FADE IN:

EARLY MORNING SUN

It's a brilliant orange looming in the horizon.
It almost resembles how you'd think a strange sun would 
appear in another galaxy.

Below it squats GEORGE AIR FORCE BASE...

FRISBEE

High in flight, it's caught momentarily in the rays of the sun, 
arches down...

FLIGHT LINE - GEORGE AIR FORCE BASE

To a YOUNG CREWMAN.  LAUGHING, he flips the Frisbee back to 
another CREWMAN.

A fuel truck pulls up.  TECH. SGT. drives...

                       TECH SGT.
              Knock it off!

One of the crewmen scoops up the Frisbee and throws it as they 
run for the truck and hop on.  Kids at play.  

PAN with truck to REVEAL a flight line of carefully parked
F-15's...

Even at rest they look lethal.  Huge twin stabilizers like 
monstrous blades ready to cup up the skies at more than Mach 2.5.  
The fighters are painted gray-blue to make them all but invisible 
at forty-thousand feet.Enough fire power to destroy a city...all 
controlled by one man.

RUNWAY - GEORGE AIR FORCE BASE

Aircraft roll down the runway and take to the skies -- 
some with a silken grace, leaving earth with a GREAT FIERY ROAR...


VICE WING COMMANDER'S OFFICE/ON WINDOW

A MAN watches the take-offs through his office window.  
He does it with the eye of a lover, the expression like 
that of some people in museums, or horse shows, or mountain 
climbers looking at that ultimate mountain...

The man turns away from the window seeing the last jet leave 
earth...

He's chewing something...

PICTURE/HERO SHOT

SPLAT!...

A spitball strikes the glass of a framed photograph on the wall.  
Spitball doesn't stick.

Room is small.  Airless.  Sparse furniture of heavy gray metal...

COLONEL ALBERT FISKE sits behind the desk.  He looks haggard, drawn, 
in need of a shave.  He's wearing a pilot's jumpsuit.  
It carries enough combat patches to make a quilt.  PHONE RINGS...

Fiske ignores it...

He rips off another piece of paper with his teeth, chews it, takes aim 
with a plastic straw...PHONE STOPS.

SPLAT...

A perfect hit.  Squarely on the head.  This is Second Lt. 
Albert Fiske, a mean machine glaring from the cockpit of an F-114 
some twenty-two  years ago...

Fiske allows himself a slight smile at his accurate shot.  
The aging air warrior.  Nearing mid-forties.  The consummate fighter
jock.

MAJOR GEORGE HOFER sticks his head in the room.  He's in his
early thirties -- young, professional, straight out of the Academy.  
He still lets military things impress him.
      

                       HOFER
              Colonel, may I come in?

                       FISKE
              I'm busy. 

Hofer's carrying an envelope.  He feels awkward with it.  
Fiske eyes the envelope like Hofer's carrying a fresh turd. 

                       FISKE
                   (continuing)
              That's it?

                       HOFER
              Sir...I'm sorry.

He deposits the envelope on Fiske's desk.  Fiske doesn't even look at it.

                       FISKE
              Is Bennie around?

                       HOFER
              I think the General's in his office.

                       FISKE
                   (abruptly rising)
              Answer the phone for me, will ya'?

                       HOFER
              Sir, I don't think...

                       FISKE
              Architectural Digest is doing a
              layout on my office -- I don't want
              to miss the call.

                       HOFER
              But, sir...

Hofer finds himself talking to empty air...

HOLBART'S OFFICE - GEORGE AIR FORCE BASE

LT. GENERAL BENJAMIN HOLBART is in his mid-fifties, an imposing man.  
The kind who gets the job done without giving or taking much shit.  
He sits behind a desk littered with sundry reports. An old "94th SQDN"
coffee mug and a half eaten sweet roll are pushed to one side.  
He pops several Tums while going over a stack of papers in front of him. 
Benjamin  Holbart is the Commander of the Twelfth Air Force.

There is a photograph on the wall of Holbart, Fiske and another hot-shot
jet jockey, all in their twenties, full of jism and attitude.

Fiske suddenly crashes in...

Holbart doesn't even look up...

                       HOLBART
              I got a door.  Use it.