Immediately the weapon-seeker symbology appeared on his head-up display in front of him, the signal for him to line up his aircraft with the target . . . He counted the seconds down from twenty, as he had done so often on the firing ranges on Exercise Red Flag, back home in the Nevada desert. At fifteen seconds his head-up display indicated target-lock on. The sensor on the Maverick missile had detected the laser beam as it bounced off the “painted” target being marked by the laser operator on the ground.

“Hold it steady, boy. Hold it steady,” Bertinetti urged the unknown operator.

The laser beam remained rock steady.

This guy’s a serious pro. He’s done this before. And he’s under fire.

Bertinetti felt, once again, the respect an airman feels for the man on the ground, close up and personal with the enemy. Bertinetti had encountered much worse target designation on a peacetime range with no one shooting back.

I’m not going to let this guy down. He’s done his job perfectly and now I’m going to do mine.

As he closed in, he concentrated on holding the aircraft steady. Get this wrong and he would not only blow himself and the Iskanders to eternity, he would go down as the man who sparked the nuclear exchange that ended civilization. That was if there was anybody left alive to remember it.

“Now!” he told himself, as he pressed the weapon-release button on the top of his stick with his right thumb. The missile fired forward off its launch rail and, as it blasted into the blackness in front of him, he was momentarily blinded by the flaming propellant. He felt the wing rise a fraction as the weight was removed and he automatically moved to correct the aircraft trim.

Below him, the missile accelerated toward its target.

0225 hours, Sunday, July 9, 2017, Central European Time

0325 hours, Sunday, July 9, 2017, Eastern European Time

Close to the Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad

HIGH ABOVE THEM, Morland was conscious of the scream of a fast jet engine.

“Won’t be long now!” shouted Webb. “Stand by for impact . . .”

Morland looked up and, in the sky above the muzzle flashes, the first faint streaks of dawn light illuminated a dark, cigar shape, which descended rapidly toward the watchtower where the Korda continued to pump out a steady stream of tracer. It flew inexorably, a creature with a computer brain of its own.