Nerve Center (21 page)

“Why?” asked Mack. “Why not use the Hawkmother?”

“Because I want to work on theory first, then worry about dealing with the vortexes the Boeing kicks off,” said Jeff. “Kevin, I want you to fly the plane, not C3.”

“Shit. He’s going to have more trouble pulling up behind me than the 777,” said Mack.

“Even if that were true, you’ve demonstrated twice now that you can get out of the way fast.”

“Oh, thanks. Hear that, Junior? Dad doesn’t think you’ll be careful with his car.”

“What’s the course?” answered Madrone.

Jeff laid it out for them, setting Mack into a long racetrack orbit at eighteen thousand feet. Smith was almost surely right—the Fulcrum, with its closely spaced engines and knifelike wing surfaces and fuselage, threw wicked vortexes off its wings. It also didn’t have a lighting system to help guide Madrone in.

But Zen stuck with it stubbornly. Mack gave another grouchy harumph before settling into his track, flying it flawlessly as the two Flighthawks closed behind him. Hawk One pulled to within twenty feet of the MiG’s right wing, as briefed, held its position for ten seconds, then dropped back.

“He let C3 handle that completely,” said Ong. “Did you want that?”

“Hawk Leader, rely a little less on the computer assist with Hawk Two,” said Zen.

“Hawk.”

Zen glanced back at Ong as Madrone began his approach. Jennifer would have been hunched over one of the laptops, punching the keyboard furiously. Ong just sat back and watched, occasionally making notes on a yellow legal pad.

Hawk Two, now totally under Madrone’s control, pulled to within twenty feet of the MiG, holding its position for ten seconds. Then it ducked down twenty feet, accelerated, and reemerged exactly under the fuselage of the plane. Madrone—flying without the direct aid of the flight computer’s automatic pilot sections—held the pattern through Mack’s banking turn.

“Okay, Kevin, impressive,” said Zen.

“Hawk.”

Hawk Two fell back.

“Getting some wild fluctuations in the command centers,” said Ong. “I’m not sure what’s going on there, Jeff.”

Before he could answer, Bree broke in over the interphone. “Zen, Boeing is off track. Something’s up with him.”

Hawkmother
19 February, 1015

THE SHARDS CAME AT MADRONE LIKE BULLETS OF HAIL in a storm, bits and pieces of the Boeing pelting his head. He put his hand out to catch them—Kevin felt the metaphor in his mind, saw his palm extending and the hail landing, landing and building slowly and steadily. He stared at the hail, concentrating his thoughts—a snowball congealed from the mass, cold and wet but thick despite the heat of the rain forest around him.

He could feel the plane’s wings. He saw himself in the air, gliding along at 10,322 feet, the back of his neck rumbling with the engines.

A great thirst.

I need fuel, he told himself. I can find fuel where?

A needle at the top of his head connected to a run of numbers—a computer link to the database, a CD listing of hex numbers recording possible emergency bases.

AH345098BC333.

Lightning spiked through his eyes. Metal began to boil at the sides of his temples.

Madrone’s heart skipped erratically. His lungs, caught somehow out of synch, began to choke. He felt himself moving sideways, twisting though the air.

He had to analyze what had just happened. He’d crossed some sort of threshold, but he didn’t have control of it.

It’s all in the way you think about it,
she coached him.
Find the right metaphor to organize your thoughts. They will extend themselves. You must be yourself not the computer.

His chest began to swell. His heart pounded out of control.

There were different levels to the brain. You didn’t think about how your heart worked, but you could control the beat with the right sequence of thoughts.

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 lover 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.