“I’m taking a shot,” said Englehardt. He reached for the throttle. “Come on, Sullivan. Help me.”
Sullivan was silent for a moment, then sprang to help. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s what we got to do.”
Englehardt had worked with the 757 tanker project, and had a great deal of experience pulling up under two-engined aircraft similar to the Airbus. But he’d never tried to pick one up before.
Screw that. This was happening. He could see it in his head.
The airliner’s shadow grew steadily. The computer’s automatic warning system was screaming alerts.
“Kill the auto system,” said Englehardt, narrowing his focus to the small area in front of him.
“Killed,” said Sullivan.
Slowly, the Megafortress eased forward. Then, just as he was going to nose up, the Airbus lurched to the left.
Englehardt felt a hole open in his stomach. His hands trembled and all of sudden he was sweating again. His entire body turned to water. There was no way he could do this. No damn way.
Tears welled in his eyes. He was scared, too scared — not good enough.
A coward. A failure.
“Hang in there, Mike,” said Colonel Bastian, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You almost had him. Just hang with him and push it in. I know you can do it.”
“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.”
Something cracked below him. The Airbus felt as if it were being pushed upward, shaking violently with a loud scraping and crackling.
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.
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
“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 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
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.
Kerman struggled to find a way to release the Airbus, 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.
“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.
“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 symbol went from red — locked — to yellow. The radar had lost the lock.
