Eagle Station

Four windows blinked open on his right-hand multifunction display. The long-range automated cameras they’d mounted at various points on the destroyer’s superstructure had zoomed in on the enemy warheads as they slashed through the sky. At this distance and altitude, they were only visible as wavering orange blobs superheated by friction as they ripped deeper into the atmosphere. Streamers of ionized gas curled behind them.

Brad whistled under his breath. “Jesus, those things must be pulling twenty-plus G’s when they maneuver.”

“Excellent engineering,” Nadia agreed coolly from beside him. From her tone, she could have been commenting on the weather. But then he felt her warm hand slide into his. “I am crossing my fingers now, too, Brad.”

“Trzymam kciuki,” he echoed, using the Polish equivalent of the English idiom for good luck. Smooth move, McLanahan, he told himself. Find the woman of your dreams, persuade her to marry you, and then haul her into deadly danger. Even knowing that she would never have stood for being left out of this operation didn’t make that seem any smarter.

Their threat computer broke in again. “Ten seconds to impact. Range eighteen nautical miles.”

Okay, Boomer, now would be a really good time to show up, Brad thought, feeling his stomach muscles tighten. This was suddenly a binary equation. Either their plan worked perfectly… or they were dead.

Shadow Two-Nine Bravo

That Same Time

Through the spaceplane’s forward cockpit canopy, Hunter Noble saw the two U.S. Navy destroyers, haze gray against the brilliant blue sea, transform from distant, indistinct blurred shapes to close-up, razor-sharp silhouettes bristling with weapons and antennas. And then they were gone, vanishing far astern as the S-29B flashed overhead at more than three thousand miles per hour.

High above them, he spotted four glowing specks of light ripping south across the sky with incredible speed.

“Emitters locked on!” Paul Jacobs, the Shadow’s defensive systems officer, shouted over the intercom. “Firing!”

Weirdly, there was no sound over the roar of their engines. No added vibration. No evidence aboard the spaceplane that anything had just happened.

But instantly all four DF-26 warheads veered off course, corkscrewing wildly across the sky in widening spirals until they slammed headlong into the sea miles away from the American warships. Huge geysers of churning foam and superheated steam erupted from the center of each impact point, rising hundreds of feet into the air before plunging harmlessly back down into the roiled waters.

“Nailed ’em!” Boomer heard Jacobs crow.

The Chinese weapons had just been zapped by the S-29B’s four retractable microwave emitter pods — two set near its wing tips, one atop the forward fuselage, and one mounted under the aft fuselage. Operating autonomously, in an engagement that lasted only milliseconds, the Shadow’s defensive systems had sent directed bursts of high-energy microwaves sleeting through the DF-26 warheads, frying their electronics and flight controls, and sending them tumbling out of control.

“Good kills, Paul!” Boomer confirmed. Smiling now, he keyed his mike. “Bait Eight-Five, this is Shadow Two-Nine Bravo. Splash four. Repeat, splash four.”

“Copy that, Shadow,” Nadia Rozek replied. Her voice sounded only slightly strained. “Well done.”

Boomer’s smile widened. “All part of the service package, Eight-Five. Need anything else today?”

“Negative, Shadow,” she said. “We will take it from here.”

“Roger, Eight-Five,” Boomer acknowledged. “See you back home in a few days.” He tugged his stick slightly to the right, rolling the big spaceplane into a shallow, curving turn around to the east. Then, climbing steeply, the S-29B streaked away — heading for the upper reaches of the stratosphere, where its engines could transition to scramjet mode and kick it to full hypersonic speed.

Four

PLA Navy Command Post, Yŏngxīng Dăo (Eternal Prosperity Island)

That Same Time

Navy Captain Commandant Yang Zhi glared at the pictures transmitted by his Silver Eagle drone. The two American warships steamed on unscathed, still heading north as though nothing had happened. The waves emanating from each DF-26 warhead’s distant impact point rippled past those ships without doing more than rocking them a few degrees from side to side.

His secure phone buzzed. “Yang here.” He straightened up to his full height as he listened to the staccato orders barked out from Beijing. When the furious voice fell silent, he nodded rapidly. “Yes, Comrade Admiral. It will be done!”

Yang hung up and turned to his chief of staff. “That was Admiral Cao. This American interference with our missile test was a hostile act. We are authorized to engage and sink those destroyers without further warning.” He eyed the other man. “Your recommendation?”