Richardson didn't mind—indeed, he relished—the hazards of the mission.  Two of his three comrades were, like him, airline pilots, the third a crop duster, all experienced men with plenty of practice in low-level tactics.  And their mission was a good one.

The briefing, conducted by a naval officer, had taken over an hour.  They were paying a visit to the Soviet Navy.  Richardson had read in the papers that the Russians were up to something, and when he had heard at the briefing that they were sending their fleet to trail its coat this close to the American coast, he had been shocked by their boldness.  It had angered him to learn that one of their crummy little day fighters had back-shot a navy Tomcat the day before, nearly killing one of its officers.  He wondered why the navy was being cut out of the response.  Most of the Saratoga's air group was visible on the concrete pads at Loring, sitting alongside the B-52s, A-6E Intruders, and F-18 Hornets with their ordnance carts a few feet away.  He guessed that his mission was only the first act, the delicate part.  While Soviet eyes were locked on the alpha strike hovering at the edge of their SAM range, his flight of four would dash in under radar cover to the fleet flagship, the nuclear-powered battle cruiser Kirov.  To deliver a message.

It was surprising that guardsmen had been selected for this mission.  Nearly a thousand tactical aircraft were now mobilized on the East Coast, about a third of them reservists of one kind or another, and Richardson guessed that that was part of the message.  A very difficult tactical operation was being run by second-line airmen, while the regular squadrons sat ready on the runways of Loring, and McGuire, and Dover, and Pease, and several other bases from Virginia to Maine, fueled, briefed, and ready.  Nearly a thousand aircraft! Richardson smiled.  There wouldn't be enough targets to go around.

"Linebacker Lead, this is Sentry-Delta.  Target bearing zero-four-eight, range fifty miles.  Course is one-eight-five, speed twenty."

Richardson did not acknowledge the transmission over the encrypted radio link.  The flight was under EMCON.  Any electronic noise might alert the Soviets.  Even his targeting radar was switched off, and only passive infrared and low-light television sensors were operating.  He looked quickly left and right.  Second-line flyers, hell! he said to himself.  Every man in the flight had at least four thousand hours, more than most regular pilots would ever have, more than most of the astronauts, and their birds were maintained by people who tinkered with airplanes because they liked to.  The fact of the matter was that his squadron had better aircraft-availability than any regular squadron and had had fewer accidents than the wet-nosed hotdogs who flew the warthogs in England and Korea.  They'd show the Russkies that.