Off to his left, now, an expanding fireball of red and orange filled the sky. It was fiery incandescent in the center, darkening to yellow then red, and finally fringed in black, rolling smoke. He heard the tinkling ping-ping of shrapnel pelting his fuselage, and prayed that none of it would reach the remaining missiles hung under his wings.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Hellman’s voice asked angrily. “I would have had him.”
“Save it for when we get back to the boat,” Thor said curtly. “What’s your state?”
“Who gives a shit? I — shit.” The bravado seeped out of Hellman’s voice as he realized just how low on fuel he was. “Oh, man, I’m really in the shitter, here.”
“Jeff, this is Hornet 106. We’re in bad need of a tanker, like within the next five seconds,” Thor announced over tactical. He hated emphasizing the blunder his wingman had made in public — the place to air dirty laundry was in the confines of the ready room — but he had to make sure that the Hornets were given priority for tanking.
“Hornet One-zero-six, One-zero-six, come right, course two-three-zero at seven miles. Texaco standing by.”
“Wingman goes first, Jeff,” Thor said quietly. He switched over to the private frequency he shared with Hellman. “You got that?” He could see by his heads-up display that Hellman was already making the course change and heading for the tanker. “You’ve got one plug at this, Hellman.”
“I’ve never missed a plug yet,” Hellman shot back.
“Not until you had to plug that MiG,” Thor observed. “It’s time to lose the attitude, buddy. You splash that aircraft with a MiG, you’ve got a chance of surviving as an aviator. But you splash one because you ran out of fuel, you’d better believe your flying days are over. Lose the attitude and take the plug, you got that?” Thor’s voice bore not one ounce of mercy. Not now.
“Yes, sir,” came back the short reply.
Thor circled overhead as he watched Hellman slide the Hornet in for a plug on the first tank, and watched as he hungrily sucked down five thousand pounds of JP8 from the KS-3 tanker.
And now for his own trip to the Texaco — 106 was lower on av gas than he needed to be to take a pass at the boat.
Chan stared up at the sky as the most brilliant stars made their first tentative appearances of the evening. It would be, he thought, perhaps the last night sky he would ever see, and he felt a slight surge of gratitude that at least the skies were clear.
He didn’t need radio contact with his carrier to know just how badly the entire mission had turned out. The oily black plumes of smoke towering the sky, still dark smudges against the sunset, told him everything he needed to know. If there were to be a rescue, it would come from the American forces. Chan knew only how he would have treated a downed American pilot had their situations been reversed, and he was not certain that he even wanted rescue. Not at that price.
A split second later, he was quite certain that he would undergo any sort of insidious torture or mistreatment that the Americans might have in mind. Then it happened again — something hard and rough brushed against his leg, something with massive inertia that almost popped him out of the water in reaction.
A third pass, this one more insistent, and Chan started screaming to every god he had ever known for deliverance, for mercy, for a fate other than the one that was approaching too quickly.
The shark’s fourth pass was far less tentative than the previous three, and lasted quite a bit longer.
TWENTY-THREE
The Lucky Star, with the Coast Guard officer commanding, chugged out to a spot directly over the USS Arizona. Tombstone’s pickup team, along with Tomboy and Batman and the Simpsons, were in a loose formation on the stern. No one had ordered them into ranks, but there was something about the solemnity of the moment that manifested itself in quiet, somber voices and stiffened backbones.
“On station, Admiral,” Captain Henry said finally. “Standing by for your orders.”
“Maintain bare steerageway to keep us in this area,” Tombstone said. “I don’t want to anchor. This poor old girl has suffered enough insults to her final resting place, I think.”
“Maintain station with bare steerageway, aye, sir,” the Coast Guard Officer repeated. In the quiet on the aft deck, the visitors could hear the command repeated first by the officer of the deck and then by both the helmsman and the lee helm.
The Lucky Star’s engines throttled down to a dull rumble. They were running so smoothly now that they could barely feel the vibrations on the deck, a marked contrast to the rough sound that she’d made but a week earlier.
Amazing what the Coast Guard can do, Tombstone thought. I wonder where they pinched the funds from to refurbish this old girl. But on reflection, he decided that it wasn’t so much a matter of throwing money at the vessel’s engine spaces. No, he suspected that there hadn’t been a Coast Guard sailor within a thousand miles who hadn’t begged, insisted, or downright whined to be allowed the honor of working on this boat. Spare parts would have materialized, some, he hoped, contributed by grateful Navy shipmates. There would have been no shortage of manpower, and for a brief moment he smiled at the mental picture of thousands of Coast Guard and Navy snipes thronging the pier, begging to be allowed to help to restore the ship to proper working order.
And Lucky Star deserved it. While nothing was certain yet, he’d heard from his uncle that the senators and congressmen from Hawaii had been lobbying to be allowed to designate Lucky Star as a permanent honor escort for the USS Arizona.
Did ships have souls? Perhaps his surface brethren would be better equipped to say, but Tombstone thought that they might. Oh, perhaps not the incandescent life that a Tomcat had, that quick, sweet responsiveness to your every thought. No, if he had to picture it, a ship would have an older soul, a more gallant one — and perhaps, one that knew better the meaning of “Never say die.”
There was a stir of motion on the deck, and an honor guard made its stately way forward, the colors guarded and flying proudly in the wind, one man carrying a simple wreath. The crowd parted before them, allowing them access to the rear railing of the ship. Tombstone caught a whiff of fresh paint smell in the air, and knew that more than the boat’s engines had been refurbished.
A single trumpeter stepped forward. He wet his lips, and then the hauntingly mournful tones of Taps floated out over the air. The notes slid gently through the thick sea air, glistened under the hot sun and seemed to sink into the ocean of their own accord. Tombstone hoped that somehow, somewhere, the sailors that had gone down to the sea for the last time onboard the Arizona heard them and knew that their shipmates still kept the faith today.
A chaplain stepped forward, and said a brief prayer, accompanied by a trumpet playing the Navy Hymn. How many times had Tombstone heard the words to the hymn, under how many different circumstances? They resonated deep in the soul of every sailor, yet never had they meant more to him than they did at this moment, standing on the deck of this gallant little vessel, surrounded by men and women who’d risen to the occasion just as Lucky Star had.
Tombstone barely heard the chaplain’s words as he stared down at the clear water, at the final resting place for so many brave men. They’d done their duty back then, and had once again reached out from beyond the grave to answer the call to duty. Somehow he knew that they would have been proud that their ship, the USS Arizona, had fought one final fight for her country.