Retribution Read Online Free

unrecognizable, bizarrely shaped and shot through with pain.
    Time lost meaning, and there was no meaning, there was no present or past, nothing solid, nothing reliable except confusion.
    Major Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard lay on his back in the ocean, floating not on water but rocks, black rocks tinged with orange. Flames lapped at his face and his legs were packed solid in ice. When he breathed, his lungs filled with the perfumed air of lilacs.
    What happened to me?
    The voice came from the sky.
    Am I out of the plane?
    Zen tried to shake his head and regain consciousness. Instead of his head, his chest shook.
    Where is Breanna? Where’s my wife?
    A black blanket covered his head. He clawed at it, pulled and poked and prodded, but it would not yield. He gave up.
    When he did, the blackness lifted to reveal a golden redsun no more than a foot from his head.
    The voice spoke again.
    I’m out of the plane, but where is Breanna?
    Zen blinked his eyes, trying to shield them from the sun. His brain began to sort things out, reconstituting his memory like a computer rebuilding its hard drive. It moved sequentially, from the very beginning, everything rushing together: He was in high school, he was in the Air Force, he had just qualified as a fighter pilot, in the Gulf War.
    Good shot, Captain, that MiG never had a chance.
    Selected as test pilot, assigned to Dreamland, in love.
    Well, you’re too pretty to be a bomber pilot, why’d you slap me?
    I do, I do, I do the happiest day of my life and no, the damn Flighthawk is going to hit my tail pain just pain just dark blank nothing who cares no one cares never and I will walk damn you all damn everyone because I will walk and I won’t walk I won’t won’t won’t will not give up will come back and who I am who I am?
    Where is Breanna? Where is my wife?
    Bree?
    The voice called louder, pleading. Finally, he recognized that it was his voice, that he was calling for his wife, that he wanted her more than he wanted anything, more than he cared for his own life, certainly.
    And then time asserted itself, and he was aware of the present. Zen fell into it, consumed by the swirling ocean of gray.
    White House Situation Room,
    Washington, D.C.
    2145, 14 January 1998
    (0745, 15 January, Karachi)
    “T HERE’S AN OPPORTUNITY HERE THAT WE HADN’T ANTICIPATED.” National Security Advisor Philip Freeman’s face was beet red as he pleaded his cause. “It’s been thrown in our lap.”
    Freeman glanced at Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman, then at President Kevin Martindale. Jed Barclay couldn’t remember his boss arguing this passionately before.
    “Of course there’s risk, but it’s not as great as it seems,” continued Freeman. “The T-Rays have been much more effective than we hoped. It will be days before power is restored. The Lincoln is within a day’s sail, and we still have the Dreamland assets in the region. If we recover those warheads ourselves, neither country will be in a position to challenge the other for years—years.”
    “We need to know definitively where the warheads are before we give the go ahead for an operation,” insisted Secretary of Defense Arthur Chastain, speaking over the closed circuit communications system from the Pentagon War Room. “Without that, Mr. President, I can’t guarantee success. I’m not even sure I can with it.”
    “Jed?” said Martindale.
    “Space Command is working on the p-p-projections,” said Jed, referring to the Air Force agency responsible for monitoring satellite intelligence. “They say they’ll have something in twenty-four hours.”
    “Twenty-four hours!” Martindale never shouted, but his voice was as loud as Jed had ever heard it.
    “Mr. President,” said Chastain, “it’s going to take time to get the area under full surveillance. The satellites we couldn’t reposition were lost. Remember, we had to rush the operation before all the assets we wanted were in place, and even if they had been—”
    “I