Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland) (8 page)

2

CIA campus, Virginia

D
ANNY
F
REAH PAUSED
FOR A SECOND, WAITI
NG FOR
the computerized security system to recognize him by his biometrics, then continued through the large, empty basement space surrounding the “Cube”—Whiplash’s secure command center on the CIA headquarters campus in McLean, Virginia. He walked directly toward a black wall, which grew foggy as he approached. The wall was actually a sophisticated energy field, which allowed him through as soon as he touched it and was recognized by the security system.

He went down the hallway—these walls were “real”—to the central command center, where Breanna Stockard, Jonathon Reid, and six specialists were monitoring the Iran operation in a small, theaterlike room. Three rows of curved console tables, arranged on descending levels, sat in front of large screen. The floor, chairs, and tables moved, allowing the room to be reconfigured in a half-dozen ways, including a bowl-like arrangement that reminded Danny of a baseball stadium. While the designers had hailed the flexibility, it turned out the room was almost exclusively used as it was now, in a traditional “mission control” layout.

Paul Smith looked up at Danny from the back bench. Smith was a military mission coordinator “borrowed” by Whiplash from the Air Force’s Space Reconnaissance Command. He’d worked as the liaison with Dreamland on the nano-UAVs, and was now the primary communications link to the command center with Turk and the ground team. Like the others in the room, he generally handled a variety of tasks, often all at once.

“He’s in-country,” Smith told Danny.

“Any trouble?”

“Not with the jump. They had to move, though. One of the owners came to the house where the Delta team had hidden. Just one of those things. Murphy’s Law.”

“Were they compromised?” Danny asked.

Smith shook his head. He wore civilian clothes to fit in with the rest of the team; only Danny was in uniform. “Bad luck for them.”

Smith meant for the people who had undoubtedly been killed, though Danny didn’t ask.

Luck, good or otherwise, was the wildcard of life. It was also the one ingredient of every operation, covert or conventional, that could never be fully factored in. Things happened or didn’t happen; you planned for as many contingencies as possible, then thought on your feet.

As it happened, the team’s presence at the farm was already part of a contingency plan—they’d moved from what had been an abandoned warehouse complex when workmen showed up suddenly to start tearing down the place. But then the entire operation was a cascading series of contingencies, revamped on the run.

“They have another site about two miles farther north,” added Smith. “They have two guys there who’ve been watching it from a hide nearby. They should be OK there.”

“Danny, do you have a minute?” asked Breanna, rising from her seat at the front. She came up the stairs slowly, obviously tired. Danny guessed that she hadn’t slept the night before. “Just in my office. Coffee?”

“No thanks. Too much on the plane.”

Danny followed Breanna as she detoured into the complex’s kitchenette. The smell of freshly brewed coffee tempted him.

“How was he?” she asked.

“He looked good. He nearly beat one of the trainers to a pulp.”

“There’s yogurt in the fridge,” she told him, going over to the coffeepot. “Good for your allergies.”

“Haven’t been bothering me lately. Desert helped.”

“How was Ray?”

“A sphinx, as usual.”

A smile flickered across Breanna’s face as she brought the coffee to one of the two small tables and sat down. She put both hands around her coffee cup, funneling the warm vapors toward her face.

“Cold?” asked Danny.

“A little,” she confessed. “It’s sitting in one place, I think. What did Sergeant Ransom say?”

“Sergeant Ransom knows his duty,” Danny told her.

“I wish we could have trained someone else for the mission. The timetable just made it impossible. It wasn’t what we planned.”

“I think it’ll be better this way. Easier to train Turk to get along with the snake eaters than to have one of them try and figure out the aircraft.”

“But—”

“They’ll make it out,” Danny told her, reading the concern on her face. “I would have preferred it if it were our team,” he admitted, “but they were already there. They’ll do fine.”

“God, I hope you’re right.” Breanna’s whole body seemed to heave as she sighed; she looked as if she were carrying an immense weight. “The second orbiter will be launched tomorrow night. Once it’s in place so we have full backup, we’ll proceed. Assuming nothing happens between now and then.”

“Sounds good,” said Danny.

Breanna rose. “I don’t think it will be necessary. I think they’ll make it out.”

“So do I,” answered Danny. “I’m sure of it.”

3

Iran

T
HE NEW H
IDING PLACE WAS A CO
LLECTION OF CRAGS
at the back end of what had been a farm in the foothills. It hadn’t been tilled in years, and the two men who’d been watching it reported that they hadn’t seen anyone nearby since they’d arrived some forty-eight hours before.

“We’re near a road the Quds Force uses to truck arms from the capital to the Taliban in western Afghanistan,” said the captain, leading Turk and Grease to a shallow cave where they could rest. “That’s good and bad—good, because we’re likely to be left alone. Bad, because if someone spots us, they’re likely to be armed. And there’ll be a bunch of them.”

“We’ll be ready, Cap,” said Grease.

“Probably never come. Pilot, you should get some rest.” The captain took a quick look around. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go. You got about eight, nine hours.”

Turk set the control pack down against the back wall of the cave, then leaned against it. There were no blankets or sleeping bags—they would have been dead weight on the mission.

Better bullets than a pillow.

One of the trainers had said that in Arizona. Not Grease. But who? And when? The sessions, so intense at the time, were now blurred in his memory. Everything was blurred.

He should sleep. He needed to be alert.

“What’d they do with the car?” he asked Grease.

“They’ll get rid of it somewhere.”

“Were they civilians? The people who came to the house. It was a civilian car.”

“I don’t know who they were. Would it matter, though?” added Grease. “We have to do this. We have to succeed. If we don’t do it, a lot more people are going to die. A lot.”

Turk didn’t disagree. And yet he was disturbed by the idea that they had killed the civilians.

“Rest easy, Pilot,” said Dome, checking on them. “You got a busy night ahead of you.”

“Is that my nickname now?” Turk asked.

“Could be. There’s a lot worse.”

Turk shifted around against the backpack, trying to get to sleep. As his head drifted, Turk remembered falling asleep with Li the night before he left. He relived it in his mind, hoping it would help him nod off, or at least shift his mind into neutral.

4

Washington, D.C.

“I
’VE NEVER SMOKED I
N MY LIFE.”
P
RESIDEN
T
T
ODD
rose from the chair, defiant, angry, ready to do battle. “Never.”

“I know.” Amanda Ross raised her gaze just enough to fix the President’s eyes. Dr. Ross had been Todd’s personal physician for nearly twenty years, dating to Todd’s first stay in Washington as a freshman congresswoman. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Todd folded her arms and tried to temper her voice. They were in the President’s Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House, used by Todd as a private, after-hours office, a place she could duck into late at night while her husband slept in the bedroom next door. Now it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and with the exception of the Secret Service detail just outside the door, the floor was empty, but Todd didn’t want to broadcast her condition to even her most trusted aides. “Just give me the details plainly.”

“It’s a relatively . . . well not rare, but lesser, um . . .” The doctor stumbled for words.

“Lung cancer,” said Todd, a little sharper than she wished. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Chris. Madam President.”

“Chris is fine. We’ve known each other long enough for that.” Todd reached her hand to the doctor’s arm and patted it. “I do want to know everything. And I’m not blaming you.”

“I know.”

Todd squeezed the doctor’s arm, then sat back down in the chair. “Tell me everything you know about large cell undifferentiated carcinoma. I won’t interrupt until you’re done.”

“I
’M NOT RE
SIGNING.”
P
RESIDENT
T
ODD POINTED HER
finger at her husband. For just a moment he was the enemy, he was the cancer.

“Resectioning your lung, followed by chemo?
Chris
-tine.”

The way he said her name, dragging it out so that it was a piece of music—it took her back in time to a dozen different occasions, all difficult and yet somehow happily nostalgic now. She loved him dearly—but if she didn’t stay hard, if she didn’t stay angry, she would crumple.

“I did not take my oath only to give up two years into my term.”

“Three, I think.” He looked over his reading glasses. He was sitting up in bed, reading his latest mystery novel, as was his bedtime habit for all the years she’d known him. “And don’t think I haven’t counted the days.”

“In any event, I’m not giving up.”

“Jesus, it’s not giving up, Christine.”

“I have a responsibility to the people who elected me. To the country.”

“Not to yourself?”

“The office comes first.”

“Well maybe you should think about the sort of job you’ll be doing when you’re vomiting twenty-four/seven from the chemo.”

Her lip began to quaver. She felt her toughness start to fade. “You’re so cruel.”

Daniel Todd put the book down and got out of bed. He glided across the room, forty years of wear and tear vanishing in an eye-blink. He reached down to the chair and pulled her up, folding her gently in his grasp. He put his cheek next to hers. She smelled the faint sweetness of the bourbon he’d drunk earlier in the evening lingering in his breath.

“I love you, Chris. I’ll stand by you, whatever you decide. But honestly, love, just for once, could you please think about yourself? Your health. The Republic will survive.”

“I know it will, Dan.”

The President bent her face toward his shoulder, wiping away the single tear that had slipped from her eye.

And then she was over it, back in control.

“I get to the point where I can’t carry out my duties, then, yes, yes, then I will resign. But the doctor assures me—”

“Now listen—”

“The doctor
assures
me that it is at an early stage. There’s hope. A lot of hope. And a plan to deal with it.”

“I know there’s hope.”

Todd rested against her husband’s arms for another few seconds, then gently pushed him away. She took his hands, and together they went and sat on the edge of the bed.

“When are you going to go public?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You can’t keep it a secret.”

“I realize that. But there’s a lot going on at the moment.”

“Chris-tine. There is always a lot going on.”

“I think what I’ll do is announce it right before the surgery. That’s the most appropriate time.”

“Says you.”

“Yes, but I’m paid to make that decision.” She smiled at him; Reid was always telling her the same thing. “Besides, there’s no sense worrying people beforehand.”

“You won’t tell your staff?”

“I will. But doing that is almost a sure guarantee that it will go public.”

“What about your reelection campaign?”

“That—That is a problem.”

“You’re
not
running for reelection.”

“No. I agree.” Todd had given it a great deal of thought. Even if things did work out right—and she was sure they would—she didn’t think the public would vote for someone who’d had lung cancer. True, attitudes about cancer were changing, but they weren’t changing that much. Todd herself wasn’t sure whether she would give someone a job knowing he or she had cancer that would require aggressive treatment. So the best thing to do would be not to run. She’d been on the fence anyway; this just pushed her off.

“I’ll avoid the issue for a while,” she told her husband. “If I make myself a lame duck, Congress will be even more of a pain.”

“Avoid the issue, or put off a decision?” asked her husband.

“The decision is made, love.” She let go of his hand and patted it, then moved back on the bed. Her nightgown snagged a little; she rearranged it neatly.

“They’ll hound you until you say something, once the news about the cancer is out.”

“True. But I’m used to that. The big problem is lining up a successor.”

“You’re going to line up a successor?”

“If I can, yes.”

“How?”

“With my support. I have my ways.”

“Not Mantis?” He meant Jay Mantis, the vice president.

“Don’t even think it.” Privately, Todd called him the Preying Mantis, and it was anything but a compliment. He was the most duplicitous person she had ever met in politics, and that was saying a great deal.

“Who then?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my mind.”

“I have some ideas.”

“I’ll bet you do.” She pulled back the covers and pushed her feet under. “I have more immediate problems to worry about over the next few days.”

“Chris.”

“Don’t be a mother hen.”

“A father hen.”

Todd let her head sink into the pillow. Her health would wait; she had to deal with the Iranian mess first. Which meant a few hours nap, then back to work.

“Feel like going to sleep?” she asked her husband.

“To bed, yes. Sleep no.”

“That sounds a lot like what I was thinking. Let me turn off the light.”