Fighting off the temptation to relax and let his guard down, he pulled up his fuel system’s display and compared his current fuel state with the plan. No matter how successful the test went, if he didn’t have enough gas to make it back to base, that failure would overshadow everything else.

“Looking good,” he said to himself. But any additional commentary was cut short when his display flickered. “What the…”

He half expected the oddity to be accompanied by a caution, warning of an impending electrical failure. But the flicker lasted less than a second and the display returned to normal, leaving him with only a slightly uneasy feeling that things weren’t as kosher as they seemed. He had almost successfully brushed the incident under the rug of other more pressing matters when he remembered what Colt had told him earlier.

He switched off datalink comms to the frequency for the radio they had set up in the ready room back in Point Mugu. “Base, Devil One, is Lieutenant Bancroft around?”

“Wait one.”

He knew Colt was focused on getting results back from China Lake, but he didn’t think the TOPGUN instructor would be far from the radio where he could monitor the test. Even though he was certain he was letting his imagination get the better of him, he couldn’t just dismiss the anomaly as a one-off gremlin that all newer fighters experienced.

“Devil One, he’s not in the room at the moment.”

He shrugged and decided to let it go in favor of focusing on the task at hand. He made a mental note to include the flickering displays in his report and reached up to the touchscreen display to select his weapons page. The screen flickered again, then shuffled through several pages on its own, causing his stomach to drop with a sudden onset of fear.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Jug, this is Colt.”

Jug exhaled loudly, then keyed the button to transmit his reply. “Colt, something strange is going on.”

“Abort the mission and return to base.”

He recoiled as if slapped. “Say that again?”

“I said abort… abort the mission and return to base. Punky is taking fire over Santa Cruz Island, and I’m en route to provide air cover.”

He didn’t have a clue what was going on but didn’t argue and pressed the button to disengage the autopilot, uncoupling the jet from the pre-programmed route. Then he added pressure to the side stick to turn his jet back to the east and the safety of Point Mugu. The test could wait.

But his wings remained level with his nose pointed at the dark mass of San Nicolas Island.

Oh, shit…

“Jug?”

The moisture in his mouth evaporated in an instant, and his tongue felt thick as he tried to speak. “Colt…” He paused. “I can’t…”

“You have to!”

“You don’t understand,” he replied, awash with fear. “I can’t control it.”

41

USS Mobile Bay (CG-53)

South of Santa Cruz Island, California

Captain Bethany Lewis jerked upright with a start, her eyes wide with fright and staring into the darkness as she struggled to surface from her nightmare. The blue wool blanket was a little thinner than it had been when they issued it to her as a Plebe at the Naval Academy, but she tossed the “blue magnet” aside and swung her feet out onto the floor. Using the heels of her hands, she massaged away the fatigue from her eyes before glancing at the boxy battery-powered alarm clock on her desk.

21:57

She reached for the clock and, with practiced hands, turned off the alarm that was to go off in three more minutes. She had only intended for it to be a short power nap anyway. While she wasn’t technically needed in CIC for either the missile test or the search and rescue mission, she wasn’t about to put the burden on her crew while she sawed logs. Leadership bore responsibilities she was unwilling to pass on to others.

Beth still wore her blue coveralls but had kicked off her steel-toed boots before climbing into her rack. She bent over and slid her feet inside the worn leather footwear, then laced them up like she had done countless times before. It was pitch black, but she didn’t need the benefit of light to navigate the scant furnishings of her stateroom, and she rose from her bed and walked through the door into the head, where she flipped on the fluorescent light above the sink.

She stared at her reflection for a long minute, studying the bags under her eyes and the creased worry lines on her forehead. It seemed like only yesterday when she had stared back at herself from a mirror in the fourth wing of Bancroft Hall, questioning her decision to leave her family and friends behind and travel across the country to pursue a career in the Navy. The lines hadn’t been there then, but the worry had.

A distant knock on the door to the passageway broke her trance of reminiscence, and she glanced at her watch to see that the three minutes had elapsed.

Right on time, she thought.