Nerve Center by Dale Brown & Jim Defelice

Author:Dale Brown & Jim Defelice [Brown, Dale & Defelice, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Espionage, Fantasy, Action & Adventure, War & Military
ISBN: 9780425187722
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2002-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Aboard SAR Helicopter Charlie 7

Over Sierra Nevada Mountains

19 February, 1715

SERGEANT PERSE “POWDER” TALCOM LEANED AGAINST the door window of the Pave Low as the big helicopter struggled against the wind. The cloud hanging on the mountainside seemed like a massive bear, trying to protect her young.

“Fierce fuckin’ rain,” he groused to Sergeant Lee “Nurse” Liu, who was standing behind him. “I can’t fuckin’ see fuckin’ shit.”

“Sleet,” corrected Liu. “Some of it’s even snow.”

“Whatever.”

“Use Captain Freah’s visor.”

“Helmet’s too damn heavy.”

“Then I will.”

Powder gave his companion a scowl, then braced himself to fit the smart helmet and its high-tech visor over his head. Freah’s suggestion that they take the new device had seemed like a great idea—until Powder put it on in the transport out to Nellis. The helmet had been formed for the captain’s head. It scraped the hell out of Powder’s ears going on, but floated around freely like a bucket atop a water pump once on.

No wonder officers thought differently than normal human beings; their heads were shaped weird.

Normally, a Pave Low would ride with two officers—pilot and copilot—along with a pair of flight engineers and two crew members manning the guns. This craft, Charlie 7, had been flying nearly nonstop since before the crash, and was now on its third crew. Besides the pilots and the Dreamland volunteers as SAR personnel, it carried only one flight engineer, a staff sergeant named Brautman who had drunk at least four liter bottles of Coke since the Dreamland volunteers had come aboard forty-five minutes ago. He definitely had a caffeine buzz—his chin bobbed up and down constantly and his arms buzzed like a hummingbird’s wings. Brautman kept getting up and down, pacing back and forth between the rear of the flight deck and the rest of the cabin, so jittery Powder felt like laying him out with a shot to the jaw.

“There, right there,” said Liu, pointing to the ravine.

Powder flicked the visor into infrared mode. A brownish blob appeared at the lower left of the screen; the weather cut down greatly on the available detail, but there was definitely something warm down there.

“Get us the fuck down there,” Powder yelled to Brautman, who relayed the request to the pilot without the expletive.

“Too windy,” was the reply.

“Fuck that.” Sergeant Talcom took off the helmet, and then nearly lost it as turbulence rocked the helo. Liu grabbed the helmet and Powder tottered forward, grabbing at the bulkhead like a drunken sailor.

“You gotta get us fuckin’ down!” he yelled at the two men on the flight deck.

As a general rule, Air Force SAR helicopter pilots, and Pave Low jocks in particular, had boulder-sized balls. With the possible exception of their mamas, they weren’t scared of anything. This particular pilot had flown deep into Iraq during the Gulf War, and had a scar on his leg to prove he had done so under fire. But he shook his head.

“The storm is too much, night’s coming on, and that’s not a man down there,” he told Powder.

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