“So how do we tell?” Batman said in a more reasonable tone of voice. “Within the next three minutes, I mean.” He pointed at the screen. “Because when that blue gaggle intersects that red gaggle, we’ve got no more choices left to make.”
“I have an asset in the area,” Lab Rat said immediately. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and punched in the number that Jack Simpson had given him. “I don’t know if they’re close enough to tell, but maybe. Hell, there’s even a chance that they’re not who they claim to be. But under the circumstances, it’s worth a shot.” He plugged the jack in the back of the phone into a patch panel nearby, circumventing the carrier’s electromagnetic shielding by wiring its small internal antenna to one of the massive arrays atop the carrier’s mast. He listened to the ring signal, and then said, “This is the carrier. I’ve got a question for you to answer for us.”
“You want us to what?” Jack Simpson asked. “Conduct an intercept?”
“That’s right,” the other voice said firmly. “We have to know who’s on that pleasure craft — good guys or bad guys. And as you might notice, our fighters are otherwise engaged at the moment.”
“Yeah, but — ” Jack glanced over at his wife. An offended expression started to cross her face. She reached out and grabbed the phone from Jack.
“What is it you need to know?” she demanded.
There was a pause, then the voice said, “As I was telling your husband, we need to know who’s on that pleasure craft. Can you get back in and see if it’s Americans or Chinese?”
“Of course we can,” she said firmly. “My husband is an officer — and I’m an officer’s wife. We’re on our way.” She handed the phone back to her husband, a fierce expression on her face. “Don’t ever let me catch you pulling that shit again, you understand?”
Jack could only nod, speechless and overwhelmed by his admiration for the fierce warrior he’d married.
Before Adele had even hung up, he’d turned toward the small boat that they’d seen flashing light at the carrier. Within five minutes, staring through the binoculars, he had his answer.
“Hit redial,” he said, as he approached the other vessel. “Tell them that whoever is on that boat, they’re not Chinese.”
“That’s it,” Bird Dog said. “Little bastard’s at two and a half miles. He’s toast.”
“Hey,” Gator protested. “Two miles. And we’re weapons tight.”
“And he’s not. Look.” Bird Dog rolled over inverted and stared down — up — at the surface of the water. “You see that group up forward? Ten gets you twenty that’s a Stinger they’re holding.”
“Bird Dog, you ass. Roll this bitch back over before I puke.” The sight of the sea rushing by, seemingly just outside the canopy, was disconcerting.
“Did you see it?” Bird Dog asked, swiftly rolling back into the proper orientation.
“I didn’t see shit that looked like a Stinger.”
“You weren’t looking hard enough.”
“Hard enough to see that that looked like Navy uniforms they had on.”
“Bullshit. Just tan pants and shirts. And there was a guy in BDUs, too. Carrying a machine gun.”
“I didn’t see a machine gun, either,” Gator argued. “For all you know, that’s a charter out of the Officers’ Boat Club that got caught out on the harbor when it all went down. It could be that they’re trying to get back to Jefferson because that’s where they came from.
“Bullshit,” Bird Dog repeated. “By the time I come back around and get in position, they’re going to be at two miles.”
“I know. Okay, line up on them, but you’re still weapons tight, remember,” Gator said.
“Weapon’s tight my ass. Lobo wasn’t all that weapons tight the other day and she went after a MiG,” Bird Dog muttered.
“Oh, so that’s what this is about? Your girl chases a MiG, you gotta chase something?”
“No.”
“You happen to see Lobo’s name on the flight line when we launched?” Gator pressed. “Or Hot Rock? Or their RIOs?”
“No,” Bird Dog said, doubt in his voice now. As he talked, he put the Tomcat in a hard bank, crossed over the bumpy stream of his own exhaust, descended another hundred feet and lined up on the stern of the boat. He toggled off a short burst of gunfire, the rounds striking the water two hundred feet off the starboard side of the boat. Every tenth round was a tracer. Even if the boat had missed the sound of the Vulcan canon or the stitches of water, they would have seen the tracer rounds.
“Stop that right now,” Gator snapped.
“Just verifying that I’m mission capable, RIO,” Bird Dog said innocently. “What’s your problem?”
“The reason you don’t see them on the flight deck is because they’re grounded, asshole. Maybe permanently. And Batman didn’t take any prisoners — he grounded the fucking RIOs too, for not having the balls to keep their pilots under control. So hear me when I tell you this — you fire off one round, one single round, before you’re weapons free and I’m punching out. By myself. You can hightail it back to the carrier and explain to Batman and CAG why you came back without your RIO and your canopy, and why you fired on an unarmed civilian boat. You got that?”
“If I hit it, it’s because I’m weapons free and it’s inbound on the carrier,”
“Fine. Find yourself another RIO,” Gator snapped.
“You’re always threatening me like that, and you haven’t punched out yet,” Bird Dog observed. He was now barely a quarter mile astern of the boat. He jogged back slightly on the throttle and retrimmed the aircraft for level flight. “You don’t have the balls to do it. And there are sharks down there.”
“Sharks, hell. I’d rather face them than Batman if he’s pissed at you. I get a leg bit off, at least I’ll get a medical discharge instead of a court-martial.”
Bird Dog fell silent. The warm throb of the Tomcat’s engines wrapped around them like a muffling blanket. “Call Jefferson, ask them what the status is,” he said finally, a note of resignation in his voice.
Gator breathed a sigh of relief. He toggled over to Tactical and contacted the operations specialist who was acting as air intercept controller. “Interrogative the status of that boat inbound,” Gator asked.
“Check fire, all stations, all aircraft,” a new voice said over tactical. “This is TAO Jefferson — boat inbound on Jefferson is friendly, repeat, friendly. Check fire all stations, weapons tight.”
“Holy shit,” Gator breathed, “A friendly.”
“You copied that, Tomcat 201?”
“Roger, copy redesignated as friendly. Who the hell’s on that boat?”
“Admiral Tombstone Magruder and escort,” the AIC said promptly. He paused for a moment, then said, “TAO says for you to stay overhead and make sure no one bothers him on his way in. You copy? Escort duty, 201.”
“Roger, copy all,” Gator acknowledged. He switched his mike to ICS from Tactical. “Bird Dog, we’ve got five minutes to get our story straight. Start talking.”
The ass end of the carrier loomed up out of the swells like an improbably massive cliff jutting up out of the middle of the ocean. Even though Tombstone had seen it many times from this aspect, mostly from liberty boats launching, the sheer size of the carrier always awed him. It seemed so small when you were airborne, vectoring in on final approach, your balls climbing up into your stomach every time as you wondered how in hell you were going to get sixty thousand pounds of Tomcat down onto a deck that looked like a postage stamp. It never got any bigger in the air, not unless you were unlucky enough to come in too low — unlucky or just plain not good enough, although they never thought of it in those terms. From the air, it was always too small, too far away, the gray tarmac rushing up to you at impossible speeds as you tried to maintain altitude, pitch, and orient on the center line and the three wire.