As he hurtled through the night above Poland at 30,000 feet and at a cruising speed of 435 knots, he felt the familiar nerves in the pit of his stomach, as the unreality and scale of what he was involved in hit him. Only that afternoon, in lovely sunshine, instead of the normal family Sunday afternoon spent by the officers’ club swimming pool, he had kissed his wife farewell at the gate of their married quarter by the air base at Aviano in northern Italy, before heading in to prepare for the mission. He might be a combat veteran with three confirmed kills—hence the three small Russian flags his ground crew had painted on the side of his F-16—but he was wise enough and modest enough to know that only luck had protected him from the insane randomness of war. And, like courage, luck was an expendable commodity.

Forcing himself to focus on his head-up display, he saw that in two minutes they’d be within the 400-kilometer range of the Russian S-400 Integrated Air Defense System.

“Don’t dwell on it,” he urged himself. “Only worry about the things you can change . . . and think of your guys.” He glanced to his right and there, in the darkness, just to his rear, covering his six o’clock and keeping perfect station, were the flashing anti-collision, navigation and formation lights of his wingman, Captain Mike Ryan. Sure, he’d had his baptism of fire over Lielvārde in Latvia a couple of months ago, but he was still pretty new on the squadron and needed all the reassurance he could get. On either side and to his rear, and also keeping perfect station, were the six other aircraft making up the bombing attack. All the pilots knew from the briefing that they were moments away from the death zone, and that meant they would all need the reassurance of good leadership. A quick radar transmission from Bertinetti and he knew they’d stay alert for each other and were ready for incoming SAMs.

Another look at the color flat-panel, liquid-crystal multifunction instruments and, right on time, the helmet-mounted cueing system told him that they had entered the danger area for the S-400. Automatically, the airborne radar flicked into air-ground mode to initiate simultaneous multi-target tracking by the planar antenna array installed in the aircraft’s nose.

“Won’t be long now before the radar locks onto us,” he muttered to himself, in the knowledge that the Voronezh system could track 500 aircraft simultaneously at ranges beyond 600 kilometers—in plenty of time to launch the S-400 40N6 missile with its range of 400 kilometers. At its speed of Mach 6.2, Bertinetti calculated that a missile would take just over three minutes from launch at that range to hit his sortie. And he was lead aircraft.