Outside the cockpit, the sky is cloudy. Few stars are visible. Gavallan's eyes are trained on his instruments: altimeter, flight speed, fuel. Tonight's flight plan is typical of the twenty-two missions he has logged to date. Takeoff to be followed by a rendezvous with a KC-135 to top off the tanks. After the completion of midair refueling, he will cross the Iraqi border and hit two targets, an IOC, or intercept operations center, at Ash Shamiyah, and an SOC, or sector operations center, at Ali Al Salem, one hundred miles to the south. Time to target is two hours forty-seven minutes.

Gavallan runs a hand over his pistol, flight harness, and G suit, fingers probing for the search and rescue map wedged into his leg pocket and the cloth "blood chit" on top of it. The blood chit is to be used in case of forced landing or ejection and carries four "tickets" offering a reward to its holder for helping shepherd the downed airman to safety. The 9mm pistol is in case the ragheads need more convincing.

Suppression of enemy air defenses has been ruled 98 percent successful, but someone has forgotten to inform the Iraqis of the fact. The flak that has greeted Gavallan on his most recent sorties is as hot and heavy as on the first night over Baghdad. Sooner or later, he will be hit. It is a law, not a probability.

He completes refueling without incident. Routine, he says, working to quell his apprehension, feeling restless in the green-glow midnight of the Black Jet's cockpit. He stays on the KC-135's wing for ninety minutes, then "stealths up" and turns east, driving Darling Lil into Iraq. As he kills the primary radio, he glides his thumb over the CD player in his flight suit and hits the play button. Axl Rose screams, "Welcome to the jungle."

Ash Shamiyah goes off without a hitch. A grown man's video game. Bomb armed. Systems check good. Target acquired: a gray rectangle dead center in his infrared display. Bombs away. The long downward ride, his thumb steering death on its unerring path. Thirty seconds later the screen whites out- a desert flower blossoming on his IR display. The IOC is a rectangle no more.

Gavallan pushes the stick left, banking the plane hard into a four G roll. Gut tight, head in a hammerlock, he turns to a heading of 210 degrees, driving Darling Lil to the night's second target. Five minutes later, static tickles his ear. The steely guitars of Guns N' Roses abruptly cut out.

"Thunder three-six. We have a code red, change of target."

Gavallan stiffens. The primary rule of Stealth flight has been broken. Radio contact on the newly installed EML- emergency transmission link.

"Proceed to target designation 'Alpha Golf.' This is a Priority One, Ring One engagement. Do you copy?"

Priority One. Ring One.

Unconsciously, Gavallan leans forward, a tiger who has caught scent of his prey. Ring One refers to "command control communications centers," or C3s, the highest-priority target on the modern battlefield. Priority One denotes that the commander of the C3 may be present at the target. In Iraq there is only one man who carries the moniker Priority One, and one of his many palaces is located in Abu Ghurayb- target designation Alpha Golf.

"Thunder three-six. Copy."

"Okay, Tex, this is your chance for the big time. Don't fuck it up."

It is his flight controller, Rob Gettels, and for once Gavallan can't think of a witty response. Suddenly his throat is dry, his stomach jittery. He's a rookie all over again and he's taking the plane up for his first flight. But a second later, the nerves calm, the hand steadies, and the breathing slows. He programs the onboard navigational system and banks the plane north. He is on his way. Priority One. Ring One. The Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex.

Twenty minutes later, the radio crackles to life.

"Thunder three-six, green light on target Alpha Golf."

"Copy."

Gavallan lowers his seat an inch or two so that he can no longer see out of the cockpit. His world shrinks to the cocoon of instruments surrounding him. The stick between his legs. The throttle and weapons guidance joystick to his left. The infrared display that looks like a six-inch black-and-white television screen. The heads-up display above it.

He is at bombing altitude. A finger toggles the "master-arm" switch. The bomb is primed. Eyes forward on the IR display. Target spotted. A pale stable of buildings silhouetted against the gray desert floor. He has studied the target before, as he has studied all of Hussein's palaces, and he knows the main suite of bedrooms to be in the eastern wing, a slim outcropping from the principal complex of buildings. His middle finger slews the crosshairs back and forth across the palace until he decides he has found the wing. Then, as if a mechanism itself, the thumb locks down. Jett Gavallan does not miss his target. Distance five kilometers. A yellow light flashes. Laser acquisition engaged. Red letters fire on the heads-up display. Target in range. Gavallan hits the "pickle," a red button on top of the stick, and the weapons bay doors open. Darling Lil shudders. Still no ack-ack. No SAMs corkscrewing their way through the night sky. No 57mm shells bursting like flashbulbs on his old Kodak Instamatic. Gavallan does not question. He does not hesitate. He attacks. He is the spearhead of his country's arsenal.

Gavallan depresses the pickle again and the bomb falls from the aircraft. Suddenly lighter, Darling Lil jerks upward, and as his harness strap cuts into his shoulder, he grunts with a secret pleasure. His eyes lock onto the IR screen and the delicate crosshairs positioned over the east wing of the Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex. All external stimuli disappear. He is in a tunnel. At the far end rests his target. The crosshairs do not move. Thirty seconds to impact. Twenty.

Too easy, a voice whispers. Where are the SAMs? Where's the flak parade? It is the voice that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He sees plumes of exhaust approaching the palace. He counts one, two, three vehicles. Tank? Jeeps? Trucks? Ours? Theirs? Someone running away? Someone arriving?

Ten seconds.

The crosshairs do not move.

The radio screams. "Thunder three-six. Abort run. Copy?"

The bomb appears on the screen. A dark dot skimming across the ground at an impossible speed. Above the screen, a red light blinks. Fuel warning. Tanks low.

Five seconds.

"I repeat. Abort run. Friendlies in area. We have friendlies on-site."

The words fire in Gavallan's ear as a warning bell sounds in the cockpit. The fuel light is dim. Above it, another light blinks in time to the urgent keening of the warning bell. The Allied Forces Locator. He has engaged friendly forces. His eyes dart between the lights, hesitating. Events blur.

Two seconds.

Only then does the finger dodge right, the crosshairs leave the palace and land in the desert. Or did it go earlier? Before the command? It does not matter. The bomb does not listen. She has been too long on her downward trajectory and it is as if she is too stubborn to alter her course.

"Abort run! Confirm, Thunder three-six!"

One second.

The desert flower blossoms. The screen blanches. A blizzard of white noise. The palace reappears. The east wing is no more, a bonfire of angles fallen in on itself. The heat signatures have disappeared, too, replaced by the blotchy, pulsing quasars that indicate fire.

Ours? Theirs? Coming? Going?

Jett Gavallan does not miss his target.

"Friendlies hit! Friendlies down!" It is Gettels, his operational calm obliterated. "Christ, Tex, I said abort!"

Gavallan blinks his eyes and catapults through space, through time, through the firestorm of his emotions to the present. He is walking. In his sleep, the baby named Henry twitches and is still.

Ten Marines dead. Two in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. Forward elements of Task Force Ripper, he was to learn later. Scouts who got too far ahead of themselves. Gavallan knows their names to a man. He has sent the families checks for years. But their financial support is skimpy fare for a ravenous conscience. Everywhere he looks he sees pleas for help. Ask me, he begs the unfortunate. Order me. But his appetite for atonement is insatiable. Guilt, he discovers, is a desire, not an emotion. It can be slaked, but never extinguished.