When Chen looked out of his canopy, the city had disappeared. He knew exactly what this meant: The air raid sirens had begun wailing. When this occurred at night, the city’s lights would automatically shut off. This was done to not only give air defense units a clear view of the target in the night sky, but also deny an intruder the use of landmarks for navigation.

      The power grid switch was in the hands of the regional commander who coordinated the defense of the outlying areas in his jurisdiction. With the lights off, all Chen could see now were the glowing tracers of anti-air munitions whizzing past him, flak explosions around him, and fire trails of SAMs leaving their rails and silos from the ground beneath him.

      He checked his altitude: 28,500 feet. He was still in Fuqing and needed to get to sea as soon as possible. But first he had to factor in some variables within the seconds he had. He knew the fastest route for escape would be through the Gates of Hell, but he quickly dismissed it, knowing that all those island SAM sites were waiting for him.

      He knew that of the six airfields in the province, Longtian—about 20 miles south, would already have fighters in the air, ready to ambush him as he made for the Gates. In fact, his air-search radar already alerted him that aircraft were waiting for him at around 45,000 feet. He had plenty of fuel, so there were options. He could go vertical, hit afterburner and outrun the fighters and the SAMs. However, it was something that they’d expect him to do and would probably have planes at higher altitudes to ambush him on the way up.

      He could meet and tangle with the fighters themselves, having shamed them in the past, until he found a corridor to escape. But again, it’s something they might expect knowing that he was flying a more advanced fighter. He decided on a different tactic altogether. After a few defensive rolling maneuvers, he hit afterburner and shoved the stick all the way forward.

      “Amazing!” exhaled Marrion as he watched the OPTICA footage. “Look at him! This man is going supersonic at treetop level!” All three watched in awe as Chen roared out of the power dive less than 100 meters from the skyline. He blew over office buildings, twisted past massive blocks of apartment complexes, and slipped between Fuqing’s darkened skyscrapers, blowing out windows, roof shingles and human eardrums with his back blast. OPTICA captured the flight in super high definition as it meandered through the suburban town.

      Avoiding Fuqing Bay, the first gate of the Gates of Hell, Chen banked left and north to the smaller town of Nanling, then banked right and southeast to Songxia. Too low, too fast and too close to the community to be locked onto by SAMs, he was able to navigate his route in the pitch of night and virtually unmolested. PLA fighters tracked him from above, but did not engage him because the pilots had no training in low altitude maneuvers, and didn’t want to risk being defeated-at home-against Taiwan’s best pilot.

      Five miles until the East China Sea, Chen would face one final SAM challenge as he flew over Dongluo Island. He easily jammed the SAM’s radar and evaded the missiles. He left China airspace, increased his altitude and soared towards Taiwan at Mach 2.3.

      “That was unbelievable!” Marrion sat back in his chair and looked at both women, shaking his head. “How close were those Dragon Fangs before Chen’s RFR detected them?”

      “OPTICA tracking barely registered them, but they came as close as 80 meters.”

      “Christ! Imagine what they could do to our pilots! Especially the newer, less experienced ones!”

      “What’s worse, Admiral,” added Chang grimly. “Imagine what these things could do if sold to terrorists. There’s no Chen flying airbuses or passenger liners.”

      Suddenly, the gravity of Chang’s statement and his mission hit Marrion like a freight train. It wasn’t so much that combat pilots were at risk by the Dragon Fang, but civilian aviation would be sitting ducks. This is why this was such a high priority mission. Chang was right: There were no Chens flying airliners.

      Although some international airlines had installed flares in the fuselage of certain classes of planes on certain flights, the U.S. had no such equipped planes. Budget analysis studies on the proposal estimated that it would cost the U.S. government at least $12 million per plane to install anti-missile flares, chaff and lasers on airliners, and therefore the proposal was never pursued. And 15 years after 9-11, the demand for such systems was drowned by the Bush Recession. There simply was no demand since U.S. planes were never targeted by hand-held weapons in any country.

      But times were different now. Radicals had more money than before, and were willing to spend it on better technology. Dragon Fangs answered their prayers, and would be hot commodities to heavily financed third world

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