Stoner wasn't sure whether it was an invitation, and he debated what to do as they walked back to the apartment. Sleeping with her might help him get more information. On the other hand, it felt wrong in a way he couldn't explain to himself.

She kissed him on the cheek as they reached the door of the apartment, then slipped inside, alone.

He was glad, and disappointed at the same time.

Iasi Airfield,

northeastern Romania

2100.

COLONEL BASTIAN SAT DOWN AT THE COMMUNICATIONS desk in the Dreamland Mobile Command Center and pulled on a headset. He typed his pa.s.swords into the console, then leaned back in the seat, preparing to do something he hadn't had to do in quite a while-give an operational status report to his immediate superior.

The fact that he didn't much like General Samson ought to be besides the point, he told himself. In the course of his career, he'd had to work for many men-and one or two women-whom he didn't particularly like. It wasn't just their personality clashes, though. The truth was, he'd had this command, and now he didn't. Even having known that Dreamland would either be closed or taken over by a general, he still resented his successor.

The best thing for him to do-and the best thing for Dreamland-was to move on. As long as he was here, the friction between him and Samson would be detrimental to the unit and its mission.

"Colonel Bastian, good morning," Captain Jake Lewis, on duty in the base control center, said to him through the headset.

"It's pretty late at night here," said Dog. "Twenty-one hundred hours."

"Yes, sir. You're ten hours ahead of us. Soon your today will be our tomorrow."

Dog frowned. Somehow, the captain's joke seemed more like a metaphor of his career situation.

"Would you like to speak to General Samson?" asked the captain.

"Absolutely," lied Dog.

"Stand by, Colonel."

Dog expected Samson to be connected via the special phone up in his office. But instead the general's face flashed on the screen. Obviously he'd been in the command center, waiting for Dog to check in.

You couldn't blame him for that, Dog decided. He would have done the same thing. A lot of what Samson did, he would have done.

Differently. But what was bugging him was the fact that it was Samson doing it, not him.

Jealousy. Yes. He had to admit it.

"This is Samson. What's going on over there, Bastian?"

"Good morning, General. We've completed our first day of working with Romanian ground soldiers. There were some language glitches, but all in all it went well."

"What kind of glitches?"

"Nothing critical. A little hard sometimes to understand what they're saying, and I imagine vice versa."

"That's it?"

"No. I wanted to alert you to something that should be pa.s.sed on to Jed Barclay and the White House."

Samson's scowl made it clear that he'd be the judge of that.

"While we were up, a flight of Russian MiGs flew over the Black Sea and part of the Ukraine. I believe they were shadowing us. They appear to have been working with one of their Elint planes to get an idea of where we were. I took a hard turn toward them and they vamoosed. I'm not positive, of course, but-"

"What do you mean, you took a hard turn toward them? You went into Moldova?"

"No, General, I didn't. I stayed inside the country's boundaries and flew in the direction of the Black Sea. But they were watching me closely, and it seems to me they didn't want to be noticed."

"Don't overa.n.a.lyze it. What sort of planes?"

"Two MiG-29s, configured for air-to-air intercept. There was a Tu-135 just beyond them. We were too far to get comprehensive details. I didn't want to go out of Romanian airs.p.a.ce."

Dog watched Samson step over to one of the nearby consoles in the command center, consulting with one of the men there. Finally he looked back in the direction of the video camera attop the main screen in the front of the room.

"What else do you have?" asked Samson.

"Nothing else. I was wondering when the Johnson will arrive."

"Englehardt and his crew took off an hour ago," said Samson. "They should be there tonight, our time."

"Once they're here, I expect to start running two sorties a day. We'll stagger them-"

"I don't need the details. Carry on."

The screen blanked. Dog leaned back in his seat. He was sorry now that he'd agreed to take on the mission. He should just have gone on leave-he was more than ent.i.tled.

Rising, he took off his headset and pulled back the curtain to call the Whiplash communications specialist. As he did, the console buzzed, indicating an incoming communication.

It was Danny Freah.

"Colonel, we have something up," said Danny as soon as he punched the b.u.t.tons to make the connection. "Report of a possible attack in a village southeast of us. We could use some Flighthawk coverage."

"We're on our way."

Allegro, Nevada

1105.

BREANNA PULLED UP AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE POOL, catching her breath. Her heart was pumping ferociously, the beats so fast she didn't count them. Fearing she was far over her targeted pulse rate, she took a deep, slow breath, savoring the oxygen in her lungs. Then she went to the side and pulled herself out.

"h.e.l.l of a workout," said one of the club trainers, a white woman in her mid-thirties with the unfortunate nickname of Dolly, though she didn't seem to mind it. "You were swimming up a storm."

Breanna nodded, still catching her breath.

"You OK, girl?" asked Dolly.

"I'm fine." Breanna forced a smile. She loved to swim, and the water workouts were easy on her knee, but her ribs ached from the vigorous strokes.

"You trying to prove something?" asked Dolly.

"Why?"

Dolly laughed. "I think you just broke the record for the 10K free-style."

"Just that I'm in good shape."

"No doubts there."

Breanna smiled, then grabbed her water bottle and the small towel she always took with her during a workout.

No doubt there.

All she had to do was convince the doc. Maybe she'd bring him along tomorrow.

She'd just reached the locker room when she heard her cell phone ringing. She opened the lock and took out the phone, opening it without looking at the number.

"This is Breanna."

"I got those tickets. Meet me over at the county airport at four."

"Tickets?"

"To the Lakers, remember?"

"Oh, Sleek. Um, OK. Sure. Where?"

Sleek Top leased part of a small Cessna that was kept at the Las Vegas airport; they'd take it to L.A., where the Lakers were facing Kings later that evening. He told her where to meet him.

"We'll grab something to eat at the game," he said. "I'll have you back home before midnight."

"Great," she said. "I'll see you then."

Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2115.

THE ROMANIAN PLATOON TRAVELED IN FOUR 1980S VINTAGE Land Rover III three-quarter-ton light trucks, and a pair of much older UAZ469B jeeplike vehicles. The former were badly dented and the latter were rusted, but their engines were in good order and the troops wasted no time moving out, driving down the highway in the direction of the reported guerrilla sighting. The gas pipeline was about fifteen miles to the northwest, and Danny wondered if the report wasn't the result of a mistake or perhaps hysteria until he saw the glow of a fire in the distance.

"It's the local police station," Lieutenant Roma told him, leaning back from the front seat of the UAZ. "They make these kind of attacks all the time."

The police station was located across from a church in a cl.u.s.ter of six or seven buildings just off the main road. The station was one of three wooden buildings nestled together, and the flames that had been started by an explosion had set the other two buildings on fire.

The Romanian lieutenant split up his force, using about half to secure the road on both sides of the hamlet. The rest came with him as he went to investigate the attack.

The men leaped out of the trucks as they arrived, shouting at the people in front of the burning buildings and telling them to get back. Everything was chaos. There were a dozen civilians, some crying, some screaming, others stoically using pails in a vain attempt to put out the flames.

A man in a soot-covered police uniform materialized from the right of the buildings, his face burned to a bright red by the heat. He had something in his arms-a doll, Danny thought at first. And then as he stared, he realized the doll was a human child who'd been pulled out of the building too late.

Tears streamed from the policeman's eyes, and Danny felt his stomach weaken.

Lieutenant Roma was talking with an older man near the steps to the church. The man spoke in almost a whisper, his head pitched down toward the ground, as if speaking to his shoes.

Roma listened for a while, then nodded. He moved away from the church, toward Danny.

"There were twelve," he told him. "They may have taken a policeman hostage. They blew up the building with no warning."

"Where'd they go?"

Roma shook his head. "They have the police car, the ambulance, and may have taken a truck as well. Someone heard tires screeching on the back road there." He pointed to the side street, which ran to the southeast. "It would make sense that they would go that way. They'll avoid the highway."

"Let's get after them."

The lieutenant frowned. Danny realized he wasn't hesitating out of cowardice-there was no local fire department, and he was debating whether anything could be done to stop the fire.

It was already far too late. Fed by the wood that had dried for more than a hundred years, the flames climbed into the night sky. The back of one of the buildings crumbled to the ground. The fire flared, but without wind to spread it across the street, it would soon run out of fuel, choked by its own ravenous hunger.

Thicker, heavier parts of the buildings-rugs, appliances-began to melt rather than burn. Acrid smoke spread across the road, stinging everyone's nose and eyes.

"Yes, let's go." Roma turned to the man and told him in Romanian that they would be back. Then he looked at Danny. "Are your people ready to help us?"