Ice Station

the ocean Yates saw the black aircraft hovering in the air in front of him, saw the luminescent red glow of its tail thrusters.

Then he saw the white vapor trail of his own missile as it streaked away from his wing and headed in toward the black fighter's thrusters.

As the missile raced toward its target, a shimmering haze suddenly descended upon the black fighter. The sight was absolutely amazing. It looked like a shimmering, rippling heat haze?like the kind that hangs over a highway on a hot summer's day?and it just descended over the black fighter as if someone were lowering a curtain over it.

Suddenly the black plane was gone.

Yates's missile went berserk.

With its initial target lost, the missile immediately began searching for another target.

It found it in one of the F-22s flying in front of Schofield's Silhouette. The missile shot into the tailpipe of the forward F-22 and the stealth fighter exploded bright orange in the dark twilight sky.

Yates was stunned. Voices shouted over his headset.

'?just disappeared?'

'?fucking thing just vanished!?'

Yates checked his scopes. The black fighter didn't appear on his radar. He searched the sky for the black plane with his eyes. He couldn't see it, couldn't see it anywhe?

And then he saw it.

Or at least he thought he saw it.

Overlaid on the orange horizon Yates saw a shimmering body of air. It looked like a warped glass lens, a lens that had been superimposed on the flat horizon, causing one short section of that horizon to ripple continuously.

He couldn't believe his eyes.

Inside the Silhouette, Schofield was already flicking switches.

The missile had missed him and he could hear the comments of the F-22 pilots over his own radio. The F-22s couldn't see him. It was time to fight back.

'Renshaw! Bring Gant up here! Wendy, too!'

Renshaw brought Gant forward, into the back section of the cockpit. Wendy loped into the cockpit behind him.

'Shut the cockpit door,' Schofield said.

Renshaw shut the door. They were now cut off from the missile bay in the belly of the Silhouette.

Schofield flicked a final switch and saw a red warning light appear on his computer screen.

MISSILES ARMED. TARGETING...

The screen began to flash.

5 TARGETS ACQUIRED. READY TO FIRE.

Schofield jammed down on his thumb trigger.

At that moment, the missile bay door of the Silhouette opened and the two racks in the missile bay began to rotate.

One after the other, five missiles dropped through the missile bay doors and out into the sky. Schofield watched as the missiles streaked away from him and began searching for their targets like bloodhounds.

The first F-22 exploded in a giant fireball. When it went up in flames, the other F-22 pilots shouted as one.

'?missile just came out of the fucking sky!?'

'?can't see him anywhere?'

'?bastard's using some sort of cloaking device?'

A couple of the F-22 pilots hit their afterburners, but it was no use.

More missiles shot out from the shimmering body of air that was the Silhouette. Three hit their targets right away, blasted them to smithereens.

The sixth and final F-22 tried to make a run for it. It managed to get a mile away before the missile that had acquired it?the last missile to drop from the rotating missile racks inside the Silhouette? slammed into its tailpipe and blew it to hell.

Inside the Silhouette, Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. As he turned north, he keyed his radio again. 'USS Wasp. Come in. USS Wasp. Please. Come in.'

After several tries, there finally came a reply. 'Unidentified aircraft, this is Wasp. Identify yourself.' Schofield gave his name and service number. The person at the other end checked it and then said,

'Lieutenant Schofield, it's good to hear from you. The flight deck has been cleared. You have clearance to land. I am sending you our coordinates now.'

 The Silhouette flew into the night

The USS Wasp, the Marine Corps' aircraft carrier-like vessel, was about eighty nautical miles from Schofield. It would take about fifteen minutes to cruise there.

In the luminescent green glow of his indicator dials Schofield stared out at the orange horizon. He had lifted the cloaking device and was allowing the plane to go on autopilot for a while.

The previous twenty-four hours flitted through his mind.

The French. The British. The ICG. His own men who had died on a mission that was never meant to succeed. Faces flashed across his mind. Hollywood. Samurai. Book. Mother. Soldiers who had died so that their country could lay its greedy hands on some extraterrestrial technology that never was.

A deep sadness fell over Schofield.

He leaned forward and began flicking some switches. The screen in front of him flashed:

MISSILE ARMED. TARGETING ...

Schofield quickly hit another switch.

MANUAL TARGETING SELECTED.

He maneuvered the target selector on the screen until he found the target he was looking for. He pressed the select button on his stick.

Several other option screens appeared and Schofield calmly chose the options he wanted.

SET DELAY PERIOD: 23:00 MINS. SAFETY MEASURES: DEACTIVATED.

Then, when he was done, he hit his thumb trigger.

At that moment, the sixth and final missile inside his missile bay rotated on its rack and dropped down into the sky. Its thrusters kicked in and the missile shot off into the distance, climbing high into the deep black sky.

The USS Wasp lay at rest in the middle of the Southern Ocean.

It was a big ship. With a length of 844 feet, it was as long as two and a half football fields. The enormous five-story superstructure in the middle of the ship?the operations center of the ship known as 'the island'?looked down on the flight deck. On a normal day, the flight deck would have been dotted with choppers, Harriers, gunships, and people, but not today.

Today the flight deck was deserted. There was no movement on it at all, no aircraft, no people.

It looked like a ghost town.

The Silhouette slowed perfectly in the air above the non-skid deck of the Wasp, its retros firing thin streams of gas down onto the deck beneath it. The ominous black fighter plane landed softly on the flight deck, near the stern of the ship.