"You are Stoner?" the man with the gun asked.

"You think anybody else is going to be standing out in the middle of this f.u.c.king road at this hour?"

The man glanced to his right, looking at his companion. It was a half second of inattention, a momentary, reflexive glance, but it was all Stoner needed. He leaped forward, grabbing and pushing the man's arm up with his left hand while pulling out his own gun with his right. The Romanian lost his balance; Stoner went down to the ground with him, pistol pointed at the man's forehead. The Romanian's gun flew to the side.

"Identify yourself, a.s.shole." Stoner pushed the muzzle of the weapon against the man's forehead.

The Romanian couldn't speak. His companion took a step closer.

"You come any closer, he's f.u.c.king dead!" Stoner yelled.

"He doesn't speak English," said the man on the ground.

"Tell him, you jacka.s.s. Tell him before I blow your brains out. Then I'll shoot him, too."

In a nervous voice, the Romanian urged his friend to remain calm.

"Now tell me who the h.e.l.l you are," said Stoner.

Though they were dressed in civilian clothes, Stoner knew the man and his companion had to be the two soldiers sent to help him sneak across the border, but there was a point to be made here. Pulling a gun on him was completely unacceptable.

"I am Deniz. He is Kyiv. He does not speak no English," added the man on the ground. "We were to help you."

"Yeah, I know who the h.e.l.l you are." Stoner jumped up, taking a step back. "You're going to check me out, you do it from a distance. You don't walk right up to me and draw your gun. You're lucky I didn't shoot you."

Deniz gave a nervous laugh, then reached for his pistol. Stoner kicked it away, then scooped it up.

"This is your only weapon?" he asked.

Deniz shrugged.

"What's he carrying?"

"No gun. The captain said-"

"No gun?"

"We are to pretend we're civilians," said Deniz. "No uniform, no rifle. Not even boots."

Idiot, thought Stoner. "You know where we're going?" he asked.

Deniz nodded.

Stoner looked at them. Deniz was twenty, maybe, taller than he was but at least fifty pounds lighter. Kyiv was a pudge of a man, his age anywhere from fifteen to thirty-five. He looked like a baker who liked his work a little too much, not a fighter.

Neither would be much help if things got rough. On the other hand, Stoner not only didn't know the area, but knew only a few phrases in Romanian.

"Kyiv knows the border very well," said Deniz, trying to rea.s.sure him. "Part of his family lives there. Yes?"

He repeated what he had said in Romanian for Kyiv, who nodded and said something in Romanian.

"The girls are better on the other side," added Deniz. "We go there often. No guns. Not needed."

Stoner frowned, then led them to his car, parked off the road behind some brush.

"You know how to use these, I a.s.sume," he said, opening the trunk and handing them each an AK-47.

"It is not dangerous where we are going," said Deniz.

"It's always dangerous," said Stoner, pressing the rifle on him. "Don't kid yourself."

He took his own gun-another AK-47, this one a paratrooper's model with a folding metal stock-and doled out banana magazines to the others.

"This is the spot," he said, unfolding the satellite photo he'd brought. "The GPS coordinates are for this barn."

Deniz took the paper, turning it around several times as he looked at it. Then he handed it to his companion. The two men began talking in Romanian.

"He knows the barn," said Deniz finally. "Five kilometers from the border. The woman who owned it died two years ago. A neighbor mows the field."

"Who owns it now?"

Kyiv didn't know.

"The rebels have been quiet this week," said Deniz as Stoner adjusted his knapsack. "We have become a very silent area."

"That's good to know."

"We could take your car," added the Romanian.

"No. We walk."

Taking the car would mean they'd have to pa.s.s through a Moldovan as well as a Romanian military checkpoint, and their procedures required them to keep track of every car or truck pa.s.sing through by recording the license plate. Even if it wasn't likely there would be trouble, Stoner didn't want the trip recorded. Besides, going on foot would make it easier to survey the area and avoid an ambush or double-cross. Five kilometers wasn't much to walk.

"We drive over many times," said Deniz.

"Walking's good for you. You should be able to do five kilometers inside an hour without a pack."

The soldier frowned. Neither man seemed in particularly good shape. Stoner a.s.sumed their training regime was far from the best.

They walked in silence for about fifteen minutes, the pace far slower than what would have been required to do five kilometers in an hour. Even so, Stoner had to stop every so often to let them catch up.

"Why are we going?" asked Deniz after they had crossed the border.

"We're meeting someone."

"A rebel or a smuggler?"

Stoner shrugged. Deniz chortled.

"A smuggler," guessed Deniz.

"Why do you care?"

"Curious. The captain told us an American needs a guide. That's all we know," answered the Romanian.

"That's more than you should."

Kyiv said something. His tone was angry, and Stoner looked at Deniz for an explanation.

"The smugglers are the men with the money," said Deniz. "They throw cash around. My friend thinks it's disgusting."

"And you?"

"I just want what they want."

Deniz gave him a leering smile. Stoner had been planning on giving the men a "tip" after they returned; now he wasn't so sure he'd bother.

"Tell me about the rebels," he said. "They don't scare you?"

"Criminals." Deniz spit. "Clowns. From the cities."

He added something Romanian that Stoner didn't understand.

"They are dogs," explained Deniz. "With no brains. They make an attack, then run before we get there. Cowards. There are not many."

"How many is not many?"

Deniz shrugged. "A thousand. Two, maybe."

The official government estimates Stoner had seen ranged from five to ten thousand, but the Bucharest CIA station chief guessed the number was far lower, most likely under a thousand if not under five hundred. What the rebels lacked in numbers, the Romanian army seemed to make up for in incompetence, though in fairness it was far harder to deal with a small band of insurgents bent on destruction than a regular army seeking to occupy territory.

"You speak English pretty well," Stoner told Deniz, changing the subject.

"In Bucharest, all learn it. TV. It is the people here who don't need it." He gestured toward Kyiv. "If you live all of your life in the hills, there is not a need."

"I see."

"On the computer-Internet-everything good is English."

"Probably," said Stoner."

"Someday, I go to New York."

"Why New York?"

"My cousin lives there. Very big opportunity. We will do business, back and forth. There are many things I could get in New York and sell here. Stop!"

He put his hand across Stoner's chest. Stoner tensed, worrying for a moment that he might have sized the men up wrong.

"There is a second Moldovan border post there," said Deniz, pointing to a fence about a hundred meters away. "A backup. If you don't want to be seen, we must go this way through the field."

"Lead the way."

Dreamland

22 January 1998

0935.

FOLDED, THE MAN/EXTERNAL SYNTHETIC Sh.e.l.l KINETIC Integrated Tool-better known as MESSKIT-looked like a nineteenth century furnace bellows with robot arms.

Unfolded, it looked like the remains of a prehistoric, man-sized bat.

"And you think this thing is going to make me fly?" asked Zen, looking at it doubtfully.

"It won't take you cross-country," said scientist Annie Klondike, picking it up from the table in the Dreamland weapons lab where she'd laid it out. "But it will get you safely from the plane to the ground. Think of it as a very sophisticated parachute."

Zen took the MESSKIT from her. It was lighter than he'd thought it would be, barely ten pounds. The arms were made of a carbon-boron compound, similar to the material used in the Dreamland Whiplash armored vests. The wings were made of fiber, but the material felt like nothing he'd ever touched-almost like liquid steel.

Six very small, microturbine engines were arrayed above and below the wing. Though no bigger than a juice gla.s.s, together the engines could provide enough thrust to lift a man roughly five hundred feet in the air. In the MESSKIT, their actual intention was to increase the distance an endangered pilot could fly after bailing out, and to augment his ability to steer himself as he descended.

"You sure this thing will hold me?"

"Prototype holds me," said Danny.

"Yeah, but you're a tough guy," joked Zen. "You fall on your head, the ground gets hurt."

"It's much stronger than nylon, Zen, and you've already trusted your life to that," said Annie.

A white-haired grandmother whose midwestern drawl softened her sometimes sardonic remarks, Annie ran the ground weapons lab at Dreamland. MESSKIT was a "one-off"-a special adaptation of one of the lab's exoskeleton projects. Exoskeletons were like robotic attachments to a soldier's arms and legs, giving him or her the strength to lift or carry very heavy items. The MESSKIT's progenitor was intended to help paratroopers leaving aircraft at high alt.i.tude, allowing them to essentially fly to a target miles away.

Annie and some of the other techies had adapted the design after hearing about the problems Zen had had on his last mission using a standard parachute. If MESSKIT was successful, others would eventually be able to use it to bail out of high-flying aircraft no matter what alt.i.tude they were at or what the condition of the airplane. MESSKIT would allow an airman to travel for miles before having to land. If Zen had had it over India, he might have been able to fly far enough to reach an American ship and safety when his plane was destroyed. And because it was powered, the MESSKIT would also have allowed him to bail out safely from the Megafortress after the ejection seat had already been used.

"Try it on," urged Danny, who'd served as the lab's guinea pig and done some of the testing the day before. "You put it on like a coat."

"What's with these arms? What am I, an octopus?"