Jack stopped talking as he surveyed the tactical radar readouts in front of him, then looked at Martin, “We have about five minutes left before we launch the first rocket. You ready for this?” He looked very seriously at his friend, “You know what happens when we launch, don’t you?” Martin nodded, but Jack elaborated so he could be sure his friend knew the consequences, “All our stealth goes out the window. We will be launching munitions over foreign soil without their permission, heck, without even their knowledge, or that of our own government. We will be shot at by everything that they can mobilize against us, and eventually they will hit us.”

Martin did not make light of it. He got it, and he held his friend’s stare. They both got it. The looked at each other for a moment longer, then Jack nodded, his respect for his colleague’s bravery showing in his eyes. Jack reached across and held out his hand. Martin looked at it a moment, then extended his own. The two doomed men shook hands across the central console of the plane and then put their concerns behind them.

“OK, Martin, switching to deployment mode. Strap in and put on your face mask.”

They both secured their straps and pulled on their helmets. Jack had his in place in seconds, but Martin fiddled with his face mask for a moment before he got it settled. The oxygen now flowing, they were prepped for maneuvering, and Jack reached down to switch the plane’s screens to deployment mode.

The view on the screens in front of Martin changed instantly. As a missile specialist, he was more familiar than most with the missile deployment systems on US warplanes, but he had never had as good a view as this before, and he whistled. Paging through the screens in front of him, he selected the target acquisition screen and started to plot in the first pod’s trajectory, setting the computer to track its course and plot a path to intercept. Next, he switched to the armament screen and began activating the first of his one-thousand-pound AGM-158A cruise missiles. The system automatically initiated fuel stirring and warming devices and a thirty-second deployment pre-system check started. Sensors and systems went to work making sure the engine would ignite when it was dropped from the cargo hold of the plane.

“OK,” said Martin, “I’ve plotted the target path on screen.”

“I see it, time to launch window … six minutes.” said Jack, “How are we doing on missile prep?”