“Yes, Admiral, they sounded certain. It’s Gator and Bird Dog from VF95,” the TAO answered. He turned and gave the admiral a questioning look as he heard a sharp snort behind him.
“Bird Dog,” Batman muttered. “I should’ve known. Anytime something starts happening, that youngster’s in the middle of it. Damnedest luck.”
He looked up and saw Captain Craig’s face twitch. “You got something on your mind, COS?” Batman demanded.
“No, Admiral,” the chief of staff said quietly. “You’re right, that young pilot does seem to be in the middle of every tactical situation he’s been near since he’s been in the Navy.” COS stopped and carefully assessed the man standing before him. “I was just thinking about someone else, that’s all.”
Batman stared at him. “Why, you old fart. Are you saying-?”
The chief of staff nodded.
Batman stared at the COS for a second, then turned back to the screen. “Maybe I won’t court-martial his ass after all. TAO,” he said, raising his voice, “get those Alert-Five Tomcats in the air. And move four Hornets and four more Tomcats to Alert Five. I want asses and cockpits on the deck and metal in the air. Now.”
The TAO nodded, and picked up the white phone to call the CDC TAO. His counterpart twenty frames down the passageway would automatically add tankers and SAR support to his revised flight schedule.
Moments later, the full-throated growl of a Tomcat engine ramping up shook TFCC, which was located directly under the flight deck. Batman stared up at the overhead. “Damn, those bastards are getting faster every day.”
“How many of you are with me?” the old Inuit demanded. He gazed around at the circle of faces arrayed before him. To an outsider, the men would have seemed impassive, but he could read the subtle emotions as easily as he could distinguish between new-fallen snow and ice. He frowned. “There is a problem?”
One of the older men stirred. “This mission — we are not young men anymore,” he began. He glanced around the circle, saw heads nodding in support.
“Not all of us are old,” the elder argued.
“This is your war,” a younger man piped up. “What have these men ever done for us? Let them kill themselves out there on the ice, for all I care.”
“You forget your place,” the older man said softly. “You are here at our tolerance only — you have no say in these matters.”
“The old ways.” The young man looked disgusted. “What have they gotten us?”
“You forget who you are at a price,” the old man responded sharply. “If you have no honor, then you are nothing — do you understand, nothing. You would no longer exist to me.”
“All this talk about honor is a fine thing, but what have the mainlanders done to our people?”
“And you would rather live under the heels of these others? Have you not listened? Those men are Cossacks. Cossacks, I say.” He saw a stir of uncertainty ripple across the faces. “Don’t the stories mean anything to you?” he pressed.
An uneasy silence fell over the group. Men avoided each other’s eyes. The women, standing in the back of the room, murmured quietly among themselves. Finally, the eldest woman spoke up. “Stories are kept safe for a reason,” she said quietly. “The things I know — the things my mother taught me, and her mother before her, and on and on, are true. Above all, we must not let these invaders stay on our soil.” Around her, the women moved closer in support.
The elder whirled on the circle of men. “Even the women remember,” he said, disgusted. “And who would know better than they? Murder, rape, killing as the whim seizes them — this is what the Cossacks would bring to us.” He made a motion as if to spit on the floor. “And you complain about the mainlanders? Pah! You know nothing.”
Finally, one elder spoke into the silence. “Better mainlanders than Cossacks,” he said, his conviction growing as he spoke. “Though it last happened centuries ago, that people has not changed. I would rather live with sickness and disease than under the Cossack hand. We should go.”
The mood shifted in the room, as one by one the men nodded assent. The women looked even graver than they, knowing that many of them would be widowed or would lose a son in the weeks to come.
“It is done, then.” He turned to a younger man. “Your army experience — it will come in handy now. Begin assembling all the weapons that we have here, including all of the portable communications systems. Hand-held radios, GPS — all here as soon as you can.”
The younger man looked grim. “Be all that you can be,” he said finally. A tight smile crossed his face.
“How many men?” Admiral Wayne asked again.
The young SEAL petty officer looked haggard and drawn. “At least thirty, maybe more. Maybe forty, I don’t know for sure,” he said. His fatigue was evident in his voice.
“Could you see whether your teammates were shot?” Lab Rat asked. He stared at the man before him, wondering at the combination of strength, training, and sheer courage that had brought the SEALs back alive.
“I don’t know. We were too far away. I heard gunfire — a Kalishnikov, I’m certain of it. One burst from an M16, that’s all. I thought I saw a SEAL on the ground, but I couldn’t be sure.”
Batman turned to Lab Rat. “I suggest you start talking to the other SEALS, Commander,” he said. “We’re going to have to get them out.”
“Let me go, sir,” the SEAL they were interrogating said suddenly. A look of desperation crossed his face. “We don’t leave our men behind — never.”
Batman regarded him carefully. “This mission isn’t going in the next five minutes, son,” he said quietly. “You let the commander finish up with you, then you hit the rack for a good solid twelve hours. After that, we’ll see what you and your shipmates look like. If you’re up to it, there’ll be a spot on the mission for you.”
The younger man looked relieved. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
“I think I’m done with him, Admiral,” Lab Rat said. He turned to the SEAL. “Hit the rack, sailor. If you need something to help you sleep, see Doc. But if you want to be part of this mission, you’d better be asleep in the next fifteen minutes.”
The young sailor left quickly, his eyes already half-lidded at the thought of sleep.
Lab Rat turned to the admiral. “This will be a bastard of a mission,” he said quietly. “The SEALs will want to do their own planning, of course.”
Batman nodded. “They always do. Anything they want — anything intelligencewise, or any other form of support, we get it for them.”
USS Coronado
“She’s on final, sir,” the TAO said. Tombstone studied the plat camera mounted in one corner of TFCC.
“Doesn’t look like she’s having problems to me,” he said shortly. “Airspeed good, hover is stable — no, I can’t see a damned thing wrong with that bird.” The helicopter gracefully settling onto the deck above him confirmed his suspicions. “Get them down here,” he snapped at the chief of staff. Then he turned to the lawyer behind him. “In my stateroom, Captain. You’ve got ten minutes to make me real smart on what my options are. Let’s start with treason and work our way down from there.”
The moment the weapon left his hands, something slammed into Sikes’s back. The force sent him flying through the air like a linebacker, and he landed facedown on the hard ice, the grooves and ridges in it scraping the protective gear away from his face and smashing one lens of his protective goggles.