Eagle Station

“Very well,” Dvorsky said. Her voice sounded tight. China’s intermediate-range DF-26 ballistic missiles were ship killers, capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads with enormous striking power. Intelligence reports she’d read claimed they couldn’t score hits against warships smaller than aircraft carriers. But those claims were a lot less comforting with real missiles racing toward her two destroyers at fifteen thousand miles per hour. “Should we take evasive action?”

“No, ma’am,” Brad replied. “Recommend you hold this course and speed. We’ve got this.” He muted the connection again and crossed his fingers below his console. “At least I hope so.”

Nadia smiled at him. “Have a little faith. Everything is proceeding as we have foreseen.” She pushed a com icon on her own central display. “Shadow Two-Nine Bravo, this is Bait Eight-Five. Four DF-26 IRBMs inbound to this location. You are up and at bat.”

Shadow Two-Nine Bravo, over the South China Sea

That Same Time

Two hundred nautical miles southeast of the Paracel Islands, a large, black blended-wing aircraft rolled into a slow turn toward the northwest. To a layman’s eye, it looked a lot like a bigger version of the SR-71 Blackbird, only with four huge engines mounted below its highly swept delta wing instead of two, and a fifth engine atop its aft fuselage. In order to avoid detection by China’s air search radars, the Scion-operated S-29B Shadow spaceplane had been flying a fuel-conserving racetrack pattern at low altitude, a little more than five hundred feet above the sea.

“…You are up and at bat.”

“Copy that, Bait Eight-Five. We’re heading out now,” Hunter “Boomer” Noble promised. He glanced quickly across the cockpit at his copilot. “Good grief. Now Brad’s got Nadia — Nadia ‘I can break you in half with my little finger’ Rozek! — using baseball jargon?”

Liz Gallagher, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and B-2 bomber pilot, smiled back at him. “Fair’s fair, Boomer. McLanahan’s picked up a bunch of Polish swearwords from her, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Boomer allowed absently, refocusing his attention on his head-up display. As the steering cue provided by their navigation system slid right and then stabilized, his gloved left hand tweaked a sidestick controller a scooch, bringing the big spaceplane out of its slow right bank. His right hand settled on a bank of engine throttles set in the center console between the S-29B’s two forward seats. “Are we configured for supersonic flight?”

“All checklists are complete,” Gallagher said, watching her displays closely. The spaceplane’s advanced computers had just finished running through their automated programs. A slew of graphic indicators flashed green and stayed lit. “All engines and other systems are go.”

“Roger that,” Boomer said. He keyed the intercom to the aft cabin, where the S-29’s three other crewmen — a data-link specialist, offensive systems officer, and defensive systems officer — sat at their stations. “Buckle up, boys and girls. And stand by on all weapons and sensors. This mission just went hot.”

As terse acknowledgments flooded through his headset, he advanced all five throttles. Instantly, the growling roar of the S-29’s LPDRS (Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System) triple-hybrid engines deepened. These remarkable “leopard” engines could transform from air-breathing supersonic turbofans to hypersonic scramjets to reusable rockets, and they were powerful enough to send the Shadow into Earth orbit.

Pressed into his seat by rapid acceleration, Hunter Noble gently pulled back on his stick. Climbing higher, the big black spaceplane streaked northwest at ever-increasing speed.

Aboard USS McCampbell

A Short Time Later

“Bridge, Combat, new tracking data received from SBIRS. All four warheads have separated from their boost vehicles. Speed now Mach twenty. Estimated time to impact one hundred twenty seconds.”

“Combat, Bridge. Very well.” Commander Amanda Dvorsky stood motionless, fighting down the useless urge to rush out onto the bridge wing and stare up into the clear blue sky. Those incoming DF-26 warheads were still close to five hundred nautical miles downrange and well above the atmosphere. And for all the good the surface-to-air missiles nestled in McCampbell and Mustin’s vertical launch tubes could do right now, those Chinese warheads might as well have been on the moon. Her two destroyers were armed with shorter-ranged and slower SM-2 Standard Missiles, not the upgraded, antiballistic missile-capable SM-3s deployed aboard newer Arleigh Burke destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

Another call from the Combat Information Center blared over the speakers. “Bridge, Combat! Friendly air contact bearing one-six-five degrees at angels three. Speed is Mach three and increasing. Positive IFF. Range sixty-four nautical miles and closing.”