“This is Commander Jones of the Eighteenth Fighter Wing,” Smith said, picking a random alias and speaking into his radio microphone. “Our aircraft has suffered a computer failure and I’m unable to turn. We’re rebooting and expect to have the problem corrected soon.”

When the Chinese air force man came back on, he seemed to have not heard the admittedly lame excuse. “Do not cross into Chinese territory, Commander. I repeat, do not cross into Chinese territory.”

“We may not have any choice,” Smith said, trying to stall the Chinese military’s response as long as possible. “We’re doing everything we can. Please contact General Baron at Kadena for confirmation.”

There was no response this time and Smith decided to take it as a positive sign that the Chinese were running it up the chain of command. With a little luck, they’d contact Baron and he would tell them the exact same thing in the slowest possible way. Every second he could give them might be the difference between success and failure.

“ETA?” Smith asked the pilot.

“Thirty-one minutes to intercept. Three minutes to incursion into Chinese territory.”

Smith nodded to himself and again wondered exactly what orders the pilot had been given. General Baron had never reappeared and it seemed likely that he was still trying to get confirmation of Smith’s authority. Had he told his pilots to hold in international airspace until he gave them direct authorization to continue? Smith ran his fingers over his sidearm. If so, things were going to get real interesting real fast.

For once, luck was with him and Baron’s voice crackled to life over an encrypted frequency. “I have just spoken personally to the president and I’d like to quote him directly. ‘If you see Jesus Christ himself coming out of the sky in a fiery chariot and Jon tells you to fire on him, you will do so without hesitation.’ Are those orders crystal clear?”

Smith let out a quiet sigh of relief as the affirmative responses came from all the pilots in his formation. A moment ago there had been a thousand things that could go wrong with this particular Hail Mary. Only 999 left.

“Are we aware of any Chinese response yet?” Smith said.

“It looks like they’re scrambling fighters for an intercept, but we’re still trying to solidify the intel on that. My Chinese counterpart is trying to reach me through back channels but I’m under orders not to respond to him.”

“Understood.” The president and Klein would undoubtedly be trying to work through this at much higher levels.

“I’ll update you as soon as we get any information you can use, Jon. In the meantime, good luck.”

*  *  *

“Contact! Ten bogeys closing fast from the south.”