“Where are they?” he asked into his microphone.
“This is Ray Simpson, Dirk,” came the voice of the commander who had briefed them on the Ibis. “I’ll talk you in.”
“Where are they?” Pitt repeated.
“Thirty kilometers and closing fast.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Pitt. “They can’t be more than a thousand knots faster than this bus.”
“Fifteen hundred,” read Giordino. “Speed five-ninety.”
“I wish I’d read the flight manual,” Pitt muttered under his breath.
“Twelve hundred meters. Speed six-fifty. Looking good.”
“How do you know?”
“It seemed the thing to say.” Giordino shrugged.
At that instant, an alarm gong began sounding in the cockpit. They had taken the aircraft beyond its safety limits into the realm of the unknown.
“One thousand meters. Speed seven-forty. Wings, don’t fail us now.”
Now within visible range, the lead Japanese aircraft’s pilot centered the red dot that appeared in his targeting system’s TV monitor on the diving tilt-turbine. The optical computer took over the firing sequence and launched the missile.
“Air-to-air missile on the way,” Simpson warned them in an ominous voice.
“Alert me when it’s closed to within one kilometer,” ordered Pitt quickly.
“Six hundred meters,” Giordino warned Pitt. “Speed eight hundred. Now is the time.”
Pitt did not waste his breath on a reply but pulled back on the control column. The tilt-rotor responded as if it was a glider gripped by a giant hand. Smoothly, in a perfectly curved arc, it swooped into level flight perilously low, less than seventy meters above the water.
“Missile closing, three kilometers,” Simpson said, his voice flat and empty.
“Al, begin maximum tilt to engines.” Pitt hesitated.
Almost instantly, it seemed, Simpson called out, “One kilometer.”
“Now.”
Giordino shoved the levers that tilted the engines from horizontal to full vertical.
The aircraft seemed to shoot from level flight into a near ninety-degree angle upward. The tilt-turbine shuddered as everyone was thrown forward under the sudden change in momentum and the skyward pull of the engines still turning on full power.
The missile streaked beneath, missing the aircraft’s belly by less than two meters. And then it was gone, flashing away and eventually falling into the sea.
“Nice work,” complimented Simpson. “You’re coming within range of our Vulcan. Try to stay low so we have an open field of fire above you.”
“It’ll take time to swing this bus back to level flight on the deck,” Pitt told Simpson, frustration displayed on the furrowed lines of his face. “I’ve lost my airspeed.”
Giordino returned the jet turbines to horizontal as Pitt nosed the aircraft over. It leveled and screamed a scant twenty meters over the water toward the looming outline of the ship. From Pitt’s view, hurtling across the wave tops, it looked like a stationary paper ship on a plastic sea.
“Aircraft closing but no indication of a missile launch,” came Simpson’s anxious voice. “They’re delaying until the last second to compensate for your next maneuver. You’d better hit the deck and damned fast.”
“I’m surfing the waves now,” Pitt snapped back.
“So are they. One above the other so you can’t pull your flying saucer stunt again.”
“They must be reading our minds,” said Giordino calmly.
“Since you don’t have a scrambler to encrypt voice transmissions, they listen to your every move,” Simpson warned them.
“Now he tells us.”
Pitt stared through the windshield at the Ralph R. Bennett.He felt as if he could reach out and touch its giant radar array. “The next play action is yours, Bennett. We’ve run out of surprises.”
“The gate to the fort is open,” came the voice of Harper suddenly. “Swing five degrees to port and don’t forget to duck when the mail goes out.”
“Missile away,” Simpson called.
“I read,” said Pitt, “but have nowhere to go.”
Pitt and Giordino instinctively crouched in anticipation of the impact and explosion. They poised as helpless as homing pigeons under attack by a falcon. Suddenly their salvation erupted in a maelstrom of fire that flashed in front of the tilt-turbine’s bow and roared overhead and to the rear.
The Bennett’s thirty-millimeter Sea Vulcan had cut loose. The modern Gatling gun’s seven barrels rotated and spat 4,200 rounds a minute in a swath of fire so thick the shells could be followed by the naked eye. The stream cut across the sky until it met the incoming missile, blasting it into a mushroom of flame less than two hundred meters behind the fleeing tilt-turbine aircraft.
Then it walked toward the lead aircraft, caught up with it, and chewed away one wing like teeth through a potato chip. The Mitsubishi Raven jet fighter flipped into a series of contorted rollovers and smacked the water with a great splash. The second jet went into a steep bank, barely staying ahead of the river of shells that raced relentlessly toward its exhaust, and whirled around on a course back to Japan. Only then did the Sea Vulcan fall silent as the last of its rounds swept the blue and fell, spraying the crests of the swells into white foam.
“Bring her on in, Mr. Pitt.” Harper’s vast relief could be clearly distinguished in his voice. “Wind is off the starboard beam at eight knots.”
“Thank you, Commander.” said Pitt. “And thank your crew. That was nice shooting.”
“It’s all in knowing how to make love to your electronics.”
“Beginning final approach.”
“Sorry we don’t have a brass band and a proper reception committee.”
“The Stars and Stripes flapping in the breeze will do nicely.”
Four minutes later, Pitt set the tilt-turbine on the Bennett’s helicopter pad. Only then did he take a deep breath, sag in his seat, and relax as Giordino shut down the engines.
For the first time in weeks he felt safe and secure. There was no more risk or danger in his immediate future. His part of the MAIT team operation was finished. He thought only of returning home, and then perhaps going on a dive trip to the warm waters and tropical sunshine of Puerto Rico or Haiti, hopefully with Loren at his side.
Pitt would have laughed in absolute disbelief if anyone had walked into the cockpit and predicted that within a few short weeks Admiral Sandecker would be delivering a eulogy at his memorial service.
Part 4
Mother’s Breath
59
October 20, 1993
Washington, D.C.
“THEY’RE OUT!” JORDAN announced exuberantly as he slammed down a telephone in the National Security Council’s Situation Room deep under the White House. “We’ve just received a signal that our MAIT team has escaped Soseki Island.”
Dale Nichols stared at Jordan suspiciously. “Is that confirmed?”
Jordan nodded in tight confidence. “Solid information. They were attacked by Japanese Self-Defense fighters, but evaded and broke clear.”
The President came forward in his chair. “Where are they now?”
“Safely landed on board the Ralph R. Bennett, a naval surveillance ship stationed a hundred kilometers off the island.”