Piranha by Dale Brown & Jim Defelice

Author:Dale Brown & Jim Defelice
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Fiction, American, Suspense, Adventure Stories, Thrillers, Thriller
ISBN: 9780515135817
Publisher: Jove
Published: 2003-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Death in the family

Philippines

August 26, 1997, 0718 local

When Jennifer Gleason finally managed to unfold herself from the jump seat on the C-17’s flight deck, her legs felt if they had been stapled together. Her stomach and throat had changed places; and even her eyes were giving her trouble. Jennifer was a veteran flier, had been in the Megafortress during combat, and survived a disabling laser hit, but this was by far the worse flight she had ever endured.

It wasn’t just uncomfortable fold-down seat or the turbulent air. She’d spent the entire flight worried about Colonel Bastian; a vague uneasiness, indefinable. It was new to her; she’d never really had anyone to worry about before, not like this. None of her other boyfriends—the term seemed ridiculous applied to Tecumseh, who was anything but a boy—had aroused such emotions. Until Tecumseh—she hated calling him Dog—Jennifer had been organized and specific about her thoughts and emotions. Now her head fluttered back and forth, and her body hurt like hell.

Outside, the rain had stopped; the wet leaves glistened in the morning light. The base had been taken over by the Navy—there were several large patrol aircraft parked in front of two Megafortresses, along with a pair of F/A-18’s and a blue Navy helicopter. Three or four bulldozers were revving nearby, assisting a construction crew to erect a hangar area.

Colonel Bastian was waiting for Jennifer at the Whiplash command post. So was most of the Dreamland contingent, and a few Navy officers besides, so she had to confine her greeting to a very proper “Sir.”

“Jennifer, we’ve been waiting for you,” said the colonel. “Or rather, your equipment.”

She snickered at the unintended double entendre, but it went right by Dog and the others. He introduced two Navy officers as liaisons with the fleet, informing Jennifer they had clearance for Piranha.

“If you can give us a quick timetable,” he added in his deep voice. She had trouble turning her mind back to the project, and the reason she’d come.

“It’s straightforward. First up, we get the control gear into the planes. By tomorrow night we should have two new probes. Beyond that, there are some tests and fixes I’d like to try. Oh, and I have a fix, no, not a fix, just a tweak, on the wake detectors—I’ll put that in first. Shouldn’t take too long; it’s a software thing.”

“So how sensitive is the passive sonar?” asked one of the Navy people.

“Good enough to follow submarines of the Trafalgar type at twenty miles. I have the diffusion rates, all the technical data here.”

The officer had obviously asked the question to see how much she knew, and Jennifer, not so subtly, called his bluff, reaching into her knapsack for her laptop.

“We’ve had a few problems with the amplitude when the temperatures shifts quickly, such as when you go into a different thermal layer. We think it’s hardware, though I’ve tried two different versions of the chip circuitry and had the same results, so I’m not sure. Here—maybe you have some ideas.

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