Colt exhaled and watched the airspeed ticking upward on his visor as the Joint Strike Fighter gained speed rolling down the darkened runway. When he felt the nose start to lift, he eased back on the stick and coaxed the stealth fighter into the air. Free from the Earth, he raised the landing gear and pointed his nose out to sea.

Punky’s in good hands, he thought. He kept the afterburner lit to chase down the rogue fighter.

He had a hard time believing it had been only twenty-four hours since he had flown the same jet over the same waters. So much had taken place since then, he almost felt like a different person. He turned his head to look at the dark shape of Santa Cruz Island, and he felt his stomach knot up thinking about Punky down there fighting for her life. But nothing mattered more than catching up to the hijacked stealth fighter before something tragic happened. Not his fatigue, not his fear. Colt was a man on a mission, and he knew it was the most important mission of his life.

He looked at the moving map display on the large touchscreen in front of him, noticing the test aircraft’s route of flight overlaid atop a sectional chart. He zoomed out and saw an icon representing Devil One barely fifty miles away, flying northwest along the planned route. Colt angled his jet right, setting a cutoff vector that would hopefully allow him to intercept the other F-35 at the western edge of the missile test complex.

He had never been particularly good at math. It was one of the reasons he became a pilot. But he was constantly amazed at the number of times he’d had to perform mental gymnastics to come up a number that nine times out of ten ended up being no better than a SWAG, a scientific wild ass guess.

Based on Devil One’s speed and route of flight, Colt calculated it would take the hijacked jet just under six minutes to reach the next checkpoint and turn back south to engage the target ship. If he cut across the northern border near Santa Cruz Island, Colt would need to fly close to six hundred knots to complete the intercept before the other jet made the turn. At the altitude he was climbing to, the speed of sound was just over that, and thumping the island with a sonic boom wouldn’t do him any favors.

It was a fine line. But like most things in Colt’s life, he had become accustomed to toeing that line.

He keyed the microphone switch to transmit over the datalink network. “Jug, you up?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

He breathed a sigh of relief that the hack hadn’t severed the communication channels. “How you doing, buddy?”

“How the hell do you think I’m doing?”

He figured the test pilot was still disoriented and confused by having his ability to fly the jet stripped from him. So, he kept his conversation casual, like they were just catching up over a few beers at the Country Luau in Kingsville. “I hear you, man. We’ll figure this out.”

“Where the hell are you?”

He had just passed over the eastern shore of Santa Cruz Island, but he wasn’t ready to give up that bit of information just yet. He wasn’t sure if the person who had hacked into the F-35 had the means of monitoring their datalink communications, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. The only thing he had going for him was that nobody knew where he was.

“Never mind that,” Colt said. “Let’s focus on what your jet is doing.”

There was a pause, and he could almost feel Jug’s fear radiating across the night sky in that silence. “I don’t know what’s going on, Colt.”

Colt watched his airspeed creep past six hundred knots, and he pulled the throttle back to come out of afterburner. If Punky was right and TANDY was on the island beneath him, the last thing he wanted to do was let her know he was there. He glanced down at the island again, then pulled up his EW page as an afterthought.

“I hear ya,” Colt said, straining to keep his voice calm and soothing. “You just keep observing what’s happening, and if you see anything that might give you an idea of the target, you just let me know.”

“Target? What are you talking about?”

He probably should have kept his mouth shut. But Colt also believed in giving the man in the seat all the information he needed to make the best decisions, however limited those decisions might be. “Listen, Jug.” Colt paused as he tried to find the right words. “The Chinese hacked into your jet for a reason. We don’t know why, but there is definitely a target at the end of this road.”

“Holy shit.”

“So, if you see anything that—”

Jug interrupted him. “A waypoint was added to my route south of San Clemente.”

A chill ran up Colt’s spine. There were a lot of reasons why the hijacked jet might fly south of the Point Mugu Sea Range, but there was only one target Colt could think of that would be worth the effort. “Holy shit is right,” he said without keying the microphone.

43

USS Mobile Bay (CG-53)

Beth blew onto the bridge, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness as she made her way to the forward windows.