The Sons of Scarlatti. John McNally

the $150-million fifth-generation stealth fighter, in the empty weapons bay, wrapped in an ‘indestructible’ transport crate, was a single small frozen phial.

      Control had cleared the skies.

      Delta loved Aviator shades, beating men at anything and strafing ground targets with 44mm cannon. She also love love loved to fly.

      In fact, the only thing she loved more was her little sister Carla, but that was not the sort of thing that she would say out loud in the (Classified) M3 Wing of the US Air Force.

      “Clear for take-off,” said Control.

      With an easy touch, Delta fully engaged the twin F119-PW-100 turbofan engines producing 35,000lbs of thrust that shot the aircraft off the runway and into a steep climb.

      Her mother had been an alcoholic and she’d spent most of her childhood neglected, finding escape only in video games (starting with Splinter Cell back in 2002). In 2004 the USAF had started looking for recruits with exceptional hand-eye coordination in the online gaming community. They noticed the data spike around Delta’s tag and traced it to a state children’s home in Philadelphia where they found a fierce, scruffy, skinny thirteen-year-old who intensely distrusted authority, having been separated from her baby sister when taken into care. She tested off the scale.

      The USAF put her into a top-secret training programme, arranged an appropriate adoption for Carla, with visitation rights, and gave Delta the chance to excel. She was triple-A rated on six different aircraft and had won two Air Force Distinguised Service Medals and a Medal of Honour. She was twenty-three years old – even if she looked an Indie rock nineteen.

      At 20,000 feet she banked east off the American continent. She could never get used to how great this felt.

      “Badass…” she sighed.

      “I heard that, Salazar,” snapped Control.

      She laughed and rocketed off across the Atlantic.

       EIGHT

      DAY TWO 02:46 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey

      Just over eleven hours later, at the climax of what must have been an astonishing briefing, and in the midst of the organised chaos of all that was going on in and around the CFAC, Finn witnessed the moment Flight Lieutenant Salazar finally stopped chewing her gum.

      Her eyes were still hidden behind her Aviator shades (despite it being the middle of the night), her boots were still on the desk and she still carried an air of youthful insouciance, but… the chewing had stopped. This was the biggest reaction they’d had from her since her arrival.

      “We need your decision in the next hour. Lieutenant? Do you understand the proposition?” Al said.

      Nothing.

      Finn looked at Al. He’s not handling this very well, he thought. The Lieutenant seemed to have unsettled Al somehow. He was trying to be clipped and cool, but was coming across as nervous and edgy. The silence crackled.

      “They’re going to shrink you!” said Finn, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

      Still nothing.

      Using his thumb and forefinger to illustrate actual size, Kelly tried to translate into militarese.

      “Listen up! You’re going to be shrunk to 12 millimetres, put in a 110-millimetre Apache chopper, then pursue and terminate an apocalyptic bug with extreme prejudice. You copy?”

      “I copy… Just let me suck it up,” Delta responded.

      (She could have been more specific and told them what it felt like: that the idea was so crazy it had caused a temporary gap in the game code of her reality and that she needed to download a patch,¹ but she had learned never to discuss her feelings with fellow soldiers. Besides which, where was she supposed to find the patch?)

      Al blinked. Finn smiled. Kelly laughed.

      “She’ll be fine,” said Kelly. “Move on.”

      With the main briefings out of the way, Kelly, Stubbs and Salazar were handed over to a medical team itching to study the ‘before and after’ effects of ‘atomic collapse’ on the human body (they could smell a Nobel Prize).

      Al expected them to be poked, prodded and drained of various fluids in the usual manner, but when he was recalled to the crew area, he was informed that the process had ground to a halt during a ‘psychiatric evaluation’.

      Each crew member had been asked to construct a solid sphere out of a number of irregular-shaped blocks. Delta had just sat there (evidently still hanging with the concept). Stubbs had got started, but then fell asleep like a granddad doing a Christmas jigsaw, and Kelly got a member of the medical team in a headlock and forced him to eat one of the pieces.

      “You have a voluntary mute, an old man suffering from depression and an idiot alpha male with the emotional sophistication of an earthworm,” said the lady chief psychologist.

      Al said, “The young woman is just seriously cool, Stubbs just needs tea and biscuits and Kelly was at Cambridge with me – he’s only part Neanderthal. They’re all perfectly normal.”

      “Dr Allenby, there’s no way I can pass any of these people fit for active service.”

      “Fit for service?” laughed Al as he was dragged away to a crisis in Array Engineering. “They ride at dawn. Just make sure the pilot signs up – do whatever you have to do.”

      By the time Al and Finn returned, the psychologist had the crew members sitting in a circle.

      “If you could take one special personal item with you, what would that be?” the psychologist asked Delta. “Flight Lieutenant?”

      Delta chewed her gum.

      “OK. How about we move on to you, Leonard?” said the psychologist.

      “I’ll need my tablets,” said Stubbs.

      The psychologist gave him a hard stare.

      “No, Leonard, we’re talking about a special personal item that…”

      Finn, having spent a lot of time with grief counsellors, knew the drill and decided to be helpful to hurry things along.

      “She means like a teddy bear or a wedding ring or something.”

      “I never married,” Stubbs said glumly. “Who would want me? Married to the job. Not much of a looker. And I haven’t seen Teddy since the orphanage burnt down in 1962.”

      There was a moment of silence as Captain Kelly fought to suppress a snigger, but failed, setting Al off. They were soon hysterical. Stubbs glared and shook his head. Not for the first time Finn wondered what the little old man was doing on such a mission.

      “Ignore them,” Stubbs advised the psychologist. “Rise above it.”

      “Captain Kelly!” the psychologist snapped in a tone of admonishment. “When you’ve quite finished… what item would you like to take?”

      Kelly stopped himself laughing and gave Stubbs a playful squeeze on the knee to show there were no hard feelings.

      “Ow!”

      “Apologies. I just want my Minimi² and maybe a couple of M27s³,” the technicalities of which he then explained at length to the confused psychologist, the confusion added to by Stubbs explaining at the same time that he really had to take his mobile workshop with him (a Pinzgauer all-terrain truck adapted to his own specifications), otherwise, frankly, what was the point in him bothering to come at all?

      In the meantime, behind her shades, Delta constructed her own patch:

       0382*<this mission was about the craziest most suicidal thing