Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (51 page)

 
          
The
storm was so severe, both the Chinese and Indians had landed all of their
planes. The thick cloud cover made it impossible for satellites to scan the
ocean, and at points Zen had a difficult time separating the waves from the
much he was flying through. Ten miles from the gray
splatch
of sky where Quicksilver had been lost, he felt his arms and shoulders sag. Zen
leaned his head forward. The fatigue nearly crushed him, pounding his temples.
He saw Bree on their wedding day, the blue and pink flowered dress tight
against her hips in the small chapel. Her mouth trembled ever so slightly, and
when the minister had her repeat the words of the vows, she hesitated over
“richer or poorer.”

 
          
Did
not, she said that night, cuddled against his arms.

 
          
Did
too, he told her.

 
          
Didn’t,
she said a thousand times later.

 
          
Too,
he replied.

 
          
But
there’d been no hesitation on sickness. Ever.

 
          
“Commencing
visual search.” Zen tightened his grip on the U/MF’s control and pushed the
plane through a reef of wind and rain. Clouds came at him in a tumble of fists;
the small plane knifed back and forth as it fell toward the dark ocean.
Finally, he broke through the worst of it, though this was only a matter of
degree; at three thousand feet he found a solid sheet of rain. Leveling off,
Zen gingerly nudged off his power. Not exactly optimized for slow flight in the
best weather, the U/MF had trouble staying stable under two hundred knots in
the shifting winds. Zen had his hands and head full, constantly adjusting to
stay on the flight path. But he needed to go as slow as possible, since it
increased the video’s resolution and, more importantly, the computer’s ability
to scan the fleeting images for signs of the survivors.

 
          
At
least concentrating on flying meant he couldn’t think about anything else.

 
          
“Coming
to the end of our search track,” said the copilot above.

 
          
“Roger
that. Turning,” said Zen.

 
          
Zen
selected IR view. The rain was too thick for it to fight through, and finally
he decided to flip back to the optical view. Two long circuits took them
slightly to the north. Iowa’s look-down radar fought through the storm to scan
the roiling waves, but the conditions were severe. Zen punched over the waves
at just under a thousand feet, convinced the U/MF’s video cams—and his
eyes—were the best tools they had, at least for now.

 
          
A
distress call came over the UHF circuit as one of the Sukhois ran out of fuel
before he could complete a landing on his storm-shrouded carrier.

 
          
“Poor
shit,” said somebody over the interphone circuit without thinking.

 
          
Yeah,
thought Zen to himself. Poor shit. Then he pushed the Flighthawk lower to the
ocean.

 
          
Los Angeles International Airport

 
          
August
27, 1997, 0600 local (August 28, 2100 Philippines)

 
          
Flying
as a passenger on a civilian airliner was bad enough, but Colonel Bastian had
the bad luck to draw an overly talkative seventy-year-old as a seatmate. The
woman spent roughly an hour detailing the cruise she had just been on; when
that topic was exhausted, she moved on to the wallpaper she was putting in her
bathroom, and finally the oranges she had ordered for her daughter’s upcoming
birthday. Dog was too polite to tell her to shut up. By the time he got off the
plane, his ear had a permanent buzz; he knew if he checked in a mirror it would
be red.

 
          
He
hadn’t decided how to get over to Edwards; thinking he might rent a car and
drive, he headed in the direction of the Hertz booth. On the way, his eye
caught the fleeting text on a TV screen set to deliver headline news.

 
          
“Fighting
breaks out between China and India,” said the words.

 
          
Dog
stopped so abruptly, a short man walking behind him bumped into him with his
suitcase. Instead of accepting the man’s apology, he asked where the phones
were.

 
          
“Major
Ascenzio
has a jet en route,” said Ax when Dog dialed
into Dreamland. “I’ll transfer you down to him for the details.”

 
          
“Thanks,
Ax.”

 
          
“Colonel,
one thing—Breanna was aboard the plane.”

 
          
“What
plane?” Dog asked.

 
          
For
the first time since he’d known him, Chief Master Sergeant Terrence “Ax” Gibbs
was lost for words.

 
          
“What
plane?” Dog demanded when he didn’t answer.

 
          
“Quicksilver
is down, sir.”

 
          
Aboard Iowa, over the South China Sea

 
          
Twice
Zen thought he found something, but the brief flickers from the computer proved
to be anomalies. Jennifer Gleason worked the freeze-frames back and forth
silently, sometimes calling up the radar and IR scans on her own. But none of
the sensors picked up anything substantial in the swirling torrent.

 
          
They
refueled the small plane three times. Knocking off the refueling probe and
diving through the thick storms, Zen felt as if he had plunged back into the
underworld, battling the winds of hell. He funneled his eyes into the
viewscreen
, scanning with the computer, looking, looking,
looking. The copilot kept track of the search tracks; his announcements of the
approaching turns marked the time like a grandfather clock clanging on the
quarter hour.

 
          
Zen
saw nothing. The radar found nothing. Still he flew, back and forth across the
angry ocean, repeating the tracks.

 
          
In
sickness and in health, she’d said. And she’d meant it.

 
          
“Jeff,
we’re about three ounces from bingo.” Major Alou’s voice sounded as if he were
speaking from the other end of a wide pipe.

 
          
“Where’s
our tanker?”

 
          
“There
are no tankers,” said Alou. “The storm’s too much and we’re too far. There’s no
choice—we have to get down. I’ve already stretched it out.”

 
          
Zen
didn’t answer.

 
          
“There’s
a Navy P-3 out of Japan due in twenty minutes,” he told him. “They’re going to
continue the search. As soon as the carrier can launch more planes, they’ll
have another search package out. The F-14’s will stay over the area in the
meantime. They’ll hear a transmission.”

 
          
Who
the hell would manage to use a radio in this?

 
          
“Jeff,
we’ll find her. They will, or we will. But we have to go. We’ll be out of the
storm at least, so we can refuel and take off right away. It may be far east.
Okay?”

 
          
“Yeah,
Roger that.”

 
          
Dreamland

 
          
The
flight from LAX to Dreamland was quick—Ax had sent an F-15E, and the pilot,
Major Mack Smith, had probably broken the speed barrier twenty feet off the
tarmac. Ax met Dog in a Jimmy SUV as the airplane taxied toward the hangar; the
truck whipped over to
Taj
so fast Dog never got his
seat belt buckled. Even the notoriously slow elevator seemed to understand this
was a real emergency; it started downward three seconds after Dog touched the
button for the subbasement level where the command center was located.

 
          
Major
Ascenzio
, Ray Rubeo, and about a half-dozen mission
specialist were waiting for hi,

 
          
Rubeo
stepped up and started to talk, telling the colonel they shared his concern for
his daughter and the rest of the crew. The scientist was not only sincere, but
actually seemed on the brink of becoming emotional—a development so out of
character Dog felt worse than before.

 
          
“Thanks,
Dog. Thanks, everybody. Let’s get to work. Who’s searching, what have we
heard?”

 
          
“Iowa’s
just knocking off for fuel,” said Gat. Major
Ascenzio
reached down to his desk and hit a key; a diagram of the search area appeared
on the main screen at the front of the room. They had used data from
Quicksilver’s transmission to plot it’s probably flight path after it was hit.
Because of the clouds and Quicksilver’s altitude and position, there was no
usable information from the Crystal asset—a KH-12 satellite—covering the area,
but there was some possibility a satellite used to monitor missiles launches might
have picked up explosions aboard the plane; they had a query in to the
Natioanal
Reconaissance
Office to
see. That information might help them tweak their search area, though Gat felt
they had a decent handle on it.

 
          
One
thing the major didn’t mention: Like much of the rest of the Air Force,
Dreamland’s standard survival equipment included the PRC-90 survival radio.
While the radio was a time-tested veteran, it had a limited range and was
hardly state-of-the-art equipment. Newer versions utilizing satellite
communications were hard to come by—a ridiculous budget constraint that might
have proved fatal for Captain Scott O’Grady in Bosnia two years before.
O’Grady’s heroism and resourcefulness notwithstanding, a more powerful radio
with a locator would have shortened his ordeal considerably.

 
          
“We’ll
find them,” said Gat. “A P-3 from the Pacific Fleet in en route.”

 
          
“That’s
it?” said Dog.

 
          
“The
weather is fierce,” said Gat. “Hurricane winds, hail, the works. Half the
Pacific is covered by it. The carriers can’t launch aircraft.”

 
          
Dog
folded his arms. The storm had even more serious implications for the people
who had parachuted—if they parachuted—from the plane. Even if they somehow got
into the water without injury, climbing into a life raft in mountainous seas
could be an almost impossible task. And once you were in it—hell, you might as
well go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

 
          
“
PacCom
has lost at least one plane as well,” said Gat. “The
storm is that bad. They feel they’ll be in a better position by tomorrow
afternoon.”

 
          
“Tomorrow
afternoon? Fuck that. Fuck that!”

 
          
The
words flew from his mouth like meteors, spitting down on everyone in the room.

 
          
“We
need to organize the search,” said Dog, not apologizing. “We have three
planes—two planes.” He caught himself. His breath was racing but he couldn’t
corral it. “We’ll run eight-hour missions out of the Philippines.”

 
          
“Raven’s
not ours,” Gat said. “And besides, the storm there is incredible. Kitty Hawk
had to curtail operations, I had Major Alou divert all the way over to Japan.”

 
          
“Why
didn’t he just refuel in the air and continue the search?”

 
          
“We
didn’t have a tanker available.”

 
          
“Punch
me through to Woods.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.” Gat grimaced. “It’ll be voice-only.”

 
          
“Yeah,
okay.” Dog wasn’t mad at Gat—he wasn’t even mad at Woods, but he nonetheless
barked at the Navy lieutenant who came on the line.