“The company can’t do dick to us, Gonzo. They can’t fire us, they can’t dock our pay, and they can’t sue us.”

“What about the guys on the ground?”

“If they’re smart, they’ll bug out shortly after we do,” Tanaka said. “I’ll let them know exactly what we’re doing, and why.” That made Wickland swallow hard—he was scared of dying, obviously, but also scared of being thought of as a coward by his cohorts. “Like I said, Gonzo, this is the general’s fight, not ours. I’m flying this mission because I happen to believe that we’re doing something good, something right—and besides, I like flying this kick-ass plane into battle, real battle. But I respect your wishes, too—we do this together. So what do you say?”

Wickland looked at his supercockpit display, automatically entering commands or adjusting settings. He turned to Tanaka, opened his mouth as if to say something, then turned back to his console.

“Gonzo? What’s it going to be?”

The mission commander shrugged. He was called the “mission commander,” but truthfully he didn’t feel like a commander of anything. All he wanted to do was build and test cutting-edge neural network computer systems. He didn’t want to go to war.

Still...

“Let’s keep going,” he heard himself say. “I spent four hours getting the interface to work between those hunks of junk in our bomb bay—now I want to see if they’ll work.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Tanaka said. “Let’s plot a course around as many of these SAMs as we can, then make our way to the initial point on time.” He was pleased to see Wickland immediately start punching the supercockpit display’s touchscreen and speaking computer commands—he was back in the lab or in the sim, where he really belonged. Whatever it took to get his head where it needed to be ...

“We’ve got two SA-l0s, one just nine miles east of the IP, the other forty miles west-northwest,” Wickland reported. “Looks like they moved them since this morning when those Libyans scouted them.”

“The target run will put us just inside lethal range of the second SAM after we’re DP inbound, and he’ll be alerted if we have to fire on the first site,” Tanaka said. “What’s the computer say?”