“Sergeant Gupta, inform the squadron commander to come to that heading and altitude, and give him an estimated time to detonation. Let’s get some eyes on one of these explosions.” said the general, and the operator acknowledged quickly, already reaching for the comms key in anticipation of the command.

* * *

“Acknowledged, Command Central.” said the squadron leader a moment later, then, flicking a switch to go to tight beamed plane-to-plane comms, he passed on his orders to his pilots.

“Pelishar Wing, this is Pelishar One, come to nine-zero-niner, on my mark. Line up on the parallel, vertical recon formation, 2K splits from 40,000ft. I have the point.”

The other pilots acknowledged briefly and efficiently, and the squadron leader initiated the maneuver. With cool precision the planes broke formation and started to spread out. They were entering a vertical search pattern with the lowest plane at 40,000 feet and the next two thousand feet above him and so on, up to fifty-two thousand.

As the planes climbed and spread out onto their new search grid, the command bunker operator updated them on the latest information. The squadron had actually seen the last explosion as a yellow-orange spark on the horizon, and now they were starting to get intermittent blips from the next pod as they closed on it. If it followed the same pattern as the others, they should be in visual range when the next explosion occurred. It was still night, but the sky was starting to be permeated with the first deep blue hues of dawn. Soon the line of the horizon would resolve itself against the brightening sky and the stars would bleach and fade behind the coming day.

Maybe the new day would bring some clarity to the strange tori of fire punctuating the sky over their violence stricken country.

Fifteen more minutes passed as they closed on their objective, then suddenly the top four planes in the formation reported seeing a blue band streaking through the sky. At that precise moment, a second radar blip registered briefly on their radar screens, too small to be visible to Central Command. There was something else out there, but a moment later it was gone again, leaving only the faint blue band ahead of them.

The squadron leader had heard about this. They had received reports from Afghanistan of the radar ghosts formed by America’s advanced stealth fighters and bombers, and the squadron commander’s curiosity grew as he considered what they might be about to find.

* * *

General Abashell nodded as the operator gave him the reports of a fresh radar signature being patched from the fighter’s radar arrays, and reached up to stroke his chin. Only the Americans had planes equipped with proven stealth technology, though the Europeans and Chinese each claimed some level of it themselves.