Nerve Center (26 page)

His men certainly. Unless you added in the lives of men who might be saved in the future by a squadron of Flight-hawks.

As for Secretary Keesh…

“SAR assets are strapped. They’re looking for help,” added Danny. “That was the only Pave Low available within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

“You sure you’re not tired?” Dog asked Jeff.

“Of course I’m tired,” said Zen. “But I’m not going to fall asleep now anyway.”

“Go for it.”

Sierra Nevada Mountains
19 February, 1934

POWDER SLOGGED HIS SODDEN BOOT UP AND OVER THE rock outcropping, forcing his foot into the small crevice. Then he boosted himself over the razor-sharp diagonal, finally onto solid and relatively flat ground. The CIV and its helmet were heavy, but they did at least give him a pretty clear picture, even in these conditions—the helicopter sat on its side about a hundred yards away, its nose pointed down the opposite slope. One of its blades pointed into the air like a giant middle finger raised against the storm. The rain and sleet had turned back into snow, which had already piled about an inch high against the fuselage.

“Shit,” Powder told Liu, who was just clearing the ravine behind him. He pointed the flashlight attached to his wrist, showing Nurse the way.

“Light a flare,” suggested Liu, pointing left. “We’ll stage off those rocks if anything goes wrong.”

The night turned crimson-gray, the flare burning fitfully in the wet snow. They walked gingerly, unsure of their footing. The crash had forced the front of the helicopter’s fuselage together; Powder prepared himself for a gruesome sight.

He couldn’t see much at first. Liu climbed onto the chin of the helicopter, draping himself over it and then smashing at the side glass with his heavy flashlight and elbow. Powder took out another flashlight from his kit and clambered up.

Someone groaned inside.

“We’re here, buddy,” shouted Talcom. Adrenaline shot through him; he reached his fingers into the door frame and somehow managed to pry it open, the metal twisting as he did so. He got to his knees and then his feet, pushing the bent panel away with all of his weight. The mangled hinges gave way and the door flew through the air and into the snow.

The pilot and copilot were still strapped into their seats. Liu leaned in, slinking over the men to check on them.

“Pulses strong,” said Nurse. “Let’s take this slow in case they injured their backs.”

“Hey!” yelled a voice in the back. “Hey!”

Powder clicked the visor from starlight to infrared mode and scanned the dim interior. Fingers fluttered in front of a wall; the viewer made them look like worms in a lake, unattached to anything human.

The sergeant slipped the helmet back and yelled into the helicopter. “Yo!”

“Hello,” yelled Brautman. “Leg’s broke,” he added, his voice almost cheerful. “Otherwise, I’m cool except for whatever the hell is holding me down.”

It looked like a good hunk of the helicopter wall.

“You say the F word yet?” asked the flight engineer as Powder tried to push his way toward him.

“No way,” answered Powder. “You owe me ten.”

“Mission’s not done yet.”

“Need a pneumatic jack to get him out.” said Liu from somewhere outside the helicopter.

“Screw that.” Powder straightened in a small spot between the forward area and what was left of the rear compartment. He had enough clearance to sit upright, but still couldn’t see Brautman’s head. “I said ‘screw,’ not the F word,” he yelled back to the trapped crewman.

“I heard ya. You will.”

Powder backed out, gingerly climbing atop the wrecked helicopter. Liu stood on the ground near the door—the chopper body had been squeezed so tight it barely came to his shoulders. Moving forward on his knees, Powder looked for something to use to help lever the rear door off its rail. When he couldn’t see anything, he set himself at a forty-five-degree angle and managed to jerk the metal out in two loud rips, producing a two-foot-wide opening.

“I ate my Wheaties this morning,” he told Liu as he leaned back to rest. His arm felt like he’d pulled it out of its socket.

The helicopter creaked as he spoke. He straightened, then realized they were moving—not far, not fast, but definitely moving.

“We may slide down the slope,” said Liu.

“Shit,” answered Powder.

“Get the pilots out one at a time, ASAP.”

As Liu said that, he was already clambering back to the cockpit. He leaned in, trying to release the pilot from his restraints.

The helicopter slid some more, then stopped. Powder thought of trying to find something to prop it in place, but quickly dismissed the idea. He swung down and took the pilot’s body from Liu.

The pilot was heavier than he thought, and Talcom’s legs buckled as he carried the man toward the rocks they had pointed out before. The rocks didn’t offer much shelter, but they were easy to find in the swirling snow and sat on the other side of a large crack, which might—might—mean they were safe from the slide. Powder laid the pilot as flat as possible, then lifted the crash shield on his helmet to make sure he was still breathing. When the man opened his eyes, Powder nudged his cheek with his thick thumb, then closed the shield. He took off the CIV and smart helmet, placing them next to the pilot, and ran back to the Pave Low. Liu was just lifting the copilot out.

“You’re strong for a little guy, Liu.”

“He’s conscious,” said Liu, holding the man in front of him as if he were displaying a piece of meat.

Powder clambered up onto the helicopter. The aircraft slid a lot this time. “Damn,” he said, grabbing the copilot.

“I’m okay,” grumbled the man. “I can walk myself.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Powder, ignoring him. He turned to get off the helicopter, then noticed something peculiar—though the Pave Low had moved several times, it hadn’t pushed up any snow in front of it as it slid.

“That’s because the whole sheet of ice is moving,” explained Liu before ducking back inside the craft.

“Damn,” said Powder. “Damn, damn, damn.”

He helped the copilot back to the rock, then ran to Liu. The wind rattled the helicopter propeller back and forth. Powder heard a low rumble, as if a train were approaching from the distance.

“Liu! What the hell are you doing in there?”

“If we use this spar as a lever,” Liu answered from inside the cockpit, “maybe we can move the wall away.”

“The whole thing is moving,” said Powder. “Feel it?”

“Quickly then.”

“Shit.” Talcom squeezed around Liu to push his legs into the small opening to the rear of the helo. There was a loud groan from outside as he did.

“Hope that was the Abominable Snowman,” he said.

“Ice is giving way,” said Brautman.

Powder wedged his foot against the metal side of the helicopter and tried levering the piece of spar in the opposite direction. As he did, Liu dropped the flashlight.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Brautman told them. “Go.”

“Now who’s using bad words?” said Powder. The helicopter or the ice it was on slid downward, and he felt an empty impotence in his stomach.

“Screw this horseshit!” Talcom yelled, jamming his boots against the metal.

It snapped away, springing back as the door released from its latch. Snow and sleet and ice and rain fell through, twinkling artistically in the dim flare-light. None of them stopped to admire it—Brautman pulled himself upward through the hole, helped by Liu, who was outside. The flight engineer’s leg trailed behind him at an odd angle, and Powder felt a twinge in his stomach, thinking of how the damn thing must feel.

The twinge was replaced by full-scale nausea as the helicopter jerked hard to his left, starting to ride down the incline. It had finally slipped on the ice—which also shifted in its own direction.

“Get the hell out of here! Go!” Powder shouted. He’d started to push himself upward when he saw something moving beneath the twisted metal where the snow was falling.

Dalton, still strapped to the stretcher.

Aboard Raven
19 February, 2010

HAWK THREE KNIFED THROUGH THE TURBULENCE, accelerating toward the jagged, snow-laden peaks where the Pave Low had disappeared. While the flight computer could cope with the strong vortices of wind easily enough, there was little it could do about the ice trying to freeze on the wings. The lower and slower Zen went—and to do the search properly, he had to go low and slow—the more precipitation clung to the control surfaces. While not enough to keep the plane from flying, it added considerably to the difficulty factor in the swirling winds near the crags.

“Sector Alpha-Baker-1 is clear,” said Jennifer Gleason, who’d volunteered to come along and help monitor the scans. Major Cheshire had bumped Bree’s copilot and was at the stick; Bree had slid over to the second officer’s seat and was also studying the feeds.

“Alpha-Baker-2 is also clear,” snapped Breanna. Both women were examining the IR video from Hawk Four, which was being flown entirely by the computer through a ravine at the very northern edge of the search area. The weather there was not as severe and the terrain not as twisted as the area Zen was working himself further southwest.

Hawk Three hit a patch of clear air and shot forward as if her engine had ingested pure oxygen. Zen steadied his left joystick, glancing at the vital signs projected at the lower edge of the visor. Everything was in the green.

His attention back on the main screen, he saw a dull shadow at the edge of the approaching valley, below a triple-dagger peak. It wasn’t warm enough to be a body, but since it was the first non-rock he’d seen, he switched from the IR to the optical feed.

“Computer, zoom in the dark object at the bottom of Hawk Three’s visual feed,” Zen directed.

The computer formed a box around the image, which seemed to burst into the middle of his view screen.

Ejection seat.

“Mark location,” said Jeff.

“What do you have?” Jennifer asked over the interphone. “Jeff?” said Bree.

“Excuse me. Are you manning your scans?” he snapped. “Affirmative, Hawk Leader,” answered Bree testily. Jennifer said nothing.

“Raven, I have a piece of the seat, I think, from the Boeing,” Jeff said, technically speaking to Cheshire though they could all hear him. “I’ve marked it. I’ll continue to sweep the sector. Hawk Four is going to stay in the pattern we planned.”

“Raven Leader acknowledges,” said the pilot. Although Jeff was actually sitting a few feet below Cheshire on Raven’s lower deck, they had found it easier to communicate as if flying separate planes—which, of course, they were.

Zen pushed Hawk Three to the south, dropping her lower to scan close to a W-shaped ravine at the edge of a shallow mountain plateau. The severe storm shortened the IR’s range considerably, though from a technical viewpoint the fact that he was even receiving an image was impressive. Even light rain played havoc with conventional FUR systems.

As he neared the end of the ravine, a small shadow flickered into the upper right-hand corner of the view screen. He was by it before he could ask for a magnification; he pulled back on the Flighthawk’s joystick, then felt the plane fluttering in the heavy wind.

“Disconnect in zero-three,”
warned the computer. The storm and jagged terrain degraded the link between the Hawk and its mother.

“Raven, I need you closer to Three,” snapped Jeff. He started to pull up, but saw something in the IR screen at the right-hand corner. He pushed toward it, despite the disconnect warning that flashed in the screen.

“Disconnect in zero-three, two—”

Zen managed to nudge the U/MF upward at the last second, retaining the data flow. But the storm whipped hard against the small plane’s wings. It pushed up and then down, yawing like a gum wrapper tossed from a car. Even with the assistance of the computer and the vectoring nozzles, Zen couldn’t get it where he wanted.

“Raven, lower,” he demanded.

“You want me to park on Mount Whitney?” snapped Cheshire.

“That’s too high.” He just missed a ravine wall as he tried to slide Hawk Three back toward the ridge where he’d seen the image. Hawk Three hugged the hillside, her altimeter nudging six thousand feet—half the altitude Raven needed to clear the surrounding peaks. This was too damn low for comfort, and even C3 began doing a Bitchin’ Betty routine, warning that he was going too low and too slow. Still, the only way to get a good view was to practically crawl across the terrain. Hawk Three’s forward airspeed nudged below ninety knots.

Stall warning. But something hot, real hot, filled the screen. Above—up. Jeff throttled and pushed the stick, climbing the side of the ridge.

“Disconnect in zero-three.”

“Nancy! Closer!”

“We’re trying, Zen!”

A red bar appeared at the bottom of his view screen as the computer continued counting down the disconnect.

But there was a man there. Definitely a man—two men, huddled.

As Zen went to push the GPS marker, the screen blanked into gray fuzz. The default sequence knocked the view screen back to the optical view from Hawk Four, which had just begun knifing east.

A magenta disc filled the screen; Jeff felt suddenly weightless, sliding backward. The right side of his head imploded, pain shooting everywhere—he closed his eyes as he spun back, caught by some trick of fatigue or exertion or merely disorientation. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Streaks of rain and lightning flashed by him, close enough to feel but not see. The world split beneath him, the fault line running through his spine.

Then he felt his toes. He could actually feel his toes.

The sun turned mercury red, then steamed off, evaporating in a hiss that filled his helmet.

An ANTARES flashback because he’d been thinking of Kevin?

Or because he’d taken the first dose of drugs as soon as Bastian gave the okay to rejoin the program?

That was less than two hours ago. The screen was back to normal—it had to have been a weird anomaly caused by the lightning.

And fatigue. He was getting damn tired.