Текст книги "Nerve Center"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

He looked left. He was in Hawkmother.

Full throttle. Go. Go.

The fuel truck exploded. Though it was by now several hundred yards away, the shock wave nearly pushed Hawk-mother off the narrow ramp. Her right wheels nudged the soft dirt.

He pulled back on the stick. The 777, not yet at eighty knots, far too slow to take off, hesitated. The safety protocols screamed.

He swept them away with his hand, demanded more thrust. The armored car began to fire its cannon at him.

Now, he told the plane, and she lifted into the sky.

Dreamland

19 February, 1705 local

JEFF UNDID HIS RESTRAINTS AND LEANED BACK IN HIS seat as Raven rolled toward her hangar. The day had been impossibly long, and he’d had nothing to eat beyond the sludge from Ong’s zero-gravity Mr. Coffee. But the way his stomach was roiling, Zen was glad it was empty.

They had found and retrieved the copilot with help of SAR assets from Nellis, working at long distance. But the storm over the mountains had whipped into a fury as they worked, hampering even Raven and its sophisticated sensors. The pilot and Madrone were still missing, and no one had found the wreckage of Hawkmother or the Flighthawks.

“Major, you need a hand?” asked Ong behind him.

Poor egghead looked like he was ready to fall down on the deck and sleep there.

“Nah,” Jeff told him, swinging his chair out from its mounting. “I’m fine.”

“Tight squeeze,” said Ong.

“Yeah. You should see me trying to get into a phone booth.” He leaned forward, then levered his arms against the low-slung seat rests, maneuvering his fanny backward into the wheelchair. He supported his entire weight with his left hand, then walked it back a bit before sliding into the chair. He’d done it maybe a thousand times, but tonight fatigue made him slip a bit, and he nearly fell out as he plopped backward. He rolled to the hatch slowly, attaching the chair to the special clamps on the ventral ladder that allowed him to use the specially designed escalator.

Colonel Bastian was waiting on the tarmac. “So?”

“Dalton and Madrone are still missing. We think we have the area narrowed down,” said Jeff.

“McMann told me they saw a chute,” said Bastian. Colonel McMann was in charge of the search-and-rescue assets that had been scrambled from Edwards.

Zen nodded. “The infrareds didn’t find anything there. They were going to wait until morning to send some PJs down unless there’s a radio transmission. Bitchin’ terrain.”

Bastian nodded. “No use going out in this weather in the dark.”

“Crew’s beat,” agreed Zen, even though he and the others had debated going back out.

“Dr. Geraldo tells me you want to rejoin ANTARES.”

“Technically, I never left,” said Jeff.

“It’s a tight schedule until we get another Flighthawk pilot.”

“I realize that,” Jeff told him.

Bastian nodded, but the silence remained awkward.

“I thought I’d go downstairs and see if they made anything out from the mission data,” said Jeff. “See if we can turn up anything. I had Ong transmit the data when we were inbound.”

“Yeah, okay. Look, Zen …”

Bastian touched his shoulder, but didn’t say anything. In the dim morning twilight he suddenly looked very old.

“I’m okay, Dad,” he told his father-in-law.

Bastian nodded, then took his hand away. Zen gripped the top of his wheels.

“Dad?” said Dog, slightly bemused. Jeff had never called Bastian “Dad” before.

“Don’t get used to it, Colonel.”

“I don’t know that I’d want to.” Bastian gave him a tired smile, and waved him on.

Computer Lab

19 February, 1715

JENNIFER GLEASON SPREAD THE PRINTOUTS ACROSS the black lab tables, trying to see if there was a pattern to gibberish that had inserted itself into C3’s resource-allocation data.

Of course there was a pattern; there had to be a pattern. But what was it? Her diagnostic routines hadn’t a clue. Baffled, she decided to get them all on a printout in one place, mark them, and see if anything occurred to her. Scrounging tape and a marker, she laid out the pages of the printout, then began the laborious process of highlighting the interesting sections.

Following their usual protocol, the entire test session had been recorded on the diagnostic computers. The flight computer’s different functions were logged as they were monitored in real time, tracking flight commands and the U/MF’s responses. She also had a hard record of C3’s processing and memory allocations, which corresponded with the various instructions and inputs on the log. Specific commands—takeoff, for example—always resulted in a certain pattern of resource allocations, in the same way human brain waves corresponded to certain actions.

The correspondences were all there, a perfect set of fingerprints showing that C3 and the Flighthawks had worked flawlessly, at least until the point when Raven lost its link with Hawkmother over the Sierra Nevadas.

But the diagnostic program that she’d run to check for the correspondences had discovered a large number of anomalies in the allocations. Sparse at first, they’d increased dramatically by the time contact was lost.

They were short too, and didn’t correspond to actual or virtual addresses in the memory or processing units. But they were definitely there—as her yellow marker attested. Jennifer climbed onto the table, bending low to mark them. She was about three quarters of the way through when the door to the lab slid open.

“Hey, Jen,” said Zen, rolling in.

“Hi,” she said, continuing to mark the sheets.

“What are you doing on the table?”

“Cramming for the test,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Just a joke.” She lifted her knees carefully and slid off the table.

“Some view,” said Zen.

“If I’d have known you were coming I would have worn a miniskirt,” she said.

“Seriously, what are you doing?”

“Something strange happened with the Flighthawk control computer,” she said, explaining about the allocations.

“Maybe it’s just a transmission problem.”

“No way. We’ve done this a million times without anything like this showing up.”

“Not with ANTARES.”

“True.”

“This related to the crash?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Jennifer tugged a strand of hair back behind her ear. “I don’t see how. You have no idea what happened?”

“Kulpin thought the flight computer on the Boeing whacked out and somehow took over.”

“Hmmmph.”

“Possible?”

What if the gibberish were code from the Boeing’s computer pilot?

“Well?” asked Jeff.

“I uh, well, probably not,” she said. “We’ve never had that kind of problem with the autopilot before. It’s basically a subset of the systems we’ve used in the Megafortress.”

How could the Boeing’s command computer leak across into C3?

Through the interrupts they used for the video, and to coordinate the flight information. But the gateway and thus ANTARES were in the way.

Impossible.

Impossible?

“Jen?”

“I just thought of an odd theory,” she said, explaining it to him. Zen’s eyes began to glaze after the first sentence, so she cut it short. “I’ll have to review a few sessions to see if I’m on the right track. I’m not sure I’m right, but it might be a start.”

“Do you have anything that can help us now? For the search’?”

“Sorry.”

Jeff started to roll away.

“Jeff, if you can get the hard drives back, we’d have a much better chance to figure out what happened.”

“Figuring out what happened isn’t my priority at the moment,” he said. “I want to find Dalton and Madrone.”

“So do I.”

Aboard SAR Helicopter Charlie 7

Over Sierra Nevada Mountains

19 February, 1715

SERGEANT PERSE “POWDER” TALCOM LEANED AGAINST the door window of the Pave Low as the big helicopter struggled against the wind. The cloud hanging on the mountainside seemed like a massive bear, trying to protect her young.

“Fierce fuckin’ rain,” he groused to Sergeant Lee “Nurse” Liu, who was standing behind him. “I can’t fuckin’ see fuckin’ shit.”

“Sleet,” corrected Liu. “Some of it’s even snow.”

“Whatever.”

“Use Captain Freah’s visor.”

“Helmet’s too damn heavy.”

“Then I will.”

Powder gave his companion a scowl, then braced himself to fit the smart helmet and its high-tech visor over his head. Freah’s suggestion that they take the new device had seemed like a great idea—until Powder put it on in the transport out to Nellis. The helmet had been formed for the captain’s head. It scraped the hell out of Powder’s ears going on, but floated around freely like a bucket atop a water pump once on.

No wonder officers thought differently than normal human beings; their heads were shaped weird.

Normally, a Pave Low would ride with two officers—pilot and copilot—along with a pair of flight engineers and two crew members manning the guns. This craft, Charlie 7, had been flying nearly nonstop since before the crash, and was now on its third crew. Besides the pilots and the Dreamland volunteers as SAR personnel, it carried only one flight engineer, a staff sergeant named Brautman who had drunk at least four liter bottles of Coke since the Dreamland volunteers had come aboard forty-five minutes ago. He definitely had a caffeine buzz—his chin bobbed up and down constantly and his arms buzzed like a hummingbird’s wings. Brautman kept getting up and down, pacing back and forth between the rear of the flight deck and the rest of the cabin, so jittery Powder felt like laying him out with a shot to the jaw.

“There, right there,” said Liu, pointing to the ravine.

Powder flicked the visor into infrared mode. A brownish blob appeared at the lower left of the screen; the weather cut down greatly on the available detail, but there was definitely something warm down there.

“Get us the fuck down there,” Powder yelled to Brautman, who relayed the request to the pilot without the expletive.

“Too windy,” was the reply.

“Fuck that.” Sergeant Talcom took off the helmet, and then nearly lost it as turbulence rocked the helo. Liu grabbed the helmet and Powder tottered forward, grabbing at the bulkhead like a drunken sailor.

“You gotta get us fuckin’ down!” he yelled at the two men on the flight deck.

As a general rule, Air Force SAR helicopter pilots, and Pave Low jocks in particular, had boulder-sized balls. With the possible exception of their mamas, they weren’t scared of anything. This particular pilot had flown deep into Iraq during the Gulf War, and had a scar on his leg to prove he had done so under fire. But he shook his head.

“The storm is too much, night’s coming on, and that’s not a man down there,” he told Powder.

“How the fuck do you know?” demanded the sergeant.

“Because we’ve been looking at that spot for five minutes on the infrared.” answered the copilot, pointing to the Pave Low’s screen. A strong gust of wind caught the helicopter, and he snapped his head back to the front as the pilot steadied the craft. “The scope is clear,” he added. “No one’s there.”

“He’s on ours!” answered Powder. He jerked his thumb back toward Liu. “Or something is! I’m fuckin’ tellin’ yaour gear spotted something.”

“Look, Sergeant, you do your job, we’ll do ours,” said the copilot. “And watch your language when you’re talking to an officer.”

“Hey, fuck that,” grumbled Powder.

Liu squeezed next to him, the helmet on his head. The Whiplash crew members’ discrete-burst com sets didn’t interface with the Pave Low’s interphone, so he hadn’t heard the discussion.

“I see something,” he shouted to the others over the whine of the engines.

“We know,” said Powder.

“Not a person,” answered the copilot.

“I know,” said Liu. “But I have a theory.”

“What?” said Brautman.

“If that object below is the ejection seat, which I believe it must be, then perhaps the pilot came out nearby.”

No shit, thought Powder.

“In this storm, he would seek shelter,” continued Liu. “There are caves on the south side of the ravine.”

“We can look.” said the copilot, all of a sudden Mr. Compromise. He said something into his mouthpiece and the pilot began nodding his head.

“You’re a fuckin’ diplomat, you know that, Nurse?” Powder told Liu.

The wash of the motors drowned out Liu’s reply. The two Whiplash troopers resumed their posts at the windows, trying to scan through the heavy fog and drizzle.

The helicopter lurched sharply left, so quickly Talcom thought they were going in.

“Got something!” yelled the flight engineer.

Powder bent forward to look at the IR screen. A small greenish blob congealed at the bottom of the screen around other greenish blobs in a sea of fuzz.

“Our fuckin’ guy?” he asked Liu, who was scanning with the CIV.

“Something,” replied Nurse. “The rain and sleet hinder the sensors.”

The pilots agreed the only way to find out was to go down there. But between the wind and the ravine, the closest the helicopter could come after three attempts was twenty-five feet.

“Tell the pilot to hold the fuckin’ thing steady and we’ll fuckin’ rappel,” Powder told Brautman.

“That’s a hell of a fall,” said the flight engineer.

“I ain’t plannin’ on fuckin’ fallin,” said Powder. “Come on—it’s gettin’ fuckin’ dark. We gotta kick ass here.”

Brautman consulted with the pilots through his corn gear. “He’s up for it if you’re up for it.”

The helicopter stuttered against a wind shear.

“Fuckin’ damn, let’s kick ass.”

“Hey,” said Brautman, grabbing Talcom’s shoulder. “You sure?”

“Fuck you.”

Brautman laughed and shook his head.

“What?”

“You curse worse than anyone I’ve ever met”

“Fuck off.”

“Ten bucks says you can’t get through the rest of the mission without using the F word.”

Powder snorted. “Sure. Now let’s stop screwin’ around and do it. Liu, give me the damn helmet back and put on your own. Mama always told me never go out in a storm without a hat.”

The Pave Low reared sideways as the door slid open for Powder and Liu. The wash of wind, sleet, hail, and rain against Powder’s body felt like a tsunami, sending him off balance into the bulkhead behind the cockpit. The sergeant smacked the back of his helmet against the metal and rebounded like a cue ball with bottom English.

“Bitchin’ shit-ass weather,” said Powder, grabbing for the side of the door. He was careful not to use “fuck.” Ten bucks was ten bucks.

By the time he was three quarters of the way down the rope line, his thick weatherproof gloves were sopping wet. He managed to toe himself against a ledge six or seven feet over the cave Liu had spotted. The helo had descended a little further, but could hardly be called steady; one of the gyrations whipped him forward, and he just managed to avoid smashing his knee on the rocks. Leaning around the rope, Powder tried to see what the hell was below him—he didn’t want to be climbing through this shit for a lost mountain lion.

He couldn’t see much of anything except some very nasty-looking rocks. And sheets of rain, sleet, and snow.

Slowly, he worked himself down far enough to leave the rope. The helicopter began drifting backward as he went; he twisted and put one arm out to keep himself from smacking against the rock face opposite the cave. Finally, he found a ledge wide enough to stand on.

As soon as he let go of the rope, he slipped and tumbled halfway down a three-foot-wide crevice to his right. His curses became truly poetic, invoking the wrath not merely of God, but of the bastard recruiting sergeant who had steered him toward such a thank-shitting-less life. He continued to curse until he reached the cave, where he found Liu kneeling over a prostrate body.

“Alive. Barely. Hypothermia. Broken leg. Internal injuries,” said Liu over the Whiplash corn set. “It’s the pilot, Dalton.”

“Yeah. Think he’ll survive a shittin’ sling?” asked Powder. “He better. An avalanche may cover the cave opening any minute.”

“You’re pulling my pud, right?”

“Too big to pull, Powder.”

Talcom heard—or thought he heard—the rocks groan above. He popped out his walkie-talkie and told the crew to expedite the stretcher.

The wind died somewhat as they secured Dalton and brought him beneath the helicopter. The sleet compensated by kicking down harder.

Despite the fact that he was clad entirely in waterproof gear, water had seeped into every pore of Powder’s body. Even his liver felt waterlogged. He sloshed against the rocks, trying to keep the stretcher from spinning too much as it cranked upward. It had reached nearly to the doorway when the Pave Low stuttered backward, pushed toward the jagged peaks by an immense gush of wind.

“Hey, you bastard,” Powder shouted. “Crank him in before you go anywhere.”

He and Liu stared at the aircraft struggling above them, no more powerful than a grasshopper caught in the fury of the storm. The front of the helicopter pushed upward, then steadied back, leveling off. Brautman appeared in the doorway, fumbling with the mechanism for the stretcher. Dalton disappeared inside the hull.

Then the rear of the MH-53 veered to the left, the front of the big bird tipping against the wind. Powder thought the idiot pilot had forgotten them and was taking off.

In the next moment, the helicopter’s tail smashed against the rocks.

Dreamland Commander’s Office

19 February, 1803

“EXCUSE ME, COLONEL,” SAID SERGEANT GIBBS, opening the door to Dog’s office. “Secretary Keesh is on the line.”

Dog nodded, then turned back to Geraldo, who had only just come in. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” he told her. “This isn’t going to be pleasant anyway.”

“I understand, Colonel.” She stood. “I should be back at my lab in any event. You’ll contact me when Kevin is picked up?”

Even though he was a big believer in remaining positive, Dog found it hard not to grimace. If Madrone had managed to parachute—and at the moment there was no reason to think that he had, based on what the copilot had said—he would have spent more than seven hours in mountainous terrain in freezing weather.

“It’s okay, Colonel,” said Geraldo. “I realize the odds. But it’s best to sound positive.”

“I’ll keep you informed,” he told her as she walked out of the room.

Ax held the door for her. The sergeant rarely, if ever, did that for anyone, Dog thought to himself before picking up the phone.

Ax soft on Geraldo?

No way.

“Stand by for Secretary Keesh,” said an aide on the other line. The woman’s voice sounded muffled, as if she were speaking from inside full body armor—undoubtedly standard issue for anyone on Keesh’s staff.

“How the hell did you lose two airplanes?” demanded Keesh as the line clicked.

“Actually, sir, it was one 777 and two Flighthawks. We’ve recovered one of the pilots. Two others are missing, including the ANTARES subject.”

Dog paused for effect, pushing around the papers on his desk. Among them was an old photograph Ax had found while going through some old papers the other day; it showed Dog at an air show standing in front of a P-51 Mustang.

Damn nice airplane. He hadn’t had a chance to fly it, though.

“What is this going to do to the project?” Keesh demanded.

“At the moment, Mr. Secretary, we’re in the process of recovering our people. We haven’t even located the wreckage yet.

“You’re taking your damn time.”

There was no sense arguing with him. Bastian looked up as the door to his office opened again. Danny Freah stood there with one of his most serious expressions.

“With all due respect, sir, I’m advised by my security people that we’re speaking on an open line,” said Bastian.

“That’s not going to get you off the hook, Bastian.”

Dog was tempted—sorely tempted—to ask if Keesh thought he’d arranged the crash solely to make the Secretary look bad. But he merely told Keesh that he would keep him apprised through the proper channels, then hung up the phone.

“You’re not here about that line being open, are you?” Dog said to Danny, who was still standing in the doorway.

“They’ve lost contact with the Pave Low that Powder and Liu were on,” said Freah. “They think they went down. The storm’s pretty bad.”

“Excuse me, Colonel,” said Major Stockard, rolling up behind Danny. “Can I get in on this?”

“I don’t know that there’s anything to get in on, Jeff,” said Bastian.

“Nellis is asking for help in the search,” explained Danny, who obviously had already told Zen what was up.

“Raven and the Flighthawks can help,” said Stockard. “The IR sensors on the U/MFs are more sensitive than the units in the Pave Lows. We can get in through the storm while Raven stays up above.”

“We just lost two Flighthawks,” said Bastian.

“The Flighthawks had nothing to do with that,” said Jeff. He gave his wheels a shove, then pulled his hands close to his body as the chair rolled across the threshold, narrowly clearing the doorjambs. “We can be off the ground inside of thirty minutes. Twenty, easy. Raven’s ready to go. With the weather, the Flighthawks would extend our vision exponentially.”

“I don’t know Jeff. Those are our last two Flighthawks.”

“Why do we have them if we can’t use them?”

“You have to be tired as shit.”

“Screw that.”

Bastian folded his arms. If the Flighthawks ran into trouble in the heavy storm—and the weather report was anything but pleasant—Keesh would be unmerciful. Worse, the Flighthawk program might be set back six months or even longer.

But he had two missing men, plus two Whiplash team members and the crew of a Pave Low down. What was more important?

His men certainly. Unless you added in the lives of men who might be saved in the future by a squadron of Flight-hawks.

As for Secretary Keesh…

“SAR assets are strapped. They’re looking for help,” added Danny. “That was the only Pave Low available within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

“You sure you’re not tired?” Dog asked Jeff.

“Of course I’m tired,” said Zen. “But I’m not going to fall asleep now anyway.”

“Go for it.”

Sierra Nevada Mountains

19 February, 1934

POWDER SLOGGED HIS SODDEN BOOT UP AND OVER THE rock outcropping, forcing his foot into the small crevice. Then he boosted himself over the razor-sharp diagonal, finally onto solid and relatively flat ground. The CIV and its helmet were heavy, but they did at least give him a pretty clear picture, even in these conditions—the helicopter sat on its side about a hundred yards away, its nose pointed down the opposite slope. One of its blades pointed into the air like a giant middle finger raised against the storm. The rain and sleet had turned back into snow, which had already piled about an inch high against the fuselage.

“Shit,” Powder told Liu, who was just clearing the ravine behind him. He pointed the flashlight attached to his wrist, showing Nurse the way.

“Light a flare,” suggested Liu, pointing left. “We’ll stage off those rocks if anything goes wrong.”

The night turned crimson-gray, the flare burning fitfully in the wet snow. They walked gingerly, unsure of their footing. The crash had forced the front of the helicopter’s fuselage together; Powder prepared himself for a gruesome sight.

He couldn’t see much at first. Liu climbed onto the chin of the helicopter, draping himself over it and then smashing at the side glass with his heavy flashlight and elbow. Powder took out another flashlight from his kit and clambered up.

Someone groaned inside.

“We’re here, buddy,” shouted Talcom. Adrenaline shot through him; he reached his fingers into the door frame and somehow managed to pry it open, the metal twisting as he did so. He got to his knees and then his feet, pushing the bent panel away with all of his weight. The mangled hinges gave way and the door flew through the air and into the snow.

The pilot and copilot were still strapped into their seats. Liu leaned in, slinking over the men to check on them.

“Pulses strong,” said Nurse. “Let’s take this slow in case they injured their backs.”

“Hey!” yelled a voice in the back. “Hey!”

Powder clicked the visor from starlight to infrared mode and scanned the dim interior. Fingers fluttered in front of a wall; the viewer made them look like worms in a lake, unattached to anything human.

The sergeant slipped the helmet back and yelled into the helicopter. “Yo!”

“Hello,” yelled Brautman. “Leg’s broke,” he added, his voice almost cheerful. “Otherwise, I’m cool except for whatever the hell is holding me down.”

It looked like a good hunk of the helicopter wall.

“You say the F word yet?” asked the flight engineer as Powder tried to push his way toward him.

“No way,” answered Powder. “You owe me ten.”

“Mission’s not done yet.”

“Need a pneumatic jack to get him out.” said Liu from somewhere outside the helicopter.

“Screw that.” Powder straightened in a small spot between the forward area and what was left of the rear compartment. He had enough clearance to sit upright, but still couldn’t see Brautman’s head. “I said ‘screw,’ not the F word,” he yelled back to the trapped crewman.

“I heard ya. You will.”

Powder backed out, gingerly climbing atop the wrecked helicopter. Liu stood on the ground near the door—the chopper body had been squeezed so tight it barely came to his shoulders. Moving forward on his knees, Powder looked for something to use to help lever the rear door off its rail. When he couldn’t see anything, he set himself at a forty-five-degree angle and managed to jerk the metal out in two loud rips, producing a two-foot-wide opening.

“I ate my Wheaties this morning,” he told Liu as he leaned back to rest. His arm felt like he’d pulled it out of its socket.

The helicopter creaked as he spoke. He straightened, then realized they were moving—not far, not fast, but definitely moving.

“We may slide down the slope,” said Liu.

“Shit,” answered Powder.

“Get the pilots out one at a time, ASAP.”

As Liu said that, he was already clambering back to the cockpit. He leaned in, trying to release the pilot from his restraints.

The helicopter slid some more, then stopped. Powder thought of trying to find something to prop it in place, but quickly dismissed the idea. He swung down and took the pilot’s body from Liu.

The pilot was heavier than he thought, and Talcom’s legs buckled as he carried the man toward the rocks they had pointed out before. The rocks didn’t offer much shelter, but they were easy to find in the swirling snow and sat on the other side of a large crack, which might—might—mean they were safe from the slide. Powder laid the pilot as flat as possible, then lifted the crash shield on his helmet to make sure he was still breathing. When the man opened his eyes, Powder nudged his cheek with his thick thumb, then closed the shield. He took off the CIV and smart helmet, placing them next to the pilot, and ran back to the Pave Low. Liu was just lifting the copilot out.

“You’re strong for a little guy, Liu.”

“He’s conscious,” said Liu, holding the man in front of him as if he were displaying a piece of meat.

Powder clambered up onto the helicopter. The aircraft slid a lot this time. “Damn,” he said, grabbing the copilot.

“I’m okay,” grumbled the man. “I can walk myself.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Powder, ignoring him. He turned to get off the helicopter, then noticed something peculiar—though the Pave Low had moved several times, it hadn’t pushed up any snow in front of it as it slid.

“That’s because the whole sheet of ice is moving,” explained Liu before ducking back inside the craft.

“Damn,” said Powder. “Damn, damn, damn.”

He helped the copilot back to the rock, then ran to Liu. The wind rattled the helicopter propeller back and forth. Powder heard a low rumble, as if a train were approaching from the distance.

“Liu! What the hell are you doing in there?”

“If we use this spar as a lever,” Liu answered from inside the cockpit, “maybe we can move the wall away.”

“The whole thing is moving,” said Powder. “Feel it?”

“Quickly then.”

“Shit.” Talcom squeezed around Liu to push his legs into the small opening to the rear of the helo. There was a loud groan from outside as he did.

“Hope that was the Abominable Snowman,” he said.

“Ice is giving way,” said Brautman.

Powder wedged his foot against the metal side of the helicopter and tried levering the piece of spar in the opposite direction. As he did, Liu dropped the flashlight.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Brautman told them. “Go.”

“Now who’s using bad words?” said Powder. The helicopter or the ice it was on slid downward, and he felt an empty impotence in his stomach.

“Screw this horseshit!” Talcom yelled, jamming his boots against the metal.

It snapped away, springing back as the door released from its latch. Snow and sleet and ice and rain fell through, twinkling artistically in the dim flare-light. None of them stopped to admire it—Brautman pulled himself upward through the hole, helped by Liu, who was outside. The flight engineer’s leg trailed behind him at an odd angle, and Powder felt a twinge in his stomach, thinking of how the damn thing must feel.

The twinge was replaced by full-scale nausea as the helicopter jerked hard to his left, starting to ride down the incline. It had finally slipped on the ice—which also shifted in its own direction.

“Get the hell out of here! Go!” Powder shouted. He’d started to push himself upward when he saw something moving beneath the twisted metal where the snow was falling.

Dalton, still strapped to the stretcher.

Aboard Raven

19 February, 2010

HAWK THREE KNIFED THROUGH THE TURBULENCE, accelerating toward the jagged, snow-laden peaks where the Pave Low had disappeared. While the flight computer could cope with the strong vortices of wind easily enough, there was little it could do about the ice trying to freeze on the wings. The lower and slower Zen went—and to do the search properly, he had to go low and slow—the more precipitation clung to the control surfaces. While not enough to keep the plane from flying, it added considerably to the difficulty factor in the swirling winds near the crags.

“Sector Alpha-Baker-1 is clear,” said Jennifer Gleason, who’d volunteered to come along and help monitor the scans. Major Cheshire had bumped Bree’s copilot and was at the stick; Bree had slid over to the second officer’s seat and was also studying the feeds.

“Alpha-Baker-2 is also clear,” snapped Breanna. Both women were examining the IR video from Hawk Four, which was being flown entirely by the computer through a ravine at the very northern edge of the search area. The weather there was not as severe and the terrain not as twisted as the area Zen was working himself further southwest.

Hawk Three hit a patch of clear air and shot forward as if her engine had ingested pure oxygen. Zen steadied his left joystick, glancing at the vital signs projected at the lower edge of the visor. Everything was in the green.