“Yeah, I’m gonna do it,” said Englehardt. His voice cracked and trembled, but he tightened his grip on the stick. He pushed the Megafortress back toward the Airbus. “I am going to do it.”
Over Las Vegas
2144
SOMETHING CRACKED BELOW HIM. THE AIRBUS FELT AS IF
it were being pushed upward, shaking violently with a loud scraping and crackling.
RETRIBUTION
415
Kerman cursed. He was so close—he needed only a few more minutes. Only a few more. He pounded his hand on the throttle and pulled back on the yoke.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett
2145
ENGLEHARDT FELT LIKE A BULL HAD CLIMBED ON HIS BACK
and he was struggling to hold it there.
“Power!” he yelled at Sullivan.
“It’s working!” Sullivan shouted back.
The Bennett shook violently as the Airbus ramped up its engines. The Megafortress shot upward, slapping against the belly of the smaller plane.
“Starship—take out the bastard’s engines!” yelled Englehardt, pushing his nose up to stay on the Airbus.
The two planes were now rocking violently. Englehardt struggled to keep his nose angled up while Sullivan concentrated on the power. The Megafortress drove against the Airbus, pushing and pulling the lighter commercial plane through the air. Three or four people, including Nellis ground control, were trying to talk over the radio, but Englehardt kept them blocked out. He was sweating and his head pounded and his stomach was a knot, but he was doing this, he was definitely doing this, and no one was going to stop him.
HAWK ONE’S CONTROL SURFACES HAD BEEN BADLY DAMaged by the pressure from the Airbus; worse, her engine had sucked in bits of metal, shredding most of her turbine. Starship tried to get the aircraft to the west of the city, into the open terrain, but he didn’t have enough momentum. The Flighthawk spun toward a tight cluster of homes, their light brown roofs looking like the sides of a zipper. White sand appeared—Starship pulled back on the stick, trying to push the plummeting aircraft into a golf course built in the middle 416
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
of a condo development. Green grass flashed in the screen, and then everything went blank.
“Connection lost,” said the computer.
There was no time to see whether he had missed the houses. He took over Hawk Two, selecting the cannon.
The computer refused to let him fire. He was too close to the mother ship.
“Override,” he said.
“Forbidden.”
“Override Authorization StarStarTwoTwoTwo.”
“Forbidden,” insisted the computer.
“I can’t get the Flighthawk to fire!” he told Englehardt. “It thinks it’s shooting on us.”
THE MEGAFORTRESS WAS FLYING WITH HER NOSE PRACTIcally thirty degrees downward, but she was still pushing the Airbus forward. They were past Nellis, into the Dreamland test ranges.
How far did he need to go? Twenty miles, fifty?
He might be able to hold it for another sixty seconds.
“All right—everybody get the hell out!” he said. “Get down to the Flighthawk deck and bail.”
“We’re staying with you, Mike,” said Sullivan.
“Yeah, we’re with you, Englehardt. Right down to the line,” said Daly.
“I ain’t leaving,” said Rager.
“No way,” said Starship.
The long expanse of Dreamland’s main runway passed the left side of the airplane. The Airbus bucked upward, escaped—Englehardt pushed the ganged throttle, his hand on Sullivan’s, ramming into the cargo plane.
No way it was getting away.
Tears streamed from Englehardt’s eyes.
“We’re doing this!” he screamed.
RETRIBUTION
417
Over Nevada
2147
KERMAN STRUGGLED TO FIND A WAY TO RELEASE THE AIR-bus, but everything he tried seemed to fail. He was being pushed sideways and forward at the same time. The bigger, more powerful aircraft below him had him in its claws, pushing him away from the city, toward the open desert.
He wasn’t going to make it. By the time the bomb exploded he’d be much too far from Las Vegas to do any damage.
He pulled his seat belt off. He’d have to find a way to detonate the bomb immediately.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett
2148
“THIS IS FAR ENOUGH, MIKE!” DOG YELLED AT THE PILOT.
“Let it go!”
The Megafortress lurched to the left. Suddenly free of the weight she had been carrying, she shot upward, out of control.
Dog flew backward as the plane lurched. He tumbled against the airborne radar operator’s station, then pulled himself up.
The pilots were wrestling with the controls, trying to keep the plane in the air. Dog fumbled for his headset, resettling it on his head.
“Station Five, operational, authorization Bastian Nine-nine-one,” he told the computer, double tapping the power button to bring the station on line.
“On line.”
“Anaconda weapons section on line. Authorization Bastian Nine-nine-one.”
“Bastian authorized.”
The targeting screen came up.
418
DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND
“Target aircraft identified as PC-1.”
A message flashed on the screen—the aircraft was identified as a civilian by its identifier.
“Override.”
A targeting reticule appeared. The plane had begun to turn back to the south, toward Las Vegas.
Dog was about to tell the computer to fire when the sym-bol went from red—locked—to yellow. The radar had lost the lock.
“Lock, damn it,” said Dog.
If the computer heard him, it didn’t let on. Dog switched to the manual control, using a small joystick that would let him designate the target the old-fashioned way. He hit the reset, moved to the cursor, and this time got a lock.
“Fire,” he said. “Fire Fox One!”
The missile ripped from the belly of the aircraft.
Over Nevada
2150
KERMAN FINGERED THE WIRES ON THE BOMB’S TIMER AS
the aircraft jerked up and down. He hadn’t been with his uncle when the timer was explained, and Sattari hadn’t bothered to show him how it worked. Still, it seemed like a simple device; there had to be a way to set it off immediately.
A set of wires had been soldered to contacts at the top of the switch. Kerman decided he had only to cross the contacts for the weapon to be triggered.
He had nothing to cross them with.
He could do it with a pen.
The plane jerked as he reached to his pocket. He fell backward to the deck.
There was no time. Just strip the wires and touch them together, he told himself. Be done with it. Be done with it.
He clawed his way upright, then hunched over the timer.
RETRIBUTION
419
As his fingers touched the wires, the plane lurched again.
Kerman pushed down on the device with one hand and managed to pull the wires off the contact with his other.
The plane suddenly jerked upward and stopped shaking.
He was free! The American had given up!
He started to rise to run back to the cockpit. Then he stopped, realizing there was no sense doing that now. He reached back to the wires to push them together.
As he did, the front of the aircraft turned silver. It looked like a flash of light, but it was pure silver, a brilliant shade that he had never seen before.
Paradise, he thought.
Then silver turned to red, then black, then nothing.
Aboard Dreamland Bennett
2151
STARSHIP SAW THE ANACONDA MISSILE CLOSE IN ON THE
Airbus’s cabin just as he was pressing the trigger on the Flighthawk’s gun. He rolled away, escaping most of the explosion. The Anaconda struck at the front cabin, decapitating the aircraft. The cockpit disintegrated, but the rest of the fuselage continued on, flying toward the highest of the Glass Mountains about sixty miles northwest of Dreamland.