r Rook’s preflight routine was always the same. He would walk the runway long after the Engineers had given the OK and cleared the area. Just Rook and his wings, alone on the tarmac – that was how he liked it. He was afforded this odd luxury because he was the best pilot in the BBB. He was a good ten years older than the next in line and still beat all of them in every flight test and in every plane. No other pilot could claim to have a one hundred per cent success rate on all of their 200 missions because no other pilot was Mr Rook. His training and the consequent wiping of his memories had been so thorough that he did not know who his parents were, where he’d been born or even the country in which he’d taken his first gulps of air. The only thing he knew with absolute certainty, and which had been confirmed by his superiors, was that he was the best pilot in the world.
Mr Rook knew nothing else.
He spent a while admiring the silhouette of his HO-9. Despite its deadly cargo, it was a feat of engineering elegance. Its nose was as sharp as a razor, its body and wings more graceful and lithe than a hawk’s. They needed to be. The HO-9 was the first of its kind, developed by the BBB to be completely undetectable. Radar only reached so far, and the HO-9 flew higher, riding the thermals like a bird of prey at the very edge of the earth’s atmosphere. Part glider, part jet, but all stealth.
He climbed the ladder and lowered himself into the cockpit. To any normal man it would have looked like an indecipherable mess of dials, switches and levers, but Rook knew them all so well he could have worked them blindfolded. There was only one light that he needed to see. Currently it was red. Were it to turn green, he would launch the laser-guided bomb and a thirty-mile radius in the wilds of Siberia would be instantly turned to ash. Nothing would survive the blast.
In their wisdom, the highly trained psychologists that advised his higher-ups had decided to have the colour of the light give the command. Were it to come via radio, another HO-9 pilot might ask questions, might even hesitate at the last minute. But Rook knew that Fox, Bear and Owl had to be in agreement for the light to turn green. In any case, it was not his job to ask questions, only to launch the bomb.
Besides, Mr Rook knew nothing else.