Nerve Center

I am in control, he told himself. He visualized himself sitting in Hawkmother’s cockpit. He pulled back on the yoke, pushing the plane away from the ocean. The plane responded easily, pushing her nose up in the rapid climb he set.

Climb to twenty thousand feet and refuel. Then find a civilian flight path. Have the computer keep the Flighthawks close to the 777, where they would be invisible.

Find a civilian flight to impersonate. Refuel.

The first thing he tried was tapping into the Mexican civilian control network. He thought there would be a database of flights, and that the Boeing’s flight computer could somehow access it. But if that was possible, he couldn’t find the right hook; his mind clogged and the best he could do was use the radio, talking directly to the tower at Hermosilla—a comical exchange of ¿Qué? after ¿Qué?

Then he got a better idea. He monitored transmissions from flights taking off from the airport, listening for call signs and then asking C3 to identify the plane types. He wanted something similar to the 777 flying southward.

After several minutes, he found a 707 bound for Mexico City—AirTeknocali 713. It was a cargo plane, and its course took it over the Sierra Madres. Adjusting the Boeing’s flight path to trail it was accomplished with a nudge.

Refueling the Flighthawks was equally easy. The Boeing extended the tail boom. The first buffet of turbulence off the big plane’s airfoil pushed the nose of Hawk One down, but Madrone found that the eddy helped hold the small plane in place; if he backed the engine of the U/MF off quickly as he approached, the nose of the plane moved to the nozzle like iron shavings to a magnet.

The Mexican plane, meanwhile, lumbered ahead, rising to 28,000 feet but barely pushing three hundred knots.

Madrone couldn’t make it to Mexico City, but that was just as well. There’d be too many questions there, and people expecting AirTeknocali. He found a smaller airfield nearer the coast, Tepic.

He looked to the right, examining the Boeing’s controls. He pushed the throttle bar gently, then edged the control yoke to the left, getting onto the exact path of the Mexican plane, though he was about five thousand feet lower.

He looked left, climbing into the Flighthawks. He punched them out of the 777’s shadow, felt the rush as their engines began to accelerate. The planes’ relatively small power plants couldn’t take them much beyond Mach 1.2, but they were considerably faster than AirTeknocali 713 and infinitely more maneuverable.

The Mexican plane grew in Hawk One’s visual display. C3 began giving him readings on its bearing and speed, then realized what he was doing.

“Intercept in eighty-five seconds,” the computer told him.

He pushed the two Flighthawks into a spread, their wings separated 131 feet, exactly an inch outside the Boeing’s.

Until the last moment, Madrone intended only to scare the pilot of AirTeknocali 713 into changing course. He had a vague notion of forcing the pilot far inland, spooking him long enough so there was no possibility of him interfering. Concentrating on flying had calmed Kevin somehow, removed the pain to a faraway place, focused his thoughts. But rage seized him as he rode the Flighthawks toward the wings of the cargo jet. A claw grabbed for the back of his head; he heard a jaguar or another big cat growling behind him. The anger at losing his daughter, the anger at being betrayed by the Army, by the people at Dreamland, by everyone, boiled into its scream.

Madrone flashed inches from the windshield of the Mexican jet with Hawk One, then took Hawk Two so close the wing scraped the cockpit glass, breaking it. The Mexican plane bolted upward, then nosed hard toward the ground, its pilot jerking hard on the stick as his windshield exploded and the force of the escaping air sucked at his clothes. Madrone rolled the Flighthawks downward, his mind between the two cockpits, flying them as one plane, flying them as if they were his hands. He was a giant, a vengeful god seeking revenge against all who had tried to hurt him.

The 707—their 707—flailed helplessly, trying to escape his grasp. As the pilot or copilot radioed a Mayday, Madrone shot Hawk One back across their path. The visual input from the robot plane caught the cockpit. The pilot’s seat was empty. The other man cried, eyes bulging as the jowls of his cheeks distorted with the violent gravity and atmospheric pressures.

The plane yawed into a spin.

Madrone pulled the Flighthawks back, rage spent. He told C3 to take the planes back to Hawkmother, then rushed away from them and their inputs, not wanting to know what happened to AirTeknocali 713, not daring to see the copilot’s tears as the plane crashed into the mountain.

From Hawkmother’s cockpit, he radioed Tepic and told him he had a fuel emergency.

He used English, but the response came in Spanish. He was cleared in to land.

As he approached. someone on the ground radioed him frantically. Was he AirTeknocali 713?

Yes, he said.

But the radar showed he was something else.

He’d turned the identifier off, at least.

He had no time to figure out if there was a way to spoof the radar or to puzzle out a proper response. Madrone was committed now. The fear and excitement of landing, the danger—it all calmed him, helping him concentrate. He didn’t worry about red tinges reappearing at the edge of his brain, or fear the bizarre dreams and startling metaphors ANTARES imposed on his thoughts. He simply flew.

The flight computer walked him into the airport. The strip was short—they’d have to go right into reverse thrust.

Doable. A good wind had kicked up to hit him in the nose. No problem here.

He jumped back to the Flighthawks. Madrone put them in a very low and slow orbit over the waves. They would be just barely within control range when he landed, but there was no one nearby to spot them.

What would they do if there was trouble? They had no shells in their ca

He could crash them into his enemies, burn the bastards to hell.

No. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. That wasn’t him. He’d felt bad even for the Iraqis after they’d killed them in the tanks.

Madrone found himself in the tower again, the storm flashing above him. He took a long breath, but it didn’t disappear. Someone cried below. There was a growl—the guttural yap of a jungle cat approaching its helpless prey. A jaguar about to strike.

Christina!

“I’m coming,” he told her. “I’m coming.”

He fell into Hawkmother’s cockpit. The plane settled down perfectly toward the runway, guided by the autopilot. Dreamland’s modifications to the airfoil allowed the plane to slow to seventy-seven knots without stalling; she could have stopped in half the distance.

The tower controller gave him a command. Madrone concentrated on steering, forcing everything else away. He spotted a plane being serviced near a hangar at the far end of the access ramp. He told the computer to take him there, felt a twinge of pain, but nonetheless realized his directions were being followed. His thoughts ransacked the computer, desperately searching for information on how to refuel the plane.

The onboard computer did not appear to hold the ground refueling procedures, but a schematic of the aircraft showed him where the main refueling panel was located on the fuselage.

He jumped to the Flighthawks—no one was nearby.

He jumped back to Hawkmother, saw from the video feed that a crew was refueling an old DC-9 in front of a warehouse-like building at the right side of the ramp.

The tower tried again to contact him.

He had to get out of the plane and refuel it himself. He’d have to convince them somehow to help.

To do that, though, he had to leave Theta and ANTARES.

The big Boeing rolled slowly to a stop. He couldn’t see the maintenance people working on the DC-9 anymore.