knots. It was a jolt compared to a Megafortress’s takeoff, but by B-1 standards it was almost lackadaisical. Breanna told herself to stop comparing the planes and just fly.

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There was a tickle in her nose. She hoped she wasn’t getting a cold.

“Big Bird to Boomer. I have you in sight,” said Sleek Top from the other B-1B/L. His voice was so loud he drowned out the engines.

“Boomer,” acknowledged Samson. “How are you looking?”

“Purring like a kitten, General,” responded Sleek. “We have your six.”

“Roger that.”

“First way marker in ten minutes, General,” said Breanna.

“Systems are in the green. Fuel burn is a little lighter than originally computed.”

“Hmmmph.”

“We have a bit more of a tailwind,” said Breanna, explaining the difference.

“Good, Captain. Stay on it.”

Not too many pilots would have been miffed that they were getting better mileage than expected, but that was Samson. His tone tended to be a bit gruff, but it wasn’t anything Breanna wasn’t used to from her father. In many ways the two men were similar—no wonder they couldn’t stand each other.

GENERAL SAMSON CHECKED HIS COURSE ON THE COMPUter screen. While he’d flown this B-1 during an orientation flight a few weeks before, it still felt a bit odd. In nearly every measurable aspect, the plane was superior to the “stock”

B-1Bs he was used to. It was faster, a hair more maneuverable, and could fly farther without refueling if the tanks were managed properly—which was almost a given, since the computer did the managing.

Boomer’s internal bomb bays were taken up by the laser, but the weapon’s comparatively lighter weight meant a heavier bomb load could be carried on the wings and fuselage. In this version, the aircraft didn’t need the offensive and defensive systems officers; their jobs were completely replaced by the REVOLUTION

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computer. The computer could even take over most if not all of the piloting tasks—not that Samson was about to give it the opportunity.

Still, there was something about Boomer and its sister ship, Big Bird, that bothered him. It was almost too slick, too easy to fly. It wasn’t going to keep a pilot on his toes the way an older ship would.

But what the hell. It was good to be flying again, and even better to lead a mission. Samson knew there’d be flak from above at some point, but if Colonel Dog Bastian could do it, so could he.

Maybe it would earn him a new nickname: the Flying, Fighting General.

Now that was the sort of thing that helped you get confirmed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bucharest, Romania

28 January 1998

0900

ALIN VODA’S POLITICAL CAREER HAD STARTED IN THE MOST

unlikely way when, at age seven, a family friend gave him a trombone. It was a worn instrument, with many scratches and two dents in the playing tube; the bell of the horn had been pushed slightly to one side. Even an accomplished musician would have had trouble coaxing a winning sound from the instrument. But it lit a fire in Voda’s brain. He took lessons at his local elementary school, and within a few months had devoured the teacher’s small store of sheet music. His notes, strained by the condition of the old horn, did not always have the best tone, but Voda’s enthusiasm for the music burned so hot that it infected anyone who heard him.

His teacher happened to have a better trombone in storage, and one day decided to loan it to Voda, letting the boy play it first at school, and then, within a week or two, at home. The 262

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sound of the instrument was a revelation, and Voda’s passion, already great, doubled. By the end of the school year he could play at the level of a competent teenager, and certainly practiced as much.

During the summer vacation, Voda returned to his own instrument, and immediately felt its limitations. It was not just the sound of the battered horn; trombones played in a relatively limited range, and while there was much to be mastered, it already seemed to the eight-year-old that the range would be too limited for his imagination. He was thinking and dreaming in notes.

Wild riffs played through his head. If a painter might be said to see the world in colors, Voda had come to hear the world in music. He pestered his parents—poorly paid workers for the state—to find him a piano. Even a used instrument was out of the question, but the same friend who had given him the trombone had a brother who was a janitor at a local school. Thanks to his job, he had the keys to the basement where the music room was, and one day the friend arranged for the brother to meet Voda and his mother so the boy could plunk on the piano.

Within a few minutes, Voda had figured out how to trans-pose the notes he played on the trombone to the keyboard.

His playing was not good by any means; the piano itself was old and some of the keys fidgety, so none of the songs were recognizable except to Voda. But again, it fired his imagination.

He pestered his parents and the friend to allow him to return. A week later, he was able to coax a melodious version of a Romanian folk song from the instrument; after about fifteen minutes of playing it back and forth, his mistakes morphed into a pleasant improvisation, his mind hearing the notes as they might be, not necessarily as they had been originally intended.

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he came down to investigate, he was surprised to see a thin, somewhat undersized eight-year-old at the keyboard. While the janitor and Voda’s mother froze in fear that they were about to get into trouble for sneaking into the building, the principal strode to Voda. When the boy finished, the older man—a modest amateur pianist himself—began asking questions about the song and, eventually, about Voda’s training, or rather, lack of it.

From that point on, coincidence no longer played a part in Voda’s musical career. Admission was arranged to a special school in Bucharest, where he had access to some of the best teachers in the country. While the routine of becoming a true artist—the endless hours of practice and study—often bored Voda, it did not dull his love of music. He continued to throw himself into the work, making his fingers produce the notes he imagined in his head.

The teachers were divided over whether the boy should be considered a true “prodigy” or simply an extremely talented and gifted young man. Initially, his public concerts were limited to small performances at the school. He did not particularly stand out at these, not only because of the talent surrounding him on the program, but because the pieces he played tended toward the obscure and difficult. But those who knew what he did in the practice rooms never under-valued his talent, and pushed him to improve.

At fifteen, Voda discovered Mozart. Naturally, he’d played many Mozart pieces over the years and had a general understanding of the great composer’s work, but until then he never understood the music the way an artist must understand it. Ironically, the moment came while playing the overture for Don Giovanni, not generally considered a pianist’s show-piece when compared to the rest of Mozart’s oeuvre. As he began the third measure, the notes suddenly felt different. For Voda, it was as if he had pushed open the door of a fabulous mansion and strolled in, suddenly at home.

His first performance of a Mozart piece at the school—

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Sonata K 310—was a sensation. The small audience leaped to its feet when he concluded, and applauded so long that he had to do an encore. Within weeks he had his first concert outside the school’s auspices; by the time he was eighteen, he was touring the country, playing on his own. He visited Russia and Warsaw. With classical music much more popular behind what was then the Iron Curtain than it was in the West, Voda became an emerging superstar and a national hero.