Now Jackson couldn’t resist looking toward the bow, at the rows of bodies. Two officers stood amongst the bags, heads close together in discussion. One officer was short and blond-haired, with glasses; Jackson didn’t know who he was. The other was Bird Dog Robinson, the pilot who usually flew this bird. Jackson hadn’t had much personal contact with Bird Dog, although the other plane crew members either loved him or hated his guts. Right now, both he and the blond-haired officer looked grim as hell.
He looked back at Orell. “Somebody kills Americans, we gotta do something.”
Orell grinned. “I agree. Absolutely. What we should do is load this here bird up and send it off to drop ordnance on a bunch of poor people didn’t do anything but go fishing last night. Know who lives in Hong Kong, Jackson? A few dozen billionaires, and about fifty million people living in shit, just like your family does back home. Nice, huh? Think about it. Who’s gonna die when we go deliver our payback for what happened to that yacht? The billionaires? Not likely.” Orell bobbed his head toward the corner, then turned and bobbed it in the other direction, toward the crew of technicians working on the bomb-damaged aft elevator. “A whole bunch of colored people gonna die for this. But there’s too many of ’em anyway, so that’s okay. You just make this plane work real nice, son.”
Orell winked, draped his massive, freckled hands over the wheel of the tow tractor, and hit the gas. As he pulled away, he had to turn abruptly to avoid three more men walking across the hanger floor. When Jackson saw who one of those men was, he almost crammed his head right back into the service bay, because it was Rear Admiral Wayne walking along right there. With him was some little Chinese guy in an oversized T-shirt and khaki pants, and a corpsman from the ship’s hospital.
But the Admiral didn’t glance his way, or even seem to be aware he existed. No doubt Orell would point out that was typical of officers. Wouldn’t mention — wouldn’t need to mention — that most of the officers were white, too.
“Excuse me, Petty Officer Ord.” Beaman’s voice came from between two parked planes. Jackson whirled, almost rapping his head on the corner of the open service hatch. Beaman was as black as the F-14 was silvery-gray, and would have been swallowed up by Orell Blessing’s shadow, but the Plane Captain was nobody to screw around with. “Maybe you’d like me to have Lieutenant Commander Robinson come over here and tell you what it’s like to fly a Tomcat when an improperly tightened hydraulic line gives way, and all the fluid leaks out of the control surface system. Would you like that, sailor?”
“Sorry.” Then he waved his wrench at the figures in the corner. “I was just wondering what’s going on.”
Beaman barely glanced across the hangar. “The brass have their work to do, Ord, and we’ve got ours.”
“But what do you think’s going to happen? Think we’re going to mix it up with the Chinese?”
“I don’t get paid to have opinions outside this hangar bay. I get paid for the same thing you do: making sure these birds are ready to fly when and if they do have to fight. And it so happens this bird has to be ready to fly tomorrow.”
“Already?”
“Yep. We’re going to be cycling planes pretty fast for the next few days.”
Jackson glanced toward the corner with the body bags. The Admiral was there now, bending over one of the bags, the Chinese man bending down with him. “Why?” Jackson said.
“Because they tell us to, Ord. Because they tell us to.”
“I don’t see him, Admiral,” Martin Lee said in a voice as thin as the gauze bandage taped over one of his ears. “Mr. McIntyre is not here, and he was not in the morgue. He is… his body is one of the missing.”
Batman nodded. It was amazing, really; from memory alone, Lee had identified every single one of the corpses brought back from Lady of Leisure, often based on no more than a piece of jewelry on a severed hand or the color and length of hair on a crushed skull. Still, eight bodies were missing — including Phillip McIntyre’s, it appeared. That wasn’t a bad ratio, considering all that had happened. And as for McIntyre, his disappearance was no surprise at all. Lee himself had stated that McIntyre was shot to death inside the yacht well before the helicopter arrived. Which meant his corpse was now feeding crabs at the bottom of the South China Sea.
But Batman said none of that. Instead, he put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. When the man turned, Batman held out his other hand and said, “Mr. Lee, thank you. I know this was difficult, but you were very brave.”
Lee stared at his hand for a moment, as if afraid it would not be attached, then reached out and shook it. “May I go home now? My wife was very worried over the phone. She is pregnant.”
“The doctor’s given you a clean bill of health,” Batman said. “As soon as arrangements are finalized, we’ll fly you back.” He didn’t mention how difficult it had been to make those arrangements. For several hours the PLA had refused to allow any American military aircraft or surface vessels access to Hong Kong without prior “inspection.” At the same time, they were demanding that Jefferson immediately release the wreckage and corpses they’d recovered from Lady of Leisure. Catch-22.
Fortunately, the civilian aeronautical authorities in Hong Kong had quoted certain provisions of the Sino-British agreement, pointed out that American warships docked in Hong Kong all the time, and insisted that the return of Hong Kong citizens, living and dead, did not fall under the purview of national security. Rather to Batman’s surprise, the PLA had backed down.
Batman signaled the corpsman to take Lee back to sick bay. As the young man was led off, he hardly seemed to be aware of his surroundings, far less who he was with.
“Tough,” Bird Dog said, watching him go.
Batman nodded. “I wouldn’t want to have his nightmares for the next few nights.”
“Admiral,” Lab Rat said, “what were the autopsy results?”
Batman sighed and looked down at the body bags. “Officially, a couple of these people drowned. Of course, that was after they took a cannon hit or two. The rest were simply shot to pieces.”
“Except Mr. Lee.”
“Yes. He got lucky; he was hanging onto the section of boat that had all those explosives inside. Would you fire a cannon into that at close range?”
“And the Chinese are still claiming they had nothing to do with this,” Bird Dog said. It was not a question.
Lab Rat snorted, a rare display of disbelief from a man who had seen almost every form of misdirection and chicanery. “They just presented a theory at the U.N. claiming the whole massacre was part of a Hong Kong drug war. We’re talking a story as thin as my father’s hair, but some people have grabbed hold of it anyway. For some people, believing any old lie is a better than fighting China.”
Batman stared down at the body bags, thinking of the terror and agony they represented. “It’s my fault. I should have pushed for an immediate retaliatory strike before the Chinese got their bullshit on the table.”
“The Joint Chiefs would almost certainly have vetoed it,” Lab Rat said.
“I still should have made the request.” Batman shook himself. “Never mind. Okay, the explosion yesterday might have been a fluke, but we’re still in agreement that this whole thing isn’t over, right?”
“I’d say it’s just begun,” Lab Rat said.
“So would I,” Bird Dog said.
“Then from now on, we’re going to behave accordingly. There are thousands of American citizens in Hong Kong, with more flying in every day. We’re going to do our damnedest to make them feel safe here.”