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“Two zero one, take angels thirty, fly heading two five zero for cutoff.”

Colt adjusted his heading another twenty degrees to the left and continued climbing through fifteen thousand feet. He was still in afterburner and accelerating away from the carrier, not wasting time worrying about whether the other two alert aircraft had launched. If they did, he would see them over the datalink soon enough.

“Two zero one,” he replied.

“Two zero one, cleared to switch Tiger control.”

Colt reached up and tuned his primary radio to the E-2D Hawkeye controller’s frequency and leveled off at thirty thousand feet before keying the microphone. “Tiger, two zero one.”

“Two zero one, Tiger, picture single group, BRAA, two six zero, one hundred and fifty, forty-two thousand, flank southeast, bogey, outlaw.”

Outlaw?

Colt felt a flutter of excitement deep in his stomach, and he ran the cursors on his radar attack display along that line of bearing. The addition of the brevity code outlaw meant that the bogey aircraft had met point of origin criteria. They knew where the unidentified plane had launched from, but it hadn’t yet satisfied criteria for declaring it hostile. He was surprised they had even called away the alert for that.

“Two zero one, commit,” he replied, indicating he was taking ownership of the intercept.

“Tiger copies commit. Single group, BRAA, two five eight, one hundred and thirty-five, forty-two thousand, flank southeast, bogey, outlaw.”

Colt pulled up the Situational Awareness display that showed both surface and air contacts the E-2D Hawkeye populated into the datalink network. Although still beyond his onboard radar range, the airborne threat’s surveillance track moved rapidly away from Hainan Island at forty-two thousand feet toward another track flying well below one hundred. He placed his cursors over the low and slow-flying surveillance track.

“Tiger, declare contact, BRAA two zero zero, seventy-five.”

The reply was immediate. “Contact BRAA two zero zero, seventy-five, friendly. I say again, friendly. Skip it, skip it.”

What the fuck is going on?

He thought back to the Russian helicopter he had watched take off while sitting on the catapult and wondered if that was the low-flying contact. Colt swallowed, then moved his cursors back to the hostile group and designated it to pull up additional information in his Night Vision Cueing and Display, a hybrid between the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System and the AN/AVS-9 dual tube night vision goggles. While not as powerful as the Helmet Mounted Display he had worn while flying the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, the NVCD still provided him visual guidance to a computer-generated box in the sky where the invisible target was located. He selected his radar-guided AIM-120D AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, and studied the depicted Launch Acceptability Region.

Still too far away.

The box centered around the lead J-11B Flanker in his NVCD abruptly rotated and became a diamond. Although he saw the correct symbology for a hostile contact on his Situational Awareness and radar attack displays, he still had a hard time accepting it and wanted the controller to declare it hostile and give him the authority to shoot. “Tiger, declare single group.”

“Single group hostile.”

Holy shit.

Dusty One

Air Branch Mi-17 Hip

Charlie dropped his eyes to look under his NODs at the red light flashing just under the glare shield on his forward instrument panel. It took him less than a second to recognize its position on the Hip’s upgraded radar warning receiver.

Not good.

“Radar lock,” Roger confirmed. “Six o’clock and correlated.”

If there was a bright side to having a hostile enemy fighter locking you up on radar, it was that at least it wasn’t a surface-to-air missile site that had gone undetected by their surveillance. The fighters rapidly closing in on them were still their biggest threat.

“How far?” Charlie asked, lifting his gaze to look at the augmented darkness through the forward windscreen.

“They’re at sixty miles and closing.”

“How far to Passu Keah?”

Roger zoomed out on his display that had become cluttered with additional icons as the Reagan’s E-2D added additional surveillance tracks to the datalink network. “Also sixty miles. About thirty minutes of flying time.”

Charlie keyed the transmit switch for the SATCOM radio. “Scar Nine Nine, Dusty One is thirty minutes from FARP Alpha.” He omitted the fact that they were only thirty minutes from landing if the Chinese fighters didn’t shoot them down first.

“Scar Nine Nine copies.”

Charlie turned his attention back to the closest alligator to the canoe. “How far out is our savior?”

Roger didn’t have to ask who he meant, since there was only one contact on his screen that had any chance of saving them from becoming a burning fireball in the night sky. “Seventy miles. One additional Super Hornet is ten miles in trail.”