Nerve Center (43 page)

A warning flashed. Bogeys. F/A-18’s.

Zen’s head cleared. He was at the U/MF observer station, the technician’s bench next to the control seat. Two American F/A-18 Navy fighter-bombers were approaching. They might have caught something on their radar, though the threat screen indicated they hadn’t picked up the lead Flighthawk, which was on an intercept vector from the southeast.

The Hughes APG-73 digital programmable radar of the F/ A-18’s rated among the best conventional radars in service; were the Flighthawk a conventional fighter, it could have been detected at no less than a hundred nautical miles, even in look-down mode, which tended to lower the range. But the Flighthawk was much smaller and considerably stealthier than a conventional plane. Its pilot also had the advantage of seeing exactly where the radar fingers were groping. By the time the Hornets finally detected the U/MF, it was less than eight nautical miles away.

It took nearly twenty seconds for the Navy pilots to realize the odd, unidentifiable returns on their radars were definitely a bogey. One of the pilots fired an AMRAAM, even though the Flighthawk screen showed he hadn’t locked; Zen reflexively reached for the button to dispense chaff.

Madrone didn’t bother, apparently realizing that he was so close and so fast that the missile, even if properly aimed, wouldn’t be a threat. He was correct; C3 flicked it off with a quick buzz of its ECMs, barely breaking a sweat as the missile sailed past, self-detonating about two miles away.

Madrone pressed a heads-on attack against the lead plane. The Hornet pilot handled it well, waiting until the Flighthawk began firing to make his move, a rolling dive to the right. Under ordinary circumstances against nearly any other plane, his tucking roll would have brought him behind the aggressor, leaving him with an easy Sidewinder shot. But against the U/ MF, the Hornet pilot would have been better off pulling the yellow handle at the side of his seat.

Madrone tucked his nose and threw his tail out a bit, the vectored thrusters on the Flighthawk yanking it around so quickly that he closed on the Hornet’s tail before the other plane completed its maneuver. He was within two hundred yards when he began firing the cannon again; two seconds later the back end of his target exploded.

As quickly as it happened, nailing the Hornet still took time. Had the pilot of the second plane been a coward or perhaps simply more prudent, the second F/A-18 could have escaped. But the Navy lieutenant in the trail plane was either brave or reckless, depending on the perspective; he pressed on toward the fresh contact his radar locked on eight miles away—the Megafortress.

Zen guessed that Gal’s RWR had buzzed upstairs, for the plane suddenly lurched eastward. He reached to flip’the screen into Gal’s sensor array, which he could view but not control through the diagnostic station. Before he could complete the sequence and bring up the image, Madrone had begun to close on the Hornet’s twin tailpipe.

The F/A-18’s wing flared. He’d launched an AMRAAM. A second dropped off the rail. Then a long stream of red appeared, arcing from the nose of the Flighthawk. But Madrone had started to fire a few seconds too soon to score a fatal hit—the targeting control on C3 had always been slightly optimistic.

The Hornet veered upward, perhaps to try and outclimb its pursuer. All Madrone had to do was nudge his nose slightly to alter his aim and keep coming; the Flighthawk had built enough momentum to smash bullets through the right wing of the McDonnell-Douglas fighter, shearing it off between the outboard and inboard stores pylon.

Zen saw the Hornet’s canopy fly away as the plane began to spin. The Flighthawk veered off.

Then he remembered the AMRAAMs.

“AIRCRAFT TARGETED. RADAR MATCHED FROM LIBRARY. ECMs prepared.”

Minerva stared at the legend in the screen at the right side of the dash as the RWR continued to clang. The Megafortress had not only detected the missiles, but computed the proper response.

But it wanted her to authorize it. How?

“Activate ECMs,” she said into her headset.

Nothing happened.

She twisted back to Breanna, then realized she wouldn’t help.

“Use the word ‘computer,’ “ said Mayo.

“Computer, activate ECMs,” Minerva said.

“Acknowledged,” responded a programmed voice.

The tone stopped. There was a flash in the sky two miles off their wing.

“Why are we not to go over ten thousand feet?” said Mayo.

Minerva turned toward her lieutenant. He stared at her. Before she could say anything, he pulled back on the stick. With one hand, she reached for the controls. With the other, she drew the gun from her belt.

Mayo threw himself on her before she could retrieve the revolver. The plane lurched left as they struggled, the nose rising before abruptly pitching downward.

BREANNA HUNKERED DOWN AS BEST SHE COULD AS the two struggled. The plane rolled on its wing, pitching itself wildly toward the earth.

Gravity slammed her from two directions at once. The plane began to spin. She heard something pop a few feet away, and then a dark cowl tightened around her head, the violent g forces depriving her brain of blood.

“Let the computer fly it,” she said, or maybe just thought—she didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to help them. Negative g’s tore at her body, twisting it like a bag of loose Jell-O; her head snapped back against the seat while her legs flew outward.

She remembered the night in the hospital with Jeff after his accident, the night that turned into a week that became a year, a dark hood around her head that had never completely cleared, a cowl she’d clawed and pushed and punched away.

The Megafortress stumbled through an invert and blood rushed to her head, and now Rap knew she was going to die, felt the grim weightlessness that precedes the final auger-in. The back of the plane lurched upward, a fish snapping its tail in the air as it arced over the water.

Breanna remembered the first day she’d seen Jeff, standing in the cockpit of a cranked-arrow F-16, a grin like nothing she’d ever seen before, and eyes—sparkling eyes that held the soft place inside her, that could ferret out her secrets. The afternoon they’d made love for the first time, she knew he would be her husband, knew she wanted to go nowhere else.

Her head snapped forward and then back twice, gravity pounding her face like a middleweight working a bag.

And then the storm was over. The engines’ powerful thrust propelled them upward with a jerk. The computer had taken over and managed to wrestle the plane level.

Breanna twisted toward the front. Minerva sat in the copilot’s seat, tensely guiding the plane.

Breanna let herself hang forward over the radar control console. All of the Megafortresses designed to work with the Flighthawks had locator beacons with an omnidirectional, “always-on” signal that could be read by standard IFF units about fifty miles away. The beacon could only be activated through the flight computer and required authentication to initiate, since it potentially could help an enemy find the otherwise stealthy plane. Staring at the inactive radar screens, Breanna made up her mind to find a way to issue the command. A headset lay at the base of the left tube; if it was active, her voice might just carry loud enough for the computer to respond.

She couldn’t reach it, though. And there was no way to speak loud enough without the others hearing.

An auxiliary keyboard sat in the cubby below the tubes. She tried scrunching her body down—maybe she could get it with her teeth, somehow hit the right combination of keys.

Her arms suddenly sprang apart, freed. She fell forward, smacking her face on the tube. She pushed upward, determined to ignore the pain, make the most of this stroke of luck.

“No,” said Minerva behind her. She put her hand on Breanna’s shoulder and forced her back into the seat. Rap began to push back, but a knife slid along the back of her ear. The skin felt cold, and then as if it were pulling itself apart.

“I want you to fly the plane,” Minerva told her.

“Me? You trust me to fly the plane?” Breanna began to laugh. “Are we giving up?”

“Hardly. Captain Madrone intends on bombing San Francisco.”

“You’re insane. I’ll never help you.”

“It’s possible that I may be able to talk Captain Madrone out of it. In any event, you have a choice. Either you help me, and we possibly save San Francisco as well your husband and yourself. Or I kill you and let Captain Madrone do as he pleases.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I am many things, but not crazy. I would prefer you to fly the plane,” she added, pushing the point of the blade into Breanna’s neck.

“What happened to your pilot?” said Breanna. But as she turned to face her captor she saw the answer—Mayo lay on the floor.

“He had only one bullet in his gun,” said Lanzas. “It was unfortunate that it struck him in his head. Now—move him and fly the plane.”

“Okay,” said Breanna.

Dreamland
8 March, 0245 local (0645 Brazil)

THE BREEZE KICKED UP AS IOWA ROCKETED INTO THE sky, but it was an oddly warm breeze, as if the big plane’s engines were warming the night. Colonel Bastian stared at the Megafortress as it rose, the tremble of its long wings reverberating in his chest. He belonged in the sky, not on the ground pushing paper. On any given day, the best use of his talents was in the air—and today was more than any given day.

More than likely, his flying days were over. Keesh would see to that. Not his flying days exactly just his Air Force ones. The loss of the Boeing and Flighthawks was bad enough when it looked like an accident. But someone stealing a plane—that was a different story. And then losing a Mega-fortress and two more Flighthawks—Brad Elliott had been cashiered for less.

Not exactly. In Elliott’s case, the thief was a Soviet spy, with the backing of a world superpower. Here he was simply a madman.

If Dog was going to be bagged anyway, why the hell not get his butt up in the air and do something?

Do what? Kill his own daughter?

What the hell kind of father would he be if it came to that?

The kind who had sworn an oath to protect his country.

What sort of oath had he taken when Breanna was born?

If he was there, he might be able to help her somehow. But then, hadn’t that been the story of his life—he’d never been there when she was growing up.

The Megafortress began banking, heading south. Dog turned and climbed aboard the black Jimmy waiting to take him back to the Taj. The driver threw the SUV in gear.

They were almost at the building when Bastian put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Take me back around to the Megafortress hangar,” he said. “Shed Two. Then knock off for the night.”

“Sir?”

“You have forty-eight hours leave. I’d suggest you don’t waste a minute of it.”

Aboard Galatica
Over Colombia
8 March, 0545 local (0645 Brazil)

MINERVA HAD FIGURED OUT HOW TO PROGRAM THE course in on the flight computer, and was watching Breanna carefully. Rap flew the plane precisely as her captor directed, skimming across the ragged landscape just at the edge of a thunderstorm at 8,500 feet. Sooner or later an opportunity would present itself, even if it meant pushing the plane into a mountain.

“F-15’s, twenty miles ahead at compass point three-two-zero,” said Madrone over the interphone. He had one of the Flighthawks flying eight miles ahead as a scout, using its passive sensors to check for threats. “Two planes, one at twenty-five thousand feet. The second is at twenty-eight.”

“Attack them,” said Minerva.

“We can get by them,” suggested Breanna. “It will be safer.”

“Do it.”

“Hold on. I’m going to take us out of this turbulence. Computer—”

“Don’t change the course,” Minerva hissed, leaning toward her.

“Do you want to get by them or not?”

“Don’t change the course, or the altitude.”

“I just have to get out of this storm.”

Minerva grabbed her hand.

The Flighthawk screen showed the Eagles in a standard search sweep, running well off to the west. A standard B-52 would be clearly visible to them, but Gal had the profile of a barn swallow, and unless the plane made a sudden movement, the interceptors were likely to miss it.

“They’re off my radar,” said Kevin.

“If we switched our radar on, we’d see threats two to three hundred miles away,” Breanna told Lanzas.

“Three hundred miles?”

“How do you think we were able to track you to Brazil? Gal is testing a—”

“The radar would also allow our enemies to see us coming,” said Lanzas, her voice tired. “Please, Captain, do not test me further.”

JEFF CURSED AS THE F-15S PASSED OUT TO SEA, another chance lost.

“I know you’re watching me, Jeff,” said Madrone. His voice came from a small speaker in the console ordinarily used only by the Megafortress’s systems. “Put the headset on.

Slowly, Jeff pushed upright and reached for the headset. His sore upper body moved like the works in an old rusted clock, creaking and cracking.

“Kevin, how did you manage to use that speaker?” he asked. “It’s not part of ANTARES or C3.”

“There are no boundaries I can’t cross, Jeff.”

“You flew Hawkmother too. How? Through the gateway?”

“I’m beyond ANTARES, Jeff. I don’t need the computer.”

“Show me. Take off the control helmet.”

“Don’t try and trick me. I’m not stupid.”

“Withdrawal from the Theta drugs makes you paranoid,” Jeff said. He turned and looked across the bay at the man who had been his friend. “It did it to me. It still affects me.”

“It’s not paranoia when people are really out to get you.”

“I thought I could feel my legs,” said Jeff. “It really tricked me.”

“You’re the only one playing tricks.”

“I can’t feel my legs, Kevin. It was a dream—a desire or something I can’t control. It’s not too late,” he said. “Geraldo can help you. Take us back to Dreamland and surrender. I’ll help you. I swear 1 will.”