“Five seconds,” said the computer.

Three too many. Zen twinged the rudder, hoping Smith would think he was planning a sharp cut. Then he held steady.

Knife bought it, but only for a second. Zen could practically feel his bad breath on his neck.

“I’m coming,” hissed Knife.

The Flighthawk bar went green.

“Fire!” screamed Zen.

As the nighthawk fired, Knife broke downward. The move—dangerous as well as brilliant, since they were now only five hundred feet over the desert floor—caught Zen by surprise. Zen started to pull up, then realized Knife had simply yo-yoed beneath him and was about to nail his belly. Stockard shoved the F-15 into a hard right turn. As he did, he gave the Flighthawk a command to break off its attack.

In the next second, a shudder ran through Zen’s body, something he’d never felt before. It was like a tickle from inside, starting in the middle of his spine and flashing like lightning into every muscle. His hands and feet went cold, his toes froze. The steady roar of the big Pratt & Whitneys behind Zen stopped.

The sensation lasted a bare millionth of a second. It was followed by a hard slam and an unbearably loud screech, then silence.

The Flighthawk had sheared through the wing of Zen’s plane.

BY THE TIME THE SICS BLEEPED WITH THE HIT, KNIFE had pulled the plane onto its back, rolled level, and was trying desperately to regain altitude and forward airspeed. For a moment, he lost track of everything—his target, the Flighthawk, even the ground and the sky. Blood rushed furiously around his brain, its flow distorted by the centrifugal forces of his hard-stick maneuvers. For a second or two, Knife flew on instinct alone, his arms and legs sorting what his mind could not. They got the plane stable, kept it in the air, even pushed his eyes where they belonged.

Okay, he heard himself say. Okay. I nailed him.

The fuzz cleared and he was back in control, banking and climbing. Something big was tumbling across the sky above him. Gray foam seemed to shoot from its sides.

It took Knife nearly three full seconds to realize it was Stockard’s plane. Somehow he’d lost control and was cartwheeling across the sky.

THERE WAS NO WAY TO HOLD THE PLANE. IT DEFIED gravity and every known law of Newtonian physics, moving in four directions at once, backward and forward, up and down.

Then everything stopped, time as well as the plane. It seemed to Zen that he could pop the canopy, undo his restraints, and step out. It seemed to Zen that he could stand on the seat and walk over the fuselage and look down at the sheared wing. He’d crouch and shake his head. Straightening with a grunt, he’d walk to the other wing and step off. It seemed to Zen he would trot down into the desert, running at an easy pace across the test range, back to his bunk at Dreamland.

Just when he decided he would do that, things began moving again, spinning with the force of a tornado. Zen’s eyes fell to the yellow eject handles next to the seat. He realized he was too low and moving too fast to eject; the plane was tumbling and there was no way he was getting out alive. At best, he’d go out sideways and the chute wouldn’t open and with his luck he’d fly through Smith’s wing, though that would serve the SOB right.

His arms were paralyzed and he couldn’t move anyway, and Zen took a breath and closed his eyes, ready to die.

Then there was a fierce wind around him and he realized he’d already yanked the handles.

II

The hottest stick on the

patch

One year later …

Dreamland

7 October 1996, 1930

IN THE PINK LIGHT OF THE LATE FALL SUNSET, THE desert complex looked abandoned. Four large shedlike hangars stood off to the right, beyond the long, wide concrete runway that Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian and his F-16 were heading for. A lone Humvee sat near the access ramp; another vehicle, a station wagon or SUV, was parked next to one of the hangars. There was no tower building, and in fact the only structures that seemed inhabitable were one-story dormlike buildings made of yellow bricks near the double fence. A few scratch roads, barely visible from the sky, wound across the flat terrain toward an old boneyard, or plane cemetery, at the extreme western end of the fence. Two, perhaps three ramshackle shacks guarded the old metal hulks, whose skeletons glittered red with the reflected light, as if they were still burning with the desire to fly.

If there were more desolate posts on earth, few seemed so ordinary or bland. Dry lake beds spread out before the mountains in the distance, crisscrossed by strange shadows and shapes, marks on the earth that could have been left by a race of desert giants, long since vanquished by the coming of man.

These immense hieroglyphics were actually a clue that the restricted desert and airspace north of Nellis Air Force base in Nevada was special indeed. For the shadows were manmade concoctions designed to confuse optical satellites orbiting above. Despite appearances, the base at the corner of Groom Lake was one of the most secure on the planet. Colonel Bastian’s presence was being monitored not only by three different ground radars, but by two AWACS planes flying circuits around the restricted air corridors. And while nothing much might be happening on the surface of the desert, the bunkers and laboratories below were teeming with enough activity to shame a dozen ant colonies. There was indeed an air traffic control facility; it was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, including a brand-new three-dimensional rendering system that projected Bastian’s F-16 in a holographic display for the controller. The high-tech “tower” was located underground—beneath enough cement to withstand a ten-megaton nuclear blast_ And so was the facility it connected to, with suites of some of the most sophisticated aeronautical and electronics research labs in the country. For Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh Bastian was approaching the Air Force High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, otherwise known as HAWC or, more colloquially, “Dreamland.” The four cavernous hangars—and the facilities connected by special elevators beneath them—contained some of the most advanced aircraft and weapons imaginable.

And a few that were unimaginable.

“Dream Tower, this is DCAF Flight One,” said Bastian after keying Dreamland’s frequency on his F-16’s radio.

“DCAF Flight One, squawk 2351 and ident,” responded the tower, asking the colonel to prod the electronic identifying equipment aboard his plane. Even though the controller’s sophisticated equipment had already independently ID’d the plane, Bastian moved quickly to comply; failing to do so could result in a no-questions-asked shoot-down by one of the MIM-23 I-HAWK batteries covered by desert camo netting just to the west of the base.

The controller did not verbally acknowledge the ID. Instead, he asked Bastian to give his security clearance. “Diamond-diamond-black,” replied the colonel.

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir,” replied the controller finally. “Welcome to Dreamland, Colonel Bastian. We, uh, weren’t expecting you today or in an F-16, sir.”

“I assume you’re not asking me to change planes,” Bastian snapped. He had already begun to line up for his final approach, although technically he had not yet received clearance.

“Sir, no, sir,” said the flustered controller, who immediately cleared Dreamland’s new commander for a landing on the main runway. He added in a final aside that the weather was “desert fine.”