“Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Bandit has dropped below sweep. Last known altitude: angels zero-decimal-five. Speed: one-zero-zero knots. Heading steady one-one-zero.”

  That didn’t make sense. Five seconds ago, it had been right there. Midge was about to ask—

  “Tracker, Kutex One-Six, confirm—lost contact?” Frodo’s voice cut in, clear but tight. A sign of how rattled everyone was.

  “Kutex One-Six, Tracker. Confirm. No return. Estimate low altitude—possible terrain masking or drop below Doppler threshold. Maintain intercept heading.”

  “It went from five thousand feet to five hundred, and from twelve hundred knots to one hundred... in ten seconds,” Cnker muttered. “What does that, then? That’s no bloody manned aircraft.”

  “We knew that already,” Saxon replied, easing the throttle back. They were burning fuel fast—and chasing ghosts.

  The silence held for another beat.

  “That was a terminal dive profile,” Midge said quietly.

  He keyed his mic.

  “Tracker, Kutex One-Five. That looked like a terminal dive.”

  The four men waited for the reply.

  Midge shifted in his seat. The cramps in his legs were just beginning. He hated the helmet, the oxygen mask, the stiff seat. Hated the way the full-immersion suit made his skin itch. Saxon once joked it was a mystery why Midge chose to fly at all. Midge had replied: no one had warned him about the downsides of tiny cockpits. But even with the discomfort—he wouldn’t trade it. Not for this. Not for the unknown they were chasing.

  They’d be over the bandit’s st known position in sixty seconds.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Watch for signs of detonation.”

  Saxon eased the speed further. Midge scanned the terrain below, knowing Frodo was doing the same.

  “Tracker, Kutex One-Five. Roger.”

  “No plume. No debris,” Cnker reported. “Nothin’ on the ground at all.”

  “Commence search pattern,” Saxon ordered, banking right to widen separation from One-Six. The two fighters began slow circling, tracing wide loops over where the bandit had vanished.

  They didn’t know they were looking in the wrong pce.

  Aric had nearly reached the end of the ke when he spotted a flock of ducks. They burst into flight at the approaching threat, and he slowed even further to avoid hitting them. He waited until they’d formed up in the air before accelerating again—matching their speed as he slipped into formation at the end of the V.

  The duck nearest to him gave a sideways gnce and a honk that sounded suspiciously like a reprimand.

  “Mind if I tag along for a bit?” Aric called out.

  His hair whipped in the wind—reminding him that he was long overdue for a haircut. But Delphine wanted him to wait until Min. She’d promised—demanded, really—to take him to her gars à Min, the man who always did her hair for fashion week. Aric had received the message loud and clear: he had no say in the matter.

  He stayed with his winged friends for a minute more before waving goodbye. He dropped below them, gnced at the compass on his wrist, then banked east and began to climb—reforming the protective energy bubble as he accelerated. The air around him glowed with the pale shimmer of ionization as he sped up.

  “Negative radar contact.”

  It was the third time Tracker had said that. No missile plume. No smoke. No wreckage. Nothing. Saxon was about to call it when—

  “Radar reacquired. Angels one-decimal-five, speed 35 knots. Repeat: object is climbing and increasing speed, now four-zero knots. Heading zero-niner-zero, range fourteen.”

  “Where the hell was it hidin’, then?” Cnker said, half to himself. “And what in God’s name was it doin’ down there?”

  “What the fuck is it?” Midge asked over intercom.

  “I don’t know,” Saxon said, pulling back on the stick and pushing the throttle forward. The bandit was back. And now they had a chance of catching it.

  “But at this rate, I think we’re going to find out.”

  They were not the only ones asking those sort of questions.

  August 16, 1984 – North Yorkshire, Engnd

  Radar Technician Supervisor Dennis Ngata continued to study the screen in front of him—and the data it was receiving from the Sector Operations Centre (SOC) feed. Across Northern Engnd—in other command and control centers at other RAF bases—men and women like him were doing the same thing. Younger man and women to be sure. Mostly. He’d enlisted in 1966. When he thought about some of the new operators at RAF Leeming they looked like they should be sitting behind a desk in secondary school instead of at a radar monitoring station. He wondered if he looked equally old to them before gncing at the Senior Air Defence Controller. Squadron Leader Penelope “Penny” Winfield had five more years of service than he did. It made no difference to Dennis—or anyone he knew personally—that she was technically WRAF. Someone had seen fit to give her command of a squadron and those were not handed out willy-nilly.

  If they think I’m old— he thought before the screen in front of him drew his attention.

  “She’s back,” Dennis said to the entire room as he sat up straighter. All ships were she/her as far as Dennis was concerned. Whether they flew through the air or plowed through the waves.

  Penny’s head appeared over his left shoulder, her eyes fixed on the strangely shaped object on the screen as her brow furrowed.

  “Eight minutes,” she said. “What’d she do, stop for a cuppa?”

  Dennis shook his head and exhaled the breath he’d only just realized he’d been holding. The mystery bandit was practically crawling compared to its previous speed. The two senior members of RAF Leeming’s C2 watched it crawl across the screen, like a drop of water defying gravity as it moved on a diagonal. But, along with every other base except Leuchar, he was deaf to what the fighters were hearing.

  “Kutex-15, Tracker. Radar reacquired. Angels one-decimal-five, speed 35 knots. Repeat: the object is climbing and increasing speed, now four-zero knots. Heading one-three-zero, range fourteen.”

  Dennis thought the radar signature had been strange from the beginning. Strange in shape, strange in behavior, strange in trajectory. At times it seemed to jump from one pce to another—sometimes by as much as twenty miles. It had become crystal clear for the briefest moment—after making a thirteen-mile jump directly east—just before vanishing again.

  Now, as it reappeared on their screens, it looked stranger still: a wide, diffuse blob drifting slowly eastward and upward.

  They watched in silence for ten seconds—until—

  “Ngā atua—” Dennis said as the radar return split in two. One half continued east. The other turned sharply and accelerated on a familiar heading.

  “Jesus, we’ve got a split,” Penny added, eyes locked on the screen. The second signal was climbing fast. Then it jumped northwest ten miles. There was no question which of the two they’d been tracking all along.

  Dennis wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “Possible decoy or radar artifact. Primary return’s climbing and accelerating—profile consistent with the original target.”

  He might have been reassured to know that Leuchars agreed with him.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Update: Bandit re-acquired at angels two-decimal-six, heading one-three-zero, speed three-zero-zero. Vector one-four-five, intercept bearing one-zero-zero, range one-five. Secondary contact moving east at low altitude and low speed—no intercept assigned. Maintain current target.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-One-Five, Roger.”

  “They’ll cross into our sector in five minutes,” Dennis said to the woman standing beside him—the commander of a squadron of F-4K Phantom FG.1s and the men who flew them.

  Four of those men were still in the ready room, oblivious to what was happening unless someone physically walked in to deliver the report. She could scramble them now. Unlike the Leuchars fighters, her intercept would be head-to-head. They would definitely close.

  But if the target held its preferred altitude and speed, they wouldn’t stay with it for long.

  She still didn’t know what it was—or what she expected her men to do if they got close enough to find out.

  She had less than five minutes to decide.

  It was some of the most stunning scenery he’d ever seen.

  Aric had heard stories about the beauty of Scotnd. But hearing and seeing were two different things. For the umpteenth time this morning his brain pyed the same thought.

  I wish Edith and Delphine could see this.

  He was traveling slowly compared to earlier, part of his mind trying to calcute what his new heading should be. His detour to see the waterway—and his short flight with the duck—had thrown off his original flight pn. He gave up the dual struggle eventually and slowed to a hover as he considered how far east he’d traveled, and what that did to the next leg of his trip.

  He allowed the bubble of energy surrounding him to dissipate as he stared at his compass. His original path included a turn eastward to avoid Leeds before turning back for the final approach to Surrey. He was more easterly than he should be, but he didn’t think far enough. He turned until his compass pointed to his original heading and then turned his body slightly eastward.

  Ten degrees should do it, he thought as he began to accelerate. He reformed his protective yer as he picked up speed.

  It was one of the reasons he did not hear the two aircraft screaming down from above, their onboard radars locked on him.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Update: Bandit now at angels three-decimal-one, heading one-three-zero, speed one-seven-zero. Vector one-four-five, intercept bearing one-zero-zero, range one-five.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-One-Five, Roger.”

  All across northern Engnd, in operations centers and in cockpits, men and woman saw the same thing as the bandit slowed—and jumped directly under the two pursuing aircraft.

  “Signal’s clean!” Dennis shouted as if Leeds United had just scored a goal. “Solid track. Strong return. Speed—wait one.”

  Penny didn’t need her Scope Watch Lead to expin what was happening. She could see it for herself. Everyone could.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Update: Bandit now at angels three-decimal-zero, heading one-three-zero, speed zero-niner-zero. Vector one-four-five, intercept bearing one-zero-zero, range zero-decimal-five.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-One-Five, Roger.”

  “Christ,” Midge said as he saw the signal suddenly reappear beneath them.

  Then the bandit’s signal winked out of existence.

  “Jesus!” Dennis said.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Bandit st confirmed directly beneath you at angels three-decimal-zero, bearing one-three-zero, range zero-decimal-five. Signal dropped. Maintain intercept heading, visual scan authorized.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-One-Five, Roger.”

  It was time for Midge to earn his paycheck.

  “Bringing radar online—manual sweep.”

  A short distance away Frodo was doing the same thing. If this were a training mission the two men would have a friendly bet on who found the decoy target first. But there was nothing friendly about their mission, and both men were totally focused on their jobs.

  Got you, you son of a bitch.

  “Got it! Weak return, low altitude. five miles. We’re right on top of him.”

  “Confirm,” Saxon said. It would be the only time he asked Midge to check his math.

  Midge made a final check before keying his mike to both aircraft.

  “Confirmed, target directly below, range one mile, angles three-decimal-one. Vectoring now—drop to three-decimal-one, nose hard down.

  “Copy,” Saxon replied tersely as he began an inverted roll that took the aircraft into a steep dive.

  They’d been on the verge of waving the Leuchars pursuit off and unching their own. If the bandit had traveled south just a bit farther Penny would have scrambled her own QRA. But the bandit—whatever it was—had slowed before disappearing off their scopes. She watched as the Leuchars QRA begin a steep dive—the WSO’s must have the bandit in their sights now, robbing 11 Squadron’s men of the opportunity. All they could do now was watch.

  In the air, making a rapid descent from 35,000 feet, four men were preparing—physically and mentally— for what was about to happen.

  “25,000. 20. 15,000 feet.” Midge watched the altimeter spin wildly as he looked out the cockpit at the green covered terrain they were approaching like a bat out of hell. The air was thickening—the buffeting growing stronger—the lower they went, and Midge’s heart rate climbed. But it wasn’t just the bumpy ride that cause the sweat to drip down his neck, it was what was about to happen when the reached 5000 feet.

  “10,000 feet. Five–”

  He’d barely spoken the word before Saxon pulled back on the stick. Midge’s G-suite began to infte in response to the seven Gs his body was experiencing. His mind and body reacted almost on their own—relying on many hours of training more than conscious thought. He tensed his calves, thighs and core muscles as his lungs took short forceful breaths. It hurt like hell, but it was better than a grayout or tunnel vision.

  "Hick—gd I didn’t—hick—have that extra—hick—cuppa,” Midge said to the entire flight. It was important for Saxon to know that Midge was still conscious. Important that they maintained communication—calm, professional—mostly.

  The fighter was shuddering badly. They were flying too fast, too low, to endure it for long.

  “They’re on the raggedy edge” Dennis said as he watched both fighters level off at 3100 feet, flying towards their target at 800 knots. His hands had been balled into fists as he watched their dive. His palms still bore the marks from his fingernails.

  “Shit—” Penny said as the bandit began to move—and climb.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Update: Bandit reacquired at angels three-decimal-eight, heading one-two-zero, speed 600 knots. Vector one-four-five, intercept bearing one-zero-zero, range zero-decimal-five.”

  Midge’s instruments confirmed Tracker’s information. But Saxon and Cnker didn’t need it. They could finally see the bandit for themselves.

  “I have it on visual,” Saxon said. “Whatever it is, it’s small. Not an aircraft.”

  Midge took a quick gnce out the cockpit before his eyes returned to his instruments.

  “Picking up speed and climbing,” he said. 1000 knots, climbing past 4000 feet.”

  “If we don’t step on it we’ll lose it,” Cnker’s voice said in Midge’s ear.

  “Then let’s step on it,” Saxon said as he pushed the throttle forward.

  The pne responded instantly. The shuddering grew worse as their speed increased. Then Midge’s instruments did something he’d never seen before.

  “It’s gone,” he said simply. “Signal’s dropped.”

  “I still have a visual,” Saxon said. It was still there, but it looked different now. Larger, but less sharp. Like someone had thrown camoufge netting over it.

  “Kutex One-Five, Tracker. Bandit at angels four-decimal-two, heading one-two-zero, speed 1000 knots. Vector one-four-five, intercept bearing zero-niner-zero, range two-zero miles.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-one-five. Negative on that range. I have a visual on bandit. Directly ahead, range two miles.”

  “It’s off my scope,” Frodo said calmly. The shuddering was giving Midge a headache and making it difficult to focus on his scope, which also showed nothing.

  “Some sort of radar jamming or masking?” he asked.

  “Let’s end this,” Saxon said. “Lock him up.”

  His scope was still clear. It was like there was nothing out there besides the two Phantoms.

  “There’s nothing for the Sparrow to lock onto. Scope’s clear.”

  “Sidewinder?”

  “No heat. No IR signal. Nothing.”

  “Hold on. I’ll get us closer.”

  The shuddering grew noticeably worse as Saxon pushed the envelope of what was possible. 1400 knots. 1500. Midge began a manual tone search, holding the trigger down halfway, hoping—praying—for a contact before the Phantom flew to pieces around them.

  “They need to abort,” Dennis said as he watched everything that was happening on his screen. “At this rate—”

  “Got a problem,” a prominently Welsh voice announced. “Right pedal is loose. Trying to hold trim.”

  “Kutex-one-five, Kutex-one-six. We have a mechanical failure in the rudder. We have significant yaw instability,” Frodo’s voice said as pinly as if he was ordering lunch.

  Saxon looked at the diffuse shape ahead of him as it pulled away. His logical mind informed his hunter instinct of the harsh truth: even at one-hundred percent they were never going to catch it. His duty now was to see to the safety of his men.

  He pulled back on the throttle as he spoke.

  “Frodo, call it.”

  “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Kutex-one-six, ten miles east of Skipton, experiencing rudder malfunction, heavy turbulence. Requesting immediate vectors to nearest airfield. Two souls on board. Fuel at 1900 pounds.”

  “Kutex one-five, one-six, Tracker. Mayday acknowledged. Divert to RAF Leeming for recovery. Bearing zero-eight-five, distance four-zero miles. Vector zero-eight-five.”

  “Tracker, Kutex-one-five. Roger. Turning zero-eight-five for Leeming.”

  In the Leeming C2 a double buzz tone cut through the nervous atmosphere. Dennis picked up the VC&R handset before the second ring.

  “Leeming Control,” he said curtly.

  “Leeming Control, Boulmer — Kutex One-Six has decred Mayday. Emergency squawk seven-seven-zero-zero. Tracker has diversion to Leeming. Acknowledge.”

  Dennis looked at Penny’s stern face as he replied.

  “Roger Boulmer. Kutex One-Six Mayday, diverting Leeming.”

  “Scramble Javelin,” Penny Winfield said ftly. It was their problem now. Hers and her men.

  Dennis’ response was immediate. “Javelin scramble. Unknown at angels four-decimal five, track 120, speed 1150 knots.”

  Penny knew that four sets of boots were now running down the passage between the ready room and the hardened shelter were their fighters sat. In less that three minutes they would be airborne, in a head on chase towards the unidentified object that had escaped two Phantoms—and indirectly damaged one.

  She hoped her men had better luck.