"Pilot, this is I-One," Luger said over the aircraft interphone. "How about taking it down now?"

There was a pause; Luger was about to repeat his question, but just then the weapons-systems officer in the copilot seat, nicknamed "Strike," replied, "We have high terrain at twenty kilometers, pilot. Recommend zero-point-eight K meters altitude."

Like the B-2 Black Knight bomber, this aircraft used a pilot-trained navigator in the right seat to manage the navigation, weapons, and defensive systems; an engineering officer, located in a forward-facing ejection seat behind the weapons officer, monitored essential aircraft, flight, and engine systems.

"Copy. Zero point eight. Descending." The aircraft descended the scant two hundred meters, and the autopilot came back on. Luger fell silent, biting his lip to keep from yawning into his oxygen mask.

Normally Luger wouldn't have been so bored flying at night on a simulated low-level bombing mission, especially since he was in the flight engineer's station of the incredible Fisikous170 Tuman stealth bomber. But he was bored because the Soviet-trained pilots and engineers flew the thing like a couple of old women, which he really didn't understand.

Somewhere, deep within the far reaches of his mind, something tugged at him, telling him a flight like this could be so much more exciting...

Still, even the by-the-book pilots and engineers didn't diminish Luger's growing love for the Fi.170. With two hundred and eight thousand kilos of composites and muscles, nearly half of that fuel, Luger usually felt like he was king of the sky in the bomber. Externally, nothing compared to the deadly war machine. It was shaped like a giant manta ray, with thin, curved wings that rolled upwards away from the center, then gently downwards toward the rounded wingtips. The four engines were buried within the oblong body, with grilles screening both the inlets and exhausts to prevent radar energy from reflecting off the compressor blades and to cut down on heat emissions. A split aileron system replaced rudders, with the ailerons deflecting up or down depending on the desired degree of roll or pitch-Tuman had no vertical surfaces whatsoever that might reflect radar energy. Tuman had three long, spindly landing gear-it was not designed for rough-field operations--and two twenty-five-meter-diameter drag chutes for stopping itself after landing.

Although Tuman had been first designed in the early 1 980s, its weapon fit was not finalized until just a few years ago, with the arrival to the design- and flight-test program of Dr. Ivan Sergeiovich Ozerov-it was David Luger who almost singlehandedly decided and designed the weapons fit. Tuman was designed for very long-range strike missions against the United States and China, and also designed to be self-sufficient, with a minimum of support from other aircraft. Long-range bombers were inherently vulnerable to fighter and surface-to-air missile attack, so Luger designed Tuman to protect itself and still pack a significant offensive wallop.

No one, not even David Luger himself, realized that Dr. Ozerov developed that concept from an American bomber called the EB-52 Megafortress. Just as Viktor Gabovich of the KGB