Strike Zone. Dale Brown
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Zen jerked away from the controls. Stoner walked down the long ramp at the far end toward him.
Zen wheeled his chair around. ‘What’s up?’
‘Want to get a beer or something?’
‘No.’
The CIA officer pulled out the chair from the main programmer’s station and sat on it, rolling it forward as Zen approached.
‘You don’t like me, Major,’ said Stoner.
‘Is that relevant?’
‘Probably not.’
Stoner and Breanna had lashed themselves together after bailing out, and it was probably because of that that they survived the fierce storm that had swallowed most of the rest of the crew. Zen didn’t begrudge Stoner that.
If anything, he should be grateful.
And yet.
And yet.
He just didn’t like him.
‘I don’t think it’s Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘Is that the flight where we got shot down?’
‘More or less.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘You’re not in the picture,’ said Zen, but he rolled back anyway.
The simulation area duplicated a Flighthawk control deck aboard an EB-52, with a double set of configurable displays and dedicated systems readouts. It wasn’t a perfect match – some of the equipment on the side racks was omitted, the floor was cement rather than metal mesh, and most importantly, the station never reacted to turbulence. The simulator that did, located down the hall, required at least one techie to run.
‘We didn’t go in like that,’ said Stoner, watching the screen that showed Quicksilver. ‘Breanna – your wife – held us up and got us away from danger before telling us to bail. There was some other stuff, self-destruct routines.’
‘We skip that. We’re not really interested in the accident, just the ghost clone.’
‘Where is it?’
Zen slapped at the keyboard. The sitrep showed it at seventy-five miles, to the northeast of the Chinese fleet.
‘It’s got to be spying on the Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘But it doesn’t really make sense that the Indians would send it that far around, does it?’
‘No,’ said Zen.
‘It could be another Chinese unit,’ Stoner said. ‘The admiral in charge of this fleet, Xiam, is not well-liked. But I still don’t think they have the technology.’
‘They spy on themselves?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I know how we can settle it,’ said Zen. ‘We go back, buzz their coast, see if it comes out.’
Stoner shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
Zen had thought of the idea earlier and been ready to reject it because it didn’t seem as if the clone could be Chinese. But if what Stoner was saying was true – that one unit might spy on another – then the clone’s location made perfect sense.
‘We fly over their coast, try to get them to come out. If it’s Chinese, eventually they’ll come and take a look. In the meantime, we can adjust our Elint gear to look for their transmissions,’ added Zen. ‘Now that we know what we’re looking for, our range will be wider. They won’t know it.’
‘I guess.’
‘You have a better idea?’ Zen asked.
‘Actually, I came down to suggest it myself.’
Dreamland Perimeter 0525
Jennifer Gleason took the last turn and broke into a sprint as she headed up the hill back toward the low-slung building that housed her small apartment. As she ran, she glanced in the direction of Dog’s small bungalow, hoping he might appear. The fact that he didn’t probably meant he was already over at his office. She channeled her disappointment into her legs, pushing out long strides as she finished her daily run.
One brief warm-down and shower later, she grabbed breakfast from her tiny refrigerator – strawberry-banana yogurt – then headed over to the computer labs located below the main Megafortress hangars. Jennifer liked the feel of the empty lab around her early in the morning; she generally had the large underground complex to herself for at least a few hours and could walk around talking to herself as she figured out problems. That would be especially important today; she had an idea on how they might be able to break into the ghost clone’s coding and take it over, assuming they could get close to it again.
Jennifer got off the elevator and punched her card into the reader next to the door, fingers slipping to the side to hit the number combination to clear the lock while she stared down the retina scan. Inside, she got a pot of coffee going, then went back to kick her computers on so they’d be ready when the coffee was.
Except nothing came up.
Jennifer stared at the blank screens, then reached down to the keyboards and gave her access codes again, directing the terminals to boot into the main system housed in a shielded bunker two floors below. The coffee hissed at her from the bench at the side of the room. She hit Enter and went back for a cup, expecting the screens to be blinking their hellos when she returned. But they were still blank.
Kneeling at her station, she keyed her passwords one letter and number at a time. The system allowed only three tries, so she had to get it right.
She did.
But there was still nothing.
The computers were operating – there was a cursor on the fifteen-inch network screen, and the two larger CRTs had their indicator lights on.
The bungled attempts at signing on locked her out as a user, but not as system administrator. She went to the network bench, where the operating system – which she had helped tweak – was controlled. The monitor flashed to life, reported that the system was in perfect shape – and then refused her password.
‘You get up early,’ said Ray Rubeo, coming into the lab.
‘Something’s wrong with the system,’ said Jennifer.
‘Hardly. Miss Spanish Inquisition has temporarily locked us out of the system.’
‘What?’
Rubeo went to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. He drank the whole cup, black and steaming, in two gulps, then poured himself another one.
‘We’re under suspicion of being spies,’ said Rubeo.
‘No, that’s not true,’ said Danny Freah, entering the room. Cortend was right behind him.
‘Danny, did you lock me out of the system?’
‘I did it,’ said Rubeo. ‘We’re all out.’
‘We’re just following standard procedure,’ said Freah. ‘Just until we can go through some more interviews.’
‘I thought this was an informal inquiry,’ said Jennifer.
Danny didn’t answer.
‘When is this lockout going to end?’ asked Jennifer.
‘When you pass a lie detector test,’ said Cortend.
‘What?’
‘Are you refusing?’ said Cortend.
Jennifer had taken several lie detector tests before, but the implication of it – that she was suspected of being a traitor – floored her. She felt as if she’d been