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.
Chapter 31
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.
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.
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.
He slammed the MiG through a series of hard rolls, taking close to ten g’s as he jerked violently down, the MiG just barely controllable. Gravity pirouetted against the sides of his body, punching so hard that even the advanced flight suit he wore couldn’t ward off all of the pressure. A black cowl closed around his head. His eyes stopped working together; he saw the world as two circles of spinning blue and brown in a thick bowl of grayness. Knife lost sight of his instruments, of the cockpit; he flew by dizzy feel, the stick his only consciousness.
Somehow he pulled out as the spin threatened to overwhelm him. Somehow he managed to get the MiG moving in the direction opposite the one he’d started in, gaining speed.
Knife pushed his wings flat. The world expanded around him, the effects of oxygen deprivation receding. One of the Flighthawks shot ahead, well off his left wing, but where the hell was the other?
He started to move his head around the cockpit, and belatedly realized he was flying upside down. Still disoriented, he swooped right, losing three thousand feet in a roll that brought him nearly to the desert floor.
The second U/MF was on his tail, over him about five hundred feet, still trying to close.
Knife knew he should call time-out, push the mike button and yell knock it off. He might already have done that — his brain was so scrambled he couldn’t remember whether he had or not.
But Goddamnit. If Zen and his shadow were going to play for keeps, so was he.
He forced his hand to the throttle, notching his speed back. He could feel the Flighthawk trying to close.
He’d pull his nose up at the last second, send the son of a bitch right into the dead lake bed. Easy as pie, as long as he kept his head clear and his speed up high enough to avoid stalling.
Madrone would smash the $500-million Flighthawk to bits. Let him explain that, the SOB.
Kevin’s thoughts and ideas streamed through the blue sky, comets jittering and disintegrating. He thought of sending the Flighthawks crashing into the MiG.
The idea remained there, a contrail in the jungle sky. He grabbed for it desperately, trying to wipe it away.
“Knock it off! Knock it off!” Zen yelled.
The red disappeared. The sky and rain forest disappeared. And then he felt Hawk Two, felt the wind coursing below his wings. He relaxed, put his nose up, and circled away from the MiG, breaking pursuit.
Kevin’s head pounded; his heart thumped against his chest. He wanted to turn the two robot planes back over to their flight computer, but he dared not. He couldn’t be sure what other ideas sat out there, ghosts ready to jump in and take control.
“What the hell’s going on, Kevin?” asked Stockard.
“Hawks One and Two returning to base,” he answered. “Requesting permission to land.”
Zen punched the transmission switch angrily. This time it had clearly been Kevin’s fault; Mack had flown the pattern perfectly until the Flighthawks homed in on his tail. If anything, Mack had waited too long to take evasive maneuvers. It was a miracle there hadn’t been a collision, and at least a minor miracle that he hadn’t lost Sharkishki.
Jeff had screwed up too. He hadn’t told them to knock it off soon enough, hadn’t taken over the Flighthawks the instant his command wasn’t obeyed.