Nerve Center

The Brazilian made no effort to stop her. She seemed to be in a trance.

Brea

Still staring at Lanzas, Bree put the headset on.

“Bree.”

“Jeff? Are you okay?”

“We landing?”

“I think we’re rigged to explode. I’m not sure how, though—whether it’s a timer or some sort of altimeter bomb.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t know if Lanzas is lying or not. But she was awfully worried about going over ten thousand feet.”

“We did that already.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I want you to eject.”

“What about you?”

“Just do it.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jeff. Besides, she probably sabotaged the seats. The ones below were monkeyed with.”

He didn’t answer. She could hear him groaning and shoving his body around; he sounded like he did in the morning when he pulled himself from bed and went to the bathroom by crawling across the floor.

“How much fuel do we have?” he said finally.

“About twenty minutes worth. Maybe a little less. We’re on three engines,” she added. “A Scorpion took one off.”

“That ought to stretch things a bit, no?” he asked.

His voice was so deadpan, she wasn’t entirely sure he was trying to make a joke.

Aboard M-68 March, 0915

“GALATICA, THIS IS DREAMLAND M-6. Do YOU READ ME? Galatica, can you hear me? Please acknowledge.”

Dog listened as both McAden and Geraldo took turns trying to hail the plane. They were about ten minutes out of Dreamland.

His fatigue was starting to set in. Fatigue and worry, mostly about his daughter.

“Dreamland M-6, this is Galatica,” said Brea

“Bree,” said Dog.

“Hey, Daddy. What the hell are you doing in a Megafortress?”

“I’m flying it,” he said. “Bree—the nuke.”

“On the Flighthawk.”

“Mack Smith splashed it,” said Bastian.

“Mack?”

“Insubordinate snot disobeyed orders, thank God,” said Dog. “Now listen, little girl, you stayed out past your bedtime and I’ve come to bring you home. Set up for Runway One.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that. We have a bit of a situation here.”

Aboard Galatica

8 March, 0925

IN JEFF’S OPINION, MINERVA WAS BLUFFING.

On the other hand, nothing she’d done until now had been a bluff.

“Altimeter or timer?” Bree asked.

“Timer,” said Jeff.

“Then we should land right now.”

“Unless it’s an altimeter. What’s the lowest we’ve been?”

“Hold.”

Jeff listened as Rap paged back through the logs.

“Three hundred feet. But if it wasn’t armed until ten thousand, it could be anywhere below 4,500, I think. Minerva’s still catatonic. What about Kevin?”

“I knocked him out. He wouldn’t know anyway. She used him.”

“So what’s your call?” Bree asked, her voice as breezy as if she were asking about a basketball bet. “Altimeter or timer?”

“Have to be a radar altimeter.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise you could defeat it by landing someplace high. Lanzas would have thought about that, and suggested it as a way out. Do you know where it is?”

“If I knew where it was, don’t you think I’d run back and find it?”

“I didn’t realize you had a blowtorch handy,” said Zen sarcastically. “Must be in the tail, where they repaired the plane. Maybe we can spoof the beacon.”

“Jeff, even if you were right and you could find a way to do that, it wouldn’t eliminate a timer.”

“Well, let’s take a shot at finding it. Check the course that Kevin programmed in. See how low he was going to go before making the attack.”

“That was the three hundred feet.”

“Probably below that triggers it.”

“Well, great, that’s an easy jump.”

If it did have a radar altimeter, there probably would be a way to spoof it, Jeff decided. He could use a Flighthawk to detect it, or maybe examine the hull for a hot spot.

Except that he didn’t have a Flighthawk. But Je

“It’s in native mode, orbiting above Dreamland,” Je

“Not a problem.”

As he waited, Jeff glanced over at Kevin, slumped in his seat. Zen had grabbed and punched him hard as he leaned over him; blood curled from his nose and ear. But for some reason Jeff thought it was more than the blow that had knocked his friend senseless. The fatigue of these past days, the drugs, fear, and maybe the realization of what he’d done—they must be at least as responsible for knocking him out as Jeff’s fist.

Zen’s wrist had swollen, either from the punch or the fall. He winced, but still managed a smooth handoff of the Flight-hawk. He took the U/MF from its orbit and swung up toward the EB-52.

Odd to fly the plane from the panels without his flight helmet, almost as if he were working by remote control. Which, of course, he was. All the time.

“Blew that engine clean off,” said Zen.

“B-52’s don’t go down,” said Bree. “I can tell you stories. Major Cheshire has a whole gallery of damaged BUFFs that landed in Vietnam with half the plane shot away.”

Jeff tried infrared as he closed in, focusing on the tail section. Maybe there was a little part of the right stabilizer that wasn’t as hot as the rest, maybe not. The repair threw everything off anyway.

“Going to put the fuzz detector on full,” said Zen. “Jeff, it’s not going to make any difference.”

“Knowledge is power. Just hold us level until the tanker gets here.”

“I have an idea. Let’s break off the stabilizer and land.”

“What?”

“Let’s assume the bomb is there, okay? What do we do? We can’t eject, we can’t land. We twiddle our thumbs for the next twenty years—or twenty seconds, until the timer nails us.

Jeff nudged the Flighthawk closer. There were intermittent signals.

“I think it is in the tail. Where they repaired the plane.”

“Great. Snap it off and let’s go home. I’m getting hungry.”

“How do you want me to snap it off?”

“Shoot it off with the Flighthawk.”

“You’re out of your mind, girlie.”

“Don’t call me girlie while we’re working.”

Zen pulled up the armament panel. The U/MF was down to two slugs.

Not that he had intended on using them.

“Don’t have enough bullets, Bree.”

“Slice through it,” she said. “Fly right into it. This way we’ll be sure nothing else hits us.”

“Rap, even if I managed to do that, how are you going to land without a tail?”

“You know how many times I’ve done that?”

“Zero.”

“Hell, it was in pieces when I landed in Brazil. I’ve done it once a week on the simulator. Jeez, even my father can do it.”

“I’m not worried about him.”

“You have a better idea?”

HE DIDN’T.

Brea

As they crossed into Dreamland’s restricted airspace, she leveled at a thousand feet. The range was cleared; they had nothing but empty lake bed for miles.

Was snapping off the stabilizer better than letting the bomb explode?

Depended entirely on how big the bomb was. And where it was. And luck. And how clean a break Jeff got.

Three hundred feet was really too high to do this.

Small bomb wouldn’t do much damage. Except for the debris and shrapnel and fire.

She could land without one stabilizer. Hell, she could land without the whole tail.

Of course, if Jeff missed and somehow took out the wing as well …

“We’ll get ready to land,” she told her husband. “You have to hit me when we’re at three hundred and fifty feet.”

“Shit, Bree, we’ll roll right into the ground.”

“No way.”

“Bullshit.”

“We will if you miss and crash into the rest of the plane.”

“Bree.”