When the world's most powerful and advanced supersonic fighter jet is stolen during a demonstration for foreign dignitaries, the U.S., under the leadership of Colonel "Jesse" James, must race against time, using outdated technology, to retrieve the weapon before it can be used to ignite global warfare. By the author of The Fourth War. 20,000 first printing. Chapter 1 Upper Bitterroot Mountains Central Idaho The man masked his power very well. He looked to be about fifty, though he was almost ten years older and clearly in good shape, with long legs and well-defined arms. He had dark hair with tints of gray and a small tattoo of a star on his shoulder, which would have shocked three hundred million Americans had they known. Everything he had on was new: his logging shirt was pressed, his jeans stiff and clean. Even his waders glistened, smelling more like fresh rubber than fish. He stood eleven feet from the rocky bank. The late morning sun had finally broken over the mountain peaks, glistening on the whitecaps as they rolled over the boulders in the stream. The man cast the artificial gnat, a Rio Grande King (dark red tail, hand-tied in a small room off of the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House), the same way he did everything else—deliberately. No beauty, all power. Pulling back his arm, he jerked it forward while snatching his wrist, floating the leader, fine as human hair, out before him. The artificial gnat lay on top of the water, caught the current to wash over a large rock, then was pulled upriver in the backwash to hover in the shade of stone. There he let it linger. A native cutthroat trout was hiding in the backwash behind the stone. The man hadn’t seen it yet, but he’d sensed the tiny ripple and knew it was there, resting in the null area where the water pooled. The cutthroat wasn’t a monster—eight, maybe ten inches is all—but large for this stream, which meant he’d been smart enough to survive in the river awhile. Which meant he would be hard to catch. But the man was going to catch him and he smiled again as he cast. The gnat caught a sudden current and was spit into the main stream again. The man let it drift downriver, pulled out a little more line, then took in the slack and cast again. Forty feet behind him, the small stream spilled down a rocky bank and poured into the Salmon River with a constant roar. Above his head, the wind blew down from the Rocky Mountain peaks. Thirteen thousand feet up, there was still a lot of snow, most of it piled in the glaciers that had been there for ten thousand years. Two hundred meters downriver, the Forest Service campground had been completely taken over by his men. Three huge helicopters had been towed across the grass to the shade of the old pines. The choppers were unmarked, dark green and black, with odd-shaped bubbles behind their main rotors to hide the antennas of the top-secret communications gear stuffed inside. The camp’s main lodge was crowded with his men, but the fisherman stayed away from them as best as he could, choosing to stay in a tent by himself, twenty meters back in the trees. As the man cast again, he caught a shadow to his right. The agent hadn’t moved in almost three hours, and he was impressed. Still, though, he mumbled. “Two thousand miles I come, to the most isolated river in the lower forty-eight, and yet I can’t be alone!” Not even for a moment! Not even out here! Providing security in the mountains was a nightmare, and he felt bad, knowing it was hard on his security forces, but he needed time alone, time to feel the presence of no one but the mountains and the wind, to look at the sky and imagine he was the only man on the earth, to smell the pines and hear the river and simply be by himself. He glanced at the agent in the trees, then turned back to his line. The gnat was sucked into the backflow again, and he saw a shadow in the water. “Come on, you little bugger,” he whispered. “It’s you and it’s me, baby. Man against nature. Now who’s going to win?” The shadow rose and then fell. He tugged lightly on the line, a subtle move of his fingers that pulled the tiny gnat across the water, seeming to give it wings. “Come on, you little wise one, come on.” The shadow started rising. “Good morning, Mr. President,” a man shouted from behind him. The shadow dropped out of sight, falling beneath a large stone. The president swore, his face angry. He didn’t even turn around. Not alone for ten seconds! Not even out here. “Mr. President,” the national security advisor called to the president again. The Secret Service agent in the trees dropped to his knees. Behind him, another agent emerged from the shadows to stand in the sun. Patrick Abram reluctantly turned around. The NSA stood uncertainly on the edge of the bank. He wore dark jeans, a white shirt, and black loafers, as authentic a Western look as the Massachusetts boy could muster. The president ignored him and cast again. The NSA waited a full two minutes, then took off his shoes