HAWK THREE KNIFED THROUGH THE TURBULENCE, accelerating toward the jagged, snow-laden peaks where the Pave Low had disappeared. While the flight computer could cope with the strong vortices of wind easily enough, there was little it could do about the ice trying to freeze on the wings. The lower and slower Zen went—and to do the search properly, he had to go low and slow—the more precipitation clung to the control surfaces. While not enough to keep the plane from flying, it added considerably to the difficulty factor in the swirling winds near the crags.
“Sector Alpha-Baker-1 is clear,” said Jennifer Gleason, who’d volunteered to come along and help monitor the scans. Major Cheshire had bumped Bree’s copilot and was at the stick; Bree had slid over to the second officer’s seat and was also studying the feeds.
“Alpha-Baker-2 is also clear,” snapped Breanna. Both women were examining the IR video from Hawk Four, which was being flown entirely by the computer through a ravine at the very northern edge of the search area. The weather there was not as severe and the terrain not as twisted as the area Zen was working himself further southwest.
Hawk Three hit a patch of clear air and shot forward as if her engine had ingested pure oxygen. Zen steadied his left joystick, glancing at the vital signs projected at the lower edge of the visor. Everything was in the green.
His attention back on the main screen, he saw a dull shadow at the edge of the approaching valley, below a triple-dagger peak. It wasn’t warm enough to be a body, but since it was the first non-rock he’d seen, he switched from the IR to the optical feed.
“Computer, zoom in the dark object at the bottom of Hawk Three’s visual feed,” Zen directed.
The computer formed a box around the image, which seemed to burst into the middle of his view screen.
Ejection seat.
“Mark location,” said Jeff.
“What do you have?” Jennifer asked over the interphone. “Jeff?” said Bree.
“Excuse me. Are you manning your scans?” he snapped. “Affirmative, Hawk Leader,” answered Bree testily. Jennifer said nothing.
“Raven, I have a piece of the seat, I think, from the Boeing,” Jeff said, technically speaking to Cheshire though they could all hear him. “I’ve marked it. I’ll continue to sweep the sector. Hawk Four is going to stay in the pattern we planned.”
“Raven Leader acknowledges,” said the pilot. Although Jeff was actually sitting a few feet below Cheshire on Raven’s lower deck, they had found it easier to communicate as if flying separate planes—which, of course, they were.
Zen pushed Hawk Three to the south, dropping her lower to scan close to a W-shaped ravine at the edge of a shallow mountain plateau. The severe storm shortened the IR’s range considerably, though from a technical viewpoint the fact that he was even receiving an image was impressive. Even light rain played havoc with conventional FUR systems.
As he neared the end of the ravine, a small shadow flickered into the upper right-hand corner of the view screen. He was by it before he could ask for a magnification; he pulled back on the Flighthawk’s joystick, then felt the plane fluttering in the heavy wind.
“Disconnect in zero-three,” warned the computer. The storm and jagged terrain degraded the link between the Hawk and its mother.
“Raven, I need you closer to Three,” snapped Jeff. He started to pull up, but saw something in the IR screen at the right-hand corner. He pushed toward it, despite the disconnect warning that flashed in the screen.
“Disconnect in zero-three, two—”
Zen managed to nudge the U/MF upward at the last second, retaining the data flow. But the storm whipped hard against the small plane’s wings. It pushed up and then down, yawing like a gum wrapper tossed from a car. Even with the assistance of the computer and the vectoring nozzles, Zen couldn’t get it where he wanted.
“Raven, lower,” he demanded.
“You want me to park on Mount Whitney?” snapped Cheshire.
“That’s too high.” He just missed a ravine wall as he tried to slide Hawk Three back toward the ridge where he’d seen the image. Hawk Three hugged the hillside, her altimeter nudging six thousand feet—half the altitude Raven needed to clear the surrounding peaks. This was too damn low for comfort, and even C3 began doing a Bitchin’ Betty routine, warning that he was going too low and too slow. Still, the only way to get a good view was to practically crawl across the terrain. Hawk Three’s forward airspeed nudged below ninety knots.
Stall warning. But something hot, real hot, filled the screen. Above—up. Jeff throttled and pushed the stick, climbing the side of the ridge.
“Disconnect in zero-three.”
“Nancy! Closer!”
“We’re trying, Zen!”
A red bar appeared at the bottom of his view screen as the computer continued counting down the disconnect.
But there was a man there. Definitely a man—two men, huddled.
As Zen went to push the GPS marker, the screen blanked into gray fuzz. The default sequence knocked the view screen back to the optical view from Hawk Four, which had just begun knifing east.
A magenta disc filled the screen; Jeff felt suddenly weightless, sliding backward. The right side of his head imploded, pain shooting everywhere—he closed his eyes as he spun back, caught by some trick of fatigue or exertion or merely disorientation. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Streaks of rain and lightning flashed by him, close enough to feel but not see. The world split beneath him, the fault line running through his spine.
Then he felt his toes. He could actually feel his toes.
The sun turned mercury red, then steamed off, evaporating in a hiss that filled his helmet.
An ANTARES flashback because he’d been thinking of Kevin?
Or because he’d taken the first dose of drugs as soon as Bastian gave the okay to rejoin the program?
That was less than two hours ago. The screen was back to normal—it had to have been a weird anomaly caused by the lightning.
And fatigue. He was getting damn tired.
“Sorry, shit, I’m sorry. The storm is too fierce here,” said Cheshire somewhere outside of his helmet. She apologized for the wicked, disorienting turbulence shaking the plane.
Raven shuddered, trying desperately to fight off a wind shear that dropped her nearly two hundred feet in the blink of an eye. The plane pitched onto her side, just barely staying airborne.
“Zen, I can’t get any lower than this.”
“Hawk Leader acknowledges,” he snapped. “C3, reestablish contact with Hawk Three.”
“Attempting,” answered the voice module.
“Try harder,” he said, even though he realized the voice command would merely confuse the computer. He altered Hawk Four’s course to close on the area Three had been surveying, and was within ten miles when the computer finally managed to restore full bandwidth with the U/MF.
Fail-safe mode during disconnect had caused the robot to fly upward out of the mountains. Because of that, Four was actually closer to the slope where he’d seen what he thought were men—or at least he thought it was closer, since he hadn’t marked it. Zen let the computer put Three into a safe orbit at fifteen thousand feet over Raven, and brought Four into the treacherous peaks. He flew south, then circled back,. pushing downward as he came.
A fire burned at the left-hand side of his screen. Above to the right loomed a large object.
The Pave Low. Men nearby.
Jeff quickly marked the location.
“I have them,” he told Nancy. “Get me the SAR commander.”
“Coast Guard asset Colgate is already en route to our position, Hawk Commander,” answered Breanna from the copilot’s station, where she was handling communications. “ETA is ten minutes. They’re requesting you guide them in.”
“I have a flare on the ground. Two figures near a rock, three figures. Something else in the helicopter,” said Zen, nudging Hawk Four to get as close as possible in the storm. “Looks like the helicopter’s moving, sliding or something.”