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“I can be patient, and gentle,” he assured her.

Beneath the dressing gown she was completely naked. She walked with slow steps toward the bed and stretched her body down upon him.

“Show me it’s going to be a lovely weekend,” she said against his lips as she pressed herself to him. “Show me.”

“The lights …” he began.

“Sod the lights.”

As their bodies fused together in eager passion, Selby found uppermost in his mind the thought that when all the flowery phrases were removed, this was what he was employed by the taxpayer to protect. The man trained to blow an invading bomber to smithereens was only protecting his right to make love to Kim Mannon.

In the event, the weekend turned out much better than had been expected. Sir Julius had to leave for an urgent meeting abroad, with Barham-Deane forced to accompany him in what was clearly a deep
sulk. Left to their own devices, Selby and Kim Mannon had themselves a high old time, most of which was spent in bed. Jarvis was discretion itself, and had kept well out of the way.

Selby returned to his unit on the following Monday, to find he was one of the selected crews to take part in a forthcoming Red Flag exercise, in company with two West German Tornadoes. His back-seater was to be an American, Elmer Lee McCann, who had been posted in to undergo Tornado conversion training.

He had flown with McCann several times at Cottesmore, and had found that he liked the quirky, rebellious American. It was on one such flight that McCann had confided in him of an expected posting to a special unit. Selby had said nothing of his own posting, preferring to wait and see how things eventually turned out. If McCann became his permanent back-seater at the new unit, he wouldn’t mind.

The second Red Flag Tornado was being crewed by Urquhart and the Australian, Ferris. Selby liked Ferris, and had also worked with him. The teams had been well-selected, he felt. RAF Tornadoes had scooped trophies in previous competitions in the States, and he hoped his team would do well at Nellis.

He had been designated leader of the RAF teams, and had been told that the West Germans would be led by a Kapitän Leutnant Hohendorf. At Nellis, lead of all four aircraft would alternate by
mission, between Selby and Hohendorf. He wondered anxiously what Hohendorf was like. What kind of pilot? What kind of man and most importantly, what would he be like to work with in a team?

They would not actually meet until Nellis. Normally, all crews would work-up together, sometimes for weeks, before going on to the vast “war zone” in the Nevada desert, but on this occasion the mission had been planned so that the two pairs of aircraft would simply rendezvous over the North Atlantic, and then continue on together to Nellis. Selby felt certain the mission had been planned that way as a prelude to the eventual posting to Scotland.

Two weeks later, McCann was putting on his country boy accent in the back seat of Selby’s aircraft: “Ah’ve got two bogeys at zero four five, 800 knots. Angels three zero.” McCann meant 30,000 feet, their own current cruising altitude.

“Bogeys? Angels? Where do you think you are, Elmer Lee?”

“Let me have my fun. Wow! Those guys are hitting it.”

“They’re on time and spot on,” Selby said. “They seem to know their stuff.”

“They look like hot shots to me. Wonder what they’ll be like on the ranges?”

“We’re not competing with them, Elmer Lee. They’re on the team.”

“Even so,” McCann said, always eager to pit
himself against any newcomers. “They’ll be on us …” he continued, “… now!”

The RAF Tornadoes were cruising at a steady 450 knots. The two Marineflieger aircraft tore past on either side, wings at full sweep, to pull into a steep climb. They snapped into a quarter-roll and belly to belly, continued the climb. They reversed wing to wing and spreading their wings forward, pulled over the top to double back on their track, upside down. They flashed past, going the other way to pull into a dive, levelled out, having completed the entire maneuver in perfect formation.

Their exhibition over, the Marineflieger Tornadoes were now coming up fast, but slowing down to match speeds as they drew closer. The leading aircraft gave the impression of coming to a halt as it matched exactly Selby’s airspeed.

Selby glanced to his left, and gave a brief salute. So this was Hohendorf.

McCann looked out at the newcomers, noting how they had slotted neatly into formation: the lead ships now side by side, the wingman on each outer wing and a little to the rear.

McCann selected the pre-arranged frequency. “We’ve got some smart-ass fliers here, Mark ol’ buddy,” he said, knowing the other aircraft would pick him up.

“Very impressive,” Selby concurred.

“Glad you think so,” came a new voice. “Think
you know the way to Nellis?” The voice spoke English with only the slightest of accents.

“Any time, baby,” McCann answered. “Any time.”

The helmet was turned their way again. “Then lead on.”

Back on the cockpit frequency, McCann said: “Sounds like he’s got a sense of humor.”

“That’s always a help,” came Selby’s comment.

There was a Tristar tanker up ahead to top them all up, then it would be on to Nellis.

Nellis. Red Flag: a vast airbase packed solid with aircraft of all types, and of various Western air forces. Beyond it, thousands of square miles of Nevada emptiness; baking desert and dragon’s teeth mountains. A simulated war zone where the unwary pilot could be “killed” by wily Aggressors pretending to be the enemy, or be truly killed by his own mistakes. The mountains and the desert floor, and the air, were not kind to the unwary.

When they arrived, Selby had immediately been struck by the seemingly limitless visibility. The cloudless sky, the heat and the vastness, could not have been more different from what he was accustomed to in Europe. He had previously been to Maple Flag up in Canada where the terrain and weather were more familiar, even if the available area for combat flying was infinitely more generous. Of the four NATO crews, only McCann was returning to a
known stamping ground. He promised to show them the ropes.

Using maps of the range area, he showed them the favored ambush points of the Aggressor pilots who invariably flew the tiny, difficult-to-acquire F-5, but who could be supplemented at any time by other students flying Eagles or Falcons. Some of these students might well have been to Red Flag before and would have some dirty tricks up their sleeves. He warned them of the simulated surface-to-air missiles, hidden out there in the mountains and the desert, which would be eager to make the Tornadoes their meat.

“These SAM birds are operated by nasty little enlisted personnel,” he told them, “who like nothing more than nailing some hot shot pilot. Take it from me, guys. They’re after our asses.”

By the time they went into their first mission pre-brief, they felt they had already acquired a subtle edge over their fellow lambs to the waiting slaughter. Their first flight was to be a familiarisation mission over the ranges, to see what was in store.

Selby had found that he had been accepted easily by the West German crews, with the exception of Hohendorf, in whom he had sensed wariness. They had been like two stags, carefully assessing each other; and when Hohendorf had extended a hand in greeting, despite the accompanying smile Selby had seen a challenge in the eyes. He knew then
that Hohendorf would be the one to watch. And he wasn’t surprised: after the fancy approach over the Atlantic, he had suspected that the leader of the Marineflieger Tornadoes would be a tough one.

For his part, Hohendorf viewed Selby with his own watchfulness.

“That one,” he confided later to Ecker, “is somebody to watch.”

“Mark Selby?”

“Oh yes. Mr. Selby thinks he can show me a thing or two.”

“And can he?”

Hohendorf smiled. “Johann, Johann. Prepare to get dust in your eyes. Flacht and I are going to take out more targets than our friend Selby. We’re going to tear the throats of the SAM crews. Just make sure you get Willi Beuren to follow me in when he’s paired with me.”

Ecker said nothing, but smiled in acquiescence. He wished he would be flying with Hohendorf, but this was a perfect opportunity to acclimatise Wolfgang Flacht to Hohendorf’s at-the-edge flying. It was Flacht who would be going to Scotland with Paul. Ecker felt regret at this, but kept his silence.

The four Tornadoes flew low across the desert, Selby in the lead.

“Good God,” he said, looking out at the pitiless landscape. “I wouldn’t like to go down here.”

“I got news for you,” McCann said. “I wouldn’t
like to go down anywhere. Just keep right on being a hot shot pilot, will you?”

Selby smiled in his mask. “So what’s down there, Elmer Lee?”

“All the wonders of creation … bull snakes, side-winders, rattlers …”

“That’s quite enough, thank you.”

“There’s lots more … tarantulas, a wonderful landscape of sagebrush, scrub …”

“McCann—”

“Had enough?”

“More than enough. I promise not to put you down.”

“I just hate walking, is all.”

“So do I. Rattlesnakes. Ugh!” Selby was grateful they were not earmarked for desert survival training during their stay. Some of the other visitors, he’d learned, had been selected to undergo the ordeal. The majority of them had been from the US forces; though he’d heard a couple of French, Jaguarflying pilots had been put on it. Given their probable posting to Chad, he was not surprised. “Better them than me.”

“Did you say something?” McCann queried.

“Just pilot talk.”

High above them, F-15 Eagles were mixing it with the Aggressors. Invisibly in the distance, the high-G contest whirled spectacularly. At any given time, all sorts of aircraft were engaged in furious maneuvering,
all across the range area. But today, this would not concern them.

The sortie was completed without incident. No Aggressors tapped them—they were not supposed to—but McCann had warned against complacency. So they kept low all the way. Legend had it that an RAF Buccaneer pilot had once left wingtip trails on the desert floor, so low had he gone.

The next day’s sortie was a different thing altogether. They were given, in McCann’s words “a real bitch.” The mission brief had assigned them two target areas. One was a clutch of SAM sites, an airfield, a convoy of trucks, and a railroad. The other, more SAM sites, a helipad, and a pipeline.

Hohendorf and Selby decided to split forces on the approach, each of them leading a pair. Selby would lead Beuren’s and Ecker’s Tornado, while Hohendorf would have Urquhart and Ferris. It was to be a low-level transit all the way to the targets and back, using maximum ground cover, and maximum jamming to neutralise the defences.

Take-off was on time. They were lucky. Due to the heavy concentration of aircraft waiting for the off, some left for their designated areas later than planned. Hohendorf and Selby intended to use that to advantage. Some of the late ones were Aggressors. Selby did not think this advantage unfair. In a real war, a potential enemy would be snagged by all sorts of organizational problems. It was inevitable on either
side. Maximizing all advantages was the name of the game.

The two pairs of Tornadoes hurled themselves into the air, and headed for their allocated targets.

In the target areas, the ground defense operators were on the alert. Their simulated armament was as close to the real thing as was possible. Their target videos would record all passes and all “kills,” precluding any arguments from indignant pilots. Those videos were the stuff of humiliation; true ego de-flaters. But at least, the “dead” crews would still be alive to learn from their mistakes. Knowledge that in a real war they wouldn’t have made it was supremely chastening.

In both their minds, Selby and Hohendorf, fully aware of the accuracy of the defences, nursed a determination not to get nailed. They kept their aircraft low, twisting and turning against the high ground, using the terrain to mask their approach.

Target area. An operator was getting excited.

“We’ve got a … what’s this? It’s a Tornado!” he exclaimed. “And he’s giving us all kind of jamming, and I mean heavy. He’s low down in the dirt and … he’s gone! Let’s get a track on this guy,” he added wearily, defeated by the Tornadoes’ electronic counter-measures.

Someone else picked up the refrain. “I’ve got him! There he goes. We’re locked on, we’re firing on
this guy … we broke up. Let’s see if we can acquire this guy again. And … we’re tracking … we’re track … there he goes. No. Boy … he’s ECMing us bad here on something … he’s way out of range now.”

Hohendorf threaded his Tornado between two ramparts of high ground, safely through the first line of defense.

“Good work, Wolfgang,” he said to Flacht. “I think you turned their tracking into a mess. Now for the next line.”

The second operator was speaking. “Here’s another Tornado! His wingman. We’re tracking. We’ve got ECM here. Giving us some stuff. This guy’s ripping through. Good job. Good job. And he’s gone. No chance.”

Urquhart followed Hohendorfs reefing Tornado, hugging the ground, through the SAM barrier.

Watching the world tilt this way and that, Ferris said: “Don’t you dare lose that nimble lad out there.”

“I’m on him, Bondi. I’m on him.”

A third operator had picked up Hohendorfs aircraft. “Here he comes, here he comes! I’ve got him! I’ve got … goddamn Tornado … Oh shit! I missed him. let’s see … no, no. I’ve lost this guy. And here’s his
buddy. Keeping low. Good masking. Oh some good stuff here. I just can’t acquire this guy. Some heavy manoeuvres. We’ve lost him. We’ve lost him. He’s long gone.”

They were through. The first target, the railroad, was coming up.

From the back, Flacht said: “Do you want manual on this? Or shall I set it up?”

“It’s all yours, Wolfgang. You deserve it. We’ll go for auto-release.”

As Flacht set up the run-in, Hohendorf uncaged the weapon release button on the stick and waited for Flacht’s word. At the bottom of the HUD, two dashes began sliding towards the middle. When the fall line from the center entered the space between them, they would be on target.