Nerve Center (16 page)

Aboard Sharkishki
18 February, 1137

MACK CONTINUED TO CLIMB AT FORTY-FIVE DEGREES, his forward air speed pushing through 550 kilometers an hour, roughly three hundred knots. The dials were marked with both measurements and he could toggle the displays; the metrics had been retained to give the Aggressor pilot more of a “Russian head.” Mack felt particularly Russian today—which translated into a foul mood. He acknowledged the range change and continued to climb, nudging the stick left as he reached fifteen thousand feet.

The MiG controls felt much different than an American jet like the F-15. Set subtly higher and further forward, the stick seemed to pull Mack toward the front of the plane, using a different twitch of his muscles. It handled well, though, even with its hydraulic controls—he did a roll for the hell of it, coming onto the new course for Test Range 4B.

Bastian still hadn’t found him a command gig. No one else had stepped up either. Frickin’ best damn pilot in the Air Force, and he was getting the leper treatment.

Knife was tempted to goose the burners, tuck the plane down, and run. He’d be in Mexico before anyone realized he was gone.

And what would he do there? Find a beach and some willing
senorita.
Hell, damn plane was worth serious bucks, even if the damn ex-Commies were flooding the globe with them. Spare parts alone would keep him in margaritas for the rest of his life.

He hated margaritas.

Could always fly to Brazil and look up that Defense Ministry honcho.

Have to refuel a few million times. Not even Raven could make it there on a full tank.

Knife held the MiG steady at fifteen thousand feet, watching the radar as it caught and painted the Flighthawks west of him. They altered course slightly to run by him. They’d turn, pretend to catch him from the rear—and all he could do was take it.

This was what he’d been reduced to—playing target sled for Monkey Brain.

Aboard Hawkmother
18 February, 1141

MADRONE PUSHED HAWKS ONE AND TWO AHEAD, CLOSING on the enemy fighter, precisely as planned. The MiG’s radar spotted his two planes, but held course as they’d planned.

If it were a real encounter, he would have flown the U/ MFs much differently. C gave him several suggestions. The best had the two-ship split up right about now, with Hawk One vanishing into the ground clutter before beginning an end run toward the MiG’s rear, where its radar coverage was poor. Then Hawk Two would disappear as well.

Smith would finally find Hawk One gunning for his tail. His only option would be to flood the afterburners and speed straight away, outrunning his adversary.

Which would take him into the second Flighthawk, waiting ahead. The small planes could outmaneuver the MiG; no matter what the bandit did, Madrone would get one pass with his cannon.

And one pass was all he needed.

But not today. Today he had to swing around the back, just as they’d mapped it out.

Make more sense to mount a front-quarter attack, rake the SOB. Not a high probability in a conventional fighter, but the Flighthawks and C wouldn’t miss.

The computer glowed at the top of his head.

Why not do it, just for giggles? Frost that asshole Smith and his jerk-face smirk.

Aboard Sharkishki
18 February, 1145

MACK RAN HIS EYES OVER HIS INSTRUMENTS. HIS RIGHT engine had the temp indicator pegged at the extreme edge of the acceptable range, a bit hotter than the left. Fuel burn seemed constant, and the two power plants seemed to be working in unison. Mack suspected the gauge was flaky—he was always suspecting gauges were flaky.

As he looked back at the windscreen, he realized the two Flighthawks had deviated from the planned course. Instead of flying in the planned arc, they were heading straight for him.

Oh, real funny, Zen.

“Yo, Gameboy, we sticking to the program or do I get to shoot these suckers down?” he asked.

“Gameboy to Hawk Leader,” boomed Zen over the circuit. “Kevin, you’re off course. Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, like I believe you and Monkey Brain didn’t cook this up on your private line,” said Mack.

He said it, but he didn’t transmit. He rolled the MiG, accelerating at the same time as he swooped around to outfox Zen and his nugget sidekick controlling the U/MFs.

Aboard Hawkmother 18 February, 1153

MADRONE COULDN’T TELL AT FIRST WHAT THE MiG WAS doing, and C3 offered no clues. He started to cut power, then realized Sharkishki would try to slice behind his two planes. Kevin nudged Hawk One north, intending to send the two planes in opposite directions, ready for anything Mack might pull.

Pain crashed into his skull, pushing him back in his chair. He gave the computer full control of the two robots. The fight drifted to the edge of his consciousness as the heavy control helmet seemed to shear his skull in half. The crankshaft of an immense engine revolved around and around at the top of his head, its counterweights smashing against his cranium, pounding through the bone into the gray matter beneath. Ma-drone tried to relieve the pressure, but couldn’t, felt himself weighted down, pushed back by the pain.

He heard a tapping noise somewhere in the corn set.

Rain.

His Theta metaphor.

Relax.

He tried to conjure the jungle, the rain just beginning, the dark shadows around him.

“Knock it off! Knock it off!” screamed Zen.

The rain surged, but the pain backed away. Madrone realized he was hyperventilating. He controlled his breaths, let his shoulders droop, found Hawk One and Two under control, approaching from opposite ends toward the MiG; the computer had followed his directions without being distracted by his pain.

“Knock it off!” repeated Zen.

“Hawk Leader acknowledges,” said Madrone, retaking control of the planes and sending them back toward their prearranged course.

“What the hell happened there?” said Zen.

He seemed to be talking to Kevin, but it was Mack Smith in the MiG who responded.

“Microchip Boy came at me for a front-quarter attack,” said Smith. “I just waxed his tail.”

“You were out of line,” said Zen.

“I held the wrong course a little too long,” said Madrone. The pain was gone; it had been an aberration, probably because he’d been breathing too fast. “Let’s try it again.”

“I think we ought to go home,” said Stockard.

“Jeez Louise, 1 can’t make a mistake?” Madrone snapped. “Come on, Zen. Don’t be a baby,” said Mack. “Just because I spanked Junior.”

“I think we could run through the scenario again,” said Geraldo. Her voice sounded like a soothing whisper; Kevin caught a glimpse of her, standing at the side of him, long hair, much younger.

How did he see her beyond his visor array?

His mind projected her, just as it did with the Flighthawks. No, not like that. But it felt the same.

His memory created the image. But it had distorted it as well. She didn’t really look like that; he’d never seen her that young.

“You sure, Kevin?” asked Zen.

“Let’s go for it,” said Madrone.

“All right. Everybody back to their starting positions. This time, exactly as we planned.”

Aboard Raven
18 February, 1213

“WHAT HAPPENED?” BREANNA ASKED JEFF AS SHE began the bank at the end of the racetrack pattern they were flying.

“Kindergarten bullshit.”

Bree said nothing as she pulled the Megafortress through the lazy turn. They were at thirty-five thousand feet, well above the action. Jeff s annoyance was interesting; while it was true that Madrone and Smith had disregarded the planned scenario, Jeff himself had said during the briefing that they could freelance as circumstances allowed. Granted, it was early in the exercise, but the fact that Madrone had taken the initiative there seemed to her a good thing.

Kevin had definitely changed since ANTARES began. He was more confident, more self-assured. He seemed to be working out; his chest and arms had bulked. She was annoyed with him, though—he’d made, but then blown off, a date with her friend Abby.

Very un-Madrone-like. But people did weird things when they were in love.

“They’re in position,” said Chris Ferris, her copilot.

“Try it again,” said Jeff over the shared circuit.

Aboard Hawkmother
18 February, 1227

KEVIN STEADIED THE TWO ROBOT PLANES ON THEIR course. Actually, the flight computer did—he simply acquiesced to its suggested course.

Maybe Mack was right. Kevin was just a monkey here; the computer could fly the planes without him.

True enough, but that didn’t make him useless or unimportant. On the contrary. He could go anywhere. He had no limits. He told the computer what to do, and it did it.

What had the red shock of pain been? He didn’t have control over that. It was a storm that had struck without warning. He could go anywhere. He hadn’t completed an actual refueling yet—that was on tomorrow’s agenda. But he had no doubt he could master it. And then, what were the limits?

Whatever his mind flowed into, ANTARES, the gateway, C3—those were the limits.

He could get beyond them. He didn’t want to be tethered to dotted lines laid out on maps. He wasn’t a monkey boy or microchip brain or whatever Smith decided to call him—he was beyond that.

Madrone felt a twinge in his temple, the hint of the headache returning. He concentrated on his breathing, and the twinge receded into the pink space beyond the edge of his vision.

Where did it go’? He slid out toward it, focusing his thoughts into a kind of greenish cone, his curiosity forming into a shape. But he couldn’t penetrate the haze; his vision darkened and he began falling out of Theta.

He heard the rain of the forest, returned to full control. He moved the Flighthawks farther apart, closing on the MiG at ten miles.

C3 gave him a warning:
“Connection degrading.”
The Flighthawks had extended to nearly twenty miles ahead of Hawkmother. The 777 couldn’t keep up.

He backed off his speed. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. He had to learn to segregate his thoughts, to monitor the computer but to think beyond it as well.

The difficulty was the pain.

Maybe. He didn’t have control of everything, not even his own mind, not yet anyway. It worked in a way he didn’t completely understand or control.

The MiG sat at the apex of a V. dead meat between his two planes, his two hands.

If his curiosity were a snake, it would slither beyond the edge of his brain, over the round seam that marked the end of his universe.

The autopilot system of the Boeing. Thick metal levers and motors.

No vision, but the radar.

Safety protocols suspended. The autopilot was off. It was helpless, just watching.

Could he switch it on?

No. Yes?

No. It was off.

Could he be in all three planes at once? Guide them all? Hawkmother’s seat felt foreign to him, deliciously unfamiliar, spiking his taste buds.

He slipped. His body began to sink.

He could hold it.

The tingle again. A harsh red circle around his head. A massive band of pressure, thick oily pressure erupting below his head, his neck on fire, the flames of pain consuming the center of his being.

Aboard Sharkishki
18 February, 1250

MACK’S ALTITUDE HELD STEADY AT 7,500 METERS, roughly 22,500 feet. The Flighthawks passed by and began banking for their attack. Monkey Brain was doing it by the book this time, and so did he, flying exactly on the prebriefed course.

Kick on the afterburner, tuck down, head for the open sea. Be over the Pacific in what? An hour?

Easy. Except with the afterburner he’d blow through his fuel and bail out over Baja.

Go west, young man—buzz L.A. Why the hell not? His career was toast anyway.

If the future really was bleak, maybe he should look up that Brazilian geezer. Or just hang it all and fly airliners for a living.

Yeah, right. That was fine for some guys. Hell, you couldn’t argue with the bucks or the time off. But Mack needed more; he needed the edge.

The Flighthawks roared up behind him, closing to pointblank cannon range. They were directly behind his wings, vectored at a slight angle.

“Bang-bang you got me,” he said over the radio.

Then he realized they weren’t stopping.

Aboard Hawkmother
18 February, 1257

GERALDO’S VOICE BURST ALL AROUND HIM.

“You’re off the chart,” she told Kevin. “The peaks are overlapping. Your heartbeat is at one-fifty. Your brain waves are off the chart.”

Did she mean he was out of control? Pain pressed against him from all different directions. His head was a block of glass being broken into a million jagged pieces.

Except that if it were glass, the pain would have stopped. Madrone tried to breathe, tried to relax—he forced himself back into the jungle, into his Theta metaphor, the pathway for his control.

Someone spoke to him, a woman with a deep voice. From behind the greens and browns and blacks. She spoke Geraldo’s words, urging him to breathe slowly, but it wasn’t the middle-aged psychiatrist speaking; it was a dark woman, a beautiful woman.

Karen, his wife.

No, not Karen. Someone infinitely more beautiful. He could see her through the dark trees. Rain streamed down her naked body, coursing over her breasts and hips.

Come to me, darling. Come.

The Flighthawks were above him. They had a target in sight, closing on a collision course.

C3’s safety protocols had been suspended.

Who did that? Had he?

The pain flashed in waves. Madrone tried to push himself back into the Flighthawks, back into control.

Aboard Sharkishki
18 February, 1301

MACK PUSHED HIS LEFT WING DOWN, DROPPING THE MiG into a violent, sliding dive. The Flighthawks had caught him flat-footed; they were closing so fast he couldn’t even hit his afterburner and rely on his superior speed to get away. All he could do was duck.