“Attack target laser, stop attack” the computer warned. The second shot took several seconds longer, but soon Patrick could see a stream of smoke trailing from the MiG’s fuselage—and then suddenly the fuselage seemed to disintegrate from the inside, with ribbons of flames trailing from several cracks and tears in the upper-fuselage fuel tanks right above the number-one engine. The MiG-29 was into its second flat spin, its left engine burning hotly, before the pilot ejected.

“Wow, that was very cool,” Franken exclaimed. “A laser powerful enough to shoot down a MiG-29 fighter. Very cool.”

“Let’s try the last part of the test,” Patrick said. He quickly entered commands into the attack computer. It had stored information on the launch point of the SA-10 missile they had shot down, computed from tracking information by the laser radar arrays. Patrick slaved the laser telescope to die launch point coordinates, starting with a wide image. There, on the multifunction supercockpit display, he saw the entire SA-10 “Grumble” surface-to-air missile battery—the mobile engagement radar, the command post and low-altitude radar vehicle, a reload vehicle, and the four-round transporter- erector-launcher vehicle. Two rounds had obviously been fired from that vehicle. Patrick focused the telescope until the crosshairs were centered on one of the still-loaded launch tubes. The image was not as clear as the others were—the image was out of focus and wavered. Obviously it was harder for the adaptive optics to focus the image while shooting down through the atmosphere than it was to shoot across or up.

“C’mon, baby, let’s see what you can do,” Patrick said. He hit his voice command button: “Attack target,” he ordered.

“Attack command received, stop attack ” the computer responded.

“Commit Dragon.”

“Laser commit. . . laser engaging.”

But the results were not quite as pleasing this time. The crosshairs were dead on the target, and the diode laser was firing at full power, but the target remained. Patrick left it on for a full ten seconds before terminating. “Didn’t blow the launch tube. Not enough power to shoot down through the atmosphere at this range.”

“Please don’t suggest we get any closer.”

“Don’t worry—I think we’re close enough. But we’ve got to figure out a way to pump more power into the system.”

“You’re disappointed because your big laser couldn’t slice, dice, and julienne every target? Too bad, sir,” Franken joked. “Can we terminate the test and go home now before they empty those last two missiles on us?”

“You got it, AC. Test terminated,” Patrick said after a sigh of relief. He quickly punched up the initial point of the air refueling anchor into the navigation computer, then replotted the flight path to take them well clear of Libyan airspace. “Center up and let’s go home.”

AL-AZHAR MOSQUE, CAIRO, EGYPT
 THAT SAME TIME