Eagle Station

“Our promised Trojan horse is right where it is supposed to be,” Nadia announced from the right-hand seat. She was flying as Brad’s copilot and systems operator. Currently, one of her big multifunction displays was set to show all air contacts within several hundred miles. Most were civilian flights with active transponders and in communication with air traffic control centers in Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and northern Russia.

Thanks to a highly advanced data-link system comparable to those equipping F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation fighters, her computers could fuse information gathered from a wide range of friendly ground- and space-based sensors into a single coherent picture. As a result, freed from any immediate need to activate its own powerful radar, the Rustler could fly safely through even crowded airspace without giving its position away, cloaked in electromagnetic silence.

She tagged one of those air contacts on her display. Within milliseconds, the data-link system transferred its position, heading, and observed airspeed to the XCV-70’s flight computer. A green line appeared, connecting them to the aircraft she’d selected. “Intercept course generated,” she reported.

Instantly, a new steering cue blinked onto Brad’s HUD. It was high up and sliding fast to the left across his field of vision.

“Turning to intercept,” he said. He pushed his throttles forward to full military power and pulled back and to the left on the stick. G-forces pushed them back against their seats as the Rustler rolled into a steep, climbing turn — chasing after the tagged air contact as it arrowed toward the north high above them.

Steadily, the steering cue moved back toward the center of Brad’s HUD. Glowing green brackets appeared, highlighting a distant silvery dot against the pale blue sky. He rolled back out of his turn, but kept the XCV-70’s nose up — soaring through thirty thousand feet and on past forty thousand feet before leveling off just above the altitude of the other aircraft. Their airspeed increased to 520 knots.

As they closed in, the tiny dot visible through the cockpit canopy grew bigger and took on more definition. Abruptly, it shifted to become the clearly recognizable shape of a very large, multi-engine aircraft painted in bright white and yellow stripes. “The contact is a Traveler Air Freight 747-8 cargo plane,” he said.

“Copy that,” Nadia confirmed.

Traveler Air Freight was another of Kevin Martindale’s shell companies. Ordinarily he used its aircraft to discreetly ferry supplies, equipment, and personnel to various Scion teams operating covertly around the globe. But today’s flight had a very different purpose.

Brad kept his left hand on the Rustler’s throttles as they flew in behind the enormous wide-body cargo jet. Numbers appeared on his HUD, showing the distance between their two aircraft. Those numbers decreased rapidly at first and then slower as he reduced power, reducing the XCV-70’s rate of closure. He was careful to stay slightly above the 747 to avoid running into any wake turbulence curling off its wings.

“Two hundred yards. Vertical separation one hundred feet,” Nadia said quietly, counting down the remaining distance from her own station. “Our airspeed is now five hundred knots. Ten knots closure.”

The Rustler shuddered slightly, buffeted by turbulence.

“One hundred yards. Vertical separation sixty feet.”

Brad eased back even more on the throttles.

“Five knots closure.” Nadia reported. She glanced across the cockpit. “Just how close are you planning to come?”

“Right… about… here,” Brad said, scissoring a little from side to side to slow down and match the big 747’s airspeed. Satisfied, he leveled out.

They were now hanging back only fifty to sixty feet behind and just slightly above the larger aircraft’s tail assembly. That might not qualify as tight formation flying by the standards of a military aerobatics team like the Air Force’s Thunderbirds or the Navy’s Blue Angels, but it felt awfully close considering the size of both aircraft… and the fact that the 747’s crew didn’t have any real way to keep track of his position. Intellectually, he knew this wasn’t much different from carrying out an air-to-air refueling, but tanking up from a Sky Masters KC-767 or KC-10 Extender was an operation that usually required only five to ten minutes… and there was always a boom operator ready to warn the tanker pilot if anything went wrong. To successfully pull off the stunt he had in mind, he’d need to stick like glue to the big Boeing-built jet for the next three and a half hours.

“You said you wanted to get close enough to count their rivets,” Nadia said accusingly. She made a pretense of peering through the canopy. “Well, I cannot yet make out any rivets on that 747.”

“That was mere poetic license, Mrs. Major Rozek-McLanahan,” Brad said, with a smile concealed by his oxygen mask. “Trust me, this is more than close enough.”