“The magnetic field. It’s variable up to fifteen miles, but, at that range, the ship is still invisible—well, mostly—but the sheering forces we experienced after rescuing Linda are negligible.”

“Is the ship armed at all?”

“Not as far as I can tell, but there’s a mountain of info here, and we’re just scratching at the foothills.”

Cabrillo didn’t think it would be armed. The magnetic field was the weapon and to work effectively it needed to get in close.

“‘Foothills of data’?” Max scoffed. “Wordsmith, you are not.”

Cabrillo was about to answer the radio hail when the woman’s voice filled the op center for a second time. “Unidentified vessel, this is the USS Ross. We are a guided missile destroyer and you are entering a restricted military area. Turn back at once or we will take steps to compel you to leave this region. Do you copy?”

Juan knew this was mostly bluff. They were still a good distance from the carrier, although the Ross might be protecting the crash site as well as the Stennis. Either way, they were still a long way from resorting to any kind of violent confrontation.

“Chairman,” Linda cried, “they just launched two more planes and they’re vectoring on our position.”

The Navy was reacting a lot more aggressively than he’d anticipated. No doubt those two planes would be armed with antiship missiles, probably Harpoons. He keyed his mic. “USS Ross, this is Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo of the Oregon. Please repeat.”

Cabrillo didn’t know how to handle this. He doubted he could talk his way into letting them pass, but he didn’t think telling the truth would get him much either.

“You are about to enter a restricted military exclusion zone. You must turn at least ninety degrees from your current heading.”

“That F-18 is going to be here in about thirty seconds,” Linda informed him.

They still had miles to go before reaching where he thought the stealth ship would be hiding. It suddenly occurred to him that the ship had cloaked itself prematurely because its crew knew an American spy satellite was passing overhead. The new generation had no problem peering down from the heavens through cloud cover as dense as what they had hovering over them now. So the Chinese knew they would be spotted and had to cloak to avoid detection.

“Radar lock!” Mark Murphy called out.

“The Ross?”

“No. The first inbound fighter.”

Juan cursed. He’d been relying on the American reluctance to shoot first and ask questions later. Having the F-18 lock on weapons was no bluff, since a civilian ship wouldn’t be able to detect it. They either thought the Oregon was a Chinese warship or they didn’t care if they sank a civilian.