Lanzas had appeared at the bottom of the steps when he landed the Boeing. At first he’d thought she was an apparition, part of an ANTARES-induced dream. But she had proven very real, personally nursing him back to health, taking him to bed that first night. She had restored the plane, marveling at the Flighthawks. She had filled him with incredible energy and love and strength. She was not the dark woman of the Theta metaphor; she was better.
“Time now, my darling,” she said. “Time to begin.”
“Yes,” said Madrone, though he made no effort to move. Neither did she.
“Our first step, today.”
“Yes,” said Madrone. He had told her how everyone was against him, how the scientists and militarists were seeking to destroy not just him but the planet, turning everyone to robots with their drugs and implanted chips. He’d been their first guinea pig. Minerva had agreed, and pointed out the obvious — he would never be safe until they were neutralized.
Neither would she. His enemies were already trying to get her. The Brazilian Air Force had sent a flight of Mirages over the base yesterday, obviously looking for him. Fortunately, Hawkmother and the U/MFs were well been hidden by netting.
The bastards. Puny Mirages. They would pay.
He saw it. He could feel the Flighthawks firing their guns.
Loading the planes with shells was child’s play, a simple adjustment not worthy of his expertise. But the cannons were limited and Minerva had few other weapons — six early-version Sidewinders, a pair of runway-denial bombs, and a dozen antitank weapons “on loan” from an Army unit. Adapting them so they could be used with the Flighthawks taxed him considerably, even though ANTARES had greatly expanded his intellect.
Lanzas thought the antitank weapons were useless; they were wire-guided and meant to be fired from helicopters or ground vehicles. But Madrone was well schooled in Army weapons, and saw the TOW equivalents as the most versatile weapons imaginable — their rocket motors could be staged, the wire extended. Their slender shapes would fit well beneath the U/MF fuselages. With the proper modifications, they could carry warheads of several hundred pounds.
He saw the solutions before he did the computations. His brain unfolded in a million directions. Under Minerva’s care, without the Dreamland bastards breathing down his neck, his powers increased exponentially. He ran to each corner of his mind, vibrating with ferocious energy. He felt connected to ANTARES at all times. Even though he was no longer taking Geraldo’s drugs, he felt his hippocampus and other brain cells continuing to grow.
They couldn’t control him now that he had gotten away. They couldn’t use him anymore. He would turn the tables, destroy the bastards, all of them. And then he would be safe here, at the edge of the rain forest.
“What are you thinking?” Minerva asked, rubbing his chest.
“The cannons in the Flighthawks,” said Madrone. “Boa Vista and Manaus will be destroyed.”
“Think of something else for now.”
Lanzas’s hand slid toward his belly. Madrone drifted. He loved flying the Flighthawks, because it meant he was in Theta. But being with her was better, far better.
She rubbed his thigh with the palm of her hand. Then she pulled it away abruptly.
“You’re right. You must go,” Minerva said. “It will be late.”
“A few more minutes won’t matter,” he said, rolling on top of her. “Our victims will wait.”
Chapter 61
Jennifer Gleason looked up from her desk to see Colonel Bastian coming through the door to her lab. Instantly, her fingers felt wet and her heart fluttery; her tongue stumbled as she said hello.
“Dr. Rubeo said you might have some details about anomalies in the communications-and-control computer handling the Flighthawks during the Boeing flight,” said Bastian. He smiled, then pointed to a chair. “Mind if I sit?”
“Go ahead, please.”
She picked at her hair, trying desperately to stop acting like a teenager with a full-blown crush. She was, after all, a grown woman with a full-blown crush.
Jennifer reached to her desk drawer and pulled on it before remembering that she had locked it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she kept the key on a chain around her neck beneath her blouse. She could feel every millimeter of her skin turning beet red as she pulled the chain up discreetly and then bent to unlock the drawer. She retrieved the folders and got up, willing her legs to stop shaking.
“I think when you look at them side by side,” she said, placing the folders down on a clear lab table in the corner of the room, “you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
“You haven’t actually said what you’re talking about,” said Bastian.
For just a half second, she considered throwing herself in his arms. But the consequences of that — of his inevitable rejection — were too great. Carefully, slowly, she laid out the papers.
“These signals came across to our monitoring equipment from the Boeing. They’re broadcast through C3 via the 57Y circuit—”
“Jen.” He touched her arm and she nearly exploded. “Skip some of the technical jargon, okay?”
She managed to nod, then pointed to some of the yellow markings.
“Early on I realized that they were part of the Boeing’s computer-assist-pilot unit. It’s obvious — you can see the coding once you know what to look for. What I didn’t realize until a few days ago — well, yesterday actually — while we were doing some upgrades on ANTARES, was that the leak isn’t accidental. It corresponds to specific wave patterns. It’s a command.”
“Something bothering you, Doc?”
“Didn’t get much sleep last night,” she said lamely, quickly launching into an explanation of her theory that minimized the technical aspects. In a nutshell, she thought that Madrone had somehow learned to use ANTARES to fly the 777, or that C3 had done so at his direction.
“It was most likely a combination of both,” said Jennifer. “The system was hardwired to the Boeing for test purposes and ANTARES or Madrone may have exploited it. I don’t think C3 could have decided to do it on its own, since I haven’t been able to get it to do so in the simulations.”
“Dr. Rubeo doesn’t think it’s possible for an ANTARES subject to do that,” said Dog.
“That’s not exactly what he said. He said, I believe,” she added, “I believe he probably told you that it’s technically difficult to maintain, and that we haven’t any proof. This crossover may not be a deliberate crossover at all, just the code spooling crazily.”
“Can you pin it down?”
“I’m trying to come up with some simulations that can duplicate the ANTARES code. Major Stockard may also be able to help once he’s up to speed. Of course, if we had the hard-drive recorder from the computer in Hawkmother, or, uh, well, if Captain Madrone turned up, I mean if, when—”
“I have to say, Doc, the odds are pretty damn good he’s dead.”
Dog looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She longed to take some of it off — massage his back, kiss him. Jennifer felt an impulse, began to follow it, rising slowly from her chair.