A leisurely stroll. He’d done this before. He wanted something new, something more challenging.
Aggressor Flight checked in.
Come for me, baby.
Madrone wanted more planes, more challenges. How far could his mind really go? What if it turned inward, examined the nooks and crannies of the interface and the ANTARES computer? What rooms were there?
A video camera had been rigged in the nose of Hawk-mother to record the mission. The video was recorded onto a hard drive and could be accessed through the C3 controls, where the techies had made use of a physical bus and a series of unused interrupts to get easy control of the device. That let them run a log coordinating all of the flight records — Hawkmother’s as well as the Flighthawks’ and ANTARES — off the same time scale.
It was also a connection he could squeeze down, providing the gateway let him. His brain could slither in, like a kid slinking through a subway turnstile. Once inside, he’d have control.
C3 gave him an error message, a slight buzz of confusion poking against his temple. His wandering thoughts had confused it.
But he could see the video. It was part of him.
Pain. Great pain.
Stay in your head. Maintain discipline.
He could partition his brain. That was the trick to AN-TARES. Lock off different parts. Just as he’d locked off Christina.
The interface tried to suck everything out of you.
Kevin moved the Flighthawks into a combat spread 3,500 feet apart. He nudged Two upward slightly, offset three hundred feet higher than One’s twelve thousand AGL.
A brown-red blanket of desert lay at his feet; clear blue surrounded his head. Instruments were green.
The MiG would appear dead ahead. He would close with Two, flushing his enemy, who could only choose to dive or run past. Either way, Mack Smith and his Sharkishki would be nailed.
The tactics were basic and simple. Change the distances, which were really just a function of the engines, and the formation and procedures for engaging the enemy would be familiar to Baron von Richtofen.
Too simple a task to waste his thoughts on.
Madrone was invincible with these planes. Why had it taken so long for him to arrive at this point? He’d wasted every moment of his life until now.
“Keep your separation,” warned Zen.
“Hawk Leader,” he snapped, acknowledging the petty and tedious reminder.
Chapter 28
Zen frowned as he stared at the main monitor display at his station. The sitrep or God’s-eye-view projected the exercise in sharp, color-coded lines, depicting actual positions in solid against the briefed courses in dash. Everything matched, even the reds showing Mack in Sharkishki, which had just taken off en route to Area Two over the mountains.
So what the hell was bugging him?
The U/MFs had come off the wings a second too soon. Kevin had taken them from him, even though Zen had assigned himself the launch.
Maybe. Kevin had definitely come in before the planned handoff, which was supposed to be ten seconds after the launch, when the Flighthawks were well beyond the vortices. Whether he’d had control on the wing and actually initiated the release was difficult to tell, because in either case C3 handled the actual sequence.
The flight computer did nearly everything under AN-TARES, or could. That was the way the designers wanted it — the computer was more efficient.
Jeff resented that, even though C3 made it possible for him to fly as well. But he was angry about something else, even though he couldn’t precisely define it. Something about Kevin — his attitude seemed more dismissive.
Jeff realized he might be hypersensitive. Maybe Geraldo was right; maybe he was just jealous. Madrone was flying his planes, after all.
There was one other thing. The 777 had been nicknamed “Hawkmother.” It was natural, a prosaic if utilitarian name for the plane. But it also happened to be the call sign Zen had used the day of the accident that cost him his legs.
He’d thought of suggesting something different, but decided it would seem trivial or worse — superstitious.
“Dream Tower is requesting we change the scenario a bit,” said Bree, punching the interphone circuit that restricted the communications to inside the plane.
Zen acknowledged, then flipped into the control circuit to find out what was going on. A live-fire exercise was taking longer than expected, the controller explained, and they wanted to maintain a suitable margin of error. The new area for the Aggressor drill was well to the southwest, over another stretch of empty desert at the edge of the mountains.
“Yeah, okay, we can do that. Gameboy acknowledges,” said Zen. He went back on the shared line to tell Madrone and the others about the change.
“Already have the course plotted,” said Kevin before he could say anything.
Zen went through the instructions anyway.
Madrone was doing a great job. Why did that bug Jeff so much?
Chapter 29
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.
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.