“My God,” Jon muttered. “A plasma-pumped solid-state laser—on board an aircraft. Incredible! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You did, remember?” Kelsey giggled.

“The plasma-yield warhead ... can we confine the fusion reaction to the laser chamber?” Jon started mumbling to himself, the others forgotten. “How much power will we need for that?” It was several moments later before he realized that Kelsey was holding a school notebook up to him— with preliminary figures already calculated. “Kelsey!”

“I don’t know all the details on your plasma-yield warhead, Jon,” she said, “and I need to look at the schematics of the oscillator and laser generators. But a plasma field of this approximate size and of this density will need only this much laser power for the inertial confinement process in the fusion chamber, and then will require approximately this much power in the magnetic field to channel the plasma to the laser generator. I think we can do it.”

“You think you can do it? Kelsey, you've just done it! This is it!” Jon exclaimed breathlessly, looking at the formulas with ever-widening eyes. “This is the answer! I can take this to the engineering department and have them start building the fusion chambers right away! We’ve got so much work to do—reconfiguring test article number two, getting the engineering going . ..” To Jon’s great surprise, Kelsey started heading for the door. “Kelsey? Anything wrong? Where are you going?”

“To the bathroom,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I can help with the engineering after I get done.”

“Well,” Helen remarked with a smile, “that’s certainly something you don’t hear every day from a world-class engineer.”

At that moment, Jon’s secure cell phone beeped. He looked at the caller’s ID number, smiled broadly, then punched in a descrambling code. “Patrick!” he said happily. “Is that you?”

“Hi, Jon,” Patrick McLanahan said. Kelsey and Cheryl Duffield looked on with great interest as they heard the name of the man they most wanted to meet at Sky Masters.

“How are you? Any news about Wendy?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” Patrick replied. “Are you secure?”

“I’m here with our new partners,” Jon said.

“Then buzz me once you’re by yourself.”

“I can’t do that, Patrick,” Jon said. “They’re our full partners now—they’ve got to be told about what we’re doing. They have the proper clearances. I have no choice.”

Patrick paused for a long moment; then: “All right, Jon. We’re going to turn up the heat a little. I need some gadgets to fly a mission.”

“You got it,” Jon replied. “Just tell me where, when, and how much.”

“What about your new partners?”

“I said I have to tell them—I didn’t say they had a vote,” Jon said. “Don’t worry about it. Whatever you want, you get, as long as it helps bring back Wendy.”

“It will either help bring her home—or punish the ones that took her,” Patrick said. “I’ll transmit the order of battle to you in a few minutes. They’ll need to launch within the next sixteen hours.”