The odds were better to just keep it flying, he decided.

A few seconds later the screen on the control blanked. It had stopped transmitting. The Libyan gunfire had caught the aircraft.

There was a ground flare at the complex. For a brief moment Rubeo thought it was the aircraft crashing, but in fact it was an SA–10 missile launching. A second and then a third and fourth came off the ground in quick succession.

“It is time for us to leave,” announced the scientist. “Pack quickly.”

HESITATION

1

Over Libya

The A–10E helmet had a night vision attachment allowing the pilots to see in the dark. The combination was still lighter than the smart helmet, but it was awkward, tilting the helmet forward so the edges rubbed against Turk’s cheekbones.

The glasses turned the world into a crisp collection of greens and blacks, an alternate universe that lived parallel to the real one. It was as if the pilot was an electronic ghost, slipping through the dark solids before him.

While the technology was different, the view itself was familiar to Turk from the smart helmet, where it was one of the preset defaults, designed to make the transition from older technology to new as seamless as possible. He felt it was superior to the view offered in F–35 helmets—another preset. There was a sharpness to it that the Lightning II view seemed to lack.

Turk took Shooter Four up from the south runway, moving into a gradual climb over the Mediterranean. The four-ship flight’s first stop was a tanker track to the southwest; they would top off there before heading over Libya.

Turk listened as Ginella checked in with the AWACS, getting a picture of the situation over the country.

She was an odd case—professional to the point of cold indifference toward him in the squadron room, outrageously passionate in bed.

It confused the hell out of him.

Remembering Grizzly’s tales of tanker woe, Turk approached the boom gently, easing in at a crawl. At any second he expected the boomer to squawk at him about how slow he was going. But all he got was an attaboy and a solid clunk as the probe was shoved into the nose of the Hog.

He held the aircraft steady as the JP–8 sloshed in. The cockpit filled with the heady scent of escaping kerosene. Turk tried to relax his shoulder and arm muscles, afraid that any twitch would jerk him off the straw. By the time the boomer called over to tell him to disconnect, his arms had cramped.

“Copy that. Thanks.”

Turk slipped downward, dropping through several dozen feet before banking right and moving out and away from the tanker. The radio whispered hints of distant missions; it was a busy night over Libya, the allies keeping pressure on the government as the rebels continued with their offensive.

Grizzly had already tanked and was waiting for him.

“You did good, Turk,” said the other pilot. “Gonna make a real Hog driver out of you yet.”

“I’m getting there.”

“You gotta work on your grunts.” Grizzly made a noise somewhat similar to the sound of a rooting hog. His voice lost an octave and became something a caveman would have been proud of. “Real Hog driver talk like this.”

“All right, you two, knock it off,” said Ginella. “Let’s look sharp and keep our comments to business. Turk, how are your eyes?”

“I’m good.”

“There’s been no sign of our package south,” she added. “Let’s get there. You know the drill.”

Thirty minutes later the four Hogs approached an arbitrary point in the sky where they had been assigned to loiter. The other half of Shooter Squadron was to the southwest about seventy miles. The aircraft were flying at roughly 30,000 feet, high enough so they couldn’t be seen or heard in the dark night sky.

The American planes were part of a massive search and rescue operation. Dozens of aircraft were strung out across the country, ready. All they needed was a downed pilot.

The wreck had been located in a ravine twenty miles south. But the pilot’s locator beacon and radio had not been detected. Ground forces were conducting a search near the plane and in an area where computer simulations showed the man might have parachuted. Army Special Forces units had been inserted just after dusk, and had made contact with some rebels in the area who were helping with the search.

Turk didn’t have a lot of experience with rescue operations, but it took little more than common sense to realize that if the pilot hadn’t radioed in by now, the odds of finding him alive were extremely slim. But no one in the air wanted to mention that. It was too easy to put yourself in the downed man’s place—you didn’t want to think of giving up.

An hour passed. The other half of Shooter Squadron called it a night and headed home. Ginella led her group farther south, orbiting over two different spec op detachments.

Adrenaline drained, Turk found staying alert extremely difficult. He stretched his legs, rocked his shoulders back and forth—it was a constant battle, far more difficult than actually flying the plane.

One of the ground units reported that they were following a lead from the rebel guerrillas; the information was passed back down the line to the squadron. Turk felt his pulse jump. But when the lead failed to pan out, he found it even harder to keep his edge.

With dawn approaching, Ginella decided they would refuel so their patrol could be extended if needed. She split the group in two so they could continue to provide coverage. Grizzly and Turk went north to the tanker track while she and her wingman stayed south.

Mostly silent during their loops, Grizzly became animated as they approached the hookup. He told Turk he had brought along an iPod and was listening to music as they flew.

“Got some old stuff I haven’t heard in a while.”

The music may have been old, but Turk hadn’t heard any of it. It was country and country pop—Son Volt and Civil Wars and half a dozen other singers and groups completely off his radar.

“You gotta get out more,” laughed Grizzly when Turk confessed he’d never heard of the groups. He began filling him in, keeping the patter up all the way to the Air Force 757s.

“What do you think of G?” asked Grizzly after they had finished tanking.

“Seems OK,” said Turk as neutrally as possible.

“Real hardass sometimes. Good pilot, though. First woman commander I’ve ever had.”

“First one?”

“Probably had a female in charge of one of the schools somewhere along the way,” said Grizzly, referring to the different classes the officer would have attended. “But not, you know, like this.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Kinda different flying for a woman, you think?” said Grizzly.

It sounded somewhere between a statement and a question. Turk didn’t know how to answer it either way. His boss—Breanna Stockard—was a woman, but he wasn’t supposed to refer to Special Projects if possible, and he worried that mentioning her would inevitably point the conversation in that direction. It took him a few moments to think of something suitably neutral and bland to come back with.

“I haven’t worked with an actual squadron in a while,” he told the other pilot. “I’m pretty much a one-man shop.”

“That’s kind of cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Word is the Air Force is gonna phase us down,” said Grizzly. “Turn all the electronics in these suckers on and let them fly themselves.”