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high-performance SA-10 antiaircraft missile system—but the threat-warning computers measured the signal strength of the search radar and determined that it was not strong enough to get a good reflection from the stealthy EB-1C Vampire. “Keep going.” He keyed his secure command satellite net’s mike button. “Control, Puppeteer.”
    â€œWe see it,” Patrick’s friend and deputy, Brigadier-General David Luger, replied. Luger, a fellow navigator and aeronautical engineer who had been partnered with Patrick since their early days in B-52 bombers, was watching the mission from the “virtual cockpit,” a system that displayed all of the EB-1C Vampire’s flight information on computer screens back home and allowed crews and technicians there to monitor and even partially control the actual flight mission. “I’ve issued recall instructions to the surveillance StealthHawk—it’ll ditch itself in the Arabian Sea, and the Navy will retrieve it for us. Still no contact with the strike StealthHawk—it’s still operating normally, still looking for targets but not responding to satellite steering commands.
    â€œI’ve got a call in to the State Department,” Luger went on. “I strongly recommend not crossing the Pakistani border until you get permission. Do I need to remind you about your Russia mission?”
    â€œYou do not,” Patrick said. The last time he’d been in a bomber, an EB-52 Megafortress over southwestern Russia, he made a decision to violate orders to help a special-ops mission in trouble—and that decision had almost cost him his life. “Put in a call to Hal and Chris, too,” he said.
    â€œThey’re monitoring everything and are briefing up an insertion mission,” Luger said. Stationed in the Gulf of Oman on board a large civilian freighter was Patrick’s backup rescue team: Hal Briggs, Chris Wohl, and ten highly trained commandos, outfitted in Tin Man electronic battle armor. Hidden in the freighter’s cargo hold was an MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft, an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft modified with jet engines to give it more range, speed, and load-carrying capability. With a range of over two thousand miles, air-refuelable, and with the capability of flying below radar, the Pave Dasher was the ideal way to insert rescue or attack troops deep inside hostile territory. “They’re working several problems: They’ll be right at the extreme range of the Pave Dasher—the farther the StealthHawk flies into Turkmenistan, the more problematic the situation becomes, and there’s some pretty bad weather closing in.”
    â€œLet me know what they say,” Patrick said. “If there’s any way they can try it, I want it done.”
    â€œStand by,” Luger said.
    Rebecca Furness rolled her eyes in exasperation. “We can’t ‘stand by,’ “ she said. “We’ll be feet-dry in”—she glanced at her navigation display and muttered—“now. We’re in violation of I don’t know how many international laws.”
    â€œThe SA-10 is down,” Patrick told her. “They lost us. No other threats detected, just search radars, all below detection levels.”
    â€œBad news, Muck,” Luger radioed a few minutes later. “The weather is getting worse down there in eastern Turkmenistan. Hal says it’s your call.”
    â€œWhat do you think, Texas?”
    â€œIf it was to pick up any of our guys, no question,” Luger replied. “But to pick up a two-thousand-pound UCAV from across a hostile border in Turkmenistan, with the Pakistanis, Iranians, and maybe the Russians looking on? Sorry, Muck. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
    â€œGeneral?” Rebecca Furness asked. “You lost it. Let’s get back over the Arabian Sea, get our gas, and go home.”
    â€œJust keep going,”