“What’s happened on the Reagan?” Connor asked.
The watch commander turned and appraised him, obviously frustrated by the interruption. But he answered the question anyway, likely to avoid distraction so his team could focus on the solution instead of the problem. “There has been some kind of outbreak, and the commanding officer has declared the entire ship in quarantine.”
Connor opened his mouth to press for more details, but the commander held up a hand and silenced him with a surprisingly patient gesture. “I know there are lots of questions, but we can address those after we get them back here.” He turned and faced a Navy lieutenant commander with gold wings on his chest. “Air, does Dusty have the range to make it here?”
The baby-faced pilot plotted the straight-line distance between the FARP on Passu Keah and their location aboard Clark Air Base, then hastily scratched numbers down on a notepad. Connor watched him scribbling furiously while every head in the room was turned in his direction, waiting for his answer. At last, he looked up and said, “Maybe.”
“Maybe? What does that mean?”
If the pilot was nervous, he didn’t show it. He simply recited the facts as he saw them. “The standard range for the Mi-17 is three hundred and eight miles, but we’ll call it an even three hundred to make the math easy. This particular bird has two two-hundred-and-thirty-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks installed. Each tank has approximately two hundred and twenty-seven gallons of usable fuel for an increased range of just under two hundred miles. Again — easy math — we’ll call it two hundred and twenty-five gallons usable with a range increase of one hundred and ninety miles.”
“Get to the point,” the watch commander urged.
“It depends on how bad they’re leaking and how much fuel they made it to the atoll with,” he said. “With a full internal tank and two full auxiliary tanks, they should have a range of just under seven hundred miles.”
“How far are we from Passu Keah?”
“Six hundred miles.”
“So, what’s the problem?” the watch commander asked.
“The fuel blivet at FARP Alpha is only five hundred gallons. If they were on fumes when they landed on Passu Keah, that’s only enough gas to get them four hundred miles.”
The watch commander snatched his phone off its cradle.
Charlie looked over his shoulder at the gaggle of men scrambling back aboard the helicopter. It was a slow process transferring fuel from the five-hundred-gallon fuel bladder on the atoll into the Russian-made helicopter, but he felt the tension in his upper back dissolve as he watched the needles creep upward on the fuel quantity gauges for his two auxiliary fuel tanks.
“We drained her dry,” Dave said, poking his head into the cockpit.
“Is it enough?” Charlie asked.
Roger measured their distance on the atoll to the Reagan’s Position of Intended Movement and nodded. “More than enough. Even with the leak, we should be able—”
The satellite radio squawked and interrupted his answer. “Dusty One, Scar Nine Nine.”
Charlie pressed the transmit button. “Go ahead.”
“What’s your fuel state in gallons?”
Charlie shared a concerned look with Roger before answering. Normally, they spoke in units of time instead of quantity. “Just under six hundred gallons. More than enough to make it back to mom.”
He released the push-to-talk switch and looked back at Roger. “What the hell is going on?”
The other pilot shook his head. “I have no idea, but I have a feeling we’re not going to like it.”
As if on cue, the radio squawked again. “Change in plans, Dusty. Mom is no longer a suitable destination. You are to proceed to Clark Air Base. How copy?”
“We can’t make that,” Roger said. “We’ve got maybe four hundred miles left.”
Charlie took a deep breath before replying. “That’s a negative. We don’t have the range.”
“Good copy, Dusty. Start heading that way while we work something out.”
Charlie exhaled slowly and turned to Roger. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s fucking stupid. They want us to fly east through known Chinese surface-to-air missile sites and over open ocean without being able to reach our destination?”
“Are there any other atolls between here and there that we can use as emergency diverts?”
Roger zoomed in on his tablet to look at satellite imagery of the ocean between their tiny speck of land and the Philippines. “Macclesfield Bank is about one hundred and ninety miles away, but the shoals are entirely submerged and won’t do us any good.”
“Dammit!” Charlie said. “Anything else?”
“Scarborough Shoal,” Roger said. “It’s just over four hundred miles away.”
“Dry?”
“Maybe. The highest point should be six feet above sea level at high tide.”
Charlie nodded and looked at Dave over his shoulder. “Everybody aboard?”
“Last man,” he said.
“Pass out life vests and prepare the rafts for a potential ditching. We’re going to another island.”
Dave gave him a curious look but didn’t argue and spun back into the cabin. Charlie increased torque, and he felt the Mi-17 get light as he lifted off the sandbar and hovered inches off the ground. After stabilizing in the hover for a second, he nosed over and quickly accelerated away from the atoll before keying the switch to transmit back to the TOC.
“Scar Nine Nine, Dusty One is airborne and proceeding to Scarborough Shoal. Request you launch Search and Rescue.”
39
Colt arrived at the coordinates the Hawkeye controller had passed to him and oriented his CAP facing Hainan Island to the northwest. Even though Vietnam also claimed rights to the Paracel Islands, if anybody were to launch and challenge the two Super Hornets, it would be China.
“Tiger, two zero one established on CAP, angels thirty.”
The controller replied with a clipped, “Tiger.”
Colt looked over his right shoulder and saw the darkened outline of his wingman’s jet, a little less than a mile away. The anxiety he had felt after launching from the Reagan was gone now that he was no longer alone in the contested skies over the South China Sea. But the carrier in quarantine brought with it an entirely new worry.
“In place right,” Colt said.
He glanced over his shoulder again and saw the other jet come up on a wing to begin his one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn back to the southeast. They would flow cold — away from the threat sector — while relying on Tiger’s radar to alert them of potentially hostile aircraft launching from Hainan Island. He started his turn, then looked down at the datalink display to verify Rucas had turned in the right direction, but his eyes focused on the icon for the slow-moving helicopter beneath them.
“Tiger, two zero one, picture.”
“Tiger, picture clean,” the controller said, then added, “Friendly helicopter, your position, cherubs five, flowing east.”
“Two zero one.”
Colt rolled out heading southeast, then banked ninety degrees and looked straight down at the pitch black beneath him. Through his NVCD, he saw a cluster of infrared lights glowing from an island he assumed the helicopter had landed on, but the helicopter itself was invisible. He rolled upright and settled in for a long night ahead of him.
“Two zero one, Tiger, friendly helicopter is proceeding to Scarborough Shoal.”
Rucas spoke up first. “Where the hell’s that?”