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The ancient receivers crackled to life. “Alert Force, Alert Force, scramble, scramble, scramble! I say again, Alert Force, Alert Force, scramble, scramble, scramble!”

  For a split second the pilots sat frozen, staring at each other across the table like gunfighters about to draw. Then chairs flew and silverware clattered as they jumped from their seats and headed for the door in a mad dash for the alert vehicles. It was a matter of pride to be the first pair out of the parking lot.

  Instead of racing with the other pilots, Murph calmly wiped a crumb of bacon from his lips, stood up, replaced his chair, and casually walked out of the facility. While the other pilots ran off in pairs, he jogged alone, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sun and scanning the flight line for the twentieth man. “Where are you, Tony?” he grumbled, wondering if his partner’s ancient radio had woken him up at all.

  Fifty yards from the flight kitchen, ten midnight blue sedans sat waiting for the sprint to the hangars, and fifty yards beyond the vehicles the alert shack tilted precariously with the wind, straining against its tie-down ropes.

  Murph shook his head. The proud days of Strategic Air Command were gone. In the glory days, breakfast would have been good, hot, and free, and the alert shack would have been a brick building with showers and a gym. This morning the food was nasty, cold, and four bucks a plate, and the alert facility amounted to nothing more than a big brown tent with a diesel generator.

  Should he get the car running or go to the shack and retrieve Tony? Finally Murph made his decision and began a full sprint for the tent, assuming that he would have to drag his sleeping crewmate out of bed. His crewmate proved him wrong.

  A tanned, half-naked figure shot through the tent flaps like a bullet from a gun. Anthony Merigold was new to the B-2, having finished mission qualification training just a week before. He stood six foot, three inches tall with dark hair, broad shoulders, and strong Greek features. In a flight suit, Tony Merigold looked so much like a poster boy for the Air Force that the older pilots called him Captain America, even though he was only a lieutenant.

  As Murph looked on in horror, the younger officer sprinted across the pavement wearing nothing but a pair of gray boxer briefs and black boot socks. His flight suit whipped in the breeze, slung over his right shoulder, and his combat boots bounced along, dangling from his left hand by their strings. Murph stopped short, making an abrupt turn to join his streaking partner in the sprint to the car. “Oversleep, did we?”

  “How was I supposed to know it was gonna happen now?”

  “It always happens on Tuesday morning.”

  “Yeah? Well . . . maybe you could’ve told me that yesterday.”

  Tony reached the car first and tossed his boots on the floorboard of the passenger side. Murph jumped in the driver’s seat and cranked the engine. He punched the gas pedal to the floor as Tony desperately tried to get dressed.

  “Great,” said Tony, angrily slapping the dashboard.

  “What?”

  “I forgot my shirt.”

  “Zip your flight suit up to the neck and nobody’ll notice.”

  Tony nodded and ripped the zipper to its upper limit. “Ow!”

  “What now?”

  Tony’s response was strained, almost whispered: “Chest hair.”

  Murph closed on the vehicle in front of them as both cars headed for the northernmost hangars, three-quarters of a mile away. The alert crews were supposed to drive at a safe but urgent speed, but Murph’s speed was always a little more urgent than safe. As he passed the other car, Murph smiled and waved. The other driver shook his fist while his passenger pretended to write down their license plate number on his hand.

  A few moments later Murph screeched to a halt in the white box painted on the pavement in front of Hangar 2. A deafening buzzer warned them to stay clear as massive doors slid open to reveal a beautiful charcoal-colored aircraft. Both pilots hopped out of the car and paused, awed by the spectacle. The Spirit of Texas glared back at them over its slightly curved beak, looking mean and alien against the backdrop of a hundred halogen lights.

  Inside the hangar, the crew chief punched a big red button on the B-2’s nose gear and a contoured hatch appeared as if from nowhere, extending a short ladder to the floor. A tremendous rushing sound filled the air as two huge generators fired up inside the aircraft.

  The two pilots ran toward the ladder. Waiting below the hatch, the crew chief gave Murph a knuckle bump, but he stopped short with Tony, raising an eyebrow at the lieutenant’s stockinged feet.

  “Hey, at least I’m not naked,” said Tony.

  As the younger pilot rushed up the ladder with his boots, Murph signed the crew chief’s log. Then he walked briskly around the plane, checking for any tools or maintenance equipment that might obstruct the taxiing aircraft. He glanced up at the munitions in the B-2’s weapons bay. Even though the briefings were scripted and the enemy was fictitious, the bombers were loaded with real bombs—enough conventional firepower to turn a small country into a smoking crater. It had to be that way to accurately test the wing’s response times.

  Murph’s B-2 carried a thirty-six-thousand-pound mixture of GPS-guided destruction, including four standard two-thousand-pounders, four two-thousand-pound penetrators, and four GBU-37 five-thousand-pound GAMs—GPS aided munitions—better known as bunker busters.

  “The area’s clear and the weapons are good!” shouted Murph as he climbed the stairs to join his partner. He jumped into his seat, put on his Bose headset, and waited for the lead stealth bomber to initiate a check-in.

  “Rage, check.”

  “Two . . .”

  “Three . . .” Each crew counted off in sequence up to ten. Then there was silence.

  “What now?” asked Tony.

  “Now we wait.” Murph checked his watch. It was 7:55 A.M. Central Time. The date was September 11.

  Chapter 2

  Pale rays of afternoon sunlight poured through the narrow windows of the fitness room at the 81st Fighter Squadron in Spangdahlem, Germany. The light formed two bright columns across the sectional rubber floor, yet it offered no heat at all. Lieutenant Nick Baron attacked a 150-pound punching bag with fury. He moved his six-foot frame around the bag with practiced ease, his steel blue eyes intently focused on the target, his blond hair matted to his forehead with sweat. He was not broad shouldered, but he was muscular, and the heavy bag shook violently under the power of his blows.

  As he shifted his weight for a roundhouse kick, Nick felt a presence enter the room. He paused for a fraction of a second, pulling the kick to avoid the new obstacle, and then continued to punish the bag. He would not be interrupted; there were sixty seconds left on the timer. Undaunted, the intruder moved to a more obvious position. The two columns of light fell into shadow.

  “You’re in my way and you’re blocking my light.”

  The intruder, a red-haired, freckle-faced intelligence specialist named McBride, gave him an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, sir, but your presence is requested in the Vault. Immediately.”

  The timer expired. Nick brushed the young airman aside as he punched off the alarm, and then grabbed a small towel to dab his face. “Tell Oso that if he wants to interrupt my workout, he’s going to have to drag my sweaty carcass out of the gym himself.”

  The kid lowered his eyes, but he insistently stepped in front of Nick again. “Sir, the major was called away to the wing headquarters. You are in charge of the mission planning section until he gets back.”

  “So?”

  “So, we think the United States may be under attack.”

  * * *

  Breaking news was always hit-or-miss at the 81st. Unlike their counterparts in the States, the American squadrons in Europe had no television news playing in the squadron—no Fox News or even CNN. More often than not they depended on the squadron wives to call in. The pilots called it the wives n
ews network, or WNN. Once again WNN had outpaced the Air Force intelligence pipeline. The commander’s wife had alerted him to the tragedy. Now McBride and the squadron’s other enlisted analysts—called intelligence specialists—were playing catch-up, trying to pull information from the slow classified Net.

  Nick followed McBride into the Vault, so dubbed because it was protected by a large steel blast door and because it housed most of the squadron’s classified work. A giant map table covered in charts filled the center of the large room. One wall held three doors that led to small briefing rooms, while the other three walls were lined with computer workstations dedicated to each of the squadron’s tactical sections—one wall for Intelligence, one for Weapons, and one for Mission Planning. Airman McBride led Nick to that third set of workstations, where another specialist pushed back from the computers to make room.

  Airman First Class Will McBride had always made Nick think Andy Griffith must be right around the corner. He had Opie written all over him—in his appearance, in his innocence—yet he was one of the best intelligence analysts Nick had ever worked with.

  “What’s the story, McBride?”

  “We have two potential attacks on the same complex in New York, sir.” The analyst showed Nick a series of data transmissions and news clips on the workstations. An airliner had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Then, seventeen minutes later, a second aircraft had crashed into the South Tower, eliminating any speculation that the first was a bizarre accident. Even as the kid spoke, the phone rang.

  Another specialist grabbed it, and as he listened to the caller, his eyes widened. He looked up, covering the receiver. “They just hit the Pentagon.”

  “We’re at war,” McBride said quietly.

  Nick bowed his head and silently uttered a prayer. He prayed for the souls lost in the attacks. He prayed for comfort for their families. And he prayed that God would give all of them justice.

  Chapter 3

  “How long do you think it will take before we know who’s responsible?” asked McBride.

  “We know exactly who’s responsible.”

  “Bin Laden?”

  Nick nodded. There were few in the U.S. intelligence community who didn’t already know that name. The rest of the world would know it within hours.

  For Nick keeping tabs on Islamic terrorists had started as little more than an odd hobby—a complement to his work as a student in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy. But as the years passed and the terrorists’ activities escalated, the hobby had become an obsession. Each heinous act struck him more deeply: the Hatshepsut massacre in Egypt, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole in Yemen. With each event, it became more personal.

  Nick’s hobby file tracked the known locations of Bin Laden and a number of his lieutenants: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, Tariq al-Majid, and several others. He knew their names; he knew their faces; and because he knew their crimes he would gladly assassinate any one of them if given the opportunity. Sometimes he wondered if that hatred—that desire for blood retribution—made him just like them. At the moment, he didn’t care. Like every other American fighting man, he wanted revenge.

  Nick glanced down at McBride’s gently humming workstation. “You wanna nail down some targets?” he asked, pulling a chair out from the desk.

  “You think they’re going to let the 81st strike back?”

  He sighed and pushed the chair back into its place. “No. At least, not immediately.” A hint of envy crept into his voice. “If there’s going to be any retaliation, the brass will go to the heavy hitters first.”

  “You mean the B-2s,” said McBride, rolling his eyes. “You’re going to have to let that fantasy go, sir.”

  Nick’s desire to fly the stealth bomber was no secret in the 81st. He had submitted an application to the B-2 wing several months before, despite the fact that he didn’t meet the minimum experience requirements. To everyone’s surprise, the hiring board had flown him to Whiteman for an interview, but the reception was lukewarm. He had returned less than three weeks ago, feeling defeated. Now he was just waiting for the official rejection letter.

  “Go ahead, make fun. But I’ll bet the stealth bombers are starting engines as we speak, just waiting for a set of target coordinates.”

  Chapter 4

  Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri

  24 September 2001

  Tony Merigold sighed as he left the highway and turned toward the main entrance to the base. It had seemed a tragically fortuitous coincidence. Ten stealth bombers, loaded for bear and brimming with fuel—all manned with fresh alert crews at the moment the nation was attacked. Tony and Murph had waited an hour before any news came from the command post. Finally a runner had appeared at the base of their ladder with news of the attack. He told them the order was to wait. And wait they did.

  For a full four hours twenty pilots sat in their loaded bombers, not one of them growing the least bit weary and every one of them dying to receive a go signal. But the go signal never came. They were ordered to shut down their engines. Then they were sent home to wait some more on telephone alert status, and, twenty-four hours later, even the telephone alert was canceled. That was two weeks ago.

  As he passed through the gate, Tony glanced up at the historic B-29 that guarded the main entrance to Whiteman. It served as a reminder of his squadron’s distinguished and somewhat controversial history. On 6 August 1945, two of the 393rd’s B-29s had departed the island of Tinian in the South Pacific. A few hours later one of them, the Enola Gay, had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, with the Great Artiste flying in a chase position as a scientific observation platform. Since then the Tigers had flown a variety of bombers: B-47s, B-52s, F-111s, and finally B-2s. But the Great Artiste remained an honorary member of the fleet, preserved as a testament to the squadron’s heritage.

  Nearly every morning since his arrival at Whiteman six months before, Tony had slowed to admire the old bomber as he passed through the front gate, but not lately. For the last two weeks he’d hardly noticed it at all, hurrying past on his way to the squadron, anxious to find out if America had come any closer to striking back.

  The squadron building was a large, brick-covered structure that the Tigers shared with 325th Squadron’s Cavemen—more reminiscent of a maximum-security prison than a flying squadron. A ten-foot fence covered in motion sensors and topped with concertina wire surrounded the facility while unseen eyes packing unseen weaponry monitored the perimeter.

  It took Tony fifteen minutes to work his way through multiple layers of security and climb the stairs to the squadron level, where a large preserved tiger—fixed in midstride with head lowered, as if stalking unwary prey—guarded the door. He placed his hand on the tiger’s glass case. “Well, girl,” he said quietly, “we took a big hit. Do you think we’ll ever go out and settle the score?”

  The tiger, whose name was Autumn, looked back with empathetic eyes but stoically held her tongue. Tony sighed. “I don’t know, either.”

  Murph met Tony as he entered the squadron’s weapons office, raising his hand for a high five. Tony hesitantly reciprocated. “What’s up? Are we finally going to war?”

  “Not yet, but when we do, you and I are crewmates for night one.” Murph held up his hand again.

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” Tony threw his high five with more fervor this time. At least things were getting serious enough for the commanders to set down a crew schedule. Murph explained that the colonels had laid out the framework for the first few missions. The two of them had not just made the list, they’d been handpicked to go in on the first night.

  The excitement of Murph’s revelation wore off as hour after hour passed with no other news. Tony found it difficult to focus on his work as the assistant weapons officer. He spent the rest of the day picking at bomb inventories, waiting for a phon
e call that would order him to send those bombs to the planes. But the phone call never came. Soon it was time to go home—another day of inaction for America while jihadists the world over laughed out loud.

  As Tony trudged across the parking lot on the way to his car, another pilot grabbed him by the arm. “Hey, Captain America, we’ve been looking all over for you.” The man’s lips spread into a crooked grin. It wasn’t malice. He had a three-inch scar left by a wayward hockey puck that always distorted his smile, hence his call sign—Slapshot.

  Still smiling, Slapshot jerked his head toward the officer’s club across the street. “There’s a meeting in five. You don’t wanna be late, do ya?”

  Tony hadn’t heard about any meeting but he dutifully followed his fellow Tiger over to the O club. Slapshot held a side door open for him. “Hurry up, dude. Through here.”

  Tony hesitated. “We’re not going through the main entrance?” Scar or not, that smile looked devious. And he knew that this particular door led to the small billiard room at the rear of the O club bar, not the conference room where officer meetings were usually held. What kind of briefing took place at the back of a bar?

  He didn’t have much time to think about it. Slapshot became impatient, grabbed him, and shoved him through the door. Tony stumbled into the room and gaped at what he saw.

  Every pilot from the Tigers stood at attention along either side of the billiard table. Murph, rather than the commander, stood at the head. He wore an absurd, tiger-patterned robe and held a sledgehammer like a king holding his scepter. Mugs of beer and soda lined the table. Slapshot smacked Tony on the back, closed the door, and took his place among the others.

  “Attention to orders!” bellowed Murph. “Let it be known to all these present that Lieutenant Tony C. Merigold has successfully demonstrated the dedication and skill required of a combat-ready Tiger.” Murph locked eyes with Tony. “Lieutenant Merigold, you have been deemed worthy by the unruly mob before you . . .”