Threat Level Black

Tempted as he was to call Smith’s cell phone-he knew the number by heart-he realized he couldn’t. Instead he hung up and rose, looking out the nearby window at the brilliantly lit Manhattan skyline.

“I hope you’re okay, Kevin,” he told the glass. “I hope to God we’re all okay.”

Chapter 7

Fisher walked up along the track about a hundred yards, slowing as the light from the station faded behind him. The problem wasn’t the darkness; he could see fairly well. But the schematic of the tunnel system he’d seen earlier had shown a passage here to his left, and he couldn’t find it now.

Fisher took another two steps. There should be a little work light along the narrow walkway that flanked the tracks here somewhere.

As he stared at the wall, the light appeared about ten yards to his right. But it was dark. The socket was empty.

Fisher glanced down the tracks. The light bulb had been unscrewed and thrown on the tracks. He could see the glass shards quite clearly.

Which was a problem, actually. All of a sudden there was plenty of light flooding into the dark tunnel: A train was approaching.

Rather quickly too.

The door he was looking for stood next to the light. He made it with something like three seconds to spare, pulling himself up onto the ledge as the train’s brakes squealed and the tunnel shook.

When the train passed, Fisher took his pistol from its holster and opened the door.

Chapter 8

Howe steadied Iron Hawk on its course toward the contact, riding over the rooftops of Bergen County, New Jersey. He had the UAV now, the computer boxing it in the upper right corner of his screen.

“Zoom on Unidentified 1-3- 1,” Howe told the computer, using its tag for the contact. The image blossomed in his screen. It was as if Howe were hovering just in front of its nose. The UAV was moving at just over three hundred knots, skimming above the waves at about eight feet roughly forty miles from the tip of Manhattan, across Brooklyn in the Atlantic due south of Long Beach, Long Island.

“Viper Two to Iron Hawk. Colonel, is this it?” asked the pilot in the second F-16. He was approximately twenty miles beyond the Statue of Liberty, just about ready for an intercept. Viper One was north, escorting Qual-Air back to Boston because of the earlier threat.

“Affirmative, I have the target on my screen,” said Howe. He read off the UAV’s location, heading, and speed, pulling back on the magnification level so he could better direct the F-16.

The fighters that had just taken off checked in. One peeled off to back up Viper Two; the other took up a patrol position in case this, too, was a ruse.

It wasn’t. Howe felt his heart beating steady now, the rhythm familiar. His fingers felt heavy, his eyes almost hollow.

He’d flown in combat before, but this time it was different: This time there were people he knew on the ground, in harm’s way. This time his own people were in the crosshairs.

The contact tucked left, adjusting its course. There were thirty-five miles between it and New York.

As Viper Two approached, it quickly became apparent that he would have to get very close to the UAV to shoot it down. The UAV’s extremely small radar profile protected it against a longer range shot by the AMRAAM missiles; the pilot’s best bet would be to choose either heat seekers or his cannon. Howe could see him sizing up his strategy and preparing for it: He had a parallel track to the UAV’s course that would allow him to turn and get on its tail as it approached; the F-16’s superior speed would make the terrorist craft an easy target.

Not easy, exactly. Viper Two still had no idea where it was. In the dark night, moving at hundreds of miles an hour, the world was a flashing blur. The airplane and its target moved through four dimensions-three spatial, one of time-in a complicated dance. It was man against machine, and the jock at the stick of the F-16 was now in a confrontation where the slightest error, the wrong twitch at the wrong moment, might mean disaster. The pilot had trained for countless hours, but no simulation, no drill, could come close to duplicating what he was flying against now.

Howe had been there himself. You reached down at that moment and found what you had.

He watched the display. Viper Two couldn’t find the UAV, even as he closed.

“Turn,” snapped Howe. “Now.”

The F-16 stuttered in the display. Then it moved downward toward the water, pirouetting on its wing, 18,000 pounds of metal and machinery transformed into a graceful ballerina. The wings straightened and the dancer became a linebacker blitzing unmolested toward the fleeing quarterback.

“Range is five miles,” said Howe. “You’re dead on. Dead on and steady.”

“Roger that.”

Howe told the computer system to zoom in on the target. The screen blinked-and then went back to the large-area scan.

He started to curse, then saw the change was not due to a malfunction: A second contact had been spotted, this one behind him, only five miles south of the Statue of Liberty.

Chapter 9