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added his tracer stream to this hail of lead as he slowly zigzagged his way across the main hallway and toward a long ornate set of marble stairs.
    Scrambling up this staircase, he reached the first landing and found it split off into two adjoining passageways-one leading up, the other leading down.
    Crouched behind a thick marble post off to one side of this landing, firing away with a huge Browning automatic rifle, was his good friend, Catfish Johnson, along with a dozen of his men.
    "Glad to see you made it, Hawk," Johnson told him, managing to shake his hand and yell above the racket of the ancient yet still-powerful BAR. "Where you heading?"
    Hunter nodded toward the passageway that led up to the castle's tower. "I'm pretty sure Dominique is up there."
    At that point, a squad of Free Canadian troopers came running up the other passageway, Major Frost in the lead.
    "That way leads down to the dungeon," Frost told them after quickly greeting Hunter. "We broke in through the
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    subbasement, blew down a wall, and trapped a bunch of these Guardians down there. At least temporarily . . ."
    Despite the nonstop gunfire, the constant blinding light of flash grenades going off, and the generally ear-splitting racket of warfare, Hunter turned to his friends and said: "Things seem to be under control here . . . I've got to get going ... got things to do."
    He started to move past them and toward the hallway that would bring him up to the tower when Frost reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
    "There's something you should know, Hawk," he yelled. "We spotted an airplane way down in that dungeon. A bunch of these goons were pushing it out of the back and toward that road on the other side of the mountain."
    Hunter shrugged anxiously. "So?"
    Frost took a quick deep breath. "It was your airplane, Hawk," he said deliberately. "Your F-16 . . ."
    Hunter immediately became frozen to the spot.
    "My airplane?" he asked, dumbfounded. "Here?"
    The F-16XL. It seemed like an eternity since Hunter had climbed into that familiar cockpit, savored the reassuring touch of those customized controls, felt the surge of excitement as his skill and energy blended with the raw power and unmatched aerodynamic technology of the remarkable aircraft. They said that in his hands, the XL was the greatest jet fighter in the history of aerial combat.
    And in a flash, he remembered the sickening feeling, like a vicious kick in the gut, that struck him when he first learned the XL had been stolen. It was before his trek with the Freedom Express-a mission that required the capability of the Harrier to land on a flatcar-that he had stored the one-of-a-kind F-16 at Andrews Air Force Base. Yet, despite the heavy guard, the airplane vanished, spirited away by a faceless enemy.
    He had vowed to search to the far ends of the earth, if necessary, to find that legendary airplane and reclaim it. And now, it was here, within his grasp once again.
    "Now listen to me, Hawk," Frost told him grimly, 31
    knowing full well the implications of what he was about to tell his friend.
    "Say the word and you, me, and ten of my guys will go and get it. It's not in the plan and it will take time. But we'd have to do it right now."
    In the infinitesimal time frame of a nano-second, Hunter realized the horrible irony of the moment. Down one hallway he would find his treasured airplane; up another, the only woman he had ever really loved. If he went after one, the other would surely be lost again-most likely forever.
    And there was no way to rescue both.
    Oddly, the gist of an old saying came into his head. "I found two roads . . .
    and it was the road not taken that made all the difference."
    But as it turned out, Hunter didn't hesitate more than a a heartbeat.
    "We've got to stick to the plan" he told Frost.
    Then without another moment's loss, he jumped up and ran into the passageway that would lead him to Dominique.
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Chapter Five
    With the sounds of gunfire and flash explosions