Nerve Center

Chapter 58

It was different than Zen remembered — much different. Better. He strode across the plain, a light wind brushing his face. He walked — walked! — to the edge of the mesa and looked out over the valley.

“You’re in Theta,” said Geraldo somewhere far behind him. Jeff laughed. He spread his arms, then coiled his feet. His knees felt so damn good.

He wriggled his toes for the first time in a year and a half. He knew, or thought he knew, that he wasn’t really moving them — it was a hallucination, a dreamlike, vivid memory enhanced by ANTARES.

But what if the process somehow did make it possible for him to feel his toes? ANTARES made unused portions of the brain available — maybe it could do that with nerve cells and the spinal cord as well. One of the doctors who had examined him in the hospital thought the cord wasn’t one-hundred-percent severed; he thought it might be theoretically possible for Zen to feel something, if not today, then in the future.

The day he’d heard that he’d felt so much hope. Then he’d crashed back down as other experts disagreed and it became more and more obvious he felt nothing at all.

“Jeff?”

He leapt into the air and began to fly. The light pressure he’d felt from the wind increased exponentially. Pain shot through his head.

Stay in Theta, he told himself.

The bony plates of his skull tore apart. His head spun and he fell. When Jeff opened his eyes, he was back in the ANTARES lab.

Geraldo stood in front of him.

“Good,” she said. “You were in Theta for two hours.”

“Two hours?”

The scientist smiled.

Jeff waited while the others recorded his vital signs and brain waves now that he was out of Theta. The changes in the system since he’d been involved in the program the first time were incredible. It wasn’t just the circuitry or the drugs or even Geraldo’s preference for using Eastern-inspired mental-relaxation techniques. Connecting to the ANTARES gear in the past had been painful — this was extremely pleasurable.

He could walk. He knew it.

ANTARES, or perhaps the drugs that helped enhance his connection with it, stimulated the crushed nerves in his spinal cord. The damn thing was going to make him walk again.

“Let’s work with the Flighthawks,” he suggested as Geraldo’s assistants began removing the body monitor wires.

“No, Jeff, not today. It’s not on the agenda. You said you wanted to start slow, and I agree.”

“Well let’s take another turn in Theta,” he told Geraldo. “Let’s go for it.’’

“Major. Jeffrey.”

Geraldo’s frown reminded Jeff of his grandmother’s. She glanced at her two assistants; without saying anything they left the room.

“Jeff, you know we have to go slow,” Geraldo told him after they had gone. “For one thing, Colonel Bastian hasn’t given his approval for you to devote anything beyond minimal time. And I do have other subjects. Besides, the drugs are only starting to reach potent levels in your system. They’re very new, and since you didn’t use them before, I’d like to have a good, firm baseline to use as we proceed.”

She had obviously conspired with her assistants against him, Jeff realized. Why? What was she up to?

“Is there something you want to say to me?” the scientist asked.

“In what sense?”

“In any sense.” She folded her arms in front of her chest, studying him.

“Uh, no. You staring at me for any particular reason? I got boogers coming out of my nose or something?”

Geraldo finally laughed. “No, Jeffrey, not at all. Come on. Have some tea.” She turned and walked across the large room, going through the open doorway and entering the small lounge area. Light jazz played in the background, music that Jeff had selected last week before his first attempt — failed — to get into Theta.

She’s trying to seduce me somehow, he realized as he rolled his wheelchair toward the table area. Geraldo took a bag of cinnamon-apple herbal tea and placed it in a cup as she waited for the kettle to boil. She didn’t disapprove of coffee or “real” tea, but she advised against it. As a physician, she said, she had some doubts about the long-term effects of caffeine.

“Jeff, do you remember the accident when you lost your legs?”

“I didn’t lose them,” he said. “I have legs just the same as you.”

“They’re not the same. Though I did misspeak,” she said, correcting herself.

Geraldo was a viper. She came off like a grandma-type, but beneath it she was always plotting.

“I remember the accident,” he said.

The electric teapot whistled. She poured out two cups. “Do you think about it often?” she asked, waiting as the tea steeped.

“No. At first, sure. But not now.”

“Would you say you’ve accepted it?”

“Who the hell accepts something like that?” Zen struggled to keep his anger in control. Geraldo was trying to provoke him. “The thing is, see, you don’t accept it. Not really. Never. But you, it’s like you move to the next problem. A pilot, see — a pilot knows there’s a checklist.”

“Losing your ability to walk isn’t the same as missing an item on the checklist.” She stopped stirring the tea for a moment. “Do you think you’ll ever walk again?”

The bitch must have some way of reading his mind while he was hooked up into the machine.

They’d always said that was impossible. They’d claimed they could only see waves.

But hell, if it meant walking again, he’d put up with it. He could put up with anything.

“The doctors have been pretty much universal that I won’t walk. And, yes, it seems pretty evident, don’t you think?” He reached for his tea. He smelled it, could tell from the steam rising that it would be too hot, held it in his lap. “Everyone is in agreement that walking isn’t in my future.”

“But you don’t agree.”

Zen laughed. He really did like her; she really did remind him of his grandmother. “The fact of the matter is, Doc, even if I thought I could walk — hell, if I wished to right now — it wouldn’t change a damn thing. I’d still fall flat on my face and you’d laugh your ass off.”

“I wouldn’t laugh at you, Jeffrey,” she said, so seriously that he couldn’t do anything but sniff once more at the tea.

Chapter 59

Like everything else at Dreamland, the survival shop was on the cutting edge. While there were no masseuses on duty, pilots suiting up for test flights had nearly every other conceivable amenity. Their flight gear, of course, was custom-tailored; the men and women who prepared their suits could embarrass a team of London tailors with their speed and accuracy. The survival gear itself — parachutes, etc. — was mostly standard issue, and received the same standard of care administered at any U.S. Air Force facility: in other words, the best possible. But the experts attending pilots before and after their test runs included a nurse who helped make sure the legs and arms and chests fitting into the suits were in top condition. She had certificates in sports medicine and nutrition as well as aviation medicine.

She was also as free with her advice as Ann Landers. Which meant that Dog got the full harangue as he dressed before taking the new EB-52 for a flight.

“You’ve put on two pounds since you’ve come here, Colonel,” warned Nurse Yenglais. “Too much of the good life.”

“Good life?” Dog slid his helmet liner on his head. “Are you implying I’m getting fat, Maria?”

“Six thousand calories,” she said, undeterred. “At this rate, you will be outside of your ideal weight range in two years.”

Which would still leave him about ten pounds lighter than nearly everyone in the Air Force at his rank. But Dog knew better than to voice that objection, and merely winked at the nearby staff sergeant who was performing what amounted to a quadruple check of his safety gear.

“See you all in exactly ninety minutes,” said Dog, taking his helmet and striding for the plane.

The practice sessions that had started because he wanted to prove to his daughter that he could fly anything had become welcome escapes from the rigors of his desk job. In the space of two weeks, Bastian had made himself into an excellent Megafortress pilot, and in fact an important fill-in for test flights. The plane’s flight computers even rated him the third-best EB-52 skipper on the base.

Which irked him no end. He didn’t mind — much — that his computer scores were lower than Major Cheshire’s. She’d been flying big jets forever, and had helped build the plane and spent more time at the helm every day than he spent at his desk.

But ranking behind Breanna was another matter. Never mind that Bree also had considerable experience in multiengined jets, or that she too had worked with the designers and whiz kids on the Megafortress. Dog wanted to beat her.

Not too bad, of course. Just enough to show he was better.

“Colonel, you have five?” shouted Danny Freah just as Dog touched the ladder to board his plane.

“I can spare about three,” he told the captain.

“Just, uh, can we talk over here?” asked Freah, gesturing with his thumb. Dog followed Freah a short distance away, out of earshot of the techies completing last-second checks of the new plane, which had been dubbed “Galatica.”

“I’ve been talking to Jed Barclay over at the NSC. We have a weird theory about the 777.”

Dog squinted into the sun. “More hiker reports, or has the Navy found something?”

“No. The Navy contacts turned out bogus, just as you predicted.”

Despite several promising leads, the search teams had failed to turn up any wreckage in the Sierras, and the search had been extended to the Pacific, where the Boeing and Flight-hawks could theoretically have flown after the pilots ejected. The fact that the big plane did not appear on any radars and had not been sighted, of course, argued against it continuing to the Pacific, but it had to have landed somewhere.

“You’re going to think this is nuts,” added Danny.

“If Jed Barclay came up with it, I will.”

“It’s more my idea,” said Danny. “A few hours after Hawk-mother and the Flighthawks disappeared, there was an incident at a small national airport in Mexico. A large plane set down there, using the registration and ID of a 707. A gang stole some fuel, killed a man, and blew up a tanker before taking off.”

“A gang?”

“It’s not a good fit, I know. But one of the reports states that other planes were involved, and that one swooped in low and tried to shoot up some of the security vehicles. It could have been a Flighthawk.”

“I don’t know, Danny. I’m still thinking it’s in the mountains somewhere, buried under the snow.”

“With no beacon?”

“Disabled in the crash.”

“I checked some of the technical data out. Hawkmother could have reached Mexico. The airport is down the peninsula, in the western mountains not far from the sea.”

“The Flighthawks would never have made it that far.”

“They could have refueled,” said Danny. “I checked that out too. There would have been just enough fuel for all three to have made it. It would explain why we can’t find the planes, Colonel.”

Bastian looked back at the sun. Sabotage had, of course, been considered from the start. But theft was a different angle, and most unlikely. Madrone was the only other person on the plane; it seemed almost inconceivable that anyone else had snuck aboard. The Army captain had no experience as a pilot beyond ANTARES, and even if he had been an ace, he would have had a difficult time in the cockpit once the ejection seats were gone.

“Maybe the computer was programmed to fly the plane away,” suggested Danny. “Maybe ANTARES is the target. The Russians know about it. They obviously want it. I talked to Dr. Rubeo,” added Freah. “He says it would have been impossible to preprogram the computer to take the plane without it showing up in the preflight dumps. Apparently, they download the memory before taking off for some sort of baseline check.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” said Dog.

“Except that there were transmissions that the Flighthawk team can’t account for. Rubeo told me to talk to Jennifer Gleason. I think there’s something here, Colonel.”

“If the plane were in Russia, you don’t think we would have heard by now?”

“Maybe it’s been cut up and shipped by boat.”

“You realize the satellites have checked every airfield it could land on.”

“Has to be somewhere. I don’t believe in the Bermuda Triangle. Or space aliens.”

“You’re not angling to go down to Mexico, are you?” asked Dog.

“I have an FBI contact that can smooth the way. She speaks Spanish too. If you authorize it, we’ll hop a plane this afternoon.”

“She?”

“Debra Flanigan.”

“Nothing I have to inform your wife about, right?”

“Colonel. Come on.”

“It’s far-fetched, Danny. More than likely the planes are lying in a million pieces and buried under a few feet of snow. There’s been plenty of crashes like that.”

“I think it’s worth a shot, Colonel.”

Bastian glanced at the waiting Megafortress, and thought of all the work that waited for him back at his office. Among the pink telephone message slips there were bound to be several from the Pentagon asking what was up with the search.

“Take a shot at it if you think it’s worth it,” he told Danny, lifting his flight helmet to his head.

Chapter 60

He plunged inside her again and again, pushing himself against her body. Minerva’s breasts curved against his chest and her lips pressed into his, warm electricity bathing his body. Madrone felt himself beginning to climax and tried to hold back, unwilling to let go of the moment, unwilling to lose the immersion in the beautiful dark breathlessness of her body. Her fingers reached across his back, the sharp nails teasing his muscles. Minerva’s perfume eased into his lungs and he exploded, coming with a violent surge that shook her to orgasm as well. The warmth of the jungle settled around them; Madrone floated as the energy slowly dissipated. Finally, he rolled onto his back, lying on the bed as she nuzzled her face against his chest.

Lanzas had appeared at the bottom of the steps when he landed the Boeing. At first he’d thought she was an apparition, part of an ANTARES-induced dream. But she had proven very real, personally nursing him back to health, taking him to bed that first night. She had restored the plane, marveling at the Flighthawks. She had filled him with incredible energy and love and strength. She was not the dark woman of the Theta metaphor; she was better.

“Time now, my darling,” she said. “Time to begin.”

“Yes,” said Madrone, though he made no effort to move. Neither did she.

“Our first step, today.”

“Yes,” said Madrone. He had told her how everyone was against him, how the scientists and militarists were seeking to destroy not just him but the planet, turning everyone to robots with their drugs and implanted chips. He’d been their first guinea pig. Minerva had agreed, and pointed out the obvious — he would never be safe until they were neutralized.

Neither would she. His enemies were already trying to get her. The Brazilian Air Force had sent a flight of Mirages over the base yesterday, obviously looking for him. Fortunately, Hawkmother and the U/MFs were well been hidden by netting.

The bastards. Puny Mirages. They would pay.

He saw it. He could feel the Flighthawks firing their guns.

Loading the planes with shells was child’s play, a simple adjustment not worthy of his expertise. But the cannons were limited and Minerva had few other weapons — six early-version Sidewinders, a pair of runway-denial bombs, and a dozen antitank weapons “on loan” from an Army unit. Adapting them so they could be used with the Flighthawks taxed him considerably, even though ANTARES had greatly expanded his intellect.

Lanzas thought the antitank weapons were useless; they were wire-guided and meant to be fired from helicopters or ground vehicles. But Madrone was well schooled in Army weapons, and saw the TOW equivalents as the most versatile weapons imaginable — their rocket motors could be staged, the wire extended. Their slender shapes would fit well beneath the U/MF fuselages. With the proper modifications, they could carry warheads of several hundred pounds.

He saw the solutions before he did the computations. His brain unfolded in a million directions. Under Minerva’s care, without the Dreamland bastards breathing down his neck, his powers increased exponentially. He ran to each corner of his mind, vibrating with ferocious energy. He felt connected to ANTARES at all times. Even though he was no longer taking Geraldo’s drugs, he felt his hippocampus and other brain cells continuing to grow.

They couldn’t control him now that he had gotten away. They couldn’t use him anymore. He would turn the tables, destroy the bastards, all of them. And then he would be safe here, at the edge of the rain forest.

“What are you thinking?” Minerva asked, rubbing his chest.

“The cannons in the Flighthawks,” said Madrone. “Boa Vista and Manaus will be destroyed.”

“Think of something else for now.”

Lanzas’s hand slid toward his belly. Madrone drifted. He loved flying the Flighthawks, because it meant he was in Theta. But being with her was better, far better.

She rubbed his thigh with the palm of her hand. Then she pulled it away abruptly.

“You’re right. You must go,” Minerva said. “It will be late.”

“A few more minutes won’t matter,” he said, rolling on top of her. “Our victims will wait.”

Chapter 61

Jennifer Gleason looked up from her desk to see Colonel Bastian coming through the door to her lab. Instantly, her fingers felt wet and her heart fluttery; her tongue stumbled as she said hello.

“Dr. Rubeo said you might have some details about anomalies in the communications-and-control computer handling the Flighthawks during the Boeing flight,” said Bastian. He smiled, then pointed to a chair. “Mind if I sit?”

“Go ahead, please.”

She picked at her hair, trying desperately to stop acting like a teenager with a full-blown crush. She was, after all, a grown woman with a full-blown crush.

Jennifer reached to her desk drawer and pulled on it before remembering that she had locked it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she kept the key on a chain around her neck beneath her blouse. She could feel every millimeter of her skin turning beet red as she pulled the chain up discreetly and then bent to unlock the drawer. She retrieved the folders and got up, willing her legs to stop shaking.

“I think when you look at them side by side,” she said, placing the folders down on a clear lab table in the corner of the room, “you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

“You haven’t actually said what you’re talking about,” said Bastian.

For just a half second, she considered throwing herself in his arms. But the consequences of that — of his inevitable rejection — were too great. Carefully, slowly, she laid out the papers.

“These signals came across to our monitoring equipment from the Boeing. They’re broadcast through C3 via the 57Y circuit—”

“Jen.” He touched her arm and she nearly exploded. “Skip some of the technical jargon, okay?”

She managed to nod, then pointed to some of the yellow markings.

“Early on I realized that they were part of the Boeing’s computer-assist-pilot unit. It’s obvious — you can see the coding once you know what to look for. What I didn’t realize until a few days ago — well, yesterday actually — while we were doing some upgrades on ANTARES, was that the leak isn’t accidental. It corresponds to specific wave patterns. It’s a command.”

“Something bothering you, Doc?”

“Didn’t get much sleep last night,” she said lamely, quickly launching into an explanation of her theory that minimized the technical aspects. In a nutshell, she thought that Madrone had somehow learned to use ANTARES to fly the 777, or that C3 had done so at his direction.

“It was most likely a combination of both,” said Jennifer. “The system was hardwired to the Boeing for test purposes and ANTARES or Madrone may have exploited it. I don’t think C3 could have decided to do it on its own, since I haven’t been able to get it to do so in the simulations.”

“Dr. Rubeo doesn’t think it’s possible for an ANTARES subject to do that,” said Dog.

“That’s not exactly what he said. He said, I believe,” she added, “I believe he probably told you that it’s technically difficult to maintain, and that we haven’t any proof. This crossover may not be a deliberate crossover at all, just the code spooling crazily.”

“Can you pin it down?”

“I’m trying to come up with some simulations that can duplicate the ANTARES code. Major Stockard may also be able to help once he’s up to speed. Of course, if we had the hard-drive recorder from the computer in Hawkmother, or, uh, well, if Captain Madrone turned up, I mean if, when—”

“I have to say, Doc, the odds are pretty damn good he’s dead.”

Dog looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She longed to take some of it off — massage his back, kiss him. Jennifer felt an impulse, began to follow it, rising slowly from her chair.

But Bastian had already gotten up and was walking to the door. She froze as he turned.

“See if you can expedite the testing you need. If this is a problem with ANTARES, I need to know right away.” She managed to nod before he stepped out.

Chapter 62

Minerva watched as the fuel-laden Boeing lumbered down the newly finished runway, struggling off the field though she had nearly tripled its size in just a few days. The left wing dipped down as the wheels were cranked upward, but it stayed in the air.

In contrast, the two small robot planes jetted off smartly in less than two thousand meters, even with massive bombs beneath their bellies. The JP 233 British runway-denial weapons had been obtained by Brazil through Italy several years before. Minerva had managed to obtain them from another unit for a price approaching ten times the commanding general’s salary. And it was only that cheap because the man considered himself her ally and sometime lover. At least he’d had the grace not to ask questions.

Nearly as big as the U/MFs, the bombs cut down on the smaller planes’ maneuverability and range. But Madrone had practiced with one yesterday; she was confident he would succeed. More importantly, so was he.

Madrone scared her. She was used to manipulating men, but with him it was beyond manipulation. He anticipated her darkest wishes and went beyond them. It was as if the devil himself had materialized before her.

Yet he could be such a gentle lover, so willing, so soft when she asked.

His suggestion that the antitank weapons could be altered and then fit to the U/MFs made sense to her, though her experts had deep reservations. Madrone’s enhancements to the shaped-charge warheads, at least, could be easily implemented, and were even now being tested in a bunker on the other side of the hill.

The dimensions of the planned weapons gave her a better idea, though she didn’t trust Kevin enough yet to broach it. Perhaps it wasn’t merely trust. Perhaps she knew that if she told him, he would dare her to use them. For that, she wasn’t ready.

Colonel Lanzas had recruited two pilots to fly the Boeing. The exhausted state Madrone had arrived in made it obvious that he had to concentrate on guiding the two smaller jets and not worry about the 777. She did not completely understand the process — his description of ANTARES sounded like science fiction, as if he merely closed his eyes and wished the planes to fly. But there was no doubt that it worked.

Minerva folded her arms, gazing at the large plane disappearing into the distance. They had painted it dark green, making it more difficult to spot when it flew at night or over the jungle canopy. She watched it now disappear in the darkness above the trees, to a thought in the unrippled distance.

If the attack went well, the commanders of Number 18 Group and Number 16 Group would join her immediately. She would — then approach Herule. Already in the capital, the general would be well positioned to apply pressure on the government.

That meant she would have to let him believe he was in charge.

Acceptable, for now.

Chapter 63

Hitting Boa Vista took no more effort than closing his eyes and saying, “Be gone.”

Madrone saw the runway as Hawk One approached. The threat screen remained clear even after he had dropped the parcel of Thompson-Brandt BAP.1000 antirunway weapons and their massive dispenser toward the center of the strip and swung to strafe the row of AT-27’s. He demolished all but one of the half-dozen armed trainers, and set their hangars on fire before the ancient antiaircraft guns began spitting in the direction of the Ffighthawk. The gunfire was optically aimed and easily ignored as he finished off the last trainer.

Manaus was a different story.

Two Roland antiaircraft missiles had been located at the base. Their radars were scanning the air as he approached. Additionally, four F-5Es were overhead, undoubtedly alerted by the attack on Boa Vista.

The American-built Tiger IIs were agile, capable interceptors carrying Mectron MAA-1 heat-seeking missiles as well as cannons. Patrolling in pairs at roughly twenty thousand feet, they were running two elongated ovals seven miles north and south of the base. Since the Boeing had to stay within ten miles of the two Flighthawks, it would be an easy target for the fighters when he attacked.

So he would nail them first, using Hawk One. Hawk Two, still carrying its ponderous bomb, would be held in reserve.

The Tigers’ radars quickly picked up the Boeing, vectoring toward it and issuing challenges before Hawk One closed to five miles. Madrone’s heart raced and the edges of his scalp tingled ever so slightly, as if a light rain had begun to fall on his head.

Her voice guided him:

Remain in Hawk One. Forget everything but the plane.

The U/MF’s threat screen flashed red. The F-5’s had picked him up somehow. But it was too late for them, very much too late — he edged right, wishing the targeting screen into place, the pipper stoking red as he cut a V in the sky, Hawk One diving and then bolting back behind the Brazilian interceptor. He lost ground, the pipper turning cold black, then starting to blink, changing to yellow, then red. Madrone squeezed, and it was like the first time with Minerva, all of his fears rushing out of him. His enemy burst into flames.

He edged left, his body the Flighthawk. His maneuvers drew him parallel to the second Tiger, the pilot so intent on attacking the Boeing that he didn’t see the Flighthawk in the darkness beside him. Nor could his radar find it as it slid backward, slowing a moment to let its target get slightly ahead and below him.

Madrone climbed. He focused the Flighthawk’s IR scan in the center of his head, tipping downward to accelerate into the attack. He saw the man fiddling with his gear.

The idiot was arming his Sidewinders.

The attack caught the F-5E midships. The cannon shells smashed the turbines cleanly in half. The front part of the plane plunged down immediately, tumbling over violently. The rear, containing the engines, tail, and wings, flew on by itself for nearly a mile, a headless horseman still seeking revenge in the night.

By then, Madrone had turned his attention to the Roland defense missiles. The two Marder chassis launchers were located at the western end of the base, on slightly elevated ground. He had to dive quickly to avoid their radar, which swept out to just under ten miles. One of the launchers fired as he dove, though it wasn’t clear why exactly — the Boeing and the Flighthawks were still well outside the missiles’ range, and the threat screens were both clear.

“Captain, we are under attack,” reported Mayo, the copilot. The voice came at him from above, a terrible intrusion from the clouds.

“Stay with me,” said Madrone, concentrating on Hawk One’s threat screen.

“But—”

“You will stay with me!” he thundered.

There was no response. He checked Hawkmother’s position on the God’s-eye view — if the pilots pulled off, he would eject them.

He might just do that now.

The threat screen on Hawk One painted the coverage area of the Roland’s radar as he closed in. The French-German unit was especially proficient at finding low-flying targets, but even it couldn’t find something as small as a Flighthawk flying at only twenty feet off the ground. A second missile took off from the launcher at the right; Madrone guessed that in their excitement the crew had misidentified and fired at the wreckage of the F-5 as it fell to earth.

Or perhaps they could see him somehow. Perhaps the bastards who had tried to destroy Madrone had altered the radar on the Flighthawk, made it visible to the enemy.

It was as if an iron bar hit him in the forehead. Madrone slumped backward in the chair, losing everything.

We will destroy them, Minerva whispered. We will destroy them for what they have done to you. And we will live together, safe in our home.

Madrone felt his way back into the cockpit of Hawk One, saw the large radar dish of the Roland barely two miles away. He waited until he was within a half mile to begin firing. At his speed and range, he got no more than five slugs into the hull of the SAM launcher. But they were more than enough to destroy her.

Flames shot everywhere. A fireball from the first launcher’s missile struck the second, unarmed launcher, but Madrone decided to erase it as well.

From there it was a turkey shoot. He vectored Hawk Two in to drop the bomb while he searched for the remaining F-5Es with One. After he shot them down, he found and destroyed a flight of Mirage IIIs on the ground, and even wasted an old Starfighter that managed to scramble toward the runway to stop him.

By the time Madrone was done, the best combat squadrons of Força Aérea Brasileiria had been eliminated. More importantly, the only units in the western part of the country that answered directly to the Defense Minister — and thus would resist Minerva — no longer had planes to fly.

Chapter 64

Breanna pushed away the plate with her half-eaten turkey sandwich and got up from the table in Lounge B. One of the fancier clubs on the base, Lounge B had been thrown open under Dog’s all-ranks edicts, and now served a very passable lunch, as well as offering some convenient nooks and crannies for involved couples.

Which, in theory, Zen and Bree were. Though during the past few days they had been acting increasingly “married.”

A terrible word in her book, which she equated with a range of disparaging adjectives, none of which included intimate. For the past week, Zen had consistently ignored her, claiming he was working. He’d spent all of his spare time either in the ANTARES bunker — or in that computer bitch’s lair.

Jennifer Gleason. Bree would scratch her eyes out if they were doing anything.

She knew Zen, knew he wasn’t like that. But he was human.

And he’d blown her off for lunch. She was due at a briefing with Colonel Bastian in ten minutes, or she’d hunt him down.

Or maybe not. She was being silly. Most likely he was working — he was incredibly busy, after all. Besides heading the Flighthawk Program, he was currently the only person who’d been able to achieve Theta-alpha in the ANTARES program.

Not that she’d heard that from him.

Was she being silly? Jeff had been acting strange lately, distant, quiet, not talking to her. True, Zen did get moody at times — he’d always been that way, even before the accident.

But something was definitely different now. ANTARES made him edgy, darker.

Could be lack of sleep.

“Hey, Bree, how’s it going?” asked Danny Freah, sauntering in. A very attractive woman appeared behind him.

“Hello, Danny,” said Bree, her eyes following to the blonde. As tall as Freah, she looked like an aerobic instructor even though she wore a conservative pantsuit.

Freah was married, the SOB.

“This is Debbie,” said the captain, gesturing to the woman.

Debbie smiled and offered her hand. Bree didn’t take it. “I’m running a little late,” Bree told Freah. “You see Jeff anywhere?”

“No. He supposed to be here?”

“He’s supposed to be married,” snapped Bree, storming from the room.

Chapter 65

Zen felt the rush of adrenaline as the plane soared to fifty thousand feet. He pushed the rudder pedals — pushed the pedals, he could feel them, feel his feet! He hunted in the sky for his adversary, a MiG-29 somewhere below.

His feet! He could feel his feet!

He had to test this. Had to!

He stood.

Gravity slammed his head back. He fell into a void, every part of him on fire. He blanked out.

When he came to, Geraldo and her assistants were standing over him. He was still in the ANTARES lab room, but they had removed his connections, all except the small wires that monitored his heart and the chemical composition of his blood.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We were going to ask you the same thing,” said Geraldo. “I guess, I guess the MiG nailed me when I wasn’t looking,” he said.

“Our tape of the simulation showed the aggressor still out of range when you blacked out,” said Carrie.

She had her hands on her hips, her beautiful breasts thrust out. Zen hadn’t realized how beautiful she was until now, for some reason. Shy and reserved, but the kind of woman who would turn into something in bed.

“Jeff, how do you feel?” asked Geraldo, pulling over a small metal chair on wheels. The assistants customarily used the chair while adjusting the connections; its steel gleamed even in the softly lit lab.

“Uh-oh, I’m a prisoner of the Inquisition,” he joked, still looking at Carrie.

“Not an inquisition, Jeffrey,” said Geraldo. “But I do have some questions for you.”

Carrie glanced down at the floor. He thought her face had colored, but he couldn’t be sure — she and Roger beat a hasty retreat, leaving their boss to talk to him alone.

It occurred to Jeff that he could wring Geraldo’s thin white neck with one hand, though he had no desire to do so.

“Jeffrey, I’m frankly concerned about you,” said Geraldo.

“Why? Because I got waxed by a MiG? It’s flying Mack Smith’s game plans. It’s pretty good.”

“It has nothing to do with the MiG,” said the scientist.

He really could wring her neck. It wouldn’t be difficult. “When you’re in Theta, do you have full use of your limbs?” she asked.

She knew. Somehow, the bitch knew.

She wanted to control him. She wanted him to remain crippled. A gimp couldn’t take over like Madrone had.

But that was just a wild theory of Danny’s. He’d taken Jennifer Gleason’s ideas to the ridiculous, paranoid nth degree.

No. It had happened that way. Looking at Geraldo, seeing her cloying, meddling way, Jeff knew it must have happened that way. It was the only explanation.

Of course he’d taken over. With ANTARES Kevin could do anything.

So could Jeff. He could walk. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon.

“Do you use your legs in ANTARES?” Geraldo asked.

“Of course,” he told her. “So what?”

She nodded, then started to move away.

“Hey, Doc — hey! Where are you going?”

She stopped at the door. “Jeffrey, I’m thinking of talking to Colonel Bastian. I’m thinking.”

She stopped.

Jeff realized he had gripped the tires of his wheelchair and started forward, jerking the wires that were still attached to his hand and chest from the machines.

Why am I so angry?

“I think we’re going to put ANTARES on hold,” she said. Her cheeks and lips were pale, but her voice was calm and smooth. “Not just you — the entire program.”

“I’ll fight that.”

“You can go to Colonel Bastian with me. I’ll set up the appointment myself.”

“Don’t do this.”

“Something is happening to you that I don’t understand. I care about you, Jeffrey.”

“Then give me back my legs,” Zen told her.

Her lower lip trembled, but she said nothing as the door behind her opened and she stepped out.

Chapter 66

Minerva shivered as she slipped from the bed, chilled by a breeze from the balcony door. Naked, she walked to the draped French doors, checking to make sure they were closed and locked. Halfway across the room she felt a premonition of danger and sidestepped to the upholstered chair nearby. She lowered herself stealthily, eyes riveted on the doors as she reached her hand beneath the chair to the pistol holstered there.

Madrone murmured and turned over on the bed, lost in his dreams. He mumbled something, a string of curses, as she rose and walked, still nude, to the doors. She held the Glock against her body, where it couldn’t easily be wrestled away; the small gun’s plastic butt felt warm against the inside of her rib cage. She paused a foot from the doors, breathing as softly as she could, examining the shadows.

Nothing.

But she could not dispel the premonition. Lanzas moved to the side of the drape, pulled it back gently.

Nothing.

The feeling of danger persisted. There was nothing to do but confront it — she pushed the drape away with a flourish, her body tense.

Moonlight washed the narrow terrace with a golden yellow. Otherwise, it was empty.

She slid her fingers across the combination lock to the French doors. Minerva trusted the men stationed there implicitly — many were related to her, and the others had worked for her or her family for at least a decade. But she well knew men were fickle, susceptible to all kinds of temptations. The glass in the doors was bullet-proof, able to turn back concentrated fire from a .50-caliber machine gun. The lair itself nestled onto the side of a rocky slope, with no possible vantage for a gunman for over three miles.

The concrete felt ice cold, but she stood on the terrace anyway.

Nothing.

Quietly, she slid back inside. Madrone remained sleeping on the bed, hands curled in tight fists. She patted him gently, then took her robe from the floor. Wrapping it around herself, her gun still in her hand, she slipped into the narrow hallway from her bedroom. With every step she scanned carefully for any sign of an intruder.

Her caution and fear made her late, though only by a few seconds — the light on her secure phone began to blink as she entered her study.

She let her robe fall open as she picked up the phone, as if her breasts might once again seduce Herule.

Perhaps they did, for his tone was that of a compliant lover, not a fierce and at times tiresome mentor.

“You have done amazingly well,” he told her in Portuguese. The words rolled from his tongue poetically — after having used so much English these past few days with Madrone, Minerva felt they sounded almost haunting.

“Are you ready?” she asked the general.

“The Defense Minister will resign tomorrow. Then, I will be appointed,” said the general.

He had worked more quickly than she had dared hope, but she held her voice flat, as if she had expected even more.

“And?” she said.

“Of course you will be rewarded.”

Minerva felt her body flush with anger. She was the one with the power. She deserved not just nebulous promises but tangible rewards — the head of FAB, a post in Brasilia, even her own portfolio as Defense Minister.

Why did she need him?

She should just destroy them all. She could tell Madrone about the nuclear weapons, have him adapt them to the antitank missiles.

Kevin would do it in an instant, no matter what technical difficulties there might be. He was a genius, and he was in love with her. Most important, he would want to destroy them all.

Herule sensed her anger. “The reward will be ample,” said the general.

Was she being too greedy? Overreaching again? Or simply too ready to destroy?

The American made her that way, with his infectious rage.

The Boeing and its Flighthawks were more powerful than the entire Força Aérea combined. Yesterday, Madrone had demonstrated that the small planes could not be located by the P-95’s attached to the Navy. Technically part of Força Aérea though under a Naval commander, the turboprop planes were equipped with surveillance radars that were the most powerful airborne radars in the Brazilian inventory. The Navy had come to look for her, though it had not dared to overfly her base. Madrone’s Flighthawks had danced around the P-95 before it was turned back by a flight of T-27 Tucanos newly loyal to her cause.

There had been some tense moments. The pilots in the T-27’s thought the Hawkos, as they called them, were going to shoot down the radar plane.

And themselves.

Madrone had toyed with them. Perhaps he had even contemplated eliminating them.

She would have to dispose of him eventually. It was more than a matter of control. He made her reckless, more vicious than she needed or wanted to be. He made her think of using the nuclear bombs against her own people.

He was her dark side. He asked about her lovers, and she thought of killing them all — a needless and empty gesture. Self-defeating. Her last husband had contacts with the Russians that could be used to obtain MiGs — what good would come from killing him?

Joy at the moment his face twisted white certainly. Great joy. But after that?

“Colonel Lanzas?”

“Yes, General,” she said, her voice silky. “I will stay quiet the next few days and await your orders.”

She hung up the phone before he could say anything else — before she could say anything else.

Carefully, she moved back to the bedroom. As she stepped across the threshold, something moved in the darkness. She dropped quickly, pushing down as she did to a firing position, the small Glock in both hands.

“It’s only me, love,” said Madrone, sitting. “Come to bed.”

She placed the gun on the floor and slipped beside him.

“I thought I heard something. It was silly.” She curled herself around his body. Her nipples rose against his warm skin.

“We will have to eliminate all of our enemies,” he said.

“Things are progressing, love,” she reassured him. She ran her fingers along his thighs and downward to the top of his calves, starting back slowly.

“Not just in Brazil,” he said. “I have been thinking. Los Alamos. Glass Mountain. They are stalking us.”

“Los Alamos?”

“Where they first found me. Glass Mountain is the worst. They poisoned me. Remember? Where the tower is.”

“They would not dare to follow you here,” she said, slipping her hand toward his groin.

“They would!” Madrone bolted upright. “They have to be stopped.”

His heart pumped violently; she reached for him, but he pushed her hand back, sliding out of the bed and stomping to the balcony.

“They’re after us,” he snarled. “Don’t you see? They want to destroy me. They’ll destroy you too.”

Madrone flung open the drapes, staring outside.

“Let’s make love,” she said softly.

“I have to crush them before they crush us,” he said, his back still turned. “I have to destroy their tower. Completely.”

“Yes,” she whispered, holding her arms out and willing him back. “We will crush them all,” she said as he came back to her. “You will have your revenge.”

He crawled into bed like a jaguar, silently stalking its prey. She slid her hand down and found him already hard.

“Make love to me,” she said. “And then we will plan how to deal with them.”

“I leave in the morning,” he said.

“In a few days.”

“Now.”

“Be inside me,” she said, pulling him gently toward the bed.

Chapter 67

One thing Mack had to say for these candy-ass Department of Energy test sites — they stocked them with delectable feminine talent.

He and Marine Colonel Robling were being ushered around the surplus base by a young woman who rated a ten on the Mack Smith scale of excellence. Her lips puckered ever so slightly, her neck a dainty, vulnerable white, as she drove the Jimmy with smooth, lithe twists of her head and arms. Her short blond hair jostled as she drove down the mountainside toward the artillery testing range, and her breasts — her breasts were so perfectly shaped that Mack had to rub his mouth with his hand to keep from drooling.

Fortunately, he’d given the front seat of the car to Robling, or he’d have melted into a puddle of water by now.

He’d make a play after dinner. He’d get her talking and then turn on the charm.

Assuming he could contain himself that long. He hadn’t had sex now in three days, since the redhead at Chesterville.

Robling chattered away about how stupid the Army had been laying out the test site. It was his usual BS. Not that he didn’t have a point in a way — there were no defenses here, aside from a few grunts in some Humvees near the perimeters. But the place had been used for artillery and short-range-missile testing, and who the hell would have attacked it?

They’d shut down all active testing here months ago, and according to Blondie the contractors had already completed site reclamation; Glass Mountain would be closed down in thirty days.

Blondie. Jesus, he’d forgotten her name.

“See now, your main building is very vulnerable from here,” said Robling as they stopped atop a ridge. “Give me a Ma Duce and I could pin down a regiment there.”

“Oh,” said the guide. “Ma Duce?”

That’s your cue, Mack realized.

“The colonel means a heavy-caliber machine gun,” said Mack. “He does have a point. But this is a hell of a view.” He released his seat belt — she’d turned around specially to ask him to put it on — and opened the door.

Geographically, the view consisted largely of wasteland, the all-but-shuttered administration building, and the roofs of the vacant bunker facilities dug into the opposite hillside. But Mack had other attractions in mind.

“This hillside presents a strategic possibility,” said Robling as he got out of the truck. “If this facility were used as a base, a surveillance tower could be placed here.”

Mack rolled his eyes. Robling took no notice of Cheryl — the name flashed back — as she got out of the truck and put her hands on two of the most perfect curves in creation. She turned her back, and her firm butt — it had to be very firm — made Mack realize he was having a religious experience.

“It is a beautiful view,” said Cheryl, turning to Mack.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to wait for dinner.

“As far as a tower goes,” she continued, “we just took one down. You can see the concrete pads in the dirt.” She walked toward Mack, nearly brushing him as she passed. “Of course, it was just a light structure used to observe operations on Range F, over there.”

The range was in the valley. Robling jerked around.

“This place radioactive?” said Robling, alarm suddenly in his voice.

Mack tried hard not to roll his eyes. The colonel had asked the same question at some point at every base.

Cheryl smiled indulgently. “Of course not, Colonel. There were never live explosions here. Nuclear material was never even present except in minute amounts. Every precaution was taken.”

“Can’t be too careful,” said the colonel.

Cheryl walked over to him and — to Mack’s complete horror — patted him on the back, her fingers lingering.

Robling turned to her slowly. Mack felt violently ill.

As he reeled away, he heard a whine in the air above him. Instinctively, he threw himself to the ground.

Chapter 68

She wasn’t physically with him, yet Madrone felt Minerva’s breath on his neck as he took Hawk One into the target. She nudged his shoulder gently, pointed him to the lab where the bastards had poisoned him.

They’d come so far in the past few weeks. With her inspiring him, he’d used his brain in ways he’d never imagined possible. He’d discovered how to mount two bombs beneath each Flighthawk without losing too much speed. He had examined the Boeing’s ident gear and learned to spoof commercial identifying codes. He had even found out how to enter bogus flight information in the civilian networks as they tracked commercial flights, though that required help from Minerva.

Help she was only too glad to give — she loved him as deeply as any woman had ever loved a man. He could feel it in her touch.

Hawk One zeroed in on its target, the two AV-BP-250 550-pound rocket-powered penetrator bombs strapped to its belly ready. They had altered the fuses slightly to enhance their ability to penetrate these particular bunkers and explode on Level Three, where he had been betrayed.

So easy: he knew how to do it before he even looked at the weapons.

The bunker sat fat in the middle of his screen.

So beautiful, revenge. Unspeakable.

As Madrone pushed the trigger, he heard the bells from his daughter’s funeral.

C3 warned that it was losing the connection with Hawk One.

“You bastards,” Madrone screamed over the plane’s interphone circuit to its Brazilian pilots. “Keep me close to the Hawks.”

“We are trying, Commander,” replied the pilot. “You’re flying too fast, much faster than your plan directed.”

“Closer, damn you!” Madrone looked to the right, jumping into the Boeing’s cockpit. He took control and slammed the thrusters himself.

Back in the Flighthawks.

The bunkers had already exploded. He made sure the control connections were strong, then threw himself into the cockpit of Hawk Two, which was zeroing in on the tower.

Something was wrong. The tower wasn’t there.

Nausea ate his stomach; Madrone felt sweat starting to slide down his temples.

Did he have the wrong place?

Sitrep.

He was there. He’d hit the bunkers. There was smoke. They had taken away the tower. There was a truck there, people.

The bastards, laughing at him. They’d tricked him again. Laughing!

The AV-BI napalm bombs in Hawk Two would put an end to that.

Mack saw it only for a second, and only from the periphery of his vision. He was falling and confused, but he was certain, absolutely positive, about what he saw:

A Flighthawk, darting upward over the bunkers on the hillside.

He hit the ground face-first, too stunned to get his hands out to break his fall. Before Smith could roll onto his back, the small U/MF had disappeared in the twilight sky. In the next moment, there was a dull thud from the direction of the bunkers, then a series of progressively louder, though still muffled, concussions.

He jumped to his feet. Robling and Cheryl huddled against the truck.

“We’re under attack!” Smith yelled.

The colonel grabbed for the Jimmy’s door.

“No — that’s the only target besides the administration building!” yelled Mack. “Down the ravine. Come on!”

He grabbed Cheryl and in the next moment found himself falling, the air on fire behind him.

In his excitement, Madrone fired before the cursor settled. The napalm bombs hit a few yards before the truck. But their beautiful red flames quickly covered the hillside.

The attacks on Minerva’s Brazilian targets had been exhilarating. But this was something else entirely. When fighting the FAB, he felt jittery at times, worried about the planes or even slipping out of Theta. He was a young buck making love for the first time, worried about messing it up.

This — this was revenge, the long moment after orgasm, the deep comfort of success. This was beyond the petty victory of survival, the silly ego play of killing your opponent. This deepened his whole being.

Madrone sat in both Flighthawks and Hawkmother simultaneously, seeing the battlefield from every angle. He smiled as he pushed the planes down from opposite directions, slashing into cannon runs on the administration buildings. Bricks and mortar disintegrated in his path. Be gone, he thought — and they were.

The SUV’s gas tank exploded with a fury, the gasoline erupting in a fireball high above the ground-hugging napalm. There were three people clawing down the ravine just below the hill, three easy targets for him as he pulled Hawk Two around for the kill.

He’d nail them left to right. The optical viewer magnified them, outlined their heads with the cannon’s crosshairs.

As he started to push the trigger on the first target, the second turned toward him.

Mack Smith.

The shock threw him out of Theta.

Chapter 69

Jeff struggled to control his anger as Geraldo laid out her arguments for Colonel Bastian. The program results weren’t consistent, blah-blah-blah. The subjects were all proceeding much more quickly, blah-blah-blah. Wave activity unaccounted for. Perhaps feedback in the computer systems originating from the subject. Unpredictable lapses perhaps due to changes in the protocol. Given the inexplicable disappearance of Captain Kevin Madrone-

Zen finally lost it. “This isn’t about Madrone, it’s about me,” he sputtered. “You think I’m hallucinating. I’m not. I don’t think that I have my legs back. That’s ridiculous.”

“You personally have nothing to do with my recommendation,” said Geraldo calmly.

“Bullshit. Those are my base hormone levels on your chart there.”

“Major, you happen to be the only person who has gone through both the old and new protocols,” said Geraldo. “It’s not directed at you. But there’s a clear difference between your present charts and the ones from the past incarnation of the program. The levels of dopamine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters are clearly different, as are the brain patterns.” She turned toward Jeff. “I don’t know if we should terminate ANTARES completely. That may eventually be my recommendation. I need time to correlate it.”

“There’s no sense shutting down,” argued Jeff, trying to keep his voice even.

“We’re going to have to put ANTARES on hold,” said Bastian. “Doc, draw up a plan —

“That sucks shit,” said Jeff, jerking his head toward him.

“Major,” snapped Dog. He glared down at him, then turned his gaze back to Geraldo. “Draw up a plan to review the effects. Reinstate the Phase II psychological studies. Take Major Stockard off the drug protocol immediately.”

Jeff grabbed his wheels angrily. Bastian glared at him.

Everyone is against me, thought Jeff. They want to keep me a cripple.

But that couldn’t be true. Bastian had gone out of his way to help him.

“All right,” Jeff said finally. “I think it’s a mistake, but I’ll go along with it. Remove the chip. I’ll stop taking the drugs.”

“You can’t just stop taking them,” said Geraldo. “We have to back you off gently. If you were to stop taking them, your body would try to keep up the level of neurotransmitters on its own. They’d actually increase for about a week, perhaps two. At some point, you would crash. As for the chip — I think it’s safe to leave it in. You’ve had it for so long now, and removing it might cause complications.”

“All right,” said Zen, finally looking away from Bastian’s gaze.

Dog folded his arms in front of his chest. In less than three weeks, Zen had gone from a somewhat skeptical critic to the program’s biggest booster.

Short of Secretary Keesh. Who was going to have a cow when Bastian told him the program was on hold.

So? It was the right thing to do, very clearly. Yet Dog had hesitated to say so just now, looking for the right words. The stress of running a high-powered command was turning him into Colonel Milquetoast.

“All right,” he told Geraldo. “Give me a timetable for a report. Thanks,” he added, dismissing them.

Geraldo started to say something, but Ax’s sharp rap at the door interrupted her.

“Colonel, I’m sorry — you need to pick that phone up right now,” said the sergeant. “Line three. It’s an open line.”

Dog punched the button and held the phone to his ear.

“Colonel, this is Mack Smith. I’m at Glass Mountain. It’s just been attacked.”

“Mack?”

“I’m calling from a pay phone, Colonel. A Department of Energy test range, dummy nuke testing — two hours ago, a little more, we came under attack by Flighthawks.”

“What are you saying?”

“Flighthawks. They attacked a base in south Texas, Department of Energy District 2, Test Area 6.”

“Hold on a second.” Bastian stopped Zen and Geraldo, who were heading for the door. “Jeff, Doc, listen to this.” He punched the button for the speakerphone. “Mack, do you have access to a scrambler?”

“Colonel, I’m on a fuckin’ highway in God’s country. I had the Ranger troop car stop so I could make this call.”

“Can you get to a secure phone?”

“It’ll be hours.”

“All right. Jeff Stockard and Dr. Geraldo are here with me. Tell us everything you know.”

Chapter 70

Danny Freah looked down at his belt as his alphanumeric beeper began to vibrate. He was already en route to see Colonel Bastian, but the STAT notice took him by surprise.

So did the location — the secure video conference center in the Taj basement.

Danny quickened his pace toward Taj, the low-slung concrete building, its entrance glowing ever so faintly with the low-emission yellow lights. He strode past the security desk to the elevator.

“Subbasement Three,” he told the automated system as he stepped in.

The elevator itself wasn’t particularly fast, and the security scans that were required before it would move took forever. Danny waited impatiently, and not just because of Dog’s message. He was supposed to call his wife in exactly twenty-five minutes.

Finally, the elevator lurched and began grinding its way downward. The doors hissed open, and Danny double-timed the short distance to the conference room, whose entrance was flanked by two of his Whiplash team members, Kevin Bison and “Egg” Reagan. Bison nodded, looking desperate for a smoke.

Inside, Jed Barclay’s pimpled face filled the large screen at the front of the room.

“Mr. Freeman is still tied up in meetings on Brazil,” Barclay said as Danny came in, referring to the National Security Advisor. “But the NSC has already scheduled a meeting on this for, uh, like, nine, uh twenty-three hundred hours our time, which is, uh, eight o’clock your time, I mean—”

“You don’t have to convert it for us, Jed,” said Colonel Bastian dryly.

“Thank you. Hi, Captain,” Jed said to Danny, seeing him come in on his monitor.

“Jed.” Danny nodded toward the glass slot below the screen, where a moving video camera focused on his face. Then he nodded to the colonel and Major Stockard, who was sitting grim-faced in his wheelchair. Dr. Geraldo and Lee Ong, the scientist responsible for the Flighthawk’s physical systems, were sitting at consoles behind him.

“Just to review quickly for Captain Freah,” said Bastian, “there’s been an attack at a small Department of Energy base in southeastern Texas, formerly used to test short-range nuclear-delivery systems. We believe Flighthawks were involved.”

“Well, that’s not exactly, uh, with all due respect, Colonel,” stuttered Barclay. “There has been an incident there, but officially we’re not sure what the nature is. The state authorities believe it was terrorism.”

“Mack Smith was there. He saw Flighthawks,” said Dog.

“Mack?” Danny realized he’d practically shouted. It was too late to bite his tongue, so he sidled into a seat without saying anything else.

“Bunker-penetration weapons and napalm,” said Bastian. “And they strafed one of the buildings.”

“The U/MFs are capable of carrying AGMs,” said Ong. “However, that limits their performance. Additionally, they would require modification. Even if Hawks One and Two—”

“Which we lost,” said Zen.

“Well, even in theory, if they were capable,” said Ong, “their flight characteristics would be very degraded.”

“But an attack could have been carried out by them,” said Bastian. “Danny, can you lay out your Mexican theory?”

“There really is no theory,” said Danny, hesitating. Ong and Geraldo had the highest clearances possible, and obviously Bastian had already made the decision that they could hear everything he knew about the possibility that Madrone had somehow escaped. But the fact that Smith had reported the attack had just set off an alarm bell in his brain.

“A large plane landed and stole fuel at a regional jetport on the Mexican coast the day Hawkmother disappeared,” he told the others. “It was not necessarily our 777. In fact, some witnesses said it was a 707. We’ve had the entire area checked with U-2’s without turning up anything.”

“Satellites as well,” noted Jed.

“The Flighthawks could never have gotten to southern Mexico,” said Ong.

“They could have refueled off Hawkmother, right, Jeff?”

“It’s possible,” said Jeff, a little too defensively for Danny’s taste.

“If that was him,” said Ong, “where did he go next?”

“No idea,” said Freah. “Like I said, there really is no theory.”

“So he controlled the Boeing as well as the Flighthawks?” asked Ong. “Hard to believe.”

“There have been some anomalies,” said Geraldo. “And remember, the flight computers are actually the ones that guide the plane. The subject merely directs.”

“Captain, maybe you should head out to Glass Mountain,” said Barclay. “And maybe Major Stockard.”

“How quick can you get out there, Danny?” asked Dog.

Texas was the last place he should be, but before Danny could think of a graceful objection, Dr. Geraldo looked up.

“Glass Mountain? I thought this was a Department of Energy site.”

“Actually, the site is owned by an agency connected with the Department of Energy,” said Barclay. “The Army conducted some tests there a few years ago.”

“Colonel, Kevin Madrone was stationed at Glass Mountain. That’s where he was when his daughter died.”

Jeff watched Barclay’s face as Geraldo continued. Jed was his cousin, and Jeff felt odd watching him on the screen, as if a home movie had suddenly become part of his work life. He could remember swinging him around by the legs only a few years ago, and adjusting his arms on a bat to hit right.

Jed probably still couldn’t hit a good fastball. But he’d always been smart. And somehow he managed to land on his feet — against all odds, he’d not only managed to stay on in the Martindale Administration, but apparently had even more authority than before.

If Jed and Geraldo and Danny were right, Madrone was still alive.

But why would Kevin do this?

To screw Jeff up maybe. This would kill any chance of continuing with ANTARES.

Jeff saw the others glancing toward him every so often, as if he carried a disease.

Kevin wouldn’t hurt people.

ANTARES enhanced your mental capabilities. It didn’t change you. Geraldo had said that over and over. Hell, everybody knew that — Maraklov had been a traitor before he arrived at Dreamland; ANTARES didn’t turn him into one.

Maybe losing his daughter had twisted Kevin somehow.

Had Jeff s losing his legs done the same to him?

In Dog’s opinion, the video conference with Barclay had accomplished little. Freeman and Defense Secretary Keesh were unavailable because of a crisis in Brazil, where a three-way conflict between the Navy, Air Force, and government was coming to a head. Apparently the conflict was going to be resolved by giving a number of Air Force generals an important role in the government — though why any military person in his right mind would want that was beyond Bastian.

Barclay would present Freeman and the other members of the National Security Council with the theory that the Flight-hawks had survived and were involved in the attack. He’d also recommend that all of the places Madrone had worked in the past — starting with Los Alamos — be heavily guarded. In the meantime, Dog had to call his own boss, General Magnus, and update him.

Magnus wasn’t going to like this at all. Or maybe he would. It would undoubtedly hurt Keesh and his sidekick McCormack.

It would also damage Dog, though at least he’d advised against proceeding with ANTARES in writing.

I’m thinking like a politician and a bureaucrat, Dog told himself. That’s not who I am. I’m a pilot.

“Frowning a lot, Colonel,” said Danny, waiting for him near the door to the conference room.

“Yeah.”

“I have something I have to talk to you about,” said Freah. He gave a short wave to Zen, who was just approaching. “it’s trivial. Base stuff. But—”

“I’m a bit busy.”

“Won’t take that long. Minor discipline problem. But I need advice.”

Freah never brought minor discipline problems to him. Bastian nodded at the others, then motioned Danny to the side of the empty room. Freah waited until the doors closed.

“Everything I said just now, during the session with Barclay, was absolutely true,” Danny said. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I find it interesting that Major Smith was at Glass Mountain when it was attacked. He’s the only witness that Flighthawks were involved.”

“How many other people could ID them to begin with?” asked Bastian. “And there’s no local radar coverage.”

“My point exactly.”

“What would his motive be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something to do with the Brazilian?”

“I doubt Mack’s a traitor. And he couldn’t have stolen the Flighthawks himself.”

“Maybe working with Madrone. I’m overthinking this, I know, but Hawkmother’s pilot was found pretty far north and a good deal west of the prime search areas.”

“Happens. The search cone was based on the last course projection, but that’s always iffy.”

“Mack supplied the projection.”

“You think he purposely threw off the search?”

“I’m not saying that,” said Danny.

“No way.”

“I know,” said Freah. “But Major Smith has been at some very interesting places at very convenient times. It’s my job to be paranoid about it.”

“Jeff Stockard and Breanna were aboard Raven when Hawkmother went down.”

“Or was stolen.”

“Or was stolen,” admitted Bastian. “All right. I’ll get Smith back here right away. And I’ll kill his transfer to the Raptor program.

“If he were on ice for a bit, that’s all.”

“They need someone right away.” Bastian reached back behind his shoulder, stretching the tense muscles in his upper body. Personally, he hated Mack, but it wasn’t fair to screw him out of this based on a vague suspicion and coincidence.

Not fair, but it had to be done.

“Thanks, Colonel,” said Freah.

“You’ll have to excuse me. I have to call the boss.”

“Shit, me too.”

Chapter 71

Minerva Lanzas curled her arms across her chest, pacing in the dark night. She cursed herself for giving into him.

Did she have a choice?

A tower, enemies — he was out of his mind. She’d never see him again.

The idea clawed at her. Objectively speaking, it would be easier if the American completely vanished. Yet she didn’t think she could live if that happened.

She couldn’t really be in love; she would never allow herself to be so vulnerable. And yet, there seemed no other explanation.

The ground rattled gently. The large Boeing appeared over the mountain ridge, snapping its landing lights on as it turned abruptly to line up for the field.

Minerva trembled when the rear hatch opened and Madrone walked down the ramp and into her arms.

“I was so worried,” she told him.

“Yes,” said Madrone, pressing her so tightly to his body she thought her bones would break. “They are stronger than I imagined. I must go back. They’ll never leave us alone.”

Minerva tried to undo herself from his grasp, but couldn’t. “Kevin,” she said gently. “Let me go.”

Instead of answering, he sobbed on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“They are bastards,” he wailed. “They’re everywhere. Glavin is probably telling them what to do. I know where he is. He sent me a card, a Christmas card, the bastard. I know where he is. I have to go back. I must.”

He said it so forcefully, with such finality, Minerva knew she would never convince him to stay.

Chapter 72

Mack smith hopped off the Dolphin helicopter ferry feeling like a million dollars.

Or rather, milioncino, a cool million. Lire.

Italiano. Which he would soon be speaking. Because obviously Bastian had ordered him back here because a transfer had come through.

And the grapevine was already buzzing with the possibilities. Either the Raptor F-22 program, which found itself in need of a director of operations, or squadron commander with a wonderful bunch of ragazzi flying F-15Cs in sunny Italia.

Bene, bene.

He’d prefer the Raptors, but something told him he was bound for Italy, where wine was cheap and the babes didn’t believe in wearing tops.

To the best of his knowledge, no squadron in the Air Force was currently commanded by a major, so a promotion would quickly follow. The pay bump would be nice. Maybe he’d buy a little speedboat. Nothing outlandish just big enough to rock gently when he made love.

“Major Smith, sir, Colonel Bastian wanted to see you,” said a sergeant near the ramp. “I was to expedite you there, sir.”

Jesus, Bastian had turned into an A-one fella, Knife thought as he climbed in the black SUV the sergeant had brought to ferry him over to Taj. Mack was in such a great mood that he even took a seat when Bastian’s muck-up-the-works Sergeant Gibbs greeted him at the door.

Actually, Gibbs seemed almost deferential, at least by chief master sergeant standards, not only offering coffee, but remembering how Mack liked it. When Bastian buzzed, the sergeant showed him right in.

“Hey, Colonel,” said Mack, breezing past Gibbs and pulling up a chair. “So — what’s so fantastically important that I had to peddle back ASAP, as if I didn’t know.”

Bastian frowned at Ax, who had brought a folder’s worth of vouchers to be signed.

“So?” asked Mack as the sergeant left the room.

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Major.”

It took every ounce of self-restraint that Smith possessed not to cover his ears as Bastian continued. He spoke quickly, concisely, and without bullshit — Mack was assigned to Dreamland for the immediate future.

“Uh, Colonel — there’s a slot in Italy and, uh, F-15’s and, uh, I was promised—”

“Your name was mentioned for that, yes. I’m afraid it’s no longer viable.”

“Viable? Viable?”

“Nor is the Raptor slot open. The Pentagon wants more flight testing with the MiG-29’s. You’re on that assignment indefinitely,” said Bastian.

“Who screwed me? What the hell’s going on here?”

“I don’t know that anyone screwed you, Mack.”

“Oh, bullshit, Colonel. This isn’t about the attack at Glass Mountain, is it? I’m getting screwed by somebody here,” said Mack. He just barely stopped himself from jumping to his feet, rising slowly instead. “Colonel, can’t you do anything? I mean — my record, Somalia. I’ve been a team player.”

“I told you before, I will do something. And while we’re talking about your record, why don’t you tell me about the Brazilian you met in Las Vegas?”

“I told you about that. He wanted to know about MiG-29’s. I told him to fuck off.”

Bastian said nothing.

“That’s what this is about?” Mack was too incredulous to believe it. “Asshole buys me a drink and gives me a cigar? I don’t even smoke cigars.”

Bastian pushed a button on his phone, and Ax appeared at the door. “The sergeant will see to anything else you need.”

Confused as well as furious, Knife got up and made his way out of the office, barely controlling his temper well enough to avoid punching anything until he got into the elevator.

Chapter 73

Breanna glanced at her copilot as the EB-52 reached twenty thousand feet. Galatica was similar to Raven in general layout, though the Dreamland wizards had continued to tinker around the edges. The most critical upgrades were larger fuel stores and super-cruise engines, which were based on a Pratt & Whitney design for the F-22. In the fighter, the engines helped conserve fuel at Mach-plus speeds. Tuned somewhat differently and shortened considerably for the Megafortress, they nearly tripled the model’s combat radius. With careful fuel management, Gal could take off from Dreamland, fly a mission to Russia, and return without refueling — while providing fuel to a pair of Flighthawks through an automated boom in the tail.

The refueling boom was one of a long list of items to be tested today. They were going to air-launch two Flighthawks, which hadn’t been done from Gal yet, and run through an automated test suite on Galatica’s tactical surveillance radar. That done, they’d burn off some fuel with a few crash dives and climbs to make sure the airframe and engines were up to the stress. Bree had in mind taking a shot at eighty thousand feet, which was currently the unofficial Megafortress altitude record.

“Handling like a fighter, even with all the extra fuel weight,” said Chris Ferris, her copilot. “I thought the leading-edge flap was a little sluggish when we started to climb, but the computer recorded the specs at Dash-1.”

“What about the gear?”

“Cleaned fine.”

“I don’t like the extra tires,” said Breanna. “It all felt kind of storky.”

“I guess. I kind of like the higher view.”

The plane stood roughly four feet higher off the ground than the other models. Changes in the landing gear made heavy landings more manageable, an important consideration if the plane were carrying a full load of fuel and had to quickly return to a combat base. At the same time, the gear further protected the engines and any carriaged Flighthawks from debris at a less than perfectly groomed airfield during takeoff.

“All instruments in the green,” Ferris reported, running through the indicator screens.

“Go for it.”

“Dreamland EB-52 BX-5 Galatica to Dream Tower,” he said immediately, clicking on the radio. “We’re on station and preparing to dance. Cue the band.”

Breanna rolled her eyes as her copilot and the tower controller exchanged a series of excruciatingly poor puns. When the controller reported that the weather was “sans polka bands, with trombones blowing from the west at two notes an hour,” she decided she had had enough.

“Chris, we don’t have all day.”

“Just trying to keep everybody loose,” said Ferris.

His poorly concealed smirk indicated that he had probably been waiting for her to reach her breaking point for some time. It was not out of the realm of possibility that he and the controller had some sort of bet riding on her reaction.

“Hawk Leader to Gal,” snapped Jeff over the interphone. “Yo, are we dancing today or what?”

“Not you too,” said Breanna.

“Hey, if the waltz fits, dance it.” He’d laughed, saying the words so quickly it was obvious he’d rehearsed them.

“Oye.”

“Let’s rumba.”

“I hope you’re all enjoying yourself,” said Rap, pushing the Megafortress into the long slope that would launch the U/ MFs.

At least Jeff seemed in a good mood today.

“Flighthawk launch in zero-five,” she told her husband. “Prepare for alpha maneuver.”

“Rosin the bow, maestro.”

The air launch of the Flighthawks went off without a hitch, as did the first refuel, despite the increased turbulence generated behind Gal by the new engine configuration. When Dreamland Control asked them to shift ranges to accommodate another flight, Jeff was happy for the break.

“Trail One,” he told C3 as Breanna brought the EB-52 southwestward. The computer informed him it was complying, and Jeff slid his flight-control helmet up over his head. He glanced at the console to make sure it duped the controls — it did — then eased back in the seat.

With both Jennifer and Ong tied up on other projects, they were flying without a techie aboard today. While Zen thought the minders had long ago become superfluous, he did miss having someone on the deck to joke with — or hand him a Gatorade during downtime.

He fumbled for his small thermos cooler stowed between the two stations, barely within reach from his seat in the widened Flighthawk control bay. The original B-52’s had three different crew areas. The pilot and copilot sat on the flight deck at the top front of the plane. The electronics warfare officer and gunner had a cabin on the same level behind them, where their side-by-side seats faced the rear of the plane. Below and roughly between these two areas was a bay for the navigator and radar operator.

In the Megafortress, the pilot and copilot — along with the extensive array of flight computers and advanced avionics — could handle all of the offensive and defensive duties as well as fly the plane. This allowed the other compartments to be modified and adapted according to the plane’s specific mission. Raven, for example, had been intended as a test bed for advanced ECM warfare and Elint-gathering craft, and her upper rear bay included extensive gear for that mission.

Gal, intended from the start as a dedicated Flighthawk “mother” with AWACS-like tracking capabilities, had duplicate U/MF control consoles in the upper compartment as well as the lower, where Jeff sat now. Lengthening and reshaping of the plane’s nose area during the remodel added two more seats on the flight deck, which would be used for the operators of the plane’s long-range surveillance radars. The changes had also made the lower Flighthawk bay somewhat more spacious than the offensive weapons station of a B-52G, though most of the extra space was taken up by test equipment and recorders.

Gal’s T/APY-9 surveillance radar had been installed, but its programming was not yet complete. For now, only the system’s most rudimentary capabilities were available, though even these were impressive for a fighter jock used to the traditional limits of small-area pulse-Doppler units. Operating in F band like the AN/APY-2 in the AWACS/E-3, Gal’s next-generation slotted, phased-array antenna was twelve feet wide, rotating in a slight bulge at the bottom of the fuselage roughly where the strike camera and ECM aerials would be located on a standard B-52. While only a third of the diameter of the APY-2, the radar had nearly the same range and capability as the earlier AWACS, with Pulse Repetition Frequency and environmental modes helping it pick up fighters “in the bushes” at fairly long range. At present there was no way to slave its inputs into C; Jeff had to manually send the feed to one of the multi-use display areas, read the plot, and take appropriate action. While most combat pilots would kill to have what amounted to their own personal AWACS unit, the procedure felt somewhat clunky in the Flighthawks’ otherwise seamless overlay of information and control.

Jeff popped the top on his soda and sipped slowly, watching the control panel. The U/MFs sat in their trail positions as precisely as a pair of Blue Angels preparing for a flight show.

The T/APY-9 required a few minutes to “warm up” — the revolving radar unit slowly accelerated from idle (one turn every four minutes) to operational mode, which was four revolutions per minute. The spinning disk changed the plane’s flight characteristics, and the pilots had to adjust their control surfaces and in some regimes their engine settings to compensate for it.

Jeff checked the unit’s status on panel two of the starboard station, then told Bree that he was about to gear up.

“Hang tight a second, Zen. We need to run through a systems check up here,” she replied.

“Roger that.”

Zen listened in as the two pilots worked through a short checklist; the procedure mostly consisted of his wife saying something and her copilot replying “in the green” or simply “green,” indicating that the item was at spec. But the snap in her voice fascinated Jeff, giving him a window into part of her that he hadn’t seen before the Megafortress and Flight-hawk projects were wed. He loved his wife for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that she was an excellent pilot and a fine officer; in fact, while he’d known that those things were true when they dated and married, he hadn’t paid much if any attention — they’d worked in what were then completely different areas. But over the past few months he had come to admire her on a professional level as well. There was a certain satisfaction listening to or watching her work, as if her efforts justified some judgment he had made: My wife is not only beautiful and a great lover and companion, but she can kick ass too. Zen knew it was probably just a selfish ego stroke, but he couldn’t help smiling to himself as she and her copilot cleared him to start the radar.

“We’ll be at the next mark in, oh, call it three minutes,” Bree told him.

“Looking good,” said Jeff, sliding on his Flighthawk control helmet.

“Sitting that close to the radar,” joked Chris, “you won’t need birth control tonight.”

“Ha-ha,” said Jeff.

“Fuel burn?” said Bree in her most businesslike voice.

Jeff jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Three and began descending, watching the radar plot on the left side of the screen supplied by T/APY-9. The feeds were being recorded and the diagnostics were all automated, but Zen didn’t see the point of having the damn thing on and not using it. Smaller and stealthier than a normal fighter, the Flighthawk had a radar cross-section about the size of a sparrow’s, but the T/APY-9 followed it easily as it slid downward. Jeff’s rudimentary controls allowed him two views — full and close-in — as well as query and non-query mode, which attempted to identify targets through ticklers or ident gear. The finished product would be able to fall back on a profile library for planes that didn’t respond, a feature C3 already had.

Close-in mode painted the Flighthawk at two thousand feet AGL, five miles distant, which was the test spec.

“Gal, I’m going to push Hawk Three out to ten miles and then dial the radar down to ten percent, see if we can follow it. Give the radar a real run. What do you say?”

“Simulating a hundred-mile scan?”

“Two hundred radius, give or take.”

“That’s going to put you outside the test range, Hawk Leader.”

“Roger that.”

“Wilderness area,” said Chris. “Sometimes they run tour helicopters up across the lake and around the mountain.”

“I’ll scan it first,” Jeff said. He clicked the Flighthawk’s radar into long-range search and scan while lowering his airspeed, making sure the air ahead was clear. Then he clicked the tactical AWACS radar’s plot into long-range view as well.

Clear.

He tucked the Flighthawk on her right wing, nudging toward a vast orange-colored plateau. There were times when he flew that the universe seemed to open up; he forgot he was sitting in the belly of a lumbering bomber, totally absorbed in the experience projected on his visor. He forgot about everything and just flew.

There was a valley about a mile south. Ducking into its recesses would give the T/APY a real workout. Jeff nudged the fuel slider on the underside of the control stick, picking up speed before plunging with a glorious roll down into the canyon.

A rock outcropping jagged off the side ahead. He had to pull hard left. He tried hitting the rudder pedals, didn’t get a response.

Of course not. His legs were useless. He had no rudder pedals.

Damn, he thought to himself, I haven’t done that in months.

ANTARES.

They were still weaning him from the drugs. Sometimes he thought of saving all the pills, taking them together, seeing if that might do it.

Zen pushed the idea away, concentrating on the flight, but he’d lost the magic. He began to climb mechanically, easing back toward Galatica as the bar showing the signal strength edged toward critical.

The Flighthawk was fat on the radar. But there was something else on the screen, at the far edge, something low and very small.

Not blue, as a civilian plane should have been coded by the gear.

Red with a black bar.

Another Flighthawk.

A spoof or bizarre echo.

Another contact swallowed it. A large civilian plane, flying very low, less than a hundred feet from the ground.

Jeff pressed the ident gear, but the contacts had disappeared.

“Bree, change course, go to 0145,” he said, naming a vector to the southeast. “Go!”

“Jeff?”

“I need you to snap on that course,” he said.

The Boeing complied, but the contact was lost. Jeff told C3 to put Hawk Three back into Trail One, then slid his control helmet up and reached to the other panel. But he couldn’t remember the right sequence to get the radar feed to replay off the test equipment.

“On course,” said Breanna.

“Chris — a hundred, hundred and fifty miles ahead on this vector. There any military installations?”

“You’ve got us straight on for Mount Trumble and the Grand Canyon,” said Chris.

“Beyond that.”

“Have to look at the paper map.”

“What’s the story, Zen?” asked Bree.

“I think I picked up another Flighthawk.”

“Jeff, no way. The radar probably just had a shadow or something.”

“I think we have to check it out. We have the fuel, right?”

Breanna didn’t answer.

“Nothing on the map,” said Chris.

“No Army base?”

“Well, I mean, how far do you want me to look?” asked the copilot.

“Two hundred miles.”

“Zen—”

“We have to check this out, Bree. The radar picked up a Flighthawk.”

“At two hundred miles?”

“It was flying in front of a larger plane. I think it’s Kevin.”

“Geraldo said she thought he would try and hit Los Alamos. If he’s still alive. And crazy.”

“We have to check it out,” he told her.

There was another long pause.

“Gal Leader concurs,” she said finally. “Notifying Dreamland Tower. I’ll see if there are any other government facilities along the route.”

“In the general area. It could be north of our course,” he added, picturing a pair of Flighthawks hugging the terrain en route to a target.

“Copy that.”

Chapter 74

The gray-striped jaguar stalked back and forth as the wind gathered force, the trees stirring and then shaking. The cat stopped, looking upward as it scented danger.

But it was too late. Madrone opened his talons wide and caught his enemy behind the neck, twisting with a sharp jerk so hard that the sharp claws severed the head completely from the body.

The first Avibras FOG-MPN crashed through the roof and down into the floor of the reception area of the DOE building at Skull Valley; it cleared a large hole to the basement. Ma-drone managed a quick correction on the trail missile, getting it cleanly through the two holes and into the basement laboratory area where he believed Theo Glavin would be. Hawk One, which had launched the missiles, shot wildly to the right as a massive secondary explosion rocked the sky. Madrone pitched the plane upward, his sensors temporarily blinded by the massive explosion of a pressurized helium tank.

He’d blown it. Even with his modifications, using the short-range weapons had been a tremendous mistake. Minerva had been wrong — she’d tricked him somehow, keeping him from his revenge.

Madrone felt himself falling from the plane, tumbling toward the parched desert. He was out of Theta, about to die.

I just want to be left alone, he thought. I want to be at peace. I don’t want to be a robot — I don’t want revenge or to kill anyone. I just want peace.

I want to die.

Christina stood before him, crying.

But warm hands clamped around his shoulders, and Minerva whispered in his ear. I want you. I want you.

Even though he did nothing to initiate it, even though he didn’t think of his Theta metaphor or try to control his breathing — Madrone snapped back into Theta, back in control of the Flighthawks.

Hawk One circled above the roaring flames of the Skull Valley DOE facility. Hawk Two, still carrying its missiles, hit its IP two miles from the target, approximately six miles from Hawkmother.

The security shack was the only part of the facility left intact. Madrone zeroed in on it from Hawk Two and fired one of the Avibras FOG-MPNs. As the missile sped toward its target, he saw a small culvert on the roadway about a half mile south. He targeted it and pickled, wiping out the only approach to the lab.

“Target destroyed,” he told the Boeing’s pilots. “Return.”

He felt the pull of gravity as the pilots jerked the plane into a tight bank and hit the rocket-assist pods to accelerate. It felt good. He needed to get home, needed to wrap himself around his lover, sink deep inside her.

Chapter 75

Dreamland tower had just requested additional information when the sky exploded fifty miles ahead of Breanna’s left wing. The flare of the explosion seemed to tear the bluish haze in half.

“Holy shit,” said Chris.

“Get a fix on the location. Tell them,” Breanna said.

“I have Hawkmother on the T/APY,” Zen told Breanna over the interphone. “That’s definitely him. Seventy-five miles, correct five degrees south.”

“Can you feed me the radar image?” asked Breanna as she worked onto the course.

“Negative,” said Jeff. “Come on. They’re pulling away.”

“We’re at the firewall.”

“You’re not going to let him get away, are you? Come on, Rap. Kick some butt.”

Breanna touched the throttle slider, even though she knew it was useless — the engines were at the max. They were moving at nearly 565 nautical miles an hour, or Mach.95. That was a good deal faster than a standard B-52 could muster in level flight at 35,000 feet, and it was in fact fairly quick even for a Megafortress. They ought to be able to catch Hawk-mother easily; the Boeing’s top speed was “only” about 520 knots.

“We’re falling back,” said Zen.

“Are you sure you have live contacts?” Bree asked. “There’s no way he could outaccelerate us.”

“He is.”

“You’re positive it’s Hawkmother?”

“Stay on this course.”

“Gal Leader.”

Chapter 76

Dog had just started to think about going in search of lunch when his phone buzzed.

“Bastian,” he barked as he brought the receiver to his ear. “Urgent transmission for you, Colonel,” said Ax. “Tower on the line.”

“Punch it through,” said Bastian. He braced himself for the inevitable bad news. In the half second it took for Gibbs to punch the button and make the connection, he thought of Breanna and felt a twinge of fear.

“Colonel, Major Stockard thinks he’s found Hawkmother. They’re trailing them south of here,” blurted the controller.

“What?”

“Hawkmother — there’s been an attack.”

“Okay. All right, I need this line — wait,” he said quickly. “What other planes do we have in the air?”

“None at this time, sir. Satellite window reopens in ten minutes. Raven’s due up at 1500.”

“They don’t have clearance to take off until I give it to you directly, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said the controller.

Bastian jumped to his feet and slammed down the phone. They’d outfit Raven and he’d go after them.

“Ax, tell Danny Freah to meet me over at the Megafortress hangar,” he said, pushing into the outer office where his chief worked. “Call over there, find out who’s on the duty roster. No, never mind — tell Major Cheshire to get there quickly. And have that plane fueled to the max. Go.”

Chapter 77

When General Herule entered the room to begin the meeting, Minerva felt astoundingly light-headed, barely able to believe she had lived to see this day. The general’s personal bodyguard — wearing freshly adopted purple berets and matching epaulets as insignia — marched smartly into the hotel ballroom, flanking the doors. Their freshly polished boots reflected the sparkling chandeliers; the thick-paneled walls behind them showed off the sharp green of their khaki uniforms. Herule strode to the row of conference tables that had been set up in the exact center of the elaborate inlaid wood floor, standing at perfect attention. The sleepy town had been chosen as the site for the meeting because it was far from the capital; the hotel, finished only a few months before, because it could be easily secured. But in that moment it seemed to Minerva that there could not have been a more perfect and grand setting; the general filled the room with an air of majesty and power.

The incumbent President, mouth drawn and eyes baggy, entered from the side door not far from where Minerva stood. He’d made the long trip from Brasilia to this regional outpost just south of the Amazon by car; his body seemed to have absorbed every dirt and dust particle along the way. When he glanced toward her, she saw not the hate she expected, nor anger, but simply sadness and fatigue. His expression shook her, and as the leaders of Congress entered, she worried that she had been tricked somehow, trapped here while Madrone was far away. There were no admirals, no one, in fact, from the Navy.

Had they managed to obtain the upper hand again?

Her guards were with the plane. She was defenseless.

The general began dictating the terms of the President’s “retirement,” speaking with so little enthusiasm that Lanzas began to wonder if this was in fact a charade. Had she somehow been tricked again?

Madrone would meet his doom in America. What would she do then?

She steeled herself against them, stiffened her muscles. She would face them bravely.

“Colonel Lanzas,” said General Herule. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

She looked into his face. Herule flinched.

Betrayal. The bastard!

Minerva felt her heart fall into the pit of her stomach. Despairing, she cursed herself for being so foolish to rely on the two-faced bastard.

Then she managed a long breath, put her head back and her shoulders flat, determined to meet destiny with dignity.

“Colonel Lanzas shall be my Defense Minister,” Herule told the others. “She is well suited, both through training and her family.”

“Agreed,” said Findaro, the head of the Army. A Congressman nodded near his side. “It is a wise choice.”

“She will deal with the Americans,” added Herule. Now his eyes held hers for a moment.

Lifted from the depths of despair, Minerva felt almost sexual elation. She had won after all.

Madrone was responsible. Madrone — her dark self. She regretted letting him go, even though she knew it was better to be rid of him.

The rest of the appointments, the rest of the meeting, passed quickly. Minerva gathered herself as the others started to get up.

“Well done, my dear,” said General Herule, taking her hand and kissing it. “You almost seemed surprised.”

“And you as solicitous as ever,” she told him.

Herule laughed — then pulled her into a bear hug.

“We cannot afford to anger powerful forces to the north,” he whispered in her ear. “There should be no trace of complications. If they or others could be blamed for complications, so much the better.”

Minerva eased her hand down toward the general’s groin and squeezed gently. The table and chairs made it impossible for the others to see — but if they did, so much the better.

“We won’t have any trouble, my dear,” she whispered.

Herule released her, his face a little flushed. “I will arrange a meeting with the admirals.”

“I’ll arrange it,” she told him. “In a few days. They will come to me. In the meantime, I must get back quickly.”

“Yes,” said the general. “No complications.”

“Of course.”

Chapter 78

Madrone sensed they were after him even though the threat scope was clear. He felt them trail him out of Arizona, down the eastern Sierra Madres. They might be too far for the radar and too smart to use the radio, but he knew they were there nonetheless.

Fear prickled along the back of his head, like an electrical current arcing from the spider.

He welcomed it; it made it easy to focus.

The bastards made their move as the Boeing crossed over the southwestern Caribbean. Two planes came for him at high speed, tickling the 777’s identifier. As they came on, he told Gerrias and Mayo to hold their course.

He pulled Hawk One and Hawk Two closer to the 777, nearly touching the big plane’s wing. They would be invisible to the interceptors’ radar, but not their eyes.

If the enemy approached within visual distance, he would kill them.

“Brazilian Air 43, please identify your aircraft type and specify your cargo,” said an American voice.

Gerrias answered as they had rehearsed — a benign cargo flight carrying medical supplies. The flight would appear on the international registries, synching with their IDs.

There were two planes, F- l 6’s.

He would roll out from under Hawkmother as they approached. The only possible attack would be head-on.

Climb with the gates flooded, cannons blazing.

Madrone’s body relaxed. He waited, absorbing the sky around him, feeling the vibration of the wind buffeting off the wings of the Boeing above him.

The interceptors acknowledged Gerrias’s transmission. They continued toward them, closing to within eight miles, seven.

Then they turned northward, pretending to be satisfied with the explanation.

He avoided the temptation to go after them.

“They’re gone,” said Mayo finally.

“No,” Madrone replied. “They trail behind still. Be alert.”

“Yes, Commander,” said the copilot.

They would never rest now that he had killed Glavin. Colonel Glavin had been the jaguar. Such a clever bastard — he’d pretended to be so concerned about Christina, apologizing after denying Kevin leave to go to the X-ray session that afternoon.

“If only I’d known what it was for,” Glavin had lied. “Why didn’t you say so? Kevin, all you have to do is ask.”

The bastard. He had set everything up. That very day he’d suggested Livermore and the experimental treatment facility connected to the lab. He’d done it all so smoothly, so matter-of-factly, that Madrone had been bamboozled.

Maybe Christina hadn’t even had the cancer until then. How clever these bastards were.

Eventually, they would get him. But not before he made them bleed.

Chapter 79

“Two degrees due south. We’re still seventy-five miles behind,” Jeff told Breanna.

“F-16’s have broken off,” said Chris.

“Copy.”

“They didn’t get close enough for a visual,” added the copilot. “But the identification checked out.”

“Yeah, I know, I heard the whole thing,” said Zen. The F-16’s had flown south out of Texas, and were at the edge of their range when Jeff finally managed to vector them toward the Boeing. Since there was no way to protect the radio transmission, Zen hadn’t told them more than absolutely necessary — the plane flying south had to be identified.

If he’d ordered them to shoot it down, they wouldn’t have. No Air Force pilot in his right mind would target what seemed to be a civilian plane — hell, even a military plane — without serious authorization. Even then, most would hesitate unless they had some clear indication that the plane was a threat and the order lawful.

Jeff didn’t have the authority to give the order. Colonel Bastian had authorized them to trail Hawkmother and find its location; nothing more. The colonel had boarded Raven and sent a message that he would rally other forces to help. But they were so far away from Bastian that they couldn’t directly communicate; unlike Raven, Gal lacked a SATCOM system.

“Where the hell do you think he’s going?” Breanna asked more than an hour later as they continued southward, heading for Panama.

“Damned if I know,” said Jeff. “I thought Cuba, but he should have cut east by now.”

“How’s your fuel situation?” Breanna asked.

“You’re reading my mind. Let’s tank while he’s flying a straight line.”

They refueled as quickly as possible, but still fell gradually behind as Hawkmother continued onward, making landfall over Cartagena in Colombia. Flying at forty thousand feet, the stealthy Galatica and her Flighthawks passed undetected by the local air defense and civilian radars.

“We’re not going to be able to follow him indefinitely,” Breanna said as they approached Colombia, “especially not at this speed.”

“We should be able to tank off someone in Panama.”

“Negative,” Bree told him. “There are no tankers available. Chris already checked. No tankers, no fighters. We’re trying to get somebody out of Texas. I’d like to check back with the colonel as well. We haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“He said we might not.” Jeff saw the 777’s image start to blink — the plane was diving toward the ground.

“Maybe we can turn this over to one of the—”

“Bree — hold on.” Jeff stared at the radar; Hawkmother had disappeared. “I’ve lost him.”

He returned the Flighthawks to computer control, directing them into Trail One, then tried to work out the spot where Hawkmother had disappeared. Chris, working with the GPS and the CD map library, pinpointed the spot as a pass in the mountains just beyond the Orinco River in central Venezuela.

“No airport there,” said Chris.

“I don’t know that he landed; I think he just dropped closer to the mountains,” said Jeff. “Hold this course, Bree.”

With no way to refine the powerful radar in Gal’s belly, Jeff decided he would use the Flighthawks as scouts, scouring the river valley and mountains. It was difficult, however, to fly both planes and still look at the T/APY; its plot took up too much space in the viewer and he could only toggle it in and out. He accelerated the U/MFs into a spread formation at Mach 1.2, gradually swinging them apart. Their optical viewers showed only a thick cloud deck until he dropped below five thousand feet at the very edge of his communication range.

Beautiful country. No airport, no Boeing.

He knew Kevin was out here. He’d get him back — then they’d get ANTARES back on track. And then he’d have his legs again.

“Hawk Four disconnect in zero-three—” warned C3.

“Zen, we’re going to have to get approval from the colonel to land in Panama or someplace if we can’t arrange a tanker,” Breanna told him.

“We’ve come too far to lose him now,” Jeff said, dropping his speed and nudging the U/MFs a little higher, strengthening the connection. “Give me more speed.”

“We only have enough fuel for two more hours of flying time. And that’s stretching it. We have to talk to Colonel Bastian.”

“We can land without approval,” he said.

“Jeff, that’s not the point.”

“Just do what you’re told, Captain,” he barked.

She didn’t answer.

He toggled the radar screen back. Maybe something, seventy miles ahead, almost in Brazil. Very low.

“Stay on course,” he told Rap.

“Gal.”

She was trying to sabotage him, though. Chris was trying to raise Southern Command.

Why?

He was being paranoid. They were trying to find a tanker.

“Bree,” he said, flipping on the interphone. “Listen. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“We’re on course, Major,” she said sharply. “Brazilian border in zero-six minutes.”

The Boeing disappeared again. He jumped back in Hawk Three, skimming along the rugged terrain. The 777 needed a good-sized runway to land; it ought to be easy to spot.

Nothing.

Flight of F-5Es approaching from the east. FAB interceptors, Brazilian Air Force. Approximately fifty miles away, they were most likely patrolling the border, looking for smugglers. They weren’t quite on an intercept, but would draw within five miles in three minutes. Their APQ-153 radars could detect a standard fighter at about twenty miles; the Megafortress and her brood would be invisible to the radar until well within visual distance.

The 777, on the other hand, ought to be on their screens already.

“Rap, there’s a group of FAB F-5’s flying near their border to the east of us. They’re about fifty miles away. What do you think about hailing them to see if they’ve spotted Kevin?”

“Gal,” she snapped, still plenty pissed.

Breanna was right about the fuel. Maybe they could use the base of the F-5’s.

If Bastian approved. They’d have to get his okay. Breanna was right about that.

The Boeing flitted into the corner of the radar plot. He’d turned ten degrees north.

Where was he going?

Breanna told Chris to give the FAB flight the Boeing’s course even though they did not immediately acknowledge.

“Maybe they don’t speak English,” said Chris when they still didn’t respond.

“You speak Spanish?”

“Portuguese,” he said. “No. Hold on.” He leaned to one side, putting both hands over his helmet as if that might somehow make the transmission clearer. “Repeat?” he asked.

“What’s up?” Breanna asked.

“F-5’s are challenging us,” Chris told her. He turned toward the multi-use display at the far right of his dash. “Shit. They’re trying to tickle the ident gear.”

“Activate it. Standard mode,” said Breanna. The Megafortress’s friend-or-foe identifier could be manipulated from the dash. Standard mode presented Gal as a B-52G.

“Still not acknowledging. Ten miles off, nine, eight,” said Chris. “Should be within visual range, but I can’t pick up any lights.”

“Can they see us?” Breanna asked.

“I think it’d be kind of hard, even with this bright moon,” said Chris. “But they know we’re here. They’re correcting, maybe coming on our radio signal. I’m going to try and hail them again.”

Breanna started to answer, but Chris cut her off. “Shit — they’re charging their weapons. Shit — I think those idiots think we’re Hawkmother. They want to shoot us down.”

Chapter 80

“You were right, Captain,” the F-5E pilot told Madrone. “We have the B-52 in range. He has two escorts.”

A B-52? The plane must actually be a Megafortress, with two Flighthawks.

So Jeff had finally shown his true colors.

“Shoot him down,” Madrone said. “Ignore the escorts — they are unarmed.”

“Captain?”

“Ignore them. They’ll flail at you but they won’t strike.”

“Understood.”

Zen slammed the Flighthawks around, cursing himself for concentrating so hard on finding the Boeing that he had left their flanks uncovered. There was no reason for the damn Brazilians to attack — but here they were, pedals to the metal, slashing in.

He tucked Hawk Four into a dive as she came out of her turn, building back her momentum. C3 took Three in trail as he slammed forward, trying to get between the Tigers and Galatica. He had no shells in his cannon, but he activated the targeting radars anyway, figuring that even the limited avionics in the F-5Es would realize they were being cued for a shot.

Hopefully, that would make the pilots break off, or at least concentrate on the U/MFs.

Of course, it might only make them mad. The lead plane didn’t seem to be turning, even though Jeff was homing in on his nose.

The need to stay close to the Flighthawks cut down on Breanna’s options, and her fuel situation would make a rip-roaring climb to sixty thousand feet a Pyrrhic victory. Besides, they’d never outrun the Brazilians’ missiles.

“Their weapons are charged!” warned Chris. “Still not acknowledging our hails.”

“Trying to wave them off,” said Zen.

“Hang with me, Hawk Leader,” she said, punching the plane into a sharp roll as the first two-ship of Tiger IIs came on.

“They’re going to send the second wave onto our tails as we turn,” warned Chris.

If Gal had been armed, that would have been fatal for the Tiger IIs — the Megafortress’s Stinger air mines would have turned them into flying spaghetti. But with no weapons and no diversionary flares, Breanna had only her wits and the EB-52’s ability to zig in the air going for her.

She flailed left as one of the Tiger IIs closed to range for a heat-seeker. The Megafortress wallowed a little, held back by the trim flaps that compensated for T/APY’s rotation momentum.

“Power down the T/APY,” she told Chris.

“Powering down.”

“Shit!”

Breanna looked up to see the nose of an F-5E looming in her windscreen. She plunged right, trying to swirl into a controlled roll, but briefly lost the plane as the wings inverted.

“Missiles in the air,” said Chris.

His voice was so calm she knew they were going to get hit.

If either of the Hawks had been carrying ammunition, Zen would have made short work of all four F-5’s. But the pilots seemed to know that he was unarmed, and paid no attention to him even as he dove for them. Hawk Three closed on one of the F-5Es as it spun toward the rear of the Megafortress. He saw its cannon begin to flash, and pushed Three close enough to break the cockpit glass in two, slamming his stick with a flare of body English to hold on to the Flighthawk. The Brazilian plane pirouetted away, breaking up: C3 said Hawk Three had not suffered any damage.

As he swung toward the F-5E’s wing mate, Zen was pitched sideways by gravity. Breanna swirled the EB-52 into a hard spin trying to escape a fresh attack.

“Tell them we’re not Madrone,” Zen said.

“I’m fucking trying,” said Chris.

Hawk One’s synthetic radar feed filled the center of his mind. Madrone watched a God’s-eye view of the battle ten miles away from 65,000 feet.

He was a god, wasn’t he? That’s why they wanted to stop him.

Missiles flared toward the big black plane. It would be over soon.

Kevin felt a twinge in his stomach, then lost the vision, his body plummeting toward the mountains below. He’d slipped out of Theta.

Breanna pushed left, then right, then left, nearly warping the flaps and ailerons with her maneuvers. As she whipped back right she popped the leading-edge tabs, working them like air brakes to slam the big plane downward like a pregnant whale. Her wings flipped over, the stress on the spars so great the entire plane groaned. Rap cleaned the controls and grabbed the throttle, goosing it to the max a second before jerking the stick upward.

The acrobatics worked. The first missile sailed past, wide of its target. A second and third missile whipped past, the latter detonating on default about a hundred yards away.

A fourth was so thoroughly confused, it too exploded — unfortunately about twelve feet from the plane. Hot shards of metal ripped through Gal’s fuselage, shorting some of the electronics and damaging the control surfaces on the right wing.

But it was the cannonfire of the F-5E Rap had lost track of that almost did them in. The first she knew of the close-quarter attack was a low thump behind her. Then she felt like someone was hitting the seat with a baseball bat.

The Boeing slid sideways. Bree fought it, saw the enemy’s tracers blazing across the sky, felt Gal rolling on her wing. “I have it,” she told Chris.

“Yup,” he said, broadcasting a general Mayday on the Guard frequency.

The F-5Es swarmed on the Megafortress. Zen pushed Three closer, nudging the throttle as the four planes dove. Another six were within two miles, homing in on the scent of blood.

With a cannon, they’d all be dead meat.

“Proximity alert,” flashed on the screen, C3 warning that he was within a hundred feet of the F-5E.

Jeff watched helplessly as the Brazilian lit his cannon. Tracers blazed across the EB-52’s tail section, gouging a large hole in the fin. Zen could feel the shock behind him.

For a brief moment, the chromium sun that had been part of his ANTARES metaphor returned. He felt a flash of heat and anger. Then he put his finger on the throttle slider, accelerating Hawk Four into the midsection of the Brazilian fighter.

The shock wave of the explosion had an odd effect on Galatica, actually helping Breanna stabilize her in level flight. Even so, there was no question that they were badly damaged. The emergency screens lit on the multi-use displays, and the computer flashed a warning on the HUD saying they had only forty-percent power capability in engines one and four.

“At least it’s symmetrical,” said Chris dryly.

The Megafortress’s twin-tailplane, which extended like a V at the rear of the plane, had been severely damaged. Breanna nudged the plane into a very gentle bank, testing her control.

“F-5’s have backed off. Zen got one,” said Chris. “He rammed it.”

“Hawk Leader?”

“I’m here, Bree. You guys okay?”

“For now,” she told him. “Can you give me a visual on our damage? Start with the tail.”

“Yeah.”

The image snapped into the screen on her lower left panel, which was preset to accept the Hawk feed.

“Looks like a half-eaten waffle,” said Chris. It was an apt description; much of the skin had been blown or burned off, leaving the honeycombed carbon-fiber guts exposed.

“We’re stable. I can turn somewhat,” Breanna told her husband. “We have to land ASAP, though. We’ve lost fuel, and we weren’t exactly full to begin with.”

“Your call,” said Zen.

“Boa Vista’s a hundred miles northwest,” said Chris.

“I don’t know.” Breanna began banking in that direction anyway.

“Okay,” said Chris, working the maps.

The plane bucked sharply.

“Fuel problem,” said the copilot, punching his instruments. “Management panel won’t come up for me.”

“I have it. Find us a landing strip — even a highway at this point.”

“Got an FAB strip five miles south of us. Primitive at best.”

“Jeff, there’s a strip at the edge of the jungle five miles south of here. Can you check it out?”

“Done.”

It didn’t much matter how long the strip was — they might not even make it that far. Two tanks had been shot out; the Boeing’s automated fuel-management system had isolated the tanks, but apparently they were leaking somewhere in the feed lines as well. As Bree stabilized the engines, the monitor warned she was dry.

She thought of saying something to Jeff — maybe apologizing for not accepting his apology before. But the words didn’t come and there was too much to do, keeping the plane steady.

“One of the fuel bags the system shut off sealed,” reported Chris. “I’m trying to get it back on line manually.”

“Give it a try.”

“How long did you say that strip was?” Zen asked. “Less than twelve hundred,” said Chris.

“Try five thousand,” said Jeff. “It’s long, level, and concrete.”

“Give me a vector,” Bree said.

“You’re nearly dead on. It’s hidden by the ridges there. Sharp drop. Check the low-light feed.”

The runway looked brand-new. Everything else — a few buildings, two hangars — looked ramshackle, even from Four’s orbit at five thousand feet. An old propeller transport sat off the ramp.

“No tower that 1 can raise,” said Chris. “Trying Guard. Trying everything.”

“There are people there,” said Zen.

“We’re landing one way or the other. We’re on final,” she added as the moonlit runway suddenly came into view over the mountain.

She blew a tire as they landed, probably because it had been damaged during the attack. Chris struggled with the crosswind readings at the last minute, and Breanna lost engine one completely when she applied reverse thrust, but she still managed to hold the runway. A wide ramp sat at the far end; she felt her body starting to collapse as she headed for it.

“So, what happens now?” Chris asked.

“We call home,” said Breanna.

“The question is, why did the F-5’s attack?”

“The country’s in the middle of a crisis,” said Jeff on the interphone. He landed the Flighthawk and taxied behind them. “There’s been a military coup.”

“Just what we need,” said Breanna.

“Shooting at us still doesn’t make sense,” said Chris. “Unless they thought we were on the other side.”

“Which side is the other side, though?” said Bree.

A jeep waited ahead. A soldier stood in the rear, waving at them.

“Looks like he’s smiling,” said Chris. “What do you think? Pop out and have a chat?”

“Think he’ll speak English?” asked Bree.

“Got me.”

“Those fuckers tried to shoot us down,” said Jeff.

“It wasn’t exactly these guys,” said Breanna. “Doesn’t look to me like the F-5’s came from this base. No support facilities.”

“We’re going to have to talk to them sooner or later,” said Chris. “It’s not like we’re at war with Brazil.”

“No?” said Jeff sarcastically.

The men in the jeep jumped out, waving and smiling. They weren’t carrying weapons.

“One of us is going to have to try talking to them,” said Breanna. “We have to at least get to a phone.”

“I don’t know, Bree,” said Jeff.

“Sitting here doesn’t make any sense,” said Chris. “I mean, if they want to, they can just blow us up. But those guys down there don’t look hostile.”

“I think I’ll go talk to them,” said Breanna. “What do you think, Jeff?”

She could practically hear him debating it, tossing his head back and forth the way he always did. If the attack had been a case of mistaken identity, then going out was the obvious thing to do. Chris had broadcast their position, but there was no indication that any American units had received it; even if they had, it would take hours or even days for them to be found. In the meantime, their radio’s range would be severely limited by the mountains.

On the other hand, the F-5 attack had hardly been a friendly gesture.

“I think our options are either to blow up the plane or talk to them,” Breanna said when Jeff didn’t answer. “And we don’t have anything on board to blow up the plane.”

“Blowing up the plane doesn’t make sense,” said Zen finally.

“I agree,” said Chris.

Breanna hit the console switch to automatically crack the hatch, lowering the ramp to the ground. Then she got out of her seat. “You and Zen stay with the plane,” she told her copilot. “I’ll go see what sort of donkey train we’re going to need to get help in.”

Breanna made her way to the ventral hatch without stopping to talk to Jeff in the Flighthawk bay. After so much time in the air, her legs felt a little spongy; she wobbled a bit as she put her boot on the pavement. Gal’s stilt landing gear disoriented her as well, and Breanna felt unbalanced as she turned toward the front of the plane, walking out from its shadow. A pair of two-and-a-half-ton trucks, canvas tops flapping, whipped out from behind the hangars and headed toward her.

Breanna paused to get her bearings. As she did, something large buzzed down from the air behind her, so close and sudden that she stumbled sideways and fell to the ground. The Megafortress and the ramp rumbled with the vibration.

A Flighthawk.

“I thought you landed, Jeff,” she yelled, rolling to her feet. As she rose, one of the men who had come to greet her pulled out an Uzi and pointed it in her face.