Nerve Center

“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 ante

“I think they’re laughing,” Brea

“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 Brea

“What’s up?”

“I think they’re suffering from oxygen depletion or something,” said Brea

“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 Je

“Kick-ass,” said Zen as Colgate took on the last man and bolted upward. “Kick-ass.”

“Yeah,” said Je

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 pla

“We’re okay,” said Zen. “You worried?”

“Not about you.”

The way she said that made him think, for the first time, that maybe Je

“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 Je

“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 di

“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?”

“I’m not sure I recall that,” Bastian said. “I know he was divorced. How old is she?”

“She died a year before he was divorced.” Geraldo shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her fingers smoothing her stiff gray skirt. “It was five years ago, while he was working on a project for the Army through Los Alamos. The project itself was in the Glass Mountains in southern Texas. He worked there for a while, before she was born, and then immediately afterwards before going back to Los Alamos. His wife actually didn’t know what the project was. Kevin is very good at keeping secrets.”

Bastian nodded, sensing that that was a severe understatement.

“I’ve checked myself,” continued Geraldo. “It’s still codeword-classified, and I haven’t been privy to the details, but it dealt with nuclear weapons in some way. My guess, given his background, was that it had to do with tactical artillery, since I can’t imagine that it would involve TOW missiles. It’s probably irrelevant, except to Kevin.”

Soon after his daughter was born, Geraldo continued, she had been diagnosed with a rare but always fatal disease, anaplastic cancer of the thyroid. Highly malignant, the cancer began in the thyroid gland but spread quickly throughout the body. In her case, it had metastasized in her brain, lungs, and liver before being discovered.