A moment later, the gruff voice of Colonel Mitchell came over the radio, now designated Red Devil Two since the G700 had made his two ship a flight of three and assumed the lead as Devil One.

“Pax, Devil Two—visual contact. One—Two has a solution.”

The words gave Jed a chill. He knew that meant the lead F-16, piloted by Colonel Mitchell, had the target jet locked up with a missile, ready to shoot it down at a moment’s notice if Ben’s plan fell apart.

“Roger that, Devil Two,” Terry said in a cool voice. Jed wondered what kind of fighter jet Terry had flown in his glory days before signing on with the spooks. “Devil One has visual contact.”

“Roger, Red Devil flight. You have visual contact. You have control of the merge,” the controller said. If he knew he was managing an intercept to shoot down an airliner over American soil, his voice didn’t give it away.

Jed saw the Boeing, just a speck in the distance but growing rapidly in the windshield, just right of the sci-fi heads-up display on Terry’s side of the cockpit.

Ben tapped the radio in his kit and made his own broadcast, which only the Shepherds team could hear on their dedicated frequency. “Watcher, Shepherd One,” he said softly.

“Go ahead, Shepherd One,” Corbin answered, sounding calm and collected. She was so good on ops; Jed would take her in his ear any day.

“Watcher, I need some help,” Ben said, rising from the floor in the cockpit and turning to Jed and smiling. “I need to join you on our special frequency in just a second, okay?”

“Watcher, roger,” Corbin said, her tone sounding a decade older than her years.

Ben turned back to the pilots. “Can you sneak us in close—low and behind so they don’t see us?”

“For sure,” Terry said. “I’ll park right beneath them and in tight, keeping the fighters in our six and also out of sight.”

“And you understand what I want to do next?” Ben asked.

“I do,” Terry said. “It’s not a problem. I did a stint with the Thunderbirds, so I can get you within a foot or even less. The hard part that comes next, however, is up to you.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Ben said, then motioned for Jed to join him in the plane’s oversize galley.

“I’m still a little foggy on the plan part of the plan,” Jed said in a hushed voice. “How does this work exactly?”

His mind went back to Corporal Alexander, the Nashville Metro PD officer who had died horribly after Ben had touched him. Did Ben intend to somehow kill or incapacitate the pilots from here? Was that even possible?

I healed Alexander, Jed, Ben said.

Uh-huh, right.

Ben smiled. “We can do this. It’s all about harnessing the power of suggestion . . . with a little help from Corbin.”