Eagle Station

“We are down to thirty-six percent of our fuel,” Nadia reported from her right-hand seat. She had several status menus open on her MFDs. To make it possible for Brad to focus wholly on flying, she was monitoring their engines, avionics, and combat systems.

“Copy that,” he replied. He forced a cheerful tone. “Kinda makes me wish I’d stashed a few more cans of jet fuel in the back.”

The twenty-minute supersonic sprint he’d made earlier had enabled them to evade the first Russian attempt at interception. But the cost had been high. They were still more than fifteen hundred miles from the nearest possible point where they could safely rendezvous with a Sky Masters air tanker. Added to that was the inescapable fact that low-altitude flying drank fuel at an alarming rate. Taking the Rustler up into the thinner air at thirty or forty thousand feet would be a heck of a lot more fuel-efficient… except for the fact that it would also get them blown out of the sky by Russian SAMs or air-to-air missiles.

“How bad is this?” Nadia asked seriously.

“Remember that animated movie?” Brad said. “The one where the drunken sea captain climbs out onto the nose of a plane and belches alcoholic fumes into its tank to keep them flying just a few seconds longer?”

“Yes?” she said warily.

He grinned. “Well, it’s not quite that bad.”

“I would slug you if you were not flying this airplane,” she growled.

Brad laughed. “And here people told me being a covert ops pilot was a dangerous job.”

A sharp tone abruptly sounded in their headsets. “Warning, warning, Zaslon-M radar emissions detected at four o’clock,” the Rustler’s computer announced. “Evaluated as two MiG-31 interceptors. Estimated range eighty miles and closing. Moderate strength signal.”

“Ah, crap,” Brad muttered. “Okay, I take it back. This is a dangerous job.”

His mind ran through their tactical situation with lightning speed. Put simply, it sucked.

Those enemy fighters were headed right toward them and fast. Within minutes at most, they’d be close enough for their radars and IRST sensors to pick out the Rustler against this billiard table terrain. And even if his crappy fuel state allowed another prolonged supersonic sprint, he couldn’t outrun the MiGs. At high altitude, a MiG-31 could exceed Mach 2.8—twice the XCV-70’s maximum speed. Worse still, the Russian interceptors were probably armed with R-37M long-range, hypersonic air-to-air missiles capable of reaching out and swatting them out of the air at up to two hundred miles.

All of which really only left them with one option.

Beside him, Nadia had obviously come to the same conclusion. “We cannot hide. And we cannot run,” she said matter-of-factly. “So we fight?”

Brad nodded with equal coolness. “Definitely.” He rolled into a tight right turn, coming around hard to head straight at the oncoming MiGs. The Rustler’s radar cross section was smallest from the front.

“Twelve hundred and fifty knots closure,” their computer reported. “Range now seventy miles and closing fast. Time to radar detection estimated at two minutes thirty seconds.”

“Well, boys, I reckon this is it—” Brad started to joke.

Nadia forestalled him. “Do not say anything about ‘toe-to-toe nuclear combat with the Russkies,’ or I swear to God I will punch you and die happy,” she warned.

Brad surrendered. “No, ma’am,” he said devoutly.

Beside him, Nadia’s fingers danced across her MFDs, prepping their defensive systems. “SPEAR is online and ready to engage. Chaff is configured for R-37 radar-guided missiles. Flares ready.”

“Range now forty-five miles. Enemy radar strength climbing. Time to detection now one minute,” the Rustler’s computer interjected.

She glanced across the cockpit. “Do you have a plan? Or are we simply going straight for the enemy’s throat?”

“I’ve got a plan,” Brad assured her. Speaking fast, he outlined the tactics he had in mind.

A wolfish grin lit her face. “Oh, very sneaky! I like this plan!”

Phantom Three, Seventy Kilometers Southeast

That Same Time

Major Stepan Grigoryev glanced out his MiG-31’s cockpit canopy. Phantom Four was visible only as a distant gray dot roughly ten kilometers off his right wing. Although their data links would have allowed a much wider separation, he wanted his wingman in close support range if they found the Scion stealth aircraft they were hunting. Intelligence briefings had stressed that the private American company’s mercenary pilots were cunning and aggressive. So Grigoryev saw no point in giving one of them the chance to jump a lone aircraft. If this turned into a fight, he wanted the odds on his side.