A Better World

CHAPTER 39

As far back as she could remember, Holly Roge had wanted to fly.

Dad had been part of it, a navy man, a pilot who parked jets on moving aircraft carriers. When other little girls had been lulled to sleep with tales of princesses and unicorns, Dad had lain beside her in the dark and told her what it was like to scream in low and steep, dark water below, a tiny target ahead. How precise the angle had to be to catch the landing cable, how if you screwed up you could slide right off, bounce out into the ocean.

“Was it scary?” she’d asked, always.

And always he’d say, “Sure. But in the good way.”

And after he had kissed her forehead and told her to have beautiful dreams, she’d lie awake staring at her ceiling, wondering what that meant, scary in the good way.

Now, suited up and sitting in the ready room at Ellsworth Air Force Base just east of the Wyoming border, she wondered what Dad would think of all of this. He’d died while she was still at the academy, an aneurysm that took him in his easy chair, fast as a missile with hard lock. He’d never seen her earn her wings, never known that she made top of her class. Never known that she’d been the first woman selected to fly an F-27 Wyvern, that gorgeous piece of $185 million equipment, her second true love. Sixty-seven feet and sixty-five thousand pounds of high-performance glory, capable of soaring eighteen miles high, of after-burner blasting at Mach 2.9, twenty-two hundred magnificent miles an hour. A machine so sophisticated that the computer in the helmet read her brain’s alpha waves, allowing her to control the gauges and secondary systems just by thinking in coded patterns.

A fighter jet that she had been flying over American soil, buzzing low over a city of her own countrymen, carrying a full load of ordnance.

That was the part she didn’t dig, and she didn’t think Dad would have either. She was a warrior, had flown peacekeeping missions all over the world, been selected to fly in the honor guard for Air Force One on President Walker’s trip to India. Her job was to protect America, not threaten it. And no matter what you thought about the abnorms, last she’d heard, Wyoming was still part of the fifty.

The fact that today’s briefing was being given not by Major Barnes, as usual, but by the big dog himself, Lieutenant Colonel Riggs, didn’t make her feel any better about the situation.

“—continued state of high alert. Now, you all know that the Holdfast has antiaircraft batteries.” Riggs paused, a slight smile on his lips as twenty pilots chuckled. “And though it’s true that they would be particularly dangerous to MiG-19s”—more laughter—“that doesn’t mean I want any of you getting careless. Everything by the numbers, people. I want all of my pilots back without a scratch. You’ll be carrying . . .”

Holly knew the load, the same she’d flown the last sorties with. Military life, though, never double-check when you could quadruple-check.

It had to be posturing, she figured. A message to the Children of Darwin and all the other terrorists out there. Sure, you may be able to take out a few trucks, but can you do this? There hadn’t been a declared war since the Second World War, which meant that most of the time, military assets were more about communication than they were about offense. A way for the politicians to talk to one another, play their games of high-stakes poker.

Thing was, who were they talking to here? The Holdfast was a bunch of kids living in the desert, pretending it was a new world instead of a bunch of rocks. Fine with her, so why the full load? Each Wyvern carried enough ordnance to wipe out half of Tesla. Flying a full wing of them over the scrub town was like bringing an A-bomb to a backyard brawl.

“Any questions?”

Holly looked around. Wanted to raise her hand and ask, Sir, respectfully, what the hell are we doing here? She wouldn’t, of course, but maybe someone would. The nineteen other pilots in this room were among the best in the world, and that came with a hot-shot sense of entitlement.

If it had been Major Barnes giving the briefing, maybe one of them would have. But the vice chief of the air wing was another matter. They all sat ramrod straight and steely-eyed, ready to snap salutes and mount up.

It was only ten minutes later, as the cockpit windscreen closed and her HUD glowed to life, that it occurred to Captain Holly Roge to wonder if that was exactly why it had been Riggs giving the briefing.