Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (10 page)

 
          
He
turned off the perimeter road, driving up a short hill toward a bunker halfway
between the underground hangars and the main gate. A brown slant of cement
marked the entrance to the hardened security monitoring station. Lieutenant
William McNally and two airmen were inside, reviewing the security feeds and
drinking coffee, not necessarily in that order.

 
          
“Hey,
Boss,” said McNally as Danny came through the doors. “How’s the admiral?”

 
          
“Looked
like he was searching for a boat.”

 
          
“Can
we shoot down his plan next time? Razor guys say they had it nailed at twenty
miles.”

 
          
Danny
grunted. He checked through the logs, then told McNally he was going over to
the weapons lab to check on his gear. His smart helmet and body armor had been
damaged in Iran; its custom-fitted replacement was due for a final fitting.

 
          
McNally
stopped him, saying a message had come for him while he was with the Admiral.

 
          
“Just
leave it in my cue,” Danny told him.

 
          
“Actually,
it was a voice message, uh, your wife,” said McNally. “She decided to talk to
me.”

 
          
“And?”

 
          
“Says
she’ll be out here this afternoon, Said something about a hotel.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Danny told him.
Jemma
knew exactly what Danny did,
and had gone through her own security check before Danny was allowed to take
his post. Technically, she could come to Dreamland and stay at his quarters on
the base. However, the procedure were elaborate, and it was much easier all
around to put her up in a nice hotel for a few days.

 
          
Put
himself up too.

 
          
“Surprise
that she’s coming?” McNally asked.

 
          
“Not
a surprise, no,” Danny said. “You have a handle on things?”

 
          
“Boss,
you can take off for the next few months as far as I’m concerned. You earned
it.”

 
          
“Thanks,
Billy.” He tapped his radio and then his beeper, wordlessly telling his
lieutenant to call if needed, then headed toward the handheld-weapons lab.

 
          
Annie
Klondike sat hunched over a desk, starting at a small, liver-shaped piece of
metal. Her think white hair had been pulled back into a tight ball, enhancing
her school-
marm
look.

 
          
“Hey,
Annie,
whatcha
got going?” asked Danny.

 
          
“
Hmmmpphhhh
,” she said without looking up.

 
          
Danny
bent over and inspected the metal. “New explosive?”

 
          
“Hardly.”
She pushed herself up from the chair. “You’ll want your helmet, I suppose.”

 
          
“If
it’s convenient.”

 
          
“Convenient?
Captain, you’ve added a new word to your vocabulary.”

 
          
“I
even used it in a sentence,” said Freah.

 
          
“I’d
be curious as to your definition,” she said, beginning her shuffle toward one
of the back areas. “We took the liberty of adding upgrades,” said Annie,
opening the door to a storage closet. “Try the vest first.”

 
          
The
carbon-boron vest that Danny pulled over his chest was no thicker than a
good-quality goose-down ski vest, and weighed nearly the same. The side that
nestled against his ribs had a crinkly feel; pressing it against his side felt
a little like squishing the Styrofoam of a packing peanut.

 
          
“What’s
the cushion?”

 
          
“
Styrated
aluminum,” said Klondike. “Actually a carbonized
alloy, but mostly aluminum.”

 
          
“Aluminum?”

 
          
“It
bears only a passing resemblance to the material used in soda cans, Captain,
not to worry,” said Annie. “I’m told a bullet from a M60E1 at five yards won’t
leave a bruise, though I haven’t found a volunteer willing to demonstrate.”

 
          
“Does
the next upgrade come with a built-in nurse?”

 
          
“Your
helmet is this way,” said the weapons expert tartly. “Have I ever told you, you
have a big head?”

 
          
“All
the time.”

 
          
Danny’s
smart helmet and its connected Combat Information Visor included a display
shield with Video, low-light, infrared, and radiation-detection modes. When
plugged into its com modules—these were generally carried in a small pack on
the wearer’s back or belt—it could tie into Dreamland’s secure satellite
communications system. But that system required coordination back at Dreamland,
as well as being in line of sight of the satellite—fine in some situations, not
in others. Team members on the ground communicated through a discrete-mode unit
that was also line-of-sight—again, fine in some situations but not in others.

 
          
“We
have bowed to popular demand and added a standard radio link,” announced Annie.
“I would caution you: The encryption is merely based on a 128-byte key on a
random skip; it can be broken easily.”

 
          
“By
anyone outside of the NSA and Dreamland?”

 
          
Annie
smiled—slightly. “A simple beacon detector could be used to locate the
transmissions, which, as requested, have a range of five miles. We are looking
at a complementary-wave transmitter that would interfere with the transmissions
beyond an operator-specified range, but alas, it remains to be perfected.”

 
          
“This’ll
do,” said Danny. “It beats having to stand up under fire.”

 
          
“I
imagine it would.”

 
          
Danny
took the new helmet and fit it onto his head. it felt just like the old one—way
too tight and far too heavy.

 
          
“Yes,
I know,” said Klondike, sighing though Danny hadn’t said anything. “We balance
function and utility. We are scientists of the possible, Captain. If we could
shave off another pound while not giving up protection or functionality, we
gladly would.”

 
          
“You’ll
get it right, Annie,” he said.

 
          
“
Hmmmph
. The shape-recognition program is finally operational
and so we have added it. It defaults to ‘on.’ I find it annoying myself, though
the weapons detector is useful.”

 
          
“If
we can trust it,” said Danny.

 
          
“Yes.
Well, Captain, you’ve seen the tests yourself.” The device used pattern
recognition to check shapes in the screen against a library of weapons and
“suspicious polygons.” It was excellent against the obvious—like tanks and
artillery pieces—but tended to be overly suspicious about things like bulges in
pants and pockets. On IR mode, however, it could tell the difference between a
toy gun and the real thing, which was potentially valuable in certain
situations.

 
          
“Let’s
go test the targeting screen,” said Annie. There was almost a suppressed cackle
in her voice as she said that, and Danny knew he’d find a surprise in the
weapons locked at the firing range. Sure enough, the weapons scientist
presented him with a new gun.

 
          
“Silenced
MP-5,” he said admiringly, taking it from her hands.

 
          
“Hardly,”
said Annie. “Try it.”

 
          
Danny
studied the stubby wire at the end. On the other systems that worked with the
visor targeting system, a thin wire ran from the gun to his helmet.

 
          
“No,
there’s no connection. Just point it at the target and shoot,” insisted Annie.

 
          
As
Danny pointed the business end of the German submachine gun down the alley,
crosshairs appeared in the middle of his visor.

 
          
“Please,
I have work to do,” said Annie.

 
          
As
Danny pressed the trigger, he unconsciously raised his shoulder to brace
against the recoil. For a submachine gun, the MP-5 was famously easy to handle;
unlike many predecessors that justly earned the moniker “spray guns,” this was
a precision weapon in the hands of a trained and experienced professional. It
was, however, still a submachine gun, and all the brilliant engineering in the
world could not completely remove the barrel’s tendency under automatic fire to
kick a bit.

 
          
Or
could it? For the gun in Danny’s hands was not only exceedingly quiet—quieter
by far than even the silenced versions of the MP-5 he’s used—but it spit through
its fifteen-bullet magazine with less recoil than a water pistol.

 
          
And
continued to do so. Though it appeared no larger than the standard box, somehow
the magazine contained twenty bullets.

 
          
“
Heh
,” said Annie. She took another clip from her lab coat
and gave it to him. Danny realized it was slightly longer and just a hair
fatter than the standard box. The addition of five bullets didn’t sound like
much—until you had to use them.

 
          
“You
might try aiming this time,” added Annie.

 
          
“I
hit the target square on, bull’s-eye.”

 
          
“You
should have put all the bullets through the same hole.”

 
          
“You
want to try?”

 
          
He’d
been set up. She took the gun with a smile and pressed the button on the wall
to send the paper target back another fifty feet. Without bothering to take his
visor, she blew a rather narrow and perfectly round hole through the “100” at
the center of the head area.

 
          
“It’s
the bullets. Primarily,” she said. “Though I must say our German friends were
quite ingenious with the improvements they suggested to the gun. We’re still
working on them, of course. But we should have enough to outfit your entire
team in a month.”

 
          
“That
long?”

 
          
“My
best advice, Captain, is not to let them try the weapon until then. That boy
Powder especially; he’ll never give it up. Want to take another crack at the
target? Best two out of three. You can use your visor if you want.”

 
          
Aboard the trawler
Gui
,
South China Sea

 
          
August
22, 1997, 0600 local (August 21, 1997, 100 Dreamland)

 
          
KNOW WHITE, BE BLACK

 
          
Chen
Lo
Fann
held the ideograms in his head as he scanned
the horizon. The thick brush strokes and their stark ideas contrasted with the
haze of the horizon, the fickle world flowing in its chaos. The words from the
twenty-fifth chapter of the Tao Te
Ching
draped
themselves across his consciousness, the old master’s voice as real in his
thoughts as the shadows of the ships in the distance.

 
          
Know
white, be black. Be the empire’s model.

 
          
There
was no more perfect statement of his mission, nor his desire in life.

 
          
Chen
focused his binoculars on the closest shadow, a mere speck even at highest
magnification. It was a destroyer, an escort for the largest ship in the
squadron just over the horizon, the aircraft carrier
Shangi
-Ti.
Named for an ancient creator god, the carrier was considerably smaller than the
Mao, the pride of the Chinese Mainland Navy. But though half Mao’s size,
Shangi
-Ti and her sister ship,
T’ien
,
were nonetheless potent crafts, similar in many ways to the British Invincible
class. Displacing about twenty thousand tons,
Shangi
-Ti
and
T’ien
held four Dauphin multirole helicopters and
a dozen Chinese versions of the
Sukhoi
Su-33.