I don't especially care for sequels, but I do like bringing back many of the characters from previous stories-they are like old friends. The plot and settings for this story stand alone, but in general occur after Flight of the Old Dog and Hammerheads, but before the events described in Day of the Cheetah and Sky Masters.

I still refer to the B-lB bomber as "Excalibur," although its official Air Force nickname is

''Lancer.''

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener

fangs than freedom never endangered.

-CICERO

Prologue

ANADYR FAR EAST FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR BASE

RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATIVE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

DECEMBER 1988

his was not the way the flight of the Old Dog was supposed to be ending First Lieutenant David Luger, United States Air Force, thought grimly.

Not at all.

And yet here they were, in the very northeastern tip of the Soviet Union, forced to land at this snowy, bitterly cold enemy backwater base to steal fuel because their B-52 (I) Megafortress was running on fumes. Holding a gun to the head of the base chiefs custodian, they had commandeered one of his fuel trucks and put whatever they could into the plane. The custodian had escaped and obviously put in a frantic call to the regional militia. Luger shook his head. During the course of this mission-one of the most highly classified in the annals of American military warfare-they'd successfully penetrated restricted Soviet airspace, fought off waves upon waves of surface-to-air missiles, swarms of deadly MiG fighters, and, with a Striker glide-bomb, knocked out the most sophisticated weapon the USSR had ever developed.

The mission should have been a success, but now they were going to be captured by the fucking Red Army. Luger was sure of it. Even in a backwater, the Red Army was going to protect the Motherland-at all costs.

The tall, lean, twenty-six-year-old Texas-born crew navigator was alone in the bitterly cold belowdecks section of the crew compartment aboard the Megafortress, an experimental B-52 "test-bed" aircraft that had been pressed into service on this unusual and dangerous mission. He felt an uncontrollable shiver of fear, frustration, and sheer anger take hold of his body. Maybe it was finally going to be over.

They certainly weren't in any condition to fight-maybe they should just surrender. The stolen fuel they had pumped into their tanks was contaminated fuel oil, not jet fuel. One of their eight engines had been destroyed, and another was leaking oil so badly that it was all but useless. The Old Dog's fuselage was full of holes, and their stabilators-the odd-looking V-tail assembly that served both as rudder and horizontal stabilizer-had been shot out. The plane's wheels were frozen in knee-deep snow, and it was doubtful that the plane could even taxi on six engines, let alone attempt a takeoff on the short, snow-covered Soviet runway. The pilot, Lieutenant General Bradley Elliott, had been dragged upstairs by some of the other crew, unconscious and nearly frozen to death.

Now they were surrounded by Russian militia.