Free Death Orbit by Mack Maloney

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    The Seamaster flight commander immediately had the radio officer send a scrambled message back to Key West, telling them what they’d detected. The 10 airplanes were approximately 35 miles south of the Seamaster’s position, which was about 65 miles southeast of Key West itself. They were flying in a staggered-V formation, cruising at 270 knots and heading due north. With their weapons systems lit, they appeared to be heading for a combat-imminent situation.
    The urgent message was received at Key West, and four UA combat fighters—old and creaking F-106 Delta Darts—were dispatched in short order. Five additional aircraft, A-7K Strikefighters in the air already, were vectored toward the Seamaster’s position, as were two A-6P armed electronic warfare aircraft, who happened to be returning from a training sortie out over the Lower Bahamas. These 11 airplanes, plus the Seamaster itself, would present a counterforce to the ten bogies, whoever they were and whatever their intentions.
    Then ten more mystery airplanes showed up.
    Like the first group, they simply popped up on the Seamaster’s radar screen as if they’d materialized out of thin air. They were hard on the heels of the first group and they, too, appeared to be carrying weapons ready to be fired.
    Just as the crew of the Seamaster was absorbing this new information, another ten aircraft suddenly appeared, right behind the second group. The UA airplanes streaking toward the location now were facing 3-to-l odds. And still they had no idea what the intention of the mystery airplanes might be.
    The Seamaster got the first visual sighting on the lead wedge of intruders. Because of the location of its engines and several other factors, such as radar-absorbing paint, the Seamaster had a certain amount of stealth capability. It encountered the lead chevron of trespassers at a position about sixty-two miles due south of Key West, picking them up on its long-range LANTIRN scope, while staying undetected for the moment.
    What the radar officer saw in this NightVision-type device were ten white jet fighters, wings bulging with missiles and bombs, flying a course that would bring them right to Key West, now just a few minutes’ flying time away. But what was even more startling was the type of airplane these were: not the B-list jets that the majority of air units in the UAAF flew. These were F/A-18 Hornets, top-of-the-line naval fighter attack craft, the likes of which had not been seen in the postwar world ever since… well, ever since the Fourth Reich had invaded North America nearly three years before.
    When the Seamaster’s radar officer zoomed in on the lead airplane, the first thing he saw were the blood-red swastikas emblazoned on the Hornets’ wings and fuselage.
    “Son of a bitch,” the radar officer breathed into his microphone. “The goddamn Nazis are back…”
    It was just pure good luck that another UA fighter diverted toward the oncoming strike force was being flown by Captain John O’Malley, former president and CEO of the Ace Wrecking Company, sometime business partner of space traveler Elvis Q, and now in possession of the hottest warplane this side of Hawk Hunter’s own F-16XL.
    Having lost his much beloved F-4X Super Phantom during the battle for Lolita Island, Crunch had acquired a new, even ballsier airplane. It was an F-101X Super Voodoo, a reconditioned, kick-ass Century fighter with a massive GE 404 engine under the hood and every new air-combat gadget known to man crammed into its cockpit.
    Crunch had spent his R & R time following the action in the South China Sea fixing up the elderly airplane, which he’d purchased for a song from the infamous used-airplane salesman Roy from Troy. Crunch and his new airplane just happened to be on a layover at Key West on their way to Cape Canaveral, which was the main provisional headquarters of the United American Armed Forces these days. When the call came in about the strike force of 30