Retribution (20 page)

He also knew that with the sun sliding low in the sky, there was no way he’d make it back to the tent before it got too dark to see, if he crawled over land. Swimming might take an hour at most; it was a risk he was going to have to take.

He pulled the knife from the turtle’s shell and held it in his teeth, ready to use. Then he pushed his way down to the water. Positioning himself at the edge of the water, he took a breath and started to swim. He held the turtle in his left hand, closest to the open sea, and stayed in water as shallow as possible. At times he felt his legs dragging against the rocks.

Except, of course, he didn’t. Because he couldn’t feel anything in his legs.

He pushed as well as swam, stopping several times because the knife made it difficult to breathe. He was nearly back to the tent where he’d left Breanna when he heard the voice calling to him over the waves.

“Friend! Friend of Bart! Where are you?”

He stopped paddling for a moment, listening as the voice called for him again.

Should he go back? Was it a trap?

Unsure, he decided his first priority was getting the dead turtle back to the tent. He took a few more strokes, then beached himself for good, crawling out of the water with the turtle, a little worse for wear but still intact. Even as he pulled
the animal onto the rocks, he worried a shark would rise up and snatch it from him,
Jaws
-style.

Zen slipped the knife in his belt and pushed up the rocks toward the tent. He had to stop twice, exhausted, to gather his breath. Finally, when he was about twenty feet from the tent, he looked up and saw a figure standing next to it.

“Bree!” he shouted.

Then he realized the figure was too skinny and short to be his wife. It held up a stick.

“Who are you?” he demanded, sliding his hand down to the knife.

“Whoareya?”
said the figure.

“Simpsons?” asked Zen.

The figure took a step closer, coming out of the shadow. It was a kid, though not the same one he had seen earlier. He was older, a little bigger. He held the stick out menacingly, as if it were a spear.

“Who are you?” asked the youth.

“Hey, where’s your friend?” Zen asked. “The Bart Simpson fan?”

The boy didn’t say anything.

“Did he tell you I know Bart Simpson?”

There was a shout from behind Zen. He whirled, the knife out and ready.

It was the boy he’d seen earlier.

“You
do
know Bart Simpson?” said the kid.

“My best friend.”

The other kid shouted something and pointed. It took Zen a few seconds to realize he was pointing at the turtle.

“Food,” said Zen, gesturing at the dead animal. “I’m going to start a fire.”

Both kids started talking at once, first in a language he couldn’t recognize, then in English. Gradually, they made him understand that they had come to the island to hunt for turtles and wanted his.

While the two kids spoke English, Zen had trouble understanding their accents.

“The turtles have to be bigger,” said the younger boy.

“We take,” said the older boy.

“I don’t think so,” Zen told him.

The boy came down and grabbed at the turtle. Zen pulled it toward him. The kid started talking rapidly, and Zen couldn’t understand.

“We need,” said the younger boy finally. “You give.”

“Why do you need it?” asked Zen.

He couldn’t understand the answer. The turtle had been difficult to capture and kill, and Zen was hardly confident he could get another. But simply turning the boys away would be foolish.

“If I give it to you, can you bring me a cell phone?” said Zen.

Now it was the boys who didn’t understand.

“Phone,” said Zen. He mimicked one. “T-r-rring-ring.”

“Phone,” said the younger boy.

“Yes. Can you bring me one?”

“Phone.”

“I give you the turtle, you give me a phone.”

“Phone, yes,” said the older boy.

It seemed to be a deal. By now it was getting dark, and the boys managed to explain to him that they had to leave. They told him that they would be back the next day.

Or at least he thought that’s what they said.

As soon as he gave them the turtle, they lit out for the eastern side of the island, where they had apparently left their boats. Zen immediately regretted the deal, sensing he’d been gypped. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He checked on Breanna, still sleeping fitfully, then retrieved the stick the older boy had tossed aside, and with it and the driftwood he’d gathered the day before he managed to start a small fire.

A strong foreboding overcame him as he went to Breanna, intending to pull her a little closer to the fire. He closed his eyes as he crawled the last few feet, fearing he would find her dead.

She was still breathing, more rhythmically it seemed to him.

“Can you feel the fire here?” he asked her.

She made no sign that she heard.

“Come on down with me a little. It’ll warm you up a bit. Just a bit.”

He cradled her upper body on his lap and pushed closer to the fire. It wasn’t much, but he could feel the warmth, and hoped she could too.

Zen told his wife about the boys. “Funny that they know the Simpsons, huh? I told them I’m Bart’s best friend. Maybe they’ll come back for an autograph.”

He remembered the radio. He hadn’t broadcast all day.

He reached into his pocket for Breanna’s watch to check the time, but it wasn’t there.

Had he put it in his other pocket? He swung his body around and reached to his left.

It wasn’t there either. He began to search feverishly, sure it was somewhere in his flight suit—then not sure. Had he left it in the tent? Given it back to Breanna? Where was it?

Where the hell was it?

It’s the little things that make you crazy.

Zen heard the voice, but he knew it was only in his head—a snatch of a memory, part of a lecture someone had given during his survival training. The point had been: Don’t obsess over things that aren’t important.

He didn’t need a watch. Time was irrelevant. They’d be listening for him around the clock.

Zen went to the radio and made several calls, but there was no answer, and even the static sounded far away.

Tired, he poked at the fire. It was dark, and with the embers glowing a faint orange, he huddled around his wife and drifted off to sleep.

Southeastern Pakistan
1900

D
ANNY
F
REAH STUDIED THE IMAGE FROM THE
I-17
LANDING
zone in his smart helmet, mentally plotting the Ospreys’ in
gress into the site. They had just swung south of the nearest village and were about ten minutes from the landing area.

“When you make your cut north,” he told the Osprey pilot, bending down over the console that separated the two aviators at the front of the aircraft, “you have a straight run to the target. There’s a slight rise to the road. It looks like there’s a high spot overlooking it and the missile as well.”

Unlike the Dreamland birds, the Marine Ospreys weren’t set up to receive the video image. Once they got close, though, their forward looking infrared radar would provide a good view.

The pilot put up his hand, gesturing to Danny that they were now five minutes from the landing zone.

“Clean,” said Danny.

Behind him the Marines got ready to hit the dirt. Even though this was the third warhead they’d recovered today, the men still tensed as they gathered near the door. Danny could smell the sweat as their adrenaline picked up and they got ready to go.

The Ospreys bucked slightly as they pitched toward the ground. The rear ramp opened and the Marines swarmed over the desert, anxious ants swarming an abandoned picnic basket.

Danny had Starship give him the widest possible view of the area from the Flighthawk; after making sure it was clean, he tapped the pilot on the shoulder and went to join the men as they took control of the area. Two fire teams ran full throttle to the highway, moving in opposite directions so they could observe and stop any traffic if necessary. Four men went toward the village, setting up a post where they could watch for anyone approaching them.

“Secure, Captain,” said the ranking Marine NCO, a gunnery sergeant named Bob McNamera, who, like gunnery sergeants throughout the Corps, was called Gunny. “Ready to take a look at our Easter egg?”

“Let’s get a look,” said Danny, starting toward the warhead.

It was larger than the last two. Much of the fairing was burnt, and the ground around it was scorched. Bits and pieces of rocket were scattered behind it in an extended starburst pattern.

“This one’s a different missile than the others,” Danny told Dreamland Command as he scanned the area with his smart helmet’s built-in camera. “Bigger.”

“Very good,” replied Ray Rubeo over the satellite connection.

“Different procedure for disarming?”

“We’re determining that right now, Captain. What exactly is the ETA of Ms. Gleason to the site?”

“Huh?”

“When is Ms. Gleason expected to arrive?”

“Ms. Gleason
isn’t
expected to arrive.”

Rubeo cleared his throat, then explained that Jennifer Gleason was en route with the rest of the Whiplash ground team.

“Are you kidding?” Danny said. “They’re supposed to parachute into our camp in India an hour from now.”

“It would be useful for Ms. Gleason to join you at the scene,” said Rubeo. “Sooner rather than later.”

“Who told her she could do a night jump?”

“Who tells Ms. Gleason she can do anything?”

Aboard MC-17
Quickmover,
over northwestern India
1955

“C
HANGE IN PLANS
, J
EN
,”
SAID
S
ERGEANT
L
IU AFTER HE
clambered down the ladder from the cockpit area. “We’re going to go out a bit farther north than originally planned.”

“OK,” she answered, gripping her jump helmet. She was sitting with the other Whiplashers on a row of plastic fold-down seats at the side of the large cargo hold. The big aircraft was empty except for a small pallet of gear that would be dropped with the team.

“You sure you don’t want to hitch up?” Liu asked.

“I hate tandem jumps,” she said.

“It’s a high altitude jump at nighttime.”

“I’m Army qualified, Sergeant.”

Liu gave her a dubious look, but it was true. A year before, she had suffered the ignominy of a tandem jump into Iran. She liked the excitement of parachuting, but didn’t like being tethered to someone else. So she’d gone to the trouble of completing a parachute course with a former Army Ranger and master combat jumper.

“Qualified” was a relatively low standard—a soldier could earn the basic Army parachutist badge with five jumps, only one of which was at night. Liu and his men would do five jumps in a single day just to stay sharp. And HALO jumps—high altitude, low opening—weren’t even part of the program.

“I’ve had three night jumps, all with more gear than I’m carrying now,” added Jennifer, sensing Liu’s objections. “And I’ve done thirty jumps, including three HALO. OK? So I don’t need a keeper.”

“Hey, I jumped with her, Nurse,” said Sergeant Geraldo “Blow” Hernandez. Blow was also the team jumpmaster. “She’s got the goods.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“It’s gonna cost you,” said Blow.

“Not if I hit the ground first.”

Southeastern Pakistan
2010

“G
LOBAL
H
AWK SHOWS A CAR COMING
, C
APTAIN
. D
RIVING
from the east.”

Danny couldn’t believe the bad timing. The Whiplash team had just gone out of the aircraft.

“How fast?”

“Hard to tell,” said Gunny. “Ground team can’t see him yet. You want us to nuke him?”

Danny knew what the sergeant meant, but it was still a poor choice of words.

“Let’s see if he goes fast enough to miss them,” Danny told the sergeant. “Better for all of us if he just drives on.”

“Your call,” said the Marine, his tone leaving no doubt that he disagreed with Danny’s decision.

Danny waited for the car to come into view. If only the Whiplash team had jumped, he could have told Liu and the others to change their landing spot to avoid being detected. But he felt that was too much to ask of Jennifer.

She really shouldn’t have been on the mission at all.

“Guy’s a slowpoke,” said Gunny, who was watching the car with a set of night glasses.

Danny glanced toward the sky. The team would be opening their chutes just about now.

“We may make it,” said Danny hopefully.

“Your call.”

“Yes, it is.”

T
HE SHOCK OF WIND AS SHE HIT THE SLIPSTREAM BELOW
the jet sent a chill through Jennifer so severe that her legs shook. Even with the Dreamland night-vision technology embedded in the smart helmet, all she could see was black.

“Damn,” she told herself.

That was as close as she would come to admitting that she’d bit off a little more than she could comfortably chew. She pulled her arms and legs back closer to her torso, shaping herself into a frog position as she plummeted downward. The altimeter in the smart helmet was somewhat distracting—the default display flashed large numerals in blue as the jumper descended—but she did like the infrared night view, which bathed the world in a warm green glow.

It didn’t feel like she was falling. The sensation was more of flying, sailing through the air at a tremendous clip. For all her intellectual skills, Jennifer loved to push her body; running and rock climbing were regular pursuits. Skydiving wasn’t quite as much fun—there was too much prep involved,
which meant she had to plan quite a bit with her schedule. But it was definitely a rush.

The smart helmet showed her where she was compared to her designated landing zone. She tilted her arm and left leg, leaning back to the right spot.

A tone sounded. Jennifer yanked the ripcord, and within moments the loud hurricane rush transformed into something gentler. This wasn’t the lullaby of a bassinet slowly lulling a newborn to sleep: she had to work, checking her canopy with the aid of a wrist flashlight and then steering according to the cues given by the helmet. The parachutist and her parachute were a miniature aircraft, capable of flying literally miles before touching down.