Nerve Center

Chapter 81

As she walked toward the American plane, Minerva’s anger dissipated, replaced by a rush of awe and even envy. The massive black plane loomed from the dark shadows like a mythic beast, its sleek nose a sword thrusting from massive shoulders. The plane towered above her on its gear, with smooth skin like a dark shark in the night. It was so big it seemed like another part of the mountain, pulled down in an avalanche. Yet the F-5 pilots reported the big bomber could turn as tightly as they could. Had the plane been armed, the outcome of the battle would have been far different.

The two men guarding the hatchway snapped to attention when they saw their commander approaching. She gave them a salute, then took hold of the railing and walked upward into the reddish glow of the interior.

The lower deck looked like a television studio control room, with a wide array of monitors and a bank of computers and other gear along the walls. She guessed this was the place where the robot planes were controlled from joystick controls and extensive video banks sat in front of both seats, somewhat similar to the arrangement in Hawkmother. The seat on the right turned on a special rail; the crippled commander must sit there.

Minerva climbed to the flight deck slowly. Madrone said the Megafortress had started as an old B-52, but this didn’t seem possible — the cockpit belonged in something from the twenty-first century, or maybe the twenty-second. A smooth glass panel covered the entire dashboard area; there were no mechanical switches or old-fashioned dials on its surface. Screen areas, instruments, and controls were all configurable, either by touch or voice command. The throttle bar between the pilot and copilot did not move, but responded to pressure input. Control sticks rather than wheels guided the plane once airborne; textured areas indicated sensor switches built directly into the stick surface. Dull yellow letters in the windscreen showed clearly that the heads-up display, rather than being mirrored from a projector, was actually part of the window surface.

The plane’s potential as a scout, as a bomber, as the leader of a squadron of interceptors was limitless. With one Mega-fortress, she could dominate not merely Brazil, but all of South America.

But she had to give it back.

More than that. She had to find a way to get it back to the Americans without being implicated in its theft.

She would fly it first certainly.

And then?

Minerva slipped into the pilot’s seat. She would never give it back if she took off. No pilot could. To fly this plane would be to relive the first moment, the first dream of flight. She could never give it back.

But she had to. The Americans would never let her be if she kept it. They would take the plane back by force and dispose of her like a cockroach who had wandered into their home.

She could fight off the Americans. She could destroy them.

Desire erupted inside her, the darkness of her soul spreading everywhere. She would keep the plane, she would keep Madrone, she would destroy anyone who dared oppose her.

With great difficulty, Minerva forced herself from the seat and out of the plane. She had to let go of Kevin before he destroyed her. Even if it meant cutting her chest open with her nails and tearing out her heart.

Chapter 82

“Our tanker is set,” Colonel Bastian told Nancy Cheshire, quickly reviewing their position on the Megafortress’s navigation screen. “They’ll run a track as far south as possible. We have about an hour on our present course and speed.”

“Good enough,” said Cheshire.

“I think being copilot may be more difficult than piloting this plane,” said Bastian. Even though they had two operators aboard to handle the EB-52’s radio-eavesdropping gear, Dog was responsible for many functions that would have been handled by the navigator and weapons operators in a standard B-52. Granted, the computer did much of the grunt work, but just calling up the proper panels on the multi-use screens seemed an art.

“You’re doing fine,” said Cheshire.

“I’m going to check back with the Nimitz,” Dog told her. “See if their planes picked up anything.”

“Go for it.”

Raven’s gear made it possible for him to communicate with literally anyone in the world, as long as they could directly access satellite connections. Dog had preset the frequencies they were using for the search, and found himself speaking to a Navy flight commander in the southwestern Caribbean a half second after punching the buttons.

Nothing to report.

Southern Command had tracked Galatica to Venezuela. F/ A-18’s from the Nimitz had heard Chris Ferris, Gal’s copilot, as the plane approached Brazil, though he hadn’t answered their own hails. After that, the plane had disappeared without a trace.

Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela had all been enlisted in the search, though they were told only that they were looking for a B-52. Brazil had been fairly forthcoming, volunteering two squadrons for the search and detailing the country’s two Grumman Trackers to help out, even though the radar planes were optimized for naval operations and had only limited SAR capabilities.

The Venezuelans had fairly limited resources, but were also cooperating. Colombia, on the other hand, had balked, claiming to be very busy with an outbreak of guerrilla attacks in the south.

Not to jump to any conclusions, but it seemed the obvious place to concentrate their efforts. Unfortunately, it was currently out of range of the Nimitz and her planes. A second task force, which included a Marine MEU, was heading east from the southern Pacific, but they were still a good way off.

The com system flashed a line on Dog’s screen, indicating that they had an incoming text message from Quickmover, the Dreamland C-17 dedicated as the transport for the Whiplash assault team. Bastian touched the glass surface next to the message, and the text appeared in its place.

“On station.”

“Danny and his boys are orbiting off Mexico,” Bastian told Cheshire.

“Transmissions, too far to get a fix, very weak. Could be a distress signal,” said one of the operators.

“Give me a heading,” said Cheshire.

“Lost it, ma’am,” said the operator, Senior Airman Sean O’Brien.

“No way to pin it down?” Bastian asked.

“The problem is, Colonel, on those line-of-sight transmitters, you’re dealing with very weak signals and at this point, really what you’re trying to do is figure the bounces. This could have been fairly far away, possibly even in Brazil.”

The computer flashed a message on the corn line of the HUD:

“Incoming urgent coded Dog-Ears.”

Dog had to give a voice command to allow Raven to unscramble the transmission. It was piped only into his headset. “Colonel Bastian, this is Jed Barclay.”

“Go ahead, Jed.”

“Stand by for Assistant Secretary McCormack.”

Raven’s antennas provided a precise, clear pickup over the secure long-wave communications system, which had been originally developed for use by the President and the top brass in the event of a nuclear war. The transmission, conveyed at a slight delay because of the nature of the radio waves used and the distance they traveled, was nonetheless so clear that Dog felt his eardrums melt with McCormack’s anger.

“What the hell are you doing, Colonel?” she demanded.

“We’re conducting a search for Hawkmother and Galatica, an EB-52 that tracked her south after the raid on Skull Valley. I sent word of that quite some time ago,” said Dog. “I’ve been in communication with Jed—”

“Colonel, the Secretary wants you to return to your base immediately. Immediately.”

“Is that an order?”

“You know damn well I can’t give you a direct order,” she snapped. “General Magnus will contact you shortly.” The line went dead.

“What’s up?” Cheshire asked.

“I’m in a whole heap of trouble,” said Dog.

“Been there before,” said Cheshire.

Not like this, thought Bastian. He couldn’t leave his daughter and he couldn’t disobey a direct order, which would undoubtedly soon be forthcoming.

His career would tank now anyway, with the loss of Galatica and its two Flighthawks on top of Hawkmother. Excuses wouldn’t matter — look at what had happened to Brad Elliott.

Screwed every which way.

He needed to help Breanna.

More than likely it was too late. He had other responsibilities.

“We’ll stay on course until we receive further orders,” he told Nancy.

Chapter 83

Zen eyed the Brazilian soldiers at the door, wondering whether their polite and even deferential air was a good sign or not. While they didn’t appear to speak English, the soldiers who had taken him off the plane were well disciplined and well briefed, inspecting not just him but the ejection seat for weapons. They had even produced a receipt for his old Colt .45, which had been holstered in his gear. And they had allowed him to wheel himself to his “guest room” — a rather large storage room in one of the hangars.

Two soldiers stood silently next to the door, rifles in hand. Others were apparently outside, since he could hear voices and occasional laughs. They had offered food and water and even some Brazilian beer, though Zen had declined it all.

An odd sound from outside startled him, and he looked toward the doorway. Something big was being wheeled down the hallway.

It sounded like one of the equipment carts in the hospital where he’d spent so much time after his accident. His stomach pinched and his side ached with the memory of his helplessness and despair.

Two soldiers wheeled in a television set with a video player on top of it. Zen expected a message of some sort; remembering Jed’s reference to the Brazilian leadership scramble, he thought he might even be treated to some sort of diatribe about local politics. But the Brazilians had loaded in a tape with old Gunsmoke reruns.

One of the guards handed his M-16 to his companion and came over to watch.

If he had his legs, Jeff thought, he could overpower the bastards.

And then what? Single-handedly take over the base? Might just as well hope for Matt Dillon to walk out of the screen, six-guns blazing.

The set of boots scraping in the hall were nearly muffled by the volume of the television. Even so, Zen recognized the scrape long before Madrone entered the room. He prepared himself, gripping the chair rests tightly to check the anger welling up. But rage deserted him when he saw the blanched and hollow-eyed face of his friend.

“What’s going on, Kevin?” said Zen.

Madrone laughed. “You know what’s going on. You tried to destroy me. You’re still trying.”

Madrone’s body moved with jerks, his hands nearly flying off his arms. He seemed about ready to fly apart.

“Kevin, it’s Zen,” he said. “Do you realize that?”

“What do you think, I’m stupid?”

“Are you all right?”

Madrone laughed.

“Why are you working with the Brazilians?” Jeff said. “What’s going on? You look like you’re a ghost.”

“You know what’s going on. I’m not working with the Brazilians. They’re working for me.”

“ANTARES has messed you up. I took the drugs too. I know what they can do. You have to come home with me.” Madrone snorted with contempt.

“Going off the drugs messes you up,” Zen explained. “You become paranoid. Geraldo says—”

“I don’t care what she says. I’ll get her. I got Glavin. I’ll get them all. I know you’re going to get me. I understand that. But I’ll take as many of you down with me as I can. I will.”

“I’m sorry about your daughter.”

“Bullshit! Bullshit! You were part of it. You are part of it.”

Madrone’s fingers slashed the air. His skin went from white to red in an instant. It stretched taut over the bones of his face, which seemed animated by a sirocco.

“You have to let us help you, Kevin,” said Jeff softly. Madrone blinked at him, then bent closer. For a moment, Jeff thought he had gotten through.

“I’ll kill you all,” said Madrone, his voice even softer than Jeff s. “All of you.”

There was a burst of gunfire on the TV, so loud that Jeff jerked back apprehensively, turning toward the TV. When he looked up again, Kevin was gone.

Madrone’s head pounded as he walked from the building. His mind had shorn itself into splinters, each wedge manipulated by the spider in his skull. New voices yapped at him, emerging from the maelstrom between the segments of his brain.

Zen is your friend. What was he trying to say?

Jeff was a victim just as Kevin was. They’d made him a robot.

Breanna too. And the copilot.

Kill them!

Zen seemed to think he could escape. Had he said that? Or had Kevin wanted him to say that?

The shadows closed around Madrone as he walked out into the night. The jungle — he was back in the jungle.

He was in Theta, connected to ANTARES. But he wasn’t wearing the helmet, wasn’t in the airplane or his special suit. There was no computer in sight.

Where was Minerva? He needed her.

Minerva allowed herself a long moment of indulgence, staring at the mountains from her balcony. The stars seemed to have a light purple glow tonight — destiny stars, an omen.

Good or bad?

Good. Only good.

The door opened in the room behind her. Minerva took one long breath, then slipped inside.

Kevin stood in the middle of the room. “Why did you bring them here?” he demanded.

“Kevin, I didn’t bring them here.”

“Zen and Breanna — you wanted them to come.”

Minerva suppressed a shudder. “They followed you. love.” She glided toward him, striving to keep calm. “You’ve forgotten? I know you’re tired.”

She wrapped her hands around his shoulders. His muscles were hard metal; his heart pounded crazily.

His madness had grown nearly uncontrollable in the past twenty-four hours; he was no longer simply dangerous, but crazy as well.

That ought to have made it easier for her to let him go. But it didn’t.

“I always knew they were against me,” Kevin said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“They’re all bastards.”

“You will carry out your attack in the morning using their plane. The repairs will be finished in time. I’m positive of it,” she added, more to convince herself than him. “They will help.” Minerva ran her hands across his shoulder, then slipped her fingers beneath the collar of his jumpsuit, sliding them to his flesh.

“They won’t help me,” he said fiercely.

Fear froze her hand. He might resist — he might even turn against her.

“The Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in San Francisco,” she said. “Isn’t that where they poisoned your daughter for the final time? Perhaps she was only sick until then — and that was where they killed her.”

He’d told her several times about the treatment, performed near but not actually in the lab. Always he had spoken with anger, clearly wanting to destroy the place. It should have been his deepest desire now, the simplest way to hold him in her fingers.

But not today.

“I’m not going,” he said calmly.

She slid her hand away, drifting back toward the chair in the corner of the room. The gun was beneath the cushion. If she killed him, what would she do?

Destroy the planes, get rid of the others. There would be no trace.

Better — take some of the remains and scatter them north near the border. Her people were already helping the American searchers and offering to do more. Of course, their every move had to be cleared with her.

It wouldn’t be as convincing as her plan to send him back with the plane after pretending he had attacked her base. But luck seemed finally to have turned against her.

Still, the benefits were worth another risk. Her hand easing toward the pistol, she gathered herself to try again to persuade him.

“Whether you go or not, it is your decision,” Minerva told him. “If you do, I will give you a weapon that will guarantee their destruction. I have two warheads,” she added. Even as she said it — even though she knew it was merely part of her own plan to get rid of him — she felt a certain undeniable excitement, a lust for destruction that he provoked.

“The warheads have nuclear bombs. They are small and were designed for artillery shells. But you could adapt them. Take one. I need the other here, in case they attack.”

Madrone drew back. She sensed she’d lost him, and fought the impulse to go to him. She felt a tinge of fear, shame at her own desire

And then she continued to speak.

“Do they still do those hideous experiments there?” she said. “They must have known what it would do to her. Perhaps they lied from the beginning.”

“No!”

Kevin’s whole body shook so violently that Lanzas reached for her gun. But Madrone only collapsed on the floor.

“They’re my friends,” he murmured as she folded herself over him.

He bawled like a baby on the floor. She loved him, she truly loved him.

“If they are your friends, they will help you,” Minerva told him. “You’ll take off before dawn. The plane will be repaired then. The skin on one of the rear stabilizers is being replaced with aluminum, which perhaps will alter the flight characteristics, but it should be manageable.”

“What if they won’t help me?”

“Then our men will fly the plane. Or you can,” she said. “We’ll do whatever we have to.”

“Give me the bombs,” said Madrone. He took a breath and raised his head.

“They are warheads only. I thought perhaps they could be placed on the tank missiles as you did with the explosives. They’re about the same size. But there’s no time.”

“There’s time. I can fix it.” He’d changed back into the dervish, the determined avenger. His voice was resolute; the insanity had receded. “I’ll destroy Livermore, and I’ll destroy Dreamland, the base where they invaded my brain.”

“We have to reserve one warhead for here, in case they attack,” Minerva told him. “Could you rig it to explode from a timer or remote control?”

“Child’s play. Quickly.” He jumped up.

She realized she should let him go, but something deep inside her made her reach out and grab his arm. “Let’s make love first.”

Chapter 84

The radar operator had just finished telling Dog that the scans were clean when the yellow bar on the HUD flashed.

“Incoming urgent coded Dog-Ears.”

Bastian snapped on the transmission.

“You’ve lost your mind,” said Magnus.

“No, sir,” said Bastian. “What I’ve lost is an EB-52.”

“I’m not going to be able to bail you out of this one, Dog,” said the three-star.

“I’m not asking you to bail me out, General.”

“You are to set a course for Dreamland and return there without delay. The search will be handled properly, through official channels.”

“I am official channels. As per—”

“Colonel!”

“Yes, sir,” said Bastian. “We’re heading to refuel anyway.”

“Who’s your copilot?”

“I’m the copilot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Major Cheshire is acting under my orders,” said Dog. “She filed a protest. It’s in the log,” he added, hoping they could add it retroactively.

“That may not save her either. Let me talk to her.”

“You have to authorize it on your end,” Bastian told him.

The line was silent for a moment, apparently while the general consulted with whatever technician was helping him complete the transmission.

“Is he going to yell at me?” Cheshire asked.

“I didn’t realize you had such a sense of humor.”

“The condemned always joke before the hanging.”

“Major Cheshire?”

“Yes, General.”

“You get home. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bastian, contact me when you’re an hour from base. I’m in D.C. Find me. Out.”

“Doesn’t sound too pleased,” said Cheshire.

“Probably had a long day,” said Dog.

“What are we doing, Colonel?”

He couldn’t leave Breanna; he just couldn’t.

But it was senseless to stay here. Even without Magnus on his back, he ought to return. They had no transmission, no beacon, no sign of Galatica.

“Message, Colonel,” prompted Nancy.

Dog looked up and saw the alert code, indicating the line was scrambled and from D.C. Sighing, he once more authorized the line. He was surprised to hear Jed Barclay’s voice, not the general’s.

“Uh, Colonel, I have e-mail here, came through the NSC public system. I believe you got a copy too at Dreamland. But I want to read it to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen. ‘Deposit sixty million U.S. dollars in the following account by 0600 Pacific Coast time, or Lawrence Livermore Labs will be destroyed, along with San Francisco.’ There’s some account numbers too, which seem to be linked to a bank in the Caymans, though I haven’t been able to trace it yet. It’s signed by Madrone.”

“What?”

“I’d think it was just a loony, but there’s a TIFF file attached.”

“What’s a TIFF file?”

“Tagged graphic. Very low resolution and primitive algorithms, no security at all. But basically, it’s a photograph or a video frame. It’s a picture of an EB-52 with damage to the rear. I’m guessing it’s the one you’re searching for, but there’s no way to authenticate the picture or the e-mail definitively.”

“Where did the message come from?” Dog asked.

“At the moment, I’m not sure. We’ve traced the e-mail back to Italy, but it probably didn’t originate there.”

“Okay,” said Bastian. “Jed, have you been able to organize that surveillance via the satellites?”

“Yes, nothing there yet. I’ll get to that in a second, Colonel,” added Barclay. “There was another file attached to this e-mail. It had a line drawing. I’m not an expert, but it looks like a nuclear warhead. I’m trying to have it checked out now.”

“What did your boss say?”

“He’s en route to the White House to inform the President right now.”

Chapter 85

Danny nearly slipped off the crew ladder as he descended into the belly of the C-17. Sergeant Talcom suppressed a laugh at the base of the ladder, but the rest of his Whiplash team members guffawed so loudly he could hear them over the whine of the transport’s four powerful engines.

“All right, listen up,” Freah said. “We’re putting down for a while in Panama.”

“We got a target?” asked Bison, practically jumping off the plastic bench.

“No. We’re working on it. We have to refuel and the powers that be are gathering some intelligence.”

“Translation: Some jerkoff in D.C. wants to go to bed,” said Powder.

The others started to laugh again.

“You know, Sergeant, I hear the latrines here are a very interesting place to spend an evening. All sorts of yummy bugs to check out.”

Danny had so much venom in his voice that not one of the others dared to as much as titter as he climbed back up to the flight deck.

Chapter 86

Breanna had sat on the wooden chair for what seemed like several hours, exchanging glares with the male guards. They made no move to attack her, and had even been delicate searching her for a weapon; if she’d had anything besides her bulky Beretta, she would have been able to conceal it easily. Still, her vulnerability felt like a physical thing, pricking at her skin.

She worried about Jeff. He was due for another round of the diluted ANTARES drugs in two hours. Geraldo had told her that he had to take them within five minutes of her carefully worked out schedule, or else he’d begin to feel effects of withdrawal.

A burly airman appeared at the door carrying her flight and survival gear. He placed it on the floor next to the guard, but the soldiers waved her back into her seat when she rose to examine it. A few minutes later the same airman came in with a large bowl of food. This, at least, she was allowed to have. Despite the toughness of the beans, she ate it quickly, and slurped the thin broth at the bottom. She was done by the time Chris was led into the room a few minutes later. One of his guards carried his gear, placing it next to hers by the door.

“You’re eating that shit?” he said.

“Better than starving.”

“You don’t think it’s drugged?”

“If they were going to drug it, they would have made it taste better,” she said.

“Think they’ll release us soon?”

Breanna shrugged. She could hear Zen’s wheelchair in the hallway.

Jeff rolled into the room, an ironic smile on his face. Before she could ask what was possibly so funny, a tall man entered behind him and began giving orders in Portuguese. The guards quickly grabbed the flight gear and thrust it at Breanna and Chris, though mixing up who belonged to what.

“We’re being released,” said Chris.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Zen, still wearing his bemused expression. It was a mask he sometimes used; maybe it meant he was planning something.

“Where’s your gear?” Breanna asked.

“They made me leave it in the plane.”

“What’s so funny?” she said.

“I got a TV and you didn’t,” he said, then added, “They think I’m going to help fly the Flighthawks.”

“What?”

“He speaks English,” said Zen in a stage whisper. “He says we’re going back north. They think we’re going to help.”

“That wasn’t quite what he said.”

Breanna looked up and saw Kevin Madrone standing in the doorway.

“He said you will assist me or be killed,” said Madrone. “Hello, Breanna. Captain Ferris.”

“I’m not helping you, Kevin. Your head’s screwed up.” Zen wheeled around to face him. “You’re going through withdrawal from the drugs. ANTARES blew up your mind. Take it from me. You’re screwy. Nuts.”

Kevin glared at him, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets. And then he launched himself at Zen, flying across the room and swinging wildly. Jeff swung in his chair and managed to slip back so that Madrone fell to the floor. But this only enraged Kevin more. Breanna jumped to help her husband as Madrone’s punches started to land, but found herself in the arms of one of the security guards. Another guard had a pistol in Chris’s chest.

“Stop it! Stop!” she cried.

The soldiers tried to break up the fight. A rapid burst through the ceiling from an automatic rifle finally caught Madrone’s attention, or perhaps his fury ran out; he allowed himself to be dragged off Zen.

“Kevin, what’s happened to you?” Breanna demanded. Madrone shrugged off the guards, then shook his head, catching his breath. “I didn’t think you’d be in on this, Bree.”

“Be in on what, Kevin? What’s going on?”

“I’m not listening to you. I know you’re going to get me, but I’ll take you down too. I’ll take enough of you down to hurt you.”

“Are you involved in the revolt against the Brazilian government?” said Jeff. His voice was so calm he sounded as if he were a graduate student asking a question at a seminar.

Jeff had provoked the attack, perhaps thinking the surge of emotions would break through, Breanna realized. But it hadn’t worked, at least not the way he’d hoped.

“There’s no revolt,” said Madrone.

“Sure there is. There’s a new government already. You helped take over the country with Hawkmother and the U/ MFs.”

“People attacked us, and we neutralized them,” said Ma-drone. “We’re going to do that now.”

“Christina died from a cancer that had nothing to do with you or your work, Kevin,” said Zen. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just — horrible luck. Look at me.”

“Get them aboard the plane,” Madrone told the guards. “Handcuff the ones who can walk.”

“Who are you working for?” Chris asked.

“I’m not working for anyone.”

“I wouldn’t trust them,” said Chris.

“I don’t,” said Madrone, leaving the room.

Outside, Kevin stopped and fell against the side of the building, gasping for air. Had they been his enemies from the beginning? Or had they turned against him?

Betrayal was the worst crime. To go against your friend or your family or your lover — what could be worse?

To kill your own daughter.

He hadn’t killed her. They had. The bastards.

When they closed in, he would kill himself. He would borrow a pistol from one of the men. He would get as much revenge as possible. Then cheat them.

They would come after Minerva to avenge their losses. She was still naive — she thought they would escape together when he returned, but he, wouldn’t return.

They would destroy her too. Worse, they would make her suffer as Christina had. He wouldn’t let that happen again.

Kevin felt his body relax, the last vestiges of the headache sifting away. It was finished. He hurried to check on the men working on Minerva’s weapon.

Chapter 87

They landed precisely at ten P.M., having pushed Raven to the max. Dog slipped out of the cockpit dead tired, and went straight to the waiting Hummer without bothering to stop to change out of his gear.

The inimitable Ax was waiting at the door to his office suite with a cup of very black coffee.

“Hey, Chief. Big shots want to bark at you,” said the sergeant.

“What the hell are you doing up?”

“Never miss a hangin’,” said Gibbs, who despite his bonhomie, wore traces of worry and fatigue in the cracks around his eyes. “You’re supposed to plug into a conference call on the scrambled line. Mudroom’s all set up downstairs.”

“All right.”

“I’ll be down with the coffee soon as it finishes perkin’. Captain Freah landed in Panama,” added Ax. “Standing by for your orders.”

“Okay.” Dog took a long swig from the coffee, then handed the cup back to Ax for a refill. “What, no paperwork?”

“At this hour SOP is to forge your initials.”

Downstairs, Dog nodded at the pair of MPs covering the door and went inside the empty control room. Cleared into the secure video conference circuit, he found the others were already talking together.

“Colonel Bastian has joined us,” said Jed Barclay in the White House basement.

“Colonel,” said General Magnus gruffly.

“Good evening, Colonel.” The screen flickered and a new face appeared on the screen at the front of the room. It was the President, Kevin Martindale.

“Sir.”

“How real is this threat?” Martindale, dressed in a cardigan sweater, sat in a thick chair aboard Air Force One. Philip Freeman, John Keesh, and a grim-faced aide sat nearby.

“I’m afraid it’s very real, sir,” said Barclay.

“I want to hear Colonel Bastian,” said Martindale. “Is ANTARES responsible?”

Bastian hesitated. “I’m afraid it appears likely ANTARES was involved. We’re still trying to connect all the dots.”

“ANTARES is nothing but grief. Promising poison. It’s to end right now, on my order. This overrules any directive you may get from anyone else, no matter who it is.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bastian.

Keesh scowled in the background but said nothing.

“We’ve set up a net with ANG and regular Air Force units guarding San Francisco,” said Magnus, apparently speaking from aboard another Air Force plane. “They won’t get close.”

“I think that’s the idea,” said Dog.

“What do you mean?” said the President.

“They’ve basically told us the target and when to expect them,” Bastian said. “Either it’s a decoy, or we’re meant to shoot them down.”

“We can’t not shoot them down,” said Magnus.

“We can’t let them attack the laboratory or San Francisco,” said Dog. “But there’s something else going on. I had some of my people at the base examine the diagram. I’ve only spoken to them by radio, but they say it’s very primitive, possibly attached to a very short-range-missile system. Even if it were fired from a Flighthawk — difficult but not impossible — the controlling ship would have to be within ten miles.”

“If it’s dropped by a bomber, it will be overhead,” said Magnus dryly.

“Absolutely,” said Dog. “As long as we know they’re coming, we can cordon off an area twenty miles away, and be fairly confident of finding the plane, even a Megafortress.”

“Maybe the attack will be carried out elsewhere,” said Jed.

“That might be. But Livermore does fit,” added Bastian.

“Jed has filled us in on the psychological implications,” said Freeman, the NSC head. “Jed, run down the Brazilian scenario,” he added.

Barclay’s face came back on the screen. He had a bit of peach fuzz on his chin between the pimples, and looked as if he were going to cry. His voice shook a little as he began, but he spoke in coherent, long sentences.

“It’s not a scenario exactly. I’ve been looking at the power struggle there, trying to coordinate some of the players against the intercepts we’ve had. The conflict between the Navy and the Air Force, that’s legendary; they spy on each other back and forth. They have for years. A few months ago, there was a kind of mini-insurrection and the Navy people quashed the Air Force. The major players were cashiered or sent out to Amazon scratch bases, which is our equivalent of being detailed to guard latrines on the moon.”

“We don’t have posts on the moon,” muttered Magnus, making his opinion of Barclay evident.

“Get to the point, Jed,” prompted Freeman.

“As we know, this time fighting broke out, which resulted in a government crisis. The President resigned. Air Force people then pop up all over the place, starting with the Acting President, who was the Air Force Chief. Now it could just be the usual blackmail and skullduggery—”

“Jed,” warned Freeman.

“Yes, well, the Defense Minister — this is all just the acting government, remember, but anyway — a Colonel Minerva Lanzas is due to be named Defense Minister when Herule takes over. He’s the Prez. Lanzas was transferred from the biggest Air Force command to a mountain landing strip at the edge of the Amazon after the Navy brush-up, so that’s a pretty dramatic turnaround.”

“Is that site big enough to land a 777?” asked Dog.

“Not according to the Factbook,” said Barclay, referring to the standard non-classified directory compiled by the CIA. “But our review of Satint shows it’s been greatly expanded over the past month, maybe even more recently. You could land a standard B-52 there now, give or take. And,” added Barclay, leaning toward the camera with just a hint of dramatic flair, “there was a two-engined jet on the ground there yesterday morning. It was obscured by clouds, but it seemed to be either a 777 or an Airbus, an Airbus, uh—” He faltered, trying to remember the designation of the large European-made plane.

“We need to hit that base,” said Dog. “Now.”

“Too far,” said Freeman. “Too aggressive. Even if we had hard evidence—”

“The Whiplash Assault Team is in Panama,” said Dog. “They were standing by to help a rescue. They can go there.”

“Big risk, especially with the Brazilian government in transition,” said Freeman. “We better talk to State.”

The President, to his right, was looking at his watch. “General Herule won’t be sworn in as Acting President until noon Brasilia time,” he said.

“I’m not sure that’s relevant,” said Freeman.

“I can have my Whiplash Team on the ground at that base in two hours,” said Dog.

“I say we take a shot at it, sir,” said Magnus unexpectedly. “If young Mr. Barclay is right, it’s a logical place. I trust Colonel Bastian’s men to pull it off.”

Keesh finally spoke up. “I have faith in Colonel Bastian as well,” he said. “But if we’re wrong, it will be a grave situation.”

“If our planes aren’t on the runway, they don’t land,” said Dog. “Brazil has already offered to cooperate in the search. We can say this is just an extension.”

Someone spoke off camera in the President’s plane. He turned for a moment, listening as another aide whispered something in his ear.

“We’ll deal with that in a few minutes,” Martindale told the aide. Then he turned back to the camera. “Do it,” he said. “And keep me informed. Jack,” he added, apparently to the operator, because the circuit went gray.

Magnus reappeared on the screen. “This isn’t very good, Colonel.”

“No, sir. I understand that.”

“General Olafson will coordinate the defenses out of the Fresno ANG base. Get with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Tecumseh — no more road shows. You’re to remain at the base. You’re not a fighter pilot anymore. Your job is coordinating things from the ground.”

The screen blanked. Dog sat in the chair, the tumult of the past few days catching up with him. He was still sitting there, legs stretched along the floor, when Sergeant Gibbs entered with the coffee a minute later.

“We still in business?”

“For now,” said Dog, snapping back to himself. “Get me Captain Freah.”

“Punch line five on your doohickey thinger and you got him,” said Ax.

Chapter 88

Minerva stood in front of the large bomber as her men worked feverishly to complete their work. They were used to fashioning spare parts for military jets, but the damaged Megafortress was an extraordinary challenge. Its wings and fuselage were made from an exotic compound that none of her experts recognized; they’d fashioned replacement panels from several sources, including Hawkmother. Madrone’s EB-52 had also furnished the tail section, which proved remarkably easy to replace — a testament to the aircraft’s design, meant to facilitate quick combat-area repairs. Her chief engineer assured her the plane would get off the ground, but would give no guarantees beyond that.

Minerva didn’t need any. She had already constructed her own elaborate alibis and a cover story, pinning all of the blame on Madrone.

It wasn’t the most airtight or even believable of stories, but it didn’t have to be. As Defense Minister, she would be able to control any inquiries. And the main witnesses would all be dead:

Madrone and his friends, who would either be shot down by the Americans, or blown up when the bomb her people had added to the plane’s tail exploded. It was set with both a timer and a radar altimeter, guaranteeing their destruction.

Her people at the base, who would be killed when her second nuclear warhead exploded at 6:50 A.M. She herself would only just escape the American madman’s attempt to obliterate all Brazil. She would emerge victorious, having fought him off without the Americans’ help. She would then launch an investigation to find out who had helped him, for surely even a madman could not have come this far without local assistance.

The conspirators would pay dearly. She would end up Brazil’s heroine; the people would reward her with the Presidency and power beyond her dreams.

Even so, she longed to refuse to let Madrone go.

But Lanzas feared him greatly now; even more, she feared her own darkness. She had the strength to restrain only one.

No. She could restrain herself only if he was no longer with her.

Minerva climbed inside the plane to watch her men as they finished installing the six oversized steamer trunks containing the heart of the ANTARES equipment in the Megafortress’s equipment bay. The ‘devices plugged so simply into circuitry in the rear compartment, they seemed no more complicated than a stereo system. Two more went into the lower deck.

“We’re ready, Colonel,” reported Louis Andre, who headed the team.

“That’s it? You’re sure?”

“We followed Captain Madrone’s directions to the letter. The computer panel says that its diagnostics have cleared.”

He pointed toward the large screens at the two stations before them.

“Diagnostic complete. No errors. System ready,” read the screens.

“The most difficult thing was arranging to keep the units in the fuselage cool,” Andre told her. “We rerouted a duct in the plane. It may affect other equipment, but Captain Madrone did not seem overly concerned.”

“Very well,” she said. “Tell the captain we are ready for him.”

Minerva allowed herself one last look at the flight deck before leaving the plane. An amazing warbird, a plane of immense potential.

She could learn much from the Americans. If she was willing to wait, rather than simply take their weapons, she would do much better.

It was a pity the 777 had to be destroyed as well. But there was no other way. Her course was set. To change anything now meant only doom.

Minerva considered not seeing Kevin off, but decided that that might upset him, and in some way tip her pilots off that they were about to die. So she waited by the plane for him to arrive.

A final kiss. A supreme indulgence. But after years of letting her body be used by others — wasn’t she owed it?

Mayo walked toward her, saluting smartly.

“Madame Colonel,” he said. Mayo was young, without a family; though he’d been with her a long time, she didn’t feel his loss as much as she would that of Gerrias, who had three children. Still, she would make sure his parents had a double pension.

“You’re confident you can fly this?” she asked, though Gerrias had assured her twice already it would be easy.

“Once Captain Madrone used his security codes to open the computer for us, we had no trouble with the controls. There is a computer that does all of the work. Of course, in flight there may be a few wrinkles.”

“The small planes?”

“Picot declared them ready. Captain Madrone is inspecting them all. There are codes, apparently, that are entered directly into them. It is all voice-coded. Picot had no trouble.”

“Picot is a genius.”

“Madame Colonel, are we really attacking San Francisco?” asked Mayo.

“Not San Francisco,” said Minerva. “A complex nearby.”

“The Americans will try to stop us.”

“If you are afraid, Lieutenant, Captain Gerrias can fly alone.”

“I am not afraid. I don’t know if it is right. Captain Madrone says all of San Francisco will be destroyed.”

Minerva sighed. “Captain Madrone is brilliant, but unfortunately he exaggerates. You’ve been rewarded for the other flights?”

Mayo said nothing. She knew that he took the implication that he valued money above loyalty to her as an insult.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “In a few hours, you will return here, and then — off to wherever you will. You are already a rich man, and you will be ten times richer.”

“I fly because you saved me from death,” said Mayo stiffly. “It is a debt 1 will never forget.”

“A debt that will be discharged today. Start your engines. Quickly,” she said, saluting to dismiss him.

Madrone approached from the runway.

“We are ready,” he told her. “The Flighthawks are all fueled and loaded with bullets.”

“Can you handle all three?”

“I can handle twenty.”

The door to the hangar behind them creaked on its rusty wheel hinge. The three Americans and their guards emerged.

“Is that your robot master?” shouted the one in the wheelchair.

Even in the dim light, Minerva saw Madrone’s face turn red.

“Calmly,” she said, touching Kevin’s chest. “He’s trying to provoke you.”

“What was it Mack called you? Monkey Boy? Microchip Brain? How’s your thumbnail these days? Still biting it?”

“That’s enough out of you,” said Madrone.

“His hands are not bound?” Minerva asked the guards.

“To wheel his chair,” said the guard. “If—”

Mayo, already aboard, spooled up the two outboard engines. They were surprisingly quiet for being so close, but even so drowned out the guard.

“He’s harmless,” yelled Madrone. “Just a cripple.”

“You should have told us about your daughter, Kevin,” said the woman pilot. “I’m so sorry — it must have been so horrible.”

“You don’t care. None of you care.”

Minerva gripped Madrone’s arm. In an instant, he had changed from a confident, cocky pilot to a trembling, fearful man. Tears rolled down his face.

She should have shot the Americans.

“They’re trying to trick you, Kevin,” she said. “Perhaps we should give them something to make them less disagreeable.”

“Is she coming with us?” said the one in the wheelchair. “Your master?”

“There isn’t room on the plane,” answered Minerva.

“Actually, there is,” said the man. “There are four stations in the cockpit, two downstairs, two upstairs, and that’s not even counting the roll-out cot.”

Madrone turned toward her. “Come with us,” he told her. “You must.”

“I have to attend to things here, lover,” she said softly.

“You will come,” he told her sternly.

She reached to pat his hand, then saw he had a pistol in it.

“Kevin.” She stared, but before she said anything else she heard the loud whine of another jet popping up over the nearby mountain.

Chapter 89

In a perfect world, the target would have been under real-time surveillance from an army of recon drones and maybe a satellite or two, with a highly trained team aboard a JSTARS command craft interpreting the images and giving advice.

But Whiplash operated in a decidedly imperfect world. So the fact that Danny Freah was able to turn on his Combat Information Visor and get an image off the C-17’s chin array of infrared and optical cameras as they popped up over the mountains two miles from the target seemed like a real luxury.

Which didn’t make it any easier to read the blurs.

Danny pressed his hands against his helmet, trying to steady the image in the CIV. There were two large planes near hangars alongside the runway. The glowing bursts near the wings of the larger made it clear that its engines were just being started.

The EB-52? Too hard to tell.

Danny pressed the underside of the left lenses to adjust the contrast, reducing the image glare caused by the jet exhaust. He saw the image of a man in a wheelchair.

“Pop the ramp, we’re going out!” he shouted to his men over the shared laser-com system. “Get the chutes! We have thirty seconds! Planes at the end of the ramp. Engines are hot.”

The pilot, who was tied into the circuit, immediately cut in. “Captain, that’s not the way we planned it.”

“You go ahead and circle around to land. We’ll try and pick off the guards holding the crew at Galatica. Just hold on your course,” said Danny, who could see through the visor that the C-17 was aimed to pass right over the Megafortress.

“Captain, I can get back around and land in two minutes, maybe three.”

“Too long!” said Danny. The people near the plane were moving. “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted to his men. He unhooked the feed from the back of his helmet, the wire whipping back as wind began gusting through the rear of the plane.

Danny’s command was superfluous. Prepared for any contingency, the team members had been wearing their jump gear and night goggles on the approach. Team Jumpmaster Geraldo “Blow” Hernandez was already pushing guys out the open ramp. Danny went out with him, dragging his tethered rucksack clear.

He kicked his chute open on a two-count after sliding into the air. The cells flapped full and he swung backward slightly, his weight not quite balanced due to the rush. As he grabbed the toggle handles to steer, he realized he faced in the wrong direction; he leaned his body as he steered back, knowing that the ground would be coming up tremendously fast.

Low-altitude jumps into a combat situation were incredibly hazardous, as dangerous as jumping off a bridge with homemade equipment. A half second of disorientation could be fatal. That was especially true at night, even when you had help from advanced gear like the CIV. The images in the starlight view flared back and forth as Danny managed to steady his descent; the runway was dead ahead, fifty yards off, with the Megafortress beyond it. He pulled the right steering tog, hoping to coax his way across the runway and onto the parallel access ramp. He couldn’t see any defensive positions, but as his feet accelerated toward the ground he saw the flare of tracers on his right.

Chapter 90

Zen watched Madrone swing his arm around, revealing the gun.

“With us,” Madrone shouted to Lanzas.

“Kevin, no,” she said.

“They’ll kill you here.”

The Megafortress’s engines roared. A soldier with a rifle came down the EB-52’s ramp to see what was going on. Madrone fired his gun and the man’s body flew backward. In practically the same motion Kevin grabbed Lanzas and threw her onto the ramp. One of the guards took out his pistol, but then slumped downward. Gunfire erupted beyond the runway — the plane passing overhead had dropped paratroopers.

It has to be Whiplash, thought Zen. He saw Chris lash out at one of the guards, then felt himself pitched to the ground. He swung his arms, but realized he was being dragged by his useless legs toward the plane.

“Up,” Madrone told him. Automatic weapons barked around them. Madrone pointed a small, blocky pistol in his face. “I’ll kill you, Zen.”

“I can’t get up.”

As Kevin ducked down to him, something flew onto his back. It tumbled over his shoulder, a heavy weight that smashed against Zen’s upper torso, pinning his right arm.

Breanna.

Madrone, somehow not surprised by her, nor fazed by the chips of cement and bullets dancing around them, grabbed her by her bound hands and pulled her to her feet.

“Help Jeff into the plane. Now, or you die here!”

“No!” she shouted.

“He dies first.”

She reached for Jeff, starting to pull, going slow. Jeff tried to hold back, but Madrone pushed them both over onto the middle of the ramp. He swung his left arm wildly. Either he hit the lever to close the gangway, or someone in the cockpit issued the command; in any event, the ramp sprang upward moving quickly despite their weight.

As long as he was alive, Zen thought, there was a chance he could stop Madrone. He had to stay calm and work out a plan.

Then Madrone smashed Breanna on the head. Jeff propelled himself with an enraged shout, swinging both fists toward Kevin with all his might.

Had he connected, he surely would have knocked Madrone out. But he missed by at least half a foot. As his momentum carried him downward, he felt a hard smack against the side of his temple. He smelled the metal tint of blood tickle his nose. His lips tasted the smooth aluminum of the deck floor. Then everything went black.

Danny had his M-16 in his hands as he hit the ground, but the drop-off between the runway and the ramp kept him from getting a good view of the hangar area or the rest of his team.

It also made him lose his balance. He rolled forward, struggling to his feet. Snapping clear of his gear, he ran up the slope toward the ramp and hangar area, still without a target. He heard the distinct whap of a flash-bang grenade, thrown by one of his team members to paralyze the resistance.

The large planes near the hangars were definitely theirs. The EB-52 sat on the right. Someone fired from the ground near it; the shots were immediately answered with a spray of gunfire from the left.

Danny raised his rifle, clicking his thumb against the target switch that allowed him to use the CIV to aim.

Someone sat in the cockpit. He put the body in the cross-hairs and fired. The bullet hit the target square, but the figure remained unharmed behind the EB-52’s thick glass. The 5.56mm bullets in the M-16 were no match for the reinforced windshield and hull of the Megafortress.

The Flighthawks should be more fragile. Danny clicked the visor into IR mode and began scanning for them.

Madrone kicked Jeff’s head with his boot to make sure he was truly unconscious, then leapt into the right control seat, quickly pulling the ANTARES head gear on. Breanna moaned behind him, but he didn’t have time to worry about that now — he had to get into Theta and get the Flighthawks off the ground.

He felt his scalp tingle as soon as the liner band slid over the spider connection.

Already? The panel wire hadn’t even been connected.

He stood in the forest, rain storming all around. Balls of hail pelted him.

Hawk One, start procedure.

Two, Three.

Systems green.

Go.

A narrow flare erupted at the extreme left of Danny’s vision; by the time he turned toward it, two others had lit, small cigarette bums in the visor. He brought his rifle up and began to fire as the first object — undoubtedly a Flighthawk — moved behind a row of low bushes or some other obstruction. Danny burned the clip as it disappeared; he reloaded quickly and hiked sideways to get a shot on the U/ MFs as they rolled in the direction of the Megafortress. He figured he didn’t have to stop them, just slow them down — the C-17 ought to be landing any second and would block the narrow runway. But as the first Flighthawk reappeared, something hard slammed him down against the ground — a fifty-caliber machine gun had opened fire near the hangars.

His armor saved his life, but the heavy gun had cracked the suit and possibly his shoulder blade. Worse, as far as Danny was concerned, the fire was so severe he couldn’t raise his head or the gun. The Flighthawks whipped around the end of the runway, not bothering to wait for the Megafortress. They turned and thundered down the cement to take off — just as the C-17 appeared above.

Chapter 91

Breanna writhed on the floor, her head still spinning from the bang she’d gotten as Madrone tossed her over his shoulders. She lay at the base of the Flighthawk tech station at the left side of the bay; the tubes were flashing above, and she could hear Kevin moaning and muttering to himself at Zen’s control station. His arms flew in the air as if he were conducting some mad symphony only he could hear.

Struggling to rise, Rap pushed back against the side panel, and saw Jeff sprawled on the deck behind the seats near the hatchway. The sight of his helpless body gave her strength; she managed to push up against the panel, wedging her foot down, but then snagging her bound hands on part of the rail beneath the seat. She rebounded to the floor, then pushed back upright, still hooked on.

The main monitor at the station jumped through views. Breanna realized she was seeing the Flighthawk optics.

The technician’s panel could access C3. She tried rising, but remained snagged. She pushed down, felt metal scraping against her wrist. The pneumatic hoses that allowed the chair to be adjusted had been sawed or clipped apart; the entire base of the ejection seat looked as if it had been gnawed by a metal-eating squirrel.

The keyhole-shaped clasp at the left front of the rail covering one of connectors held her. No more than an inch and a half long and a quarter of that wide, the edge seemed sharp enough to cut the thick plastic binder on her wrists. Rap began razoring the strap back and forth, twisting at it. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the handcuff began to give way.

She looked up. The screen had stopped shifting. The dark runway ramp rushed by. The Flighthawk was taking off.

Red and yellow speckles appeared around the side of the runway — gunfire. A large store of fuel exploded beyond the hangar area, and the flames burst so bright that Madrone or C3 swapped out the IR for an optical view.

Zen groaned.

Rap looked over at him, then back as Madrone yelled something. A dark shadow loomed in the main display panel. A large bird descended, claws snatching at the air. Then everything turned red.

The first Flighthawk just cleared the C-17. The next one, however, crashed dead into the looming hull, which had thrust itself in front of him without any warning. Madrone fell backward in his seat, stunned into disorientation.

The storm raged. He was in Theta, but couldn’t feel C3 or the robot planes anywhere.

ANTARES was an immense jungle, the vegetation cluttering, choking his mind. Minerva stood before him, naked. She reached for him, turned to fire.

He hated her. She was the enemy. She’d been sent by them to destroy him.

No.

He was in the cockpit of Hawk Three. He had the bomb strapped to the center hard-point. Takeoff had been aborted; he was dead on the runway.

Hawk One was in the air. Hawk Two had been destroyed. Galatica sat at the edge of the ramp, engines revving but motionless.

He’d die here, without revenge, without anything.

Good — Kevin wanted to die, wanted to end it. He’d be with Christina.

No — he had to kill the bastards. He wanted to see them cry as she had cried.

The attacking aircraft had crashed at the end of the strip. Even with its heavy load, Hawk Three had enough room to get in the air.

And the EB-52?

Probably not. But it would be better to die trying than to be killed on the ground.

Worst case, he’d target himself with the missile.

“Take off,” he told the bridge. “Take off.”

Chapter 92

The explosion pressed Danny against the ground. He heard one of the other members of his team cursing in the corn set, but as he turned to see if he could spot him, a massive fireball ignited behind him on the runway. Metal rained down; Danny curled himself into a ball as a series of thunderous explosions shook the air and ground.

He thought the Megafortress and the C-17 had collided, but as he twisted around he saw the plane was still back near the hangars. It must’ve been one of the Flighthawks.

“The wheels!” he yelled over the com set. “Try and hit the inside wheels of the Megafortress.”

He flicked the sensors on the CIV, toggling from normal to IR and then starlight. He could see the top of the Mega-fortress, but to hit the tires he’d have to stand, exposing himself to the machine gun again.

The plane started to move. Danny jumped to his feet, raising his M-16 as a steam of bullets started whizzing by his head.

Minerva tasted blood in her mouth, her lip bleeding. The Americans were here; they were trapped.

Bullets splashed against the thick side glass of the cockpit as she pushed up onto the flight deck, half in shock. Mayo sat at the copilot’s station, frozen.

“Go!” she yelled at him as a fresh spray of bullets panged against the glass and fuselage. The panels and skin were obviously thick enough to withstand the light-caliber weapons, but sooner or later the attackers would bring heavier guns to bear. “Move!” she told her pilot.

“Colonel, Captain Gerrias isn’t aboard—”

“Just go!”

He put his hand on the slider between the pilot stations and the plane surged forward. A fireball erupted from the far end of the runway ahead.

“The other plane,” screamed Mayo, backing down the engines quickly. “The wreckage. We won’t clear the flames.”

“We must,” Lanzas told him.

“But—”

“Go! Just go!” Minerva reached over to the power console and punched the thruster so hard it nearly moved out of its retainer. The plane slammed forward, veering to the right. The flames loomed.

Better to go out in a fireball, she thought.

Gunfire rippled across the front of the outside of the cabin. The bullets made a lot of noise, but still didn’t break through the hull. Minerva saw the flames ahead and began to close her eyes, then decided she would meet her fate bravely. She thought of Madrone, who had brought her to this.

The Megafortress shuddered and there was a roar behind and below her: she fell backward against the second set of seats. An alarm sounded and she heard the plane’s computerized voice say something. For a second, she thought she could feel the flames burning her body.

In the next, they lifted off the runway.

It took her a moment to realize they were all right. She steadied her hands on the pilot’s seat, watching as Mayo raised the gear and climbed rapidly.

“Do you have a gun?” she asked him finally.

“Yes.” He reached into his vest and retrieved an old-fashioned revolver.

“Keep the plane below ten thousand feet no matter what,” she told him. “Stay on the course north. I’ll check on the others.”

Danny’s first two bullets took out a total of three tires, thanks to a lucky ricochet. But as the Megafortress lurched left on the runway, Danny felt himself pushed down again, hit by the massive machine gun on his left. This time, the gun’s bullets managed to spin him around and somehow got a piece of the CIV, cracking it.

Which made him madder than hell.

Screaming, he rolled backward and began firing into the stream of red tracers. A huge ball of fire slammed into the top of his helmet, smacking him into the ground. Somehow, he kept firing.

When his clip clicked empty, he realized the machine gun had stopped.

He could feel a welt rising at the front of his head. Though a jagged line ran through the left quadrant, Annie’s visor was still working — a body lay a few feet away from the machine gun fifty yards away.

Directly above it, four hot circles edged into ellipses over the mountain pass. The Megafortress had managed to clear the C-17 on the runway.

Breanna’s restraints came apart with a snap, slamming her hands against the seat and panel so hard, she felt something snap in her left wrist. But she ignored the pain and jumped up, launching herself across the tech station toward Madrone.

The distance was farther than she thought. She fell across the technician’s gear, grabbing Madrone’s wires and loosening them. He didn’t seem to notice, or at least made no effort to stop her. But as she squirmed to get more leverage, something grabbed her and threw her back against the rear bulkhead.

Lanzas.

“Strap the cripple into the seat and come with me,” barked the Brazilian colonel.

“He’s not a cripple. He’s my husband.”

“Do it now or you both die here.” Lanzas had a revolver in her left hand. She edged away, watching Breanna carefully as she lifted Zen up and strapped him into the seat. He seemed thoroughly out of it.

Breanna leaned toward him, intending to kiss him. The Brazilian put the pistol on her neck to stop her.

“Nice try,” said Lanzas. “Upstairs now. If you do anything, you will die. Kevin, we’re okay.”

Madrone took no notice of them. He seemed a zombie, completely oblivious.

Not sure what else to do, Breanna edged past and went up the ladder to the flight deck.

Chapter 93

“We missed the plane.”

Colonel Bastian held the receiver away from his head for a moment, not because he was disappointed with Danny — he knew stopping them on the ground was a long shot — but because he was afraid of the answer to his next question. He glanced at Major Cheshire and Captain Arjun, the two Megafortress commanders alone with him in the Mudroom. Their consoles were locked out of the secure line and they watched grimly.

“Our people?” asked Bastian.

“C-17 crew is dead. One of the Flighthawks collided with it. Two more got away with Galatica. Captain Ferns managed to roll behind some barrels on the ground before they took off, and one of the Brazilian pilots surrendered,” Danny said.

“What about Major Stockard and Captain Breanna?” he asked.

He meant to say Captain Stockard, but his emotions betrayed him.

“At the moment, we’re not one hundred percent sure,” said Danny. “We have Jeff’s wheelchair, but not him. Ferris thinks they hauled Major Stockard aboard before takeoff. It’s likely your daughter went too. We haven’t secured the entire base,” Danny added. “We will. Army Special Forces and airborne are inbound from Panama in Combat Talons and an AC-130. They should be here within twenty minutes. I’ll have the hangars secure by then.”

With only six men? But Danny wasn’t known for exaggeration.

“All right, Captain, thanks. I want you to search the base carefully. See if you can find evidence that Galatica or the Flighthawks are carrying nukes.”

“Nukes? In Brazil?”

“If there’s anything else we can do from our end, let me know,” Bastian told him.

The line snapped dead.

“There were no survivors from the C-17 crash. The Whiplash Team is intact and searching the base,” he told the others, filling them in on the situation. Cheshire rubbed her tired eyes and turned back toward the situation map they’d been studying before Danny’s call came through. The map showed the entire southern portion of the U.S., along with the defenses planned to stop Galatica.

Colonel Bastian picked up his stylus and traced it across the flat touch screen at his console, outlining in red the tracks General Olafson had given them to patrol. Raven and Iowa, a sister ship for Galatica named after the famous Naval battleship, would back up a quartet of AWACS planes that were forming a 360-degree radar picket around San Francisco. Besides their sensors — Raven’s Elint gear, which could detect C3’s radio transmissions at roughly two hundred miles, and Iowa’s admittedly unfinished T/APY radar — the planes would carry eight Scorpion AMRAAM-plus air-to-air missiles in their rotating belly launchers. They’d also have four standard AMRAAMs and four all-aspect Sidewinder AIM-9Ms on their wings.

The Megafortresses represented the last line of defense. A full squadron of F-15Cs, along with ANG F-16’s and F-4’s, Marine aircraft, and two Navy tracking planes manned the front lines. Meanwhile, a flight of F-15’s, accompanied by a tanker, were working south, as were planes from two aircraft carriers in the Caribbean. Surface-to-air-missile batteries throughout the Southwest and ships all along the Gulf Coast had been alerted.

In theory, it was an impenetrable gauntlet no conventional aircraft could penetrate. But Madrone wasn’t flying a conventional aircraft. He had a Megafortress, arguably the most capable bomber in the world. He also had two Flighthawks escorting him.

One Megafortress and two U/MFs against the entire U.S. military. Dog might take those odds. Surely a madman would.

Assuming it flew near top speed, the EB-52 would approach the mainland a little more than six hours from now. Nancy and Arjun, who would pilot Iowa, went over some fine points in strategy and timing their refuelings. Though he was essentially superfluous to the discussion, Dog followed it with as much interest as he could muster.

The alternative was to worry about his daughter.

“Let’s do it,” said Cheshire. She punched the kill codes on her terminal, deactivating the console, and stood.

Arjun rose as well.

“There’s one thing I want to make clear,” said Bastian, still in his seat. “If it comes down to it, if Galatica is there, you take your shot. Absolutely take your shot.”

Arjun nodded.

Bastian looked at Cheshire, whose cheeks seemed to have hollowed out. “Major?”

“Yes, Colonel, I will.”

The room’s silence felt oppressive. “M-6 will back you up,” he said. “Captain McAden is en route to fly it. We’re still hunting down a copilot.”

“Fenner should be here shortly,” said Cheshire.

Dog nodded. M-6 was so new it hadn’t completed its test flights. It hadn’t even been given a name. Configured as an Elint-gatherer like Raven, she had two Flighthawk control decks like Iowa and Galatica, though only part of the U/MF equipment had been installed.

Bastian followed the others out into the hall and waited for the elevator to arrive. When the doors finally sprang open, Mack Smith nearly knocked them over.

“Colonel, a word,” said Smith, marching preemptively down the corridor as if he were the one running the base.

“Why am I being shut out of this?” he demanded when Bastian joined him.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Madrone. The Flighthawks. Our Megafortresses are going to shoot him down. Why I wasn’t I informed?”

“Why the hell should you have been?”

“I’m the best fighter pilot on the base,” Smith sputtered. “I’m head of the defense squadron. Shit, I’m one of less than a dozen active guys who has a shoot-down in the entire Air Force.”

“Hold on, Mack,” said Bastian. “First of all, I believe the defense squadron you’re referring to was abolished before I even came to Dreamland. Years ago.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

Dog turned toward the elevator. “Go to bed.”

“This is because you think I sold out, huh?”

“Smith, there are times when you are just a pain in the butt, you know that?” Bastian pushed the button for the elevator to return. “And then there are other times when you are the biggest asshole in the world.”

“Colonel, seriously.”

“I am being serious.”

“You have to let me help. There’s nobody that knows what those Flighthawks will do like me. I’ve been flying against them for more than a year. Half of their damn programs are what I taught them. And Jeff,” he added belatedly. “Come on — I can wax Madrone’s fanny. Ask Jeff. I’ve done it already.”

“Jeff isn’t available to ask.” Dog pushed the elevator button again.

“Where is he?”

“We’re not sure.”

Smith had a point, though Bastian couldn’t help but remember the coincidences Danny had pointed out. Freah hadn’t had time to follow through with any of his investigations.

“He’s in on this, right?” said Mack.

“Jeff and Breanna are probably aboard Galatica, which Madrone seems to have taken control of. It will be shot down if it tries to attack.”

“You can’t shoot down Jeff and Bree.”

The elevator finally arrived. Bastian entered; Mack followed. Both looked toward the ceiling, which in theory made it easier for the scanning devices to verify their identities. Still, the process took excruciatingly long.

“You have to let me do something,” said Mack as the elevator finally began moving upward.

“What exactly do you want to do?” said Bastian.

“Help plan the defense at least. Be in the ball game. Come on. Use me. I know more about fighting the Flighthawks than anyone.”

“I’m not in charge of the defenses,” said Bastian. “They’re already set.”

“You think I’m a traitor, don’t you?”

The elevator arrived at Sublevel One. Dog got out.

“Major?” asked Bastian.

“Put me in the game.”

“It’s too late, Mack,” said Bastian as the doors closed.

Chapter 94

Powder covered Liu while he ran up to the edge of the hangar building. One or two Brazilians had retreated here, though most of the Brazilians had fallen back to the far end of the base, far away from Hawkmother and the dilapidated hangars. Three low-slung buildings were visible there, defended by at least two small armored cars and some machine guns. For the moment, they seemed to be saving their ammunition.

Which was fine with Powder. Give the Army something to do when they finally got around to showing up.

Liu reached the edge of the building, then gave Powder a hand signal to come forward. Powder humped the ten yards so fast he nearly lost his helmet.

“Two guys, that way,” said Liu.

“That it?”

“There was a light machine gun there, but Egg got him,” said Liu, referring to another member of the team, Freddy Reagan.

“You see Captain Freah?” Powder asked.

“No,” said Liu. “He hasn’t been on the circuit since the planes took off.”

“I heard him talking to Bison. They were setting up the Satcom.”

“Maybe he’s back by the C-17 wreckage, checking it out,” said Liu.

“Doesn’t look like they’re too organized,” said Powder.

“I hear something,” said Liu.

“Uh-oh — duck!” shouted Talcom as an armored car rolled around the corner of the hangar and began firing at them. The ENGESA EE-11 was a very simple, no-frills truck equipped with a very basic machine gun.

And an equally basic but tremendously destructive grenade launcher, which fired a charge point-blank at the two Whiplashers.

Fortunately, it sailed past them, exploding nearly a hundred yards away.

“Next one ain’t gonna miss,” said Powder, already running toward the truck. He pulled a phosphorus grenade from his belt as he ran, thumbing away the tape that safed the pin and fuse. He set the grenade, tossing it at the last possible second as he threw himself to the ground.

The grenade wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the EE-11’s armor, but Powder merely wanted to blind the gunners with the flash while he and his teammate attacked from behind. The machine-gun fire ceased as soon as the grenade went off. Powder, head down, jumped back to his feet and raced around to the rear of the truck.

Liu stood there already, staking it out. One of the vehicle’s doors opened. Powder tensed, then realized that the hand that emerged held a white handkerchief.

“We ought to flatten the bastards,” he said to Liu over the corn unit.

“Just make sure they’re surrendering,” said a deep and commanding voice. He glanced back and saw that Captain Freah had joined them.

Minerva lashed the woman pilot’s hands behind her with the string from her boot, wrapping the lace over Bree’s wrists and then around a bolt at the side. It might not hold for long if she strained against it, but the American’s struggles would at least warn her.

Where would they go? For now, they were running along the course Madrone had plotted. But that was suicide.

Mayo nodded nervously as she slipped into the seat beside him. He began reading off bearings and instrument numbers — a status report. Everything was in perfect order.

“Why ten thousand feet?” he asked abruptly.

“Not now, Lieutenant. Just hold the course.”

Mayo started to say something, but thought better of it. Minerva folded her arms, staring at the darkness before her.

Danny made sure Powder and Liu had the prisoners under control, then approached the hangar building cautiously. He flipped Annie’s CIV visor back into IR mode. There was one person in the hangar that he could see; he lay prone on the floor behind a desk or some boxes with a view of the doorway.

A flash-bang in his hand, Danny went to the entrance and crouched down. He couldn’t see the man now — the boxes were too thick. He reached up with his grenade hand and flicked the visor into enhanced starlight mode. The aiming triangle appeared; he lowered his aim toward the boxes, then stepped forward, slowly turning his attention around the hangar.

Empty.

Something moved behind him.

He threw himself down, then saw it was only Powder.

“Shit, sorry,” said his point man through the laser com.

“Down,” hissed Danny, pointing toward the boxes.

Powder nodded, then began working his way sideways to the left. Danny slid toward the opposite wall.

“Get away from the gun, motherfucker!” shouted Powder, who’d come up behind the Brazilian.

Danny rose slowly. The Brazilian didn’t move.

“He’s dead, Captain,” said Powder, moving in slowly.

“Hold on. Stop,” said Danny. He clicked the CIV visor control, examining the object in front of the dead Brazilian. It looked like the guts of a small rocket, or maybe a large artillery shell.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a bomb or something sitting in the middle of the floor. It’s got a timer. Go see if you can find some lights. No, wait a second.” Freah lowered himself to his knees. There was a radiation symbol on the interior of the metal casing, heading about a paragraph’s worth of closely printed letters. “You read Portuguese, Powder?”

“Negative, sir.”

“Go get Bison,” Danny said. “Tell him we have a bomb to disarm. Tell him it may be a tricky one, and to bring his full set.”

“Sniffer too?”

“Especially the sniffer. And Powder, get the Satcom. Go very fast.”

Chapter 95

Mack paced outside TM, trying to contain his fury.

He knew exactly what Madrone would do, how he would fly. He’d get around the F-15’s if they weren’t careful.

Hell, even if they were careful. Because they’d be too damn full of themselves.

Been there, done that himself.

To be put on ice. Bullshit. Bullshit!

He could have the MiG fueled on his own authority.

Not armed, though. That would take an order from Bastian. Technically. Odds were no one would question him if he said it was approved.

God, they couldn’t just leave him on the ground. At least let him talk to some of the pilots, give them advice. They friggin’ thought he was a traitor. Damn them all.

Chapter 96

“Captain, I’m assuming this is very important.”

“Annie, I need your help,” Danny said. The Army transports were just arriving outside, making it difficult to hear. “I’m looking at what I think is a nuclear warhead wired to a timer that’s supposed to go off in thirty-seven minutes.”

“Why do you think it’s a warhead?”

“Our sniffer says it’s full of uranium.”

“Read me the scale level.”

“Okay. Uh, hang on.” He fumbled with the small Geiger counter, clicking it through its modes. About the size of a lunchbox, the field unit could detect the depleted uranium used for A-10 cannon shells at about fifty yards. Whiplash carried similar units for toxic chemicals and known gas agents. “497.83,” said Danny, “on the, uh, hundredths, no, thousandths scale.”

“That’s fine,” said Annie. “How large is the device?”

“About the size of an artillery shell.”

“How far away are you?”

“About three feet, max.”

“Tsk. I believe your unit may be doubling the reading.”

“Is it a bomb?”

“Well, you’re the one looking at it. The reading is certainly high enough. Interesting — you’re in Brazil?”

“Interesting? What should I do?”

“Technically, Captain, I am not an expert on nuclear devices.”

“The NSC is supposed to be getting me one,” Danny told her. “But right now, you’re the best I got, Annie.”

“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence, Captain.” Annie sighed. “What does Sergeant Bison think?”

Bison came on the line and described the setup of the wiring to her. Danny squatted down on his knees about a foot from the timer, which he had uncovered by pulling the top off the trunk that was inside the boxes. The timer had several folds of wires running off it, including one that led to a large brick of C-4. Bison thought that was a booby trap, and Klondike agreed.

“So what the hell do we do?” Freah finally asked his sergeant.

“She’s thinking, Captain.” Bison nodded a few times, then began describing the thick group of wires that fed into the front of the device.

Danny nearly had a heart attack as his munitions expert pulled at the winds of black tape.

“Wants to talk to you, Captain,” Sergeant Bison said finally, giving the radio handset back to him.

“Creative,” said Annie. “I’m not an expert on tactical nuclear devices, but in my experience, the device sounds rather primitive. Most likely it is primed by a focused explosive device, which would propel an atomic pellet into a cup of material toward the base. Rather like the Hiroshima bomb, in a way, except that there the mechanism—”

“As powerful as that?”

“Oh, no. Only half. Probably even less — maybe a tenth, assuming I’m right about your sniffer reading. I don’t particularly like those devices; I saw two that malfunctioned in the Gulf, once when the consequences could have been very serious. Of course, the real key isn’t so much the size of the warhead as the design of the explosive lens that initiates the reaction. An American bomb that size could wipe out a city the size of New York, whereas a Pakistani bomb would barely destroy twelve or thirteen blocks. They’re quite hopeless as designers because they don’t have the hang of focusing the explosion. On the other hand—”

“Annie, there’s a timer on this thing.”

“Yes, I understand that. Well, either you or Sergeant Bison has to take it apart. That’s the first step. Undo the booby-trap component and then we’ll tackle the timer. This way maybe we can see which of the wires are obviously fake.”

“You don’t think the booby trap might set it off?”

“Always a possibility.”

Danny stood up.

“I can get the C-4 off no sweat, Captain,” said Bison.

The weapons expert stooped over the bomb. Bison worked quickly — a little too quickly, it seemed to Danny.

“All right, get some screwdrivers,” the sergeant said finally. Danny went over to the side of the hangar where there was a large tool case. He didn’t realize until he was walking back that Bison had only sent him on the errand to make himself less nervous.

“Wasn’t even connected,” said the demo expert, pointing to the plastic explosive. “Just there to fake us out. I think.”

“Maybe the whole thing is a fake.”

“That I wouldn’t count on.”

Powder gingerly held up the small clock dial and touched one of the buttons on the side with the blade of the screwdriver. “Still giving me the local time, 0636. Still set to go at 0650. I think anyway. Could be a second sequence, like a countdown from there.”

“Probably the detonation,” said Annie when Danny told her over the Satcom.

“Can we stop it?”

“Long shot.”

“Thanks.”

“Just trying to be optimistic. Would you like to know what happened on Jeopardy tonight, or should we get to work?”

Chapter 97

Zen drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, strange visions twisting in his head.

He walked in midair toward the large crimson sun. His legs felt solid and strong.

A warning flashed. Bogeys. F/A-18’s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he remembered the AMRAAMs.

“Aircraft targeted. Radar matched from library. ECMs prepared.”

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

But it wanted her to authorize it. How?

“Activate ECMs,” she said into her headset.

Nothing happened.

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

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

“Computer, activate ECMs,” Minerva said.

“Acknowledged,” responded a programmed voice.

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

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

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

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

Breanna hunkered down as best she could as the two struggled. The plane rolled on its wing, pitching itself wildly toward the earth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re insane. I’ll never help you.”

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

“You’re crazy.”

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

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

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

“Okay,” said Breanna.

Chapter 98

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

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

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

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

Do what? Kill his own daughter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sir?”

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

Chapter 99

Minerva had figured out how to program the course in on the flight computer, and was watching Breanna carefully. Rap flew the plane precisely as her captor directed, skimming across the ragged landscape just at the edge of a thunderstorm at 8,500 feet. Sooner or later an opportunity would present itself, even if it meant pushing the plane into a mountain.

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

“Attack them,” said Minerva.

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

“Do it.”

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

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

“Do you want to get by them or not?”

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

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

Minerva grabbed her hand.

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

“They’re off my radar,” said Kevin.

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

“Three hundred miles?”

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

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

Jeff cursed as the F-15s passed out to sea, another chance lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Show me. Take off the control helmet.”

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

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

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

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

“You’re the only one playing tricks.”

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

“Shut the fuck up!”

Stoking Madrone’s anger was the only weapon Jeff had. Down here there’d be no one to stop him. Zen couldn’t walk, but he would pit his upper body strength against anyone’s. As soon as Madrone lunged, he’d grab his neck and strangle him. Whatever it took to subdue him, he’d do.

Whatever it took to help him, he’d try; he hadn’t been lying about that.

“You going to hit me?” he told Kevin. “Come on, Monkey Brain. Hit me, Twig.”

Madrone didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for, Monkey Boy?”

“I’m not going to hit you, Jeff.” Madrone’s voice sounded sad, and far away. “You tried that before and it worked. But it won’t work now. No.”

“Come on, Monkey Brain. Microchip Head. Mack Smith nailed it for once. Come on. You’re a wimp. Come on.” But Madrone no longer spoke to him.

Chapter 100

Bison’s hands shook as he angled the screwdriver blade beneath the small metal band. He nodded. Danny closed his eyes.

Something snapped. But there wasn’t an explosion. “Okay, we’re ready to work on the native timer and lock mechanism,” said Bison. “It’s hot.”

As Danny relayed the information to Annie, he saw that his sergeant’s hands were shaking violently.

“Undo the LED panel on the code-lock assembly right next to the explosive that launches the pellet,” said Annie. “You see it?”

Danny told Bison. The munitions expert nodded, then pushed a Phillips-head screwdriver down toward the light green panel.

The blade slipped and clattered on the floor.

Danny grabbed Bison’s arm as he reached for the screwdriver. “Kevin, let me try.”

“I’ve d-done this a million times.”

“I know. Let me take the responsibility, though. It’s not just us who’s blowing up.”

“We evacuated the Army guys, Captain,” said Bison, but then he slid back.

The panel wouldn’t come off.

Bison held the Satcom to his head. “Now what, Annie?” said Freah.

“Try it again,” she said.

“Shit.”

“It’s either that or reattach the timer and reset the detonation time.”

“Jesus.”

“You sound nervous, Captain. We will try sorting through the wires. Just don’t cut them all. As I told you before, complete power loss will trigger—”

There was a click and the line went dead.

“Annie? Annie?”

“I think that storm’s blocking the satellite,” said Bison, working the radio. “Time’s down to two minutes,” he added.

Danny stared at the back of the LED panel. The large integrated circuit had several small solder points at the back, but nothing that gave any clue about how it worked.

“Let’s short the thing out,” offered Powder from behind him. “Dump it in water. I got a bucket right here.”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Powder?” said Freak “You were supposed to bug out.”

“None of us are going to leave you, Captain,” said Liu. “Don’t tell me you’re all here. Are you?”

“No, sir. We’re not here,” said Reagan.

Danny turned his attention back to the Satcom. “Annie? Annie?”

Nothing.

He leaned over the bomb. He could cut the wire that connected the LED lock mechanism. Annie had said that doing that would probably kill power to the spytron, the highly sensitive and accurate trigger that activated an accelerating explosive lens around the “catcher’s mitt” of uranium once the radioactive seed was launched toward it. But the explosive that sent the radioactive seed into the rest of the material would still ignite, as would the lens itself — a nanosecond or two too late to start a chain reaction maybe, but definitely in time to kill them.

“Everybody out of the hangar,” Freah shouted, taking the thick combat knife in his hand and reaching it across the thick wires. “That’s a fuckin’ order. Get out of here.”

“Captain!” shouted Powder.

“Go!”

“Nuke’ll get us anyway, Captain,” Bison said. “Rather be able to tell St. Peter I didn’t run away.”

“Just the explosive is going off,” said Danny. “Go!”

“Klondike said that might not work.”

“Go!”

“Thirty seconds,” said Bison, studying at his own watch.

“Here, Captain,” shouted Powder, running across the floor with a ceramic cup and a plastic gallon jug of water. He slipped on the smooth concrete, managing a leg-first slide near the bomb. He held the cup and jug out in front of him. “Douse it. We got nothing to lose.”

“Twenty seconds. He might be right,” said Bison.

Powder spilled water from the jug into the cup, his hands wobbly as he tried to slip it in place under Freah’s hand.

Would that work?

If it didn’t, he’d cut the wires.

Danny hesitated.

Do both at the same time.

“Fifteen.”

One way or the other, everyone in the hangar would die.

Bison reached over, trying to steady Powder’s hands. But he was shaking just as bad.

“Go!” Danny yelled.

“No time!” shouted Liu.

Danny closed his eyes and pulled back on the knife, sliding the blade through the collection of wires. He waited for the long millisecond before death, heard the fizzle of the explosion as it began.

But it wasn’t the explosion at all.

“Jeez, Louise, that was close,” said Powder. He pulled the LED into the water.

The fizzle had come from the clock circuit shorting.

“Captain, did you cut the wires?” asked Liu.

“They’re cut,” said Freah, looking at them.

“Shit,” said Powder.

“Got Ms. Klondike!” yelled Liu.

Danny sat back on the floor. The fluorescent lights in the hangar seemed very yellow. Liu came over on his knees and held the handset to Danny’s ears.

“Where have you been?” Annie asked.

“I cut the wires,” he said. “Powder dumped the timer in water and shorted it. I think that saved us.”

“No,” said the weapons expert. “The mechanism is impervious to moisture. Water wouldn’t have done anything.”

“It fizzled.”

“You cut the wires. It is odd, though — at least one end of the device should have exploded when all current was lost, unless the designer was completely inept. Are you sure you cut all the wires?”

Danny looked over at the harness. Fourteen of the sixteen wires had been cut clean; two remained.

“Shit,” said Danny. Then he told her what he saw.

“Out of curiosity, Captain, what’s your birthday?”

“Why?”

“I was thinking one of us ought to run down to Las Vegas and play those numbers on the roulette wheels.”

Chapter 101

Both McAden and Fenner insisted on staying with M-6 even after Bastian ordered them to stay on the ground; he finally decided it didn’t make much sense to argue with them. No one would blame them for flying, and besides, Magnus’s order applied to him, not them.

McAden wasn’t all that happy about taking the copilot’s seat, but there Dog had an easier argument — Dog had very little experience using the EB-52’s weapons systems, which were more easily handled from the copilot’s station.

As they got ready to fly, a black SUV hurtled up the ramp toward them, blue light flashing.

Dog watched the Jimmy screech to a halt. Undoubtedly Magnus had gotten to the security people somehow; he was about to be placed under arrest.

He edged his hand toward the throttle bar. As soon as the men were out of the car, he’d hit the gas and lurch away. By the time they got back in the vehicle he’d be on the runway.

But instead of heavily armed security men, a thin figure jumped out of the Jimmy. Dog stared at the shadow, which seemed to have small wings.

Or just very long hair.

Jennifer Gleason. She waved frantically and ran toward the plane. Another person jumped from the SUV — Dr. Geraldo.

“What should I do, Colonel?” asked McAden.

“Let’s find out what they want,” said Bastian.

McAden dropped the ramp. Gleason appeared on the flight deck a few seconds later.

“Colonel, let me aboard,” she said.

“We’re just flying backup,” he told her.

“I can override C3,” she said. “I can send feedback through the command link. It’ll break the connection with ANTARES and disable the Flighthawks.”

“That’ll work?”

“It’s either that or you’ll shoot them down, isn’t it?”

“Colonel!” yelled Geraldo from below.

“And what exactly is your plan?” he asked the psychologist as she came up.

“I want to try talking to him,” said Geraldo.

“It’s not going to work.”

“Better than shooting him down.”

“We almost certainly will have to,” said Dog.

Neither Gleason nor Geraldo said anything else.

“This won’t be a joy ride,” he said finally.

“I fly in Megafortresses every day,” said Jennifer.

“Shut the hatch,” Bastian told McAden. “Jen, show Dr. Geraldo how to strap herself in downstairs.”

Chapter 102

The fingers of the AWACS groped the air, reaching for him, desperately trying to grab him. Two F-16’s cruised not five miles to his left, at less than five thousand feet, determined to ferret him out.

The bastards would all miss. He was within sixty minutes of San Francisco, sixty minutes of having revenge.

And then?

Then they could kill him. He wouldn’t even bother to run.

“Losing connection,” warned C3.

“Closer,” he screeched on the interphone.

“But—” Breanna began.

“Closer!”

The Megafortress lurched upward and to the left. C3’s warning flashed off.

“AWACS tracking,” warned the computer.

“Impossible,” Madrone muttered. The threat screen on the Flighthawk showed he was clear.

Breanna had tricked him — the F-16’s had seen the Mega-fortress.

“F-16’s being vectored for mother ship,” said the computer. “Attempting to activate ident.”

Madrone started to slip out of Theta. His view of the U/MF screen went blank.

Kevin took a deep breath, felt himself relaxing. The feeds returned. But he couldn’t feel Galatica across the gateway. He was too drained, and his brain worked in slow motion — he had too much to hold in his mind.

“We’re being targeted by a pair of interceptors,” he told Minerva.

“What?”

“This!” He flashed the computer’s threat screen into the cockpit HUDs.

He’d have to take over Galatica as well as the Flighthawks. He’d have to find the strength somehow.

Zen saw the F-16s on the Flighthawk screen as they turned to target the Megafortress just under forty miles away. But the slippery black plane danced at the edge of their radar coverage; they would have to ride much closer to lock on. Most likely their rules of engagement demanded visual identification before firing anyway.

Or maybe not. The launcher indicators on the Flighthawk went red. Sparrow radar missiles were in the air.

Breanna pushed down on the stick, aiming to use the confusion to her advantage. But the plane moved in the opposite direction — Kevin had somehow taken control.

The rest was automatic. Tinsel shot from Gal’s backside as its ECM computer zeroed in on the AIM-7Ms and knocked them senseless with a blast of Gangsta Rap fuzz. At the same time, Galatica accelerated toward the F-16’s to keep its connection with the Flighthawks. The Air National Guard F-16 Vipers launched another salvo of missiles at approximately twenty miles; these two were easily confused.

Thirty seconds later, Hawk One began a front-quarter attack on the lead Viper. The fireball trailed across the left windscreen; as it flared out, a second appeared on the left.

“Why are you doing this, Kevin?” Breanna said.

“I’m destroying Livermore,” he said. “They poisoned my daughter there with their radiation. They claimed they were treating her, but it was a lie.”

“You’ll destroy all San Francisco.”

“So be it.”

He wanted San Francisco to be destroyed. He saw it, saw Karen there, shriveling in the flash as the nuke went off. That would serve her right for giving up on him.

Maybe she’d been in on it.

He saw his wife crying at the graveyard, sobbing as she knelt on the fresh-packed dirt. Then he saw Christina, helpless on the gurney, head shaved, the tape for the lead shields still dangling on her skin.

She screamed like he’d never heard her. The two nurses came to wheel her away. He jumped for her, but some bastard grabbed him and held him back.

Kevin fell from the sky, tumbling backward into the jungle. He landed flat on his spine, staring up at the sun overhead. The red orb pulsated, then began to descend. He tried to get up, but couldn’t.

It took Jeff a moment to realize that not only had the Flighthawks defaulted to Trail One, their favored preset mode, but that ANTARES was no longer hooked into C3. When he finally saw it, he grabbed for the controller with his right hand and threw his left on the two rockers that connected his microphone with the computer.

“Command authorization Zed Zed Zed,” he said, telling the computer to recognize him. “Zero Stockard Zero.”

“Zed Zed Zed.”

“Erase ANTARES plug-ins.”

“Command unrecognized.”

“Computer: Delete the connection with ANTARES!”

“Command unrecognized.”

“Manual control, Hawk One,” he said, pulling back on the controller. The cockpit cam showed the rear of the Megafortress in the moonlight, flying above an array of jagged peaks.

Down, he thought, pushing the stick forward so hard it nearly snapped out of its socket.

He needed to be in theta now.

Christina’s face floated in the dim blue void before him. Her mouth moved.

Daddy, she said. Daddy.

I’m here.

It’s the computer. It took me away.

ANTARES?

Yes.

But how?

It sucked me out from inside you.

Christina?

It stole me. The computer stole me. It took me from your memory and destroyed you. That was their plan all along — to kill me by killing you.

Her eyes and mouth faded, leaving only the outline of her face. Lightning flashed behind him and he fell back in the tower. The last bits of his daughter disintegrated in front of him.

She was right. It wasn’t Livermore he had to destroy. It was ANTARES.

Breanna pulled back on the stick as the plane began plummeting toward the mountain peaks. She had the yoke pressed against its stop, but the plane didn’t respond, its dive continuing.

Then, with a violent shudder, its nose began to jerk upward, and in the space of a few seconds it became a streaking roller coaster, whipping upward as the aerodynamic forces overpowered it.

Minerva was screaming next to her.

“Don’t let the plane go through ten thousand feet. No!”

Breanna grabbed the stick back, not sure if Kevin had let go or not. They whipped up to 8,500 feet, going through 8,600 and accelerating.

“Help me,” yelled Minerva. “We can’t go above ten thousand feet.”

“I have to override the flight computer,” lied Breanna, who now had control.

“Do it!”

“Computer: override course settings, override command settings. Lock out autopilot section. Authorization Rap One-One-Two.”

“Confirmed.”

“Navigation screen.” Breanna tapped the panel up and quickly hit the beacon code. In the meantime, she leveled off at 9,200 feet.

“What’s so special about ten thousand feet?” she asked after checking the plane’s systems.

Minerva didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to.

“We’re booby-trapped, aren’t we? Did you hear that, Kevin? Your lover wanted to blow you up.”

“I heard,” said Madrone.

And once more, even though locking out the autopilot should have isolated command at her console, Breanna felt the plane veer out of her control.

He didn’t care about Minerva anymore. He’d been confused by ANTARES, the drugs, the computer, everything. Confused and tricked and used.

No more. Madrone eased back in the seat, in full control of the planes. Now that he knew what he had to do — now that his daughter had made it clear to him — he felt very calm and very strong.

He gave C3 and the Megafortress the new course, then pushed up his visor, looking across at Zen. His friend flailed at the control panel, trying to take command of the robot planes. He didn’t seem to understand that Madrone and ANTARES could override any of his commands.

Or maybe he did. Maybe he struggled to keep from feeling helpless.

“That’s enough, Jeff,” Kevin said finally. He pulled his pistol out.

“Shoot me,” said Zen.

“I don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” said Zen sarcastically.

“You’re right about ANTARES. I think you’re definitely right,” he said. “I’m going to fix it, once and for all.”

Chapter 103

Dog was a hundred miles south of Dreamland when one of the AWACS in the net announced that it had found Galatica.

It had had a little help — the Megafortress had turned its locator beam on.

A quartet of F-15Cs scrambled to intercept. The controllers began jockeying other elements around, lining up the defenses.

Two of the Eagles had to turn back because of fuel. A pair of Navy jets moved up to take their place. Dog pushed M-6 to accelerate, but they were at least a hundred miles from the action.

“Swinging back — shit — Rock Two has contact!” blurted out one of the F-15 pilots. “Shit! Shit! Tally at five hundred feet, two o’clock. Jesus.”

“Rock Two, clear to engage,” answered the controller calmly, authorizing the pilot to shoot down the Megafortress.

“Rock Three to support,” said the wingman, following his commander.

Dog closed his eyes.

“Break right! Break right!” shouted Rock Three. “Band — flare! God, oh, God!”

There was static.

Dog guessed that the F-15’s had just been jumped by one or both of the Flighthawks. The AWACS vectored the Navy interceptors toward the Megafortress, then announced it had lost the locator beam.

“Plot an intercept for San Francisco,” Dog told McAden softly. “Make sure it’s good.”

“Colonel, no. Stay on this course,” said Jennifer. “I have the C3 signal. They’re eighty miles dead ahead. They’re not going to San Francisco.”

Madrone had to refuel the Flighthawks. While the computer told him he could make it to Dreamland from here, another encounter would push the U/MFs into their reserves, depriving him of his margin of error.

Dreamland was barely two hundred miles from here. If he squinted just right, he’d probably see Las Vegas glowing at the edge of the desert.

He reduced throttle on the Megafortress, swinging Hawk Three up toward the tail even as the automated boomer lowered the straw.

It was sneaky of Breanna to turn the beacon on; he hadn’t understood what it was until the AWACS latched on. He couldn’t blame her, though. Under other circumstances, he might have done the same thing.

It didn’t matter now, not in the least. Dreamland’s point-defense MIM-23 I-Hawk SAMs wouldn’t pick up the stealthy Megafortress until it was approximately ten miles from the base. Even with the long missile beneath it, Hawk Three ought to be able to get to within five miles before the batteries detected it. By the time they locked and launched, he would already have pickled, ending ANTARES forever.

He nuzzled the U/MF into the boom and began working through the refuel.

“They’re still coming,” Jennifer told Bastian over the interphone. “Distance, approximately sixty miles.”

“You ready, Devin?” the colonel asked McAden.

“I’ll turn the radar on as soon as you give the signal,” answered the copilot. “Won’t take me ten seconds to target the Scorpion after that.”

The Scorpion AMRAAM-plus air-to-air missile had a one-hundred-pound warhead and a radar that could track multiple targets, rejecting all but the tastiest. Like the stock model that had been in use for roughly five years, Dreamland’s improved version moved at over four times the speed of sound and had a range of forty nautical miles — though in actual practice against a target as slippery as the Megafortress, the missile was best launched between ten and twenty miles away, or just beyond visual range. Assuming Gal stayed on course, and assuming McAden could get a lock, that would be three minutes from now.

Targeting the Flighthawks, which were considerably smaller than the Megafortress, was far more problematic. They’d be fairly close to M-6 by the time Gal was targeted. Jennifer would try to interfere with the C3 link to keep them at bay.

It was possible, though just barely, that she might be able to succeed and they wouldn’t have to splash Gal. Dog didn’t dare hope that was the way it would play.

Flying without radar and maintaining radio silence allowed Dog to sneak closer to Gal without being detected; it was, he figured, the only way he was going to get close enough to nail them. But it was a calculated risk — the main defenses were still to the west, concentrating on protecting San Francisco. If they missed, the sky was wide open.

“Still on course,” said Jennifer. “Two minutes.”

Jeff flopped his head back against the seat, exasperated. Any good fighter pilot keeps a checklist in his head to cover any contingency — engine out, do this, do that, do this. Gear jammed, do that, do this, do that.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t have a checklist.

No, it was the second time. The first time was after the accident that had left him paralyzed.

There had been a solution to that. Not exactly the solution he wanted, but a solution. He’d gotten out of the aircraft and lived.

And now?

If he’d had his legs, what would he do?

Leap out of the seat, throttle Madrone, disconnect ANTARES.

He turned his head toward Kevin. Madrone sat ramrod straight, his hands moving as he flew the planes. He was conducting an orchestra, not working controls.

The sitrep played on the main U/MF monitor, overlaid over a GPS map. They were about eleven minutes from Las Vegas, with Dreamland a breath beyond that.

If he had his feet, he’d undo the restraints, leap out of the seat. He’d grab Kevin with his hand and pull.

He did have his feet. ANTARES wasn’t lying. Yes, it screwed up his head — yes, it made him paranoid. But there had to be something there. There had to be. ANTARES was a computer — it didn’t invent things, it worked with what was there.

So he could use his legs. All he had to do was trust them — trust ANTARES this one last time.

Otherwise they were all dead.

Carefully, stealthily, Jeff undid his restraints.

“Sixty seconds by my watch,” Bastian told Jennifer and the others. McAden jerked in his seat, rubbing his hands together.

Bastian had just missed combat over Vietnam, but he had flown missions in the Gulf and Bosnia; he had two probable kills and had ducked three different enemy missiles, including an SA-2 “telephone pole” that came within a meter of taking off his tail. By all rights, he was a grizzled veteran, and shouldn’t feel nervous.

He didn’t. Which bothered the hell out him.

“They’re tracking us!” yelled McAden.

M-6’s RWR drowned out anything else he said.

“ECMs,” ordered Dog calmly. “Jenny, go for it. Can you get them?”

“Attempting.”

“Go to active radar. Target the Flighthawks too,” Dog said.

“Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” said McAden, his voice getting progressively higher.

“Just get Galatica,” Bastian ordered. “Open bay door.”

“Opening! They have their ECMs. We’re still being tracked! 1 can’t lock them up. Attempting.”

“Flighthawk approaching,” said Jennifer. “Hold this course.”

“We’re spiked!” said McAden. One of the radars hunting for them had managed to slip around the electronic noise and locked onto them.

Ordinarily, Dog would goose some chaff and zig through the air, complicating the radar’s job before it fired. But that would complicate Gleason’s job.

So would getting shot down.

“Break it,” said Dog.

“Trying.”

“Frontal attack! It’s a U/MF!” shouted McAden, but Dog had already seen the Flighthawk on his HUD. It grew from nothing to the size of a baseball, then flashed red, firing its cannon. Dog could see the tracer arching in the air toward his windscreen as he plunged M-6 toward the earth.

“Tracking! I have him,” said McAden.

“No! No!” said Jennifer. “Feedback initiated.”

“Fire the missile,” said Bastian steadily.

The Scorpion dropped off the rotating launcher in the rear bay. Dog clicked into the command frequency, giving their position and the fact that they were engaging Galatica and had already launched a radar homer.

In the twenty or so seconds it took for him to do all that, the Flighthawk had flown over the Megafortress, curled back, and dived for their tail. The Scorpion’s rocket motor ignited; the missile zipped ahead, then flipped back. But it was no match for the agile little plane with its vectored thrust and finely tuned airfoil. The Flghthawk flicked right and closed on M-6 as the AMRAAM-plus passed by.

“Air mines,” Bastian told McAden. The copilot was half a step ahead of him, and had the Stinger tail defenses already on his screen. The air mines were a twenty-first-century version of the tail gunners who had cleared the skies behind Flying Fortresses fifty years before — they literally peppered the air with exploding mines.

There was only one problem — their range was three miles, the same as the U/MF’s cannon.

“I have the Flighthawk circuit,” Jennifer said, her voice level. “I’m applying feedback. Leave it alone. Hold our course.”

“Acquiring target!” said the copilot.

“Fucking trust me on this, Dog. If I have one I can get the other. Fuck!”

Somehow, the word “Dog” didn’t sound right coming from her mouth.

As for “fuck”…

“Colonel?” asked McAden.

“Stand by. Have you found the other Flighthawk?” he asked him.

“Negative. Gal is now locked, but the ECMs may make the missile miss from this distance. We can close.”

Before Bastian said anything else, the U/MF behind them opened fire.

Chapter 104

Something fought him, something he’d never felt before. Images flashed before Kevin’s eyes, strange sensations — the tower, the jungle, the jaguar, the dark woman, all being strangled.

A snake wrapped itself around his neck, squeezing.

Madrone began to fall from Theta. He conjured his metaphor, then heard Geraldo call to him.

A woman in a flowing dress with long, strawberry hair stood before him.

Jennifer Gleason.

She morphed into a massive cobra, its large mouth looming.

Then her fangs grabbed him from the side.

Jeff launched himself by slamming his arms against the rests, screaming as he flung his body sideways out of the seat.

His legs would work. They had to.

He hung suspended in the air, balanced perfectly between thought and action, between will and reality. He thought he could do it and he would; he willed his legs whole and they were.

But Zen’s legs were irretrievably paralyzed, and whatever he had felt while under ANTARES, whatever he wanted to feel now, he couldn’t make them cooperate. The distance between the two stations was too great to jump across, even for his well-developed arms and shoulders.

Jeff Stockard crumbled in the aisle, the long scream twisting into an agonized plea to his legs, to God, to any power that could make him whole. In that instant he would have made any bargain, paid any price, for the thinnest, poorest connection between his mind and his legs.

But no bargain could be made. He crashed down against the floor, his hands flailing until they hit one of the connecting cables to Kevin’s ANTARES gear.

He hadn’t the strength or momentum to break the cable, but as he fell his weight and agony yanked it backward, pulling the ANTARES feed from its socket.

“Got it! got it! Got it! “ screamed Gleason. “Native mode. Okay, okay, okay. Fuck, I have them. Fuck fuck fuck. Hawk One is in native mode. It’ll circle Dreamland. Locking in. My password. She’s secure. Shit! Shit! We got it!”

“Is it carrying a missile?” Dog asked quietly.

“Hold on. No. Shit, no. Fuck. Looking for the other. Damn — what do you mean, not on the circuit?”

“Jen?”

“The other Flighthawk! Where is it?”

“Something in Galatica’s shadow,” said McAden.

“It’s in preset,” said Gleason. “It’s native because the connection broke. I can’t get feedback until C3 is back on the line because of the codes. What the hell is he doing?”

“Colonel?”

Bastian glanced at McAden.

“Shoot her down,” said Bastian.

“Let me try contacting them!” said Geraldo.

“Shoot her down,” repeated Bastian.

Breanna felt something clunk and pull behind her, as if the leading-edge flaps on the wings had suddenly extended.

They had.

She grabbed hold of the stick, barely managing to take control of the plane as it did what could only be called a belly flop in the sky. Two of the engines surged, the starboard flap deployed — Gal seemed to be having a nervous breakdown.

Breanna pulled back on the stick. The altimeter ladder shot up wildly. Minerva lost hold of her knife — it clattered to the deck, tossed there by the sudden rush of g forces.

She’d blow the plane. It was the only thing to do.

9,200 — 9,500 — 9,800 —

They’d die in a second. But at least Dreamland would be safe.

“No!” screamed Lanzas, lurching toward her.

Breanna shrugged her off and closed her eyes as the altimeter nudged ten thousand feet.

Chapter 105

For the past hour, Mack had sat in the MiG on the runway, listening as the searchers continued to hunt for Galatica. He had cursed when the F-15’s closed in, realizing that he wanted to be the one who nailed the plane.

And then, miracle of miracles, it had escaped.

Only to be found by Bastian, who was targeting it.

Figured. Damn bastard hogged all the glory.

Still, from the position Dog gave, Gal seemed to be relatively close and headed this way. Resolved to get into the fight, he requested clearance from Dream Tower.

Without bothering to wait for an answer, he depressed the throttle button and moved the bar to idle. Using an old Russian Istrebeitelnyi Aviatsionnaya Polk rapid-takeoff trick, he selected just the right engine on the start panel. Knife kicked on the battery and hit the start switch, sending a whoosh of compressed air into the starboard engine. The MiG rumbled to life; he waited barely a second as it spooled up. In that second he pulled his canopy down; by the time it snugged he had started forward, rushing into the air on just one engine. Only after he had cleaned the gear did he bleed air into the left power plant, jump-starting it. The MiG shot upward.

“Alert the Nellis patrols,” he told Dream Tower. “I don’t want those cowboys taking potshots at me because I look like a bad guy.”

“Uh, Sharkishki, you’re clear to take off,” answered the tower belatedly.

The storm was so thick and deep that it took Madrone forever to realize that the connection to the planes had been lost.

The ANTARES helmet had been pulled half off his head. He had become another person, his physical self another robot to be controlled.

The Megafortress lurched upward. Madrone shook his head clear and lifted the visor. Zen floundered on the deck beside him, the control lead snagged around his arm. He was trying to pull it with him as he elbowed backward from the control panels like a swimmer.

More like an upside-down turtle.

Madrone quickly undid his restraints and leaned down to punch Jeff flat in the face twice as the son of a bitch struggled to roll away. But Stockard didn’t give up, somehow continuing to push himself backward, dragging the cord with him. Anger propelled Madrone to his feet. He stopped Jeff with a sharp kick to his stomach, then stomped twice on his chest, slamming his heel into Jeff’s jaw before Stockard finally stopped, his eyes rolling back in his head as he momentarily lost consciousness. Kevin braced himself for a truly awful kick — he would beat the pulp from the bastard’s brain until the floor oozed with it. But as he started to swing forward, something held him back, a voice whispering to him from far away.

Jeffrey is your friend. He tried to warn you but you didn’t listen.

“Give me the cord, Jeff.”

Stockard, his head limp to the side, said nothing. Madrone reached down and put his fingers on Jeff’s arm almost gently as he pried the cord away.

“I’m sorry, Jeff. It has to be this way now.” He gathered the ANTARES wire into his hands, restored the plug, and wound the wire around the panel so it couldn’t be easily removed again.

The first Scorpion missed, sailing about a hundred yards wide of Galatica. For a second, though, it looked like the pilots had lost control of the EB-52, and Dog thought Gal would spin into the mountains.

Somehow, she didn’t. Somehow, she began climbing again, and shook off the second and third Scorpions they had launched.

The fourth Scorpion lost its track and self-destructed.

They had two more left. The closer they got, the better their odds of nailing the plane. But McAden couldn’t get a lock to fire.

“Hang in there,” said Dog. “Jennifer, how’s that second U/MF?”

“It’s still in native mode,” she said.

“They’re zigging. Tinsel. Damn, jamming our radar again,” said McAden. “Shit — we’re blind. I just lost them. I’m guessing they’ll dive down for the ground clutter, but I don’t have a heading. Jesus, I can’t find them. Scanning. Scanning.”

“Jennifer, can you find Galatica for us? They’ve jammed our radar.”

“ECMs are off,” reported McAden.

“Working on it,” said Jennifer.

“No contacts. Shit,” said McAden.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” said Gleason from downstairs. “Without a transmission from them we have nothing to pick up.

“Be ready,” Dog said. “They’re here somewhere.”

Was Bree flying? She was this good certainly.

Bastian held his course for Gal’s last position. He pulled up the corn screen on his right MUD and hit the Dreamland reserve frequencies, punching in a combination to broadcast on all of the channels simultaneously.

“Rap, this is Colonel Bastian. You have to surrender, kid.”

“Daddy?”

Hey, babe, he thought. Sorry. I am so sorry.

“Captain Stockard. Stand down,” he said flatly.

“Shoot us down! There’s a nuke on the Flighthawk! Shoot us down!” said Breanna. She started to say something else, but the transmission was abruptly killed.

“Yes! I have them!” said Jennifer. She fed the coordinates up to the bridge.

“I have a lock! Five miles!” announced McAden. “Colonel?”

Shoot us down.

“Colonel?”

“Fire missiles,” said Dog. For maybe the first time in his life, for certainly the first time since joining the Air Force, a tear slid down his cheek.

As Madrone reentered Theta, he saw the launch warning. He felt the computer tracking the missiles as they approached, winced as one slipped out of the noise and headed clean for their hull.

Another ducked downward, confused, not a threat.

Tinsel, jammers, cut left, cut right, you’re too high, easy pickings.

Accelerate, accelerate. Left, right, left, left again, fool the sticky bastard.

Dreamland lay just ahead. No one ever will go through this again. Never.

The Scorpion stuttered in the air, a half mile from the fuselage. It had him nailed, but staying on its target had exhausted its fuel. Kevin lurched to the right as it tried one last burst of speed and then exploded.

The shock wave nearly threw Hawk Three into a spin.

It was then that the other missile picked itself off the deck and nailed Gal’s extreme starboard engine.

Minerva felt the shock as the American missile tore into the power plant on the right side of the wing. She spun around, nearly pirouetting out of the seat even though her restraints were snugged.

The plane stuttered in the air, but kept climbing. They passed through ten thousand feet, the Megafortress fighting off a yaw.

Gravity punched against her chest as the plane finally lurched into an invert and then began to fall from the sky. They would die now. She’d had the seats sabotaged and there was no escape.

She hadn’t wanted to escape, not really. There had been hours to persuade Madrone, or even betray him, to simply call the Americans and surrender. But she hadn’t.

Minerva felt a twinge of regret, a small wish that her fate had followed a different path. Then her body slammed back against the seat so abruptly that she nearly lost consciousness.

This is what death feels like, she thought to herself.

Then the Megafortress rolled level, and blood began returning to her brain.

“They’re beyond us!” yelled McAden. “East, at two, no, call it one o’clock. Three miles.”

“Radio the position to Nellis air defense and the rest of the net,” said Dog, calmly throwing the Megafortress into the tightest bank he could manage to pursue Galatica. “Sidewinders up. Dr. Geraldo, if you want to take your shot, do it now.”

Madrone saw the Megafortress’s emergency panel in part of his brain. The Scorpion had taken the power plant completely off, but had done only light damage to the wing itself. One of the fuel tanks had been hit by shrapnel, but the bladder material had quickly self-sealed. As potent as the Scorpion was, the EB-52’s venerable airframe had survived considerably worse.

Madrone didn’t care much for history. He dropped into Hawk Three and plunged out of Galatica’s shadow. Dreamland lay thirty miles away.

Two F-15’s approached on a direct intercept, along with four F-5’s.

The Eagles were merely a nuisance. The F-5’s weren’t even that.

He accelerated toward his target.

“Kevin,” said a familiar voice in his earphones. “You have to give up. You’re sick. It’s ANTARES.”

Geraldo.

He killed the radio.

Mack tried to tell the Nellis cowboys in their F-15’s that they were getting the sucker play, but the idiots wouldn’t listen. They charged at the Megafortress and the Flighthawk that suddenly leaped from its shadow like they were running down a piece-of-shit Chinese F-7/MiG-21 impostor.

A piece-of-shit F-7 wouldn’t have jumped from 250 knots to Mach 1.2 in less time than it took for the lead Eagle pilot to curse.

Stinking Madrone. He flew straight out of Zen’s book, no damn creativity at all. Though burdened by something that was increasing its radar signal for the F-15’s, the U/MF blew past the Eagles, made a feint for the F-5’s, which threw them in a tizzy, then ducked into the ground fuzz where no one could see him.

Mack waited for the U/MF to rise up behind the F-15’s. When it didn’t, he took a guess why — the larger return was being generated by a missile or bomb.

He had his passive sensors goosed to the max, but couldn’t find the little bastard. He tucked Sharkishki lower, nudging back in the direction of Dreamland.

Guy comes this far, in this direction, has to be thinking of nailing Dreamland.

That or Vegas. Maybe they’d cleaned Monkey Boy out at the blackjack tables and he wanted revenge.

Mack might take a piece of that himself. He zipped over Interstate 15 at five hundred miles an hour. Trucks and cars veered every which way, the drivers obviously freaking.

Wimps. He had plenty of clearance, at least a good eighteen inches. Maybe even twenty.

Breanna pushed at the stick, the plane swimming sideways in the air.

Why weren’t they dead? Had Minerva been bluffing? What could be so magical about ten thousand feet if there wasn’t a bomb in the plane.

Maybe hitting that altitude simply armed it.

Shit.

There was no time to curse herself. She’d lost an engine, maybe part of a control surface. She didn’t trust the flight computer and had no copilot. Breanna would have to do everything herself.

Assuming she didn’t blow up. And assuming Minerva didn’t take out her knife and slit her throat.

Jeff lay on his back, his head floating somewhere in a black ball of fur that filled the Megafortress’s lower deck. He heard Madrone grunting above him, working the Flight-hawk toward its target. He tried to push up, but pain shot through him. His chest and upper spine felt as if they had caught fire. He flopped back, overcome by the fear that not just his legs but every inch of him was paralyzed.

No, he told himself, I’m not giving up. Fight! Fight!

But no part of him moved.

The targeting screen took over Madrone’s mind. Numbers drained off the right side, slipping into the hole where the rest of his life had already washed away.

He had to hit the second air shaft on the target, and he had to hit it just right. But that was the beauty of the Brazilian missile. It could be steered very precisely.

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

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

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

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

Zen’s right boot lay against the cord that connected to the helmet. If he could kick it, he could knock it loose, knock if off Kevin’s head.

His leg stayed motionless.

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

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

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

Mack punched his throttle and jerked the stick back, riding the massive thrust of the MiG’s tweaked turbofans upward as he saw the Flighthawk cross above him.

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

Go, baby, go.

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

They were going to miss.

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

That damn Madrone. Zen had taught him well.

Sidewinders up.

Too far.

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

Madrone’s mind flew into a thousand pieces.

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

Minerva. The dark woman of death.

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

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

“Flighthawk is down! Flighthawk is down!” said McAden. “Who got him? Shit! MiG bearing — it’s got to be Smith!”

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

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

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

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

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

He might still have to.

The city’s neons seemed to flicker.

Crazy imagination.

No, a reflection from Galatica, passing ahead.

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

“See if they’ll answer a hail.”

Chapter 106

Lanzas seemed dazed next to her. Breanna decided it was time to get her weapon. She slipped the restraints, then jerked the stick forward, sending the plane nose down.

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

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

“Kevin’s bomb?”

“That’s on the Flighthawk.”

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

Lanzas said nothing more.

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

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

“Kevin?” she said tentatively.

Madrone didn’t answer.

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

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

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

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

Still staring at Lanzas, Bree put the headset on.

“Bree.”

“Jeff? Are you okay?”

“We landing?”

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

“You sure?”

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

“We did that already.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I want you to eject.”

“What about you?”

“Just do it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 107

“Galatica, this is Dreamland M-6. Do you read me? Galatica, can you hear me? Please acknowledge.”

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

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

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

“Bree,” said Dog.

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

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

“On the Flighthawk.”

“Mack Smith splashed it,” said Bastian.

“Mack?”

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

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

Chapter 108

In jeff’s opinion, Minerva was bluffing.

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

“Altimeter or timer?” Bree asked.

“Timer,” said Jeff.

“Then we should land right now.”

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

“Hold.”

Jeff listened as Rap paged back through the logs.

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

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

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

“Have to be a radar altimeter.”

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

“That was the three hundred feet.”

“Probably below that triggers it.”

“Well, great, that’s an easy jump.”

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

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

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

“Not a problem.”

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

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

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

“Blew that engine clean off,” said Zen.

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

Jeff nudged the Flighthawk closer. There were intermittent signals.

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

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

“How do you want me to snap it off?”

“Shoot it off with the Flighthawk.”

“You’re out of your mind, girlie.”

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

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

Not that he had intended on using them.

“Don’t have enough bullets, Bree.”

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

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

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

“Zero.”

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

“I’m not worried about him.”

“You have a better idea?”

He didn’t.

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

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

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

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

Three hundred feet was really too high to do this.

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

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

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

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

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

“No way.”

“Bullshit.”

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

“Bree.”

“On a ten count.”

“Fuck you.”

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

Chapter 109

Bastian heard Dream tower clear Breanna to land.

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

“Probably.”

“Well, what the hell are you doing?”

“Landing.”

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

“No time. Relax. We’ll be okay.”

“Breanna Rapture Bastian Stockard—”

“Close your eyes, Daddy.”

Chapter 110

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

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

No.

He was in the Megafortress.

Zen had taken control of the Flighthawks.

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay. Ten, nine,” said Breanna.

“Jeff.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 111

Captain Breanna “Rapture” Bastian Stockard woke up in her father’s arms. Her body felt as if it were encased in cement. Her arms hurt. Her fingers fluttered.

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

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

Whose voice was it? Jeff’s?

Bree opened her eyes.

“I can’t move my legs,” she said.

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

“I’m okay?”

“You’re alive.”

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

Breanna started to cry.

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

The tears flowed. God. To lose her legs.

“Yo. Good landing.”

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

“Jeff—”

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

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

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

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

What a Goddamn lie.

Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.

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

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

Dog stepped back from the stretchers as the medics packed Breanna and Jeff into the ambulance.

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

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