Trennt replaced the gear and left his seat for the mini breakfast buffet. He wasn't interested in the meager selection of self-warming rolls, but he plucked a sealed coffee from the courtesy rack. Popping its heat activating tab, he turned back for his seat when the pilot spoke.
"Someone back there free to hand me a java?"
"Sure." Trennt snatched up another of the sealed cups as the pilot reached out. Bright-eyed and friendly, he filled Trennt with the comfortable notion of his own younger brother.
"Thanks."
Trennt nodded and continued back.
"Say," the flyer added unexpectedly, "I've got an extra place up here. If you're interested."
Trennt paused. "Sure it's okay?"
"No problem. The bureau won't mind and this bird is bor-ring. Does everything itself. Just keeps me on like a kind of night watchman. Still comes with two seats, though. Have one."
Trennt shimmied through the narrow cockpit, mildly surprised to see the man absorbed in working a crossword puzzle. He eased in the vacant right chair and browsed the flight deck. Some gauges he recognized, but others were strange. Scanning the tiny half dozen CRT screens monitoring systems' performance, he singled one out.
" 'Core temp.' What kind of plane is this?"
The pilot grinned expectantly. "Nuclear."
Trennt blinked.
"Best thing to ever come out of Area 51," he declared.
"Point nine eight mach; tilt wing and vectored thrust. No fuss, no muss. No old-time fire worries. And never a thought of running out of fuel."
Trennt marveled. "No joke?"
"Serious as a heart attack," pledged the flier. "It could circle the globe nonstop for months, years. We'd give out before the plane would. The power plant is an extremely lightweight fusion-type reactor, made of something they call plasticized magnets. Very expensive and very limited. But you are indeed being powered by one."
The craft sounded and felt like a traditional jet. Trennt was naturally curious.
"Nuclear power normally means steam, right?"
The pilot nodded. "Kind of. A marble of isotope does all the work in a crash-proof container about the size of a watermelon. It superheats a propylene glycol and nitrogen mix that's routed from back in the tail through high-pressure plumbing to the aft-mounted turbines.
"Difference over other jets is in the hollow compressors. These radiate their heat into the outside air while spinning to squeeze it for thrust. That action both powers the plane and cools the propellant for its return to the atomic pile. Much like a car's radiator."
Trennt appraised the wonderful cockpit. "How'd they ever come up with something like this?"
The flier offered a jaded shrug.
"How'd they ever put sound and pictures on magnetic tape? Or anything else they do? Money. Where there's enough, there's a way." He continued, explaining, "The first nuclear aviation work was begun by the CIA Skunkworks in the mid-1950s. This prototype came about in the late '90s and was kept under lock and key at Groom Lake. Now, it's ours."
"A real nuclear airplane."
"Fly anytime, anywhere," reiterated the pilot, smugly gesturing at the controls. "And with its independent logic, it can be totally unmanned. Heads-up multicolored graphics if there is a pilot. Traffic avoidance. Doppler. Even voice response. But everything is kept out of reach until you go through just the right access procedure. Synthetic intelligence doesn't want inferior humans mucking things up unless absolutely necessary, you know.
"Takeoffs, landings, and everything in between is run through its disinfected nanosecond brain. So for me, it's kind of like the sick old joke on rape: just lie back and enjoy the ride."
The pilot huffed a low, dark snort.
"But it is hard not feeling the occasional urge to yank out some transistors and make this crate earn its keep the old-fashioned way."
They shared a glance of solidarity.
"Drue Kosinski," the pilot introduced himself.
"Jim Trennt." The two men shook hands.
"You and the other guys work together?"
"Kind of. How'd you fit in?"
"Taxi driver. Besides spending a lot of shakedown time with this bird, I'm also familiar with your LZ. I've made the resupply runs out there now and again."
Trennt checked the heightened stream of twisting lavender pacing them.
"Any problem if those static bolts catch up with us?"
"They will, shortly. But no. They'll just pass around and continue on whatever path eventually gets them to the South Pole. Passpod and avionics on this bird are double insulated against magnetics and UV. Fuselage is graphite epoxy; strong stuff. We could handle some time inside the main weather cell itself, if we had to."
"Where's that?"
"A couple hours behind the light show."
"Enough behind for us to get in and out?"
The pilot chuckled somberly. "Sure hope so. I wouldn't want to get caught on the ground in its path. A lot of old-fashioned lightning and hail still gets thrown around. And grounded planes don't handle that well at all. Not even one that does know its A-B-C's."
Conversation died away as the high flying jet raced with the dawn. Far below passed America's barren breadbasket. In less than a decade its once boundless wheat fields had faded from golden patchworks to a vast sea of dead khaki. Two centuries of chugging tractors, combines, and threshers were gone like the dinosaur, replaced with deep hollows and high dunes cut and piled by freak zephyr winds.
The great Missouri and lower Mississippi Rivers came into view. Redirected by the collapsed Madrid Fault, they now slammed headlong into a violent merge and flow which took a new river west. In the far distance a dim veil of gray-white plumes rose from the smoldering Pacific Plate volcano fields.
The jet navigated a path indifferent to the dead metropolitan centers far below. From its height, evident only as discordant flashes of dim and distant glass, were the cities: St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha—all alike. Forlorn and abstract swatches sliding quietly beneath the autotinting windows of this climate controlled, private viewing studio.
Trennt looked on and wondered, How many innocent "displaced" families had found their end amid that distant silence?
The emergency National Census of 2042 was a desperate plan hatched by the withering federal government: a last organizational edict before decentralization finally knocked the blocks out from under Washington, D.C.
After several years of trying to devise a regenerative balance for its depleted urban areas, an injection of new bodies was hit on as the simplest approach. A special census, beyond the scope of any basic head count, ordered entire families to their father's birth city. This, it was believed, would redistribute needed skills and talents of the population and infuse fresh human resources into epidemic-withered areas after the devastating North American Flu.
Trennt and his family had traveled light. A two-bag limit was mandated for all refugee families, so few troublesome effects needed to be worried over. They were directed to the local post office to await transport on that early spring morning with little more than the clothes they wore. Of their entire rural township, they were the lone family to be sent so far away.
A few friends stayed with them during their wait that day, when hugs and assurances of a brief absence were exchanged. Trennt then led his family to one-way seats aboard a bus in a flotilla of commandeered vehicles and they took their place in an exodus not seen since biblical times.
After a week's living on wilted box lunches, they finally entered the hulking city by the lake. Trennt's wife and kids were asleep as their bus joined the angled rows of sooty Greyhounds and Trailways already parked at the Randolph Street terminal and Cee-Dee reception station.
Trennt woke Dena and helped bundle Jennifer and Andy against the late-night air. The family then spent three solid hours standing in a cold drizzle, awaiting their turn at processing into their new home.
Shortly after, four-year-old Andy became the first family member to develop the ominous Cee-Dee sniffles.
Kosinski's voice startled Trennt.
"We're about twenty minutes out."
Trennt offered a map folded to their landing zone.
"Can you hang just beyond range of the station while we give it a peep?"
The pilot reached for a swingout keypad.
"I'll ask permission."
"If things look sour you can set down in this secondary clearing about a half mile south."
Back in the cabin, it was Trennt's turn to do the waking.
"Baker."
The shooter came up in his seat same as always; instant on. No hint of normal human drowsiness. "How far out are we?"
"Few minutes. Get your goods around. We'll take a couple wide swings before deciding where to land."
"Grips, Pard."
Dismissing further courtesy, Trennt called back to the other rider.
"Hey, who're you?"
The man straightened to the gruffness.
"Doctor Thomas Ashton."
"You got something to invest in this, Doctor?"
"I'm to check over the station people."
"Whatever. If you're getting off, get ready. Otherwise, stay out of the way."
Changed to a transitional flight attitude, the jet swung a lazy wide orbit about the research station. From their height, a weave of hardwood trees and camouflage netting did obscure much of its surface. Yet all five research and storage buildings seemed intact—though uninhabited.
"No smoke or movement," declared Baker.
"Not good," Trennt concurred. He called to the pilot. "Drue, hit the alternate."
The plane set down snugly in the designated clearing. Gear was quickly unloaded and readied. Trennt and Baker each took an S-12 shotgun, stuffing the magazines with explosive 10-gauge rounds. Pistols were likewise charged and holstered.
Lightweight speed packs followed, filled with Kevlar "sapper suits" for maneuvering through barrier vines, rappelling line, and assorted pyrotechnics. To allow freer movement, Baker discarded the awkward protective case housing their nuclear detonator and wedged the thin primer tube between the open straps of his pack.
After a couple of minutes orienting their map and verifying reference points, the pair was ready. The aerial light show had dimmed appreciably to the risen sun. But a somber gray void was beginning to fill the northeasterly distance. The air now also had the bitter-fresh nip of gathering ozone.
Trennt handed a walkie-talkie to the pilot as they stood in the heavy dank silence outside the parked plane.
"These should reach the short distance to the station, providing the magnetics don't get too wild. Keep an ear open. Your call sign will be 'One-One.' Ours, 'One-Two.' Anything special breaks loose, we'll call you. If the radios fail, just watch for a flare. Green means come; red, bailout. If things go good, we should be in place in three-quarters of an hour."
Baker extended a small-caliber pistol pulled from his waistband. "Can you use one o' these?"
The pilot regarded it uncomfortably.
"Hey, I'm no . . ."
"Don't have to be," interrupted the gunman. "Just keep it handy. Any trouble comes along, 'bang bang,' okay?"
Baker shifted his gear into a comfortable position. Pumping his clenched weapon, he rattled with boyish exuberance.
"Just like the old days, huh, Jimbo?"
Again checking the sky, Trennt didn't share in any nostalgia.
"Let's get it done."
They went back a long way. To the Peru-Ecuador scrap of the early new century. Dozens of long-range recon missions into enemy territory. Fighting side by side in the trenches of the Cordillera del Condor Siege. On a spot of ground named Hill 27, but forever known to the common grunt simply as "The Gnat's Ass."
All this time and it still rode fresh as ever in Trennt's mind while he hiked. Seventeen days in the spring of the year. Their firebase low on everything because of weather-fouled resupply lines. Food was a memory; hardly any ammo. Little cover and constant, driving rain. Nonstop downpours that brought on trenchfoot and those wonderful sucking leeches.
But weather that also helped smother the accuracy of enemy mortar fire. And loosened the footing of three separate bayonet charges they fought off with entrenching tools and fire axes when the bullets finally gave out on both sides and taking that hill became a matter of honor for the bad guys. Like it or not, few blood ties could ever run deeper than the one Trennt shared with the lethal, slender man hiking beside him now.
Their pace was brisk. Heading off through a downhill mix of scrub and boulders, both the point of origin and their objective were soon lost from view. The terrain was brittle and oven dry. Left shriveled by years of drought, what life remained had even lost interest in catching fire. But it was easy to read. No signs of preceding travel took some of the edge off their pace and the agents made the butte well ahead of schedule.
Their first challenge waited there. Growing freely about the steep ramp were coils of a familiar and lethal hybrid thornbush. Developed in the old army labs by the very man they were here to rescue, the hellish parasite thrived as a living razor-wire fence.
A mesh of coal black, porcelain-hard barbs rose in flesh-shearing spirals taller than a man and fifty yards deep. Hooked like jagged crosscut saw teeth, the barrier waited to shred any creature foolish enough to dare enter. Blowing it away would have been time consuming—and noisy. The only alternative was to traverse it.
From the hill's base, Baker scanned higher levels while Trennt verified the location of booby traps.
"After we get through this stuff, there're a dozen tiger pits and dead falls. Beyond are electric mines and the Intruder Alert System, with the summit another couple hundred feet past that. The guns are stocked with twenty thousand rounds apiece in a corridor that varies in width from sixteen feet to five feet. Just as bad is a four-foot-thick bed of masonry sand, topped with concrete slabs and meant to avalanche if crossed over. So stay close."