Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (57 page)

 
          
“Dreamland
Command to B-5. Zen, how are you doing?” asked Colonel Bastian over the
Dreamland circuit.

 
          
“We’re
on course.”

 
          
“Good.”

 
          
Bastian’s
voice betrayed no emotion; he could have been asking if the garbage pickup had
been made yet. Zen wanted to curse at him. Didn’t he feel anything for his
daughter?

 
          
No
one did. She was already dead as far as everyone else was concerned. He was
just looking for bodies or debris.

 
          
But
Zen knew she was there. He was going to find her.

 
          
“Keep
us apprised,” said the colonel. “Dreamland Command out.”

 
          
Yeah,
out.

 
          
Something
tapped him on the shoulder. “You okay?” said Jennifer, leaning close and
talking to him.

 
          
“Not
a problem,” said Zen.

 
          
“Want
something to eat? I smuggled in some cookies.”

 
          
Talking
threw off his beat, and that made it harder to concentrate.

 
          
“No,”
he said, willing his eyes back to the task. He pushed forward harder, scanning
the emptiness below him.

 
          
This
is what God sees, someone had told him once. It was an orientation flight in
the backseat of an SR-71. They were at eighty thousand feet, looking down at
Dreamland on a clear day.

 
          
Picture,
new picture.

 
          
Here
was something in the right corner of his screen, the first thing he’d seen in
fifteen minutes.

 
          
The
rail of a ship.

 
          
The
fantail of a ship.

 
          
A
trawler, the radar was telling him, or rather the computer was interpreting the
radar and telling him, in its synthesized voice.

 
          
He
locked it out. He had to concentrate.

 
          
One
of the Taiwanese spy ships.

 
          
“You’re
getting the ship?” Jennifer asked over the interphone, back at her station.
Even though they were physically next to each other, she couldn’t get the photo
or radar feed until it was processed and recorded by C³, which took a little
over five seconds. At that point, it was available to Dreamland as well.

 
          
“One
of the Taiwanese ships,” said Zen. “Maybe they’re on to something.”

 
          
He
was past them now, still pulsing over the empty sea. Picture, new picture.
Picture, new picture.

 
          
“
PacCom
checking in,” said Jennifer a few minutes later.

 
          
Picture,
new picture.

 
          
“Anything
you want to ask them? Or give them a lead or something?”

 
          
Picture,
new picture.

 
          
“Zen?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
Picture,
new picture. He glanced down at the lower portion of his screen, reading the
instruments—the fuel consumption was nudging a little higher than anticipated,
but otherwise everything was in the green. He selected the forward
video—nothing there, of course, since he was coming through sixty thousand
feet—then went back to the routine.

 
          
Picture,
new picture. Picture, new picture.

 
          
“Jeff,
one of the Navy planes thinks it picked up a radio signal. We’re going to
change our course and see if we can get over there,” said Major Alou. “It’s
going to take us toward your search area. It’s about two hundred miles from our
present position. So it’ll be a bit.”

 
          
Yes.
Finally.

 
          
“Give
me coordinates,” he said.

 
          
“I
will when we have them. We’re going very close to the Chinese fleet,” added
Alou.

 
          
“Okay.”
Zen reached to the console to pull up the mapping screen—he’d need to work out
a new pattern with the team back at Dreamland, but he wanted a rough idea of it
first. Just as his fingers hit the key sequence, something flickered at the
right side of the picture.

 
          
“Dreamland
is wondering about the performance of the number-two engine,” said Jennifer.
“They’re worried about power going asymmetric.”

 
          
Asymmetric.
Stinking scientists.

 
          
The
map came up. Zen’s fingers fumbled—he wasn’t used to working these controls,
couldn’t find the right sequence.

 
          
Picture,
new picture.

 
          
“What
should I tell them?” said Jennifer.

 
          
“We
have a good location on that signal,” broke in Alou. “I’m going to turn you
over—”

 
          
“Wait!”
said Zen. He pushed up the visor and looked at the keyboard, finding the keys
to bring the picture back up. “Everybody just give me a minute.”

 
          
South China Sea

 
          
Date
and time unknown

 
          
As
he leaned down toward her, something caught his attention. Stoner looked toward
the horizon. There was something there—or he thought there was.

 
          
“Water,”
she said.

 
          
He
reached for the small metal bottle, gave it to her. She took half a gulp.

 
          
She
was so beautiful.

 
          
“It’s
almost empty,” she told him.

 
          
He
nodded, took his own small sip, put it in his pants leg. “We have another,” he
said.

 
          
“Where?”

 
          
Where?
He didn’t see it.

 
          
She
lifted up, looking.

 
          
It
was gone. They must have lost it when the sharks attacked.

 
          
The
radio was gone too. They had an empty water bottle and an empty gun.

 
          
“It’s
all right,” he told her. “It’s okay—look.”

 
          
“What?”

 
          
He
put his arms around her, then pointed toward the horizon.

 
          
“I
don’t see anything.”

 
          
“Look,”
he said. Stoner put his head on her shoulder, pointing with his arm. His cheek
brushed hers. “There,” he said.

 
          
Aboard Iowa

 
          
The
resolution of the optics in the UMB’s belly were rated good enough to focus on
a one-meter object at an altitude of 22,300 miles, roughly the height necessary
for a geosynchronous orbit. A number or variables affected that focus, however,
and the designers at Dreamland had found it more expedient and meaningful in
presentations to say that, at any altitude above twenty thousand feet, the camera
array could see what a person with 20/10 vision could see across a good-sized
room. The metaphor was both memorable and accurate, and often illustrated with
the added example that a person with that vision could read the letters on a
bracelet as she reached to embrace and kiss her lover.

 
          
Zen
saw it as clearly as that.

 
          
The
edge of a raft. A foot. A leg.

 
          
Then
bodies entwined.

 
          
Their
cheeks were together—had they just kissed?

 
          
“I
have them,” he said, mouth dry. “Here are the coordinates.”

 
          
South China Sea

 
          
Date
and time unknown

 
          
“Don’t,”
said Breanna, in a soft, hoarse voice.

 
          
“No?”

 
          
She
could feel his heart beating next to hers. Desire began to well inside her,
pushing her toward him. She needed him, needed to feel his arms wrapping around
her, feel his skin on her skin. She needed to feel him push against her, wrap
her legs around his.

 
          
“No,”
she said.

 
          
“It’s
there,” Stoner told her. She couldn’t tell whether he meant the ship he’d seen,
or his feelings for her, or his lips. Suddenly she had an urge to throw herself
into the water, just dive in. she started to move upward. Perhaps sensing her
thoughts, he grabbed her; she slid into his arms and then said “no” again, the
pointed.

 
          
Now
she saw it too, a ship.

 
          
“The
flare gun,” she said.

 
          
“We
don’t have it,” said Stoner. The words emptied his eyes.

 
          
She’d
seen the same blankness in Zen’s face when he told her she’d known for weeks,
that he couldn’t feel his legs and would never feel them again.

 
          
Jeffrey.
Her desire raged and she reached toward him. A wave pushed her to his chest,
but then pulled the boat back; she struggled to push up, to throw herself
around him, but Stoner was steadying himself in a crouch at the edge of the
raft, trying to stand, or at least squat, waving.

 
          
“Balance
me,” he told her without looking, his voice a whisper. “On the other end.”

 
          
She
went to do so.

 
          
“No,
they’re not going to see us. Paddle, we’ll have to paddle,” he said.

 
          
“The
sharks,” she said, her words barely a whisper in her own ears. Before she could
repeat them louder, he had slipped into the water/

 
          
“Wave,”
he said. “Shout.”

 
          
“The
sharks.”

 
          
“Wave,
jump, anything. Get their attention.”

 
          
Airborne over the South China Sea

 
          
The
idea came to Zen only after it was too late:

 
          
Block
the transmission, kill the feed. No one will know.

 
          
It
was absurd and murderous, and once it occurred to him he couldn’t forget it:
anger, jealousy, and shame surging together. But it was too late, fortunately
too late—Dreamland had the feed, the radar had a good lock, the GPS data was
now being fed not just to Iowa’s flight deck but to the Whiplash Osprey.

 
          
Too
late, thank God.