Relatively small, it was thin and crooked and surrounded by many other smaller islands. At the moment, its center seemed to be wrapped in a thick fog. Hunter had been circling at 70,000 feet twenty miles north of the island for the last two hours. The high orbit not only kept him off any radar screens, it also allowed him to conserve fuel while waiting for dawn to come. He’d done a lot of thinking in that time—but he’d yet to come up with an answer to the most important question: Why had his mysterious instincts compelled him to come to this place? He just didn’t know. But now, with the eastern horizon brightening, so, too, came the light he needed to do a proper recon of the island. Maybe then he would learn why the feeling had brought him here. He did a quick check of his flight systems and nose cameras. Everything came back green. He checked his weapons; everything was prearmed and ready. He took a deep breath of pure oxygen and felt the smaller resultant rush in his bloodstream.
