Nerve Center

by Dale Brown

  Could he?

  Yes, she said.

  Last night’s dream loomed, rising from the jungle floor. Madrone turned away from it, concentrated, found his breath. His heart—he felt the mass of it around his eyes, stopped it.

  He gulped. Then slowly, he began pounding steadily, pumping blood through his body.

  Control. You have control.

  He didn’t want to control his heart. He wanted to fly the Boeing.

  Hail was everywhere, heavy baseballs of ice in a thick mix of rain. The storm thickened exponentially; he lost sight of C3 and the Flighthawks, lost the Boeing, lost himself as the wind and rain swirled through his head. Parts of his body broke away, flesh ripping as bones flew in different directions. His head twisted out of its socket.

  The jaws of the gateway clamped around his face.

  Then he heard her voice.

  Come to me, said the dark woman. Come to me.

  DALTON JERKED AS THE BOEING FELL AWAY FROM HIM, the control column whipping forward. It was only a flicker, as if the plane had panicked for a moment, shutting down and then revving up.

  The yoke was exactly where it had started, the HUD and multi-use displays exactly the same, all indicators in the green. The pilot blinked, scanned his gear again, tensed his fingers, and untensed them. The plane was off track and lower than planned, yet otherwise flew exactly level, all systems green.

  “Did you feel that?” he asked Kulpin.

  “What?” said the copilot, who was staring at the multi-use display at the extreme right of the control pa nel.

  “It was like, the plane blinked,” said Truck.

  “Didn’t feel a thing,” said Kulpin. ‘But the computer seems to be concerned with our fuel reserves.”

  “What?”

  “I just got a fuel report without asking for it,” said Kulpin, turning to him.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he said. Then the controls jerked away again—only this time, they didn’t come back.

  Sharkishki

  19 February, 1019

  MACK CURSED AS HE CAME OUT OF THE BANK. STINKING Madrone was becoming as big a wise-ass as his buddy Zen. The damn Flighthawk was right under his fuselage, close enough to be a Goddamn bomb for friggin’ sake. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he knew the little robot turd was still stuck there like a cling-on.

  Madrone was playing chicken with him, daring him to broadcast a “knock it off’ and end the exercise. Then he’d snort to Zen over beers about how he’d wigged Knife out.

  Fuck that. He’d hold the damn course now until he ran out of fuel.

  Which might not be too long from now in the short-legged MiG.

  Raven

  19 February, 1021

  ZEN SAW IT HAPPENING IN SLOW MOTION: MACK continued on his southern leg, hugged and shadowed by the Flight-hawks. Meanwhile, the Boeing lurched downward from its orbit, slashing toward him.

  “Break! Break!” he yelled, desperately jerking the transmit button. “Gameboy to Sharkishki—break ninety. Everybody, knock it off! Hawkmother—what the hell are you doing?”

  Hawkmother

  19 February, 1021

  HE WANTED HER.

  Madrone felt her warm breath wrap around his body, her kisses dissolving his pain.

  He would have her—his heart raced and his lungs filled with air and he stood up, spreading his arms as he screamed—He would have her!

  He looked at the palm of his hand. The icy lump of hail was still there. He squeezed, and the mush of precipitation became the Boeing. The storm raged around him and he took the plane and tossed it like a toy glider, its wings unfurling as it caught the breeze.

  He sat on top of it. The Flighthawks came and landed on his shoulders, flying.

  They were trying to stop him. The idiots in the cockpit thought they were in control. They were working with the bastard doctors who had killed his daughter.

  They could be dealt with easily—he covered them with ice, raining hail on them.

  The MiG was more of a problem.

  Sharkishki

  19 February, 1025

  MACK CURSED AS HE YANKED THE MiG AWAY FROM THE lurching 777, just barely managing to clear the tail section without scraping.

  “What the fucking hell are you assholes doing?” he shouted. He was so angry his finger slipped off the transmit button for a moment. “Dalton, you shit. What the fuck? Knock it off, knock it off,” he repeated, calling off the exercise.

  “Knock it off,” Zen said. “Flight emergency. Clear Range 4B. Radio silence. Hawkmother? Hawkmother?”

  Mack pulled Sharkishki level, recovering from the quick evasive maneuvers. He craned his neck back to find out what had happened to the Boeing.

  Damn thing had looked like it flew right at him.

  He couldn’t see it behind him. He took a breath, calming down as he leaned the MiG slightly, trying to get a fix on the stricken plane.

  A black speck appeared over his left shoulder, just beyond the MiG’s tailplane. It grew into a grayish ball.

  One of the Flighthawks. It dropped below his wing. Where the hell was it going?

  Mack hit the throttle, goosing the tweaked engines. Even so, the U/MF missed hitting him by less than twenty feet. Shit.

  “Stockard, what the fuck is going on!” he yelled.

  Hawkmother

  19 February, 1028

  MADRONE PUSHED THE BOEING DOWN TOWARD THE edge of the range, quickly descending through four thousand feet. One of the systems warned about stress to the control surfaces, but they were well within tolerance—he could feel the problem as a slight twinge near his temples.

  He’d drop to fifty feet above ground. There, the effect of the ground clutter in radar returns would render him invisible. It was low, but not so low that he couldn’t easily cut a course through the mountains.

  He could let the Boeing’s control computer fly the plane as soon as he figured out how to kill the safety restraints and reset the course. They were an electrified fence, sparking his body as he approached.

  When he got beyond the fence, he could get rid of the pilot and copilot. He could see their seats, but not quite reach the release.

  The damn MiG kept getting in his way, despite the efforts of the Flighthawks to run interference. They were unarmed, and he didn’t want to crash into Smith, since that would cost him a plane.

  Get rid of Hawkmother’s pilot and copilot first. Smith was a blowhard; he’d never be able to stop him.

  Zen called to him. Madrone turned away, closing the door on him.

  He reached for the fence protecting the pilots. Sparks jumped and he jerked back, lost control of Boeing momentarily. The pilot pulled back on the controls, starting to take it out of its dive.

  “You’re not going to beat me, you bastards!” he shouted. A latch sat on the side of the fence, held there by twisted wires.

  He could get through it, if he was willing to ignore the pain.

  As he touched the latch, the metaphor changed. He grabbed not metal but the arm of his young daughter, his baby.

  She cried with pain.

  He let go instantly, stunned.

  “Christina,” he said. “Baby.”

  She stopped sobbing and turned her eyes toward him, raising her head. The hair on the right side of her scalp fell away, just as it had during the radiation treatment at Livermore. Huge clumps dropped to the ground.

  Her neck and the side of her skull boiled. The cancer burst through her skin, purple lumps like the thyroid they’d removed.

  “Christina, Christina,” he cried.

  Lightning struck his eyes. His body convulsed with pain. He couldn’t save his daughter; he was helpless, useless, worthless. His tongue trembled in his mouth and tears flowed. His cheeks melted as if the tears were acid. His chest convulsed as thunder shook the universe.

  Come to me, said the dark woman, her voice muffled by the distance. Come, Kevin.

  Who was she? A dream of Karen? Of Geraldo? Of some primeval lo
ver stored deep in the recesses of his Jungian brain?

  A metaphor, constructed by his mind, simply a metaphor for ANTARES.

  Come to me, love.

  Madrone felt his heart slowing. His lungs worked properly again. He pushed his hand, and it no longer held his daughter, but the wire around the fence latch. He pulled, and the metal gave way; he pulled, and the protective circuitry that had prevented him from gaining full control of the plane flew over his head backward.

  He had it now. He had the course laid out. Get past the MiG, disappear into the mountains.

  Then?

  He would fly to the rain forest and the dark woman. He would find peace there.

  Madrone pushed the Boeing back toward the ground, then jerked her hard to the west, the mountain peaks looming ahead.

  “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! FUCK!” YELLED KULPIN AS DALTON continued to struggle with the 777. They’d disengaged the flight computer and done everything else possible, but had only limited success regaining control. They were well beyond Dreamland’s borders, accelerating as they flew southwest into commercial airspace. Dalton had managed to level off at three thousand feet, but now the Boeing slipped from his control once more, shuddering as she put her nose downward.

  They were going to break the sound barrier again.

  And on top of everything else, the environmental controls had freaked—it must be down to fifty degrees in the cockpit. “We’re going to have to bail,” said Kulpin.

  “Not at this speed,” said Dalton.

  “No choice,” argued Kulpin.

  “Pull, help me pull,” he said, muscling the stick.

  “I’m trying.”

  “We are going to have to bail,” Dalton began.

  He intended to tell Kulpin to radio their position and the fact that they were going out. He needed to tell Madrone what was going on, make sure the captain was strapped in and knew what to do. He wanted to start an orderly checklist, to keep things calm and precise and absolutely orderly, as if he were a cruise ship captain practicing a routine and boring lifeboat drill. But as he opened his mouth he felt his breath catch in the pit of his chest. His body slammed back on the seat and an anvil landed on his head. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized he had been ejected from the plane, though he hadn’t pulled the manual eject handles, let alone fooled with the automated sequence.

  Sharkishki19 February, 1038

  THE AUDIBLE FUEL WARNING IN MACK’S EAR HIT A NEW octave as he pushed to follow the Boeing. Dalton and his copilot didn’t answer his hails on any frequency, nor did Ma-drone.

  At least the Flighthawks had stopped flashing in front of him, staying in a close trail behind Hawkmother. Mack recognized it as one of the preprogrammed flight positions.

  As he closed the distance between himself and the big jet, the 777 took another lurch downward and the front end seemed to break apart.

  “Shit, they’re out,” he said to Zen, yelling so loud it was possible he could be heard without the radio. “Fuck. They ejected. I think they ejected. Oh, Jesus.”

  He slid the MiG into a bank, searching for parachutes. The truth was he couldn’t tell if they had ejected or if the front of the plane had blown apart—it was moving that damn fast.

  Knife glanced at his fuel panel. Serious problems. Even if he turned back this instant, he might have to glide home.

  He couldn’t see the Boeing anymore. Sharkishki’s radar had lost it in the ground clutter, but the IR scan showed the plane plummeting toward the mountains, a half mile ahead. He glanced over to mark the position with the GPS screen on the MUD. As he pushed the button, the Boeing disappeared from the screen.

  “Plane’s going in,” he told Zen. He punched the IR gear, watching for the inevitable flare.

  “Mack, what’s your status?” demanded Stockard.

  “I lost them. They bailed and the plane nose-dived. Can’t find it on the infrared. I’m not sure why. Shit.”

  “What’s your fuel, Sharkishki?” demanded Zen.

  “Yeah. I have a fuel emergency. Returning to base,” conceded Mack. “I’ll upload the GPS telemetry. Aw, shit to fucking hell.”

  Raven

  19 February, 1050

  ZEN’S CHEST COMPRESSED AS THE BOEING disappeared from the radar display. It felt like a snake had wrapped itself around him and squeezed.

  He tried the override again in a desperate attempt to grab control of the Flighthawks, but the screens remained blank, the connection severed.

  “We’ll be at Mack’s mark in zero-two,” said Breanna.

  “Yeah,” answered Zen. The snake squeezed tighter. He checked on the status of the SAR flight that had just scrambled out of Dreamland—a pair of helicopters, one a Pave Low with an extensive suite of search gear, were about fifteen minutes behind them. Edwards and Nellis both had other units on standby.

  “Aggressor, how tight is your fuel?” he said, calling Mack.

  “Under control,” answered Mack.

  Smith sounded more angry than concerned, though Zen thought he’d sound that way on fumes.

  “There’s a civilian strip in your direct flight path if you need it,” Zen told him.

  “No shit, Sherlock. Let me fly this one, all right?”

  Normally, Zen would have told Mack to screw himself. But by now the snake had wrapped itself so tightly around his throat that he couldn’t get a word out of his mouth.

  He was so damn impotent without legs, tied into a stinking wheelchair, a gimp, a cripple, a helpless lump of nothing.

  A flame flared in the middle of his head, surging and glowing, flowing into a perfect round circle, a sun that went from red to pink to chromium.

  He was helpless. He was back in the F-15 where he’d had his accident, going out at low altitude, crashing into the ground, crushing his spinal cord and losing his legs.

  “Nightingale One to Gameboy. Please state situation. Major Stockard?”

  He wasn’t helpless. He’d proven himself in Africa. Every day he got out of bed, he proved himself.

  “Zen, the SAR flight is hailing you,” said Bree over the interphone.

  “Gameboy to Nightingale One,” he said, muscling the snake away. “We have a plane down, two, hopefully three ejections. Rough terrain. Maybe the mountains. No fix, but we can make some guesses from the GPS where they were last seen.”

  “Copy that,” said the Pave Low pilot, who had already been given the coordinates by Breanna. “Do you have anything fresh?”

  “Negative,” admitted Zen. “We’re in the dark as much as you.”

  V

  THE RAIN FOREST

  Aboard Hawkmother

  Over Sierra Nevada Mountains

  19 February, 1110

  WHEN HE REALIZED THAT HE HAD SHAKEN THE MiG AND Raven, Madrone pumped his hands in the air, as elated as he had ever been in his life. But after he turned control of the Boeing over to the computer, his sense of triumph began to drain.

  There were problems. The Flighthawks were in perfect shape, holding behind Hawkmother as it hugged its way through the mountain passes. But they were more than halfway through their fuel reserves; while their engines were thrifty in cruise mode, they would need to be refueled.

  He could do that. They’d planned to. He’d gone through the simulations, and Hawkmother had been loaded with extra fuel.

  But sooner or later he’d have to find fuel for the Boeing.

  Where? It wasn’t like he could put down at a gas station and pull out his credit card. Who the hell was going to give him jet fuel without asking a lot of questions? Or demanding a lot of money?

  Why had he gone off without a plan? What madness possessed him? He tucked out of the mountains—L.A. was a vast glow to the left, the Pacific a dark haze beyond.

  Madrone began to shake, his body suddenly cold. He felt a light pop at the top of his head, and then he began to fall, or feel as if he were falling.

  He’d dropped out of Theta.

  The twinge of panic swirled into a full-blown typ
hoon. The entire Air Force would be after him, all of the military. He’d been screwed before—Army generals and personnel bastards and Pentagon phonies had screwed him out of his advanced-weapons project at Los Alamos, yanked his clearances. They’d claimed he needed a rest, but he’d known they were out to screw him because of what he’d done in Iraq. He’d shown them up, nailing those tanks with his men. Bastards.

  Madrone forced himself to sit back in the seat. He was losing it, giving in to paranoia.

  The headache started to return. He pushed air into the bottom of his lungs, loosened the muscles at the top of his shoulders.

  He hadn’t wanted to run away. But here he was. The pilot and copilot had ejected; he was in control of the ship.

  They’d call it mutiny. Put him in jail for life, and he’d never see his daughter.

  She was already dead.

  Kevin ran his fingers across his forehead. He couldn’t think straight. The universe was breaking apart.

  He had to get back into Theta. Now.

  Pej, Brazil

  19 February, 1510 local

  MINERVA LANZAS FOLDED HER ARMS ACROSS HER CHEST and leaned against the back of the bulldozer. The hazy sun cast a brown light over the dusty mountain airstrip, tinting the colors like a faded postcard. If she’d been in a better mood, she might have almost thought it romantic.

  But if she’d been in a better mood she would not be here in Pej, caught between the Amazon and the mountains of Serra Curupira, in exile—Dante’s third ring of hell.

  Three months before, Colonel Lanzas had been one of the most important officers of the Força Aérea Brasileira, the Brazilian Air Force. She had obtained her position through the usual means—family connections, politics, sex, even skill as a pilot and commander. As commanding officer of an elite group of FAB interceptors attached to the Third Air Force south of Rio de Janeiro, she’d had power, prestige, and the potential for great wealth. She had managed to shed her third husband—a once-useful if pedestrian diplomat and military attaché—and begun to amass a personal following that extended to the Army as well as the Air Force. At thirty-one, she’d looked forward to a bright future not just in the military, but in Brazilian politics as well.