The sea rushed up at him, smooth and glassy.
His balls contracted as a small flash of terror shivered through him.
The first few microseconds after launch, this fight for altitude and safety, were every pilot’s worst nightmare. If Jefferson lost steam pressure unexpectedly on the catapult shot, the Tomcat would dribble off into the ocean. A soft cat shot meant dead aircrews. Moments later, he felt the G-forces press him back into his seat as the Tomcat clawed for altitude.
“Good shot,” he announced. “Airborne once more.”
Behind him, he heard Gator groan.
“Button three for coordination with tanker,” Rasher said.
“Roger. Got a visual on him. Making my approach.” Thor eased back on the throttles, slowing the Hornet’s forward speed imperceptibly. Of all the evolutions a carrier pilot had to master, refueling in midair was one of the most dangerous, second in his nightmares only to landing on the carrier deck at night during a storm.
“Hey there, Thor,” the female KA6 tanker pilot’s voice echoed in his ear. “You dirty-winged?”
“Hell, no. This is a PMFC, not CAP. Why, you want me to kill somebody for you, sweetheart?”
“Maybe later, big boy. It’s just that there’s a cluster-fuck of MiGs milling about smartly in the middle of Tanker Alley. Thought we might sneak off somewhere that we could be alone for a while.”
Thor grinned at the lascivious note in the other pilot’s voice. The Marine Corps forced him to be politically correct on the ground. In his estimation, the paranoia that overreacting politicians generated did more to harm the morale of both men and women than it helped. This was more like it-the good-natured banter between two pilots who respected each other. “I’ll follow you anywhere. Striker,” he said, using her call sign instead of her name. “You got some particular dark and secluded corner in mind?”
Striker rapped out a quick series of vectors defining a piece of airspace well away from the MiG herd. She led the way, with Thor darting around her in his faster fighter. Ten minutes later, they were in clear airspace.
“Now, how can I make you happy, Thor?” Striker asked finally.
“Five thousand pounds will do it. Burned up some on afterburner, and I need some legs to play patty-cake with a turkey,” he added, using the common aviator’s nickname for the Tomcat.
“Cozy on up to momma. Marine. I gots what you be needing.”
Thor focused on the drogue extended in front of him from the back of the KA6. The basket bobbed and weaved in the air as it streamed out behind the other aircraft. “Steady, steady,” he muttered, talking himself through the approach.
If the Tomcat pilots thought tanking was tough, let them try it in a Hornet without a RIO to act as safety observer for them.
He watched the drogue grow larger and bled off a few more knots of airspeed. “There,” Thor said, satisfied. He tapped the throttle forward and increased speed just enough to thump gently forward into the drogue, seating his probe firmly inside the refueling apparatus.
“Got it first time.”
“Good seal,” Striker agreed. “Ready to pump.”
“Receiving,” Thor reported. “And Striker, it’s only polite to ask was it good for you, too?” He grinned and waited for the rude reply he knew he deserved, all the while watching the fuel transfer indicators for signs of trouble.
The insistent beeping of his ALR-87 threat warning receiver filled the cockpit. Thor’s head snapped up and he scanned the sky, urgently trying to find the source of the fire control radar illuminating his Hornet.
“Settle down back there,” Striker snapped. “What do you think you’re ” “Emergency breakaway!” Thor throttled the Hornet back, jerking out of the basket. Raw fuel streamed out of the drogue before the tanker’s back-pressure sensors terminated the flow. “Striker, get the hell back to the carrier! We’re being illuminated by ” The two aircraft were separated by barely fifty feet when he saw the missile.
Too low, too slow! I can’t maneuver, I’ve got no airspeed.
There’s no choice. Thor reached for the ejection seat handle.
“Striker, punch out. Now!” As his fingers closed around the yellow and black ejection bar, the tanker disintegrated into a fiery, expanding ball. Metal shrapnel tore into his Hornet as he yanked down on the bar.
A massive force slammed into his ass. Thor blacked out milliseconds later as he cleared the shattered canopy.
FOUR
I’m drowning. Thor’s body realized it before he was fully conscious. He emerged from a warm, dark unconsciousness to the feel of water searing his throat, the taste of salt filling his senses. Instinctively, he began flailing his arms and legs, pushing himself toward the surface twenty feet above. The same survival instinct clamped his mouth shut and made his lungs strive to extract every last molecule of oxygen from the air still trapped inside.
Hours later, it seemed, he broke the surface. He drew in a deep, shuddering gasp, as he only then started to realize how close he’d come to buying it.
With sudden clarity, the details of the accident came flooding back.
The tanker, jinking violently to avoid a missile. His own response, the hard diving turn of his Hornet, the water glistening below, looking soft and inviting. He remembered the flameout vaguely, just enough to wonder how he’d managed to pull the ejection seat before the massive G forces had drained the blood from his brain and thrown him into oxygen-starved unconsciousness.
The life jacket. Why wasn’t it inflated? Thor swore, coughing up seawater. He quickened the rhythm with which his feet beat at the water as he felt for the manual inflation tube. There it was, on the left side of the life jacket. He screwed the retaining valve apart, put his lips around the hard plastic tube, and blew.
Immediately, he felt the swell of expanding plastic around him. With each breath, the life jacket started contributing to his buoyancy rather than weighing him down. Finally, when it was fully inflated, he turned his attention back to his surroundings. Sea state three, maybe four, with whitecapped waves obscuring his line of sight. He caught a glimpse of an unnatural fluorescent yellow fifty, maybe seventy-five feet away, and started stroking doggedly toward it. It bobbed into view, then disappeared behind the growing swells. The wind was in his face, blowing spray and wavelets up his nose.
From the summit of the next wave, he caught sight of it again. If anything, it was farther away than it had been when he’d started swimming toward it. At this rate, there was no way he could get to it.
He paused, treading water, the full impact of his situation starting to sink in.
The rough water around him was blood temperature, and survival time without slipping into hypothermia was almost unlimited. But warm water brought hazards of its own, the ones that downed aviators feared more than almost anything else. This part of the ocean was host to a wide variety of sharks, all of which were more at home in the water than Thor. Their senses of smell and their acoustic ranging abilities rivaled that of any submarine.
He touched his face with a hand, then held the limb in front of him.
Thin streaks of blood trickled down from his fingertips to his wrists.
Thor groaned. Even more than the rhythmic motion of a panicked swimmer, blood attracted sharks. The scent traveled for miles, enticing every natural predator with the prospect of an easy meal.
Wounded prey the sharks would know it immediately.
Despite his years of training, panic crowded the back of his throat.