Thor snapped open his own emergency checklist and began reading down the action items. His wingman’s responses came more and more slowly, his words slurred even over the static.
“Hornet 102, you are cleared priority for green deck,” the air boss said. “Badger, can you get her down?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” The pilot sounded as though it didn’t make much difference one way or the other to him.
Thor keyed his mike reluctantly. “Boss, 103. Sir, recommend 102 eject rather than risk recovery on deck.” He watched as the other Hornet rolled inverted, then sluggishly regained level flight. “He’s losing flight controls, sir.” And it’s only a matter of time before he loses consciousness, too. God help us if he blacks out on the way down to the deck.
“Roger. Wait. Out.” There was silence on the circuit.
As the silence stretched on, Thor watched as his wingman’s aircraft became more and more unstable. Hydraulic fluid was streaming out behind it, some of it perilously close to the engine air intake. Any second now—
The air boss returned. “Roger, 103, concur with recommendations. One zero two, descend to angels fourteen and initiate ejection. SAR will be standing by.”
There was no answer.
“One zero two, do you copy?”
“Badger! Eject, eject!” Thor shouted, hoping his familiar voice would penetrate the fog now descending on his wingman. “Punch out, Badger. Punch out!”
As if in response, the other Hornet banked sharply to the right. It began descending, and for a moment Thor had hope that his wingman had heard him and was descending in response to the air boss’s orders. His hopes were dashed when the Hornet’s angle of attack steepened and its nose drifting down and down and down until it was in a vertical dive.
“Badger! Eject!” Thor flashed out an urgent prayer to someone, anyone, who might have some degree of control over the universe: “Eject!”
Thor followed the Hornet down, shouting and praying, ignoring the equally urgent pleas coming from the air boss. Finally, at seven thousand feet, the last shards of the canopy peeled back from the aircraft. There was a flash of fire, then a long streamer of white parachute slashing across the sky.
“Chute! I have one chute!” Thor shouted.
“Roger, copy, SAR inbound!” The relief in the air boss’s voice was palpable. “Stay with him, Thor, mark on top. They’ll have a man in the water with him before his life jacket fully inflates.”
“Roger.” Thor moved out a bit, watching the parachute billow from a safe distance. It jerked his wingman up in the air as the Hornet continued its final descent. Oddly, a sardonic definition of a successful aviator from Flight Basic came to mind: number of takeoffs should equal number of controlled landings.
Well, Badger might not be a success according to that definition, but Thor would take what the universe offered up. If his wingman was still alive, if they pulled him out before he drowned, if he had survived the ejection without serious injury, then that would be enough.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, the chute and its cargo reached the surface of the ocean. Thor watched the improbably small splash, then moved away to allow the helo to descend.
“We’ve lost him,” Rotenyo said, his voice unbelieving. “That bastard shot our fighter down.” Without asking permission, his hand went to the switch that controlled the shipboard alarm system. The hard, insistent gong of general quarters pulsed in the general’s bones.
“No,” the general said. “It was not an attack. It was an accident.”
But Rotenyo was no longer inclined to listen to him. It was too late to stop what one Russian pilot had begun.
TEN
As Tombstone escorted the COD out to the carrier, the hours of boredom passed, broken only by moments of sheer terror during tanking. Tombstone stayed well ahead of the COD, scanning the sky looking for any problems. Behind him, Greene monitored the radar. There was nothing to see.
They refueled for the final time six hundred miles from the carrier, and Tombstone was carefully watching the COD’s position the entire time. Finally, when they had taken on enough fuel, Tombstone disengaged and turned back toward the carrier.
“Stony, this is Home Plate. Be advised four playmates inbound your position. You should hold them shortly.” The operations specialist’s voice was calm and professional. There was nothing in it to indicate that dispatching four fighters to escort an unarmed COD and a fighter flown by a civilian was anything out the ordinary.
“Roger, copy four,” Jeremy responded. He glanced back down at his scope and sure enough, four new contacts positioned directly over the aircraft carrier had just appeared. “I hold our playmates now.”
“Roger. Anticipate COD on deck in four zero mikes. The tanker will top you off, then we’ll bring you in after the COD and the playmates.”
“What’s going on, Home Plate? Why the playmates?” Tombstone queried. There was a moment of silence, static hissing over the secure circuit. Tombstone felt that uneasy twitch in his gut that always seemed to presage trouble.
“Be advised, Stony, that there was an INCOS incident approximately thirty mikes ago. SAR is currently on station. Possibility that there are two casualties.”
“INCOS?” Tombstone said incredulously. “What the hell happened?”
“I’ll brief you when you get down here, Tombstone,” a new voice said, and Tombstone recognized Coyote’s accent. “For now, just hold on to that Greyhound until your playmates get in position. We’ll bring the Greyhound in first, then the playmates, then you. You got enough fuel?”
“Roger, plenty of fuel, Admiral.”
“What the hell?” Greene muttered.
Tombstone said over ICS, “That’s in case I create a flaming datum on their deck. They’ll get the COD and their own aircraft on board and out of the way in case the old guy screws up.”
“Like that’s going to happen.”
“Not everyone has your confidence in me,” Tombstone pointed out.
Suddenly, Greene’s screen flashed bright green. He lost all contacts, even the COD, as the noise blanked out every other signal. “Jamming!” he snapped, and immediately began to try to filter it out. He was able to reduce it to four broad noise spikes, but couldn’t get the screen completely clear.
“All units, Home Plate,” a new voice said over tactical. “Be advised we have airborne and surface jamming, two Mainstays and the Russian cruiser. Attempting to reach the Russian commander for clarification at this time. Set general quarters. Hold fire.”
“Hold fire!” Jeremy swore. “Jamming! That’s a hostile act by definition.” A hostile act was considered an act of war and allowed for immediate retaliation.
“Right. Not our game, though,” Tombstone snapped, although Jeremy could tell he was deeply disturbed. Adrenaline was dumping into his system, and the hair on the back of his neck bristled. Flying through jamming was like flying blind. He had no idea what was in the air in front of him outside visual range.
“I’m closing on the COD. Put our playmates between the cruiser and the COD.”
Twisting around, Jeremy could see the COD now in visual range. He gave the other four Tomcats vectors to take station on the COD to avoid mutual interference.
“All units, all airborne units, set EMCON Alfa. Receive only on link. We have a clear picture, and will control targeting from here,” the carrier TAO ordered.
While the Tomcat was capable of firing any of its weapons on targeting data provided by another platform, no fighter pilot liked to hand over control to someone else. But there was no other choice right now. The cruiser and the carrier, working together, had managed to blank out most of the interference and were transmitting a solid tactical picture. Once Tombstone and Jeremy shut down their own radar, they would have a good picture not broken by noise.