“Where we’ll all clear immigration and customs?” Stone asked.

“Nearly all of us,” Todd replied. “We’ll be at the extraction point just after midnight, local time.” Todd left the trailer.

“I told you it would be an interesting trip,” Mike said.

“I hope we’re all alive to tell about it,” Stone said.

Holly spoke up. “Lance Cabot would be very unhappy if you told anyone about it,” she said.

Stone had a meal, then stretched out for a nap. He was awakened in time to strap himself into a jump seat for the landing at Cádiz. They were on the ground for nearly an hour, then took off again, heading west and climbing.

“When do we turn around?” he asked Todd.

“As soon as we’re out of radar range of the coast,” Todd replied. “Not too long. We’ll follow a civilian flight from the Azores to La Coruña, on the northern coast of Spain. We’ll be flying closely enough behind it so that, together, the two airplanes will make only one primary target on coastal radar.”

“Will the other airplane know about this?” Stone asked.

“No. Civilian airplanes don’t have radar that can paint other aircraft, only their transponders, and ours will be off. Before the airplane reaches La Coruña, we’ll break off and head for our landing area.”

“We have only a twenty-eight-hundred-mile range, is that right?”

“Yes, and that’s plenty.”

They cleared the coast of Portugal, and Stone saw the copilot reach up and turn off some switches. He looked out the window and no longer saw the wingtip strobe and nav lights.

Stone put on his headset again.

“Other aircraft sighted,” the copilot said, checking his radar, then he looked out the windscreen and pointed. “Two o’clock and three miles,” he said, “at our altitude.”

The C-17 entered a steep bank to the right, and Stone tightened his seat belt.

TWENTY-FOUR

Stone watched from his jump seat through the pilots’ windows as the big aircraft turned into position behind the airliner, then began to catch up. Gradually the airliner grew larger in the windscreen, until Stone thought they would ram it from behind.

Stone unbuckled his seat belt and moved up behind the copilot. “How do you know when the other airplane will slow down?”

“We don’t, exactly,” the man replied.

“Swell,” Stone muttered.

“Don’t worry; we’re trained for formation flying for in-air refueling. The second he begins to slow, we’ll pop our speedbrakes, and that will keep us apart.”

“Good luck,” Stone said. He returned to his seat and strapped in tightly. He thought about fetching a parachute from the bin in the cargo bay, but he figured if they rammed the other aircraft, he wouldn’t have an opportunity to use it before he was hamburger.

Stone was still sitting rigidly in his seat when suddenly he felt the aircraft slow down, with the attendant turbulence of extended speedbrakes. The airliner grew larger in the windscreen, but only for a moment, and he saw the speed indicator tape on the pilot’s instruments begin to wind down for the approach into La Coruña. The lights of a big city were ahead. They would join the Instrument Landing System momentarily, he knew.