“Open bay doors, prepare to launch,” she told Chris. “Bay. They’re taking evasive maneuvers.”

Breanna’s HUD showed the radar’s air-combat-mode projection, with the enemy bandits displayed as triangles with directional and speed vectors. Confident that it could nail each of the aircraft, the combat computer displayed red hatch marks over each plane.

“Which ones are near the F-117’s?”

“Good question. Hold on.”

The stealth fighters were too far away to be detected directly; Chris set the computer to look for atmospheric anomalies—essentially canceling some of the correction it normally did to erase interference from the wind. He managed to find two of the F-117’s, just starting their attacks.

“One MiG within theoretical visual range,” said Chris. “Targeting.”

A box appeared around the triangle. The tiny symbol blinked, as if the computer were jumping up and down, yelling at them to nail it.

“Fire,” said Breanna.

The Scorpion AMRAAM missile slipped out of its launcher so easily that only the launch indicator told Breanna it was gone. With a one-hundred-pound explosive warhead, the Scorpion packed roughly twice the explosive power of a standard AMRAAM, while retaining its high speed and superb active radar capabilities. Once launched, the missile took care of itself.

“Tracking,” said Chris. “F-117’s have buttoned up. I can’t see them at all. Okay. One MiG heading north. They’re out of it. More evasive maneuvers. They’re looking for us. SAMs are up! Shit. We’re spiked by that MiG. They’re targeting us for air-to-air.”

“Vector One to Fort Two, what’s your situation?”

“Hold tight, Vector,” said Breanna. The threat screen painted the sky ahead yellow, overlapping radars probing for them. Two fingers of red appeared at the sides; Breanna snapped the Megafortress ninety degrees, trying to beam the MiG that was now targeting them. The computer, meanwhile, began emitting electronic fuzz to confuse the ground-intercept radar that had snapped on.

“The open bay’s going to give us away,” Breanna reminded Chris.

“Having trouble picking out the MiG that’s spiking us,” he replied.

“Can we get the SAMs?”

“Two MiGs heading for us. Twenty miles, dead-on. They’ll nail Vector if they take off.”

“Get the lead MiG,” Breanna directed. “Then we’ll go for the SAMs.”

“He’s too low. They’re firing.”

“Missile type?”

“No ID. No radar.”

“Impossible. They wasted heat-seekers from that range head-on?”

“Lost the missiles. We’re still being spiked. Missile launch.”

The RWR buzzed a warning; the second MiG had fired an AA-10 Alamo radar missile at them. Breanna pulled the Megafortress into a hard bank, unleashing tinsel and then pushing the plane into a dive. The strategy essentially provided the enemy missile with an easy—but nonexistent—target.

She sensed what the Iranians were doing, and fired diversionary flares as she cut a series of zigs in the sky.

“Yeah,” said Chris, catching on. “Three missiles tracking. The first must have been long-range heat-seekers, looking for our butts when we turned. I have a target.”

“Fire!” Breanna steadied the Megafortress as the missile dropped from the bay.

“We’re boxed. Damn it,” said Chris. His voice went up several octaves. “Okay, I’m firing. Shit. Here’s another Alamo—”

“Close bay. Hold on,” said Breanna calmly. She nailed the Megafortress nearly straight down, goosing off chaff and flares. At a thousand feet she rolled inverted and turned ninety degrees into the Doppler radar, in effect making the plane invisible in the eddy of the radar waves. The carbon fiber wings strained at their design tolerance as the massive plane twisted.

The Russian missiles realized they had missed, and blew up a thousand feet overhead. Shaking off the shock waves, Breanna rolled the mammoth plane upright, nudging her even lower.

“Splash one MiG!” said Chris. “Scorpion got it.”

Breanna grinned, then went back to trying to sort out their location as well as that of their enemies. They were north, heading in the direction of A-1. One of the MiG-29’s was running north toward the Red Sea.

“F-117’s got something,” blurted Chris. “Shit. Lots of secondaries. Wow! Big-time explosions. Nailed those mothers!”

“What happened to that SAM that was tracking us?” Bree asked.

“Lost it. Nighthawks got it or it just turned itself off without firing anything.” Chris clicked the radar into long-distance scan, searching for the MiGs. “We may have splashed that first MiG too,” he said. “I don’t have it on the scope. I have two, moving out at warp speed into the Red Sea. Spooked ‘em good.”

“Go back to passive systems.”

“Damn straight.”

Breanna checked the bearing and speed that ghosted in the screen against the instrument readings in the MUD. She punched the Megafortress’s self-test circuits, having the computer run its diagnostics as if they’d been tooling around Dreamland for the past hour.

The computer congratulated itself with perfect scores. All systems green and growing. Time to go back to the barn.

Almost.

“Let’s make it hard for the SOB to land,” she told Chris.

“Bree?”

“We still have the JSOWs in the bay. We’ll be within range of A-1 in zero-two.”

“What about that MiG-21 on the ground?”

“Something to aim at,” said Breanna.

Chris sighed deeply, but turned back to his displays without saying anything. He had meant that they were out of air-to-air weapons, which Breanna already knew.

“We have plenty of fuel,” she told him.

“We’ll be into reserves on the trip home,” he said.

“You’re not going after A-1 because of Mack, are you?”

“What?”

“I mean, you’re not getting emotionally involved here?”

“Screw you, Chris. I’m trying to do my job.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Situation.”

“We’ve chased a flight of MiGs away,” Chris told the Delta leader. “We’re proceeding north to check on A-1. We believe it may be their base.”

Breanna stared at the terrain ahead, rendered green and gray by the starscope panel. Mountains gave way to a dark black that would turn into the sea in about ten seconds. There was a road through the hills on the left. The base should be beyond that, over the next set of ridges just before the water.

“Fort Two, this is Vector. Advise us on the situation at A-1. Are our passengers there?”

“They’re nuts too,” said Chris over the interplane circuit. “We’re pushing this too far.”

“Vector, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna. “Stand by.”

She glanced quickly at the threat indicator. No radars. “Chris, are you just nervous?”

“I’m not nervous, I’m sane,” he told her. “We’ve been flying for a shitload of time, just getting here. We’re flying over a base that launched four MiGs at us. You don’t think there are ground defenses?”

“We’ll see what defenses there are in a second,” said Breanna. “I won’t take unnecessary risks.”

She could practically hear his teeth grinding. But he nonetheless hunkered toward his display screen, where he selected the FLIR and began a close scan of the base, which was just now appearing beyond the hills.

“One Zeus antiair gun, right on the coastline. Machine guns, something, I don’t know, light, near the road. There’s a ship offshore. Tanker or something. No, no, I’m wrong—patrol boat. Has a gun. Bulldozers—man, this looks nothing like that satellite photo we saw.”

That was an understatement. The Iranians had expanded and widened the strip, making it nearly three times as long as it had been, undoubtedly strengthening it as well. They were building hangars at the far end. Three aircraft—two older MiG-21’s and one DC-8 or 707—sat on a ramp area, their tails almost hanging over the water.

“Bus, other vehicles. I’m switching from the FLIR to the starscope. Shit—I have the F-117!” said Chris. “It’s moving. Shit, they’re loading it off a truck at the far end—no, they’re sliding down into a bunker. Shit. Shit. See it?”