The Circle War

Начало книги

The sky was on fire…

Brilliant reds, yellows, golds, blues, and greens streaked across the horizon.

Waves of color darting in and out, appearing and disappearing like phantoms in the crystal-clear night. The ghostly lights reflected on the ice and tundra below, doubling their intensity. Flying eight miles high and heading due north, Major Hawk Hunter relaxed for a moment to appreciate the mysterious beauty of the Aurora Borealis.

The cockpit of the U-2 was cramped — odd for an airplane designed to stay aloft for 10 or more hours with a single pilot at the controls. Compared to this, the cockpit in Hunter's F-16 was as big as a living room. But creature comforts and sightseeing were the furthest things from his mind right now. He was only reaching the midway point of his long recon mission. He still had a long way to go.

The U-2 was a spy plane. Long and pencil-shaped, it sported a pair of gooney-bird sized wings — the better to fly high and farther with. Normally the airplane was unarmed. But these weren't normal times. Hunter had jerry-rigged two Sidewinder missiles under the jet's wings in case of the unlikely possibility that he'd meet up with an unfriendly airplane somewhere over the frozen wasteland. He had also installed two 20mm cannon in the ship's nose, though at this high latitude and height, the muzzles tended to freeze up unless he test-fired them occasionally.

Читать дальше →