But the SEAL? Where was he? Rogov scanned the landscape around him quickly, looking for his other prisoner, then made a rapid time-distance calculation. There wasn’t time to look for him, not and make the airlift quickly. Furthermore, the American SEAL would surely have given them away at the very first opportunity. A loose end, and one that he would have eliminated quickly if the man had been in sight.
No time. Rogov shrugged. The hostile land would kill the man as quickly as a bullet, although he would have preferred the reassurance of the latter to the former.
If they had the chance, the Americans would kill him for this, he knew. There would be no trial, no investigation, no complicated legal maneuverings. A quick death sentence, one that the SEAL’s teammates would impose the moment they knew what had happened.
But then again, they wouldn’t be given that opportunity. Rogov had other plans immediately following his arrival on board USS Jefferson.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one, say state,” the operations specialist on board Jefferson inquired anxiously.
Bird Dog glanced down at the fuel indicator and swore quietly. Between the exhilaration of the attack and checking for icing on the wings, he’d forgotten the most basic safety in flight protocols. His fuel was now creeping dangerously low, his reserves sapped by the extended time at afterburners necessary to escape the target site.
“Three point two,” he answered calmly. “Might be nice to get a drink before we try to get back on board.”
“Roger,” the OS said, and gave the vector to the KA-6 tanker.
“Got plenty of gas for one pass,” Gator said. “But I agree — no point in taking any chances.”
Bird Dog laughed. “That’s not what you said five minutes ago,” he said, an injured tone in his voice.
“Intercept with the tanker in two mikes,” the TAO reported to TFCC. “And the SAR helicopter is airborne now, en route to the island. Medical is standing by.”
Tombstone settled into the elevated brown leatherette chair in TFCC and studied the screen carefully. Injuries — it was to be expected. But according to the SEAL team reports, there were enough uninjured men to attempt penetration of the intruder fortress. The avalanche had decimated the forces sufficiently to allow them to proceed, and they were on track to evacuate the wounded immediately, absolutely imperative in this climate. He shook his head, wondering why he had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Aside from the dare-devil maneuvers of the young Tomcat pilot — he almost smiled, remembering the stunts Bird Dog had pulled on their last cruise when Tombstone had been in command of the carrier group — things had gone pretty much as planned. Why, then, couldn’t he relax?
“Too long out of the saddle,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.
“Sir?” the TFCC TAO said, turning to look back at him.
Tombstone flushed. “Nothing,” he muttered, swearing silently. What the hell was this, voicing the random concerns and thoughts that flitted through every commander’s mind? Had he been away from real operations for too long?
“How long until the SAR helicopter arrives?” He asked to cover his embarrassment.
“One minute, Admiral,” the TAO said crisply. “They should be back on board in five minutes.” The TAO glanced back at him curiously.
“Very well.” Tombstone willed himself to sit still and concentrate on the screen. Whatever niggling concerns were in the back of his mind, no one else seemed to share them.
“Got a visual,” Bird Dog said. He pulled back on the throttle, slowing the Tomcat to rendezvous speed. “A quick plug, a fast drink, and we’re out of here,” he said over tactical.
“Gee, Bird Dog, you’re a cheap date,” the female copilot of the tanker quipped. “Might want to do something about that. I hear they’ve got all sorts of solutions for that sort of male problem these days.”
Gator laughed, while Bird Dog fumbled for a smart-ass reply.
The helicopter hovered overhead, kicking up snow and ice in the downdraft of its powerful rotors. Huerta swore and motioned it up. The pilot complied, and the draft, only slightly less gusting than the whiteout storm, abated slightly. “You the guys who called for a ride home?” his radio crackled. “Where do you want the pickup, here or down on level ground?”
Huerta glanced up at the helicopter, thinking it through. Of the ten men around him, all but Morning Eagle were moving around well enough to get down the slope, even with the clutter of debris that now covered it.
“On the flat,” he decided. He motioned to the men and trotted over. “Let’s get him down there,” he said, pointing to Morning Eagle. The two men grunted something unintelligible and started fashioning a rough structure out of tent fragments and ski poles.
Huerta spared a few moments to appraise their gear. Good solid stuff, he thought, one part of his mind coldly evaluating its tactical usefulness. Moments later, Morning Eagle was slung over the stretcher, strapped down by more torn fragments of tent. “Let’s go,” he ordered. He took point, leading the small band through a relatively flat part of the debris.
Had he not been so shaken by the avalanche, focused on the mission ahead, and still suffering a few minor scrapes and bruises by the bombardment himself, Huerta might have stopped to wonder about the equipment he’d just seen. And if he had, he might have remembered that the Inuits who had made the journey over the seas with him had been carrying outdated Navy equipment, not modern combat gear. And that would have struck him as strange.
“Easy, easy,” Gator cautioned.
“I’m okay,” Bird Dog snapped. And he would be, in just a few minutes, if he could get his goddamned hands to quit shaking, his gut to stop twisting into a knot.
Intellectually, he knew it was just the aftereffects of the adrenaline bleeding out of his system, but the feeling frightened him nonetheless. And made him angry — how he’d managed to navigate the aircraft through the near-impossible bombardment mission, only to fall apart during level flight.
Not that tanking was that easy a task. Aside from a night landing on a carrier, it was one of the most dangerous and difficult evolutions a carrier pilot underwent. Approaching another aircraft from behind, slowly adjusting the airspeed until the two were perfectly matched, and then plugging the refueling probe of a Tomcat into the small, three-foot basket trailing out the end of a KA-6 tanker called for steady hands and a cool head. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not now, not this close to another aircraft. Too many collisions took place just at this point.
“Hold it!” Gator said sharply. “Bird Dog, back off and take a look again. You’re all over the sky, man.”
Bird Dog swore softly. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he insisted.
“You’re not.” Gator’s voice was firm. “Just ease off — let’s try this again.” Gator’s calm, professional tones couldn’t mask the real note of concern in his voice. “You’re a little heavy — all that ice hasn’t melted yet, and it’s affecting your flight characteristics, but it’s real doable — just take it slow, let me kick the heaters up another notch.”
Bird Dog concentrated on the dancing basket in front of him. It was, he realized, not the basket that was moving but his dancing Tomcat. He tried to quiet the tremor in his hands, the jerk in his right foot.
“Think of something calm,” Gator’s voice soothed. “Man, you just blew the hell out of a lot of bad guys back there. Think about that.”