Jeffrey. Her desire raged and she reached toward him. A wave pushed her to his chest, but then pulled the boat back; she struggled to push up, to throw herself around him, but Stoner was steadying himself in a crouch at the edge of the raft, trying to stand, or at least squat, waving.
“Balance me,” he told her without looking, his voice a whisper. “On the other end.”
She went to do so.
“No, they’re not going to see us. Paddle, we’ll have to paddle,” he said.
“The sharks,” she said, her words barely a whisper in her own ears. Before she could repeat them louder, he had slipped into the water/
“Wave,” he said. “Shout.”
“The sharks.”
“Wave, jump, anything. Get their attention.”
The idea came to Zen only after it was too late:
Block the transmission, kill the feed. No one will know.
It was absurd and murderous, and once it occurred to him he couldn’t forget it: anger, jealousy, and shame surging together. But it was too late, fortunately too late — Dreamland had the feed, the radar had a good lock, the GPS data was now being fed not just to Iowa’s flight deck but to the Whiplash Osprey.
Too late, thank God.
Zen took the UMB from the computer, altering the course and going over each move carefully with Dreamland. There was a minor problem in one of the engines.
The scientists wanted him to give back control, send the plane back to Dreamland.
Not yet. Not until the mission was complete.
He used the rocket, engine five, took the massive robot to 140,000 feet, setting up a ten-mile orbit. The computer cut the flight path into a perfect circle.
The Taiwanese trawler spotted earlier was headed in their general direction. Danny and his Osprey were about a half hour away. If it changed its course a little, the spy ship could reach them in fifteen minutes, maybe a little less.
“Dreamland Command, what do you think of giving the position to the trawler, see if they can pick them up?” said Zen.
“Zen, this is Bastian.
“Colonel.”
“Danny’s en route. The Chinese are tracking the trawler. We’re in contact with the Kitty Hawk on the eastern side of the Chinese fleet; one of the Hawkeyes is tracking the Chinese CAP. They think two planes from the carrier are vectoring toward that area. They’re a bit far away at the moment—”
“Hold on.” Zen went to the UMB’s native radar, bringing up the search-and-scan panel. Look-down mode was limited; the unit had been optimized for flight requirements and, at this altitude and distance, the Chinese planes didn’t show up.
“I’m going to have to take your word, because they’re not on my screen,” Zen told him. “Is it the CAP patrol?”
“Negative. They’re going out to that spy ship at a good clip, and very low,” said the colonel. “They may be armed with antiship missiles. Wait a second.”
The line went dead a second.
“Jeff, at their present course and speed they’re going to be on the Osprey as well. They should find her in about sixty seconds. Kitty Hawk is sending some Tomcats out there. They’re a good distance off, though.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks for the heads-up.”
Why had she kissed him? Why?
The ship was bigger. Breanna thought her shouts were bringing it closer, but it was impossible to tell.
Stoner was starting to tire. He punctuated his kicks with rests on the side of the raft the grew longer and longer.
The sharks must be nearby still. They’d hear the splashes, come for him.
She couldn’t see that again.
“Help!” she shouted with her hoarse voice. “Hey! Hey!”
There was an airplane in the distance, a jet — two or three maybe.
A pair of gray hawks broke over the horizon, thundering between them and the ship.
F-14’s? Or Sukhois?
The two planes rode up, then banked toward the south.
“Hey!” she shouted again, though her voice was so hoarse it was barely louder than a whisper. “Here! Hey! Hey!”
“We’re being challenged,” the pilot told Danny. “Pretty bad English.”
“What are they saying?”
“That we’re in protected airspace,” said the pilot.
“We’re being targeted,” said the copilot. “Trying to spike us, the bastards.”
“Shit,” said Danny.
“They’re just trying to scare us,” said the pilot.
“They’re doing a decent job,” said the copilot.
“Tell them we’re going to pick up survivors and split,” Danny said.
“I have twice,” said the pilot. “Here they come. Everybody hold on, it’s going to be close.”
As soon as Zen heard Danny tell Dog what was going on over the Dreamland circuit, he tucked his wing and plunged toward the sea. It was a mistake, a serious mistake — he wasn’t flying a Flighthawk, and the B-5 flipped awkwardly through a roll and then headed straight downward, speed increasing quickly. An alert sounded and Fichera back at Dreamland said something in his ear about letting the computer’s emergency protocol take over. Zen ignored the scientist and the computer; he held the stick gently, letting the plane’s aerodynamics assert themselves. the nose began to lift, and not the trick was to control it, not muscling it down, or shoving it around the way he would push the small Flighthawk, but gracefully, the way you rode an overemotional show horse.
The plane slid into a turn that recorded nine Gs against the fuselage. He took a slow breath, trying to hold his instinct back, trying to baby the hurtling, accelerating mass into a controlled flight path.
Flying the UMB was more thought and perseverance than muscle. Flying was always that for him now, without muscles in his legs, without his legs at all.
Without love either, it seemed.
The idea made him hesitate. He had the Sukhois now on the video; they’d turned south to intercept the Osprey. Zen tightened his hand around the joystick. He was at eighty thousand feet, still descending, coming through seventy-nine, seventy-eight, seventy-seven — the ladder rolled downward at a steady pace now, more controlled.
The video feed from B-5’s nose showed the Osprey at his far right, moving so slowly by comparison it seemed to be standing still on the water.
The Sukhois were on his left, not standing still—530 knots, according to the information synthesized by the computer. They were positioned to flash by, turn, run up the back of the Osprey.
I thought these bastards were going after the ship, for cryin’ out loud.
He wouldn’t reach them in time — he was still a good sixty seconds away.
He had to move faster. Engine five, the rocket motor?
Too much, too hard to control.
He needed the scramjets now.
“Computer, Engines three and four. Accelerate.”
“Engines are locked off until Flight Stage Three,” responded the plane.
“Computer, initiate Flight Stage Three.”
“Parameters are incorrect.”
“Override, damn it.”
“Authorization code required.”
“Authorization Zed-Zed-Zed,” said Zen.
The Sukhois had flown past the Osprey and were now turning.
“Active engines three and four. Accelerate to marked intercept at fastest possible speed.”
It was a bit too much. A half-second after the computer acknowledged, the jet whipped forward. He started to turn and managed to shoot between the Sukhois and their target at Mach 2.3, dipping up and then flying between the two planes. His separation from the first plane was less than fifty feet — hair-raisingly close, though it had no effect on the UMB.