The wingmen did exactly what they were supposed to do, executing a textbook formation breakaway, climbing and turning away from each other and giving their leader room to maneuver. But the lead pilot—concentrating on the attack, just moments away from firing his first radar- guided missiles—didn’t react fast enough, or didn’t believe the indication, or chose to ignore it, hoping for a lucky break, the two-in-three chance that the attack was against one of his wingmen.

The thirty-seven-pound shaped warhead detonated like a shotgun blast a fraction of a second before the missile hit the MiG right above and to the left of the starboard engine nacelle. The MiG-25’s heavy steel hull, reinforced with titanium—the MiG-25 was designed to fly at nearly three times the speed of sound—deflected most of the energy of the blast. But the missile still had enough punch to crack the fuselage, rip open the fuselage fuel tank, and smack the starboard engine. Running at one hundred percent power, the engines didn’t need much of a hit. The engine’s turbine blades, knocked out of their precisely engineered highspeed orbits, shot through the engine case like atomic particles flying into space after a nuclear explosion; the extreme heat from the engines ignited the fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, causing a fire. The MiG-25 pilot had only seconds to react—but again, he was concentrating too hard on his quarry to pay attention to the warning lights, telling him he had only a few heartbeats to punch out—before the MiG blew itself into a ball of fire and spun into the Mediterranean Sea.

“Good going, kiddo,” Franken said flatly—killing someone was never cause for celebration, even if it meant saving your own skin. “You got him.”

“Thanks,” Lindsey said—then promptly whipped off her oxygen mask, lowered her head between her knees, and vomited on the deck.

The two remaining MiGs spent several minutes rejoining—they were obviously spooked by the unexpected threat warning and having to do an evasive maneuver so low to the ground at night—and then several more minutes trying to locate their leader. By the time they resumed the search for the EB-52, it had changed headings and proceeded on course to its target area.

Within a few minutes, the picture had changed considerably. Where before it was relatively quiet, now it seemed every air defense radar in both Libya and Egypt was up and operating. Lindsey kept busy steering the Megafortress around a variety of antiaircraft weapon systems, and every few minutes a fighter radar would sweep past them. They were forced to stay at low altitude to avoid all the threats.

“Headbanger, this is Stalker One, say status,” Patrick McLanahan radioed.