Page 20 of Gryphon

Yep, his thoughts had plunged once more down the same snake hole they’d been traveling all that night.

Wouldn’t it be nice, he’d thought at the time, if they were all beating on someone else other than him?

Which gave him the idea. What if they were?

His second mistake had been making his way up out of The Bunker and not going home to sleep off the idea in a drunken stupor that guaranteed a hangover able to eradicate all memories—except Elene dumping him, of course.

She hadn’t merely thrown the ring back at him, she’d laughed in his face on top of it. Marry you? She’d laughed harder, until he tossed her out of the apartment wearing only her sheer suggestion of a nightgown. He’d ducked out the back door through the chill February rain—nothing worse than a cold night’s rain in February—to avoid the new tone of the howls. Not a court in the land would convict him on that one.

Nope, he didn’t want to be anywhere around his apartment that night. The only surprise when he finally did return home was that she hadn’t fire-bombed the place.

Instead, after he’d crawled out of The Bunker—since her memory hadn’t left him alone there either—he’d gone to the office and typed up his idea. Dumping it in an Eyes Only envelope and shoving it into his boss’ secure drop constituted his last functional, if not coherent, act. Then he’d passed out face down on his desk, effectively erasing the memo from his memory.

For two months, it had stayed that way.

Then he’d been called into the service chief’s office, without his boss or either of the managers two tiers above him. He’d been utterly mystified about what the hell he’d done so wrong to be pulled up on the top carpet in the entire operation. Pavle was an analyst. He’d never had a private meeting with the chief since his six-minute welcome aboard five years ago.

We’ve vetted your plan at the highest levels. You’re no longer in the Analytical Directorate; you now report directly to me. I have a few suggestions on how we can get the assets in place.

He’d had no idea what the chief was going on about until he spotted his original memo in the open folder on the desk. His only coherent thought at the time was being impressed that he’d been sober enough to write it in the first place.

Even now, eight months after that first meeting and cleared to launch Phase Two, he wished he knew if he’d fallen into good fate or obliviously buried his head in the sand—like when he’d thrown Elene out into the February rain…or like when he’d taken her back a week later.

13

Major Ingrid Eklund of the Swedish Air Force waggled her wings in greeting as she pulled alongside the Finnish F/A-18C Hornet jet.

Kapten Liisa Salo waggled back.

In the early morning and this close to the Artic Circle, they saw each other only by their nav lights and the shine of the half-moon scraping the horizon.

They’d never met in the flesh, but Liisa had been damn cute in the pre-mission video briefing. The Finn possessed more prominent cheekbones than a typical Swedish woman, the amber eyes accented by the extra-dark-chocolate hair so different from her own true blonde. They both wore it long and had shared the easy smile of fighter pilots knowing exactly who ruled the skies. Unless Ingrid had misread the subtext, the more personal interest was also mutual.

After today’s patrol she had two days off. If all went well, maybe she’d take a Grisslehamn ferry across the Gulf of Bothnia and see what happened.

For now, they had a mission to fly.

She felt a little sorry for Liisa. The American-built F/A-18C Hornet was a nice enough jet, but dated.

And it couldn’t touch her Saab JAS 39E Gripen.

The Saab Gripen—Gryphon in English, named for the mythical beast of a lion’s hindquarters and an eagle’s head, wings, and talons—was sometimes called the first sixth-generation fighter. She wasn’t stealth. She didn’t have massive payload capabilities. The pilot wasn’t wired into her plane with a half-million-dollar helmet like the American’s fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II.

However, her Gripen had been designed elegantly with one sole purpose in mind—killing Russians. And if the time ever came to test that, Ingrid had every confidence in her mythical creature’s speed and firepower.

Her baby boasted the lowest operating cost of any fighter jet aloft by almost a factor of two. The Gripen’s entire system was based on a single suite of software so that she was easily maintained at the very leading edge of technology. Most nations’ fighter jets required years of lag-and-leap between system upgrades due to conflicting software systems from multiple manufacturers unwilling to share proprietary architecture.

There were also extreme maneuvers that had been first achieved in Saabs. Supermaneuverability was the Gripen’s home turf, all the agility of an eagle in flight. Only a handful of fighter aircraft designs could make that claim…and Liisa’s Hornet wasn’t one of them.

For the kick-ass lion’s behind? Her Gripen could drive ahead at Mach 1.2 supercruise—one of the few jets able to fly past the sound barrier without firing off the fuel-guzzling afterburners. Or seriously hustle along at Mach 2.2 when she did light them up.

Someday, Ingrid might grab a two-seat Gripen JAS-39D and show Liisa what a jet fighter could really do. All part of a friendly forces exchange program, of course.

Today’s flight had a simple profile. They’d met up at the Swedish-Finnish land border in the snow-covered north. Fly south into the light, over the Bay and then the Gulf of Bothnia. The seven-hundred-kilometer subsonic run would give them fifty minutes of flight time to get used to each other. Once over the Baltic, they’d fly east to the Finnish-Russia border. South across the narrow opening near St. Petersburg to Estonia, and then home.

Their countries had flown any number of forces coordination flights, but this was the first one since Sweden joined NATO—about freaking time. Now Article 5 ruled: an attack on any NATO-member nation would be treated as an attack on all, including Sweden.

Today was a reminder to Russia not to mess with Finland—or Estonia for that matter. The Gripen could cover the four hundred kilometers from Stockholm to Helsinki in twelve minutes or, if need be, start bombing St. Petersburg’s port out of existence in twenty. Today’s flight would be far more sedate, staying firmly in international waters.

---