Razor's Edge

Chapter 1

Torbin Dolk positioned his size thirteen boot atop the engine fairing for the F-4G Phantom Wild Weasel, then carefully levered himself from the boarding ladder to the aircraft, easing his weight onto the ancient metal like a kid testing lake ice after an early thaw. The metal had been designed to withstand pressures far greater than the bulky electronic warfare officer’s weight, but he always climbed up gingerly. He wasn’t so much afraid of breaking the plane as he was of somehow offending it, for if anything mechanical could be said to have a personality or even a soul, it was Glory B.

The broad-shouldered Phantom was one of the last of her kind still on active duty in the Air Force, and in fact she had escaped orders to report as a target sled two weeks ago only because of some last minute paperwork snafu with the plane designated to take her place patrolling northern Iraq. She waited on the ramp in front of the hangar with her chin up proudly, no doubt recalling the first flight of her kind nearly forty years before. The F4H-1 that took off that bright May day in 1958 was a very different aircraft than Glory B—cocky where she was dignified, fidgety where she was staid. The F4H-1 was also a Navy asset, a fact Glory B with her USAF markings glossed over in her musings. The Phantom, for all its imperfections, surely qualified as one of the service’s most successful airframes, a versatile jet that notched more hours in the sky than the sun.

Torbin touched the glass of the raised canopy, patting it gently for good luck. Then he put his hands on his hips and looked down at the tarmac, where his pilot was proceeding with his walkaround. Captain Dolk had flown with Major Richard “Richie” Fitzmorris for nearly a month; during that time, Fitzmorris’s preflight rituals had nearly doubled in length and rigor. Pretty soon he’d be counting brush strokes on the nose art.

“Yo, Richie, we flying today?” yelled Torbin.

Fitzmorris, who probably couldn’t hear him, waved.

The crew chief, standing a few feet behind the pilot, smirked, then ducked forward as Fitzmorris pointed at something below the right wing.

Torbin lowered himself on his haunches atop the plane.

His gaze drifted across the large airfield toward the F-16s they were to accompany, then to a pair of large C-5A transports and a fleet of trucks taking gear away. Torbin’s mind drifted. His brother-in-law had recently offered to go partners in his construction business back home, and he was giving it serious thought. His career in the Air Force seemed to have come to a dead end, though that was largely his own fault. He’d come back to the Weasels two years ago even though he knew they were doomed to extinction. Life at the Pentagon had become boring beyond belief, and he’d wanted to go where the action was.

Once the Phantom bit the dust, his options would be severely limited.

“So we going or what?” said Fitzmorris, who’d managed to sneak up on him.

The major’s voice surprised him so much, Torbin didn’t have a comeback. He dropped into the cockpit sheepishly, and hadn’t even finished snugging his restraints when the pilot and ground crew began negotiating for power. The start cart on the tarmac revved up its turbine; a few moments later the Phantom’s right engine cranked to life, its growl mimicking a tiger protecting his food. Glory B’s left engine kicked in and the plane shuddered against her brakes, Fitzmorris pushing power to about fourteen percent. Fuel flow nudged 500 pounds per minute. The indicators swung up green — good to go, boys, good to go.

Glory B rocked expectantly as her two passengers worked through their checklists, making sure they were ready. Finally she loped forward, winking at the end-of-runway crew as she paused to have her missiles armed; she was so anxious, she almost refused to hold short when the pilot had to stop and run through another of his interminable checklists. Finally cleared, she roared into the sky after the F-16s, a proud mare chasing down her foals.

Roughly an hour and a half later Glory B held her wings stiff as she bucked through turbulence deep in enemy territory. The area below belonged to Iraqi Kurds, who were currently engaged in a low-intensity, multidi-mensional war against not only Saddam Hussein’s army, but themselves. Infighting between the various Kurdish factions had helped Saddam consolidate power in the northern mountains above the Euphrates. Though ostensibly forbidden to use force there by the decrees that ended the Gulf War, he was currently backing “his”

Kurds against the others with light tanks and ground troops. The F-16s were on the lookout for helicopters; the Iraqis occasionally used them to attack villages sympathetic to the guerrillas.

“You awake back there?” Fitzmorris asked.

“Can’t you hear me snoring, stick boy?”

“Just don’t play with the steering wheel,” answered the pilot. It was an old joke — the G model of the Phantom featured a stick and flight controls in the rear cockpit.

“Glory B, this is Falcon leader,” the F-16 commander broke in. “We have some movement on the highway in box able-able-two. We’re going to take a look.”

“Roger that,” replied the pilot.

Fitzmorris adjusted his course to take them farther east, following the fighters. As they swung south, their AWACS gave them an update — nothing hostile in the sky.

Thirty seconds later an SA-2 icon blossomed in the right corner of the Plan Position Indicator at the center of Torbin’s dash. In the quarter second it took his fingers to respond, his brain plotted the flicker of light against the mission brief. Then he began doing several things simultaneously, cursoring the target and transmitting data to one of the AGM-88 HARM missiles beneath his wings.

Two small gun-dish icons flashed on the left side of the threat screen, their legends showing they were about five miles closer than the SA-2 but well beyond their firing range. Smart enough to sort and prioritize the threats, the APR-47 concentrated on the long-range missile. Torbin, who could override the system, agreed.

“Got a Two,” he told Fitzmorris. They were about thirty miles away.

His gear flashed — an SA-8 had come up. It was flicking on and off, but his gear got a decent read anyway, marking it just beyond the SA-2 site, out of range for the admittedly nasty missile.

He’d take it after the SA-2. They were almost in position to fire.

The SA-2’s radar went off, but it was too late — Torbin had the location tattooed on his HARM’s forehead. But just then one of the Falcon pilots broke in. “I’m spiked!

An SA-8!”

No you’re not, thought Torbin; don’t overreact. The radar had just flicked off. There was a launch, but it was the SA-2—which now seemed to be running without guidance.

“Torbin!” said Fitzmorris. “Shit, twenty-five-mile scope. Shit.”

“Right turn,” Torbin said. “Relax. The F-16’s okay.

The only thing that can get him is the two, and its radar just went off. He’ll beat it.”

“Yeah.”

“All right, we have an SA-8 south. There are SA-9s well south,” said Torbin. His threat scope was suddenly very crowded. “Not players.”

“Shit.”

“Out of range. We’ll take my two, then the eight.”

Balls of black, red, gray, and white flak rose in the distance. More indications lit the screen, more radars.

Torbin had never seen so many contacts before. Radars were switching on and off throughout a wide swath of territory. The Iraqis were trying something new. The APR-47

hung with them all like a trooper, though the sheer number of contacts was pushing it toward its design limits.

“Torbin!”

“Fifteen miles. Start your turn in three,” Torbin told the pilot.

“The SA-8.” Fitzmorris’s voice was a loud hiss, pointing out another threat that had popped onto the screen.

“You fly the plane.” An SA-9 battery fired one of its short-range missiles well off to the west. Torbin concentrated on the SA-2, had a good read. “Target dotted!

Handoff. Ready light!”

“Shoot him, for chrissakes!”

“Away, we’re away,” said Torbin, handing off the SA-8 to a second HARM missile and firing almost instantaneously. The two radar seekers thundered away, accelerating past Mach 3 as they rushed toward their targets.

“Rolling right!” said Fitzmorris, jinking to avoid the enemy radars.

“Triple A,” warned Torbin, who could see a large patch of black roiling over the canopy glass as they tucked around.

“Shit.” Fitzmorris’s voice seemed calmer now.

“We’re clean,” said Torbin. He craned his head around as Fitzmorris spun to a safe distance. A white puff of smoke appeared on the ground off the left wing.

Bagged somebody. Meanwhile, the other Iraqi radars had flickered out. Their jinking cost him a shot at any of the smaller SA-9 batteries; they were too far north now to fire.

“Falcon Flight, what’s your status?” Fitzmorris asked the F-16s as they regrouped.

“Where the hell were you guys?” the Falcon leader snapped. “Two’s down.”

“Two’s down?” said Torbin.

“You have a parachute?” asked Fitzmorris.

“Negative. Fucking negative. He’s down.”

“What hit him?” Torbin heard the words coming out of his mouth, powerless to stop them.

“What the hell do you mean?” the F-16 pilot answered.

“You’re the damn Weasel. You should have nailed those motherfuckers, or at least warned us. Shit, nobody told us jack.”

“I nailed the SA-2. Shit.”

“Go to hell,” said the F-16 commander.

Torbin pushed back in his seat, staring at the now empty threat screen. He listened to the traffic between the AWACS and the F-16s as they pinned down a search area and vectored a combat air patrol toward it. The short-legged F-16s would have to go home very soon; other airplanes were being scrambled from Incirlik to help in the search but it would be some time before they arrived. The Phantom, with its three “bags,” or drop tanks of extra fuel, had the search to itself.

“They launched at least three missiles,” said Fitzmorris over the interphone.

“The missiles that launched were well out of range,”

said Torbin. “They were SA-9s. No way they hit the F-16.

No way.”

“Tell that to the pilot.”

Chapter 2

The Whiplash action team made it out of the building with only minor injuries — Kevin Bison was dragging a leg and Lee “Nurse” Liu had been grazed in the arm.

Two of the three men they’d rescued from the terrorist kidnappers were in good enough condition to run, or at least trot, as they made their way down the hillside. Perse

“Powder” Talcom had the other on his back.

Captain Danny Freah, who headed the Special Forces squad, caught a breath as he reached the stone wall where Freddy “Egg” Reagan was holding down their rear flank.

“Action over the hill, Captain,” Egg told him, gesturing with his Squad Automatic Weapon. The SAW was a 5.56mm light machine gun that could lay down a devas-tating blanket of lead. It happened to be one of the few weapons the team carried that hadn’t been tinkered with by the scientists and weapons experts at Dreamland, where Whiplash was based. Some things just couldn’t be improved on — yet.

Danny flipped the visor on his helmet down and clicked into the target mode, which put a red-dot aiming cursor on the screen. The bulky visor looked like a welder’s shield and shifted the helmet’s center of gravity forward. The initial awkwardness was worth getting used to, since it offered four different viewing modes — unenhanced, infrared, starlight, and radioactive detection. The bulletproof carbon-boron helmet it was attached to provided not only GPS and secure discrete-burst, short-distance communications with the rest of the team, but linked into a combat system in Danny’s bulletproof vest that allowed him to communicate with the Dreamland Command Center — aka Dream Command — via purpose-launched tactical satellites. Once connected, Freah had virtually unlimited resources available at a whisper.

He didn’t need them here. What he needed was to reach the waiting MH-53J beyond the hill.

“Listen up,” he told the squad. “Powder and I go over the hill, make sure it’s clear. Egg, you got our butts.”

“Yo,” answered Egg.

“Sound off,” said Danny, more to give his guys a last breather than to make sure they were with him. As the team checked in alphabetically, the captain examined his MP-5, which was connected to the helmet’s targeting gear via a thin wire that plugged in at the rear. It had a fresh clip; he slipped a second into the Velcro straps at his wrist, not wanting to waste precious microseconds retrieving it under fire.

“Let’s go, Powder,” Danny said, hopping the wall and moving up the slope. A few feet from the peak he threw himself down shoulder first, raising his gun as he rolled just to the crown of the hill. He peered over with his visor at ten times magnification, quickly scanning to check the terrain.

The Air Force Special Forces helicopter sat on the level flat twenty yards from the foot of the sharp cliff, exactly where they had left it.

The six-man crew was there as well.

Except they were all dead.

“Shit,” whispered Powder, popping up behind him.

“All right, relax,” said Danny. The enemy was nowhere in sight but undoubtedly hadn’t gone far. He pointed to a small rock outcropping on the right. “They’ll be hiding there, waiting for us to hit the helicopter,” he told Powder.

“There’s probably two or three guys circling around to ambush us once they pin us down.”

Powder glanced toward the rear. Danny wasn’t worried — Egg could hold his own. “What are we doin’, Cap?”

“We play along. You make like you’re going to the Pave Low, I’ll jog that way and nail them. Try not to get killed before I waste them.”

“Shit,” cursed Powder. He continued grumbling as Danny dropped down to flank the spot.

“Whiplash, hold your positions,” whispered Danny as he ran. “Helo crew has been neutralized. Egg — we think there’re probably two or three guys trying to flank us.”

Egg acknowledged for the others.

As Danny ducked down near the end of the ravine, he lost contact with the rest of the team; unless hooked to the satellites, the com system was line-of-sight.

Even if he hadn’t used all of his grenades earlier, he wouldn’t have now, because he didn’t want to risk damaging the helicopter. But that meant getting close and personal to flush them out.

He knew they’d have a guard at the crevice, watching the flank. Drop him, and the rest would be easy pickings.

Danny took out his short, four-inch survival knife, in his opinion better suited for this kind of work than the longer models. He turned it over in his hand as he scouted the situation.

He could crawl to within ten yards of the spot from behind the rocks. But then he’d have to run over open terrain. He positioned his gun against his left hip, then began working his way forward. As he jumped to his feet he realized that even if he got to the crevice without being seen, he’d never be able to pirouette his arm up quickly enough to take the guard without firing. He ran anyway, all his momentum committed to the plan.

There was no guard.

He flopped back against the rocks, winded, temporarily confused. Had he miscalculated? Or was his enemy overconfident?

Overconfident.

Hopefully.

They were maybe twenty yards from him, fifteen, up along the crevice, waiting for the Whiplash team to come running down the hill toward the helo. Danny stowed his knife, shifted his gun, then tried to contact Powder. The sergeant didn’t answer. He raised his head, trying again.

“Powder — now,” he hissed.

Nothing.

Danny sidled along the jagged crevice. The sharp cuts made it impossible to see — maybe their guard was posted farther up.

Once they started firing at Powder, he could run up and nail them.

“Powder!”

Nothing.

Maybe they were in the helo.

“Chee-ya!” shouted Powder from the other end of the slope. He fired a burst from his gun.

Two men rose from behind the rocks five feet from Danny. Completely intent on Powder, they trained their guns and waited for an easy shot. Danny held his fire as well, sidestepping to see if anyone else was there.

“Chee-ya!” Powder shouted again, throwing himself down.

One of the enemy soldiers began firing. Danny pressed the trigger, greasing the two men, then a third who bounced out from the rocks to their right as the first fell.

Danny emptied the clip on a fourth, caught stunned behind the others.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!” said Freah, pushing up his helmet. “You’re all dead.”

“They cheated!” shouted the Pave Low pilot, from his dead-man squat down by the helicopter. “They’re wearing Whiplash gear, the fucks.”

“Hey, you cheats!” yelled Powder, running over. “No fair!”

“Hey, you’re dead,” said one of the “enemy” gunners.

“I got you.”

“Bullshit — check the computer. Read it and weep, my friend.”

“Egg, Pretty Boy, up. Four dead Delta troopers in those rocks beyond the helo,” said Danny. “Watch out for stragglers.”

“There’s no stragglers,” said the helo pilot. “They’re fucking cheaters.”

“Hey, you can’t talk to him,” said one of the men Danny had mock-killed. It was the leader of the Delta team, Major Harmon Peiler, who was indeed wearing Whiplash black camos. “Come on, Freah. You know the rules.”

Danny laughed at the Delta commander, then climbed up out of the crevice. He walked behind the position, checking to make sure there weren’t any more D boys in the rocks.

Counterfeit clothes. Not bad.

“We may be dead, but you lost this one, Danny boy,”

said Peiler. “You can’t get out. Advantage Delta. You’re buyin’ tonight.”

“Saddle up in the chopper,” Danny told his team.

“You can’t get out,” said Peiler.

“Why not? My aircraft is still here.”

“Your pilot’s dead.”

“That pilot’s dead,” said Danny, pointing.

“Yeah — you’re going to freakin’ fly it yourself?”

“Egg, you’re up,” shouted Danny. The sergeant waved, then climbed into the helicopter.

“What the freakin’ hell are you doin’?” Peiler demanded.

“Egg’s gonna fly us out,” said Danny as his sergeant settled into the cockpit.

“Like hell! Shit.”

Danny shrugged.

“Bullshit he can fly,” said Peiler.

“Well, you better hope so, because you’re going to be sitting in the back.”

“Hey, uh, Captain, I don’t know,” said the pilot.

“Relax. Egg used to fly Apaches. Ain’t that right, Egg?”

Egg, listening on his smart helmet com set, corrected him. “Uh, Captain, that was Cobras. Kind of a different thing.”

“Yeah, just give them the thumbs-up.”

Egg leaned out the cockpit window and did so. Peiler cursed.

Staff Sergeant Frederick K. “Egg” Reagan had, in fact, flown on the Army gunship, though as a gunner, not a pilot.

Nonetheless, the experience had encouraged him to obtain a helicopter pilot’s license, and he was indeed checked out on the MH-53J. Everyone on the Whiplash action team had a specialty; his was handling heavy equipment. Had there been an M1A1, he would have been equally at home.

The rotor started skipping around as the engine coughed and died.

“I don’t know about this,” said Peiler.

“Well, you can come or you can walk,” said Danny.

“It’s ten miles to the safe zone.”

Danny shrugged.

“Dead men, up and into the helicopter,” said Peiler as the twin turbos caught.

“Uh, Captain,” said the Pave Low pilot, pulling Danny aside. “If we crash, they’re going to take this out of my pay for the next hundred years.”

“You should’ve thought about that before you got suckered by these bozos,” Danny told him. “They don’t even have carbon-boron vests, for chrissakes.”

Chapter 3

Arms cramping, neck stiff, legs numb, electronic warfare officer Torbin Dolk pushed back against the ejection seat, a piece of furniture that would never be confused for an easy chair.

“How you holding out?” his pilot asked.

“Yeah,” said Torbin.

“Excuse me?” Fitzmorris asked.

“Fine. I’m fine.” He adjusted the volume on the radio, which was tuned to the emergency Guard band the downed flier should have been using. Standard procedure called for the pilot to broadcast at certain times, but the searchers monitored the radio constantly, hoping to hear something.

Fifty-five antennas protruded from various parts of the Phantom. Not one was of any particular use at the moment. The Iraqi radar operators hadn’t juiced up their sets since the shoot-down.

Bastards were probably all out at a monster party, celebrating, Torbin thought.

That or looking for the pilot.

“We’re going to have to go back,” said Fitzmorris.

“Yeah,” said Torbin. There were now four other planes scouring the peaks, waiting for any signal from the downed airman; they wouldn’t be leaving their comrade alone.

Still, Torbin didn’t want to go.

“Glory B, we’re wondering what your fuel situation is,” said the AWACS controller.

“Yeah, mom, we’re close to bingo,” answered Fitzmorris. The pilot was fudging big-time — bingo left about twenty minutes of reserve in the tanks. They were past it by nineteen minutes.

“Falcon Two, Falcon Two, you up? Jack, you hear me?” said Torbin, keying into the Guard band.

Silence.

“Falcon Two, Falcon Two. Jesus man, where the hell are you?”

“We’re going home,” said the pilot over the interphone circuit.

Chapter 4

Mack Smith had just about gotten to the door of his hotel room when the phone rang. Ordinarily he would have blown it off and gone on to dinner, but he’d given his room number to a French aerospace consultant just before leaving NATO headquarters this afternoon. The memory of her smile and lusciously shaped breasts — mostly her breasts — grabbed him and pulled him back into the room.

“Bonjour,” he said, exhausting his French.

“Major Smith, this is Jed Barclay.”

“Jed?”

“Uh, listen, Major, sorry to bother you but, uh, I need kind of a favor.”

Smith sat down on the bed. Barclay, though probably too young to shave, was a high-level aide at the National Security Council.

“Where are you, Jed?”

Barclay didn’t answer. “Listen, I need you to, uh, get a hold of General Elliott for me.”

“What? Why?”

“I need you to get General Elliott over to a secure phone and call me, okay? He’ll know the drill.”

Brad Elliott, a former three-star general, was in Brussels briefing some of the NATO brass on the recent problems with Iran. Technically retired, Elliott had headed the Air Force’s High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center — Dreamland — for several years. He was now somehow involved with the ultrasecret Intelligence Support Agency, which coordinated black operations with the CIA and elements of the military. Mack wasn’t exactly sure what the involvement was — his own clearance didn’t extend that high. Except that he’d seen the general this afternoon — briefly — he wouldn’t even have known he was in Brussels.

“Why me?” asked Mack.

“This has to be done discreetly,” said Jed.

“Well, I’m your guy,” said Smith, “but I’m not really sure where the hell he is.”

“Uh, this is an open line,” said Jed. “I need you to get him.”

“Yeah, all right, kid. Relax. I’ll do it.”

“As soon as possible, Major.”

“Gee, really?” Smith hung up the phone. He’d come to Europe on very temporary duty a few days before, assigned to deliver a seminar on differentiating between missile and other damage for visiting VIPs and crash experts next week. He’d hoped he might be able to use the assignment to troll for an interesting berth — though nominally still assigned to Dreamland, he was actually looking for a new command.

Elliott and ISA might be just the ticket. Smith went downstairs and then across the street to a pay phone, where he dialed the European Command liaison office temporarily hosting him.

“Hell-o?” answered a somewhat high-pitched feminine voice.

Patti, the English girl. Good teeth, skinny legs. He’d been working on her before meeting the aerospace consultant.

“Hey, Patti, this is Mack Smith. How were those chocolates?”

“Oh, Major Smith — very good.”

He flashed on a picture of her sucking them down.

Those legs wouldn’t stay skinny for very long.

“Listen, I’m really an airhead today — I was supposed to see General Elliott for drinks but I totally forgot where.”

“Brad Elliott? But I thought he was having a late dinner with General Stumford.”

Stumford. Second in command of JSSOC, the Joint Services Special Operations Command. Army guy. Thick neck, small ears. Here for some sort of consultation.

Probably more ISA stuff.

“Yeah, I’m supposed to meet them — where was it, exactly?”

The restaurant happened to be only two blocks away, on one of the three streets in the city that Mack had mem-orized. As he walked over he wracked his brain for a way of getting General Elliott alone. Either the walk was too short or the chilly evening air froze his brain; not a single idea occurred to him before he opened the door.

Mack ignored the long string of foreign words the maitre d’ spewed at him as he walked into the dining room. Elliott and Stumford were sitting at a table at the far end of the room, watching as a sommelier opened a bottle of wine for them.

“Hey, General Elliott,” said Mack, walking forward.

“Mack? I didn’t know you liked French food.”

“Well, I don’t, actually.” Mack glanced around, then over at Stumford, whose frown would have stopped an M1A1 in its tracks. “I, uh, I have a message for you, General. Phone call you need to make. Uh, personal, but uh, important. You’re supposed to call right away.”

Mack hesitated. Elliott wasn’t married, so he couldn’t tell him to call his wife.

“Your mom,” said Smith, lowering his voice to a near whisper. He glanced at Stumford and nodded seriously before turning back to Elliott. “It’s, well, it’s — you probably ought to call right now. If you want, I can let you use my phone over at, uh, the temporary office they gave me.

No charge.”

Elliott gave him a quizzical look. “Okay,” he said finally, pulling his napkin from his lap. “Bill, I’m sorry.”

Stumford nodded. Mack swung away, feeling reasonably proud of himself for pulling it off until Elliott grabbed his shoulder in the front room.

“You’re a good pilot, Major, but you’re going to have to work on your lying.”

“Why?”

“Bill Stumford was at my mother’s funeral.”

Mack took Elliott to his own office to use the secure phone, managing to get him down the hall without meeting anyone besides the security people. If Elliott had any clue what was up, he didn’t betray it, nor did his face show any emotion when he was finally connected with Barclay. “Go ahead, Jed,” was all he said, and he didn’t so much as grunt in acknowledgment as Barclay filled him in on what was up. He listened without comment for nearly five minutes, then stood up from the chair with the phone still at his ear.

“I’m on my way,” he said before returning the phone to its cradle. Elliott looked up at him so sharply that Mack almost didn’t ask what was up.

Almost.

“So?” he asked, looking for a way to start his pitch for help finding a new command.

“So what, Major?”

“Well, I was just wondering if … well, I—” It had been quite some time since Brad Elliott’s eyes had bored through his skull, but the effect now was immediate.

“You think you could drop me off back at my hotel, sir?”

“You’re coming with me, Major.”

“Really? Great,” said Mack. “Fantastic. This is back channel stuff right? That’s why Jed called me instead of going through official channels.”

“You’re sharp as ever, Major.”

“You know, I’d like to broaden my horizons a bit,”

added Mack, deciding to make his play. “I could do a lot with ISA and, you know me, I want to be where the action is. The projects at Dreamland are drying up, and the only thing I’ve been able to find in the real world is a D.O. slot in a squadron at Incirlik. Armpit of the world.

Jeez, I don’t want to go there.”

Elliott ignored him, starting out of the office so quickly that Mack had to run down the hallway to catch up. “Girls all wear veils, if you know what I mean.”

Elliott harrumphed as they left the building, heading for his car.

“If you can help me come up with something—”

“I can ask around,” said Elliott finally, unlocking the car.

“Thanks, General, I truly appreciate it.”

“Hmmm.”

“So where we going?” Mack asked as they wheeled out of their parking spot. “D.C.?”

“Incirlik,” said Elliott. “There’ll be a jet at the airport.”

Chapter 5

Major Jeff “Zen” Stockard swept his eyes around the readings projected on the instrument screen, confirming the computer’s declaration that all systems were in the green. The Flighthawks’ Comprehensive Command and Control computer, known as C3, had never been wrong yet, but that didn’t mean Zen was going to give it a bye.

“Major?”

“Keep your shirt on, Curly.”

Captain Kevin Fentress fidgeted at the nickname but said nothing. A reference to the short, well-furled locks on Fentress’s head, it was Zen’s latest attempt at giving the newbie Flighthawk pilot a decent handle.

“Handoff in thirty seconds,” said Zen. “Begin the procedure.”

“Right.” Fentress blew a hard breath, trying to relax. He was sitting only a few feet from Zen at the left-hand console in the Flighthawk control bay of Bear One, an EB-52

Megafortress outfitted to support test flights of the small, unmanned fighters, officially designated U/MF-3s. Taking over the robot wasn’t as simple as reaching over and grabbing the stick. Fentress’s fingers stumbled through the long panel sequence twice before he could give the voice command to transfer control to his console. The procedure included two different code words — a third, if Zen didn’t consent within five seconds — as well as retina scan by the gear in Fentress’s control helmet. By the time it was completed, the Flighthawk had traveled several miles beyond their planned turnaround and was nearing the end of the test range.

“Let’s go, Fentress. You’re behind the plane.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tighter,” Zen told his pupil as he began the turn.

“You’re not flying a Predator. Use the plane.”

Fentress gave more throttle, still obviously out of sorts; he had to back off to get the robot’s nose onto the right heading. Zen knew how hard it could be to get a precise feel for the robot. It was as much a struggle of the imagination as anything physical. But Fentress had been practicing this for several days — he ought to know it cold.

Zen took another quick glance at the U/MF-3’s instrument readings, then looked at the sitrep map in the lower left video screen. The map presented a synthesized

“bird’s-eye view” of the area around Bear One, showing not only the unmanned robot, but its planned flight path and the location of the target drone, which in this case was an ancient Phantom F-4 flown completely by computer. Today’s exercise was simple: As the Phantom flew a racetrack oval around Dreamland’s Test Range 2, Fentress would approach it from the rear and launch a simulated cannon attack. It ought to be easy.

Except that Fentress overhandled the robot, his inputs shifting it left and right and up and down so much that the computer twice gave him warnings that the plane was dangerously close to pitching toward the dirt. Zen shook his head but let the computer do the scolding — the safety parameters were set so that C3 would take over if Curly did anything truly horrible.

Which he nearly did as he angled to catch the Phantom drone, swinging wide then overaccelerating and sailing over the plane without managing to get a firing cue from the computer.

“Try again,” said Zen as patiently as he could manage.

“Sorry.”

“Try again.”

Fentress did even worse the second time, violating the test parameters by flying into the next range, which fortunately was unoccupied. Zen grabbed control of the plane ten seconds after he crossed the line, overriding the usual command sequence with a push-button safety switch on his control board.

“Jesus, what’s going on?” said Fentress, at first un-aware that he didn’t have control.

“You went into Range 3B,” said Zen. “I have it.”

Zen slid his speed back and ducked the Flighthawk’s wing, gliding toward the designated airspace like an eagle checking the crags for a new aerie. He’d grown so used to flying the Flighthawk with his control helmet that handling it with the screens felt a little like backseat driving.

He pushed the Flighthawk into a rough trail on the drone, setting his speed precisely to the drone’s at 280 knots. All Fentress had to do now was nudge the slider on his throttle bar, located on the underside of the all-control stick, and wait for the “hit me” sign from the computer.

“All yours, Curly,” he said, punching his hot switch again to give control back.

His student hunkered down in his seat, pushing forward against the restraints as he concentrated. Zen watched the targeting screen count down as Fentress closed on the drone in a rear-quarter attack. The pilot pressed the trigger the second C3 cued him to fire.

And he’d been doing so well.

“I told you, the computer is almost always optimistic from the rear,” Zen told Fentress as the bullets trailed downward toward the empty desert. Oblivious, the Phantom began its turn, taking it outside the target cone.

“Count three before you fire.”

Firing the cannon — an M61 from an F-16 modified to fit the robot plane — killed some of the U/MF’s momentum, and Fentress struggled to get back into position. Finally he dropped his speed to the point where Zen worried the Phantom would lap him. Gradually, Fentress pulled himself toward the F-4’s tail. After nearly a half hour of nudging, he finally got the fire cue, waited this time, and then fired — only to see his target tuck its wing and disappear.

Not completely. It zipped up behind him as the Flighthawk’s RWR blared and nailed him from the back.

“Bang, bang, you’re dead,” said Zen, who had overrid-den the controls.

“That’s not fair,” said Fentress.

“Damn straight. Let’s try the whole deal again. Try and close a little faster, okay? We have to land while it’s still daylight.”

Chapter 6

Captain Breanna “Rap” Stockard folded her fingers into tight fists behind her back, controlling her anger as she waited for Major Nancy Cheshire to answer her question.

“I’m not saying you’re not fit for duty,” said Cheshire.

“What I’m saying is, you have to follow regulations like everyone else.”

“I’ve had my physical exam already,” said Breanna.

“I’m completely healed. What? You think I can’t fly? I’m rusty?”

“You have to follow procedures like everyone else on this base,” insisted Cheshire. “That means ten hours as copilot, and then a reevaluation.”

“And I can’t take Galatica.”

“Galatica is not cleared beyond the stage three static tests,” said Cheshire.

“Sure it is.”

“No, Breanna, the repairs covered more than forty percent of the airframe, and that’s not even counting what they’ve added. Rules are rules — that plane has a long way to go. They haven’t even painted the nose, and the radar hasn’t been replaced. Don’t worry — I’ll take good care of it.”

“The rules are bullshit,” said Breanna, pushing her fingers together. “That’s my plane.”

“The planes don’t belong to anyone, Breanna.”

“You’re only being a bitch to me because I’m a woman.

If it were Chris or Jerry, you’d cut them some slack.”

Breanna caught her breath, realizing what she’d said.

Major Cheshire didn’t react at all, which made Breanna feel even worse.

“You have a flight at 0500,” said Cheshire. “I would expect you might want to get some sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Cheshire started to turn away. Breanna caught her sleeve. “I’m sorry, Nancy. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t.”

Cheshire nodded almost imperceptibly, then turned and walked from the simulator walkway.

Breanna hadn’t flown since crash-landing a Megafortress several weeks before. Her actions had won her an Air Force Cross — and a stay in the hospital for multiple injuries. But she’d just blown away the standard Megafortress simulations, proving she was fit to return to full duty.

In time, Breanna thought, to take Galatica up tomorrow for its first flight test after being repaired. She’d even be willing to take second seat if it meant flying her plane again.

Not that the planes belonged to anyone, exactly.

“Problem there, Captain?”

Breanna jerked around to find Clyde “Greasy Hands”

Parsons standing with a canvas tool bag a few feet from the ramp.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Ah, don’t let ’er get your goat, Captain. She’s always going around like she just stuck her butt in a power socket.” Parsons put his bag down and pulled a small tobacco tin from his pocket. He continued to speak as he wadded a tobacco plug into the side of his mouth. “She’s always looking to give someone a hard time’s all.”

“She’s doing her job, Chief,” said Breanna sharply.

Had she said that to any other chief master sergeant in the Air Force, the chief master sergeant would have snapped erect and walked on, undoubtedly cursing her under his breath. But Parsons and Breanna had been through a great deal together, and in fact the gray-haired chief liked to claim he’d been in the delivery room and pulled Breanna out from her mother’s womb.

An exaggeration, though not by much.

“You’re taking it all a bit hard, Bree,” said Greasy Hands gently. “Truth is, a lot of guys banged up like you were would take six months getting back, maybe more.”

“I wasn’t banged up.”

Banged up was what happened to her husband, a year and a half ago. That accident had cost him his legs — but not his career.

“You’re as stubborn as your old man. A real bee whacker,” said Greasy Hands, not without admiration. He started chewing his tobacco very deliberately.

“That’s a disgusting habit,” Breanna told him.

“Pretty much its main attraction.”

Breanna laughed as a small bit of tobacco juice drib-bled from his mouth.

“You’ll have a good flight tomorrow in Fort Two,” he said. “Garcia’s going along for the ride.”

“Oh no, not the Dylan freak!”

More tobacco squirted from Parsons’s mouth as he smirked. Garcia was one of Parsons’s best technical people, a whiz at both electrical and mechanical systems; supposedly he had once reassembled two turbofans blind-folded. But the staff sergeant was also an insufferable Dylan freak who saw fit to quote the master at every turn.

“Your dad wants everyone on the base to fly at least once a month. Garcia’s up,” said Parsons. “I told him not to touch nothin’ or you’d whack his fingers.”

“You did that on purpose,” Breanna told him. “You know I can’t stand Dylan.”

“Me? Never.”

Chapter 7

If the macho world of fighter jocks was ever compared to a high school football team, Kevin Fentress would be the water boy. Maybe not even that. The short, skinny kid was also painfully shy, and hadn’t been the type to join teams or clubs in high school. In fact, most of his classmates would have been surprised to find he had gone to an Army recruiter one warm day toward the end of his junior year. Intelligent and very good with math, Fentress was hoping for a way to fund a college education. The recruiter spoke to him for a half hour before Fentress finally volunteered that his true wish was to fly aircraft. After a slight hesitation — and undoubtedly observing that the would-be recruit weighed less than an Al-ice pack — the soldier dutifully directed the young man to an Air Force sergeant down the hall. Fentress surprised the skeptical recruiter by blowing away not one, but three different aptitude tests. He eventually found his way into an ROTC program with high hopes of becoming a pilot.

He hadn’t, though, for a variety of reasons both complicated and uncomplicated. His tangled path through engineering and into robotics made sense if one kept in mind two things: the original aptitude scores, and the fact that in his whole history with the Air Force, Fentress had never expressed his personal wishes or desires to any superior officer. He had never questioned any order, let alone assignment, no matter how trivial. That alone meant he would never be a fighter jock — pilots seemed to have been bred to view orders not given under fire as optional requests.

Which did not mean that Fentress didn’t have personal wishes or desires. At the moment his dearest wish was to show his boss, Major Zen Stockard, that his selection as a pilot on the U/MF program — and the only pilot in the program besides Stockard — wasn’t a huge mistake.

“One last thing, Curly,” Zen said to him. “You have to always, always, always stay in the proper test range.” He clicked off the video replay of the test mission.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not flying a Global Hawk or a Predator,” added Zen, mentioning two other projects Fentress had worked on. “This is real stuff.”

“Yes, sir. I know. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it.”

“Yes, sir. I know. I’m sorry.”

Fentress tried to bite the words back. Major Stockard embodied everything he’d once dreamed of becoming — he was a bona fide member of the Right Stuff gang, an F-15 jock who’d shot down an Iraqi jet during the Gulf War. Testing the Flighthawks, he’d survived a hellacious accident that had cost him the use of his legs. Though confined to a wheelchair, he had won his way back to active duty. Not only did he head the Flighthawk program, but he had seen action over Somalia and Brazil.

“We try again tomorrow,” added Zen, his voice still harsh.

“Yes, sir. I’ll do better. I promise. I can do better.”

“I suggest you hit the simulator.”

“I will. The whole night,” said Fentress.

“Not the whole fucking night, Curly. Get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fentress. “I will.”

The major wheeled himself away, shaking his head.

Chapter 8

“Some of the D boys were praying, I swear to god.” Danny laughed so hard he nearly dropped the phone. His wife Jemma made a little coughing sound in acknowledgment. He knew from experience that it meant she wanted to change the subject, but he was having too good a time to stop.

“You shoulda seen Russ, the helo pilot, when we landed. White as a ghost. And he’s blacker than me,” added Danny. He stretched back on his plush but very worn gold chair so his head touched the bookcase. “And Peiler. Shit.”

“Peiler is which?”

“Major running the Delta Force squad we just finished the exercises with. Smug son of a bitch is going home with his tail between his legs. Top dogs, huh? We whomped ’em!”

“I can’t keep track of all these names,” said Jemma.

Her tone was absent, distant — further away than the nearly three thousand miles between them.

“So what’d you do today?” asked Danny, finally taking her hints.

“As a matter of fact, I had lunch with James Stephens.”

Her voice changed dramatically; suddenly she was all perky and enthusiastic. “You remember him? He worked for Al D’Amato and George Pataki.”

Big-time New York state politicians — D’Amato a senator and Pataki the governor. Jemma was a black studies professor at NYU and heavily involved in politics; she was always dropping names of big shots.

“They’re Republicans,” she added. “Conservative Republicans.”

“And?”

“Jim Stephens is a good man to know,” she said. “He believes African-Americans need to be more involved.

And it’s a good time. A time when things can be done.”

“Yeah? So when are you running?” Danny asked, reaching for his drink on the table — lime-flavored seltzer.

“Not me. You,” she said sharply. “War hero. Conservative. Man of color.”

“Who says?” said Danny.

“You’re conservative.”

“Who says I’m a war hero?” He didn’t necessarily consider himself conservative, either. Nor liberal, for that matter.

Hell, he wasn’t even comfortable with “man of color.”

“Come on, Daniel. Give yourself some credit. You would be an excellent congressman. From there, who knows?”

Danny rolled his eyes but said nothing. They’d had conversations along this line two or three times before. At some point he thought he might want to work for or in the government somehow; a lot of service guys ended up there. But as far as politics was concerned, he didn’t think he could manage the bullshitting.

“I want you to talk to him,” said Jemma. “I gave him your phone number.”

“What?”

“The general line, routed through Edwards,” said Jemma quickly. “Don’t worry. I was vague on your assignment, as per instructions.”

“Jem, I really don’t want—”

“You can’t stay in the Air Force forever, Danny. You have to think about your future.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, now — you have to think about us.”

“I do think about us,” he said, and had an impulse to throw down the phone, grab a flight to New York, race to the small apartment she rented near campus, and throw himself on top of her.

Not that that would solve anything. It’d feel good, though.

“You have responsibilities,” she said, back in her professor’s voice. “Responsibilities to our people.”

Jemma really did believe in cultural and societal responsibility, but generally when she started talking about it, she was skirting some issue between them.

“I miss you a lot,” he told her.

“Me too,” she said. “I saw little Robert today.”

“How are they?” Danny tried not to let the wince get into his voice. Little Robert was the cuter-than-hell two-year-old son of a friend of theirs who lived near Jemma.

His father had served with Danny in the Air Force, leaving to take a job in the city as an investigator for the SEC.

“They’re great. He called me Auntie,” she said. “I like it.”

“You feeling those urges, Jem?”

“What? For a kid? No way. No way.”

They talked for a while more. When Jemma brought up Stephens again, he agreed to at least talk to him.

“Don’t go back on your word,” she said. “I’ll know.”

“All right, baby, I won’t.” As he hung up the phone, the urge to go to her was so strong that he got up and decided to hit the gym before dinner.

Chapter 9

The restaurant advertised itself as handicapped accessible, but like most places, the advertisement fell far short of the reality. The first barrier was a two-inch rise at the curb from the parking lot — not a great deal, certainly, and not the biggest bump Zen Stockard had even faced that day, but it was an annoying precursor of what lay ahead. The front entrance sat behind three very high and shallow steps; Zen had to wait outside as his wife went in to ask that the side door be unlocked. That was at the end of a tight ramp, and Jeff had to maneuver through the door and into the narrow hall with a series of pirouette re-versals that would have been difficult for a ballerina, let alone a man in a wheelchair. Getting into the dining room involved passing through the kitchen; Zen was almost smacked in the face by a waitress carrying a tray full of fancy spaghetti. On a different day, he might have laughed it off with a joke about not wanting his calamari in his lap, but tonight he was in a foul mood and just barely managed not to complain when the kitchen door smacked up against his rear wheel as he passed onto the thick carpet of the eating area.

It was no wonder many disabled people thought A.B.’s — the abbreviation stood for “able bodied” and was not necessarily benign — had it in for them. It wasn’t a matter of being different; that was something you could accept, or at least view as a necessary condition. It was more the smiley stares that accompanied the bumps and turns, the “look at all I’ve done for you and you’re still bitchin’ at me?” attitudes.

“We’d like a better table,” said Zen as the maitre d’showed them to a small, dim spot at the back, basically hiding them from the rest of the clientele.

“Jeff—”

“How about that one,” Zen said, pointing toward the front of the room.

It was a challenge, and the maitre d’ knew it. But give the man credit — despite his frown, he led them there.

“You really want to sit up here?” Breanna asked. “It’s going to be right in a draft.”

“I like drafts,” said Zen.

“And I thought I was in a bad mood.”

“I’m just hungry.” He took the menu.

“Wine?” Breanna asked.

“Beer.”

“I doubt they have anything you like,” she said, glancing around the fancy Italian restaurant.

Her prediction proved incorrect, as there were several relatively good brews on tap, including the Anchor Steam that Zen opted for. But even that failed to lift his mood.

“Happy anniversary,” said Breanna, holding up her glass — a reserve Chianti from Antinori that she pro-nounced “perfect.”

“Anniversary of our first date,” said Zen, clicking the glass gently. “If it was really a date.”

“A date is a date is a date. Boy, you are in a bad mood,”

said his wife. She took a long sip from her glass. “I should have ordered a whole bottle.”

“Hmmph.”

“Fentress did bad today, huh?”

“He’s lucky I don’t wash him out.”

“Oh, come on, I saw him fly yesterday. He wasn’t that bad.”

Zen took up his menu, trying to decide between the gnocchi with pesto or one of the ten thousand spaghetti choices.

“You said yourself there’d be a transition,” said Breanna.

“I was optimistic.”

“Jeff — sooner or later, there are going to be other pilots in the program.”

“You think I’m giving him a hard time on purpose?”

Breanna gave him one of her most severe frowns — her cheeks shot inward and her brow furrowed down — before pretending to study the menu.

Zen didn’t consider Fentress a bad sort, really; he was smarter than hell, with an engineering degree and several published papers on complicated computer compressions that Jennifer Gleason said were quite good. But he also had a certain lapdog quality to him, an I’ll-do-anything-you-want thing that irked Zen.

Plus he’d screwed up on the flight today.

So had he, Zen knew, on his first few flights.

Still, the kid — he was a kid, not even twenty-five yet — pissed him off.

Fentress wanted his job. He’d said something like that the first day they met, during one of the bullshit orientation “talks,” actually an informal job interview.

Still, he had gone ahead and selected Fentress for the program anyway. What the hell was he thinking?

That Curly was better than one of the jocks who wanted his job.

Less threatening?

Bullshit.

“You havin’ fish?” Zen asked his wife.

“With Chianti? No,” said Bree.

The waiter approached. “Buona sera,” he said, using Italian to say good evening.

It was the sort of thing Breanna ate up. “Buona sera,” she replied lightly. “Per piacere, un po’ d’acqua fresco,” she said, asking for water, then added in Italian that he could bring it later, after they ordered.

The waiter treated her like a long lost cousin. They began debating the merits of several dishes. Zen watched sourly. He loved Bree — truly he did — but she could act like such a jerk sometimes. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see her get up and start dancing with the buffoon.

Finally the waiter turned toward him. “E signor?”

“Yeah, spaghetti,” said Jeff.

“Just spaghetti?” asked the waiter.

“Yuppers.”

The man took the menu and retreated quickly.

“You know, you used to be fun,” said Breanna.

She meant it as a joke, but there was something serious behind it.

“When I walked, right?” he snapped.

“Jeff — baby, that’s not what I meant. Jeffrey. Jeff.” She reached her hand across the table and gently touched his face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m all right,” he said.

“Jeff.”

She rubbed her forefinger lightly against his cheek.

He tried to will away the anger and resentment, realizing that, of all people, she shouldn’t bear the brunt of it.

He remembered her face on the stretcher a few weeks ago when they’d come back from Brazil. She’d crash-landed the plane after saving them from an altimeter bomb.

He’d said a prayer then, probably the first he’d uttered since his own crash.

“Don’t let her be crippled,” he’d prayed. “It would be better for her if she died.”

He’d meant it.

“Jeff?”

“I’m sorry, Bree,” he said. “Bad day. I’m just — just a tough day. You going to give me some of your veal?”

“I ordered braised lamb in a port reduction sauce with sorrels and shaved truffles.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” he said.

Chapter 10

The hour of sleep Torbin caught after the lengthy mission debrief had served only to increase his restlessness. He came back to the base and wandered back and forth between his ready room and the hangar area, alternately checking on his aircraft and plans for a morning mission. The downed pilot hadn’t been found yet, but they now had a fix on the wreckage of his plane. Two planes were orbiting the area and a full-blown search package would launch a half hour before first light.

Torbin planned to be in it, even if he had to fly Glory B himself.

The debriefers had grilled him pretty hard about the Iraqi missile sites. Their questions were nothing compared to the single one he’d asked himself over and over since the Falcon had been hit:

How the hell had he missed the missile?

The answer was that he hadn’t. The Iraqis had fired a bunch of missiles from long range without guidance, and somehow, some way, they had gotten the F-16.

Nailed it. Clipped the sucker. Waxed his fanny.

But there was no way, no way in the world, that it had been one of the missiles he’d had on his gear. Not possible.

The APR-47 threat detection radar was an extremely capable piece of equipment — old, perhaps, but still a notch ahead of anything Iraq possessed. Assuming it was in operating order — and the technicians who swarmed over it after they landed assured him it was — the APR-47 could not have missed any Iraqi radar, certainly not one operating long enough or close enough to successfully target the plane.

Nor could he, Torbin thought.

Somehow the bastards had claimed the plane with a one in a million blind shot. Though he wasn’t even sure how they could have managed that.

Torbin folded his arms against his chest as he walked toward Glory B’s hangar. Possibly, the F-16 pilot had screwed up. Possibly. Still, he was pissed — he wanted to pound those bastards into the sand with his bare fists.

A Humvee barreled toward him as he turned the corner toward the maintenance area; he frowned at it viciously, as if that might make it miss him, then stepped off the macadam as the truck veered to a stop.

“Captain Dolk?” asked the driver, who was wearing civilian clothes.

“Yeah?”

“Hop in.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Smith,” said the driver. “Come on.”

“Hey, no offense, but I’ve got a mission to prep.”

“Just get in,” said the driver.

A figure leaned forward from the rear. “Relax, Captain,” the man told him. “My name is Brad Elliott. General Elliott. I’d like to speak to you for just a second. We’ll give you a lift to wherever it is you’re going.”

“I have a mission, sir,” said Torbin.

“We won’t interfere with that.”

Torbin shrugged, then stepped around the vehicle to get in the other side. Elliott opened the door for him. He too was wearing civilian clothes.

“I gave a full briefing when I landed, sir,” said Torbin.

“Yes, we’ve seen the preliminary report and spoken to Colonel Hashek,” said Elliott. “I’d like to hear what happened in your own words.”

Torbin sighed. This figured to be a big fucking deal, even if they got the pilot back — no one had been shot down over Iraq since the Gulf War.

“A lot of flicks on and off,” said the general, summarizing the incident after Torbin finished. “And then a barrage of missiles.”

“Pretty much,” said Torbin. “Everything was out of range, except for that SA-2 site that I nailed. And maybe the SA-8. We hit both. The tapes bear me out.”

Elliott nodded. The driver had turned around at some point during the story; Torbin looked now into his face.

Even in the darkness he could see the frown.

“I have a job to do this morning, sir,” said Torbin.

“Understood,” said Elliott. “One more thing — did you see the missile that hit the F-16?”

“No, sir. We weren’t that close to the fighters and, uh, my eyes would have been on the scope at that point, sir.”

“I wasn’t implying they weren’t,” said the general mildly. “Can you think of anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s fine,” said the general. “Thank you, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Torbin got out of the vehicle. Before he closed the door, the general leaned toward him across the seat.

“Don’t worry about what happened yesterday,” Elliott told him. “Just do your best this morning.”

“Yes, sir,” said Torbin. “That’s what I figure.”

He closed the door, stood back and saluted as the Hummer sped off.

“What do you think, mack?” asked General Elliott as Major Smith geared the Hummer toward the command buildings.

“He blew it big-time and doesn’t want to admit it,” said Mack. When Elliott didn’t answer, he added, “That’s only my opinion.”

“Understood.”

“Maybe there was a gear screw-up,” said Mack. “Or maybe the Viper flew into flak and the other guys on the flight just got his altitude wrong. Things get tangled. It could even have been a shoulder-launched SA-14,” he added, though he thought all of those possibilities were fairly remote. “Just got lucky.”

“Possible.”

“Say, General, I want to be on the mission. Hook me up with one of the F-16s. I’ll find him. I promise.”

“We have our own job to do, Major.”

“No offense, General, but you can snag an airman to do your driving. Hell, I’m a better pilot than any of these guys. You know it, sir.”

“Mack, you haven’t changed one bit.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment.”

Mack steered the Hummer into a parking spot near the small, squat building headquartering the squadron in charge of the operations. Elliott jumped out, breezing by the air policemen and striding into the building. Mack followed along as Elliott headed back to Colonel Hashek’s office. By the time Mack caught up, Hashek was already laying out the game plan for the morning search and rescue mission.

“I have a pair of MH-53 Pave Lows at this forward area here,” he said, jabbing at a large topo map showing southeastern Turkey and northwestern Iraq. “They’ll wait at this old airstrip in the mountains. From there they can jump into Iraqi territory in two minutes, maybe less. I’m going to bring in a Combat Talon and fly it back and forth over the wreckage — if that radio comes up, he’ll hear it.”

“He’ll also be a sitting duck,” said Elliott. The Combat Talon was a specially modified MC-130E Hercules, a four-engine aircraft designed to fly over hostile territory.

Despite its many improvements, it was unarmed, relatively slow, and would be exceedingly vulnerable, especially during the day.

“I need ears,” said Hashek. “And that old Herk has to be very close. Now the plane you came in—”

“It’s not my plane, so it’s not my call,” said Elliott.

“But frankly, it’s not worth the risk.”

Mack had been thinking along the same lines as the colonel, and was nearly as surprised as Hashek at Elliott’s response. Granted, the converted 707 carried a wide range of highly sensitive electronic spy equipment, most of which wouldn’t be much help in locating the pilot. But the damn thing could pick up all manner of radio communications a hundred miles out. Not worth the risk?

Mack looked at Elliott. Was this the same general who’d defied Washington and half the Air Force to get DreamStar back? The general who’d personally flown a suicide mission to Russia to prevent World War III?

The General Brad Elliott?

He looked tired, face white, pockmarked with age and fatigue, maybe even fear.

“I want to fly one of the F-16s,” Mack told Hashek. “I want to be in on this.”

Hashek turned toward him. “Thanks, Major, but we’re full up.”

“No offense to your guys, but I can fly circles around them. I can.”

“Sorry,” said Hashek. Two other men entered the office, both in flight suits. The colonel nodded at them. “I’m sorry, General, I have some business to attend to.”

“I want to be on the mission,” insisted Mack. “I don’t really feel like twiddling my thumbs back here. Hey, Colonel.” Mack caught Hashek’s arm as the colonel started to leave with the other men. “Give me a break, huh? Anything. I’ll go on the Herk even.”

“Mack, you will be in the middle of things,” said Elliott. “I want you on a Pave Low.”

“A Pave Low?”

Mack let go of Hashek’s arm. The colonel looked at him like he was an ant before stalking out, his pilots in tow.

“I’ve never flown an MH-53, General,” said Mack, who in all honesty had never even sat in the front seat of a helicopter. “But I’ll figure it out. Hell, I can fly anything.”

“I don’t want you to fly it,” said Elliott. “I’m assuming they didn’t send you to Brussels to give that seminar on missile damage just because they wanted to get rid of you.”

“Um, well, no,” said Mack, not quite sure what the point of the general’s sarcasm was.

“There should be a Huey waiting to take you to the helicopters. Find a camera and anything else you need, then get there.”

Chapter 11

Torbin hunkered over the radar display in the backseat of the Phantom, every cell in his body sensitive to its flicker. Traditional Weasel missions contained a fairly short stay over hostile territory, generally organized around a ten-minute spiral to low altitude as the pitter tracked radars and then launched missiles against well-briefed targets. Today’s mission was far more open-ended and demanding, even compared to the freelancing gigs they’d been doing for the past few weeks. Overflying the area where Falcon Two had gone down, they would fire on anything that turned on during the hunt. They’d stay in the air for as long as it took to find the pilot and drag him back to safety. That meant three or more hours of staring at the small tube in front of him.

Four Iraqi SAM sites had been targeted for attack in strikes set to be made at the moment Glory B crossed the border. In theory, those attacks would remove the major threats the searchers faced. But reality had a way of differing from the nice crisp lines and lists of call numbers drawn on maps. Those attacks might simply stir the hor-nets’ nest.

“We’re on track,” said Fitzmorris. “Zero-three to Box able-able-two.”

“Zero-three,” acknowledged Torbin. They’d been like that the whole flight, nothing but business.

Fitzmorris obviously thought he’d fucked up somehow.

Probably because he was a pilot — they stuck together.

“Scope clean,” Torbin said as they reached the grid area where the Falcon had gone down. The blue-gold tint of dawn would shade the mountains a beautiful purple, but he kept his eyes on his radar screen.

The other planes in the flight checked in, the Herky bird driver nonchalantly trading jibes with one of the F-16s escorting him. The transport plane was a spec ops version equipped for deep penetration of enemy lines, but that usually occurred at night and at low altitude. He was now at roughly twenty thousand feet, above flak but an easy target for a SAM.

Not today. Not with Torbin on the job, he thought. He blew a wad of air into his mask, then pushed his neck down, trying to work out a kink. He tracked through his instruments quickly, then glanced to his right console, double-checking his key settings out of habit. His eyes strayed briefly to the small toggle beyond the telephone-style keypad. Long ago the thin thumb had safed — or unsafed — nuclear stores.

We ought to just fry the sons of bitches and be done with it once and for all, he thought.

He jerked his eyes back to his job, pushing his face down toward the blank radar scope.

“What?” asked Fitzmorris.

“Scope’s clean.”

“Copy that.”

The static-laced silence returned. Torbin pushed himself up against his restraints. Inevitably his attention began to drift; inevitably he thought of the construction job that waited if he quit the Air Force.

Or if they forced him out as a scapegoat.

It’s what he got for wanting to be where the action was.

Should have stayed in the Pentagon, or used his stinking engineering degree at NASA like they suggested.

Screw that. And screw getting out. He didn’t want to build houses.

“Falcon Two to any allied aircraft.”

The transmission sounded like a snippet of dialogue from a TV in another room.

“Glory B to Falcon Two,” said Torbin. “Falcon Two?

I’m reading you, boy. Acknowledge.”

As Torbin clicked off, the frequency overran with six or seven other voices, all trying to make contact with their downed comrade.

“Radio silence! Radio silence!” shouted Fitzmorris.

“Falcon Two, identify yourself.”

“Captain Terry McRae,” came the answer. “I’m sure glad to hear you guys.”

“We’re glad to hear you,” said Torbin. “Give us a flare.”

“Slow down — we have to go through authentication first,” said Fitzmorris.

“Copy that,” said McRae from the ground. “But let’s move, okay? I am freezing my butt off down here.”

Torbin knew no Iraqi would have said that, but Fitzmorris dutifully checked with the AWACS controller and began relaying personal questions designed to make sure McRae really was McRae.

“I can see you and your smoky tailpipe, Glory B,” the pilot told them as they finished. “And by the way, you guys must have missed an SA-2 or something yesterday.

Smoked the shit out of me. I never saw the damn thing.”

“We’re sorry for that,” said Fitzmorris.

“Why do you think it was an SA-2 if you didn’t see it?”

asked Torbin, his voice sharper than he wanted.

“What else could it have been?”

Torbin bit his lip to keep from answering. The pilot had enough to worry about for the time being.

Chapter 12

Mack Smith tried to steady himself on the seat across from the minigun station as the big Pave Low whipped through a pass in the mountains, rushing toward the spot where the pilot had been sighted. The big helicopter tucked sharply left, the tip of its rotors about ten feet from a sheer wall as it hunkered through a pass. The low altitude tactics made it nearly impossible for an enemy radar to detect them, but at this point Mack would have traded a little safety for a smoother ride. It was one thing to jink and jive when you had the stick yourself, and quite another to be gripping the bottom of a metal ledge in the back of a flying pickup truck.

He’d managed to get out of his jeans and sport coat and into a borrowed flight suit. The boots were a little small and his shoulders felt cramped across the back, but at least he looked like he actually belonged here. The crewmen had given him a helmet connected to the com system via a long umbilical cord.

“We’re zero five from the crash site,” yelled the copilot.

“We’re holding back as reserve until we’re sure they’ve got the pilot. Then we’ll move in and put you down.

Smoky’ll go out with you. How long do you need?”

“I don’t know,” said Mack. “Half hour? I have to take some pictures. See what I see. Kick the tires, check the lights.”

The copilot didn’t laugh. “Ten minutes, max. The Iraqis are all over the place down there.”

Chapter 13

Torbin took his eyes off his radar screen momentarily as the Phantom tucked southward. The helicopter that had been tabbed for the pickup was now talking directly to the downed pilot, who had managed to climb about a third of the way up a crag about a mile from a dirt road.

This was serious mountain country, but it wasn’t entirely uninhabited — a hamlet big enough to host a mosque sat about a mile and a half to the south, and Torbin saw, or at least thought he saw, the blurred shadows of some other buildings closer to the east.

Torbin turned his head back toward the radar when something in the sky caught his eye. A red light sparkled in the distance.

McRae’s flare.

Hot damn.

“Lookin’ good,” said the Pave Low pilot over the circuit. “Hang tight. We’ll be on you in thirty seconds.”

“Yeah, I’m doing my nails,” said the pilot.

Torbin studied his scope. There had been a few brief, long distance flickers, nothing long enough to actually grab on to.

How could they even think he’d screw up? Saddam had nothing up here that could catch even an unescorted F-16.

All he had up here was shit. The SA-2’s Fan Song radar?

Crap. The low PRF was surprisingly good at picking up stealth aircraft, though it hadn’t been designed for that.

But it was easily jammed. The SA-3? Arguably better, or at least more variable, supported by Spoon Rest and a Side Net, or Squat Eye with a Flat Face and Thin Skin.

Garbage nonetheless. Tiny little wavy lines straight out of the sixties, competing with I Love Lucy and even Father Knows Best. The systems had been compromised years ago. Junk from the days when tubes ruled the world and transistors came one to a chip. SA-6s, Rolands, SA-8s — better, admittedly, but still outclassed, out-matched by the ECMs the Falcons carried.

Even if he had screwed up big-time — and he had not—

Torbin knew that the Falcon pilot should have had his jamming pod ready. He could have gone to his chaff, juked, jived—

The radar scope flared.

“I have a Three up,” Torbin told his pilot. One of the antennas on the Weasel frame had pulled the tight rap of a radar signal from the air. It held it there for him, waiting for him to catch up. He didn’t bother with the usual back and forth with the pilot, just went for it. The RIO’s fingers flew, cursoring the enemy, pushing the data to the missile, firing, nailing the son of a bitch.

“Away. Have another radar. Hold on, hold on — it’s a Two. Out of range. SA-2. I’m on it. I’ll nail it.”

“Torbin!”

“Dotted. I need you to turn, damn it! Get into him.”

“Fire at the bastard.”

“Two miles — I need two miles. Get us closer!”

The enemy missile site was at the edge of the HARM

missile’s range; they needed to draw closer to guarantee a hit.

No time. He fired.

Glory B jinked a second after the AGM-88 left her wing, taking evasive action.

Traveling at over 3.1 times the speed of sound, it took the antiradiation missiles nearly fifty seconds to reach their targets. Those were not the longest seconds of Torbin’s life, but they did take an eternity to pass. Finally, the warhead of the first missile detonated into several thousand shards of tungsten alloy, perforating the puny walls of the SA-3’s control van as well as a radar dish and all four of the missiles standing in the paired launchers.

Five seconds later a massive fireball erupted in the northern launch area of Iraqi Army Air Defense “Victorious Glory” Battalion Two, a piece of the HARM warhead igniting the liquid fuel stage of a Guideline missile that had been poised for launch.

Chapter 14

Mack hugged the helicopter’s side as he made his way to the rear ramp. A Ma Deuce .50 caliber machine gun sat in the middle of the opening, its long belt draped across the right side of the bay. The helo whipped around as it neared the wreckage, exposing its stinger to the crumpled metal on the side of the hill. The gunner angled the gun around as the helicopter spiraled; Mack nearly fell against the wall as the aircraft whipped practically onto its side before heading toward a small, relatively flat depression just below the slope.

A fat hand grabbed him by the shoulder. It was one of the pararescuers, “Smoky.” He’d traded his flight helmet for a soft campaign hat and had a Special Tactics Squadron 203—an M-16 with a grenade launcher attached — in his right hand.

“You ready, Major?” he shouted.

“Kick ass,” shouted Smith.

Smoky snorted. The helicopter jerked hard and the sergeant fell against Mack, the gun landing in his ribs. As Mack pushed him off, a volcano seemed to erupt just beyond the tail opening. Mack thought the gunner must be firing, then realized it was only the cloud of dust churned up by the rotors. He grabbed hold of something on the helicopter wall and threw himself toward the opening, following Smoky onto the ramp and then down to the ground, ducking instinctively and racing through the hail of dirt and rocks. Air rushed behind him as if a hole had just been blown in the side of the earth. In the next second he threw himself onto the slope, starting up hand over hand toward the wrecked F-16.

The dust had settled somewhat by the time he reached the wreckage. The Viper had slapped into the hillside almost nose first; most of the fuselage in front of the cockpit had disintegrated. The next six or seven feet of the plane had been crunched into about three-quarters of its original size; long ribbons of metal protruded from the twisted mass, as if they were the spines of a porcupine.

The jagged left wing sat down the slope, about twenty or thirty yards away. The rear tail fin was crumpled but more or less intact. The right wing was missing, sheered near the pylon fixing in a shallow diagonal away from the body of the plane. Some of the fuel system piping was visible; it seemed clean.

Mack reached for the tail fin. As his fingers neared the surface he hesitated, as if fearing it would be hot.

“What we lookin’ for?” asked Smoky, catching up behind him. The PJ had a microphone and headset so he could talk with the helicopter. He also humped a pack.

“Shrapnel holes, black streaks from a fire, basically a big hole or tear that can’t be explained by the impact,” said Mack. Actually, the list went on and on — nearly twenty minutes during one of Mack’s lectures, not counting time flirting with any pretty girls in the audience.

He pulled out the small 35mm camera and began taking pictures, walking along the side of the downed aircraft. The missing wing was undoubtedly the key, though the break looked remarkably clean for a missile hit.

Possibly torn off in flight after being weakened by a fire, though the fact that the fuel piping hadn’t burned meant …

Meant what?

“Missile?” Smoky asked.

“Yeah,” said Mack. “Probably took off the wing, exploded the fuel tank in the wing.”

“Wow.”

There had definitely been an explosion — there were shrapnel holes all over the place. But no fire?

Too wide a spread for a missile, actually, unless the explosion had been right under the wing or maybe in it, smashed it to smithereens so that this jag and that one, and that one and all the others, were from the wing sharding off.

“This thing catch fire?”

“No.” Mack shrugged. “Sometimes you get a fire, sometimes you don’t. This looks like a pretty direct hit with a really good-sized warhead.”

He remembered a crash he’d seen where there hadn’t been a fire — the accident that had claimed Jeff Stockard’s legs. Funny that he remembered that and not his own shoot-down a few months ago.

“Wow, look at these holes,” said Smoky, pointing to the belly of the plane. “Flak?”

Mack bent down to take a look. “Too varied. Probably from the explosion. Besides, see how this folded down there? This damage here was from the impact. Metal came away. See the bolt on that panel? Gave way.” He stepped back and took a picture.

Two small warheads maybe? Happened to hit just right and snapped the wing clean off?

He’d want odds on that.

“A missile probably got the wing and exploded it. That big an explosion, though — I don’t know. Pilot got out.”

He went to study the cockpit, which had been munched by the impact into the mountain. Still — no fire.

Mack walked back to the right wing root. The wing had almost certainly been sheered off before impact.

He’d need to see it.

Some parts of the root were white, as if the metal had been on fire and just disintegrated into powder. But there clearly had been no fire. Mack bent over an internal spar; the bolts were loose.

Sympathetic vibrations after the explosion, he thought, shock wave knocks the metal loose.

He took some pictures.

What the hell missile hit them? An SA-2?

That clean, it had to be something smaller. Three little shoulder-fired missiles?

Three heat-seekers all nailing the wing? Very strange.

Crashes were strange by definition. Mack stood back and took pictures, changed his film, took more pictures.

The engineers could tell a lot by looking at the way the metal had been bent; those guys were the real experts. He was just a moonlighting pilot who’d happened to command a crash investigation during the Gulf War. He moved in for close-ups, then bent his head under the fuselage.

The metal was scraped and not exactly smooth. Some panels and spars seemed to have buckled, probably on impact. He saw a few more loose bolts and popped rivets, but nothing here contradicted his theory that the damage emanated from the right side of the plane.

Nice to find that right wing, he thought. Real nice.

He backed off the plane onto the top of the slope, taking more pictures as he walked upward.

Stockard had managed to eject after a collision with a robot plane he was piloting from an F-15E Eagle. He’d been way low when he went out, and his chute never had a chance to fully deploy — though it was never clear to Mack whether he’d been injured going out or landing.

His plane had been a mangled collection of thick silver string strewn over the desert test area where they were flying at the time. Mack could close his eyes and still see Zen’s body lying in a heap against the flat dirt, the lines to his parachute still attached. The canopy had furled awkwardly, as if trying to pull him to his feet.

What if a stream of flak had shot through the metal, exploded the wing tank, sliced the wing right off, he asked himself.

Not to be totally ruled out — except for the shrapnel over the rest of the plane’s body. The wing definitely seemed to have exploded.

Had to be a missile, had to have ignited the wing tank.

Except that it clearly hadn’t.

Mack took some more photos, then stopped to change the roll. As he closed the back of the camera, Smoky came running across the rocks.

“We got problems, Major!” shouted the PJ. “Company coming.”

Before Mack could answer, the ground shook and he fell backward against the hillside, the roar of an exploding tank shell blaring in his ears.

Chapter 15

As the Pave Low lifted off with the injured pilot, Torbin and Fitzmorris saddled up to go home with the rest of the escorts. The Wild Weasel ducked her wing gently to starboard, steaming gracefully into a turn. Her turbines chewed on the carcasses of a thousand dead dinosaurs; the slipstream melted into a swirl of blue-white vapor. Torbin jerked his bulky frame forward, still minding his gear but more relaxed now, redeemed by the hits on the missile control radars.

Let them try and say he fucked up now, he thought. He had two fresh scalps to prove he hadn’t.

Screw building houses. Honorable profession, oh yes, but just not what he wanted to do right now, even if his brother-in-law’s cousin Shellie was pretty good-looking.

Find some sort of job doing something worthwhile.

Crew on a stinking AWACS if it came to that.

Torbin pushed his legs against the side consoles, stretching some of the cramps out of them. He rolled his shoulders from side to side, still watching the threat scope. They had a long haul home, made all the longer by the fact that the Pave Low they were accompanying would be lucky to top 175 knots.

A jumble of happy voices filled the radio as the escorts checked in with the AWACS. Then the pilot in the second Pave Low called for radio silence.

“Flag Two has vehicles on the roadway,” said the strained voice over the loud cluck of helicopter blades in the background. “I’m looking at two BMPs, a tank maybe.”

“Snake One acknowledges,” answered the leader of the F-16 flight.

Torbin did a quick check of his gear as his pilot rejig-gered their plans — they’d dog south to provide cover for the F-16s wheeling to attack the vehicles.

“How you doing back there?” Fitzmorris asked as they came to the new course bearing.

“Not a problem.” Torbin shrugged. “Scope’s clean.”

Chapter 16

They were naked on the side of the hill, exposed to the tank firing from the dirt road two hundred yards away.

Mack spotted a large group of boulders on his right and began sliding toward it. Smoky had the same idea, but not nearly as much balance — he flopped past Mack, just out of his grasp as another shell hit the hillside, this one so close that Mack smelled the powder in the dirt that flew against his helmet. He tumbled after the sergeant, rolling over three or four times before landing on his belly and sliding another four or five feet. He pulled himself up against the rocks, twisting his head back to get his bearings. Smoky’s leg lay nearby, off at an odd angle.

Severed?

It began to writhe, and Mack felt his stomach falling backward into a vacuum.

The dirt beyond the leg moved. “Jesus, this hurts like hell,” groaned Smoky, unfolding himself from the ground.

Mack stumbled over, took his arm and dragged him behind the rocks. Another volley resounded against the hillside. Mack heard the MH-53 hovering in the distance, then something else.

“Duck!” he yelled.

If the bomb whistled in — and undoubtedly it did — he never heard it. What he did hear was the muffled crack of a pair of five-hundred-pound iron bombs bracketing the turret of a T-62 Iraqi main battle tank. A chain of explosions followed as a second F-16 loosed a pair of cluster bombs on the other vehicles. The bombs hit slightly to the south of their aim point, the pilot’s mark thrown off slightly by the gusting wind and the vagaries of trying to hit a moving object while diving at five or six hundred miles an hour from fifteen thousand feet. Nonetheless, the loud rumble of a secondary explosion followed the rapid-fire popcorn of the bomblets going off.

The earth shuddered and Mack found himself lying flat on his back, eyes cupped with grit. He flailed his elbows, struggling to get upright like a frog tossed on his back.

When he finally got to his feet, he realized he’d pulled Smoky up with him.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” said the PJ.

“We got to get ourselves out of here,” said Mack.

“Where’s the helicopter?”

“He cleared back to let the fighters in,” said Smoky, who’d lost his headset somewhere. “He won’t leave us, I guarantee.”

“Where the fuck is he?”

“He’ll be back.” The sergeant put some weight on his right leg, grimaced, then fell against the rock.

“All right, come on,” said Mack, though he wasn’t exactly sure where they were going.

“You don’t have to carry me,” said the sergeant.

“I ain’t fuckin’ carrying you,” snapped Mack. “Just lean on me. We’ll go back to the flat where they dropped us. Shit — what are you doing?”

As Smoky swung his 203 up from his side, Mack ducked back, sure that the sergeant had lost his mind and was about to waste him.

Two quick bursts later something fell from the hillside above the airplane behind them.

A dead Iraqi soldier.

“Come on!” yelled Mack.

“Smoke!”

“What?”

As the sergeant reached below his vest, Mack took hold of his other arm and looped it around his neck. He pulled Smoky down around the rocks as the ground erupted behind them — bullets from two more soldiers coming across the hill.

“Smoke!” The sergeant’s voice had gone hoarse. He had a small canister in his hand.

A smoke grenade. Good idea.

Mack leaned against the sergeant to prop him up as he flicked his arm, tossing rather than throwing the grenade.

Soot began spewing from the canister, which landed only a few yards away.

“Down the hill,” hissed Smoky.

“No shit,” said Mack, helping him through the rocks.

A freight train roared overhead, its wheels pounding the loose ties of a trestle bridge with a steady, quick beat.

Mack slid but kept both of them upright as the Pave Low threw a stream of lead on the Iraqi soldiers who had tried to ambush them. The gunfire — besides the .50 caliber and the minigun, one of the crewmen was unloading a 203—seemed to sheer off the hilltop. Mack stumbled through a thick haze of pulverized rock, his mouth thick with dirt.

He spun around and landed in a heap on the ramp, the sergeant rolling on top of him.

An angel or a pararescuer — same difference — grabbed him in the next instant. They were aboard the helicopter and airborne before his lungs began working again.

Chapter 17

“Snakes are clear. All vehicles smoked. Boys are aboard and headed home.”

“Glory B copies,” said Fitzmorris.

“En route to the Grand Hotel,” said the pilot in Flag Two. “Kick ass.”

“You kicked butt down there,” said Snake One.

“Y’all didn’t do too poor yourself.”

All right guys, quit with the attaboys and get on home, Torbin thought.

“Fuel’s getting a little tight,” said Fitzmorris.

“I can get out and push if you want,” Torbin told him.

“I was thinking maybe you’d just pop your canopy and flap your arms a bit,” said the pilot.

Torbin laughed. Good to hear Fitzmorris making jokes again, even if they were lame. He scanned his gear; no threats, no nothing. Two of the F-15s flying escort radioed for an update. The planes had blown south in the direction of the nearest large Iraqi air base when things got tight, just in case Saddam decided to reinforce his troops farther north.

Fitzmorris filled them in.

“Blue skies ahead,” said one of the F-15 pilots. He had a bit of a Missouri twang in his voice, and Torbin decided to ask where he was from.

“Kansas City,” answered the pilot. “How ’bout yourself?”

“Jefferson City,” said Torbin. “Well, almost. My dad had a farm ’bout ten miles south of Moreau River.”

“Maybe you know my cousin, sells tractors out near St.

Thomas, or in St. Thomas, one of those little burbs down there.”

“What is this, old home week?” asked Fitzmorris.

“Where you from, cowboy?”

“Pittsburgh, P.A.,” answered the pilot.

“Hey, my wing mate’s from Philadelphia, aren’t you, Gunner?”

Torbin didn’t hear the reply — six or seven Iraqi radars had just flashed on simultaneously to the south. Two missiles were launched almost at the same instant.

“Shit!” was the only warning he could give before the pilot from Kansas City overran the transmission with a curse.

After that there was nothing but static.