The carrier TAO’s voice cut in sharp and hard. “Vipers, remain on station. Keep bogeys away from that site; backup is on the way. Repeat, maintain control of that site if at all possible. You’re over international waters. Backup and SAR on the way.”
“Roger,” Lobo’s voice said. “Hot Rock, Hot Rock, break off and beat feet back to your previous position. I’m going to stay down here and make it real clear nobody gets near this mess but us — especially a helicopter. You copy?”
“Copy, Viper Leader.” Hot Rock heard the slight tremor in his voice, but that was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew from experience that other aviators would interpret it as springing from anger and disappointment. Because they’d be feeling anger and disappointment at being called off potential target to play watchdog. “Damn it!” he cried, cranking the F-14 into a hard right turn and headed back and up.
“Tough luck, man,” Two Tone said from the backseat. “Unless the bogeys will want to play.”
Hot Rock said nothing. His climbing turn was smooth, powerful, and perfectly balanced, and the higher he got, the better he felt. Nobody could take this away from him; nobody could say there was a finer stickman in the entire U.S. Navy. When it came to carving up the sky, Hot Rock Stone was unsurpassed. He should be in the Blue Angels.
He should be flying in air shows….
As Rear Admiral Edward Everett “Batman” Wayne yanked on a fresh flight suit, he tried to clear his head. Before being awakened by the hard buzz of his direct line to the Tactical Flag Command Center TAO, he’d been dreaming about the last time he was in the South China Sea, about the Spratley Island campaign. Of course, back then he hadn’t been a Rear Admiral, in charge of an entire Carrier Battle Group. Back then he’d been assigned to the Pentagon, helping test the new JAST Tomcats with their advanced Doppler look-down, shoot-down radar. When the Spratleys problem heated up, he’d helped ferry a pair of the new birds to Jefferson, and even piloted one in combat, going head-to-head against the finest Chinese pilots above the oil-rich chunks of rock they were trying to claim as their own.
What he hadn’t had to do back then was worry about the “whys” of it. He hadn’t had to concern himself with the deployment or tactics of the hundreds of assets that made up a carrier battle group. Back then, that responsibility had fallen on the shoulders of his friend and onetime lead, Rear Admiral Matthew “Tombstone” Magruder.
And Tombstone had risen to the occasion… well, admirably. He’d orchestrated the battle group in such a way that it not only fended off the Chinese, but kept the South China Sea open to all naval traffic… while managing not to start a full-scale war with the People’s Republic in the meantime. An amazing job.
Now, ironically, it was Stony who was back in Washington, fighting the very different war that was life in the Pentagon while Batman was left to deal with the latest Chinese mess… whatever it turned out to be.
He mentally reviewed the brief summary the TFCC TAO had given him that had yanked him out of sleep: A Tomcat on routine patrol had engaged a Chinese helicopter it caught firing upon an unarmed American pleasure boat. Chinese bogeys were now en route to the site. Batman wasn’t sure yet what “engaged” meant, or any other details concerning the episode, but he was about to find out.
Petty Officer Third Class Dwayne Pitcock leaned out the yawning side hatch of the helo and peered down. Although the eastern sky was beginning to brighten, the water below remained black except where the helo’s searchlight created a lens of brilliant blue. The lens slipped this way and that, revealing chunks of fiberglass and foam rubber, a coffee table, a couple of ottomans, a glass coffeepot bobbing along. Tons of junk everywhere.
And then it passed over a human body, a woman in a sequined gown, floating facedown over a brown-red cloud of blood. Her back had been ripped open like the doors of a cabinet, displaying muscle and bone.
“Jesus,” Pitcock said. Since he was going to be hitting the water pretty soon, he didn’t have a headset or helmet on, and he couldn’t hear himself over the hammering blast of the Seahawk’s engine and rotor noise.
The searchlight moved on, finding more bodies, one after the other, all floating with the distinctive liquid movement of the dead, all trailing slicks of blood behind them. The bodies turned slowly as the helo’s downwash shoved at them. “Jesus,” Pitcock said again.
Then the light found the largest piece of wreckage he had yet seen — a sleek white expanse like the lip of a dying iceberg, with more of it slanting down into the water below, vanishing into indigo depths. A man’s body sprawled across the exposed section As the light hit him he stirred, turned, and raised an arm to wave.
The Seahawk immediately swooped over. Leery of the bloody water, Pitcock popped the seals on a couple of anti-shark packets and tossed them down beside the hull. They stained the water bright yellow as they emitted a chemical that supposedly drove sharks away. Pitcock, who had known sharks to swim toward the stuff, figured pissing into the water would do just as much good, but he was in the Navy, and sailors had a long tradition of superstitious behavior.
The crew boss manned the winch, spinning out a length of cable with the rescue collar attached. Before the collar hit the water, Pitcock jumped.
Still thinking of sharks, he practically bounced off the surface of the water and scooted up the tilted hull of the half-sunken yacht. He snagged an upright on the chrome guardrail a few feet away from where the man clung, then squinted up against the salt spray and pounding air and signaled the helo. It drifted forward until Pitcock was able to grab the rescue collar.
The man was staring at him now. He was Chinese — well, some kind of Asian — and maybe thirty, thirty-five years old. He was wearing a tuxedo. His expression was more vacant than grateful or even comprehending. But at least he was alive.
“I gotcha!” Pitcock shouted. “You’re okay now, sir.”
The man didn’t respond. Pitcock slid toward him across the slippery fiberglass, dragging the collar behind. The man barely reacted as Pitcock maneuvered one of his arms through the collar, then his head. His other arm was locked around the guardrail. When Pitcock tried to pry it loose, the guy started flailing around and shouting in some shrill, staccato language.
“Easy, easy,” Pitcock said as soothingly as he could, considering he had to bellow. He signaled “raise” at the chopper, and “slowly,” and waited until the cable began to pull before trying again to pry the man’s arm loose of the rail. Apparently calmed by the firm grip of the cable, the man finally relaxed his arm, and it slipped free. Pitcock whirled his arm, signaling for a faster winch.
There was a moment when the man in the tuxedo seemed to be standing on the canted hull of his own volition. His black eyes met Pitcock’s. “Thank you very much,” he said in clear English.
Pitcock grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, and he sailed into the sky.
“COS, what’s the situation?” Batman asked as he stepped into the small compartment located within a few feet of his cabin.
William “Coyote” Grant, Jefferson’s Chief of Staff, looked away from the blue screen in the front of the room. The blue screen was the focal point of this information, distilling input from all over the battle group down to a series of icons representing friendly, unfriendly and neutral assets in the area.