The attack computer immediately shifted to the second SA-10 missile, launched seconds after the first, and the result was just as successful and just as spectacular. “Missile two destroyed! Towed array in standby . .. laser’s ready to shoot again, all threats down. Hot damn!”

Sky Masters Inc. needed a realistic real-world test of its airborne laser technology, so Patrick McLanahan, overseeing the program, thought of the easiest and fastest way to test it out—fly over a country that liked to shoot missiles without warning and see if it worked. Libya filled the bill nicely. Libya had the best military hardware its oil money could buy, and they were notorious for firing on stray aircraft without warning. Plus, most of Libya south of Tripoli was open desert, so there was little risk of anyone being hurt by falling debris or misses—or, if the test didn’t work, falling pieces of the AL-52 Dragon.

“Have we had enough, boss?” Franken asked. “I sure have.”

“I don’t want to hang around here any more than I have to, Bud,” Patrick said. “But I’d sure like to wring the laser out a little more.” At that moment, both crew members received a warning message on their threat receiver, one of the multifunction displays in the center of the Dragon’s instrument panel. “Just got swept by fighter radar,” Patrick said. “I think it might be time to head home.”

“Good deal,” Franken said. He started a slow left turn to the north, mindful of the towed array still extended behind them—they could easily turn quickly enough to wrap themselves up in their own array’s cable. “Just keep those puppies off us.”

“LADAR coming on,” Patrick said. He activated the laser radar for only a few seconds, but the laser radar’s power and tight resolution drew an amazingly detailed picture of all air targets within a hundred miles. “We’ve got a flight of two MiG-29 interceptors, coming from Tripoli,” Patrick said. “When you roll out, they’ll be at your nine- thirty position, sixty-one miles, high. Heading zero-one- zero will put them at your nine o’clock.” The pulse-Doppler radar on the MiG-29, another Libyan purchase from the Russians, could not detect a target with a closure rate equal to the aircraft airspeed.

This was not looking good, Patrick noted immediately. “Warning,” the female-voiced threat computer reported, “MiG-29 nine o'clock five-zero miles, flight level three- three-zero, acquisition mode. Warning, trackbreakers are in standby”

“Either this guy is very lucky, or very good,” Patrick said. “The leader is coming right in on us. Something’s not right.” He hit the voice command stud: “System status.”

“All monitored systems are functioning normally,” the computer said after a slight pause. Then: “Warning, MiG- 29 at nine o'clock, forty miles, tracking”

“Oh, shit,” Patrick said. ‘Trackbreakers coming on.” But it was then that he found the problem: “The ECM system faulted—it shut itself down completely.” Patrick powered it back up.