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the Aurora, my call-sign was Dead Man One. It appeases the fates. It nullifies bad luck by giving
reverence to it it's pilot stuff. We call it The Nix. If you don't worship The Nix...you're spam in a
can. There won't be enough left of you for an E-2 crash technician to scrape out of the cockpit
with a spatula."
"The Nix, huh?"
"Yeah."
Another coy silence, then Ashton's voice lowered. "You might need a lot more than The Nix to
save you now."
"Think so? We'll see. I already told you, I'm not taking the mission, whatever it is."
Silence.
Then, "Oh, you'll take it, General," Ashton said. "I guarantee you'll take it."
Wentz laughed out lout in his mask. "Keep dreaming, lady! I'm just here for the stick time..."
«« »»
Fifteen minutes later, Wentz keyed his mike. "We're coming up."
"All right, General," Ashton replied. "Slight change of destination. We're not really going to
Nellis."
"What? So where are we going? Tasty-Freeze?"
"Proceed past Nellis Main Runway 3 to Papoose Lake, seventy-five miles west, southwest."
Alarmed, Wentz jerked his head around to look at her. "Papoose Lake? That's a priority no-fly
perimeter! I can't land there!"
Ashton passed forward another plastic envelope. Wentz tore it open and removed a card that
read:
4B6: PILOT - (SI) TEKNA/BYMAN/ULTIMA
- COMMAND ORDER -
BYPASS AS INSTRUCTED.
Wentz just shook his head, adjusting the pitch-trim. "Whatever you say, lady." He kept one eye
on the E-scope, then he veered the stick and peeled off toward the new coordinates. The
spookshow continues, he thought. Papoose was a lake that had dried up hundreds of years ago,
and since Wentz's first day as a pilot, any aerial passage over the ten-thousand-acre perimeter
was strictly prohibited by the FAA, the Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Air Force
Security Group Activity. No one knew why but it was easy to guess. A dried-up lake? Thousands
of acres of desert? Irradiated waste disposal, or a chemical/biological dump, Wentz presumed.
Below him, the desert stretched endlessly, humped by ridges of sand dunes. "So where am I
going to land?" he asked Ashton. "On the sand dunes?"
"There's a runway. You just can't see it."
"What?"
"Switch on your inertial-navigation director and turn your automatic blue-flight toggle to ⬠Üalt.'
Set your heading to four-three-one, then activate auto-pilot."
Smirking, Wentz did as instructed.
"Now turn on your ECM jammer pod "
"This is a courier! There's no ECM on this plane!" Wentz barked.
"No, but there's something else connected to its console."
Dismayed, Wentz flipped up the ENABLE switch. Suddenly the sky-toe display snapped on, and
What the
the aircraft began to descend, pivot, and maneuver for landing, all without Wentz doing a thing.
Of course, auto-landers existed but were rarely used, and even when they were, it was always
necessary for the pilot to visually line up a computer mark with the landing zone.
But, here, there was no landing zone.
All Wentz could see below him were the endless hillocks of sand.
"It's some kind of a pulse-navaid, isn't it?" Wentz asked. "It receives emissions from a ground-
based VOR and terrain-following radar, then feeds it all into an onboard processor, right?"
"Do you see any radar antennas or VOR dishes, General?"
Wentz strained his eyes. He saw nothing but sand.
"Besides," Ashton added over the commo line, "a half-hour from now, you're not even going to
care."
"Still think I'm taking the mission, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
Her presumptuousness continued to amuse him to no end, but as the plane's altitude began to
drop, Wentz's concern rose. She'd said something about a runway that couldn't be seen. But
where? The dunes?
"Where are we going anyway?"
"A base," Ashton answered.
Wentz stared down. Only sand dunes.
"I don't see any damn base "
Then the landing gear began to lower on its own. The flaps dropped, and power began to retard.
"Relax, General," Ashton said.
Wentz was not relaxed. He began to fidget. After all these years, he'd forgotten how to be afraid.
But now he was remembering again.
When the altimeter read ninety feet, he did something he hadn't done in decades: he panicked.
"Something's wrong! The INS must've blown its boards!"
"Relax, General," Ashton calmly repeated.
"We can't land in sand! I'm going to punch us out "
"Do NOT eject!" Ashton shouted. "The runway is camouflaged! Do NOT eject!"
Camou Wentz grit his teeth, staring at the desertscape before him. The tires chirped when the
plane touched down. Wentz expected the nose to pitch; he expected an explosion and summary
death...
But the plane landed normally in what appeared to be...sand.
Smooth as silk, he thought. "What, the runway "
"The runway is made of a sand-colored composite," Ashton said.
"Yeah, but...you can't see it." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]