Nerve Center d-2

by Dale Brown

  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

  Aboard M-68 March, 0915

  “Galatica, this is Dreamland M-6. Do you read me? Galatica, can you hear me? Please acknowledge.”

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

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

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

  “Bree,” said Dog.

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

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

  “On the Flighthawk.”

  “Mack Smith splashed it,” said Bastian.

  “Mack?”

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

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

  Chapter 108

  Aboard Galatica

  8 March, 0925

  In jeff’s opinion, Minerva was bluffing.

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

  “Altimeter or timer?” Bree asked.

  “Timer,” said Jeff.

  “Then we should land right now.”

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

  “Hold.”

  Jeff listened as Rap paged back through the logs.

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

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

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

  “Have to be a radar altimeter.”

  “Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “That was the three hundred feet.”

  “Probably below that triggers it.”

  “Well, great, that’s an easy jump.”

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

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

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

  “Not a problem.”

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

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

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

  “Blew that engine clean off,” said Zen.

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

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

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

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

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

  “What?”

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

  Jeff nudged the Flighthawk closer. There were intermittent signals.

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

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

  “How do you want me to snap it off?”

  “Shoot it off with the Flighthawk.”

  “You’re out of your mind, girlie.”

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

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

  Not that he had intended on using them.

  “Don’t have enough bullets, Bree.”

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

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

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

  “Zero.”

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

  “I’m not worried about him.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  * * *

  He didn’t.

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

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

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

  Depended entirely o
n 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

  Aboard M-6

  8 March, 0930

  Bastian heard Dream tower clear Breanna to land.

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

  “Probably.”

  “Well, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Landing.”

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

  “No time. Relax. We’ll be okay.”

  “Breanna Rapture Bastian Stockard—”

  “Close your eyes, Daddy.”

  Chapter 110

  Aboard Galatica

  8 March, 0935

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

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

  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

  Dreamland

  8 March, 1008

  Captain Breanna “Rapture” Bastian Stockard woke up in her father’s arms. Her body felt as if it were encased in cement. Her arms hurt. Her fingers fluttered.

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

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

  Whose voice was it? Jeff’s?

  Bree opened her eyes.

  “I can’t move my legs,” she said.

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

  “I’m okay?”

  “You’re alive.”

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

  Breanna started to cry.

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

  The tears flowed. God. To lose her legs.

  “Yo. Good landing.”

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

  “Jeff—”

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

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

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

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

  What a Goddamn lie.

  Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.

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

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

  * * *

  Dog stepped back from the stretchers as the medics packed Breanna and Jeff into the ambulance.

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

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

  VIII

  “ON REVIEW”

  Chapter 112

  Dreamland

  8 March, 1300

  Colonel Bastian slid the thin yellow paper over the center of his desk. His fingers brushed so gently along the tissuelike surface, he might have been touching a baby’s cheek, afraid that if he pushed too hard he would somehow damage it.

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

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

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

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

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

  Not luck at all.

  His own decision not to shoot them down.

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

  “Colonel?”

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

  Bastian picked up the phone.

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

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

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

  “Yes, sir,” said Bastian.

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

  “A visit here?”

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

  “No, sir.”


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

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

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

  “I did not,” said Bastian.

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

  “I was the most qualified pilot at the—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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