After lunch, all the officers were ordered to report to the briefing room. I guess the tour of the base was gonna have to wait. The room wasn't too big, and almost every inch of it was covered with rabbits. A narrow passage separated the two rows of benches and led up to a stage where a map was propped up, along with a giant white screen. Bucky and I took our seats near the back, where Eddie and a grey rabbit were already sitting.

"What did we miss?" Bucky asked, keeping his voice low.

"Not much, just the briefing officer setting up" the rabbit replied, still looking straight ahead. "What about you, what were you up to?"

"Nothing much, met the new guy and we tested out the engines. Everything checks out, so we're about ready to go."

"That's good. New guy?"

"Lieutenant James Barkley. It's nice to meet you, sir." I offered my paw for him to shake. He took it without so much as looking at me and it took him about two seconds to notice that the paw he was shaking was more than twice as big as his. He turned to face me, his expression one of complete confusion for a second, before shrugging and smiling.

"Lieutenant William Hopper." He eventually said, before turning forward again.

A small black furred rabbit walked up to the podium and we all stood up to salute him.

"At ease." We all sat back down. I was not expecting such a deep voice. He signaled the guy at the projector to turn it on and a large aerial photograph of an airfield showed up.

"Gentlemen, we have reason to believe that the enemy is preparing for an attack. Troop movement was picked up 200 miles northeast of our position, where they have a small airfield. Lieutenant Hopps and his crew took this photograph during their patrol yesterday. As you can see, they have 8 medium bombers parked here, just south of the runway, as well as anti-aircraft emplacements everywhere in the surrounding area. Your mission is to take out the aircraft and place some nice big craters on that runway. Make sure they can't use it for anything else."

The rabbit at the projector proceeded to turn it off, the briefing officer bringing our attention to a map of Bunny Burrow and the surrounding areas, with a line of red string showing the planned route.

"Now, we'll be sending a flight of six aircraft on this mission. Takeoff will be at 1400 hours. You'll fly in at 20,000 following a heading of 0-4-0. Once you pass this mountain range, you will turn towards the target, heading 0-0-0. The Initial Point for your bomb run will be 10 minutes after that and you will drop your payload an additional 5 minutes later, at 1500 hours. At that point you will turn to a heading of 2-4-0, far enough from the IP to avoid any alerted enemy fighters. If the weather remains clear, you should land right back here at around 1600 hours. No fighter opposition is expected, but intelligence reports mention light to moderate flak. Any questions?"

A rabbit at the front raised his hand.

"Yes, you, stand up."

"Well, sir, at that altitude we'll be easy targets, can't we go in any higher? Last time we flew in at 30,000!"

"Last time you also missed the target by half a mile. This is a purely strategic decision: a lower altitude will mean improved accuracy. What we do here is precision bombing, gentlemen, emphasis on precision. What's the point of loading these state of the art planes up with gallons of fuel and highly expensive explosives if you can't even hit the target? Any further questions? None? Great. Now, the flight crews selected for this mission are: Grey, Hopps, Bushman, Dice, Nelson and Hopper. Grey, you're flying lead, Hopps, you're second lead. Dismissed."

When briefing was done, we walked out to the main taxiway. The plane had already been moved from the hangar and currently sat at the end of the flight line. The rest of the crew joined us soon after.

"So what are we looking at?" Marty asked.

"Small airfield northeast of here, flight of six. No fighters, light to moderate flak. Total milk run, we should be back in around 2 hours." Was Bucky's reply.

"So what's the catch?"

"The catch is that we'll be flying a bit lower than usual, at only 20,000 ft." Hopper explained.

"They keep sending us in lower and lower! It's almost like they want us to get hit!" Eddie was not too happy.

"Well, according to Bucky they do. According to our 'friendly neighborhood briefing officer', it's so that we actually hit the target instead of just sprinkling bombs all over the place." Hopper explained.

"Yeah, right" Eddie said with a snort.

"Oh, but it's 'purely strategic'. 'It'll improve our accuracy' he says, 'precision bombing, gentlemen, emphasis on precision'!" Bucky mocked.

"Think about it this way, Eddie: By sending us in lower, they're making it easier for you to hit the target. And if you hit the stupid target, they won't send us back there again. Now, can we go?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever…"

Eddie, Bucky, Andy, Hopper and I climbed up through the main hatch. While their stations were in the nose, it wasn't exactly the safest place to be during takeoff, so instead Eddie sat at the desk to the right of the escape hatch, while Bucky took the small swing-out seat just behind the cockpit. The plane was set up in such a way that, in order to reach the nose, you'd have to push the co-pilot's seat (A.K.A. my seat) back and crawl through the small opening to the right of the instrument panel. On the bright side, this meant that I could push my seat further back, which let me sit much more comfortably and actually stretch instead of crouching over the control column so as to not hit my head on the roof. Andy took his seat to the left of the hatch, beginning to test the radio equipment as Hopper and I went through the checklist.

"You ready for this?" He asked me.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

"Good. Start her up."