“American interceptors, you may not interfere with any peaceful flight over international waters,” the Chinese pilot radioed. The friendly tone was completely nonexistent now. “Terminate your dangerous close flying immediately and leave us alone.”

“Lego, get on the horn to ‘home plate,’ confirm they are listening in, and ask for instructions,” the lead pilot radioed.

“Two.”

On the secondary channel the Hornet pilot said, “Chinese warplane Yu One-Four, this is Hydra One-Two-One flight, U.S. Navy, on GUARD, this is an air defense warning in the clear, you are carrying two suspected offensive antiship missiles and are headed directly for U.S. warships in international waters.” This description was for the benefit of his own ship’s cockpit voice recorders, for the recorders aboard the Hawkeye radar plane, as well as for recordings made by any other nearby ships who were certainly listening in. “I am ordering you to reverse course immediately or you may be fired on without further warning. Comply immediately. This is your final warning.”

“CAG says two hundred is the brick wall, Timber,” the wingman reported. “Based on your description, intel says he might be carrying AS-17 Kryptons. That checks with what Armstrong told us.”

“I dunno-they look bigger than Kryptons,” the lead pilot responded. The AS-17 had been used by the Russians against targets in the United States during their attacks in 2004, and the whole world was now well familiar with those deadly weapons, as well as with the other supersonic and hypersonic weapons in the Russian arsenal.

“The Ready-Five is airborne,” the wingman added.

“Rog. Okay, we’ll climb the ladder as usual and see what he does. Light him up.”

“Two.” The wingman selected his “MASTER ARM” switch from “SAFE” to “ARM” and selected an AIM-120 missile. With the Chinese aircraft designated as the target, the fire control computer changed the pulse-rate frequency of the radar signal for target tracking, which would show up on most radar-threat warning receivers as a locked-on warning. No reaction from the Chinese jet.

“Two-fifty,” the wingman reminded his leader.

“Rog. I’m moving to his left side.” The lead Hornet quickly climbed and slid over the Chinese plane’s canopy and flew beside the plane close enough to see the rank patches on the Chinese pilot’s flight suit. The pilot continued looking straight ahead, but the Hornet leader could see the weapons officer staring back at him cross-cockpit, occasionally making some kind of gestures.

“You giving me the finger, buddy? Here’s my reply.” The Hornet pilot armed his weapons, selected the twenty-millimeter cannon, and fired a one-second burst. The Chinese pilot made a brief glance at the Hornet but then looked straight ahead again. The weapons officer stopped gesturing and seemed frozen in surprise. “Are you getting the picture yet, boys?” the Hornet pilot said. But the JH-37 did not alter course. “Okay, we’ll try-”

And at that instant the lead Hornet pilot saw a brief burst of heavy machine-gun fire from the right-side cannon, the reverberations of that cannon fire rumbling through space and easily felt in the Hornet. “Bastard fired his cannon!” the leader reported. “Felt like a thirty-mike.” He didn’t need a reminder to stay away from the Chinese fighter’s nose, but he got one anyway.

“Five minutes, Timber,” the wingman said. “How ’bout I buzz him?”

“I don’t want you within range of that cannon. It’s gotta be a thirty-millimeter.”

“Then how about I do a handstand on his ass?”

The leader thought about it for a moment, then said, “Okay, c’mon in.”

The wingman shut down the radar lock, moved his weapons switch back to “SAFE,” then descended and closed in on the Chinese fighter. The leader moved away from the fighter. “Little more…little more…down a touch…” the leader said, directing his wingman closer until he was directly above and slightly ahead of the Chinese attack plane. “Okay, Lego, hit ’em.”

The wingman abruptly raised his nose almost to vertical and fed in full afterburner power, directing his jet blast directly down on the Chinese fighter from just a few yards away. That did the trick. The JH-37 looked as if it had completely stopped flying, and it started a drastic wobbly descent.

“How does that feel, bitch?” For a moment the Hornet leader was afraid the JH-37 wasn’t going to recover, but after nearly flat-spinning and descending a couple thousand feet or so, it finally stabilized. It was off-heading perhaps twenty degrees, but its course was still aimed in the direction of the USS Bush. “Lego, c’mon back around, radio home plate that the bandit is still heading in and request permission to shoot.”

“Two.”

The Hornet leader descended slightly and slowed to keep the JH-37 in sight. It was now about thirty degrees offset, but it definitely wasn’t reversing course. “Don’t make me spank you, buddy,” the Hornet leader said to himself. “Bring it around or I’ll-”

And at that instant his jaw dropped open, his eyes bulged, and his mouth turned instantly dry…because the large missile on the JH-37’s left wing dropped into space, the engine ignited with a tremendous tongue of yellow fire, and it shot ahead with a massive glob of fire and a trail of white smoke. Seconds later, the second antiship missile dropped free and launched as well!

“Holy shit…home plate, home plate, Hydra One-Two-One, Vampire, Vampire, Vampire!” he shouted on the number one radio, using the brevity code “vampire” for launch of an enemy antiship missile. “Two Vampires in the air! Lego, I’m clearing to the east and high, nail this bastard!”

“Two cleared in hot…fox two!” Seconds later, the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile hit the Chinese fighter, sending it out of control and spinning into the South China Sea.

“Scramble, scramble, scramble, ASM launch detected, scramble, scramble, scramble!” blared the loudspeakers aboard the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser escorting the USS George H. W. Bush. The cruiser’s AN/SPY-1B multifunction Aegis radar system detected the missile launches moments before the frantic radio call from the F/A-18 Hornet pilot was received.

Because they had been closely monitoring the Hornet intercept of the Chinese aircraft, both the ship’s captain and the tactical action officer were at their stations in the Lake Champlain’s Combat Direction Center. Each had two large screens providing them composite information gathered not just from their AN/SPY-1 radar but also from all the other sensors in the battle group via the Cooperative Engagement Capability, which allowed any ship in the battle group to use any radar to attack a target. The Hawkeye radar plane’s data feed was also giving them a look at the intercept beyond their horizon, and the Air Force space station was feeding information from almost anywhere else on the planet.

One glance at the display and it was immediately obvious that this was going to be close, because the new targets were accelerating past Mach 2 very quickly, going hypersonic, and they were descending to wave-top height. “Change engagement mode to auto special,” the captain shouted.

“Changing engagement mode from semiauto to auto special,” the TAO repeated. “Sir, engagement mode is set to auto special.”

The speed of the missiles had already increased to over Mach 3-the Hawkeye radar’s mechanical sweep could hardly keep up with the speed, and the Aegis system had to predict where the next return would appear based on last speed and track. At sea-skimming altitudes, the Lake Champlain ’s electronically scanned phased-array radar would only have a few seconds’ look in horizon-search mode.

In automatic-special mode, Aegis controlled almost all aspects of ship defense. It activated electronic radar jammers, dispensed decoy chaff and flares, slewed the Mk 45 five-inch gun and provided initial target azimuth to the Phalanx close-in weapon systems, steered the SPG-62 target illuminator, and finally issued firing and target-tracking commands to the cruiser’s vertical-launch SM-2 Standard antiaircraft missiles and Evolved Sea Sparrow defensive missiles.