Dennis watched as two radar signals turned and moved towards them while two new signals moved away. The fifth signal on his scope was no longer well defined, once again resembling a drop of water that changed shape as it flowed across his dispy. Whatever it was it seemed totally unbothered by the recent close call with two fully armed fighters, or the approach of two more.

  Why should it be? Dennis wondered. The closest they’d gotten to it was two miles, even though his scope told them the distance was ten times that. They knew now that it had the ability to fool them. They were tracking a ghost, and if they didn’t change the game their QRA would arrive at the calcuted intercept and find nothing but empty sky.

  “Kutex One-Five, One-Six, Tracker. Contact Leeming Approach on frequency two-five-niner-decimal-two. Expect runway two-zero. Emergency crews standing by. Good luck, gents.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-one-five. Roger. Switching to Leeming Approach on frequency two-five-niner-decimal-two. Leave the light on for us, chaps. We’ll be home soon.”

  Dennis made his decision and communicated it with only a vague second thought. If he was wrong then the bandit would slip the net, and it would be on him.

  “Javelin-two-one, Tracker. Update. Radar contact unreliable. Estimate true position bearing three-zero-zero, range two-zero miles from current track. Vector two-niner-zero for intercept. Recommend visual acquisition.”

  Penny's head appeared again beside his own. The dispy in front of them hadn’t changed.

  “Pying a hunch?” she asked.

  “Rolling the hard six,” he replied. It was a long shot. Nothing about this made sense. There was no reason to assume that the radar masking always biased in the same direction by the same amount. If it didn’t—if it was rotating frequencies—maniputing the radar return randomly—it could be anywhere.

  “Tracker, Javelin-two-one. Roger. Turning to three-zero-zero for visual acquisition.” Flight Lieutenant Daniel “Hawk” Havers had over one-thousand hours flying the F-4. He had more hours in a Phantom than the other three men in his flight had total flying hours. Some of the men in his squadron joked that he was nine years old the first time a Phantom’s canopy had closed above him. It was total luck that they had their most experienced pilot leading this intercept.

  In the skies above them Javelin was climbing and accelerating while Kutex was slowing and descending. Cnker was compensating with engine power and aileron for the loss of rudder control. RAF Leeming was growing rger before them while it was now out of sight for the Javelin QRA. They were minutes away from meeting the strange bandit. They could only guess what they would find.

  All those guesses would prove to be wrong.

  Something was catching his eye.

  A reflection—a glint where it didn’t belong, over his left shoulder. The sun—the only thing that had any right to be there—shone brightly behind him. But something else was there, and his mind flicked back to something Bobby’s dad had once said about flying Corsairs in the war.

  “The Japs would always fly out of the sun. So did we. You learned real quick to always check your six o’clock high.”

  He'd held up his left hand—the one that still had all its digits—and extended his little finger.

  “You block out the sun with the tip of your finger. If you see two wings sticking out, you’ve got company.”

  Aric rolled onto his back and held up one hand, but couldn’t keep it steady enough. He slowed to a hover and expanded his senses—tuning himself to the natural frequency of the universe. By the time he realized what was approaching, the two fighters had dropped another thousand feet.

  He was caught.

  Never having realized he was being hunted.

  Like any good infantryman, he’d had csses on aircraft recognition—friend or foe, make and model. But three years is a long time to remember—and long enough to forget—information that no longer felt relevant. He’d been stupid. Colossally. Monumentally. It had never occurred to him that flying across the UK might draw attention.

  What a fucking idiot I am, he thought, as his mind raced. The pnes kept coming. And he was a sitting duck.

  In every command center still tracking the mystery bandit, an audible gasp went up as the object on their screens went from 1,200 knots to zero in under three seconds. Some stations lost the signal entirely as Aric’s forward momentum vanished. And they would all gasp again when his body moved—before his brain had finished making the decision.

  The fighters were still diving steeply when Aric unched upward like a missile.

  As he aimed directly at the oncoming aircraft his body beginning to glow.

  “When there’s an accident on the track, aim right at it. By the time you get there, it’ll have moved.”

  Thanks, Richard Petty, Aric thought grimly.

  When man and machines passed each other, they were less than a hundred yards apart. Aric could clearly see one of the men in the rear seat turn his helmeted head to keep him in view. Aric didn’t know much about flying, but he knew that even the best aircraft couldn’t turn on a dime or pull out of a steep dive instantly. He kept climbing. The fighters shrank below him.

  Unlike the four men hurtling toward the ground, Aric relied on the air around him to breathe. So when the ionization around his body began to thin and vanish, he knew he’d climbed too high. He tipped into a new heading—like a scuba diver dropping buoyancy—and waited for the glow of ionizing air to return. Then he hit the gas. When the ionization reached his feet he figured he was going fast enough.

  The radar stations lost him for good a minute ter. He was moving at 4,000 knots.

  He clipped several treetops on the way to Surrey, but not many.

  He hoped they didn’t fall on anyone.

  By the time Javelin flight returned to Leeming both of the Phantoms from Leuchars had been moved off the taxiway and onto the hard shingle. All four men were standing behind Cnker’s fighter while technicians inspected the damaged rudder. There wasn’t much for them to see, but that wasn’t why they were there. They were waiting for the four men whose pnes were slowing to a stop not too far away. The emergency crews would give way to tugs in a short time, and the pnes would be pushed into the hardened shelter or a rger repair hanger.

  “See you gents made it here in one piece,” Hawk said as he stuck out his long fingered hand. Every pilot in Leeming heard him use that hand—and the other as well—py a wide selection of songs on the squadron's piano.

  “No thanks to this bloody beast,” Cnker said as he nodded to his damaged rudder. “Thing’s been trying to kill me since I got to Leuchars.”

  “What was it, do you know?” Rook asked, holding his flight helmet in his left hand.

  “Think it cracked pulling out of the dive, and the turbulence shook it loose afterward. How about you chaps? Take any damage trying to stay with it?”

  The men from Leuchars could see immediately that they’d hit a nerve when three of the men from Leeming looked at the fourth.

  “I know what I saw,” the man said as he stared back at one of the men in his flight. “You saw it too. Don’t lie to me, I can see it all over your face.”

  “What we saw isn’t the point right now,” Hawk said in a hushed tone. The technicians were too close for comfort. “Let’s walk.”

  They began a slow walk to the door leading back to the ready room.

  “You repeat that in the debriefing and your career is over. It’s bad enough they’ve got the radio traffic. You need to walk it back. You misspoke. It looked like a glowing man. That’s all. Reflected sunlight. Strange shaped radar absorbing panels. You get the picture?”

  Saxon, Midge, Cnker and Frodo knew enough to keep their gobs firmly shut. They didn’t even want to think the phrase glowing man for fear it would spill out during the debriefing. In any case, they were never close enough to get any kind of look at the bandit. All they got out of the ordeal was a cracked rudder.

  By the sound of it, they were the lucky ones.

  “Unidentified aircraft, this is Royal Air Force Interceptor Javelin-two-one approaching at your twelve o’clock. You are in restricted air space. State your intentions, over.”

  The four pilots and for weapons systems officers sat in the debriefing room as Flight Lieutenant Daniel “Hawk” Havers’ voice pyed over the room’s speakers. The four men from Javelin flight had heard it all as it was happening. For the men from Kutex flight it was new—as was Flight Sergeant Dennis Ngata’s voice when it appeared.

  “Javelin, confirm radio contact, over.”

  “Unidentified aircraft, you have been intercepted by RAF fighters. State your intentions, over.”

  None of the flight crews looked around—not at the man and woman in front of them, not at each other. Squadron Leader Penelope “Penny” Winfield stared bnkly ahead. She’d heard it all as it happened, and the recording held nothing new for her. Flight Lieutenant James “Mac” MacAndrew—Penny’s XO—had heard the recording shortly before the debriefing began. He’d written some hasty notes during the repy and right after. He would be the one asking questions—filling in the gaps, prying information out of men who he knew would protect themselves and their fellow flyers above all else. It was Penny’s task to remain silent and watch those four men—their demeanor, their reactions. The game was truth or dare—would they tell the truth or dare to lie, and hope they didn’t get caught.

  “Unidentified aircraft, failure to comply may result in defensive action. Acknowledge, squawk seven-six-zero-zero or make visual signal. This is your final war—

  “Incoming! Break! Break! Break!”

  Flight Lieutenant Colin “Rook” Mackay’s voice broke in, overriding his pilot’s radio communication. Penny recalled the exact moment that voice had caused her heart to spike—the instant the bandit had begun to accelerate hard towards the two descending fighters. There followed almost thirty seconds of radio silence. She had more than enough experience to know what was happening in the two cockpits as she watched the Phantom’s veer away from the approaching bandit. Anti-G Straining Maneuvers and prayers.

  Rook: “Visual—high right—brief!”

  Hawk: “Tally. Contact departing—no joy on radar—he’s gone.”

  “Jesus Christ! Did you see—did anyone else see that? Was that a man? A glowing man?!

  That was Stitch Greenwood’s voice. Flying Officer Alec “Stitch” Greenwood. His Northern Irish accent was a dead giveaway even to crew and staff that barely knew him.

  “Javelin-two-two, secure channel. Maintain comm discipline. Continue visual scanning.”

  It was a career saving intervention on Hawk Haver’s part, trying to shut down wild talk before it became part of the official record. Too te. It was all part of the after-action package now. The entire flight recording would be sent up the chain along with the Squadron Leader’s preliminary report.

  “Scope’s clear. Nothing on radar.” Stitch’s voice was calmer now, but Penny was sure his mind was racing. His heart would still be pounding, but not because of the aborted boom and zoom. He must have been mortified to have reacted that way—and to have that reaction captured on audio recording.

  Dennis’s voice was also calm when it reappeared, despite what it was reporting. “Javelin-two-one, Tracker. Bandit dropped below sweep. Last known altitude: angels zero-decimal-six. Speed: 3800 knots. Heading steady zero-niner-zero.”

  Hawk: “Tracker, Javelin-two-one. Say again st observed bandit speed, over.”

  Tracker: “Javelin-two-one, Tracker. Bandit st speed three-eight-zero-zero knots.”

  Rook: “That can’t be right. Mach 4 at 600 feet? Nothing can do that.”

  Hawk: “Cut the chatter. We still have a job to do. Let’s at least act like we’ve done this before.”

  Penny pressed the button to stop the recording. Mac wasted no time before speaking.

  “We’ll save you the seventeen minutes of radio silence before you got the recall order,” he said as he wrote something onto his pad of paper.

  “Flight Lieutenant Havers, you were in command of Javelin flight, correct?”

  Everyone in the room knew that was the case, and each of the four men thought—for what must be the thousandth time—why do they always ask questions that they know the answers to already?

  Each of the men also knew that their best course of action was one word answers—or as close to them as they could get. Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir.

  “Sir, I was.”

  Mac gnced down at his notes and read from them. “And Flight Lieutenant Mallory, you were in command of Kutex flight out of Leuchars?”

  Saxon thought about raising his hand to identify himself to this stranger asking the questions, but decided against.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. Mac’s eyes rolled up to gnce at the new voice and Saxon recognized the look immediately.

  The SL’s mastiff—her attack dog.

  He didn’t know the man, not by name or reputation. But he knew the look. He also recognized the calm demeanor—and predator’s eyes—of the woman who commanded the four men who had come home with a secret that they needed to bury as quickly and effectively as possible. She would let her XO lead the interrogation while she watched and learned. Who turned red—or pale. Who blinked too much—or not enough. Who was telling the truth—and who wasn’t.

  “We’re gd you made it here safe and sound. It sounds like whatever this was it put you through the wringer.”

  They were equal in rank, but it was always best to err on the side of caution during a debriefing.

  “Yes, sir. That it did. Twelve hundred knots at five thousand feet for almost ten minutes. Thought all my fillings would shake loose.”

  Mac smiled. “We’ll get you on your way as soon as possible. Since your flight never got a good look at the bandit I’ll ask you to sit tight for now. Now, Flight Lieutenant Havers, let’s start from the beginning...”