A predatory grin flashed across Kuryokhin’s face. Better to act now, he thought, before the Americans figured things out and had time to react. “Lead to Bodyguard Two,” he radioed. “You take the high man. I’ll take the low.”

“Two,” Ilya Troitsky said immediately.

“Make them piss their flight suits, but no shooting!” Kuryokhin warned again. “Remember, we’re here to keep them off Prospector’s back, not to start World War Three.”

His wingman snorted over the radio. “Yes, Papa Bear. I’ll be good.”

“Then follow me!” Kuryokhin ordered. He yanked back on his stick and went to afterburner. His Su-35 streaked upward, climbing vertically at more than a thousand kilometers per hour. He broke out of the lower layer seconds later and spotted his chosen target, the lead F-22, almost directly above him, flying through a valley of clearer air between two towering masses of cumulonimbus storm clouds. The American stealth fighter grew larger in his canopy with astonishing speed. He thumbed his radar to air combat mode.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

“Holy crap!” McFadden blurted, startled by the rapid-fire sequence of high-pitched tones pulsing through his headset. His Raptor was being painted by an enemy radar at close range. Madly, he scanned the sky in all directions. Where the hell—

Suddenly, a blur of white and gray flashed past his canopy just ahead of him and kept on climbing. Jesus, that was an Su-35, he realized, noting the other aircraft’s twin tails and sleek, swept-back wings in a split second. And then the Russian fighter’s wake slammed into him, rattling the F-22 from end to end.

Shaking off the stunning impact, McFadden pulled into a hard, climbing turn toward the Su-35 that had just bounced him. G-forces slammed him back into his seat and his vision grayed out a little. Straining against the g’s, he spotted Cat Parilla’s Raptor rolling away as she dodged a second Su-35 spearing up at them out of the clouds. Her rapid evasive maneuver carried her straight into a column of cloud and she disappeared from sight.

Above him, the first Russian fighter came out of its own turn and then abruptly banked tightly in the opposite direction—maneuvering with incredible speed and agility. It vanished into another cloud.

“Anvil, this is Casino Lead,” McFadden grunted, reporting in to the E-3 AWACS while he reversed back after the Su-35. Everything outside his cockpit turned dark as he entered the clouds himself. He locked his radar onto the Russian. A new diamond blinked onto his HUD, sliding fast down and back to the right again. He slammed his stick hard in that direction, rolling inverted to dive after the still-invisible enemy fighter. “Two bandits just jumped us,” he forced out against the strain of continual tight turns. “No missiles in the air. Maybe these guys want to play, not fight.”

“Copy that, Casino,” the radar controller aboard the distant E-3 Sentry acknowledged. “Sure looks like a tight furball from here.”

For “furball,” read “fucking mess,” McFadden thought fuzzily, as he tightened his next turn even more, now pulling eight g’s and using his F-22’s thrust-vectoring engine nozzles to pull the aircraft’s nose around even faster. He couldn’t see shit in all of these clouds. And he’d lost track of Parilla. Sure, their data link threw a steering cue to her fighter onto his HUD, but it was jinking all over the place as they each maneuvered wildly, trying to pick up an advantage over the two Su-35s that had just bushwhacked them . . . or to break away from trouble if the bad guys gained a favorable position on them.