“I think we should jump from there,” she told Bison, pointing. “Jump?”

“Look, it’s only twenty feet from the water. As long as we keep our balance to the very end and go out there, we won’t hit anything. It’s like a diving platform. The others can pick us up.”

“Shit on that. Twenty fuckin’ feet”

“Easier than snaking under this platform, I bet.”

“Twenty fuckin’ feet. Maybe thirty.”

“I bet you did worse than that at Lackland when you went through special operations training.”

“Yeah, but that was Lackland. Everybody was out of their mind there”

“Come on. You go first,” she told him.

“Ladies first.”

“We’ll both go first. Come on.”

“You ain’t walking out there, are you?” he said as she climbed up.

“Should I run?” she said, standing on the girder.

“Jesus,” said Bison. He pulled himself up and started to crawl out behind her.

Jennifer waited until Bison was on behind her, then started resolutely toward the edge. She felt her right foot slip, and pushed forward—she did run now, pushing her momentum so that she was sure she would fall far from the metalwork. As gravity took her, she pushed her legs together and brought her arms in together, covering her upper body.

The water punched at her so hard that she was convinced she had struck the metal. Her lungs rebelled; she pushed upward, flailing desperately. Finally she saw light just ahead, but two strokes failed to bring her to the surface. She felt despair, tasted the salt water in her mouth.

But she’d hit rock bottom a month and a half before, when the air force seemed to turn against her, launching an investigation that targeted her. She’d survived that; she could survive anything.

A shock of cold jerked her body as if she’d touched a power line. Jennifer’s head bobbed upward, breaking the water’s surface. She gasped once, twice, then felt herself lurching backward.

Liu pulled her into one of the Zodiacs. She sat upright just in time to see Bison pulling himself onto the other a few yards away.

The motor at the rear revved. The lightweight boat bucked forward, picking up speed quickly.

“Down!” yelled Liu.

Jennifer wasn’t sure why he was yelling, until she saw the platform explode over his right shoulder.

Aboard “Penn,” off the coast of Brunei

1755

Zen brought Hawk One into a shallow dive to strafe the nearest ship, the smaller of the two. He saw as he came on that the bridge area at the front of the superstructure had already been struck by something; he slid his cannon fire into the center of the gun in front of it, riding the stream of bullets through the housing as the barrel swung in his direction. He flashed overhead, spinning back for another shot. Since the gun no longer moved he slid toward the missile launchers atop the rear deck; they looked like a pair of long garbage cans angled toward the sky.

It wasn’t clear which of the ships had launched the missile at the platform earlier, but by the time he laid off the trigger it was clear that this launcher wasn’t going to be used again—a secondary explosion erupted from the front of the tube as Zen cleared upward.

There were two more missile launchers on the port side of the ship. As he started toward them, the radar warning receiver erupted with a message—the second ship, about a half-mile to the north—was attempting to lock its anti-aircraft weapons on him.

“You’re up next,” Zen said to himself.

PENN WAS JUST CLEARING FIFTEEN MILES SOUTHWEST OF the corvette, nearly in range for the JDAM GBU-32, the last weapon in her bomb rack. The GBU-32 was essentially a thousand-pound bomb with a set of steerable fins on the back that could be programmed to strike a specific GPS point. The bomb, still being tweaked for regular military use, was extremely accurate, but it had been designed to hit land targets that didn’t move, not ships at sea.

On the other hand, airplanes had been taking on ships since Billy Mitchell’s salad days, and Breanna had worked out a solid attack plan with the help of the Megafortress’s computer. She intended on launching inside five miles, which would decrease the possibility of the ship outmaneuvering the weapon.

“Zen, I’m about a minute and a half from launch,” she told him. “I’m going to open the bomb bay. Can you take out their missiles?”

“Roger that.”

Over Brunei, near Brunei International Airport

1756

McKenna swung around, getting ready for another run at the Badger.

If she only had bullets in her cannon, she could take the slimer down. Hell, she had half a mind to fly next to the big SOB, whack open the canopy, and wing the pilot with her pistol like they did in World War I.

Hell, she’d even throw a brick at him if she had one.

She did, actually. Four of them, each loaded with 250 pounds of explosives.

Bomb another airplane?

Why the hell not?

The bombs might not explode, but if she could match the other plane’s speed, she could get them right through the wings.

Matching his speed was just a BS aerobatic stunt, the sort of gimmick Ivana used to have her do all the time to close a sale.

McKenna pulled off to the right, taking a wide circle south of the Badger as she tried to decide if she was crazy to even think about taking a shot. What the hell, she decided as she came through the wide arcing turn. She leveled off, trying to slow the MiG-19 down to match the Badger’s speed. The two planes were very different, and she couldn’t quite get it; she pulled close again but the MiG tugged at her, trying to slide off to the right. By the time she got the plane steady she was beyond the Badger’s right wing. She tried swinging out to the right and then tucking back in a kind of weave, but she was still going too fast. The Brunei airport loomed ahead; obviously the Badger was going to try and land.

Maybe I’ll wait until it lands, she thought to herself as she accelerated and turned ahead.

Then she noticed that the gun turret at the top was revolving, following her.

That did it. She didn’t wait for it to fire again. She took the turn, letting her speed bleed off precipitously; the plane seemed to whine at her but she resisted the impulse to nudge the throttle. Wings barely clutching the air, she walked the MiG slowly toward the tailfin of her prey, which was now on a glide toward the concrete runway. As McKenna slipped overhead, losing her view of the Badger, she hit the bomb release. The MiG, now a thousand pounds lighter, shot forward. McKenna went for the throttle, jacking her speed and rocketing upward.

It took more than thirty seconds for her to climb up and come back around to a position where she could get a look at the runway. When she did, she saw that the Badger had landed—without its right wing.

Off the coast of Brunei

1800

Miraculously, the debris from the missile and platform didn’t strike the Zodiac, but the nearby ocean boiled with the rumbling wake. The small boat, designed to withstand anything less than a typhoon, bucked and tumbled with the waves but remained afloat.

The missile had sheared the platform off into the water, leaving only three stalks above the waves.

“Where’s the other boat?” she said to Liu. “Where’s Bison?”

“Ahead of us,” said the sergeant, nodding with his head.

DAZHOU WATCHED FROM THE BRIDGE AS THE SMALL AIRCRAFT started a fresh attack on his other ship, which had stopped defending herself. His crew had been unable to lock on the knifelike aircraft, which danced around the sky like a dervish.

“Use the cannon,” he shouted. “Sight it by eye if you have to.”