They stared at him with a mix of shock, and now somewhat restrained fury, and he saw them resigning themselves to at least being conscious for whatever was about to happen. But the moment was broken by a call from Martin in the cockpit, “Jack, we have a problem. The fighters seem to have torn each other apart again, and once again it looks like there is only one survivor. Only I get the sense that the survivor this time is far from friendly.” They had each seen something they hoped was their friend Lord Mantil rising up into the fray as the Allied fighters approached them, but their hopes had been dashed as the clearly damaged fighter had flung himself headlong into the swarm of hornets and vanished in a haze of missile fire and explosions. Only two planes had left where five had entered, and they had both been moving too fast to be the old and battered F-16.

Jack gave the two groggy and sullen pilots one more stern look, then climbed forward to glance at the radar screen. One of the remaining fighters had vanished into the dawn, but the other was coming in pursuit of the bomber as it continued to fire upon the viral pods dropping down from above. It was not quite supersonic, and maybe it had been damaged in the fight, but it was coming on hard, harder than the F-16 would have been able to fly with its remaining fuel, and it was slowly gaining on them. It would not be more than fifteen minutes till the pilot was in visual range.

Miles astern of them Jean-Paul calculated the coming kill. The minutes ticked by slowly and he decided on the tactics for his attack and started to think about how best to escape after he had killed his prey. He would take the jet north as far as his remaining fuel would take him, he decided, and then eject as close to the border with China as possible. After that he would try to regroup with Agents Lam and Kovalenko so they could assess their remaining strategic options.

The time of attack approached, his machine mind informed him, and he started to scan for the plane he knew must be out there. After a few minutes, his eyes found it even before the ghost blips started to show up on his radar. From directly behind, even the stealthiest of planes become somewhat visible as the four big jet engines driving the bomber spewed their heat and left their indelible signature on their air behind. His missile systems found the heat source a couple of miles ahead and locked on, giving a literal green light to his fire control.

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