EndWar

The five-hundred-pound JDAMs under Halverson’s wings were accurate to within thirteen meters, and she and Sapphire could launch those precision-guided bombs from up to twenty-four kilometers away during a low-altitude launch or up to sixty-four kilometers during a high-altitude launch. You plugged in the coordinates, delivered the munitions—

Barring of course, angry swarms of Russian fighters whose pilots thought otherwise.

The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons in the F-35B’s internal bays were the “C” variant developed for the Navy. The weapon utilized a combination of an imaging infrared (IIR) terminal seeker and a two-way data link to achieve point accuracy and was designed to attack point targets. It was a thousand pounds of general purpose destruction.

And it was most definitely time for her and Sapphire to flash their fangs and lighten their loads.

“Two minutes,” Halverson warned her wingman.

“Roger that. I have two targets on the ground on the east side of their staging area, over.”

“I see them,” Halverson said, checking her own display. “I’ve got two more 130s on the west side. Christ, you see all those BMPs?”

“I do. Two bad we weren’t packing more punch.”

Sapphire was right. Thousand-pound JDAMs instead of five hundred would have really done the job.

“One minute,” Halverson announced.

That’s all we need is one minute, thought Halverson. She glanced up through the canopy, where the first streaks of dawn turned the sky a light purple on the horizon.

Just thirty seconds now. Give me thirty seconds.

Sapphire cursed into the radio. “Four bogeys at our eleven o’clock, closing in.”

Halverson swore under her breath as she checked her own radar. “They ain’t ours.”

“Nope. Got ID: Su-98s. Countermeasures seem ineffective. I think they have us. We better launch before they do!”

The Sukhoi S-98 was Russia’s latest single-seat fighter, deemed by most JSF pilots as the most deadly in its arsenal and capable of carrying up to 18,000 pounds of ordnance.

“Just keep course. Fifteen seconds.”

“They’re going to get missile lock!”

Halverson’s voice turned strangely calm as her years of training kicked in, like muscle memory. “Sapphire, let’s make it all worth it. We’re almost there.”

“Oh my God,” gasped Sapphire. “We won’t make it!”

“Hang on! Five, four, three, two… Bombs away! Flares, chaff, evade!” Halverson cried.

The two JDAMs fell away from her wings as behind her, the chaff and flares ignited.

Sapphire did likewise, and Halverson lost sight of her as they both rolled inverted and dove away in a split S, the oldest trick in the book, hoping the sudden maneuver would prevent those Su-98 pilots from getting missile lock.

As she came upright, flying in the Russians’ direction about two thousand feet below, the bad news flashed: missiles locked.

And her wingman confirmed the next inescapable fact: “Siren, they’ve fired!”

Halverson longed for the days of good old dogfighting, when maybe she and Sapphire could’ve pulled out the old Thach Weave, one of them baiting an enemy pilot while the other waxed him from the side.

Though they would occasionally get to tangle with the enemy, it was mostly distant and faceless now, missiles launched from kilometers away from jets you never saw—

And those missiles you’d only glimpse for a second, your last.

Halverson reacted out of pure instinct, jamming the stick forward and plunging straight down, even as she hit the afterburner.

Her first thought was to outrun the incoming missiles, get her fighter up near Mach 2, practically melt off the wings. She imagined the missiles running out of fuel behind her and simply dropping away.

But that was a fantasy.

The Vympel R-84 had a range of at least one hundred kilometers, and everything Halverson knew about missiles and evading them told her that if these Vympels didn’t take the flares or chaff, then she was in their no-escape zone.

She blasted through the clouds and checked her screens.

Twelve seconds to impact.

“Oh, God, Siren, I don’t think I can—”

Sapphire’s transmission broke off, and her fighter vanished from Halverson’s display.

Her wingman hadn’t even ejected.

Halverson blinked hard. Is this how it’ll be, then? Give me more time. I’m not finished yet.

No barrel roll, split S, break turn, chandelle, or wingover would save her now.

No maneuver in the world.

No amount of thrust from her engines.

She cut the afterburner, hit the damned brakes. Hard.

Below lay the haphazard rows of Russian cargo planes, and Halverson’s AGM-154s were locked on a pair of targets.

So, with seven seconds left, she cut loose both bombs—

Then tugged the black-and-yellow striped handle between her legs.

The canopy blew off with a violent shudder.