“We’ll be at the next mark in, oh, call it three minutes,” Bree told him.
“Looking good,” said Jeff, sliding on his Flighthawk control helmet.
“Sitting that close to the radar,” joked Chris, “you won’t need birth control tonight.”
“Ha-ha,” said Jeff.
“Fuel burn?” said Bree in her most businesslike voice.
Jeff jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Three and began descending, watching the radar plot on the left side of the screen supplied by T/APY-9. The feeds were being recorded and the diagnostics were all automated, but Zen didn’t see the point of having the damn thing on and not using it. Smaller and stealthier than a normal fighter, the Flighthawk had a radar cross-section about the size of a sparrow’s, but the T/APY-9 followed it easily as it slid downward. Jeff’s rudimentary controls allowed him two views—full and close-in—as well as query and non-query mode, which attempted to identify targets through ticklers or ident gear. The finished product would be able to fall back on a profile library for planes that didn’t respond, a feature C3 already had.
Close-in mode painted the Flighthawk at two thousand feet AGL, five miles distant, which was the test spec.
“Gal, I’m going to push Hawk Three out to ten miles and then dial the radar down to ten percent, see if we can follow it. Give the radar a real run. What do you say?”
“Simulating a hundred-mile scan?”
“Two hundred radius, give or take.”
“That’s going to put you outside the test range, Hawk Leader.”
“Roger that.”
“Wilderness area,” said Chris. “Sometimes they run tour helicopters up across the lake and around the mountain.”
“I’ll scan it first,” Jeff said. He clicked the Flighthawk’s radar into long-range search and scan while lowering his airspeed, making sure the air ahead was clear. Then he clicked the tactical AWACS radar’s plot into long-range view as well.
Clear.
He tucked the Flighthawk on her right wing, nudging toward a vast orange-colored plateau. There were times when he flew that the universe seemed to open up; he forgot he was sitting in the belly of a lumbering bomber, totally absorbed in the experience projected on his visor. He forgot about everything and just flew.
There was a valley about a mile south. Ducking into its recesses would give the T/APY a real workout. Jeff nudged the fuel slider on the underside of the control stick, picking up speed before plunging with a glorious roll down into the canyon.
A rock outcropping jagged off the side ahead. He had to pull hard left. He tried hitting the rudder pedals, didn’t get a response.
Of course not. His legs were useless. He had no rudder pedals.
Damn, he thought to himself, I haven’t done that in months.
ANTARES.
They were still weaning him from the drugs. Sometimes he thought of saving all the pills, taking them together, seeing if that might do it.
Zen pushed the idea away, concentrating on the flight, but he’d lost the magic. He began to climb mechanically, easing back toward Galatica as the bar showing the signal strength edged toward critical.
The Flighthawk was fat on the radar. But there was something else on the screen, at the far edge, something low and very small.
Not blue, as a civilian plane should have been coded by the gear.
Red with a black bar.
Another Flighthawk.
A spoof or bizarre echo.
Another contact swallowed it. A large civilian plane, flying very low, less than a hundred feet from the ground.
Jeff pressed the ident gear, but the contacts had disappeared.
“Bree, change course, go to 0145,” he said, naming a vector to the southeast. “Go!”
“Jeff?”
“I need you to snap on that course,” he said.
The Boeing complied, but the contact was lost. Jeff told C3 to put Hawk Three back into Trail One, then slid his control helmet up and reached to the other panel. But he couldn’t remember the right sequence to get the radar feed to replay off the test equipment.
“On course,” said Breanna.
“Chris—a hundred, hundred and fifty miles ahead on this vector. There any military installations?”
“You’ve got us straight on for Mount Trumble and the Grand Canyon,” said Chris.
“Beyond that.”
“Have to look at the paper map.”
“What’s the story, Zen?” asked Bree.
“I think I picked up another Flighthawk.”
“Jeff, no way. The radar probably just had a shadow or something.”
“I think we have to check it out. We have the fuel, right?”
Breanna didn’t answer.
“Nothing on the map,” said Chris.
“No Army base?”
“Well, I mean, how far do you want me to look?” asked the copilot.
“Two hundred miles.”
“Zen—”
“We have to check this out, Bree. The radar picked up a Flighthawk.”
“At two hundred miles?”
“It was flying in front of a larger plane. I think it’s Kevin.”
“Geraldo said she thought he would try and hit Los Alamos. If he’s still alive. And crazy.”
“We have to check it out,” he told her.
There was another long pause.
“Gal Leader concurs,” she said finally. “Notifying Dreamland Tower. I’ll see if there are any other government facilities along the route.”
“In the general area. It could be north of our course,” he added, picturing a pair of Flighthawks hugging the terrain en route to a target.
“Copy that.”
Aboard Hawkmother
Over Hulapi Mountains, Western Arizona
7 March, 1120 (1020 Dreamland)
THE GRAY-STRIPED JAGUAR STALKED BACK AND FORTH as the wind gathered force, the trees stirring and then shaking. The cat stopped, looking upward as it scented danger.
But it was too late. Madrone opened his talons wide and caught his enemy behind the neck, twisting with a sharp jerk so hard that the sharp claws severed the head completely from the body.
The first Avibras FOG-MPN crashed through the roof and down into the floor of the reception area of the DOE building at Skull Valley; it cleared a large hole to the basement. Ma-drone managed a quick correction on the trail missile, getting it cleanly through the two holes and into the basement laboratory area where he believed Theo Glavin would be. Hawk One, which had launched the missiles, shot wildly to the right as a massive secondary explosion rocked the sky. Madrone pitched the plane upward, his sensors temporarily blinded by the massive explosion of a pressurized helium tank.
He’d blown it. Even with his modifications, using the short-range weapons had been a tremendous mistake. Minerva had been wrong—she’d tricked him somehow, keeping him from his revenge.
Madrone felt himself falling from the plane, tumbling toward the parched desert. He was out of Theta, about to die.
I just want to be left alone, he thought. I want to be at peace. I don’t want to be a robot—I don’t want revenge or to kill anyone. I just want peace.
I want to die.
Christina stood before him, crying.
But warm hands clamped around his shoulders, and Minerva whispered in his ear. I want you. I want you.
Even though he did nothing to initiate it, even though he didn’t think of his Theta metaphor or try to control his breathing—Madrone snapped back into Theta, back in control of the Flighthawks.
Hawk One circled above the roaring flames of the Skull Valley DOE facility. Hawk Two, still carrying its missiles, hit its IP two miles from the target, approximately six miles from Hawkmother.
The security shack was the only part of the facility left intact. Madrone zeroed in on it from Hawk Two and fired one of the Avibras FOG-MPNs. As the missile sped toward its target, he saw a small culvert on the roadway about a half mile south. He targeted it and pickled, wiping out the only approach to the lab.