Nerve Center (48 page)

No.

He was in the Megafortress.

Zen had taken control of the Flighthawks.

They’d take him prisoner, make him go back into Theta, have ANTARES suck what was left of his mind away.

He couldn’t let that happen. He pushed to get up out of the seat, got tangled in the restraints. He fell and rolled onto the deck.

JEFF’S HAND WAS SO WET WITH SWEAT THAT THE STICK slipped as he approached. He wrapped both hands around it, eyes and consciousness riveted on the screen.

He had Gal’s speed nailed. The computer kept warning about proximity, which was good.

A quick plunge to the right, snap off half the tail on Bree’s count.

“Okay. Ten, nine,” said Breanna.

“Jeff.”

Zen looked up. Madrone stood over him with his gun. “Seven, six.”

Jeff put his right hand up, his other on the stick. He felt Kevin pushing the gun down into the back of his neck. “Five, four, three.”

Madrone ripped the headset away. Zen took a breath, then bent the stick downward.

DREAMLAND’S EB-52 SIMULATOR WAS VERY, VERY realistic. But it couldn’t begin to approximate what it felt to lose your tail at 140 knots, 347 feet above the ground.

The Megafortress lurched upward, then flopped down like a flat stone, losing 150 feet of altitude in the blink of an eye. Breanna and the computer struggled to compensate for the ravaging forces of gravity and momentum.

She held the plane steady, but it slid sideways through the air. One of the flaps, damaged earlier by the Scorpion, flew off the plane. Something exploded behind them, kicking at the fuselage, pushing the nose upright at the last second.

They hit the ground rather slowly, at ninety-two knots. But they struck at an angle. The leading gear collapsed; the right-side gear twisted off, but remained under the plane. Gal spun wildly. Breanna felt something hot in her face, then lost consciousness.

Dreamland
8 March, 1008

CAPTAIN BREANNA “RAPTURE” BASTIAN STOCKARD woke up in her father’s arms. Her body felt as if it were encased in cement. Her arms hurt. Her fingers fluttered.

Her toes were numb. She tried to bend her knee, felt nothing.

“Breanna. Bree.” He spoke to her in his strong voice from far away, beyond the mountains.

Whose voice was it? Jeff’s?

Bree opened her eyes.

“I can’t move my legs,” she said.

“You’ve been immobilized,” he said. “Bree. You’re okay.”

“I’m okay?”

“You’re alive.”

She remembered Zen in the hospital. She’d said the same thing to him.

Breanna started to cry.

“The doctors say you’re okay. We’re going to put you in the ambulance.”

The tears flowed. God. To lose her legs.

“Yo. Good landing.”

She turned her head. Jeff lay on a stretcher next to her.

“Jeff—”

“Kevin’s dead,” he said. “He got slammed in the landing.

Minerva bashed her head too. They don’t think she’ll make it.

She didn’t care about the others. She pushed her head up, looking toward her feet.

You’re okay, she’d told Jeff. You’re fine.

What a Goddamn lie.

Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.

Then she saw her right boot move, ever so slightly. She pushed her left foot. It moved as well.

Thank you, God, oh, thank you, she thought as she slipped back into unconsciousness.

*   *   *

DOG STEPPED BACK FROM THE STRETCHERS AS THE medics packed Breanna and Jeff into the ambulance.

“We made it,” said a sweet, soft voice in his ear.

“Yes,” he said. Then he turned and took Jennifer Gleason into his arms, his mouth finding hers in a long, glorious kiss.

VIII
“ON REVIEW”

Dreamland
8 March, 1300

COLONEL BASTIAN SLID THE THIN YELLOW PAPER OVER the center of his desk. His fingers brushed so gently along the tissuelike surface, he might have been touching a baby’s cheek, afraid that if he pushed too hard he would somehow damage it.

He had no memory of Breanna as a baby. He had pictures of her mother pregnant, but no memory of her in a crib or in his arms.

The report said she’d be fine—minor scrapes, a few bruises, some smoke inhalation, nothing that would keep her off active duty. She’d been lucky.

Lanzas had been killed. And Madrone, his unrestrained body tossed and broken by the crash.

More than luck had saved his daughter. There was the structural integrity of the plane, its ability to absorb massive shock and trauma, the computer that had helped her manage a semistable landing, the magnificent airfoil that had somehow kept the Megafortress from becoming simply a rock.

The guts to try an outrageous solution. The skill to pull it off.

Not luck at all.

His own decision not to shoot them down.

The right decision, because everything had worked out. But if the nukes had been launched, and part of Dreamland had been obliterated, if the nuclear fallout was now drifting over Las Vegas?

“Colonel?”

Dog looked over at the door. Sergeant Gibbs grinned wider than a jack-o’-lantern. “You’re going to want to take this call right now, sir.”

Bastian picked up the phone.

“Stand by for the President,” said a woman’s voice, so cold and quick it might have been an automated operator.

Before Dog could react, President Martindale came on the line.

“Colonel Bastian, damn good to be talking with you,” said the President. The warmth in his loud voice stunned Bastian momentarily. “Damn good job out there. Damn good.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bastian.

“Tecumseh, I’m afraid I don’t have much time to talk right now, but one of my aides will set up a visit.”

“A visit here?”

The President laughed. “Unless you’re thinking of going somewhere?”

“No, sir.”

The President laughed again and hung up the phone. Bastian wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to wait for someone else to come on. After two minutes with the dead phone next to his ear, he finally hung up.

The phone rang almost immediately. But instead of the White House, it was his boss—General Magnus.

“You disobeyed a direct order,” said Magnus without any preliminaries.

“I did not,” said Bastian.

“You were in the cockpit of that EB-52. Don’t bullshit me, Dog. You had express orders not to be in a Megafortress.”

“I was the most qualified pilot at the—”

“Just because you have your nose up the President’s ass doesn’t make you immune, Bastian,” snapped Magnus. “And just because Keesh was man enough to say you opposed ANTARES when he resigned won’t get you off the hook. That was still your man who almost fried San Francisco.”

“I said from the get-go the project was ill-advised,” said Dog, his anger stoking to match the general’s. “I was under direct orders to proceed.”

“That’s the only reason you’re still in the Air Force at all,” said Magnus. “The only fucking reason.”

Bastian had never heard Magnus curse or use an obscenity. It drained his anger away.

“Your status is under review,” said the general.

“I’m being relieved?” Bastian said softly.

“Under review,” repeated the general. “We’ll see what the new Defense Secretary thinks,” Magnus added. “Arthur Chastain is the likely replacement.”

“I don’t see how you can discipline a pilot for flying an airplane,” said Bastian.

“That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“You’re taking away my wings? I can’t fly?”

“Of course not. But you’re not a pilot, Dog. That’s not your job. You’re the commander of the most important weapons-testing facility in the country, as well as Whiplash. When the shit hits the fan, your job is on the ground where you can control things, not in the air getting shot at.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You bet your ass there’s going to be a full-scale investigation.”

“I welcome it,” Dog said.

“You don’t have to lie.” Magnus snorted. He too seemed to have spent most of his fury. “Get your p’s and q’s in line. The fallout on this one is going to be heavy.”

The line snapped dead before Dog could say anything else.

Did the President’s phone call mean he would survive this no matter what? Or did it simply mean the brass would stack the odds monumentally against him?

Dog got up from the desk. He felt depressed and tired. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d work off the cloud by hopping into a cockpit and getting some flying time. Throw himself into the sky, clear his head.

He glanced down at Ax’s neat piles of paperwork and the reports waiting for his inspection.

He wavered. He was no good when feeling like this, out of sorts—how could he command anyone?

How could he expect others to follow orders if he disobeyed his?

Magnus hadn’t said he couldn’t fly. He’d said when the shit hit the fan, he belonged on the ground.

The general meant he belonged where he could control things. Truth was, with a fleet of Megafortresses, that might very well be in the air, not on the ground.

There was work to be done. Bastian sighed and pulled out his chair.

Then he pushed it back and went to find a plane in need of a check-flight.

Table of Contents

Dreamland Duty Roster

LT. COLONEL TECUMSEH “DOG” BASTIAN

CAPTAIN BREANNA BASTIAN STOCKARD

MAJOR JEFFREY “ZEN” STOCKARD

MAJOR MACK “KNIFE” SMITH

MAJOR NANCY CHESHIRE

CAPTAIN DANNY FREAH

Titles by Dale Brown

I Premonition

Allegro, Nevada 1 January 1997, 0410 (all times local)

II Night moves

Bunker B, Air Force High Technology Advanced Weapons Center (Dreamland), Nevada 9 January, 1405

Aboard EB-52 BX-2 “Raven” Range 2, Dreamland 9 January, 1415

Bunker B, Dreamland 9 January, 1415

Aboard Raven 9 January, 1415

Dreamland Shuttle Dock 9 January, 1745

Allegro, Nevada 9 January, 1913

Dreamland 9 January, 2104

Las Vegas 9 January, 2250

Dreamland Perimeter 10 January, 0455

Dreamland Aggressor Project Hangar 10 January, 0905

Dreamland Security Office 10 January, 1015

Dreamland Range 2 10 January, 1054

Dreamland Commander’s Office 10 January, 1205

Dreamland, Range 2 10 January, 1205

Dreamland Briefing Room 1 14 January, 1005

III Head games

Dreamland, Taj Suite 302 23 January, 0750

Aboard EB-52 BX-4 “Missouri” Range 2, Dreamland 23 January, 0807

Dreamland Handheld Weapons Lab 23 January, 0807

Dreamland, Aggressor Hangar 23 January, 0182

Aboard Mo 23 January, 0915

ANTARES Bunker 27 January, 0755

Dreamland All-Ranks Cafeteria 27 January, 1230

ANTARES Bunker 27 January, 1555

Dreamland Commander’s Office 29 January, 1705

Allegro, Nevada 29 January, 2034

IV Brainstorm

Aboard Hawkmother (Dreamland Boeing 777 Test Article 1) Dreamland Range 23 West 18 February, 1007

Aboard Raven 8 February, 1123

Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1137

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1141

Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1145

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1153

Aboard Raven 18 February, 1213

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1227

Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1250

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1257

Aboard Sharkishki 18 February, 1301

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1307

Aboard Raven 18 February, 1313

Dreamland Security Office 18 February, 1315

Flighthawk Control Bunker 18 February, 1400

Dreamland Administrative Offices (“Taj”), Level 1 18 February, 1545