The man looks around inside the angular confines of his aircraft’s cockpit as the missile lock warning starts blaring in his ears. The sandy-haired aviator puts the aircraft into a clearing turn, searching the typically-cloudy English night for the aircraft that has him locked up. He quickly spots the flight of two Panavia Tornados just behind his aircraft, seemingly keeping their distance out of respect.

"Ah, Down Tower, I appreciate the escort, but it’s not really necessary, I’m pretty sure I can find the runway on my own." He calls over the radio.

"The escort is more to keep others from getting a clue as to what you’re flying than to show you the way to the airfield, DarkKnight Two-Niner, people around here are used to seeing the Tornados up at all hours….but no one around here has seen what you’re flying. More for cover than escort. Right nice of you to have that reflector on for us to track you, though." The tower at Boscombe Down replies.

What? Damnit, don’t tell me I left one of the radar reflectors on…The pilot thinks as he settles the aircraft in to follow Boscombe’s ILS signal to the airfield, I wonder how many times I was tracked across the Atlantic?

As the secret jet approaches the coast of Great Britain, the pilot watches the two slate-gray Tornadoes as they maintain position just off his wingtips, then, at a signal from the ILS system, starts his approach procedures.

The pilot sets his radio to 386.7 and raises Boscombe Down’s tower to receive clearance for landing. After receiving it, he flips the attack aircraft over and dives through the clouds below, rolling upright as he enters them, and grinning tightly at the delayed reaction of the two escorts behind him, which appear startled at his otherworldly-looking aircraft’s maneuverability.

The angular black aircraft drops through the perpetual low cloud cover over Great Britain, looking like some kind of alien spacecraft from a 1950’s UFO movie. However, though the sight of the vehicle is strange, as well as a little alarming, the sound it makes is all too terrestrial, which is a comfort to the ground crew below, who have been called out of bed to greet this nocturnal visitor. The ground crew and a few of the other conscious people on the base are watching the strange vehicle follow the airbase’s pattern as it sets up and turns for final, in the glidepath for landing.

When the arrowhead-shaped aircraft touches down on the runway, the people awaiting it can hear the rustle of silk when the braking parachute deploys, helping slow the exotic aircraft down as it nears the car with the blinking yellow light on top, which will guide the aircraft in to park.

The car leads the black jet, which resembles Darth Vader’s helmet in the front view, towards the hardened aircraft shelters on the eastern side of the base.

The black aircraft’s pilot skillfully taxis the sixty-five foot, eleven-inch-long aircraft into the shelter designated for him, shuts down the vehicle’s twin General Electric F404-GE-F1D2 turbofans and pops the angular canopy, with its reflective, gold-tinted windows and saw-toothed edges.

While the crewmen approach the twelve-foot, five-inch-tall aircraft, they are amazed that this vehicle can actually fly. With a shape that is as tall at the apex of the canopy as it is at the tips of its twin outward canted vertical tails, which form a "V" at the rear of the aircraft, the fuselage slopes at a thirty degree angle from the top of the canopy to the base of the vertical stabilizers.

The shape of this revolutionary aircraft is a collection of triangular and trapezoidal facets that no designer will take credit for, and that bespeaks its computer-design.

This is the first aircraft to be designed by a computer to meet a certain set of criteria, which, by looks alone, flight appears to be the least important.

A man approaches the front of the aircraft, where four data probes protrude from the half-pyramid nose, two probes on the left, one in the center, and one on the right, when viewed from head on.

The man, six feet tall, with a hawk-like nose, longish narrow face, and just-within-regulation wavy black hair, walks through the steam rising around the aircraft as the ground crew rush to their duties.

This man has asked the pilot of the strange black aircraft before him to meet here, as he has found a possible new member of the their team in his new backseater.

As the man, who is known by his Air Force, and more clandestine, squadronmates as "Mukey", continues to scan the front of the aircraft, his gaze flicks over the Texas Instruments F-3 turret, with its IR seeker head, just below the cockpit, before noticing the alien-appearing aircraft’s pilot finish unhooking and unplugging himself from the cockpit.

The pilot takes his helmet off, revealing the light brown hair that falls over his ears, his rounder than average face, and brown eyes, which look right at the man by the nose of his aircraft, in reaction to which the pilot’s face splits into a grin.

"Hey Mukey, be right down." He calls as he sets his flight helmet on the ACES II ejection seat and climbs over the canopy lip to the waiting ladder the crew has rolled up.

Once down the ladder, Matt "Shaba" Hunter walks up to the taller man and shakes his hand.

Neal "Mukey" Hirsch looks from the five-nine aviator to his aircraft and back.

"So this is the legendary Senior Trend that pulled you away from the Concorde mission, eh?" He asks.

"Are you forever going to rub that in my face?"

"Yep. Only mission our C/O wasn’t there for."

"Not your C/O anymore, Neal, stepping down was a requirement of our deal to stay in action, even after Bush officially ‘disbanded’ us, remember? So you can quit kissing my damn ass."

"Yeah, yeah. You’ll always be our C/O, though. You’re too damned old for anything else." Neal comments with a smirk.

"Ha, Ha. I’m not that old."

"Sure. Must’ve been nice knowing Moses. Fun man to have in the bars. He could part the red beer……anyway, I thought the Prez shut us down, how did we get active again?"

"Well…yes and no we were shut down. President Bush officially shut down the 137^th Tactical Fighter Wing after the media blitz you guys created at JFK. I’m surprised no one’s cover was blown."

"Blame Wahren. He’s the one who wanted to be on TV." Neal quips.

"Anyway, some DOD brass shifted black budget funding around to get us a payroll, and pointed me in the direction of a former storage facility we can use as a base of operations."

"Hang on. We’ll have a base? You didn’t mention that in your phone call. Can we have a fireman’s pole? We gonna get a secret handshake, too? Do we get to show it off and impress the women? Bet we’ll get some leg for sure with our own Batcave! We’ve never had a base before."

Matt rolls his eyes, knowing his friend is mocking him.

"Yes, we’ll have a base. Do you want a tree house too? Geez. We’re also doing some team-wise revamping to include air operations instead of just being ground grunts like we started out. We were kinda headed that direction anyways…well, some of us, at least. Mayhem will never be big on the air side of things. Guess someone decided we’d be safer if we knew a bit more about aircraft stress levels, and maybe Aaron wouldn’t go rolling any more airliners." Matt comments with a wry face. "That’s why I called you, since the DOD wants us to expand and bring in the best pilots we can to jump-start our air arm."

"Where are the rest of the gang?"

"Well, Mayhem and DoughBoy have become Special Agents with the FBI, as has Mel, though she trains cadets at the Academy, G.E. is back with the Virginia ANG, Wizard, Shorty, and Phantom have dropped off the DOD radar, merging with the civilian population, Valder, Wolf, Mikki, and Maverick are with the Air Force, like us, Tron and Matrix are back to units with the Marine Corps, Red is consulting for the SEALs again, and Apache is flying choppers for the Army. We’re working with advancing mobile phone technology so we can keep in touch with our farther-flung members, as well." Matt replies to Neal’s query as the two men walk towards the Triumph motorcycle, which Hirsch has developed a fondness for while stationed here in England.

"I’ll give you a lift back to Lakenheath, we’ll find you some quarters, and tomorrow," Neal looks at his watch, "…er…later today, you’ll get to meet Dave. He and I are giving a little demo in the Strike Eagle this afternoon. Sweet bird." He comments as the two pilots, both original members of the 137th TFW, reach the red sports bike, which has two helmets hanging from the handlebars.

Soon the two men are speeding through the British countryside, the night’s stillness broken by the Daytona’s engine as they roar down the A330.

1600 hrs local.

The two-tone green and gray camouflaged Strike Eagle touches down lightly on the main runway at RAF Lakenheath. The paint scheme, officially known as European One, but commonly called the Lizard, has only been applied to one F-15E, the first demonstration model, a former F-15B modified for the purpose.

Matt Hunter stands on the flightline, watching the aircraft the 494th Fighter Squadron is converting to get put through its paces in front of the whole 48th Fighter Wing.

The former Commanding Officer of the ETF stands with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his bomber jacket. Matt has a slightly stocky build, due to his genetics, though he is solid, thanks to a strict routine of exercise.

Matt re-adjusts the ball cap he is wearing, his dark sandy hair trying to spill out of the cap as he has let it grow from his standard military cut. The thirty-three year old aviator checks his watch and thinks back over the dossier of the Strike Eagle’s WSO as he watches the fighter’s control surfaces move as the crew sets up for approach.

With an amazing display of airmanship, the 15E's pilot makes the 130-knot landing of the Strike Eagle look like child's play. The main gear kick up twin plumes of smoke as they touch down on the tarmac simultaneously, and the big barn door of an airbrake is deployed to slow the fighter down. At a maximum takeoff weight of seventy-five thousand pounds, the F-15E is a big bird to handle, and a lot of momentum to stop.

Matt watches the McDonnell Douglas-built aircraft roll to a stop, then turn towards the waiting crowd of F-111 pilots and crews. The F-15E is slated to replace the aging Aardvark at Lakenheath, and the Air Force has sent one of their top teams from Seymour Johnson, home of the Strike Eagle, to show the new aircraft off.

Matt has come here to recruit half of that very same team to the ETF, since the pilot has been a member of the team since its inception in 1983.

The F-15E rolls to a stop, and the ground crew rushes out to care for it as soon as the engines are shut down.

The canopy raises, and Major Neal "Mukey" Hirsch and his WSO, Second Lt. David "Warlock" Samuelson, climb to the tarmac to answer the questions of the pilots, bombardiers, crewman, brass, civilian VIPs and press that have gathered around.

While the two-man crew answers questions, Matt sizes them up. The first thing Matt realizes is that both of the men are taller than him. Neal is about six-feet even, and David only slightly shorter at five-eleven. Compared to Matt's five-nine, that is plenty of difference.

The pilot, Hirsch, has a barely-regulation mop-top of black hair and is trim, weighing maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. Matt can’t help thinking that his old friend man looks more like a Doctoral candidate than a fighter pilot. The twenty-eight year-old pilot is clean-shaven, and seems confident and at ease amongst the brass and other pilots.

However, Matt can’t be too sure about this projected ease, as he cannot see the man’s eyes behind the black rimmed silver sunglasses he is wearing, though, knowing the stuff Neal has seen and done, this has got to be a cakewalk. All the brass in the world would hardly faze Mukey.

Beside Neal, his WSO, the man he has been asked to come out here and evaluate, David Samuelson, seems a bit less at ease, his eyes darting back and forth behind his medium-tint aviator sunglasses. The man is five years younger than his pilot, and is sporting a close cut goatee, with his black hair barely within Air Force regulations.

Matt waits at the edge of the crowd until the two Strike Eagle crewmen begin to walk away, then he moves to catch up with them.

Oh well, I'm getting used to the neck aches. He quips to himself as he overtakes the taller men.

"Hey guys, you hungry? I'll spring for dinner." Matt offers, exchanging a look with Neal.

Both men spin around at the sound of Matt’s voice, Neal with a casual indifference, and David as if he is truly startled at Matt’s sudden question.

The shorter ETF pilot can feel Samuelson trying to size him up.

Neal looks over at David, who shrugs.

"Why not." Neal answers, then introduces Matt to Dave, as an old friend of his.

David Samuelson can tell right away that something is different about this guy. He isn't the usual General's lackey sent out to make sure they are taken care of, and there is an air of mystery about him.

This and the fact that, though wearing civilian clothes and trying his best to look like an innocent aviation enthusiast, camera around his neck and all, Warlock can tell that this guy is a higher-ranking officer.

He would be right. In addition to being a former Commanding Officer of the ETF, Matt holds the rank of Colonel in the USAF.

"I was quite impressed with your little display there," Matt comments to David as the three of them walk towards his waiting blue rental car, noticing the other man's reaction to the word little, "and I've got an offer to make. Ever hear of the ETF?" Matt comments.

Through a supreme effort of will, Neal manages to keep his face passive, trying not to smirk. Trust Hunter to come up with a way to keep my backseater in a stunned silence.

Behind him, David's jaw drops momentarily. Yes, he's heard of the ETF all right, though through other pilots, mostly as legend and myth, since Neal has divulged nothing to him.

Though the team is a highly–kept secret amongst the civilian population, the existence of the Eagle Task Force is a well known rumor within the upper echelons of the military, and a recognized myth among much of the Special Operations units and pilots in the military. If something happens that cannot be explained and is something that the US states they have no knowledge of, the operation is said to have been pulled off by the 137^th Wing.

Matt drives the dark blue LeBaron off base and to a little fish-and-chips place in the country. Over dinner, Matt fills David in on what kind of crews the ETF is looking for, and why he has singled him out.

Near the end of dinner, Neal looks up at the older man.

"We’ve got an obligation to the USAF to finish off this tour. Will you give Warlock here some time to consider your offer?" He asks.

In reply, Matt reaches inside his bomber jacket and pulls out a simple white business card, then slides it across the table to the still stunned Samuelson.

The F-15E WSO looks at the card as he picks it up off the table. On the front, in blue lettering, are the letters ETF. The back holds a phone number.

David slides the card into his pocket and the three men quietly finish their dinner.

The ride back to the BOQ on Lakenheath is quiet, and after shaking hands with Matt as the three men get out of the rental car, David states that he needs to turn in early and says his good-byes to the two ETF aviators.

After David has walked off, shaking his head, Neal puts an arm around Matt’s shoulders.

"Hey, I hear Bon Jovi is putting on a show over in Milton Keynes tonight, about sixteen klicks from Oxford, as part of their New Jersey tour, wanna check it out?"

"Jovi is more Aaron and Wahren’s game, but, hey, free rock concert? I’m in. So, seriously, how are the women here in England?" Matt asks as they get back into the LeBaron.

Neal just grins at the former ETF commander. It’s going to be a good night.

1545 hours local.

The scrum half takes the ball and pitches it out to his inside center, who quickly pitches it farther down the line to his forward. The forward runs with it for a moment before coming upon a large group of opposing team members. He pitches it out to his left, or strong side in this formation, winger, who has just put on a burst of speed to blast through the opposing backs.

The strong-side winger for the Polar Bears Rugby Club, Aaron Fieldman, grabs the ball from the air and charges at the opposing team's inside center.

Just when it appears he is about to be crushed by the three-hundred-pound six-eight center, Aaron skips to his inside and blasts through a hole he has seen in the back line.

The six-three winger kicks into a sprint, his tall, lanky frame accelerating easily over the field. The man is slight, maybe a hundred and ninety pounds, with close-cropped dark hair and a closely trimmed goatee. His blue-tinted sunglasses and gold hoop earring glint in the sun as he sprints down the field. Behind the rugged sport sunglasses, Aaron’s green-flecked brown eyes scan the field for obstructions ahead of him, his eyes laughing with the exhilaration of leaving the other ruggers behind.

The Arctic Sharks’ weak-side winger pours on the speed to try and catch Aaron as he blasts through the back line. No dice. Aaron has been in training for the upcoming 1992 Summer Olympics Track team, having missed the 1988 games by half a second, and cannot be caught.

He believes this until he notices the group of three forwards standing just before the trie line. The heaviest and most powerful ruggers on the field, the Sharks’ hooker and two props plow into Aaron as he swerves to avoid them.

By the force of sheer momentum, Aaron rocks the hooker off his feet as the two props knock him to the grass.

The ruck forms over him as he places the ball to his team's side and curls up in a fetal position, protecting his head and genitals from the cleated feet flashing around him.

The ruck is broken and the Polar Bear's scrum half picks up the ball and dives into the trie zone. The Bears' weak-side winger jogs over as Aaron stands up, dusting himself off.

"Good run, mate."

"Thanks Carl. Hey, where's the beer? I have a headache to account for!" Aaron comments with a grin as a cold one is tossed his way.

The twenty-nine year old athlete takes a chug of beer as he unlaces his cleats and changes into hightops. He is in the process of peeling off his muddy uniform shirt when he hears his name.

"Aaron, are you coming to the party tonight?" The Shark's forward, Dave, another tall and lanky rugger, calls over.

Aaron looks to the sidelines where an actress friend of his is waiting.

"Naw...I've got plans." He yells back.

The forward takes one look at the woman on the sidelines, winks to Aaron, then takes a much longer look at the stunning brunette before running off to the pavilion with the other twenty-eight men on the field, to warm up with alcohol.

Aaron walks to the spectators’ area of the field, suddenly acutely aware of the sweat, mud, blood, and bruises he is covered in.

The actress waits for him, her crystal blue eyes scanning the field and returning to him. Those eyes used to have the power to encapsulate Fieldman when both of them were younger, and they still have a bit of their old pull.

"Interesting form of self-mutilation you have here." Aubree Warren mutters as Aaron reaches her. She is over a foot shorter than he at five-two, and her auburn hair floats with a life of its own in the light breeze. Aubree is in town to shoot part of her first movie in the countryside surrounding Anchorage.

Aaron learned she was in the area and offered to buy his old friend dinner to celebrate. He had given her directions to the soccer field where the match was to be held.

The twenty-four year old actress wears a thick ski jacket against the cold wind, the garment not doing much to hide the former model’s near-perfect figure.

Aubree, who has been recognized as one of the world’s most beautiful people by all the usual magazines, cocks her head to one side as she looks Aaron over for serious wounds, one eyebrow raised in a silent query.

Seeing her amused look, which he recognizes so well, for they have known one another off and on since the tenth grade, he is once again mystified as to how one of the drop-dead most gorgeous, and single, women in all of creation still manages to find him interesting company.

Years ago, they had tried to take a chance at a more serious relationship….but that had gone awry, and, in a strange way, it has made them closer friends than they ever were before.

"You think this is bad?" Aaron mutters, wiping at a cleat-inflicted cut on his chest, "You should see the women's team play. Now they are some mean ruggers."

"Hmm...No thanks. I've seen enough cat fights in my life."

Aaron looks down at himself and then back at Aubree.

"Mind if I go clean up a bit before we go out?" He asks.

"Please do..." Aubree comments with a laugh while taking in the caked mud on Aaron's legs, arms, face, and in his hair.

Aaron walks the actress to her rental car, a white Honda Civic, in the field’s dirt "parking lot", no more than an area where vegetation has been beaten into the earth and refuses to grow thanks to the repeated comings and goings of the rugby, football and soccer teams’, and their audiences’, vehicles that come to the field.

After Aubree gets into the rental Honda, Aaron points out his own vehicle, which, being a black 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, is a bit hard to miss in the lot, and Aubree agrees to follow him.

Aaron sprints over to his Charger and starts the engine, the deep throaty sound of the 426 Hemi V-8 engine is music to his ears as he turns the ignition.

Aaron pushes a cassette adapter for his CD player into the stereo, hits play on the portable disc player mounted between the seats and the gearshift, and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet album starts up, with "Raise Your Hands" pumping through the Dodge’s four speakers.

Grinning back at Aubree in her rental car, Aaron shifts his four-speed transmission into first, the muscle car’s four hundred and twenty-five horsepower engine sends the rear wheels spinning, and, in less than seven and a half seconds, Aaron is at sixty miles an hour, smiling as he moves through the sparse traffic on the way back to Elmendorf, Aubree’s rental a speck in the distance of his rearview.

Fieldman slows the Charger to let the actress catch up, though he knows he could have been at a hundred miles an hour in a little over thirteen seconds. That kind of acceleration is one of the reasons the Charger was the first thing he bought with the money they received from the Concorde mission.

Aubree follows Aaron to the main gate of Elmendorf, where she parks her rental car in the visitor’s lot, and walks over to her old friend’s Charger. Aaron opens the passenger-side door for her, closes it, and gets back into the driver’s seat. Once Aubree is strapped in completely, as Aaron has also installed five-point harnesses to the Charger’s non-standard bucket seats, Aaron shifts into first and sedately pulls the Mopar monster onto base.

Peeling out in front of the SPs is rarely appreciated, Fieldman has noticed.

Aaron drives across the base and pulls into the parking lot for the BOQ, or Bachelor Officer’s Quarters, where he is staying while wringing out F-15E Strike Eagles to the delight of the crews here.

Finding an open spot near the front door of the glorified barracks, Aaron pulls past it and backs the Dodge into the space, then shuts the muscle car down.

Opening the door for Aubree again, he motions towards the building in front of them.

"Voila, home….it’s not much, but it serves its purpose." He comments as the two of them walk up the steps to the front door. Inside, a couple of pilots and BNs call out to Aaron as he and the actress pass, and he responds good-naturedly while they mount the stairs to the third floor. Once there, Aaron moves down the hall quickly and silently, without seeming to realize he is doing so.

What on earth have you been doing the last half dozen years? Aubree thinks, You used to make more noise than a stampede.

Arriving at the door of his quarters, he finds a note on the door from Wahren, another longtime member of the ETF, his partner in crime and pilot in the F-15E program.

Aaron pulls the note off the door as he unlocks it and ushers Aubree into the small apartment-like space.

"Valder?" Aubree asks as Fieldman closes and locks the door.

"Callsign." Aaron responds while he watches the brunette move around the two-and-a-half-room living space of her friend.

The quarters consist of a main room, which they have walked into, where Aaron has placed his TV, stereo, desk and a few books, a bedroom off to the right, and a small bathroom with a shower and toilet branching off the bedroom. There is no kitchen, but a small refrigerator sits in one corner of the bedroom, Aubree notices as she takes the spartan place in.

"So what do you do, then, Valder, fly jets?"

"Yeah….that’s part of it…though Wolf, er, Wahren, does most of the flying. I’m his WSO, or weapons systems operator, the backseater who gets to play with all the gadgets. What I do will probably bore you." He comments with a shrug as she slips out of her ski jacket, which he takes and drapes over the back of the blue sleeper sofa in the main room.

"Nice to see you’re living well."

"Doesn’t really matter, I’m never here. Wahren and I are doing a tour for the Air Force, we’re only here for a week. Want a beer?" Fieldman asks as he opens the mini-fridge, having wandered into the bedroom.

"Please. A week? Starting when?" Aubree queries as he hands her one of the Coors longnecks. She notices he is not drinking one, as he has gotten himself a can of Mountain Dew.

"About six days ago." Aaron remarks offhandedly, "I’m gonna dive through the shower, make yourself comfortable, there’re CDs over by the stereo if you want tunes."

"So what’s it like flying Strike Eagles, anyway? Bet it’s pretty exciting." Aubree comments as she flips through the CDs stacked on the floor, finally selecting Mr. Big’s self-titled debut album. After she has gotten the stereo turned on, the sounds of the first track off the album, "Addicted to that Rush", fill the little area with sound.

"Probably not nearly as exciting as those calendar shoots down in Tahiti." Aaron’s voice wafts back from the bathroom, from which Aubree can hear the sound of running water.

Wandering in that direction, the brunette replies, "Oh, yeah, great excitement there, freeze your ass off for the camera for three hours to get one good shot."

"But it’s such a nice ass." Aaron comments, the smirk evident in his voice as Aubree enters the steam-filled bathroom and sits on the edge of the sink. "And just when were you planning on sending me one of those calendars, anyway?" He comments

"I thought about it, but no one knew where you were. I haven’t heard from you in almost six years, you know."

"I move around a lot. Part of the job. What is it with models and beaches, anyway? It seems that every calendar is of some model on an exotic beach somewhere. Though the swimsuits, not minding those a bit." Aaron comments.

"Yeah, well, I’m not overly fond of those shoots, either. Nevermind the sand gets everywhere, but all those shoots seem to take place in the middle of winter. Then there are all the inoculations for some of those places."

"Poor baby…I’m all sympathy over here." Aaron quips.

"Don’t make me come in there….although you’d probably enjoy that." Aubree retorts, "Besides, what would you rather have me do for a calendar, pose on a fighter jet in skimpy lingerie or sprawl naked across the hood of a car with my arms placed strategically?" She asks sweetly.

"And now it has to be a cold shower…" Aaron mutters from behind the plastic curtain, his always overactive imagination in overdrive after that series of comments. "…but that is an idea. I could probably arrange a photo shoot through the Department of Defense. You have any idea how many of those things you’d sell to servicemen?"

"And you’d be standing right there with your little 35mm camera, snapping away."

"Damn straight. Probably the only way I’d end up with a copy of one of those calendars, anyway. One of my squadronmates stole last year’s." Aaron comments ruefully.

"You actually bought one?"

"Duh. I’ve got all the stuff you’ve done back at the house." He tells her.

"Really?" She asks as he shuts off the shower.

"Yeah, it’s all in one of the boxes in there…I’ve owned the house six months and haven’t unpacked a damn thing yet….could you hand me a towel?"

"I’m in a BOX?" Aubree states indignantly, throwing a towel at him as he opens the shower curtain.

"No, the magazines and calendars you’ve been in are, you’re in a bathroom, sweetheart." Fieldman replies as he towels off, then wraps the towel around his waist as he walks past her into the bedroom.

"Nice to see some things haven’t changed….have you gained weight?" Aubree asks as she looks at him from behind while he rummages through his closet in search of proper clothes for the evening.

"Are you saying I’m fat?" He asks with a mock-outraged look on his face.

"Seriously, though, about fifty pounds since the last time you saw me, you like?" He comments as he turns around with both arms flexed, his hands beside his ears, abs and pecs standing out in relief on his torso.

Aubree just rolls her eyes at his antics.

Aaron’s always been in shape, but before he was skinny. Since we last saw each other, he seems to have discovered weightlifting. What on earth have you been up to? She wonders again.

Looking over at Aubree’s liquid seeming silver top and black stretch pants, Aaron grabs a pair of black Levi’s and a denim shirt from the closet and gets dressed.

"So you’ve been doing well for yourself. First starring role and all. What’s that like?" Aaron asks her as they start to walk towards the exit of the quarters, picking up her jacket on the way past the sofa.

Something catches Aubree’s eye and she stops, walking over to the desk in the far corner of the main room, and picking up a framed picture off it.

"Wow. Talk about the difference ten years makes. I can’t believe you still have this!" She tells him, waving the silver-framed picture in his direction.

Like she has said, the picture is over a decade old, from October of 1978, and it shows much younger versions of the two of them, her in a red and black rose-print dress, he in an AFJROTC uniform complete with gloves, ascot, and wheel cap, she wearing a silver tiara and leaning on his left arm, both of their young faces smiling. Behind them the green grass of the football field, and the bleachers on the far side, are evident, though the bleachers are partly obscured by a mist that had rolled in on that cold October night, the field’s florescent lights making the mist glow slightly, and give the night an ethereal quality that, though not evident in the picture, is quickly brought into both of their minds with the memories of that moment. It had been in high school, the homecoming game of their senior year, he had been her escort for the game, and she had been the Queen.

"Old memories. They either haunt me or cheer me. This one does both." He comments with a smirk as he takes the picture from her hand and places it back on the desk. She gives him a jab in the ribs for that comment.

Soon they are back in the Charger driving down the main street of Anchorage in Aaron's Hemi-powered beast.

The two old friends are on their way to Elevation 92, a somewhat pricey American restaurant on the bay, with a view facing the waterfront.

As Aaron requested when he made the reservations, they get a table near the window, with a good overall view of the dining establishment.

They look over the menus for a few moments before ordering, and their beverages are brought, a stout beer for Fieldman and a Pinot Grigio for Warren.

While waiting for their meals to be prepared, the two of them continue talking, and Aaron inquires as to some of their old mutual friends, and whether Aubree has run into any of them lately.

"Funny you should ask. I actually ran into your old partner in crime, John Terrance, a couple weeks ago. He was connecting flights through Chicago O’Hare, going to one of his baseball games in Texas, I was on the way back from an audition…which eventually turned into the job that brought me out here. I’d asked him if he’d seen you recently, as the last time I saw either of you, besides on the TV with that hijacking incident, you were roommates out in D.C."

"Yeah, that Concorde thing was all messed up. Wrong place wrong time." Aaron mutters, looking at his napkin, "Did John say whom he’s playing for these days?" He asks her as he looks up.

"Someone in the East coast…the Conjurers…maybe Sorcerers…no…Mages? Do any of those wring a bell?"

"Wizards, maybe? It’s a AAA league in Virginia."

"That sounds about right. Said he’s playing shortstop or some such."

Ding! Aaron thinks, filing that information away for later as their meals arrive.

Aaron looks down at his thick New York strip, then across the table at Aubree’s Halibut Olympia, and decides he has the better end of the deal, never having been much of a fish fanatic.

Outside the window, Aaron and Aubree have a nice view of the inlet, the port and a military aircraft on final approach to Elmendorf Air Force Base, which is a familiar-looking white, black, and gray Strike Eagle. Seeing the twin-tailed aircraft go past, Aaron smiles and shakes his head.

"What?" Aubree asks, seeing the amused look.

"ElTito and Vyper just went by on approach." He comments, looking in the direction the aircraft has gone.

"Your squadron mates?"

"The same. Small damn world." Aaron mutters as he slices into his steak, "How’s the fish?"

Two hours later, after they have finished dinner and the subsequent dessert and drinks, Aaron drives back to Elmendorf and drops Aubree off at her car in the visitor’s lot. Neither of them seems to feel like letting the evening end, but both know they need to, as she has an early shooting schedule the next morning, and Aaron has an early morning himself.

After promising to try and visit one another more than once a decade, the two stand in the visitor’s parking lot between their vehicles.

There is a long silence as the two look at one another, both wanting to say more, neither knowing what words to use.

Finally they embrace, and Aaron holds the door to Aubree’s rental Civic open as the actress gets in. With a last wave, she starts the drive back to her hotel.

Aaron watches her go until he can no longer see the little white car, then he turns to go back to his quarters, getting control over and clamping a lid on the emotions the beautiful brunette has kicked back up, before he gets into his Charger.

Aaron pulls into one of the few empty parking spots at the now much more packed BOQ, and trudges up to his room, weary after the physically grueling match, his body having thawed out enough to feel the pain of the multiple injures, mostly minor, he sustained during the game.

Walking down the hall, Aaron hears the sound of "Finish What Ya Started", from Van Halen's OU812 album, blaring out of a room near his.

He sticks his head into the open doorway to see Captain Matthew Bendix sitting on his bed going over the flight profiles for his newest ride.

Matt is half of one of the new teams of bomber pilots and bombardiers going through changeover training to the new McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle, the most kick-ass air-to-air and air-to-mud fighter-bomber ever built.

"Hey, Bendix!!" Aaron yells into the room.

As the five-foot-nine pilot with the gymnast’s build looks up, his blondish hair and grinning blue eyes help make the aviator look younger than his twenty-six years. He waves, then goes back to his reading.

Aaron shakes his head as he continues towards his room. Matt had been a B-52 and FB-111 pilot earlier in his career, and flew one of the '111s on the 1986 raid into Libya.

"Hey Aaron, how'd the game go?" Asks a five-eleven F-15E WSO trainee, Matt's backseater. The dark-haired man is still wearing his silver wraparound sunglasses, mute evidence that he has just returned to the building himself.

Aaron doesn’t even bother to ask why Matt’s partner in crime would be wearing sunglasses when it is nearly eleven at night. It’s just part of who the man they call Vyper is.

"Pretty good, Ry…we won, anyway." Aaron comments to Lt. Ryan Wakefield, a former ELINT Sgt. who became an F-16 pilot, then was roped into flying Lancers with Matt out of Ellsworth. To his surprise, Ryan has found he likes the bomber game.

"We've got that Colorado flight tomorrow morning, don't we?" Ryan remembers.

"Yep. Bright and semi-early." Aaron mutters as he starts off towards his quarters.

"I'm gonna go pack." He mumbles as Ryan wanders into Bendix’s room.

The sounds of the two men, starting a game of Ace of Aces, can be heard before the door closes.

"Matt, go to page 170."

On his way to his quarters, Aaron passes his pilot's room, who is another member of the old 137TFW.

Aaron stops, remembers Wahren had wanted to talk to him, turns back and knocks once on the door, then walks in.

"Hey pard." He states as he enters the room.

A man with a wealth of shoulder-length brown-blond hair, well out of USAF regulations, looks up at his younger teammate, his diamond-stud earring reflecting the desk lamp’s light as he does so.

The man known as Wolf grins up at his friend through his thick goatee, his blue eyes dilating slightly as the five-foot-ten pilot sets down the diagnostics sheet he has been going over and looks at his WSO.

"Well, you're still walking, so I guess the game went well." Wahren Morast states matter-of-factly as his eyes adjust to the distance and brighter light from the hallway.

Aaron pulls a face.

"Yeah, it went alright……and dinner with Aubree……well…." Aaron drifts off, and Wahren thinks of how strange it is that Aaron should have run into her out here, when the two Eagles have come to Alaska on business. They came to this, the largest of the states, for two reasons.

Number one, they are to show off the capabilities of the new Strike Eagle to the pilots here, number two, the hidden agenda, important to the ETF, to check on a new team that has caught their attention.

No surprise to either of them, Wahren and Aaron find out it is two old friends, Matt and Ryan, whom they have known for years.

Therefore, Aaron and Wahren are evaluating the pair for entrance into their unit, which is expanding now that the 1984-emplaced governmental size restraints have been done away with, due to the "official" disbandment of the 137TFW.

Though the 137th has been officially disbanded, the ETF has been getting more Black Budget funding than ever, though none of them feel like asking where the funds are really coming from, and the ETF are even retrofitting a new base of operations, while expanding personnel. Their goal as a team has changed. They are no longer an all around anti-terrorism force ground force, but have become a bit less specialized, and many of the team have begun focusing on the deadly art of aerial warfare.

Matt and Ryan are definitely going to be a part of the team, Aaron and Wahren have decided, and the remaining original members agree with them, especially after the B.S. session two nights ago, when Matt and Aaron came up with a revolutionary idea for a new weapon for the ETF.

All that remains is for the mountain of paperwork dealing with their security clearances to get properly processed. If nothing untoward appears on either man’s checks, the FBI and CIA will send the ETF headquarters a message, clearing them to join at the team’s discretion. Though getting just a top secret clearance can take weeks, going this deep into the BlackOps world, getting a TS-4 Blue clearance, means basically ceasing to exist, and requires such an extensive background check that it normally takes three to four months to clear a person.

Things were easier in the old days, Wahren thinks, the 137TFW volunteers just had to sign up, and the government made up cover stories to explain why they no longer existed in the normal stream of things.

However, the ETF veterans that have rejoined thus far have decided that since the Government is dropping so many "helpful" people in their laps, the Eagles will take advantage of this, the former 137TFW members have managed to get all the people they are currently looking at, as well as those the believe they may some day be, started on their clearances, and the first three, ElTito, Vyper, and Warlock, should have theirs done any day now. Then it will be each of the prospective new Eagles’ decision whether or not to join.

"Did you get everything all filed and planned out for our flight tomorrow?" Aaron asks his friend.

"Yeah. We're all set to go. We've got to make a stop at Hill AFB, though, both to pick up that F-20 we asked for, and to get saddled with a hitchhiker."

Aaron groans.

"Which agency this time?" Aaron asks. He is sick and tired of all the governmental agencies dropping advisors or evaluators in on them. It is a wonder the ETF has managed to get anything done at all, let alone remain secret.

"NSA. Another evaluator."

"Ungh." Aaron groans. In the six short months since the ETF has become a separate entity, the FBI, CIA, DIA, DOD, Joint Chiefs, and members from each of the military services have evaluated them. They have also received truckloads of advisors to "help" them with their setting up shop.

Matt Hunter, at one point, had locked ten of them in a storage closet, just to get the free time to set up the ETF's new mainframe.

"I'm seriously toying with the idea of having the President declare me legally insane so I can throw every last one of them out into the snow, quite possibly never to be heard from again." Aaron muses.

"They'll just come back in greater forces. We're the hot topic for the moment. Besides, Matt managed to get all of them cleared out before he went off to Europe."

"Let's try and keep it that way."

"I'm going to get some dinner, and call it a night." Wahren answers, looking at his clock.

It is already 2300hrs.

Before he can get up from his desk, the phone rings.

Wahren glares at the ringing device for a moment, then picks up the handset. He hears the familiar electronic squalling before the line clears that tells him this is a secure call.

"This is Wolf." He states as the line clears, then he listens for a moment, nods, says "Okay, Shaba", and hangs up.

"Hunter says the clearances are good for our boys, Vyper did something irresponsible with a car in ’79, but that’s it. He’ll have their Ids ready when we get to GM. They can come to the Complex with us if they join now." Wahren tells the taller man.

After hearing this, Aaron bids his friend goodnight and heads back to Bendix’s quarters, where the two men are still playing Aces, and informs them of the news.

They both join up as soon as he is done speaking, and burst out the celebratory beers.

Three hours later, Aaron looks at the clock on Matt Bendix’s desk and notes the 0200hrs time.

Aaron groans as he heads to his quarters.

The two McDonnell Douglas F-15E's line up at the end of the tarmac at Elmendorf, each aircraft revving its twin Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofans up to full thrust.

The two pilots request clearance from the tower, and, as soon as it is granted, Matt Bendix takes his toes off his F-15E's brakes, and the sleek fighter-bomber roars down the runway, reaching two hundred knots before ElTito pulls the stick back to his stomach, standing the Strike Eagle on its tail.

Once the '15E goes vertical, its unusual white, gray, and black Arctic test camo becomes apparent against the bright blue sky.

Matt retracts the Tazmaniac's gear as soon as they leave the runway.

"Showoff." Wahren mutters as the other Strike Eagle disappears into the low cloud deck at five thousand feet.

"C'mon, Wolf, where are you?" Ryan calls tauntingly over the radio.

Wahren kicks in Eagle One's afterburners and releases the brakes as he keys the radio.

In the rear pit, Aaron has custom-built a rig that allows his CD player to jack into the plane’s intercom system, without overriding the crew’s communications.

While Wahren punches in the afterburners, the sounds of a live recording of Aerosmith and Bon Jovi performing "Walk this Way" from a live show in Milton Keynes last month flood over the intercom. Wahren releases the brakes as the legendary Joe Perry intro riff kicks in.

"Don't worry, Vyper, we'll be there in a minute. Valder and I have to cover for Tito's lackluster takeoff. We of the ETF have a reputation to uphold, here." Wahren remarks as he manipulates the flight controls, gently lifting the F-15E's tires off the pavement. "We’ll let you slide this time, ‘cause this is your first day as members."

Wahren retracts the Strike Eagle's landing gear as he calls back to Aaron in the WSO pit.

"You might want to find something to hold on to." Wahren warns.

Aaron opens his mouth to make a response just as Wahren snap rolls the '15E through three rotations to the right, then levels off and pulls into a split-S, roaring down the runway inverted.

Aaron’s comment is swallowed as he is pressed back in his seat.

Wahren rolls the F-15E onto its left wing and pulls around in a high-G turn, condensation trails streaming off the aircraft's wings.

After pulling through a full five-hundred-and-forty-degree turn, Wahren roars down the runway once more in the departure direction, then mimics Matt's maneuver, pulling Eagle One's nose skyward in a zoom climb.

Watching from above, Matt and Ryan see the display, then their missile lock warning begins blaring in their ears seconds later.

"Damn. ElTito, Valder's got us locked up. Let's give 'em a run for it." Ryan comments as he turns on the electronic counter measures, or ECM, and radar jammers in Tazmaniac's cockpit.

After doing so, Ryan looks around outside the bubble canopy of his WSO station as Matt heads the Strike Eagle for forty thousand feet.

"All right, I've got 'em. Wolf and Valder just popped through the clouds, about two miles back, on our seven." Ryan calls forward as he sees the battleship gray Eagle One roar out of the clouds.

"Roge, I've got 'em." Matt replies as he puts Tazmaniac through a clearing turn to the left.

"Wahren, try and keep those boys at altitude. They've got our radar pretty well jammed for the moment, and we'll lose them visually against the snow with that paint scheme of theirs."

"Roge, I was planning on it. Watch this." Wahren comments as he dips the Strike Eagle back into the clouds.

While he does so, Aaron activates his own jammers, effectively making Matt and Ryan blind.

He then switches on a new anti-jammer Matt Hunter and Wahren have come up with.

Once the new device powers up, Aaron's radar screen clears, showing the dot of Tazmaniac above and ahead of them.

"Wahren, they’re at our one o’ clock high, two miles and closing, heading one-eight-zero degrees."

"I've got 'em. Burners coming up." Wahren comments as the Strike Eagle hits Mach .95

"Feet wet." Aaron calls out as his moving map display shows the Strike Eagle heading out over the Pacific Ocean.

When they pass ten miles out from land a few seconds later, Aaron calls out to Wahren, "Clear for Mach."

"Burners up." Wahren calls back as he kicks in the afterburners and sends the F-15E hurtling past Mach 1.

"I just love going supersonic." Wahren states with a smirk as they quickly overtake Tazmaniac.

"Mach 2." Aaron calls as the Strike Eagle breaks through 1,400 miles an hour in level flight.

Wahren pulls back slightly on the stick to give himself and Aaron a quick view above the clouds. Only the top of Eagle One's canopy and much of her twin tails are visible above the cloud layer.

"Duh-nu, duh-na, duh-na." Aaron quips the theme from "Jaws" over the radio.

Wahren dips them back into the clouds as he estimates their overtake time.

"Give 'em a call." Wahren radios as he pulls back on the stick, climbing the F-15E at a fifty-degree angle.

"ElTito, Vyper, check six." Aaron calls over to the other aircraft as Eagle One roars over Tazmaniac at over Mach 2, missing the other aircraft by about two hundred yards.

Ryan looks around outside as Aaron's "Jaws" theme comes over the radio. He barely sees the tip of a tail as the Strike Eagle dips back into the cloud cover behind and below them.

"Matt." He starts to call as Aaron's voice comes over the radio.

"ElTito, Vyper, check six."

Ryan's head whips around to look behind them as the large grey strike fighter roars out of the cloudbanks towards them.

"Sunuva…" Ryan mutters as he gets a glimpse of the sixty-foot long aircraft as it flashes by.

Tazmaniac rocks slightly in the wake from Eagle One as Bendix kicks in his own afterburners to give chase. While Matt and Ryan look ahead to get a visual lock on the speeding aircraft, they see Wahren performing a slow victory roll, as if Eagle One is laughing at them.

Wahren pulls out of his roll and levels Eagle One out.

"Hey, bro, want to build some stick time?" He calls back to his WSO.

"Hmm....lemme think." Aaron mutters facetiously as he grabs the flight stick in the rear seat of the F-15E. The Strike Eagle has been designed with dual controls so that either crewman can fly in the case of an emergency.

"All right, I've got the plane." Aaron calls as he shakes the control stick, "Where are they?"

Wahren takes his hands off the stick and throttle, puts them on the canopy rail, and twists around, scanning the sky around them.

"Six low." Wahren calls out as Aaron does a clearing turn, and Tazmaniac comes into view from the blind spot beneath Eagle One's fuselage.

Aaron turns his head to look where Wahren has indicated.

"Tally-ho, I've got 'em." He calls out as he pulls the Strike Eagle into a hard left towards Tazmaniac, pulling back on the stick and putting in opposing rudder to keep the turn tight.

Aaron lines up the nose of his Strike Eagle on Tazmaniac's large surface area.

Seeing this, Matt rolls Tazmaniac over and dives for the deck.

The dogfight is on.

*********************************************************************

The aircraft can be heard all along the beach, and the worshippers of the sun pause in their ablutions, swimming, volleyball, and courting as they scan the sky for the source of the noise. These men and women are the dedicated followers of the sun god, for, though it is the coastline in a southern locale, it is still February, and the air temperature is in the low to mid sixties, the water a bit cooler.

Coming across the Gulf after having left Fort Worth, Texas three hours earlier, the single warplane is approaching the western coastline of Florida from a two thousand foot altitude, though at the moment it is still five miles away from the beach in question. The aircraft is a one-of-a-kind research testbed that this pilot will be delivering to Edwards AFB later in the year to begin its testing…but first she feels the imperative to give it a shakedown cruise.

The sun flooding into the cockpit through the bubble canopy of the sleek, single-engined, single tailed fighter warms the woman inside, who takes the sun’s caress in the same mental state as that of a roaring fire on a cold night, relieving some of the stresses of the last few months from her lithe body as she relaxes in the twenty-degree reclined ejection seat and steers the aircraft towards the peninsular state.

Carmen "Mikki" Ritter, one of the surviving members of the 137TFW, smiles from behind her yellow-tinted sunglasses as the beach comes into view ahead.

Almost home She thinks as she starts to manipulate the F-16XL Cranked Arrow’s controls, setting up for a descent into MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa. As the next generation fighter roars over the beach, Carmen can see the sunbathers below looking up at her, and the smile widens.

Pushing the right-side mounted control stick over to the right, and pulling back on the throttles with her left hand, Ritter puts the Cranked Arrow into a diving bank to the south, dropping to within four hundred feet of the beach as she decides to put on an impromptu airshow for the people at Clearwater Beach.

With a flick of her right wrist, Carmen places the F-16XL on its right wing, and advances the throttles while pulling back on the stick.

The ultra-responsive double-redundant fly-by-wire technology puts the former SCAMP (Supersonic Cruise and Maneuvering Prototype) designated vehicle into a tight, 7G turn just off the beach, keeping the fighter safely over the water as she completes an extremely tight turn. As the Cranked Arrow turns in a tight radius, the air is compressed into fingers of white vapor that streams over the wings from the wing root and wingtips, and the aircraft’s natural-metal finish reflects the sun dazzlingly.

At the completion of the turn, Carmen heads southbound again, putting the maneuverable aircraft through a series of rolls as she climbs into the clear blue central Florida sky.

Once she reaches ten thousand feet, Mikki rolls the aircraft inverted and dives back towards the water and sand below, pulling up at about a hundred and fifty feet off the shallow waves.

After leveling the aircraft out, she performs an eight-point roll as she flashes down the beach, her fighter pausing every forty-five degrees as she rolls it through the full three hundred and sixty back to wings-level.

Openly laughing now in the extreme freedom and sheer fun of flying this modern fighter, she sees the crowd on the beach standing and pointing in her direction.

Carmen pulls the stick full back after rolling onto her left wing this time, and pulls into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree combat turn, intentionally losing altitude as she moves the jet out to a half-mile away from the beach.

When Ritter rolls the Cranked Arrow back wings-level after this turn, the supersonic multi-role testbed is less than fifty feet off the water.

On her last two passes, Carmen scanned the water near the beach to be sure that none of the usual parasailers, jet skiers, or tour boats in her path. Having fun is all well and good, but it wouldn’t be fun if she managed to injure or kill someone while showing off. However, none of the above obstructions have appeared on any of her passes.

Smiling broadly in anticipation of what she is about to do, the aviatrix known as Mikki advances the F-16XL’s throttles with her left hand, until she has reached full military power, and the air and ground attack-superiority fighter roars down the coastline, sending up a rooster-tail of water as the high-performance jet blazes past the beach crowd at .95 Mach, Carmen laughing at the top of her lungs as she kicks up the wall of water.

Knowing that she cannot improve on this last pass, Carmen Ritter pulls the jet back to a more FAA-respectable altitude and contacts MacDill’s tower, and she is soon setting up in the pattern for landing, the brushed-metal finish of the exotic one-of-a-kind aircraft drawing a crowd at the Air Force Base as she brings the testbed in for a landing.

Within twenty minutes, Ritter has landed, taxied the F-16XL into a secured hangar beside a pair of KC-135s, debriefed, and is heading for her apartment, which is in the area she has just shown off for.

Carmen pulls her white 1989 Porsche 911 Carrera convertible into her apartment complex’s subterranean parking garage, grabs her flight bag, and heads for the elevator.

After waiting for the machine to deliver her to the twelfth floor, Carmen steps out of the elevator with her keys in her hand, and turns to the westernmost of the four doors on the floor.

Unlocking her front door, Ritter steps into her apartment, which is the size of a small house, and has three large six-by-ten-foot picture windows overlooking the beach below.

Carmen’s apartment is done in rich tones, the walls white, the carpets and much of the livingroom furniture in tan, drapes in blue. It is a comfortable-looking apartment, an irony, since Ritter spends less than thirty days a year in the apartment.

Carmen stands before the large windows for a moment, letting the sunlight warm her five-eight body as she watches the people frolic in the water below.

Originally intending to get some lunch, Carmen stretches like a cat in front of the window while deciding to go for a swim, and work on her tan.

After having made this decision, Carmen strips off her flight suit and tosses it into the laundry hamper in her closet as she walks into her bedroom, rummaging through the third drawer of her dresser as she searches through the bathing suits there, trying to decide which to wear.

After a moment, she decides upon a metallic blue bikini with a high-cut thigh and sportsbra-style top.

Once she has laid her swimsuit out on her bed, Carmen pulls off her bra and panties, then walks into the bathroom to get a beach towel and her suntan lotion.

Ritter applies the suntan lotion over her body, spending extra time on her long legs and slim arms, as she has learned that even half an hour in the Florida sun can turn her skin as red as a lobster.

After applying the lotion, Carmen pulls on her bikini and evaluates herself in the mirror.

Her long brown hair, still held back in a ponytail from her flight, hangs down her back to the top of her bikini bottoms, well out of the Air Force regulation shoulder-length, and the cut of her two piece suit shows off her athletic form, with her toned abs and ample chest, to advantage. For the most part, Carmen can pass as a beach volleyball player, though her expressive brown eyes belie a more worldly experience, both good and bad, than a woman twice her age, thanks to her adventures with the Eagles.

Looking at her reflection, Carmen feels something looks a little off. She reaches up and pulls her long hair out of its ponytail, shaking her head to loosen her long hair and allow it to fall freely across her shoulders and down her back. She then slips on her sunglasses and gives her reflection a coy little smile. Perfect.

Every man who has met her would be surprised to learn that she is single, and, to be honest, she has no problem finding men interested in her, but finding men who can understand her career choice is a bit more difficult, and, to this point, nigh on impossible.

On that train of thought, Carmen picks up her keys, lotion, and towel off her bed and heads back for the elevator, thinking over the conversation she and Matt Hunter had earlier in the week, when the former ETF commander called to inform her of the team’s reactivation.

Carmen loves all the people in the old 137TFW dearly, and loves being around them, but being shot at and risking her life on a monthly basis is starting to lose its novelty.

She had told Matt that she would think over re-joining the group, and call him back after weighing the pros and cons.

Sure, she lives well with the money they had made off the Concorde mission, but it is a somewhat solitary existence, though in a paradise setting whenever she is here at the apartment.

Most of the men, and in truth, she admits to herself after a moment as the elevator descends to the main level of the complex, here in Florida are looking for one thing, so making friends, or long-term relationships of any kind, is hard for the female warrior, especially since she has a hard time relating to the complacent, and therefore often boring, people here. They know they live in a great place, and have no inclination to look beyond their own little world, for the most part, and this is as alien a viewpoint to Carmen as women seem to be to most men.

As she walks through the back door of the apartment complex and feels the warm sand beneath and between her toes, Carmen Ritter decides to forgo thinking for a few minutes, and just enjoy her surroundings, momentarily becoming of a like mind to those she professes not to understand.

Matt Bendix and Aaron Fieldman grin as they walk out of the single large building on the premises, stepping out onto the loaned piece of tarmac at Offutt Air Force base. Spread out before them is an assortment of over forty propeller and jet driven fighters, bombers, tankers, and trainers, as well as some helicopters and recon platforms.

This is the SAC Museum, and a very special lady awaits them here.

The centerpiece of the Museum’s collection is a massive bomber that never dropped a bomb in warfare. It is a distinctive aircraft, with its six nineteen-foot-diameter three-bladed pusher propellers, four J79 turbofan engines on twin outboards pods, two engines to a pod, one pod per wing. The aircraft also has four large bomb bays, and boasts a wingspan nearly twice the length of the Wright Brothers’ hundred and twenty foot first flight, with the massive bomber’s wingspan weighing in at an impressive two hundred and thirty feet.

The two men stand quietly a moment, looking at the Convair-built aircraft, the B-36 Peacemaker, model B-36J-I-CF 52-2217, which was flown here on April 23^rd, 1957 after being placed in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson, Arizona just two months earlier. One of the only four Peacemakers to survive the ignominious fate of the rest of the Peacemakers, which were all stripped of their engines and other useable equipment, including the crash axes, which have gone on to fly with the B-52 fleet, as well as all the instrumentation the higher-ups declared sensitive, before sitting out in the hot Arizona sun before being chopped up and smelted into ingots. This was the fate of nearly all of the 385 B-36s built.

Their moment of silence is broken as Ryan Wakefield catches up to them, lugging an eighty-pound wet/dry vacuum along with him ad swearing beneath his breath.

"You two could help, y’know." He grumbles.

"What would be the fun in that?" Bendix asks him.

The three men have volunteered for the week to help the SAC Museum crew clean up many of their aircraft, as they are going to be opened up for the public, as they are every year around this time, for an event known as the "SAC Crawl-Through".

The three men have decided to tackle the B-36 first, then work their way over to the B-52and C-119, three of the seven aircraft on their list for the week, which also includes the B-25, B-17, B-29, and KC-97, supposedly to be done at the rate of one aircraft per day.

The three men plan to spend most of that time exploring and doing research on the ’36.

As the trio of aviators near the massive Peacemaker, Aaron unlocks the Master Lock holding the front gear well closed, and then expertly opens the gear doors and lowers the crew ladder.

Ryan gives him a quizzical glance as the ladder is fully unfolded.

"Matt and I used to volunteer summers here back in high school." Aaron explains his familiarity with the big aircraft away with a shrug.

Ryan nods as if unsurprised, then startles Aaron and Matt by scurrying past them, up the ladder, and into the B-36’s lower crew compartment.

"Guess we get to help out with the vac after all." Aaron mutters with a grin at his friend’s speed into the behemoth.

"Hurry up, you two, it’s so cool in here!" Ryan’s voice floats down to them.

Exchanging a glance, Matt and Aaron heft the multipurpose vacuum, Matt pulling from above while Aaron pushes from below while the two men struggle up the ladder.

When Aaron is about halfway up, and Matt is trying to turn his body to enter the small door to the crew compartment, Bendix looses his grip on the handle and the vac falls a few inches before a startled Aaron manages to compensate for the extra weight and steady it.

"Whoops." Matt comments as he re-grabs the vacuum and hauls it into the crew compartment.

"Can see the headlines now, " Aaron grunts as he pushes the vacuum in the crew door, "Special Operative Aaron Fieldman was killed today when his teammate dropped a wet/dry vac on his head while they were volunteering to clean aircraft at the SAC Museum in Bellevue, Nebraska."

"Quit whining you big baby." Ryan taunts him as he and Matt lug the vacuum into the B-36.

Aaron just grumbles in response, sticking out his tongue at Ryan as he climbs into the lowest crew compartment in the massive bomber.

All three men have to hunch slightly in the lower compartment, as the B-36 was not built with aviators six feet tall or taller in mind. All three men are drawn towards the bomber’s nose, where the glass front affords a great view ahead of them, a view that is interrupted after about fifty feet by the B-17 Flying Fortress parked ahead of them. After standing there watching the other volunteers head towards their assigned aircraft, their noses pressed to the B-36’s nose glass like a trio of small children, the three men eventually pull themselves away from the front of the aircraft and start cleaning the lower level of the front crew compartment, glancing every few moments over their shoulder at the view beyond the glass.

While they are cleaning, the three men are also taking photos and making notes in small flip notebooks they have brought along for this purpose, writing down ways of updating the classic vehicle.

Soon the bottom is as clean as it is going to get without a full ground-up restoration, and the three men climb the four steps on the right side rear of the compartment to the main cockpit, which rests under a half-globe shaped, metal-supported glass canopy, the metal forming a grid like pattern of reinforcement which, surprisingly, still offers an amazingly unobstructed three hundred and sixty degree view outside the top of the aircraft.

Matt dives into the pilot’s seat as soon as he is in the cockpit, Aaron grabs the co-‘s seat, and Ryan drops into one of the two flight engineers positions directly behind them, looking backwards towards the aircraft’s massive tail assembly, over one hundred feet away.

All three men take a moment to enjoy the unprecedented visibility, normally something found in fighter aircraft, rarely in heavy bombers, and the trio imagine what it must have been like to pilot this beast.

Unfortunately, there are no airworthy B-36s anywhere in the world. At least, not yet, though there is one in Texas that is nearly so. And another, which, with a lot of man-hours, can be made so.

Soon the three men are back to writing copious notes in their notebooks, and taking pictures of the cockpit instruments, as well as the view out the canopy, from every possible angle.

Matt and Aaron are soon involved in a discussion about the best hypothetical way to turn the cockpit before them into a modernized "glass cockpit" with MFD displays and HUD systems, so Ryan wanders back down the steps and tugs experimentally on a three foot diameter left-hinged circular door on the right rear, when facing back towards the tail, of the lower compartment, just past the steps to the cockpit on the same side of the aircraft, and the door opens to reveal a long tunnel with a small railed sled and guide wire.

"Oh, hell yes!" Ryan’s exclamation drifts up to the cockpit, rousing the other two aviators from their reverie.

"Yeeeehaaaaww." Wakefield’s voice tapers off into the distance as Bendix and Fieldman dive out of the cockpit and find the open tunnel door.

"Well, he found the communications tube." Matt comments.

"Better get back to that rear compartment before he goes hog-wild." Aaron responds as the two pilots pull the sled back towards them through the eighty-five foot long communications tunnel.

Soon Aaron and Matt are in the rear compartment with Ryan, d the picture- and note-taking resume, with periods of cleaning in between. Eight hours later, after having crawled over and photographed every accessible inch of the aircraft, including the four bomb bays and tail area, the three Eagles once again lower the vacuum out of the crew ladder, this time volunteering Ryan to go first and support it.

Over the next six days, while working on the other six aircraft on their list, the men keep sneaking back to the B-36 to measure width of fuselage, verify placement of certain items, or just hang out in their new collective favorite aircraft.

At the end of their week, Aaron purchases a 1/72 scale model of the B-36 from the SAC Museum’s gift shop to construct as a visual aid they have discussed, should they ever be able to get their hands on a B-36, which Bendix’s contact, The Miller, has told them they will.

Aaron will believe that neat trick when he sees it.

2300 hours local

Marie Cordova watches as two flatbed cars are unhooked from the main train and shunted to a side track, where a new engine is hooked to them.

On the first flatcar, a large tubular object is covered by a dark blue shroud. The object appears to have been partially dismantled, but is still over a hundred feet long.

On the second flatcar are two more massive, and identical, objects covered in another tarp, along with what appears to be a tail assembly of some monstrous aircraft.

The secondary track leads off to the west of the springs, into the Rocky Mountains themselves, and right up to the very side of the ETF's mountain stronghold. The boys, as she’d come to call the two Matts, Aaron, Ryan, and Wahren, had supervised the laying of the track last night and would supervise it’s tearing up within the next week.

The small train starts off in that direction, with Marie riding along in the massive engine with the conductor.

Earlier in the day, a construction crane had been taken up the railway to the mountain. This will place the airframe, which is the cargo behind her, into the larger hangar in the mountain, under the cover of darkness.

Inside the hangar, a support structure and rolling scaffolding have already been placed in preparation for the aircraft’s arrival. Once the flatbed has been unloaded, and the crane has snuggled the battered and weather-beaten fuselage into its new cradle, the process is repeated for the equally bruised and crumpled wing sections, with gaping holes where the engines once resided, and the monstrous tail assembly, with moss and greenery still clinging to it, is also placed into the cocoon-like scaffolds.

Once this task is completed, the train rolls back along the hastily erected track towards Colorado Springs. As it does so, it passes a small convoy of five dump trucks heading towards the mountain, with Matt Bendix, Matt Hunter, Ryan Wakefield, Aaron Fieldman, Wahren Morast riding on their respective forward lips of the dump bins, which hang nearly over the whole cab.

These dump trucks are full of dirt and sod, and have a monumental task ahead of them.

A little over five hours later, the train tracks have been buried by both the new landscaping, as well as one of the frequent, and often quite sudden, as was the case today, snow storms that spring up in the Rocky Mountains.

By this time, Aaron, Wahren, Ryan, and the Matts are crawling all around the scaffolding and the aircraft itself, inspecting the damage to this vehicle that The Miller so recently unearthed in the wilds of Washington, and making up a large shopping list of supplies and components they will need.

The main problem is that many of the components they are looking for have not been used on aircraft in over thirty years….but the men have an answer to this, as well, as they have a list of all the known worldwide crash sites of the sister ships of the sickly-looking behemoth in the hangar before them.

This particular airframe had crashed in Washington on approach to Fairchild AFB back in January of 1952, and, due to the remoteness of its crash site, no one ever bothered to recover the wreckage, and soon the airframe was forgotten about, to be encountered by the occasional hiker. Which is exactly how The Miller had come across the airframe, on a backpacking adventure with some old college friends. He knew Bendix had been looking for this kind of aircraft, and, thus, had written him.

Inspecting the aged aircraft, the five men notice that, although the insides are basically gutted, the fuselage appears sound, most of the sighting blisters are in place, and, as an added bonus, this aircraft crashed too early to have undergone the Featherweight program that stripped the rest of its kind of defensive armament, so the aircraft still has its nose, six fuselage, and tail twin cannon emplacements. The five men exchange grins as they notice this.

While a blizzard begins to brew outside, the five men set to, attaching the wings and tail assembly to the main fuselage, noting that whomever piloted this giant on her last flight managed to pancake into northern Washington with amazingly little damage to the aircraft, save for an obvious tree hit here and there on the wings.

Once this task is completed, the men attach an auxiliary hydraulic pump to the main gear and lower them out of their wing storage areas, then repeat this task with the nose gear. Thanks to the scaffolding, the gear are still about half an inch off the floor of the hangar. Using pressure gauges and an industrial air pump they had found in the amassed junk in the lower areas of the complex, the men check the tires for leaks, and are gratified to notice they only have to replace three main tires and no nose tires. These go onto the "shopping list".

Next the quintet of Eagles crawl all over every inch of the aircraft wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves, using chemical strippers to peel the behemoth’s forty-seven years worth of accumulated grime and corrosion, as well as any old paint, off and reveal the natural finish beneath.

This job finished, Hunter, Wakefield, and Morast set about planning where to get the requisite supplies to start resurrecting this bird, while Bendix and Fieldman set about buffing and polishing the aircraft’s metal finish until it shines. Then all four men, exhausted yet excited, retire for sleep some seventy hours later than they awoke to supervise the vehicle’s arrival.

1908hrs local.

Dusk. The sun slowly sets over the dusty sands of Arizona.

Two men, clad in identical black greatcoats and blue tinted Lennon sunglasses, walk down an aisle of the graveyard.

Suddenly the taller of the two men stops.

"What about this one, G?" He asks, lowering his sunglasses to glance at the hulk in front of him, its four pod-enshrouded engines hanging loosely on the wings, as if gravity is winning the fight to pull them to the earth.

"I dunno, Manochivits, this one looks just as bad as the others."

"Yeah, Mandinga, you may be right, but this one does have the recon attachments."

"If nothing else, she'll be good for her parts." The slightly shorter companion answers, "we might as well tag her."

As if in response, the taller man pulls back his duster from his hip, revealing a slightly beefed-up .45mm Colt pistol. He brings the massive weapon out of its holster and aims at the side of the relic. He fires, and the weapon shudders as it sends its payload airborne.

The capsule hits the side of the ancient warrior and explodes, spreading a radioactive red dye on its fuselage.

"Good shot." The shorter man mumbles as they continue onwards down the line, selecting six more of the massive carcasses.

Then the two men climb back into the taller man's muscle car and fade away into the early morning.

A rumbling thunder fills the normally still Arizona darkness.

Rolling across the desert, their headlights off, a quartet of tractor trailers, two flatbed semis and two flatbeds with construction cranes, as well as an enclosed trailer, a former moving truck, roll towards their destination, dimly silhouetted against the night sky ahead.

The massive formation all follow a 1969 Dodge Charger, its lights also off.

Directly behind the large formation, a lone Hummer speeds along, packed with communications gear. The HumVee is charged with keeping track of all the transmissions of the formation, and it sends periodic reports back to the mission's secret starting place.

The dust kicked up by the formation makes it hard to see the stealthy shapes riding shotgun almost a mile behind the formation.

There are two shotgunners on this mission, one a low-slung, gloss black Lamborghini Countach. The other is a dark blue 1965 Mustang, replete with white racing stripes.

Other than the noise created by the engines of the formation, the only indication of the events taking place is the slightly elevated citizen band radio usage levels.

Back at the Gorilla Mountain Complex, Matthew "Shaba" Hunter is busy monitoring all the transmissions from the group.

He has been monitoring these transmissions since the big rigs were hired for this job some five days ago, and all the radio transmissions are printed on his screen, and automatically on one of the mountain’s dot-matrix printers attached to the group of terminals in the computer center.

Matt sets the printer on standby and stands up to go grab some dinner.

He opens the door to the computer center and starts to walk across the high catwalk that houses two NASA aircraft, the X-29A and YF-17. Though the DOD has just loaned the complex to the Eagles, after the successful completion of that anti-terrorism campaign on the Concorde last year, the Air Force has been storing prototype aircraft here some time in the past, and had asked the ETF’s permission to add the aircraft to the collection. The Eagles had acquiesced, and mounted the forward swept-wing demonstrator and F/A-18 Hornet forbear on the catwalk that spans the upper cavern.

The five men drift in and out of the shadows created by the mammoth carcasses of aviation lore around them.

Like scavengers, the men move from aircraft to aircraft, pulling equipment from a cockpit here, an aerial array from a fuselage there, as they mark off items on their lists.

All five men have to keep their minds on their duties, as any of them would gladly spend hours just wandering among the miles of aircraft stored here.

However, their being here isn’t exactly above board, and they have a certain time frame to fit into. After all, the guard they bribed to get into the facility will be relieved at 0700, so they have no time to waste. Luckily, the flat desert and little vegetation will give them notice of any approaching outsiders in vehicles.

The low beams of their flashlights play over the vehicles in retirement, and, occasionally, the bright blue light of a butane torch can be seen, or the sound of a drill or hammer will reverberate through the pre-dawn silence as the drivers of the big rigs, who have been generously compensated for their help and silence, loosen equipment to add to the already-stocked pile of mismatched parts. The five men, the only members of the ETF on the premises, keep an eye on their hired help while scanning for items of opportunity, as well as occasionally adding items of personal interest for future projects, like a pair of D-21 drones or an entire F-111 ejection capsule, to the trucks’ loads. The urge to "impulse acquire" is almost overwhelming.

Like kids in a candy store, the five men laugh nervously as their eyes sweep the landscape around them, waiting at any moment to be discovered as they scavenge parts for the vehicle they are ultimately constructing.

Eventually, all of the machinery finds its way to the back of the tractor trailers the men brought with them. Less than three hours after their arrival, the men pile into the HumVee, Charger, Countach, and Mustang and follow the big rigs as they drive off into the desert. They wave to the guard as they roar past without headlights, followed, strangely, by the sounds of the Monkees greatest hits album, the current track, "Daydream Believer", hanging on the air like perfume after a woman’s exit.

The Airman on guard duty shakes his head as the last sight and sounds of the exotic high performance cars and cargo-laden trucks disappear in the distance.

He then feels the one hundred-dollar bill in his pocket and grins.

Besides, they are attached to the DOD, after all. He saw their ID’s as the curly-haired one reached into his wallet for the bill. It isn’t the craziest thing he’s seen on the graveyard shift. Not by a long shot.

The guard turns his attention back to the little portable TV in the shack with him.

The Boneyard is quiet once more.

Carmen "Mikki" Ritter looks over at Matt Hunter with a wry expression as they strap their swimming fins on. Beside Matt, Marie Cordova is struggling to get the straps for her oxygen tank to fit comfortably on her shoulders.

"I decide to rejoin the group, and your idea of fun is to drag me and this rookie out here and go diving into a lake in the middle of the night?" Carmen queries.

"Hey!" Marie starts to protest, but Ritter’s look stops her cold, leaving her grumbling under her breath.

"You were already in the area, Mikki, besides, what did you expect me to do, leave her in the Mountain all by herself while we’re out here? I bet her superiors would love that opportunity. No thanks, I’m keeping her where I can keep an eye on her, no matter what Fieldman, Wakefield, and Matt say. Nevermind the fact that Ryan and Aaron swim about as well as pigs fly." Matt replies as the two wetsuit-clad Eagles pick up their high-powered underwater lights and cutting torches, motioning at Cordova to follow them, Besides, he thinks, you two look a hell of a lot better in wetsuits.

Verbally, he adds, "Where’s your sense of adventure?"

"I left it in my other pants." Carmen replies as she, Marie, and Matt wade into Lake Fort Worth.

"What, exactly, are we looking for, anyway?" Marie asks the two Eagles. Carmen looks at the NSA agent as if to say you’re still here?, then turns back to Matt.

"Our imposition seems to have a point, Hunter. What are we doing here?" Ritter comments as she starts to put on her goggles and oxygen mask, ignoring the venomous glance from Cordova.

Matt rolls his eyes as he catches the interplay between the two women, realizing this trip might end up giving him a headache at best.

"Back in September of ’49, a plane crashed here heading back to Carswell. Most reports say the Air Force recovered the wreckage, but people have been reporting parts coming ashore for fifty years, and I was only able to find confirmed reports of the aircraft’s wing being salvaged. We’re gonna see if there’s anything useful, and on our little shopping list we all have copies of, left down here after all those years."

"We’re not archeologists, Matt. At least, we weren’t last thing I knew. Is that one of these changes you were telling me about on the phone?"

"We’ve always handled sensitive missions, right? This time, the hidden agenda is ours, not someone else’s. Just trust me on this one."

"Last time I did that, I ended up hung over and naked in that hotel in Puerto Viallarta." Carmen responds playfully.

Matt just grins in reply, remembering the vacation the two of them had taken after the completion of the Heaven’s Pass mission in 1985.

Marie looks at the two of them as if starting to understand Ritter’s attitude towards her. If either Eagle catches the look, they don’t show it as they secure their masks and dive into the waters, which suddenly look eerily dark in the moonless night.

Sighing heavily into her mask, Marie shrugs her shoulders and plunges into the lake herself, following the trail of bubbles kicked up by the pair of swimmers ahead of her as they dive towards the lake’s bottom.

Surprisingly, the search doesn’t take very long. After only about five minutes of casting around with their lights once they reach to lake’s bed, the three divers catch a glint of metal reflecting their light back at them, and soon a huge tarnished-silver shape looms out of the lake depths before them as they swim towards the reflection.

The nose of the monstrous aircraft is smashed like an empty soda can, probably a result of its collision with the lake above, and sits about thirty feet away from the remains of the main fuselage.

The three divers swim around the massive wreck a few times before consulting their laminated cards strapped to the left thigh of their wetsuits, looking over the "shopping list" that was prepared after an inspection of their airframe in the mountain.

Soon, along with larger pieces of wing skin and rudder, about two dozen smaller components have been removed from the sunken aircraft and placed upon a lifting grid, which, with the help of attached floatation balloons on all the sides, lift the salvaged pieces to the surface, where the three adventurers winch the pieces onto the back of a rented flatbed, to be driven to a waiting C-141 Starlifter waiting at Carswell Air Force Base. Once the Starlifter is loaded, Hunter will fly the aircraft back to the mountain to be unloaded, which will also give Carmen her first look at the mountain complex.

"Maybe we should have gone with Hunter." Matt Bendix opines as he trips over another hidden tree root while he and Aaron Fieldman near the forty-six year-old crash site. Behind them, Ryan Wakefield and Wahren Morast keep checking their compasses, the map Wahren carries, and their watches, as both men figure they should have found their target by now.

"This is why we never let you navigate anywhere…gimme that map." Ryan comments as he takes the contour map from the longer-haired aviator, who sticks out his tongue as Ryan turns to orient himself and the map.

"Forests aren’t my domain, anyway. I don’t even like the woods." Wahren comments defensively to Aaron and Matt ahead, who have stopped to look back at the other men’s bickering. Both men just stare at him.

"What?"

"Dude, you’re from Minnesota!" Bendix comments.

"So? Just ‘cause I’m from the north everyone figures I like cold and trees. You probably think I sit around swilling beer and watching hockey all the time. Well, I do like hockey…" Morast trails off as they come to a small clearing between trees and see the vista ahead of them.

"Wow." Wahren comments, and the other three men can only nod in agreement as they look into the lush green valley that reflects the light of the newly-risen sun from thousands of pieces of debris strewn about the area, even up the hill they are standing on, which is to the west of the largest pieces of the wreckage, most recognizable among them being about twenty feet of the vertical stabilizer and most of the right horizontal stabilizer at the bottom of the valley, near the hill opposite that which they have just crested. From where they stand, the four men can also see a large portion of one wing to the east near a gully, piston and jet engines nearby, and even one of the gun turrets can be made out in the valley. Just below them as they descend the ridge, they are soon able to make out the forward fuselage of the aircraft, which Aaron assures them was once a massive bomber.

From the wreckage, Wahren has assumed it to be two or three aircraft.

"Still think we should’ve gone with Hunter?" Aaron asks with a grin.

"Well, a moonlit lake is always a fun experience, you should try a night swim sometime." Wahren comments.

"Not me, pal, kinda hard to drown on dry land, so that’s where I’ll stay." Fieldman replies, then gestures around them. "Besides, we’ve got the better scenery."

"Didn’t you tell me Ritter was hot….and we both know about you and Marie."

"Oh, shuddup." Aaron replies with a roll of his eyes.

"I know I’d rather spend my time with two good-looking women than traipsing through the frozen north with you three…" Wakefield starts, then something the four men had discussed on the flight up from Colorado suddenly returns to the forefront of his thoughts.

"Didn’t you say this aircraft was famous or something?" He asks the tallest of the four aviators as they navigate through the trees to reach the valley below.

"Infamous might be a better word. This is the aircraft General Ellsworth was flying when he, and the rest of his crew, died during a low level flight back to South Dakota from the Azores. They got off course and slammed into that ridge over there." Matt comments, pointing.

"Ellsworth…wait, that’s the guy the bomber base in South Dakota is named after." Wahren comments.

"Was Rapid City Air Force Base beforehand." Aaron adds.

The four aviators look around them in a more profound sense of awe as they emerge onto the valley floor, knowing they are standing amidst history.

However, the four men only stand in subdued silence for a few moments before they realize that if they can find this place, then the residents around here certainly know of it, and probably come here often, or, at least, the aviation enthusiasts among the local population. Which means the Eagles need to get a move on if they are going to get the parts they need and get them out of here without arousing too much suspicion. The best way to not arouse suspicion, they have found, is to not be noticed. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done in this case, as they have Joe "Apache" Strano, another of the original members of the ETF, standing by down in Clarenville with a Sikorsky CH-54A Tarhes, also known as the Sky Crane, which is not new to the aircraft business, as many of its type were used to airlift crashed planes in Vietnam. This particular CH-54 has the cargo pod attached, as well.

As soon as the four men have located the pieces they are looking for, and managed to harvest the smaller pieces on their list and collect them in one pile, they call in Joe and the Sky Crane, watching in amazement as the seventy-foot long rotorcraft lowers into the valley, winching the cargo pod to the floor of the valley, where Ryan and Aaron climb atop it and disconnect the hook that attaches it to the Tarhes. Joe then maneuvers the 72-foot diameter rotor-equipped machine to hover above a large section of wing tip Wahren and Matt have cut off the remains of a wing, and waits for the two to loop the hook and cable around the portion before completely severing it from the rest of the airfoil. Once this is done, the Tarhes lifts the large portion of wing as if it were a paperweight, and carries it over to the cargo pod, into which Aaron and Ryan guide it.

Within an hour, the parts are stowed in the pod, and the Tarhes lands to re-winch the container into place, also allowing the four men to squeeze into the three-person cockpit for the short hop back towards the airfield the C-5A is waiting at, ready for them to fly it and their salvage back to Colorado.

*****************************************************************

May 19, 19891330hrs local

Offutt AFB, Nebraska

Aaron, Matt, and Stacy wander across the tarmac, all three in their flightsuits, looking at the various aircraft on display, and talking with the pilots who are still near their planes.

Mike is back with the AC-130, talking with the crowd, any number of which will be around the tall aviator as he patiently answers their questions about his craft.

With a thunderous roar, a C-5B Galaxy lifts off of the runway, looking like it is about to fall out of the sky, as it begins its demonstration in front of the crowds, which number in the hundreds of thousands this afternoon.

"Sounds like my cue." Aaron tells his friends as they start to head towards the runway themselves.

The C-5 will do its demonstration, then the Confederate Air Force will do their thing, to be followed by Aaron and his A-10.

"Don't have too much fun up there." Stacy comments as Aaron shows his performer pass and ducks under the crowd restraint line and walks towards his Warthog.

"I'd rather stay here and catch up with you. Watch out for Matt, he's got quick hands." Aaron informs Stacy with an evil grin to the ETF's former C/O.

Aaron marches off to the Thunderbolt II's side and performs a quick walk-around of the jet before climbing the fuselage to the cockpit to start his pre-flight checklists.

In the crowd, Stacy looks at Matt contemplatively.

"You seem to know Aaron pretty well, how is it that I've never met you?"

"Oh, I've known Aaron for a couple decades now. You could say we've been working together for the last six years. Though work is rarely as much fun, or depressing, as what we've been through together." Hunter replies.

"What exactly are you two doing? I know Aaron was working for the DIA after college, then dropped off the face of the earth until I ran into you two the other day. So what's going on?"

"Um.......I don't really know how much of this I'm at liberty to discuss. Aaron did work for the DIA, as did I, after a fashion, up until late 1983. We still work under the DOD, but at the same time we kinda work for ourselves. He and I came here on a recruiting mission for the group we work with, but the guy we came here to recruit didn't show." Matt evades the question.

"That's pretty vague, Colonel Hunter."

"Call me Matt. It kind of has to be vague. I think I can give you a pointer in the right direction, though. Last year Aaron and I had a pretty busy fall. Do you remember what happened on October 7th and November 10th last year? Let's just say our group had involvement in both of those events."

Stacy thinks for a moment, then her eyes widen as she realizes what had been the biggest news stories around the times Matt has mentioned. She turns towards Hunter as if to ask a question.

"Think real hard before you ask that next question, Captain Anrak. Knowing the answer tends to mean you have to join us, and that no one else is allowed to know what you do. It can lead to a pretty solitary life. That's the downside. I know Aaron wants you to be a part of this, but I felt we need to let you think about it. You pretty much have to give up your prior life. In my case, the upsides way outweigh the down."

"Upsides?" Stacy asks him, "Like what?"

"We have unlimited access to flying hours, a state-of-the-art base of operations, a pretty open-ended budget, as long as you can justify the expenditures, and a complete lack of oversight. That, and we tend to have a lot of fun in our off time." Matt explains, shrugging.

"Hmmm...I'm pretty happy doing what I do...but this sounds interesting. How do I get in contact with you if I decide I want in?" Stacy queries.

As if waiting for a reply, Matt Hunter reaches into his left bicep pocket of his flightsuit and pulls out one of the ETF business cards.

"Got a pen?" He asks Stacy.

She produces one, and Matt writes the numbers 3318 below the toll free contact number.

"That's Aaron's extension. His voicemail is by his callsign, Valder. Give him a call either way, I know he misses you." Matt comments as he hands her the card and pen.

While he hands these items back to Stacy, the unmistakable sound of twin General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofans shatters the summer air, and the two-tone green A-10 Thunderbolt II begins to roll onto the taxiway, the canopy still open, Aaron waving to the crowd as he taxis the sixty-foot-long tank killer past them.

When Aaron turns the Warthog towards the runway, he can see Matt and Stacy standing by the boundary rope that separates the crowd from the taxiway, both aviators waving at him, as is the majority of the crowd. Both of his old friends are also grinning.

'That can't be good', Aaron decides as he lowers the A-10A's bubble canopy into position and taxis out of sight of the mass of aviation enthusiasts by going behind the Aero Club hangar.

As soon as he has passed from the crowd's view, Aaron is on the radio with the tower, receiving his clearances and getting the latest updates on the winds, barometric pressure, and humidity.

Moments later, Aaron is at the eastern end of the runway, his A-10 facing down the two-mile-long vertically undulating runway. Unlike the conventional thought that a runway should be perfectly flat, the main runway at Offutt actually goes up and downhill as it progresses from one end to the other.

After a quick check with the pyrotechnic crew on the grounds, Aaron advances the Warthog's throttles, releases his brakes, and starts his takeoff roll.

To the people in the waiting crowd, the approach of the A-10 sounds like the thunder from some particularly vicious storm.

Soon the tank-killer can be seen, roaring just a couple of feet above the runway as it builds speed. It is two-thirty, 1430hrs.

Aaron lifts the nose slightly as the A-10 reaches "Vee Two" speed, or safe takeoff speed, and he raises the bird's rugged landing gear. As soon as the gear begin retracting, Aaron levels the attack jet out at twenty feet altitude as his airspeed increases.

The Thunderbirds, the USAF's official demonstration squadron, are the last show of the day, performing not long after Aaron lands. Fieldman decides to give them a performance to try and better.

Watching his airspeed, Aaron pulls up the A-10's nose and moves his centrally-mounted flightstick to the right, standing the Warthog on its right wing in a knife edge pass, his right wingtip less than ten feet off the runway as he roars past show center, showing the assembled sea of humanity, which the announcer previously stated is around three hundred and fifty thousand people, his aircraft's massive planform.

When he nears the end of the crowd-viewable portion of the runway, the man known as Valder rolls the A-10 onto its left wing, intentionally gaining a few feet of altitude in the process, then pulls the stick back towards his seat, performing a maximum rate of turn circle in front of the crowd before rolling wings-level and disappearing from view to the south.

Grinning broadly, Aaron banks his A-10 in a climbing right hand turn, using the buildings surrounding the public areas of the airshow to keep his aircraft hidden from the spectators.

The crowd's attention is diverted by the pyrotechnics crew, who are driving a remote-controlled tank along the opposite side of the runway.

Having turned so he is approaching from behind the crowd, Aaron has let the A-10 accelerate to its maximum speed of 440 miles an hour, and he is diving from a thousand feet towards the target tank, which he has squarely lined up in the middle of his HUD.

Aaron depresses the Thunderbolt II's trigger as soon as his head's up display tells him he is within range, and the whole crowd turns as one when the Volkswagen-sized GAU-8/A gatling gun spools up and fires, the "brrrrrrrrrrbbbbbbb" of its rapid firing reverberating in the spectators' chests below as the deadly aircraft fires blanks, while diving over the crowd, towards the tank, smoke from the cannon billowing up over the windscreen.

While he passes over the runway Aaron pulls the flightstick all the way back, and the A-10 pulls almost straight up and over to the left in a banking climb as Fieldman completes his run on the tank, which explodes as the A-10 pulls up into the partly-cloudy sky.

The assembled crowd whips around to look behind them as the A-10's cannon sounds off, most of them turning just in time to see the warthog apparently diving right at them. When the attack aircraft roars over them the crowd, as if of one mind, turn around, seeing rapid puffs of smoke erupting all over the tank past the runway, just before it explodes in a massive fireball that the front rows can feel the heat from, though they are over two hundred yards away.

This attack run is simulated by the pyrotechnics crew setting off over five hundred squibs on the tank's surface before blowing it up with a fuel bomb hidden inside the vehicle.

When the tank blows up, the spectators watch the Thunderbolt II pull into a hard banking climb away from its target, a shock wave of condensed air on each wing of the green tankbuster and a pair of contrails streaming behind it from each of its downturned wingtips.

In the cockpit, Aaron puts the A-10 through a quick vertical victory roll as he exits the visible demonstration area to set up for his next attack, which is a strafing and bombing run down the length of the runway.

Roaring down the runway at rooftop-height moments later, Fieldman calls out "Hit it, guys" into the radio as the Warthog screams down the runway in its simulated attack run before pulling up into another steep banking climb away from the crowd.

While pulling up, Aaron looks over his shoulder down the length of the A-10, to the runway behind him, framed between the engines and tails of the tank killer is a sheet of smoke and flame, thanks to the pyro guys setting off a string of twenty-four thirty-gallon gasoline drums instants after the A-10 passed overhead.

The crowd almost believes they have a ringside seat to a real war as the Warthog swoops in from their left, blows up the field on the other side of the runway, then roars away to the right. For nearly ten seconds the crowd can feel the heat of the explosion, even though it is nearly a hundred yards away.

Aaron once more lines his A-10 up on the runway as he prepares for his last pass, this time coming in from the crowd's right, at full speed.

Racing straight down the runway, Fieldman reaches show center and pulls the aircraft into a series of rolls, which end up with the Thunderbolt II on its left wing, and Aaron pulls back on the stick as soon is he is past the Aero Club building, circling around behind the crowd at low level, calling into the tower as he prepares to set up for landing. The tower informs him that he has been requested to do one more pass, a low dirty approach past the crowd, and Aaron is only too happy to oblige.

Pulling the tank killer around in a tight bank, Aaron sets the A-10 up on a simulated approach, lowering his landing gear and flaps while flying down the runway center line at ten miles an hour over stall speed, banking the aircraft left and right as he does so, crossing from left to right in front of the crowd in a low-level show pass, an he can see hundreds of cameras trained on his aircraft.

As soon as he is out of sight of the spectators, Aaron retracts his gear and flaps, increases throttle, and gains altitude before turning base for final.

Within a few moments, Aaron is taxiing back past the crowd, his canopy once again open, grinning like a six-year-old and waving at the airshow attendees.

After parking and shutting down the large jet, Aaron climbs out of the cockpit, closes the canopy, and crosses back into the spectator's area, where he answers a few people's questions, signs a couple autographs, and links back up with Matt and Stacy before the three aviators blend into the crowd.

***************************************************************

November 30, 1989

Miami, Florida

1500hrs local

The gray-painted C-21 touches down on the runway at Miami International and taxis into the parking space designated by the marshaller on the ground.

Matt Bendix steps out of the aircraft after shutting it down, signs the paperwork to leave the aircraft there, and gets a ride to the rental car desk.

He rents a vehicle and drives to the address Aaron has given him, which is a football stadium.

Though it has only been just over a year since the 137^th TFW was disbanded, no one has been able to figure out where Hera Steel disappeared to.

That is, until August, when the gang began to see her every weekend on the television.

After the team’s official disbanding, Hera, on a whim, tried out for the cheerleading squad for the Miami Dolphins, and, to know one who knows the woman’s surprise, made the squad. This is why Matt is pretty sure he will find her here, as the Dolphins have a home game against the New York Giants today.

Also, according to Matt, Wahren, and Aaron, if you find Hera, Alayne isn't too hard to find, as the two women are nearly inseparable.

Matt pulls into a spot, after being gouged out of a twenty-dollar parking fee, as directed by the parking attendants. After waiting for Vince Neil to finish singing "Girl, Don’t Go Away Mad", one of his favorite songs, Matt shuts down and locks his rental, and walks into the stadium. Even though the song is on a cassette in the rental’s stereo, Bendix rarely gets out of his vehicle without finishing the song he is listening to, the sign of any true musician. This one just happens to be a pilot first.

Matt watches the Dolphins get pretty well stomped on, with the game ending 32-14 in favor of New York.

While the game is drawing to a close, Matt wanders down towards the field, where the cheerleaders are getting their gear to leave, and the fans are heading out of the stadium.

Security stops him before he can get on the field, but a cute, petite brunette wanders by on her way to the locker rooms, wearing the distinctive light blue, orange, and white outfit, with its short skirt and tight top that signifies a Dolphins cheerleader.

Matt recognizes her instantly from the photograph Aaron has given him, and calls out her name.

Hearing this, the five-one cheerleader stops in her tracks.

Her head turns with a whirling of hair, and Hera’s face assumes a puzzled expression as she tries to place the stranger's face. Her clear blue eyes cloud a moment as she scans the man trying to get her attention. After a moment, she is sure she's never seen him before. However, he reaches into his wallet and pulls out a distinctive military ID with a holographic eagle superimposed on a sapphire blue background.

The team must be expanding she thinks as she recognizes the card only ETF members are authorized to use.

She wanders over to the six-foot-eight security guard glaring at Bendix.

"Its okay, Lucas, he's an old friend." She comments, quickly scanning the ETF ID from where she stands.

She looks at the sandy-haired man, who sports a goatee and silver-rimmed glasses around his dark blue eyes.

She notices his name on the ID, and is wondering what Hunter has up his sleeve to send someone for her.

"Matt, meet me outside by main concessions in half an hour, okay?" She says, smiling.

The new Eagle nods his head in agreement as Hera starts to move off towards the locker room.

While Steel moves out of sight, Matt shakes his head as if trying to clear it.

Damn. He thinks.

"Yeah, she has that effect on a lot of people." The human wall known as Lucas grumbles from behind him.

After Hera, whom the Eagles have nicknamed "Shorty", has changed into street clothes, she walks from the dressing rooms to the aforementioned concession stand, where she walks up behind Bendix, who is facing the other direction, waiting for her.

Slipping her right hand through the space between his torso and his left arm, Hera startles the younger man slightly as she looks up at him, stating, "C’mon, Matt, you can buy me dinner and explain what is going on that made Shaba send you out here."

"Ah…..actually, Valder’s the team’s C/O now." Matt tells her, shaken more by the petite brunette’s beauty then her ability to sneak up on him. He already knows the veteran Eagles are as silent as thought when they want to be.

"Uh-huh. Gone a year and everything changes. Let me call Alayne and have her meet us. You don’t mind taking two women out to dinner, do you?" She asks sweetly, batting her eyes at him playfully.

You could have warned me a little, Aaron. Bendix thinks as Hera leads him over to a pay phone, sure that the ETF C/O will have a good laugh at how easily Shorty has flabbergasted him.

Hera speaks a few words into the phone, then nods at Matt as she hangs up.

"She’s gonna meet up with us. You got wheels?" She asks him.

Seeing his nod in reply, Hera throws one of her million-watt smiles at the younger man.

"Good, see if you can keep up." She comments, then tells him which gate of the stadium’s parking lot to meet her at before they separate.

Matt walks back towards his rental and unlocks it, seeing the little Ford all alone in the suddenly empty lot.

It’s amazing how fast these games empty out, he muses, before looking at his watch and realizing the game ended over an hour ago.

Bendix pulls his rental Escort up to the designated gate and sees Hera standing beside a dark blue 1987 Chevrolet Camaro IROC Z28.

Aw, crap. If she drives anything like Valder, Mayhem, or Wolf do, she’s gonna lose me in an instant. He postulates.

Almost as is she senses this thought, Hera smiles at him as she watches him approach, then slips into her Camaro and heads onto the I-95 access road.

Matt follows the angular blue Chevy as it weaves in and out of the heavy traffic on the interstate, averaging eighty-five miles and hour before diving onto the exit for the A1A into Miami Beach.

Matt’s rental Escort is fairly vibrating with the strain on the little four-cylinder engine as he tries to keep the blue sportscar in sight.

Once in Miami Beach, Hera slows the Camaro to thirty miles an hour, as there are police cruisers everywhere, and Matt has no problem keeping up with the other Eagle now.

Hera pulls into a small parking lot in front of a Cuban restaurant just off the intersection of 23^rd and Collins, at almost the same time as a cherry red Corvette is approaching the same establishment from the other side of the intersection.

Matt suddenly feels as if his rental is a bit too ordinary as the 1992 Corvette ZR-1 pulls into the empty spot beside the Camaro, and Hera’s roommate, Alayne Engleslause, another of the original 137TFW members, gets out. Bendix recognizes the woman nicknamed "Phantom" from the dossier he has committed to memory as she warmly embraces Hera, then peers over the shorter woman’s shoulder, looking Matt up and down questioningly.

After a moment of this scrutiny, the five-seven woman, a good half-foot taller than Hera, walks over and introduces herself to Bendix, her shoulder-length brown hair swishing from side to side and her inquisitive brown eyes looking into his blue ones as she addresses him in a brief, no-nonsense manner. Like her roommate, Alayne is quite the looker, as well.

"Hi, I’m Alayne. Hera says you’re here about the team. Let’s go inside and talk." She suggests, though the tone of her voice leaves Matt little doubt that anyone countermands many of Alayne’s "suggestions".

While the three Eagles make their way across the restaurant and sit down to look over their menus, many of the men in the building look in their direction, wondering who in the heck this guy is that he rates such a good-looking pair of women.

Trying to ignore the eyes pointed in their direction, while at the same time trying to scan for people attempting to overhear, Matt explains to the two women about the REB-36D the team is working on, how the team is expanding, and what he is here in Miami for, namely to recruit the two of them to be a part of the NAWCC’s crew.

Hera and Alayne listen to him while eating their dinners, then ask about the welfare of the other Lebanon survivors. Matt fills them in as well as he is able to.

Once he has done so, Alayne agrees to fly back to Gorilla Mountain with him, and Hera tells them she will be there as soon as she can, working around her cheerleading schedule.

Two down, five to go. Matt thinks as he pays for dinner and escorts the women back to their cars.

**************************************************************

There y’all go, DVD ETF style. Keep your eyes peeled, an ALL NEW ETF story is in the works for mid-2004.