Fox grinned back. ‘Friendly competition, ma’am. Well, usually friendly. But we all pull together when it comes to the crunch.’ They reached the idling aircraft, where two uniformed ground crew were waiting. ‘You were lucky to get me, I gotta say. We’re normally stationed in England, but we’ve been doing NATO exercises over Turkey and the Black Sea these past few days. I was kinda surprised to get called for taxi duty, but hey, if you need to get back home in a hurry, there ain’t a faster way than riding in an Eagle.’
The ground crew positioned ladders so Fox and Nina could climb into the cockpit. Her pilot took the front seat; she went to the weapon officer’s position behind him, waiting nervously as her harness and oxygen system were secured. ‘You had the safety briefing, right, ma’am?’ Fox called over his shoulder.
‘Yeah, the Cliffs Notes version.’
‘These things are very reliable, and tough — one of ’em once landed with an entire wing shot off! If anything does happen, just do what I tell you and you’ll be fine. But I doubt there’ll be any trouble.’
The ground crew finished strapping her in, then descended and removed the ladders. Fox closed the canopy, running through a truncated series of pre-flight checks and communicating with air traffic control before addressing her again, this time through her helmet’s earphones. ‘Okay, we have take-off clearance. We’ll be refuelling three times over the Atlantic, but since we’ll be going supersonic as much as possible, the total journey time should be under four hours.’
‘How fast will we be going?’ she asked.
‘Top speed of an F-15E is classified, I’m afraid,’ he said, humour in his voice, ‘so please try not to look at the air speed indicator during flight. But I can tell you we’ll be reaching speeds in excess of Mach 2. Well in excess.’ Another exchange with the control tower. ‘All right, here we go.’
The whine of the idling twin engines rose in pitch, and the Eagle started to move, bumping along the taxiway. Nina flexed her hands nervously, trying — and failing — to relax. The impending take-off was not her only worry. Four hours was less than half as long as a commercial flight would take, but it was still cutting things fine. By the time she arrived in New York, there would be under three hours before the General Assembly’s first session began, and it was entirely possible that Cross planned to attack before then.
The main runway swung into view ahead. ‘Okay, Dr Wilde,’ said Fox, ‘we’re good to go. You might want to brace yourself.’
She did not like the sound of that. ‘Is it going to be a fast take-off?’
‘You need to get to New York in a hurry! Are you ready?’
Nina gulped, crossing her arms protectively over her stomach. ‘Yeah,’ she said, dry-mouthed.
‘Then hang on to your butt… I mean, your hat, ma’am.’
The engines rose to a shriek, even through her helmet’s soundproofing — then a thunderous crackling roar joined the cacophony as both afterburners ignited, raw fuel pumping into the jet exhausts and blasting out of the twin nozzles in a spear of flame. The F-15 shot forward like a rocket. Nina gasped as she was thrust back into the seat. The acceleration of an airliner was nothing compared to the jet fighter’s, and the G-forces kept building as the plane hurtled along the runway. Almost before she could register it, the Eagle was airborne, Ciampino dropping sharply away, and the pressure on her body grew even stronger as Fox pulled the nose up to what felt like the vertical. ‘Oh my God!’ she squeaked.
‘Are you okay?’ Fox asked.
‘I don’t know! What are we doing, ten G?’
‘Only about two, ma’am.’
‘Two!’ she cried. ‘Is that all?’
‘I deliberately kept it low on account of your condition. But I can ease off if it’s too much.’
‘Please, be my guest. I’m not supposed to ride roller coasters while I’m pregnant, and this doesn’t seem much different!’
‘I guess I won’t be showing off any barrel rolls for you, then.’
Her glare bored through the rear of his seat into his skull. ‘No thanks.’
Fox chuckled, then had another exchange with air traffic control. The F-15 eased out of its climb, Nina looking out of the cockpit’s side to find with surprise that the fighter had not even gone steeper than forty-five degrees in its ascent, never mind vertical. Rome receded below, the Vatican clearly visible at its heart. ‘Okay,’ he told her, ‘we’re going to a cruising altitude of forty-five thousand feet. I can’t go supersonic until we clear the Italian coast, and I’ll have to drop back below the sound barrier while we fly over France, but once we reach the Atlantic, I’ll put the hammer down.’
‘How about that,’ she said quietly, putting her hands on her bump and speaking to its resident. ‘Most people don’t get to fly supersonic in a jet fighter in their entire lives, but you’ve done it before you’re even born.’ A smile, mixed with a sigh. ‘I really, really hope your life isn’t as interesting as mine.’
She leaned back as the F-15 banked and headed west.
Travelling at supersonic speed turned out to be surprisingly unexciting. The Strike Eagle’s breaching of the sound barrier was marked with a jolt and a split-second burst of vapour whisking past the cockpit, but the flight afterwards felt no different from that preceding it. Their traversal of the Mediterranean seemed to take only minutes, then the plane slowed to make a high-altitude pass over south-western France before the empty grey curve of the Atlantic appeared ahead. Fox accelerated again, continuing for twenty minutes at full speed before slowing once more to rendezvous with a hulking KC-135 tanker aircraft. The manoeuvres required to link the two planes for refuelling did nothing for Nina’s stress levels, but Fox made the connection with practised ease, and before long the F-15 was on its lonely way again.
With nothing but ocean far below, there was little sense of motion. The unchanging view and the constant rumble of the engines, added to Nina’s general exhaustion, soon became soporific. She drifted into sleep, waking as the plane juddered. ‘What was that?’ she said, blinking in alarm.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Fox replied. ‘We just caught some turbulence from the Extender.’ She leaned to look past him, seeing another KC-135 growing larger ahead. ‘We’re about to gas up again. Once we’re done, it’s non-stop all the way to New York.’
‘How long will that take?’ she asked, shocked that she had managed to sleep through the second refuelling.
‘Just under an hour. Oh,’ he added, ‘and if you look back and to your left, there’s something I think you’ll want to see.’
She craned her neck to peer back over the F-15’s wing. ‘There’s another plane!’ A sleek grey shape was approaching, its twin tails suggesting that it was a second Eagle.
‘That’s right. It’s not one of ours; it’s a Saudi bird. It set off before we did, and from what I’ve been told, it’s hauled ass at the redline the whole way to catch up, on the direct orders of the Saudi king himself. I was actually ordered to slow down a bit, because you both need to land at the same time.’
‘And who’s aboard it?’ she asked, smiling because she already knew the answer.
‘I’ll switch radio channels so you can talk to them yourself.’
Brief electronic chatter in her headphones, then she heard a familiar voice. ‘Ay up, love.’
‘Ay up yourself,’ Nina replied with a huge grin. ‘So I guess Dalton came through for you too.’
‘Most of this came from the Saudis,’ Eddie told her. ‘Funny how they roll out the red carpet when you save their holy city from being gassed. Are you okay?’