting?”

“The colors are used by the People's Xia Airlines.”

“They own them too?”

“That's a Mainland airline,” said Stoner. “They left off the symbols on the tail, but otherwise it's a ringer.”

Brunei IAP, Field Seven
Dreamland Temporary Hangar
1312

Z
EN TOOK ONE
look at Starship and rolled his eyes.

“Where the hell did you find alcohol in Brunei?”

“Excuse me, sir?” said Starship.

If Zen had had any doubts about Starship's sobriety, the accent he put on “sir” would have dispelled them.

“Take the rest of the day off,” he told the lieutenant. “You were due rest anyway. I shouldn't have called you back.”

“I can fly, Zen. Major—I can fly.”

“Go take a shower, Starship. That's an order.”

Starship's face turned red. He spun on his heel and retreated from the hangar.

“You and me, Kick, let's go,” said Zen, backing his wheelchair away so he could go and get his flight suit and other gear. “
Pennsylvania
is taking off in an hour. We're way behind schedule.”

 

T
HEY LAUNCHED THE
Flighthawk as soon as they were over water. Zen took the first leg of the flight, checking
on some of the merchant ships that lay in their path. He wanted Kick to take the last half of the flight so he'd have the experience of landing at Tainan Air Base, their destination on Taiwan.

“See the ship there, Kick?” he asked his nugget assistant, who was monitoring the flight from the second station.

“Yes, sir.”

“Zero the cursor in, query it, get the registration data.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Relax, Kick, I'm not going to bite your head off. You don't have to say ‘sir' every ten seconds.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zen laughed.

Both Kick and Starship were excellent pilots and Flighthawk operators, but both men tended to be nervous around him. Was it because he was in charge of the program and therefore had a huge amount to say over their futures?

Or was it the wheelchair?

When he first came from his accident, he would have automatically assumed the latter. Lately, though, he'd become more discerning, or at least willing to let the complicated attitudes people had toward him ride.

Most days, anyway.

The wheelchair could get in the way. It had with Fentress—but that was Zen's fault. He'd been jealous of the kid, or rather jealous of the fact that the kid could walk away from a session and he couldn't. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

“Got the data,” said Kick.

“So? What do you think?” Zen asked.

The information was already on Zen's screen—the ship was a Malaysian freighter.

“Looks pretty straightforward. Carrying tea. My thinking is we go over low and slow, find out. No big deal.”

“No big deal.” Zen nudged the Flighthawk toward the ship. The computer already had a dotted line plotted for the recon run; he authorized the flight and gave control to C
³
.

“You know how I got crippled?” he said to Kick.

“I heard some sort of accident.”

“Mack Smith and I were having a mock dogfight with the Flighthawks. I got too close to one of them. Sawed me in half. I was below five hundred feet. A lot below, actually. I don't even remember bailing out.”