McFairn grabbed it. There was a dial tone. She began dialing.

Dalton saw the ship below him, the large dishes facing the sky. He jumped once more, to the unoccupied flight deck at the rear of the ship behind the smokestack. He slipped from the virtual plane to the real. He assumed the form of Cesar and began moving forward along the port side.

He wished he had as clear a plan as Jackson did. He was winging it at best, but he figured thirty-five years of Special Operations experience would come up with something.

Mentor checked his watch. Five minutes until CS-MILSTAR was supposed to be on-line.

Hammond was at the computer console. “Barnes is out there, but he’s not responding to my attempts to contact him through Sybyl.” She scrolled down. “His pattern isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” Mentor asked.

Hammond shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just not right.”

Boreas glanced out the windows of the control center. Even on this moonless night he could make out the white peaks of the Wrangell Range. He glanced at the red digital countdown at the front of the control room as it clicked through four minutes.

His desk phone rang. He ignored it and hit Redial on the SATPhone. The desk phone continued to ring. He stalked over to the desk and grabbed the receiver.

“What?” he yelled.

“It’s McFairn. I have the code.”

Jackson left the first B-2 and went into the second. She knew what she was doing now and this time it went quicker.

Eagle Six had the arm at full extension. He locked the controls for a second and removed his hands. His palms were wet and he wiped them on his flight suit before regaining the controls.

“Status?” he called out.

“Green,” the payload master replied.

“Position?”

“Right on.”

“Attitude, velocity?”

“Within parameters.”

Eagle Six pulled a trigger and the end of the arm released the satellite. He spun ninety degrees to the right, to a communications panel, and accessed his private, secure link.

“Boreas, this is Eagle Six. Over.”

“This is Boreas. Over.”

“CS-MILSTAR is deployed. Operational in two minutes. Over.”

“Roger. Out here.”

“What the hell?” the pilot on the lead B-2 exclaimed as the plane banked to the right. He checked his navigation computer, then turned to the mission commander in the right seat. “We’re off course.”

The commander had already noted that and was furiously typing into his keyboard. “I can’t access control.”

“Shut it down then!”

“I can’t.” The commander slammed a fist down on the keyboard. “Where are we headed?”

“I have no idea.”

A red bulb lit up in front of them. The mission commander swallowed hard. “We’re weapons hot.”

Dalton cut through a cross corridor on his way toward the bridge and paused.

Jimmy.

He was perfectly still as he faded slightly from the real plane, accessing the virtual. He knew he was vulnerable, floating on the cusp between the two planes, but he felt Marie. He waited.

Two doors down. Left.

Dalton waited, knowing as he did so that he was running out of time to act, never mind come up with a plan. But there was nothing more from Marie.

He returned solidly to the real plane. He walked down the corridor and pivoted left in front of a door. He grabbed the knob and threw it open.

A woman was sitting on a bed, several plastic weapons cases next to her, a frame in her hand-the woman who had thrown the strange grenade at the villa in Saba. She jumped to her feet.

“Cesar! You’ve reconsidered?”

Dalton had to trust Marie. She wouldn’t have sent him in here without knowing more than he did. He shifted avatars, assuming his own form.

The woman was as fast as his change, her hand snaking to the shoulder holster and having a gun pointed at him before he had finished transitioning. “Who are you?”

That was an interesting question, Dalton realized, one he wasn’t sure how to answer.

“You’re American?” the woman asked.

Dalton nodded.

“A Psychic Warrior?”

“Yes. Sergeant Major Dalton.”

“I’m Valika.” The gun was still pointed at him. “Why are you here?”

“To stop the transmission.”

“It is bad, isn’t it?” Valika asked, the muzzle of the weapon lowering slightly.

“Yes.”

“Cesar is not himself.”

“He’s being manipulated.”

“By who?”

“A group. They-” Dalton searched for words. “Live on the other side. In the virtual plane.”

Valika nodded. “ Souris has also been corrupted by them. And they have changed her. I knew it. I knew something was wrong all along.”

“They mean to kill everyone on the planet.”

Valika shook her head, but not very convincingly.

“Cesar says the satellites will target specific places on the planet.”

“The MIL STAR satellites blanket the world,” Dalton said. “And he’s not in control like he thinks. Is Souris here?”

“No.”

“Why do you think she’s not here?” Dalton didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s going to a shielded location. Everyone on this ship will be killed when you transmit.”

“The bitch,” Valika muttered. “I never trusted her.”

“There isn’t much time,” Dalton said.

“What can we do?”

He noted a long case on her bed and he had the spark of an idea. “What’s that?”

“Barrett fifty caliber.”

Dalton smiled and he knew Marie had pointed him in the right direction. “Strategic target interdiction.”

“What?”

“Something I trained on in Special Forces.” Dalton was opening the case. “Grab a couple of extra magazines.”

Boreas’s eyes were locked on the red numbers counting down.

:58:57:56

Cesar was also watching the same numbers on the screen of the computer that Souris had programmed. He briefly wondered where she was. She had not called in for a while. It did not matter. His gaze went back to the screen and the distant stare returned.

Jackson released out of the trail B-2’s computer into the virtual plane, flying along with the two bombers. She watched as they both smoothly completed the turn, led by their guidance and targeting systems, and their bomb bay doors opened.

The first cylinder of the lead plane dropped down into the opening and cycled through, spitting out bombs.

Boreas leaned forward to hit the red transmit button just as the first MK-82 landed on the leading edge of the field of antennas. The second impacted a half a second later.

Mixed among the five-hundred-pound high-explosive bombs were the cluster bombs. Two hundred meters above the ground, the casing of each thousand-pound cylinder split open, dispensing 202 bomblets. The “footprint,” as the Air Force called it, for each CBU was two hundred meters by four hundred meters. As the heavier MK-82s dug out ten-foot-deep craters, the CBUs cut huge swaths through the antenna field, slicing metal like cheese.

Boreas was stunned as the thud of the first explosions reverberated through the control center. He ran to the window and looked out, seeing flash after flash in the darkness as bombs exploded.

Jackson was satisfied the HAARP field had been wiped off the face of the Earth by the first B-2. She was right behind the second one as its first cylinder unloaded.

She’d manipulated the GATS/GAM on that one to target the HAARP control facility. She knew forty thousand pounds of ordnance was overkill for one two-story building, but the bombs were available.

Boreas never saw the B-2, five thousand feet above in the night sky. He also didn’t see the first MK-82 as it hit the roof and tore through to the first floor.