“Razor Four, Fox Two,” called Choi, a triumphant ring in his voice. He had just taken a Sidewinder shot. “Trail bandit muzza fugga, middle group.”
Bass winced at the mangled profanity. Muzza fugga?
“Fox Two, lead bandit, splash two muzza fugga rats.” Choi had fired a second Sidewinder.
Bass had to shake his head. Yeah, radio discipline was clearly going to hell, but he might cut them some slack. Instead of shooting his precious AMRAAMs, Choi had closed to Sidewinder range. And killed two muzza fugga Fishbeds.
It was a good time to exit the fight. “Razor flight, reset,” he called. “Bug east.”
Bass reefed the nose of his F-16 around to a heading of 090. A feeling of elation swept over him. He felt like roaring and thumping his chest. Six kills! He and his student fighter pilots had just cut a swath through the PLA air force.
He saw Wei-ling rolling out in position on the right. Somewhere to the north, on the left side, was Jian. Below and behind them was Choi. They would regroup a little bit farther east, closer to the Taiwanese coastline—
What was that?
He glanced again at Wei-ling, a mile off his right wing. Something, a kind of shimmering blur, just behind Wei-ling’s F-16.
And then it vanished.
He was still staring at the F-16 when it exploded.
Wing-lei’s fighter was gone. In its place was a roiling orange fireball.
What the hell happened? Wei-ling had been vaporized. There had been no radar warning, no contacts. The only thing that could have done that was a…
He reacted by instinct — a nine-G break turn toward the tumbling wreckage of Wing-lei’s Viper. Pull! That was where the threat had to be. Rolling away from it would only expose his hot tailpipe.
He rolled inverted and pulled hard for the deck. At the same time he hit the flare dispenser, spewing another trail of IR-decoying flares. He couldn’t see it but he knew it was back there. A missile with his name on it.
His mind was sending urgent subliminal messages. Pull hard. Maximum Gs, throw the missile off your tail. It’s your only chance.
In his gut he knew it wouldn’t work. Whatever had killed Wei-ling already had the drop on him. His only hope was to avoid taking a hit straight up the tailpipe. His F-16 was B004Y1N0G2-0-EBOKalready on the g-limiter. He had no idea where the enemy was, or even what kind of fighter had engaged him. All he could do was pray.
When the explosion came from behind, he knew what happened. He had outturned the missile. Almost. The warhead had missed but came close enough to detonate the proximity fuse.
The airframe had a new vibration to it. It felt like pieces were coming off the tail. He pulled the throttle back, then tried nudging the nose of the F-16 up. The jet responded, coming almost to level flight.
He felt a thunk that rattled the airframe. The F-16 was no longer responding to his inputs with the stick. When the red FIRE light illuminated on his panel, he knew he had run out of options.
Major Catfish Bass muttered a silent prayer and reached for the ejection handle.
Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.
Maxwell kept the rhythm going, working the punching bag with both gloves, rotating each fist in a steady tempo. Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.
He was in the fitness room, just off the hangar deck on the port side. He’d been at it for ten minutes, working up a sweat, when he became aware of someone standing behind him. In his peripheral vision he saw Bullet Alexander.
“Pretty impressive, Skipper. Didn’t know you were a boxer.”
“Ex-boxer.” He kept working the bag, keeping up the tempo. “Golden gloves, then intercollegiate when I was at Rensselaer.”
“Me, I never liked getting slapped around like that. I liked football because they gave you a face guard. If you wanted to rough somebody up, you just steamrolled him on the scrimmage line.”
Maxwell kept his eyes on the bag, concentrating on the rhythm. He knew Alexander. He hadn’t come down to the fitness room to talk about college sports. “What’s on your mind, Bullet?”
“Oh, just thought you could use some advice.”
“About?”
“Women.”
Maxwell missed a beat with the gloves. “What?”
“Yeah. With all due respect, Brick, it’s obvious that you don’t know jack shit about them.”
Maxwell gave the bag one final whack. He turned to peer at Alexander. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look at you, hammering at that bag like it was Bin Laden’s skull because you’re all torn up over some chick.”
“Did it ever occur to you that there just might be something in this squadron that isn’t any of your business?”
Alexander just smiled. “Actually, no. As your executive officer, I’m supposed to watch out for you. That’s why I’m here.”
“To advise me about women? What the hell makes you an expert on the subject?”
“Experience. Two wives, with a significant number of near-misses in between. I’ve got battle scars to prove it.”
Maxwell looked around the room. They were alone except for a young petty officer working the Nautilus gear. “You’re not going to stop pestering me until you’ve said your piece. Get it over with. What is it about women that I’m missing?”
“Good. Now listen up. The first thing you have to understand about women is that you won’t ever understand them. Period. End of story. Give up. They are weird creatures who don’t behave like men, and we keep making ourselves crazy because we don’t accept that.”
“So, assuming I’m listening to your uninvited counsel, what should I be doing?”
“Quit taking it out on yourself. Or that punching bag. I gather that your girl — what’s her name? Claire? She dumped you, right?”
Maxwell kept his face expressionless. “That’s personal.”
“She sent you a Dear John, right? By e-mail, probably. That’s the way they do it these days.”
“Something like that.”
“That’s life, Boss. My message to you is this. It’s not something you gotta understand, or blame yourself for, or beat up a bag over. It’s like a bad cat shot or a gomer getting lucky with a SAM. Shit happens. You accept it.”
Maxwell knew in his gut that Bullet was making sense, but he could still feel the anger bubbling up in him. The urge was there. He wanted to pound the living shit out of something — the punching bag, a terrorist, an enemy fighter pilot.
Claire Phillips’s husband.
He gave the bag one more vicious haymaker, then turned away from it.
“Okay, counselor, you said your piece. Let’s get back to work. We’ve still got a squadron to run.”
You’ve done it now, Bass. They’re going to hang you by the balls.
The thought played like a dirge in his mind as he descended toward the sea. It occurred to him that he would have been better off dead, blown to pieces like Wing-lei, who never knew what hit him.
In the distance he could see the wakes of vessels running across the surface. His chute had deployed automatically somewhere around ten thousand feet. That meant everyone in a twenty mile radius could see him floating down like a goddamn circus tent. Who were the good guys and who were the bad? They were all dark shapes on a gray sea.
A wave of dread passed over him. The PLA navy had enough boats and ships in the Strait to make a floating bridge to Taiwan. Had they picked up electronic intel reports that two F-16s were down?
Bass had an unwavering fear of the open sea and of drowning, which had been a major factor in choosing the Air Force over the Navy or Marines. Water sucked, and he wanted nothing to do with it. At least he had some hang time before getting his feet wet…