Jack Davis had never flown in anger, yes he had flown for eight years with the Royal Air-force, driving fighters, transports, bombers, the lot, but he had never fired a missile or gun at a living target. Now he was the captain of this three man crew supposed to be flying the most advanced aircraft the world had ever seen, and soon would be going into the attack. The 'P7' (Mirage) had been developed in Britain over six years, with the assembly and testing taking place in a secluded area of northern Spain. The plane is equipped with full 'Chameleon' circuits, thousands of microscopic cells complete with cameras that feed their light signals to the opposing cell on the other side of the craft. The result, the plane is almost totally invisible, and because the cameras react to the full light spectrum, the aircraft is invisible to all forms of detection. The weaponry is also the most advanced on the planet, together with the targeting and evasion systems; it is the ultimate killing machine.
Despite all this, Jack was scared, war was, or should have been, a thing of the past, it was not the thought of flying the aircraft that scared him, as the chief test pilot, he had flown it many times. What was scary was having to purposely take human lives, it made him feel sick. Being a fighter pilot was supposed to be fun. Trying to take his mind off of what was surely to come, he picked up one of the dozens of magazines and started to read, it didn't work. It didn't work because within three minutes of picking the magazine up, the public address system summoned all crews to the briefing room. There were seven crews and Jack was flight leader, that responsibility also weighed heavy on him, and he was supposed to set an example.
The briefing took thirty minutes and the crews were each given a programmed card with the targets specified on it that would be uploaded to the weapons, there was no room for any error. Each crew consisted of the captain (the pilot), an e-weapons person and a navigator who was also the co-pilot, Jack's crew had been flying together for two years and were the best of friends. The test crew had spent the last two months training the other six crews and a feeling of comradeship had begun to develop. Sortie launch time was twelve noon, the first of possibly many missions against Iran.