The thought of them made Wendy smile. “It’s so great that they’re a team now,” she said. “I love seeing them so happy together.”

Patrick nodded, but he had something else on his mind. “Bro, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time…”

“You don’t have to tell me, Patrick,” Paul said. “I think I know what kind of things you’ve been doing the past several years-though I’ve got a feeling I’ve only sensed the very tip of the iceberg. But there’s something I want to tell you too. I know how much you like Jon and the company and all, but I think you’re much happier in the Air Force, doing all the cosmic stuff you were doing. You’re a general. Go be a general again. Get out there to your base, wherever the hell it is; march in front of your troops, call them to attention, and lead them. You’re certainly not too old to strap on a jet once in a while and fly a few more bomb runs, but I’ll bet there are some pretty shit-hot kids out there ready to do their part. You’ve just got to teach ‘em how it’s done.”

Patrick looked at his brother quizzically. “And how the hell did you get to be so smart, kid?”

“Just trying to be like you, bro,” Paul said. “Just trying to be like you.”

The Sky Masters, Inc. Gulfstream had departed from Mather Jetport several minutes earlier, bound for San Diego. Paul McLanahan was back on Highway 50, heading to his first afternoon on the job, when his cellular phone rang. When he picked it up, he heard a warbling sound, so he pushed the function and I keys to engage the auto-descrambling function on the special Sky Masters cellphone and waited for the warbling to go away. Then he said, “Hi, Jon.”

“Hi, Paul,” Jon Masters responded. “They’re on their way?”

“Yes.”

“What did Patrick say?”

“Nothing definite,” Paul replied. “I think he wants to take the Air Force job, but he also wants to give being a dad a try. My feeling is he’ll come back to work for you for a few months, but he’s not going to let October come and go without some hard soul-searching.”

“I thought so,” Jon said. “Listen, I have some mods I want to try on your arm-and-shoulder prosthesis. I’ll be back out your way next week. Should only take a couple of hours over two or three nights. You won’t miss any work.”

“What kind of mods?”

“Oh, I think you’ll like them,” Jon replied. “A bit better interface with the suit, some weapon-control functions I want to try.”

“What about the suit itself?” Paul asked.

“I’ll bring the latest version along with me,” Jon said. “A bit better slow-penetration protection, better power-management functions and readouts, some different features to try to bring the weapon systems on board.”

“Good,” Paul said. “My office has been receiving a lot of new information on a resurgence of meth producers moving into the state, and especially in the north. I have a feeling the Tin Man needs to get out on the street and countryside a bit more.”

“The National Interagency Counterdrug Strike Force out of San Luis Obispo has an operation that I think might be perfect for you,” Jon said. “Are you familiar with NICI?”

“Of course,” Paul said. NICI, located on the central coast of California, was a combined federal, state, and local law-enforcement training-and-education center where members of the military, federal agencies, police units, and district attorneys came together to learn the latest about the illegal drug trade and how all the different antinarcotics agencies could work together more effectively. What was not widely known was that every year NICI took the best and the brightest one percent of its thousands of graduates and formed a strike team that ran actual counterdrug operations throughout the United States. “I can’t wait to get started.”

“You give the word and your support team will be rolling and ready to go,” Jon Masters said.

“You’ve got the word, Jon,” said the new Tin Man. “You’ve got the word.”

About The Author

Former US Air Force captain Dale Brown was born in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in Nevada. He graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Western European History and received a US Air Force commission in 1978. While in the Air Force, he was a navigator-bombardier in the B-52G Stratofortress heavy bomber and the FB-111A supersonic medium bomber, flying over 2500 hours in different military tactical and training aircraft and receiving several military decorations and awards. He was still serving in the Air Force when he wrote Flight of the Old Dog, his highly acclaimed first novel. Since then he has written a string of New York Times bestselling novels, all of which are available from HarperCollins: Silver Tower, Day of the Cheetah, Hammerheads, Sky Masters, Night of the Hawk, Chains of Command, Storming Heaven, Shadows of Steel, Fatal Terrain and, most recently, The Tin Man.