“Opening Colgate channel. I think I’m getting something on Guard as well.”
The helicopter seemed to hop in the screen.
“Colgate better get a move on,” said Zen. “And Bree, if you can get the crew on Guard, tell them to get the hell off that ice. The whole side of that hill is heading for the ravine.”
Sierra Nevada Mountains
19 February, 2018
POWDER SHOULDERED AGAINST THE HELICOPTER SPAR, then felt something shove down behind him. Metal crunched and crackled—he pushed around what had been a flight engineer’s seat, kneeling and then crawling into the cabin opening. Dalton lay beneath some blankets just a few feet away, his legs exposed.
They were moving. The earth rumbled beneath them.
“Yo, Captain, I’m gonna cut you outta this,” said Powder, feeling along the stretcher for the restraints. “I sure hope your back ain’t messed up, ‘cause we gotta go.”
Dalton groaned, or at least Powder thought he groaned. Powder pulled his combat knife against the belts, slashing and hacking as the back end of the helo slid around. His hand Hew free as he reached the last strap. He lost the knife but grabbed Dalton, pulling him backward as he pushed upward to get out of the fuselage. Dalton dragged behind, still attached somehow.
“Come on!” shouted Powder, pulling. Whatever held the pilot down snapped free. Powder got his elbow on the metal side below the open doorway and pushed upward like a swimmer trying to rise from the bottom of a swimming pool. He managed to get out of the fuselage, dragging the pilot with him as they tumbled into the snow and ice and rocks. Powder got to his feet, clawing in the direction of the others as the mountain rumbled beneath him. Something hard hit him in the chest, but he kept moving, churning his legs and struggling to keep Dalton in the grip of his icy fingers. After about five or six yards he fell sideways into a fissure of earth, then lost his balance backward.
Something grabbed his scalp, yanking at it but losing its grip; nonetheless, it helped him regain his momentum, and he threw himself and the injured pilot forward, scrambling as a pair of arms caught his side and hauled him upward.
“Shit fuck,” he said, landing on the ground across the fissure near the rock, helped there by Liu and the copilot.
“You owe me ten bucks,” growled Brautman on the ground.
“Fuck yourself,” Powder said to him, easing Dalton to the ground.
“Want to try double or nothing?”
Despite the storm, they all started laughing.
Aboard Raven
19 February, 2024
RAVEN HAD BEEN OUTFITTED AS AN ELECTRONICS warfare and electronics intelligence or Elint test bed, and her sleek underbody included several long aerodynamic bulges containing high-tech antennae. Though not trained to squeeze the last ounce of reception out of the equipment, Bree knew enough to pinpoint the strongest areas of the PRC-90 transmission beacon as it bounced out of the rocks. The enhanced gear in Raven gathered different parts of the broadcast, in effect cobbling the full transmission from a series of broken shadows. The problem was making the PRC-90 hear them; the radios were strictly line-of-sight and the surrounding ridges gave only a narrow reception cone.
“I think they’re laughing,” Breanna told the others on the interphone.
“Laughing?” said Cheshire.
“Hang on.” She clicked back into the Guard frequency. “Charlie 7, this is Raven. Can you hear me?”
“Charlie 7. Got you Raven, honey.”
The crewman was definitely giggling.
“Honey?”
“Kind of wet down here,” responded whoever was handling the radio. “Send some umbrellas if you’re not picking us up.” Major Cheshire tapped Breanna’s shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“I think they’re suffering from oxygen depletion or something,” said Breanna, shrugging before giving the Coast Guard rescue helicopter a vector to the crash.
“Colgate acknowledges. Bitchin’ weather, but—we see them, we see them!” said the Coast Guard pilot, his voice suddenly jumping an octave. “We can get them as long as they stay in the clear there. We can get them!”
“Raven acknowledges. We’ll stand by.”
ZEN TOOK OFF HIS CONTROL HELMET AND LEANED BACK as Jennifer dialed the video feed from Hawk Four into a common channel, allowing the pilot and copilot to view the rescue on one of the multi-configurable screens upstairs. It looked almost—almost—easy from here, as the Dauphin helicopter battled against the wind, rain, and sleet, hovering only a few feet from the downed crew.
“Kick-ass,” said Zen as Colgate took on the last man and bolted upward. “Kick-ass.”
“Yeah,” said Jennifer.
C3 flew the two planes in an orbit at fifteen thousand feet, now below Raven as she stayed well out of the way of the rescue helicopter. Zen rolled his neck and stretched his shoulders, taking advantage of the break to relax a little. He took a long, slow pull on his Gatorade, getting ready to jump back into things.
He already had a grid marked out to resume the search for Madrone and the downed planes. Between this position and the spot where Kulpin had been recovered, they’d have a fairly decent idea where the wreckage ought to be.
Finding it in the storm, of course, wouldn’t be easy. Even in perfect weather, the wreckage of an airplane could take days if not weeks to find.
And as for Kevin—given that they hadn’t detected a beacon or a transmission from him, it seemed likely that he had gone down with the airplane.
“You’ve used more fuel than you planned,” Jennifer told him. “With the storm.”
“We’re okay,” said Zen. “You worried?”
“Not about you.”
The way she said that made him think, for the first time, that maybe Jennifer was a little sweet on Madrone.
“We’ll find him,” he told her.
“You think?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Did he seem—has he been acting odd lately?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“He came on to me just about attacked me—in the lab the other day. If Colonel Bastian hadn’t come in, I think he would’ve …” Her voice stopped. “He might have done something.”
“Kevin? Did you tell the colonel?”
“Well, no. I mean—I don’t know. It was all so … just weird.”
“Raven to Hawk Leader,” said Cheshire over the interphone, her voice muffled because the helmet was on his lap. “Ready to resume search?”
“Give me a minute,” he told her. He turned back to Jennifer. “Captain Madrone has been acting strange around you?”
“Just that time. He was like—I don’t know. It was like a different person.”
“I noticed something too,” said Jeff.
“Side effects of ANTARES?” she asked.
“Maybe.” Zen shrugged. He glanced down at his visor before putting his helmet back on.
Dreamland
19 February, 2043
THINGS AT DREAMLAND DIDN’T COME TO A STANDSTILL because of one crisis, however great it might be. And in fact, Dog believed that on the day Armageddon arrived he’d have a foot of paperwork to review and a dozen meetings to sit through before being cleared to see St. Peter.
It was only when the hunger pangs in his stomach echoed off the walls of his office that he realized it was nearly nine P.M. He made it as far as his doorway before being waylaid by Dr. Geraldo.
“I was just coming to see you,” she said. “I checked over in your quarters but you weren’t there.”
“Going for dinner,” said Dog. “Come on. You don’t have to eat, just talk,” said Dog.
“Actually, Colonel,” said Geraldo, grabbing his arm, “this really should be discussed in your office.”
Reluctantly, Dog led her back inside.
“I located Captain Madrone’s ex-wife,” said Geraldo.
“That was premature,” said Dog.
“I understand that,” said the scientist. “I thought, under the circumstances, it was appropriate.” Geraldo rushed on. “In any event, she seemed to want to talk. Did you know that Kevin had a daughter?”