Nerve Center (47 page)

The bomb would only destroy the top portion of the lab. A second reinforced layer protected the computer itself. But they’d never get around the radiation. They’d wait a hundred years, maybe more.

The numbers drained away. The Flighthawk’s pipper began to pulse, and the targeting bar went to yellow, ready.

He was now thirty seconds from his target. Time to unsafe the bomb, allowing the trigger to be activated as soon as the missile’s engine ignited.

As he started to give the command, something told him to watch his back.

ZEN’S RIGHT BOOT LAY AGAINST THE CORD THAT connected to the helmet. If he could kick it, he could knock it loose, knock if off Kevin’s head.

His leg stayed motionless.

Of course. Useless damn legs. Useless damn body. He’d taken his best shot and now he was truly impotent.

“No!” he screamed, smashing his arm against the base of the control seat so violently his whole body jerked away.

The cord caught on the tip of the lower flap hook on his pants. But it had been tied to the panel—putting pressure on it had no effect on the plug. Jeff cursed and tried to sit up, pushing away the pain, telling his body he’d ignored much worse. He had gotten his elbow below him and begun to lever around when Gal lurched hard to the right and downward. Jeff’s efforts were vastly multiplied by the plane’s sudden momentum; his body flew backward, tugging the wire and sending the ANTARES helmet flying across the cabin.

Aboard Sharkishki
8 March, 0855

MACK PUNCHED HIS THROTTLE AND JERKED THE STICK back, riding the massive thrust of the MiG’s tweaked turbofans upward as he saw the Flighthawk cross above him.

Little bastard was fast and still off his screen. Mack had the Scorpion thumbed up, locked.

Go, baby, go.

The missile clunked off its rail. He lost a second in locking and firing the other missile.

They were going to miss.

Son of a bitch. Chaff. Zigging and breaking down.

That damn Madrone. Zen had taught him well.

Sidewinders up.

Too far.

Mack jammed the throttles all the way to max afterburner. As the MiG shot ahead on its fiery ride, the Sidewinder growled. He launched right away.

Aboard Gal
8 March, 0658

MADRONE’S MIND FLEW INTO A THOUSAND PIECES.

He tried to give the command anyway, tell the Flighthawk to launch.

Minerva. The dark woman of death.

Kevin opened his mouth, but the only word that came to his lips was “Christina.”

As he said it a second time, he realized the connection with ANTARES had been lost.

Aboard M-6
8 March, 0900

“FLIGHTHAWK IS DOWN! FLIGHTHAWK IS DOWN!” SAID McAden. “Who got him? Shit! MiG bearing—it’s got to be Smith!”

“The bomb,” said Dog. “Was it on the U/MF or not?”

His eyes were pasted on the windscreen. Las Vegas sat peacefully in the distance.

“I’m tracking fragments,” said the copilot. “Big hunk of something.”

Dog waited. If the Flighthawk had had the weapon aboard, it might still detonate when it hit the ground.

If it didn’t have it aboard, he had to take out Galatica.

He might still have to.

The city’s neons seemed to flicker.

Crazy imagination.

No, a reflection from Galatica, passing ahead.

“Lost it. Bomb would have gone off by now,” said McAden. “Galatica, two miles dead ahead. Low, erratic.”

“See if they’ll answer a hail.”

Aboard Gal
8 March, 0906

LANZAS SEEMED DAZED NEXT TO HER. BREANNA decided it was time to get her weapon. She slipped the restraints, then jerked the stick forward, sending the plane nose down.

Pushing away her com headset, Rap dove for Minerva, wrestling for the big knife Minerva had tucked in the other side of her belt. But the Brazilian she-wolf didn’t try to fight her off. Breanna pulled the blade free, then pointed it at Lanzas.

“It’s no use,” said the Brazilian. “You can kill me if you want. The bomb will get us when we land.”

“Kevin’s bomb?”

“That’s on the Flighthawk.”

“We’re booby-trapped,” said Breanna. “Where is it? Where’s the bomb. Is it on a timer? Or an altimeter? When does it go off?”

Lanzas said nothing more.

“Jeff, are you down there? Jeff, are you all right?”

He didn’t answer. She tried the interphone circuit again, but got nothing.

“Kevin?” she said tentatively.

Madrone didn’t answer.

The Megafortress accepted her commands without interference. Something had happened below—it might well be that both Jeff and Kevin were dead.

Breanna reauthorized the computer pilot, reasoning that Madrone had been able to take over the plane even when the computer pilot was off. The computer snapped in, almost eager; it blew through its self-diagnostics, reporting itself fit and trim. Rap glanced at Lanzas as she told the computer to hold the present course, then locked the controls with her voice command.

The Brazilian made no effort to stop her. She seemed to be in a trance.

Breanna stood, twisting her headphones off. But as she started to get up to go below, she heard a voice over the headset.

Still staring at Lanzas, Bree put the headset on.

“Bree.”

“Jeff? Are you okay?”

“We landing?”

“I think we’re rigged to explode. I’m not sure how, though—whether it’s a timer or some sort of altimeter bomb.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t know if Lanzas is lying or not. But she was awfully worried about going over ten thousand feet.”

“We did that already.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I want you to eject.”

“What about you?”

“Just do it.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jeff. Besides, she probably sabotaged the seats. The ones below were monkeyed with.”

He didn’t answer. She could hear him groaning and shoving his body around; he sounded like he did in the morning when he pulled himself from bed and went to the bathroom by crawling across the floor.

“How much fuel do we have?” he said finally.

“About twenty minutes worth. Maybe a little less. We’re on three engines,” she added. “A Scorpion took one off.”

“That ought to stretch things a bit, no?” he asked.

His voice was so deadpan, she wasn’t entirely sure he was trying to make a joke.

Aboard M-68 March, 0915

“GALATICA, THIS IS DREAMLAND M-6. Do YOU READ ME? Galatica, can you hear me? Please acknowledge.”

Dog listened as both McAden and Geraldo took turns trying to hail the plane. They were about ten minutes out of Dreamland.

His fatigue was starting to set in. Fatigue and worry, mostly about his daughter.

“Dreamland M-6, this is Galatica,” said Breanna. “I’m in control here. Repeat, I am in control.”

“Bree,” said Dog.

“Hey, Daddy. What the hell are you doing in a Megafortress?”

“I’m flying it,” he said. “Bree—the nuke.”

“On the Flighthawk.”

“Mack Smith splashed it,” said Bastian.

“Mack?”

“Insubordinate snot disobeyed orders, thank God,” said Dog. “Now listen, little girl, you stayed out past your bedtime and I’ve come to bring you home. Set up for Runway One.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that. We have a bit of a situation here.”

Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0925

IN JEFF’S OPINION, MINERVA WAS BLUFFING.

On the other hand, nothing she’d done until now had been a bluff.

“Altimeter or timer?” Bree asked.

“Timer,” said Jeff.

“Then we should land right now.”

“Unless it’s an altimeter. What’s the lowest we’ve been?”

“Hold.”

Jeff listened as Rap paged back through the logs.

“Three hundred feet. But if it wasn’t armed until ten thousand, it could be anywhere below 4,500, I think. Minerva’s still catatonic. What about Kevin?”

“I knocked him out. He wouldn’t know anyway. She used him.”

“So what’s your call?” Bree asked, her voice as breezy as if she were asking about a basketball bet. “Altimeter or timer?”

“Have to be a radar altimeter.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise you could defeat it by landing someplace high. Lanzas would have thought about that, and suggested it as a way out. Do you know where it is?”

“If I knew where it was, don’t you think I’d run back and find it?”

“I didn’t realize you had a blowtorch handy,” said Zen sarcastically. “Must be in the tail, where they repaired the plane. Maybe we can spoof the beacon.”

“Jeff, even if you were right and you could find a way to do that, it wouldn’t eliminate a timer.”

“Well, let’s take a shot at finding it. Check the course that Kevin programmed in. See how low he was going to go before making the attack.”

“That was the three hundred feet.”

“Probably below that triggers it.”

“Well, great, that’s an easy jump.”

If it did have a radar altimeter, there probably would be a way to spoof it, Jeff decided. He could use a Flighthawk to detect it, or maybe examine the hull for a hot spot.

Except that he didn’t have a Flighthawk. But Jennifer Gleason did.

“It’s in native mode, orbiting above Dreamland,” Jennifer told him. “I can unlock it. Can you fly it?”

“Not a problem.”

As he waited, Jeff glanced over at Kevin, slumped in his seat. Zen had grabbed and punched him hard as he leaned over him; blood curled from his nose and ear. But for some reason Jeff thought it was more than the blow that had knocked his friend senseless. The fatigue of these past days, the drugs, fear, and maybe the realization of what he’d done—they must be at least as responsible for knocking him out as Jeff’s fist.

Zen’s wrist had swollen, either from the punch or the fall. He winced, but still managed a smooth handoff of the Flight-hawk. He took the U/MF from its orbit and swung up toward the EB-52.

Odd to fly the plane from the panels without his flight helmet, almost as if he were working by remote control. Which, of course, he was. All the time.

“Blew that engine clean off,” said Zen.

“B-52’s don’t go down,” said Bree. “I can tell you stories. Major Cheshire has a whole gallery of damaged BUFFs that landed in Vietnam with half the plane shot away.”

Jeff tried infrared as he closed in, focusing on the tail section. Maybe there was a little part of the right stabilizer that wasn’t as hot as the rest, maybe not. The repair threw everything off anyway.

“Going to put the fuzz detector on full,” said Zen. “Jeff, it’s not going to make any difference.”

“Knowledge is power. Just hold us level until the tanker gets here.”

“I have an idea. Let’s break off the stabilizer and land.”

“What?”

“Let’s assume the bomb is there, okay? What do we do? We can’t eject, we can’t land. We twiddle our thumbs for the next twenty years—or twenty seconds, until the timer nails us.

Jeff nudged the Flighthawk closer. There were intermittent signals.

“I think it is in the tail. Where they repaired the plane.”

“Great. Snap it off and let’s go home. I’m getting hungry.”

“How do you want me to snap it off?”

“Shoot it off with the Flighthawk.”

“You’re out of your mind, girlie.”

“Don’t call me girlie while we’re working.”

Zen pulled up the armament panel. The U/MF was down to two slugs.

Not that he had intended on using them.

“Don’t have enough bullets, Bree.”

“Slice through it,” she said. “Fly right into it. This way we’ll be sure nothing else hits us.”

“Rap, even if I managed to do that, how are you going to land without a tail?”

“You know how many times I’ve done that?”

“Zero.”

“Hell, it was in pieces when I landed in Brazil. I’ve done it once a week on the simulator. Jeez, even my father can do it.”

“I’m not worried about him.”

“You have a better idea?”

HE DIDN’T.

Breanna decided that sooner was better than later—it wasn’t like they were going to gain anything by waiting.

As they crossed into Dreamland’s restricted airspace, she leveled at a thousand feet. The range was cleared; they had nothing but empty lake bed for miles.

Was snapping off the stabilizer better than letting the bomb explode?

Depended entirely on how big the bomb was. And where it was. And luck. And how clean a break Jeff got.

Three hundred feet was really too high to do this.

Small bomb wouldn’t do much damage. Except for the debris and shrapnel and fire.

She could land without one stabilizer. Hell, she could land without the whole tail.

Of course, if Jeff missed and somehow took out the wing as well …

“We’ll get ready to land,” she told her husband. “You have to hit me when we’re at three hundred and fifty feet.”

“Shit, Bree, we’ll roll right into the ground.”

“No way.”

“Bullshit.”

“We will if you miss and crash into the rest of the plane.”

“Bree.”

“On a ten count.”

“Fuck you.”

“With great pleasure,” she said, watching the altimeter slip through nine hundred feet.

Aboard M-6
8 March, 0930

BASTIAN HEARD DREAM TOWER CLEAR BREANNA TO land.

“I thought you had a bomb aboard,” he said, trying—and failing-to keep his voice calm.

“Probably.”

“Well, what the hell are you doing?”

“Landing.”

“Wait. We can figure something out,” he said. “Maybe we can get some parachutes into your plane.”

“No time. Relax. We’ll be okay.”

“Breanna Rapture Bastian Stockard—”

“Close your eyes, Daddy.”

Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0935

HIS DAUGHTER WOKE HIM WITH HER WAIL. KEVIN JERKED back to consciousness.

He’d fallen asleep downstairs again. He had to get up and get her, before she woke Karen.