“Daddy?”
Hey, babe, he thought. Sorry. I am so sorry.
“Captain Stockard. Stand down,” he said flatly.
“Shoot us down! There’s a nuke on the Flighthawk! Shoot us down!” said Breanna. She started to say something else, but the transmission was abruptly killed.
“Yes! I have them!” said Jennifer. She fed the coordinates up to the bridge.
“I have a lock! Five miles!” announced McAden. “Colonel?”
Shoot us down.
“Colonel?”
“Fire missiles,” said Dog. For maybe the first time in his life, for certainly the first time since joining the Air Force, a tear slid down his cheek.
Aboard Gal
8 March, 0832
As MADRONE REENTERED THETA, HE SAW THE LAUNCH warning. He felt the computer tracking the missiles as they approached, winced as one slipped out of the noise and headed clean for their hull.
Another ducked downward, confused, not a threat.
Tinsel, jammers, cut left, cut right, you’re too high, easy pickings.
Accelerate, accelerate. Left, right, left, left again, fool the sticky bastard.
Dreamland lay just ahead. No one ever will go through this again. Never.
The Scorpion stuttered in the air, a half mile from the fuselage. It had him nailed, but staying on its target had exhausted its fuel. Kevin lurched to the right as it tried one last burst of speed and then exploded.
The shock wave nearly threw Hawk Three into a spin.
It was then that the other missile picked itself off the deck and nailed Gal’s extreme starboard engine.
MINERVA FELT THE SHOCK AS THE AMERICAN MISSILE tore into the power plant on the right side of the wing. She spun around, nearly pirouetting out of the seat even though her restraints were snugged.
The plane stuttered in the air, but kept climbing. They passed through ten thousand feet, the Megafortress fighting off a yaw.
Gravity punched against her chest as the plane finally lurched into an invert and then began to fall from the sky. They would die now. She’d had the seats sabotaged and there was no escape.
She hadn’t wanted to escape, not really. There had been hours to persuade Madrone, or even betray him, to simply call the Americans and surrender. But she hadn’t.
Minerva felt a twinge of regret, a small wish that her fate had followed a different path. Then her body slammed back against the seat so abruptly that she nearly lost consciousness.
This is what death feels like, she thought to herself.
Then the Megafortress rolled level, and blood began returning to her brain.
Aboard M-6
8 March, 0838
“THEY’RE BEYOND US!” YELLED MCADEN. “EAST, AT two, no, call it one o’clock. Three miles.”
“Radio the position to Nellis air defense and the rest of the net,” said Dog, calmly throwing the Megafortress into the tightest bank he could manage to pursue Galatica. “Sidewinders up. Dr. Geraldo, if you want to take your shot, do it now.”
Aboard Gal
8 March, 0840
MADRONE SAW THE MEGAFORTRESS’S EMERGENCY panel in part of his brain. The Scorpion had taken the power plant completely off, but had done only light damage to the wing itself. One of the fuel tanks had been hit by shrapnel, but the bladder material had quickly self-sealed. As potent as the Scorpion was, the EB-52’s venerable airframe had survived considerably worse.
Madrone didn’t care much for history. He dropped into Hawk Three and plunged out of Galatica’s shadow. Dreamland lay thirty miles away.
Two F-15’s approached on a direct intercept, along with four F-5’s.
The Eagles were merely a nuisance. The F-5’s weren’t even that.
He accelerated toward his target.
“Kevin,” said a familiar voice in his earphones. “You have to give up. You’re sick. It’s ANTARES.”
Geraldo.
He killed the radio.
Aboard Sharkishki
8 March, 0848
MACK TRIED TO TELL THE NELLIS COWBOYS IN THEIR F-15’s that they were getting the sucker play, but the idiots wouldn’t listen. They charged at the Megafortress and the Flighthawk that suddenly leaped from its shadow like they were running down a piece-of-shit Chinese F-7/MiG-21 impostor.
A piece-of-shit F-7 wouldn’t have jumped from 250 knots to Mach 1.2 in less time than it took for the lead Eagle pilot to curse.
Stinking Madrone. He flew straight out of Zen’s book, no damn creativity at all. Though burdened by something that was increasing its radar signal for the F-15’s, the U/MF blew past the Eagles, made a feint for the F-5’s, which threw them in a tizzy, then ducked into the ground fuzz where no one could see him.
Mack waited for the U/MF to rise up behind the F-15’s. When it didn’t, he took a guess why—the larger return was being generated by a missile or bomb.
He had his passive sensors goosed to the max, but couldn’t find the little bastard. He tucked Sharkishki lower, nudging back in the direction of Dreamland.
Guy comes this far, in this direction, has to be thinking of nailing Dreamland.
That or Vegas. Maybe they’d cleaned Monkey Boy out at the blackjack tables and he wanted revenge.
Mack might take a piece of that himself. He zipped over Interstate 15 at five hundred miles an hour. Trucks and cars veered every which way, the drivers obviously freaking.
Wimps. He had plenty of clearance, at least a good eighteen inches. Maybe even twenty.
Aboard Galatica
8 March, 0853
BREANNA PUSHED AT THE STICK, THE PLANE SWIMMING sideways in the air.
Why weren’t they dead? Had Minerva been bluffing? What could be so magical about ten thousand feet if there wasn’t a bomb in the plane.
Maybe hitting that altitude simply armed it.
Shit.
There was no time to curse herself. She’d lost an engine, maybe part of a control surface. She didn’t trust the flight computer and had no copilot. Breanna would have to do everything herself.
Assuming she didn’t blow up. And assuming Minerva didn’t take out her knife and slit her throat.
Aboard Gal
8 March, 0855
JEFF LAY ON HIS BACK, HIS HEAD FLOATING SOMEWHERE in a black ball of fur that filled the Megafortress’s lower deck. He heard Madrone grunting above him, working the Flight-hawk toward its target. He tried to push up, but pain shot through him. His chest and upper spine felt as if they had caught fire. He flopped back, overcome by the fear that not just his legs but every inch of him was paralyzed.
No, he told himself, I’m not giving up. Fight! Fight!
But no part of him moved.
THE TARGETING SCREEN TOOK OVER MADRONE’S MIND. Numbers drained off the right side, slipping into the hole where the rest of his life had already washed away.
He had to hit the second air shaft on the target, and he had to hit it just right. But that was the beauty of the Brazilian missile. It could be steered very precisely.
The bomb would only destroy the top portion of the lab. A second reinforced layer protected the computer itself. But they’d never get around the radiation. They’d wait a hundred years, maybe more.
The numbers drained away. The Flighthawk’s pipper began to pulse, and the targeting bar went to yellow, ready.
He was now thirty seconds from his target. Time to unsafe the bomb, allowing the trigger to be activated as soon as the missile’s engine ignited.
As he started to give the command, something told him to watch his back.
ZEN’S RIGHT BOOT LAY AGAINST THE CORD THAT connected to the helmet. If he could kick it, he could knock it loose, knock if off Kevin’s head.