“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.
Breanna decided that sooner was better than later — it wasn’t like they were going to gain anything by waiting.
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.”
“On a ten count.”
“Fuck you.”
“With great pleasure,” she said, watching the altimeter slip through nine hundred feet.
Chapter 109
Bastian heard Dream tower clear Breanna to land.
“I thought you had a bomb aboard,” he said, trying — and failing-to keep his voice calm.
“Probably.”
“Well, what the hell are you doing?”
“Landing.”
“Wait. We can figure something out,” he said. “Maybe we can get some parachutes into your plane.”
“No time. Relax. We’ll be okay.”
“Breanna Rapture Bastian Stockard—”
“Close your eyes, Daddy.”
Chapter 110
HIS DAUGHTER WOKE HIM WITH HER WAIL. KEVIN JERKED back to consciousness.
He’d fallen asleep downstairs again. He had to get up and get her, before she woke Karen.
No.
He was in the Megafortress.
Zen had taken control of the Flighthawks.
They’d take him prisoner, make him go back into Theta, have ANTARES suck what was left of his mind away.
He couldn’t let that happen. He pushed to get up out of the seat, got tangled in the restraints. He fell and rolled onto the deck.
JEFF’S HAND WAS SO WET WITH SWEAT THAT THE STICK slipped as he approached. He wrapped both hands around it, eyes and consciousness riveted on the screen.
He had Gal’s speed nailed. The computer kept warning about proximity, which was good.
A quick plunge to the right, snap off half the tail on Bree’s count.
“Okay. Ten, nine,” said Breanna.
“Jeff.”
Zen looked up. Madrone stood over him with his gun. “Seven, six.”
Jeff put his right hand up, his other on the stick. He felt Kevin pushing the gun down into the back of his neck. “Five, four, three.”
Madrone ripped the headset away. Zen took a breath, then bent the stick downward.
DREAMLAND’S EB-52 SIMULATOR WAS VERY, VERY realistic. But it couldn’t begin to approximate what it felt to lose your tail at 140 knots, 347 feet above the ground.
The Megafortress lurched upward, then flopped down like a flat stone, losing 150 feet of altitude in the blink of an eye. Breanna and the computer struggled to compensate for the ravaging forces of gravity and momentum.
She held the plane steady, but it slid sideways through the air. One of the flaps, damaged earlier by the Scorpion, flew off the plane. Something exploded behind them, kicking at the fuselage, pushing the nose upright at the last second.
They hit the ground rather slowly, at ninety-two knots. But they struck at an angle. The leading gear collapsed; the right-side gear twisted off, but remained under the plane. Gal spun wildly. Breanna felt something hot in her face, then lost consciousness.
Chapter 111
Captain Breanna “Rapture” Bastian Stockard woke up in her father’s arms. Her body felt as if it were encased in cement. Her arms hurt. Her fingers fluttered.
Her toes were numb. She tried to bend her knee, felt nothing.
“Breanna. Bree.” He spoke to her in his strong voice from far away, beyond the mountains.
Whose voice was it? Jeff’s?
Bree opened her eyes.
“I can’t move my legs,” she said.
“You’ve been immobilized,” he said. “Bree. You’re okay.”
“I’m okay?”
“You’re alive.”
She remembered Zen in the hospital. She’d said the same thing to him.
Breanna started to cry.
“The doctors say you’re okay. We’re going to put you in the ambulance.”
The tears flowed. God. To lose her legs.
“Yo. Good landing.”
She turned her head. Jeff lay on a stretcher next to her.
“Jeff—”
“Kevin’s dead,” he said. “He got slammed in the landing.
Minerva bashed her head too. They don’t think she’ll make it.
She didn’t care about the others. She pushed her head up, looking toward her feet.
You’re okay, she’d told Jeff. You’re fine.
What a Goddamn lie.
Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.
Then she saw her right boot move, ever so slightly. She pushed her left foot. It moved as well.
Thank you, God, oh, thank you, she thought as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
Dog stepped back from the stretchers as the medics packed Breanna and Jeff into the ambulance.
“We made it,” said a sweet, soft voice in his ear.
“Yes,” he said. Then he turned and took Jennifer Gleason into his arms, his mouth finding hers in a long, glorious kiss.
VIII
“ON REVIEW”
Chapter 112
Colonel Bastian slid the thin yellow paper over the center of his desk. His fingers brushed so gently along the tissuelike surface, he might have been touching a baby’s cheek, afraid that if he pushed too hard he would somehow damage it.