In the air, the buffeting pressure of the fresh storm system held them back. Zen launched the Flighthawk and pushed ahead, scanning through the thick rain even though they were still a hundred miles from the coordinates of Quicksilver’s last voice transmission. Other resources were being scrambled from the fleet, but at the moment they were the only ones on the scene, and certainly Bree’s best chance.
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
2308
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.