“You’ll come with me. It’s only about a mile swim, but it will feel like longer if you’re not used to it. Especially after what you’ve been through today. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drown.”
He assessed her candidly, noting the long, smooth muscles rippling beneath her flawless skin. Yes, probably a swimmer. She had the build and the musculature for it.
“Garcia and Huerta, you stay with the major,” Sikes ordered. As hefty as the Marine was, it might take more than one man to keep him afloat if he needed help. He saw the Marine start to protest, and cut him off with a quick motion.
“My mission, my expertise. Major. You just do what you’re told. We won’t tell anybody when we get back to the boat, okay?”
There was no point in wasting any further time. Sikes turned, started down to the water with Pamela Drake in tow, and let the warm ocean slip over him.
The first cramp in his gut brought him back to full consciousness. Bird Dog woke abruptly, coughing and sputtering, trying to eject the seawater from his lungs and to take a deep, shuddering breath. His brain was demanding oxygen, but the gray unconsciousness still lurking there was more than drowned out by the agonizing cramp in his gut.
He choked, came to his senses, and leaned back into the life preserver.
It had done its job well, keeping his head out of the water, though not by much. At any rate, he hadn’t drowned after losing consciousness, and that was good enough.
Gator. Where was he? He must be somewhere near the two had punched out fractions of a second apart, although the RIO’s offset angle of trajectory away from the cockpit might have led to some separation when they hit the water.
Had Gator even survived? He tried to remember whether or not he’d seen his chute open. Yes, a chute. Had there been motion below it? If there had been, it had been indiscernible from the motion generated by swaying to and fro under the canopy. Whether or not his backseater was still alive was an open question.
The life raft where was it? Seawater on the seat pan would have activated it automatically. The theory was that the pilot would remain conscious and thus be able to swim over and grab it before it drifted out of range.
He hoisted himself up out of the water as he topped another wave and scanned the ocean around him. There was not a sign of the bright orange life raft, nor of his backseater.
They’re coming for us, though. He was certain of it. He fished out his emergency radio and tried to raise the carrier.
A voice immediately answered his transmission.
With the prospect of SAR helicopters immediately inbound his location.
Bird Dog curled up in a ball, let the life jacket support him, and tried to massage the cramp out of his gut.
Sikes heaved himself into the boat first, then reached over the gunwale, lying flat on his stomach, and grabbed Pamela Drake by the waist. He heaved back, dragging her over the rigid inflated side and onto the cold, clammy deck-On the opposite side of the boat, the other SEALs and Thor were executing the same maneuver.
They took a SEAL rest period, approximately two seconds of stopping, orienting themselves, and taking three quick, deep breams to flush carbon dioxide out of their systems. The immediate influx of oxygen generated a temporary feeling of well-being, but Sikes knew that the draining effect of the swim out from shore could not be avoided indefinitely. They needed to get moving now, back to the carrier, back to safety.
As the small boat topped a wave, he could see the carrier outlined against the rising sun to the east, just barely visible above the horizon. Fifteen miles, he decided maybe a bit more. Twenty minutes to safety, if all went well.
But so often it didn’t, not in the final stages of a mission.
The prospect of safety, the illusion of relative security, tempted SEAL teams into mistakes. Mistakes that were likely to be fatal at this point.
Garcia slipped into the stern of the boat and gunned the muffled, sound-suppressed engine. It caught the first time.
The other men settled into their accustomed spots in the boat. Drake and Thor sat on the deck, holding themselves steady by grasping the lines that ran around the gunwales.
“Let’s get going before it’s full daylight,” Sikes ordered.
The boat surged beneath his feet.
The unexpected struck when they were halfway back to the carrier. The massive floating airfield had grown from a gray, semisolid haze to the massive floating fortress that it was.
Sikes could even catch glimpses of the combatants and escorts around her, identifying them mainly by their running lights.
The seas were running smooth, with the morning winds picking up, flecking the swells with whitecaps. Sea state two or three, he decided. Uncomfortable, but not dangerous.
Ahead in the water he noticed a log. No, not a log. He turned to shout at Garcia to throttle back. Whatever it was, they didn’t need to run over it. If the impact didn’t kill them, it would most assuredly toss them all into the ocean, thus necessitating rescue by the carrier.
As the boat slowed, he faced forward again and studied the anomaly carefully. It looked like part of a dry dock that had broken loose somehow and floated out to sea, or maybe the rusted remains of an old houseboat, oroh, hell.
The rest of the submarine emerged from the sea, and figures appeared on the conning tower. He noticed them scampering quickly up, mounting stanchions and machine guns on brackets on the conning tower, and quickly bringing the focus on the SEALs’ boat. By the time he had turned to give the order to Garcia to get them the hell out of there, the submarine had them covered.
“Stoney, break off, break off!” Batman’s voice was commanding.
“What the hell?” Tombstone reached over to flip his communications switch to tactical. “Roger, copy RTB.
What the hell?” Tombstone asked.
“Not RTB, but you’ve got a new primary mission. That SEAL team I sent in a couple hours ago they’ve run into some problems on their way back to the carrier. I need you to get in there and cover them. Stoney, there’s no one else close around it’s got to be you. We’ll vector you back to the primary mission when you’re done with them.”
“A SEAL team? But what good will” “It’s a guns mission. They were headed back to the carrier when the Cuban Foxtrot surfaced and held them off at gunpoint. Now there’s two small Cuban boats inbound on them, and it looks like the Cubans are planning on taking them hostage.
The SAR helo’s still somewhere off chasing down Bird Dog, and I don’t have anything else in the area.
Here, I’ll have the TAO give the coordinates to your RIO.”
Tombstone wanted to scream. It seemed that everything in the world was working to prevent him from accomplishing his primary purpose for being there. But still, he’d left Batman in command of the carrier battle group, and implicitly placed himself under Batman’s command by undertaking to fly this mission. And if the battle group commander thought there was a more valuable use to be made of his aircraft, then it was up to Stoney to toe the line.
He sighed, then swung the Tomcat around in a hard, tight 160-degree turn as Tomboy fed him new fly-to points.
It took only three minutes to cover the distance between him and the SEAL boat. At once, in his first overflight, he saw the nature of the problem.
The SEAL boat was bobbing uneasily in the stiffening wind, held at gunpoint by the submarine-mounted machine guns to the west. Two small boats were approaching from the east. Cuban patrol boats, no doubt unreasonably pissed off after the destruction of their communications, command, and control vessel earlier that day. If the Cubans got ahold of the SEALs, Tombstone wouldn’t give a plug nickel for their chances of survival.