Turning, he started to make his way across huge base. He wasn’t going to wait for the world to come for him, he was going to take the fight to them, he thought, as he rounded the corner and the fenced-off Rafale Fighter hangar opened up in front of him. Six of the powerful beasts sat there, prepped and ready to go. There was lots of activity on the base, which had been on high alert since the attack on Peshawar had begun. The small, nimble fighters were on standby, fueled and loaded. Their standard armament was mostly air-to-ground, but they also carried four sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Flashing his pilot’s ID, he walked past the doubled guard, and into the quad.

The six fighters were deadly, capable of wiping a field clean of a hundred men in a matter of seconds. Like the American F-22 and European Typhoon, they mounted Gatling guns in their forward wings that could tear through steel with devastating ease. Unlike the F-22, they were not stealth capable, but were still much harder to pinpoint than any previous generation of fighter in the sky.

Jean-Paul reviewed the mission log for the next patrol. He was a copilot for now, supposedly learning the ropes from a more capable pilot. He chuckled bitterly, like they could teach him anything. He was not assigned to the next patrol, but he turned and headed to the pilot’s locker room anyway, to talk to the next pilot and copilot team as they prepped for their patrol mission.

“Michel, Etienne, ca va?” he shouted, as he glanced briefly around the room to make sure no other pilots were showering or getting changed. With pilots on long shifts, he knew it was unlikely any of them would be in the locker room unless they had to be, and he soon confirmed they were alone. Stepping back to the locker room door, he flicked the latch and returned to the aisle where Michel and Etienne were putting on their flight suits.

The two men looked up as Jean-Paul approached, smiling before continuing to pull on the bulky, one-piece suits. Stepping between them, he reached out with his left hand and grasped the neck of Michel, while simultaneously bringing up his right leg and whipping his booted foot out into the jugular of Etienne. He registered the feeling of the man’s neck snapping through the sole of his boot, and turned his gaze to Michel, who was scrabbling pointlessly at the hand around his neck.

As his instantly dead copilot slumped to the ground, Michel stared wide-eyed at the man he had known as Jean-Paul Merard, struggling at the hand pinning him against his locker.

“I want the takeoff clearance code, Michel.” said Jean-Paul.