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“Olives, keep your knots up and take trail. Get FLIR images of anything on the surface. Check in with state.”

Her wingmen, now in a long daisy chain as they watched Rip descend to the west, checked in with their fuel states, but Olive already knew how they would respond. None of them, most importantly Olive, had fuel to orbit as Rip floated down to the surface. And they were over the open water of the passage. Olive did the math in her head; Rip would drift ten miles in the next ten minutes if the winds were constant, but nearer to the water, they would die down. She figured he would drift six to seven miles before splashing into the South China Sea.

The Chinese UCAVs were up there someplace, and maybe dealing with the MALDs or tracking them with more missiles inbound. With no fuel and no way to defend from the invisible threat from above, she had to leave.

“Olives, let’s bring it east. Lookout, Jab one-one, we need to pass you the on-scene command. Any CSAR assets nearby?”

“Not nearby, Jab one-one. We’re workin’ on it, and roger OSC.”

Olive monitored Rip’s chute over her left shoulder, two miles away. She wanted to pass close aboard to reassure him, but it was too risky. She switched up the SAR freq. to see if Rip was on it with this handheld CSEL radio.

Jab one-three, from lead. How copy?”

Olive repeated her call. Nothing. Then, static, and a mike click.

Jab one-three is up. Got you loud and clear!”

A relieved Olive pumped her fist. Thank God!

“One-three, roger. You okay?”

“Affirm, but I lost my helmet and probably pulled some muscles. But I’m okay. Left arm hurts… freezing up here.”

Olive watched him over her shoulder as she climbed, his parachute a mere speck. She had to tell him. “One-three, we have to RTB for fuel. Lookout has got on-scene command. We’ve marked your posit and drift. We’re going to get you.”

“Roger, one-one,” was all Rip said in reply, knowing there was nothing nearby to get him. Olive followed her wingmen as they climbed to altitude, lucky no more were shot down by invisible missiles, lucky to know Rip was okay — for now. He was injured from a high-speed ejection, but his spirited responses encouraged Olive and the others. Rip would enter warm tropical water, but, until sunup, it was also black tropical water. She was dealing with cockpit tasks when she noticed her nose cross Palawan. Olive looked behind her for Rip’s chute.

He was gone.

CHAPTER 51

Olive and the rest of her strike package — all but one — found Hancock and recovered. Once they were aboard, Blower sprinted to an oiler rendezvous point to top off his aviation fuel bunkers and enter the Celebes Sea before dawn in another long night among previous long nights, and with an unknown number of them ahead.

Wilson was with The Big Unit in flag plot. LCDR “Rip” Van Winkle’s estimated position was 20 miles off Palawan. With currents and winds it was more of a twenty-mile circle around a shaky latitude/longitude, a lot of water to cover. He had reported himself in his raft, his last transmission two hours ago, and would be spend the night on the dark waters off Palawan. Rip was popular in the air wing; they had to get him back.

The missile boat USS Indiana was thought to be east of the Spratlys, and it was the only friendly unit in the vicinity. Rip was surrounded by everything from banca boats to trawlers to PLA(N) diesel subs to Chinese Coast Guard pickets.

No doubt the Chinese knew an American fighter pilot was bobbing somewhere in the waters off Palawan. The Philippine Air Force and Navy was a threat that Qin and Southern Command could all but ignore. Qin wanted to get the American before Clark’s forces could, but not lose sight of his prize — a nuclear carrier.

The Americans were chipping away at Qin’s forces off Luzon; another Type 055 was targeted west of the strait by an attack boat that blew off its bow. The ship remained afloat, and, in a remarkable display of seamanship, the crew was able to maneuver it under its own power to the west.

As it limped along at three knots, the unseen American submarine let it escape. Qin now had his own rescue problem, but the American challenge of finding and rescuing just one downed aviator was much more difficult, and Qin had the forces to bait the Americans further and further west. He was succeeding.

Wilson knew it, too. How many more aviators will we lose?

Olive’s probe generated some intel, and the cyber warriors were crashing on a way to knock out the Chinese UCAVs, or at least disable them. Tomorrow, however, Hancock was going to launch its first strike into the Spratlys — at Stingray Reef—Heaven’s Shield or no. Pressure from above to neutralize the outposts was growing, and The Big Unit had to follow the orders given.

Wilson managed to concentrate on the charts and dated imagery, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding. The familiar anxiety, the knot in his stomach. Even after all his combat experience in the “sandbox”—which included his predawn strike to Yaz Kernoum a decade ago and his near-death experience over San Ramón — he knew one could never get used to the stress of “going downtown.” Tomorrow they would go at night, and not downtown so much as into a potential Chinese threshing machine of missiles above and below, the only “known” ones launched from glorified sandbars that didn’t exist four years earlier.

He measured the distance. From their expected launch posit inside the Celebes Sea, they would tank from their own Rhinos as the sun set and push out over Palawan as the sky ahead of them darkened. They would first suppress, and then destroy, the defenses at Stingray, opening a lane to Yawu and Blood Moon — but knowing the Chinese could plug it easily with a Type 055 or Luyang III — or a group of them — that could be anywhere. Gumby and his Growlers would be jamming like their lives depended on it, and there would be heavy chatter on the radios and multiple contacts to clutter up their displays. Information overload and Gumby, as assistant strike lead, would be making lots of audibles. Wilson was exhausted, and he would have delegated the lead to Gumby, but this was the first real strike into the Chinese outposts. Wilson, as CAG, would lead on point.

As Wilson waited, The Big Unit was on the phone with a radio relay to VADM McGill at Seventh Fleet. Admiral Johnson scribbled notes and nodded during the one-way conversation. When Wilson heard him say, “Aye, aye, sir. Out here,” Johnson cradled the receiver and turned to his go-to warfighter as other staff officers listened.

John Adams lost a Rhino, a single-seater, a few hours ago in the Luzon Strait, shot by a SAM from a Luyang. The lieutenant pilot got out and is in the water, and it’s a race to catch her. That’s right, her, and, to the media, this story leads. INDOPACOM wants to know how many females we are sending over the beach on your strike tomorrow night.”

Johnson gave Wilson an understanding look as he, too, shared Wilson’s disgust. Hancock and John Adams each had a pilot floating in contested waters, and, while both lives were precious and the effort to recover both had four-star attention, the press and Washington were focused on one: Lieutenant Amy Campbell, who had left an anxious husband and small child behind in Hanford, California. The Chinese were doing all they could to capture either one, and they had a better chance of finding and capturing Rip, but the propaganda value of capturing Lieutenant Campbell and holding her as another bargaining chip was huge, and both sides knew it. She would become the victimized face of Washington’s belligerence and would remind the world that the Americans drafted women—nursing mothers! — to do their fighting. The PLA was aided by Western media coverage who all but gave the Chinese the coordinates to look for the young mother. Clark’s war plan was on hold as his Philippine Sea forces concentrated on combat SAR off Cape Engaño.