THREE
“Well,” Two Tone said dryly from the backseat, “that was a real waste of fuel.”
Hot Rock knew his RIO was talking about the extra hours they had pulled circling around and around the site of the sunken sailboat, including an aerial refueling so they could stay on station until the SAR and salvage ops were finished. All that without so much as a glimpse of a Chinese fighter.
He made his voice sound rough and disappointed. “Who knows? We might get another chance.”
“We already had a chance with that helo,” Two Tone said.
“We were too close to the twelve-mile limit. You heard our orders.” Hot Rock eased the Tomcat into a left bank, maintaining his position in the Marshal pattern until it was his turn to trap back onto Jefferson.
“Well, let’s just hope that helo doesn’t decide to take out some other poor civilian boat,” Two Tone said. “Or if it does, that we don’t let it get away again.”
Hot Rock didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure if there was a reprimand behind those words, or not. He had to remember that not everyone was his father. Not everyone could peer into his heart and see that, deep inside, Reginald Stone knew he wasn’t good enough.
Besides, Two Tone was almost a stranger. Apart from the absolute synchronicity imposed by life in a Tomcat, they shared no common interests and rarely hung out together.
Fifteen minutes later it was his turn at last to land, and he angled the big bird down toward what looked pretty much like a post card-sized deck. But his hands remained steady on the controls, his breath flowed smooth and easy, he was perfectly relaxed. He loved this part.
A moment later the Tomcat’s tailhook snagged the three wire and the Tomcat jolted to a halt. Hot Rock smiled. Another perfect trap. His father could never have done such a thing. His brother, either.
“I’ll say one thing,” Two Tone said in his honking accent. “Nobody knows how to get a bird home as safely as you do, man.”
Although Tombstone was a member of the flying club at the Naval Air Station, he preferred to keep his Pitts Special at a small private strip in the middle of the Maryland countryside. Somehow, the biplane looked more at home amongst the motley collection of Supercubs, Cessna 150s and Stearmans that lodged there than it did surrounded by sleek Bonanzas and Sky Kings, not to mention F-14s and F/A-18s. Besides, Tombstone liked the laid-back atmosphere. He liked the grass strip adjacent to the paved one, and he liked how a pot of bad coffee was always percolating in the office building.
By the time he eased the Pitts down onto the grass, the sun was squatting on the horizon, pushing long shadows across the field. Tombstone taxied to his tie-down area, the Pitts bumping over the sod, and killed the engine. Climbed out of the cramped cockpit and dropped onto the grass — and almost all the way to his knees.
His legs were shaking like Slinkys.
He should be dead. That was the thing. He should be dead right now. He’d had close calls before, sure; but this was different. This time he was alive for only one reason: luck. Not because he was such a damned fine pilot, but because he didn’t know how to handle the Pitts properly. The truth was, that bogey should have nailed him on its first pass. And it would have, if he hadn’t pulled out of his dive too soon. Luck had saved him. Pure luck. That was all.
He heard the crunch of gravel under car tires, and demanded that his legs stiffen. He couldn’t endure being seen like this. As he stood, he had to reach up and grab the Pitts’ cockpit coaming to maintain his balance.
“You got back just in time,” said a familiar voice, and Tomboy appeared before him, short and buxom and beautiful in the shadows. Instinctively, he reached out and pulled her to him, and hung on to her rather than the biplane. Her red hair smelled of violet, as if the twilight had gotten caught in it.
“Hey, big guy!” she said, sounding both surprised and pleased. She hugged him back. “That must have been some flight.”
Tombstone began to laugh. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that was some flight.”
Tomboy pulled away from him. Her face was serious. “Before you tell me about it, I’ve got something to tell you.” Within a couple of minutes, she gave him an encapsulated version of a terrible event in the South China Sea. CBG-14, his old command, was involved.
Atop the airport building, a beacon began to flash at the first stars.
“The Chinese again,” Tombstone said, thinking of his longtime wingman and best friend, Batman. “What the hell are they up to this time?”
Tomboy put her hand on his arm. “There’s something else, sweetheart. The man who owned the yacht was someone you know. Phillip McIntyre.”
“Phillip… you mean… Uncle Phil?” His knees weakened again. Phillip McIntyre wasn’t really an uncle, but an old friend of Tombstone’s real uncle, Admiral Thomas Magruder. The two older men went way back together. They’d been regular blood brothers all during grade school and high school, and remained close after that even though their careers had taken them in opposite directions from college on. Phillip McIntyre had gone into engineering, focusing on the development of computer circuitry long before it was trendy, then cashing in on the sudden bonanza. From there he’d diversified into other forms of manufacturing and high-tech development.
Tombstone remembered his uncle Phil as a kind of jet-setter, always sending cards and gifts from exotic corners of the world. When Tombstone graduated from Annapolis, a brand-new Japanese motorcycle was waiting for him, courtesy of Uncle Phil. More recently, while Tombstone and Tomboy were in Vegas for their quick, supposedly secret wedding, a complete set of hand-carved rosewood bedroom furniture was en route from the Philippines, on one of Uncle Phil’s commercial ships.
“Is he…” Tombstone said. “Did he…”
“They don’t know yet. They’re still searching. Anyway, your uncle called and told me he won’t be having dinner with us tonight.”
“I understand.” Tombstone shook his head. “That’s okay. Frankly, I don’t think I’m up for it myself.”
She rested a hand on his forearm. “Phillip might not be dead, Tombstone. We don’t know yet.”
“It’s not that. I mean, that’s a shock, but there’s something else.”
“Don’t tell me: Your new toy scared the piss out of you. Go on, admit it.”
He gulped down another mad surge of laughter. “Not exactly.”
Then he told her what had happened, and watched her eyes widen in the darkness.
“Very bad thing. Very bad. Is why I left Vietnam. Now same thing here!”
Dr. George wished the cabbie would shut up. The horrendous midmorning Hong Kong traffic was distracting enough without this man jabbering on about something or other. Dr. George was on his way to make a crucial presentation, and he wanted to rehearse it in his mind. He wanted it to be just right. Absolutely convincing. Hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake.
No, millions of dollars. That’s the angle. This is Hong Kong, remember. Millions of dollars are at stake, that’s what I’ve got to tell them. Billions of dollars.
It was a shame he had to behave like a door-to-door salesman to seek financing for his work. Unfortunately, for political and economic reasons, the United States government had cut back drastically on direct research into Dr. George’s specialty: Pacific Basin tropical storms. The logic was that typhoons were a Pacific phenomenon, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration had reason to concentrate its resources on Atlantic Basin storms. It was hurricanes, after all, that endangered American homes and American businesses. With the exception of Hawaii and a few pissant military enclaves, only faraway Asian lands were threatened by typhoons.