Authors: Gordon Kent
“I got her.”
Soleck took his hands off the controls and flexed them, realizing he had been flying like a nugget with a clench. He looked at ESM, saw a targeting radar come up on the Kashin-class destroyer.
“101, prepare for another missile. Get out of there!”
“Roger, evading. Going to burner. Chaff and flares.”
Soleck pulled up a factoid from his remarkable memory. “Missiles will be first-generation radar-homing.”
“Thanks, 703.”
“101, they should suck at look-down.”
“Roger, copy, going on the deck.”
Soleck waited. He was sure the old Russian missiles would be poor at finding targets below them. Almost sure. For a moment, he could
see
the missiles on ESM as their radar homing warheads flickered. Then they vanished.
Then 101’s voice: “Two missiles past timeout overhead, I can see the exhaust at burnout. Owe you a beer.”
Soleck made himself breathe. He activated his radio. “AW, this is 703. 101 is under fire from an Indian Navy vessel, Kashin class.”
And if I had a Harpoon, I could whack him from here.
“Copy, 703.” Captain Lash, again. “Break, break, 101, what’s your status?”
“Peachy, Alpha Whiskey.”
Soleck thought that was just adrenaline talking. In fact, if that Tomcat had just turned low with his burners on, he’d used more fuel than he had to spare, and Soleck didn’t have any extra. He unclipped his harness, leaned way out over Gup and plucked the kneeboard off his lap.
“We’re going to need gas, Alpha Whiskey,” 101 said.
Yeah.
And without Stevens, he could see they were already short. Somebody wasn’t going to make it. He did the math while 101 reported the incident to AW and repeated that there was a man in the water. Soleck walled off the idea that Stevens and Goldy might be gone. He was walling a lot off. He heard Alpha Whiskey scramble his own helo, already busy doing search and rescue on pilots who had punched off the
Jefferson
‘s burning deck, to get the man in the water up north.
He went to the Alpha Whiskey freq and requested another line. He wasn’t ready to go public yet. Then he got 203 on Donitz’s squadron freq. “Donuts?”
“Yeah, Soleck?”
“I got a problem. The Tomcat had to burn gas—”
“I heard.”
“And Stevens’s plane is down. Somebody is screwed for Trincomalee. Or anywhere.”
“Relax, Ev. We’re not. I can make it—altitude’s good. And if I can make it, all the Hornets—”
“Not the Hornets, Chris.”
Four of the Hornets had already tanked. They couldn’t give the gas back if they wanted. The Tomcats farther north had limited options and their options were getting smaller by the second.
“Gotcha.” Donuts had thought it through without Soleck’s having to spell it out: one of the Tomcats was going in the drink. Almost certainly the one that had just saved itself from that very fate. And Soleck was telling Donuts that he was going to have to make the call.
Welcome to command.
Even while he listened for Donuts, Soleck was back on the ESM, watching the Godavari-class destroyer as she closed with the Kashin-class. She had a number of radars, French, German, and Russian, and while they baffled even Soleck’s knowledge he could see their types. The Modified Godavari, a middle-aged Indian ship with a curious mix of British and Russian technology, was illuminating something with a high PRF radar that almost had to be for gun-control. She was
way
out of range of the Tomcats.
That meant she was about to shoot the Kashin.
The world was going to hell
Two thousand miles away in Bahrain, there was no thought of guns or of death from the sky. Harry O’Neill had taken
Mike Dukas off to show him his new Hummer. Harry ran a security company that had contracts all over the Middle East; an armored Humvee was just the thing for the CEO to drive. Leslie had stayed behind with Rose, ostensibly to help with dinner, really to talk. Or try to talk. Younger by fifteen years, she was shy—a once noisy, overweight, semi-literate young woman who had found her real self in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s bureaucracy—and in Mike Dukas.
“So what do you do with your days?” Rose asked her as they were dipping lush tomatoes into boiling water and then peeling them.
“I take classes. Distance learning, you know. Plus Arabic at U. of Bahrain. Plus I do some temping.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Michael says I’m an over-achiever.” She put a peeled tomato on the cutting board between them, and Rose cut a cross in the bottom and squeezed seeds and pulp into a blue plastic bowl. “I’m going to be an NCIS special agent, just like him.”
“What does he say to that?”
Leslie made an unhappy face. “He says things like, ‘Dream on.’”
“That’s not fair.”
“He doesn’t mean it like that. He means—it’s hard, and there aren’t that many jobs for women. And he means it’s
me.”
She stopped peeling, looked down at the board, knife in one hand, tomato in the other. “Leslie, the trailer-park-trash queen.”
“Honey.” Rose wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Hey. You’re smarter than he is, that’s the trouble.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Leslie, I
know
Mike. You’re smarter.”
“He’s in love with you.” Leslie smiled. “It’s okay. But I know he is.” The smile became shaky. “He isn’t in love with me, though.”
“Honey, you two live together!”
“Michael likes sex, right?” Leslie passed the back of the tomato-holding hand under her nose and sniffed. “I chase him across the Atlantic Ocean, I show up at his door, he hasn’t got a woman in Bahrain yet—dah-dah! How nice to see you, Leslie, why don’t you lie down and spread your legs.” Tears welled in her eyes. She sniffed again.
Rose put her arms around her. “Oh, honey, he isn’t like that. He’s, he’s—”
Leslie let her hands hang at her sides, let herself be hugged. She said, “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, Les—!” Rose swayed back, her hands on Leslie’s upper arms. “That’s—” She studied Leslie’s face, thought better of saying it was wonderful. “Does he know?”
Leslie shook her head. “He’ll think I did it on purpose. You know, to—”
“You have to tell him!”
“I’m thinking, maybe—maybe if I, you know, didn’t have it, then he wouldn’t feel—” She shuddered. “Trapped. Whatever.”
Rose held her arms. “I’ve been
praying
to get pregnant again. I was going to have our last one here, shore tour, it would be easy. Then I had a miscarriage. Les, it’s hell when you want one and you can’t.”
“It’s kind of hell when you got one and you figure he doesn’t want it.” She searched Rose’s face. “I’m sorry I dumped my shit on you, and you’re—you got more reason to—”
“No, no!” Rose laughed a little shakily. “I’m pregnant, too! If I can make it to three months, maybe this time it’ll be okay! Ten more days.”
“Does Alan know?”
“He’s been away, so busy, it’s just one more—” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s unlucky to tell him until I’m sure, you know?”
The two women let their eyes meet, then put their arms around each other, laughing that partly mad laughter that is near tears.
In a pool of white sunlight, five red tomatoes gleamed beside the bright blue bowl.
They found chain-link fences behind the naval base’s buildings. Fences that had to be climbed. And there were five of them. And one was a woman with the upper-body strength of a child.
Ong had to be helped from behind by Alan or Fidel and pulled to the top by Clavers, who made it in one graceful jump, grab, and swing. Fidel and Alan went over like monkeys. Benvenuto managed to get over by grabs and gasps, but it wasn’t pretty.
“Whadya think?” Fidel said when the little group had made it over their third fence. They were huddling in a dumpster storage yard that smelled mostly of things that had been in the dumpsters too long.
“I think the lieutenant’s about had it.”
Ong was collapsed on a stack of wooden pallets, her head in her hands, saying “I can’t” and weeping.
“We need some fucking guns.” Fidel said it as if guns would get Ong over the fences faster. The words were not quite out when a man with a gun stepped around a dumpster fifty feet away. He was eighteen or nineteen, thin, in Indian naval working dress. He had an AK-47 and there was no way to tell what side of this strange conflict he was on.
Fidel raised his right arm and shot him. Just like that. Alan would have sworn Fidel hadn’t had time to aim.
“Jesus, Fidel—”
“You wait to ask who he is, you die.” Fidel was already over the body, the AK in one hand, the other ripping through pockets for extra clips. He found one, then another. “That shot’ll bring shit down on us, Jesus—” Other gunshots were still popping out on the street, but nothing close by.
He tossed Alan the CZ and bent over the boy’s body again, looking for more ammunition, but his head was up to watch the place where the boy had first appeared. Alan went to the corner of the dumpster and looked around it, finding nothing. Above them, the wall of the building was window-less for four storeys; above that, a single row of floor-to-ceiling windows ran the entire width.
VIP country,
he thought. He supposed the building had something to do with the dumpsters—maintenance, or facilities and grounds. Would those people be involved in a mutiny? Could the building be a safe haven for Americans?
Fidel backed himself against another dumpster twenty feet away. He pointed at Alan, then at the space that he could see and Alan couldn’t. The finger pointed again at Alan:
You—go!
Alan went around the corner of the iron dumpster, the CZ ready, took in at a glance that they were between two rows of dumpsters, five on each side, and he raced to the next one and sheltered there, looked back and nodded at Fidel, who ran forward. So they made their way up the rows, covering each other, until they reached the third pair. Alan was leaning against the sun-warmed metal, Fidel just signaled to come on, when a brown hand splayed itself against the edge of the dumpster opposite. Fidel was already running.
Black hair appeared by the hand, then a face, brown eyes like a deer’s, young and feminine. The boy tried to swing a weapon into position; Alan had time to see that it was a bolt-action rifle, and then he fired the CZ, shooting on instinct as he had been taught—index finger along the side of the pistol, third finger on the trigger.
Point and shoot.
An astonished expression replaced the fear on the young face, and the kid screamed. He had been hit just below the collarbone on the right side. Then Fidel was there blocking Alan’s view, and the AK was hammering, and it was over.
Alan found himself looking at two bodies. The smell of blood was sickening, lush, warm. Twitching, the two boys lay on the violated earth, dirt impregnated with broken glass and bolts and hard plastic knobs that stuck out like bones, blood on them now. “Jesus Christ, Fidel!” Alan said. “They’re kids.”
“You think I’m fucking proud of it?!”
“We don’t have to kill everybody we see!”
Fidel’s face was twisted. “You want to take the fucking gun—
sir?”
He held out the AK-47.
“You know you’re better with it.”
“Yeah, well just keep that in mind
—sir!”
Alan suppressed the angry things that sprang to his tongue. They stared into each other’s eyes, neither flinching. Finally, Alan said, “You’re out of line with that tone, Chief,” and turned away, exposing his back to the other man and his anger and his weapon. But Fidel was better than that.
They picked up the two rifles, old British .303s, beautifully maintained and oiled but half a century out of date. Each of the sailors had had a full box magazine and five more rounds.
“The poor bastards were like mall security guards,” Alan said with disgust. He turned away because flies were already gathering. Thinking,
No safe haven here after we’ve killed three of their guys, no matter who they are.
He looked at the next chain-link fence and then at Ong and the others. “This sucks.”
“No shit.”
“We’re going farther down toward the creek. It’ll be crap, but there’ll be no fences and no people.”
And nobody we have to shoot,
he thought, looking at Fidel. “Well?”
Fidel looked toward the scrub jungle through which the maps said a creek flowed. “I think we’re gonna wind up humping some people on our backs, but—” He shrugged. “O-ka-a-a-y!”
Soleck cycled through the screens on his computer while warming the ISAR—Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar—which used the doppler of a target’s movement to create a two-dimensional digital image, a radar photograph. It was best against targets on the water; it could be cranky, was often attenuated by atmospherics, but when it worked, it could reach over the horizon through ducts and reflections to image a ship that lay hundreds of miles away.
“Gup, you did leave
us
enough gas to make Trincomalee?”
Guppy didn’t rise to it. “Roger that,” he said. “And a thousand pounds reserve for whoever needs it. Both planes.”
Soleck wanted to check the figures but Guppy had a head for math and somebody in Air Ops must have done it, too. Gup was doing very well indeed. In fact, by the end of this flight, he might have shed nugget status forever.
Soleck had the radar in surface-search mode; he could see the Indian battle group to the north, now well spread out, with elements dispersed over ninety miles of ocean. He overlaid the position of the Tomcats and the man in the water and the ESM cuts, shading his small screen with a hand and trying to work with the minimal inputs available to the front seat.
There.
Two bananas on the surface-search that corresponded to his ESM cuts. He pressed the image button on the Indian Kashin-class and had the satisfaction of seeing her come up immediately. The image wavered and rotated twice; she was almost bow on. As he watched, the shape of her superstructure developed two major radar returns that showed as bright spikes above her hull.
Has to be damage,
he said to himself. He also thought he could see her forward turret rotating and something changing amidships.
More damage?
The ESM told the story—launch parameters for a Styx IIc anti-ship missile. He watched it go to homing and then terminal and then vanish as the Indian Godavari-class’s close-in weapons took it out. He got on the comm.
“Alpha Whiskey, this is 703. An Indian Navy Mod Kashin fired on 101. That ship is now taking fire from an Indian Navy Mod Godavari. The Kashin has suffered damage. 703 is monitoring via ISAR and ESM.”
“Copy, 703.”
Donuts spoke up. “Alpha Whiskey, the mission tankers don’t have enough gas to get 101 to the beach.” Soleck could see him flying a thousand feet above him and a mile away.
“Roger, 203. Concur. What do you recommend?”
“Strike Lead recommends Alpha Whiskey advise on sending an SAR helo into a hot zone.”
“203, I’m hesitant to send an unescorted helo up there.”
Soleck, his eyes on the computer screen, cut in. “Kashin’s air-search radar went off the air during the last exchange, Alpha Whiskey. Hasn’t come back up. Still taking hits from the Godavari and seems to be listing to port.”
“Roger, 703, copy all. 203, I’ll risk the helo. What’s on your mind?”
The nasal quality of Donuts’s voice came through clearly. “I want 102 to turn south and head for the tankers. I want 101 to hang with the man in the water until gas is an issue or better yet until the helo shows; make it look like we have teeth. Then punch out or ditch, pilot’s choice, and the helo picks them all up.”
Wow, thought Soleck,
Donuts can be a cold bastard.
But the more he thought it through, the better the plan seemed—except for the two guys who would have to punch out of a perfectly good plane.
“203, I see your plan. I was thinking of ordering them to try and bingo at Lakshadweep.”
“Copy, Alpha Whiskey. I’m concerned with the Indian Navy.” Probably one of Donuts’s best understatements.
“Roger, 203. Concur. Helo is on the way.”
Soleck listened to Donuts repeat it all to 101. The pilot in 101 showed his sangfroid. “203, this is 101, concur. Always enjoy spending the taxpayer’s money.”
On his computer screen, Soleck could see the Kashin-class listing more and more heavily. Flames and smoke didn’t register on ISAR, but damage did, and her superstructure was a spike of radar reflections twice the height of the original image. None of her radars showed on ESM.
In the last light of the setting sun, he could just see the smudge of smoke to the north. Way out over the horizon there, the Kashin-class was burning, a plume of smoke rising thousands of feet into the air. Behind him in the quick dusk of the Arabian Sea, the black pall of the deck fires on the
Jefferson
rose to meet it.
Soleck watched the computer and the gas and prayed.
Donitz pulled on the stick and turned his nose south and east until his compass read 140 and his GPS arrow lined up with Soleck’s pointer for Trincomalee. He checked his altitude, his profile, did the math on his fuel one more time, and shifted his butt in his seat. Long ride, and the fuel was too close to call all the way there.
“All planes, this is Strike Lead. See you in Trin.”
Ten sets of
Roger.
And 101 came up last. “Have a beer for me, Strike Lead. We’re punching out in a minute.”
Donitz listened to the pilot in 101 count the time down, his voice flat through the count. And then he said “Eject,” and he was gone.
The flag lieutenant, resplendent in whites and chicken guts, cut straight to the head of the morning line in the hotel lobby. “Is Admiral Pilchard in the hotel, please?” he asked. A full commander in the line glared at him, and Spinner smiled back.
You may be some shit somewhere, pal,
Spinner’s look said,
but not with me. Not right now.
“He’s in the pub, sir.” The woman behind the desk smiled. Spinner was used to that smile, but right now he had other fish to fry. Ignoring the outraged stares of the line, Spinner marched across the lobby of the Gulf Hotel and into the pub.
Pilchard was planning to play a round of golf with the new ambassador and an old buddy; he was wearing an ancient navy sweatshirt and jeans and Spinner thought he looked old and undignified. He and his buddy were laughing, the only patrons in the bar; just two ill-dressed old men drinking coffee.
Pilchard’s head came up as soon as he saw Spinner’s uniform.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.” Spinner paused for dramatic effect. This was what he liked best, center stage. “There’s been a serious accident on board the
Jefferson.”
“How serious?”
Spinner felt as if he were watching Pilchard age, as if it was some cheap horror movie. The laugh was gone; the face looked gray.
Time to retire, old-timer.
“We don’t know for sure, sir, but the first look is that a plane, possibly Indian, hit the deck of the
Jefferson.
Her flight deck is on fire and she has fires on the O-2 level and above. Captain Rogers is dead and Admiral Rafehausen is badly injured. Captain Lash of the
Fort Klock
has taken command. He’s ordered the fleet exercise canceled.” Spinner was keeping his voice very low.
“Jesus,” Pilchard’s guest murmured.
“I have to go,” Pilchard said, pulling a windbreaker from the back of his chair. “You drive?” he asked. Spinner winced.
“Yes, sir.” Kiss the afternoon goodbye.
“Get me out to HQ.” Pilchard waved to his friend and started out to the lobby, Spinner hurrying to keep pace.
Pilchard had his phone open and was dialing. He glanced up at Spinner, who pointed at the waiting car. “Shelley?” Spinner wished he could hear Captain Lurgwitz on the other end. She was Pilchard’s flag captain and she didn’t like Spinner, thus kept him out of a lot of good information. “Yeah, Spinner’s here. I got it. Was it Indian? What do they say?” There was a pause. By now, Spinner was at the wheel and Pilchard was folding his height into the cockpit of Spinner’s BMW. He nodded at something.
“How long have they been off the air?” A low buzz as Lurgwitz spoke. “You tried calling Al Craik at Mahe?”
Spinner’s stomach growled at the mere mention of Craik, who had reprimanded him for some trivial message attachment once and didn’t seem to play the game the way the other staff officers did.
Blow-hard glory hound.
Pilchard glanced over at him, and Spinner wondered what showed on his face. The admiral was still gabbing on the phone. “I’ll look at the rest when I’m in. No press till we know, right. Yeah, Shelley, I remember the
Forrestal.
If you can’t get Mahe, get me HQ Delhi or even their attaché here, okay? And get me Al Craik.”
A cell-phone tower rose from a dusty plain like a damaged tree. A poorly paved road ran by it. A motorbike came down the road, two people on it, a man and a woman, the woman riding behind.
The motorbike stopped by the cell-phone tower, and the driver dropped it in the dry grass. He looked up and down the road—people walking, four cyclists, a distant truck—and removed two blocks of C-4 from the bike’s saddle bags. The woman was already wrapping wire around two of the tower’s supports.