“Yes, sir.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Anything else?” the president asked.
The general said, “Sir, we’re going to modify the communication procedures as discussed earlier, due to concerns that the Chinese cyberoperations teams may be intercepting our movement orders.”
“Alright. Anything else? What about the Americans on that island? Do you have a plan to rescue them yet?”
“Yes, sir, but as the national security advisor correctly pointed out, the Chinese have been refuting any claims of participation in the Iranian attacks, as well as denying that the Red Cell island holds any American citizens.”
“So what help is needed there?”
“We’ll have something for you soon, sir,” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said.
The president stood. “Good. Tell me when you’ve got more.”
“Yes, sir.”
2
Victoria said, “You have twenty minutes of fuel left.”
“Roger. Can you tell me what you see below us?”
She craned her helmet to the left, looking through her night vision goggles. The dark Pacific Ocean that lay five hundred feet beneath their helicopter didn’t give her much, but it didn’t matter.
“There’s a family of three down there,” Victoria said. “The father is injured. Their boat just sank. The child looks to be about eight years old. None of them have flotation devices. They’re treading water.”
Juan gripped the cyclic stick a little tighter, scanning the horizon through his own night vision goggles — a constant side-to-side sweeping motion. But he too saw very little out there in the green abyss. There just wasn’t enough light for the goggles to pick up. A flash on the horizon from a far-off thunderstorm. But nothing else.
His trained scan shifted to his cockpit instruments. Airspeed — eighty knots. Altitude — five hundred feet. Fuel — about one thousand pounds.
Juan said, “Is he ambulatory?”
“Yes.”
“Water temperature?”
“It’s warm.”
“How far away is the ship?”
“Thirty miles.”
“That’s about fifteen minutes at a max range airspeed of one hundred and twenty knots, so that gives me five minutes to rescue them.”
The lone enlisted man on the aircraft, AWR1 Fetternut, spoke into his helmet’s microphone from the back of the aircraft. “Sir, we’ll need ten minutes to be able to do the rescue.”
“Uh… well, I could go single-engine and save more fuel,” Juan said.
He knew as soon as the words came out of his mouth that it was a stupid thing to say. He could feel his boss, Lieutenant Commander Victoria Manning, shaking her head in disappointment.
“Sir, remind me not to fly with you when you make aircraft commander,” came the sarcastic voice of the aircrewman over the internal communications system.
Fetternut was both a rescue swimmer and a sensor operator for the MH-60R Seahawk helicopter. He was a petty officer first class — lower-ranking than the two pilots, who were commissioned officers. But he had much more experience than Juan, who was the junior pilot.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Juan “Spike” Volonte could feel his blood pressure rising under the evaluation of his aircraft commander. She was not only the senior pilot on this flight, but the air boss on the ship’s aviation detachment. That meant she was the senior officer of all thirty members of his helicopter squadron who were embarked on the USS Farragut. She was the third-highest-ranking person on the ship, with only the captain and the XO above her.
Juan raised his eyebrows to try and get the sweat to stop beading down from his helmet and into his eyes. He hated being grilled by his boss.
It was true that she could be patient. Her style was to be a teacher — not like one of those instructor pilots from flight school that got off on making the student look like an idiot for not knowing the answer. Still, when you flew with her, you always had to be on. She never stopped training. And oftentimes it was in the form of these pop quiz scenarios. That’s what flying as a junior Navy pilot on deployment was: one continuous pop quiz.
She said, “You would take one engine to idle?”
“No. Sorry. That was dumb.”
“Why?”
“Because I would need to go into a hover to rescue those people. And I would need both engines to do that. Otherwise we wouldn’t have enough power to hover, and we’d start sinking towards the water.” Sweat dripped down from his soaked hair under his helmet and onto his forehead.
Air boss said, “Okay. Just checking.”
He could practically hear her breathe a sigh of relief that her copilot wasn’t a total idiot. She wouldn’t recommend him to go to his HAC board unless he could consistently prove himself as a competent decision maker under pressure.
Then she said, “Maybe you can make up for it. Simulated.”
Simulated. Every pilot attached a special meaning to that dreaded word. It was used to denote that whatever happened next was a simulated emergency induced by the other pilot.
The ENGINE FIRE light illuminated on the master caution panel in front of him.
“Engine fire in flight procedures…” His voice increased an octave as he began announcing each step in the emergency procedure from memory. “Uh… confirm fire…”
He instinctively used his right hand, which was gripping the cyclic control, to place the aircraft into a steady turn.
Victoria said, “AWR1, you see a fire?”
“I don’t know, ma’am, it’s pretty dark out. I don’t see any smoke.”
Dammit, what was this? Now they were teaming up on him.
“Okay, Juan, now I want you to keep troubleshooting the engine fire emergency as if this scenario with the three survivors in the water below you was still going on. What’s your plan?”
He had inadvertently put in too much forward stick in the turn. The helicopter’s AFCS computers had reacted by increasing the target airspeed for the autopilot system. Autopilot. Now there was a bullshit term. It was more like cruise control — it would help you out, but you sure as hell better keep driving.
Now they were going ten knots too fast. Not a lot, but it showed shoddy airmanship… and they were still in a turn.
Juan couldn’t believe how dark it was, flying over the water on these moonless nights. It was much easier to fly during the day. Then he could use the horizon to determine the aircraft’s pitch, roll, and yaw. But now, at night and over the dark ocean, he was completely reliant upon his instruments.
Instruments. Shit. He was still turning, and he didn’t mean to be.
The digital readouts in front of him glowed a faint green. A collection of numbers and shapes. Airspeed indicators and altitude. Columns of pixels and an artificial horizon. Engine oil pressure and transmission oil pressure. And fuel. He couldn’t forget about fuel.
Goddammit, was he still turning? She was still waiting for him to answer her question. This flight was not going well.
“Juan?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Aviate, navigate, communicate. Check your airspeed. I’ve got you ten knots fast and twenty degrees right wing down.”
Juan found himself fixating on his gyro, the round center of his digital display. It was what was telling him up from down. He had a twenty-degree turn in still. But he felt like he was straight and level.
He realized that he was tilting his body and neck to the left. Dammit. He was getting a case of the leans.