Alpha Strike

CHAPTER 1

Bird Dog slammed the stick to the right, rolled the F-14 Tomcat over onto its back, and craned his neck back to stare down through the canopy at the South China Sea fifteen thousand feet below. From that altitude, the whitecaps were mere fly specks on the dark blue water. A gash of silver cut east to west across the sea, the last remnants of the aircraft carrier’s wake. He hung suspended between sky and water for ten seconds, blood pounding in his head, and then rolled the Tomcat back into level flight.

Angels fifteen, CAVU (Clear Air, Visibility Unlimited) and a Tomcat strapped to my ass — life doesn’t get any better than this! If it doesn’t trip the Master Caution Light or yell at me over tactical, it’s not worth worrying about. Not as long as I’m up here.

Lieutenant Curt “Bird Dog” Robinson was long overdue for a little slice of heaven. In the last three weeks of Navy life, he’d learned that being an F-14 pilot was a lot more complicated than they’d told him it would be. It wasn’t the flying — no, not that at all. That was the only thing that was sweet about being a junior nugget in VF-95, the sharpest fighter squadron onboard USS Jefferson. It was all the other stuff. The paperwork, the endless administrative details that occupied far too much of his waking hours, and the problems that plagued his work center, the Aviation Electricians Branch.

A weary sigh came over the ICS. “You want to let me know the next time, asshole?” Lieutenant Commander Charlie “Gator” Cummings, his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) asked. “What if I’d been taking a leak? And wasn’t this briefed as a straight and level mission?”

“I was straight and level,” Bird Dog said hotly, sidestepping the issue of whether or not he should have alerted his backseater before rolling the Tomcat inverted. “What wasn’t straight and level about that?”

“Upside down?”

“So? No one told me I couldn’t. They just said straight and level. And, if you had any judgment at all, you’d have to agree that that was about the straightest, levelest inverted flight you’ve ever been privileged to experience!”

Another deep sigh was the only response from the backseater.

Automatically, Bird Dog kept up his scan, glancing down at the cockpit instrumentation every few seconds and then back up at the horizon. The line between water and empty air blurred into haze in the distance. He concentrated on the hard throb of the Tomcat’s engines, the familiar growl radiating into his body at every point that it touched his ejection seat. Now, if his backseater would just stay quiet, maybe he could escape back into that perfect union of man and aircraft where nothing mattered but airspeed and altitude.

No such luck.

A metallic flash off to his right brought him back to reality. Irritated, Bird Dog toggled the communications button. “Jeez, Spider, give me a little airspace! What’s the matter, afraid you’re going to get lost?”

“Sorry.” His wingman slid back and away from Bird Dog’s aircraft.

“Better,” Bird Dog mumbled. He tapped the throttle forward slightly, increasing his airspeed just enough to pull ahead and put Spider out of view.

“Ten minutes, Bird Dog,” Gator announced.

“I know, I know. You think I’ve been somewhere else for the last hour?”

His backseater fell silent again.

Bird Dog sighed and tried to recapture the euphoria he’d been feeling a few minutes earlier. The daily look-see presence patrol over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea was the most boring, useless waste of the powerful fighter’s capabilities that he’d ever seen, but at least he was flying instead of playing Navy. Flying he could do. It was the Navy business that went along with it that was giving him problems.

Below him, the Spratly Islands were spread over an area about the size of Montana. The cluster of sandbars, rocks, and occasional islands was a key flash point in the South China Sea and the Far East. China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines all laid claim to the area and the rich oil-bearing seabed below it. Lately, both China and Vietnam had started building “fishing camps” on the islands. The presence of tanks and guided missile emplacements in “fishing camps” indicated that both nations were expecting a little more than economic competition.

“First rock coming up,” Gator said a few minutes later.

“Okay, okay. Anything around?”

“Nothing new. I probably would have told you if there were.”

Bird Dog winced at the chilly note of reproach in his RIO’s voice. Not only was Gator a friend, he was also considerably senior to Bird Dog.

“Sorry, Gator,” he said finally. “Just in a bad mood today, I guess.”

“Happens. Best get your head out of your ass and fly this mission, though. If I tell you to move, I want to see some action up front.”

“Yeah, yeah. Like anything’s going to happen. We’ve been circling this pile of rocks for days, and nobody’s ever shown up to play with us. And it ain’t like there’s anything on those rocks that’s going to shoot at us.”

“You really think you’re immortal? ‘Cause if you do, you can let me off at the next pit stop.”

“No, I know they’ve got Stingers. But why in the hell would they shoot one at us? We’re not at war with anyone. I don’t even know what we’re doing here!”

“National security, Bird Dog. Didn’t you read the OP-ORDER? We’re supposed to keep China from making a grab for the islands.”

“Like it’s any of our business anyway. Who cares whether the Chinese or the Vietnamese or the Malaysians end up owning these islands?”

“You’ll care, if China throws everybody else out by force. No way we could let her start establishing a regional hegemony, and that’s what will happen if she gets her hands on that oil.”

Bird Dog moaned. Not only was he required to fly straight and level — no aerobatics, no fooling around — in the world’s best fighter, but he had to listen to lectures on world politics at the same time.

“One minute away from Mischief Reef, thirty seconds to Island 203,” Gator added. “T-54 tank, probably some Stingers with it.”

“Got that, Spider?” Bird Dog said over the radio circuit. One short click acknowledged the transmission.

Great. Now even his wingman wasn’t speaking to him.

Chu Hsi crawled out of the tank and stretched. He glanced around, hating the naked vulnerability of his post. Fifteen years in the Chinese army, most of those as part of a tank crew, had ingrained in him an instinctive longing for maneuverability that was the key to survival in land warfare. Trapped on this rock, barely out of the reach of the sea, his tank rusting under the constant mist of sea spray and his instincts screaming reflexive warnings about his immobility, Chu Hsi could only wonder at the thinking of his superiors.

The rock had no name, and was barely even far enough above water to be called an island. Twenty meters long and eight meters wide, its ragged peak protruded only two meters above the waves. Two weeks earlier, a transport helicopter had deposited the T-54 Russian-made tank and its two-man crew on the rock. Perched squarely in the middle of the rock, tilted and uncomfortable ten degrees off plumb level, his tank looked forlorn and abandoned.

Doctrine called for maintaining a continual alert status and radio watch, though he’d never known — nor bothered to ask — why. Mischief Reef, five miles away and barely visible through the haze and the fog, was the command post for this area of the South China Sea. Its elaborately constructed bamboo-and-corrugated-sheet-metal main camp perched on an island six times the size of Chu Hsi’s rock.

The Mischief Reef camp was three stories tall, the lowest floor almost twenty feet above the island’s surface. While the island itself might be able to boast of more surface area than Chu Hsi’s rock, most of it was awash in the sea. Even the drinking water there had a faintly salty taste. The stilts were necessary to keep the structure away from the ever-hungry ocean.

From a distance, the structure looked like it might teeter and fall into the warm South China Sea at any moment, but appearances were deceiving. Centuries of practice had given the Chinese the ability to construct deceptively strong buildings out of little more than bamboo, twine, and wire. The two-inch-diameter poles were woven together in such an intricate interlace that the resulting building could withstand almost anything short of a typhoon.

Chu Hsi held up one hand to block the sun and gazed longingly at the larger camp. Life was easier there, certainly. On his last trip to the base camp, he’d seen the catchment basins used to collect rainwater. One of the soldiers had told him that they were allowed two gallons of water every week just for bathing, a luxury Chu Hsi’s crew would have to forego for the three weeks of their tour on the rock. By the time their tour was up, the salt that collected on their skin would have started to chafe open sores around their collars. Only changing socks every three days kept their feet from disintegrating into molding, festering tissue.

A distant roar reached his ears, barely audible above the noise of the waves lapping at his rock. Chu Hsi scanned the horizon, finally locating the source.

More aircraft. Probably the Americans again, he thought. He called his gunner. The daily overflights by aircraft and the hourly radio checks with the Mischief Reef camp were the only relief from terminal boredom.

His gunner popped his head out of the tank, and then pulled himself up to join Chu Hsi on the deck.

“Back again, yes? Maybe someday we can make life more interesting for them. I have just the toy to do it with!”

“You really believe you could hit an American fighter with that device?” Chu Hsi laughed. “About as much chance as us hitting it with this tank!”

“You wait.” The gunner looked pointedly at his Stinger, and hefted it to his shoulder. The Stinger, a U.S.-built shoulder-launched infrared guided surface-to-air missile, had proved its reliability in every combat theater in the last fifteen years. It had been the primary reason for the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Chu Hsi had seen the demonstrations, and was impressed. But he wasn’t about to tell his gunner that.

“I won’t hold my breath.”

The two men watched the aircraft grow larger, impossibly fast. The light gray shapes were hard to see in the ever-present haze that clung to the surface of the warm sea, but the contrails that formed in the warm air were clear.

“F-14. I will make the report.”

“Which is so necessary,” Chu Hsi sneered. “As though our superiors on the next island can’t see and hear it just as clearly as we can.”

The gunner paused, half in and half out of the tank. “It is a requirement. You are aware of that.”

Chu Hsi waved him down, suddenly tired of baiting the gunner. Useless entertainment, since nothing ever pierced the gunner’s humorless devotion to operational requirements. The sheer boredom of sitting in a tank on a rock in the middle of the ocean would probably kill both men before anything else.

The American aircraft disappeared over the horizon. Chu Hsi took a step back toward the open hatch. The minutes until the next hourly radio report stretched interminably before him. Chu Hsi sighed.

The two Tomcats made several passes over the two rocks, descending to five thousand feet for a better look. “Nothing new, as far as I can tell,” Bird Dog said finally. “Same old rusty tank, same little fellow sitting on top. And the same old gun emplacements on Mischief Reef. Okay, enough of this shit!”

“Now that we’ve had our look-see, you ready to head for home?” Gator asked.

Bird Dog didn’t answer.

“Come on, Bird Dog, let’s just head back to the carrier, nice and easy,” Gator coaxed.

“In a minute. Let’s take a quick trip around the battle group first. Just for the hell of it,” Bird Dog said, too casually.

“Don’t do this to me again,” Gator warned. “No fly-overs on the cruiser, you hear me? They got downright hostile the last time you did that without asking them. You’re going to convince them to send a missile up our ass next time, instead of just locking us up like last time.”

Bird Dog shoved the throttle forward and felt his ass sink into the hard seat. Around him, the comforting scream of the twin engines deepened. He held his hand on the throttle for a moment, reveling in the sheer power of the vibrations there. Sweet and even, reassuring reminders that every bit of this finely tuned machine was running perfectly.

“We’re not going to do a fly-over,” he said softly. “Not this time. But somebody ought to remind them to watch out for friendlies. That damned CIWS locked me up last time. I don’t appreciate it. Not one little bit.”

The Phalanx Mark 15 20-mm CIWS — pronounced seewhiz — was the Close-In Weapons System, a ship’s last defense against a fast-moving inbound missile. Its J-band radar tracked both incoming targets and the gatling-gun stream of bullets it fired, self-correcting its aim. Theoretically, the Block I version on the Vincennes could fire 4,500 rounds each minute within two seconds of detecting an incoming object that matched its threat parameters.

“What’re you going to do, Bird Dog?” Gator asked, a sudden note of concern in his voice. “Don’t go screwing with that ship. CAG already reamed you out for the fly-over, and he’ll castrate you if he catches you dicking around out here.”

“Hang on!” Bird Dog said, and punched the throttle forward into afterburner. He nosed the aircraft down, letting gravity add speed to the power generated by the afterburners.

Bird Dog leveled out at five hundred feet, increasing his speed to.8 Mach. At 480 knots, the aircraft was traveling eight miles every minute. The cruiser was thirty-five miles away, and would have a surface radar range of approximately thirty miles against a decent target. Bird Dog hoped he’d dropped off their radar screens when he’d descended.

“Damn it, Bird Dog! You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? I swear to God, one of these days I’m punching out! I’ll let you try to explain why you got back to the ship minus your backseater!”

Bird Dog watched the ocean streak by below. One more minute.

Six miles from the cruiser, Bird Dog yanked back on the stick and stood the screaming jet on its tail. He let it claw for altitude, and felt the slight decrease in pressure against the back of the seat as his speed fell off. At six thousand feet, he leveled off and continued on toward the cruiser.

“There,” he said, satisfied. “CAG can hardly gig me for a fly-over if I’m at angels six, can he?”

“Oh, no, hardly a fly-over. You idiot! Are you trying to give that ship a hard-on for you?”

“What? Me?” Bird Dog said innocently.

“Asshole,” Gator muttered. “You know exactly what they thought, and CDC is going to be screaming in my ears any second. Disappear off everyone’s radar, come in fast and low and pop up — you know what they thought!”

“That I was a sea-skimmer missile popping up on them? Oh, surely not, Gator! Not that finely trained bunch of black shoes that tried to sic CIWS on me last week! After all, they’re watching the scopes, tracking the friendlies. They had to know it was me, didn’t they? I mean, we talked to them last week about not causing a blue-on-blue engagement. Surely they’re paying more attention this time!”

“If I had any sense, I would have punched out an hour ago and taken my chances with the sharks! Better them than CAG.”

“So touchy,” Bird Dog murmured. “You RIOs never have the right stuff. You know that, Gator?”

His backseater sighed and gave up.

Twenty miles from the carrier, something blipped into existence on the RIO’s radar screen for two sweeps. “Hold on, I got — wait, it’s gone,” Gator said.

The note of excitement in Gator’s voice cut through Bird Dog’s daydream of a perfect world where pilots flew every day and every trap was a three-wire. “Got what, Gator? What?” Bird Dog demanded.

“Nothing now,” his RIO said, frustration edging his voice. “I thought I saw a high-speed blip break out of the ocean clutter. Just for a second — it’s gone now.”

“I saw it, too,” Lieutenant Commander Joyce Flynn, Spider’s RIO, chimed in. Nicknamed Tomboy, the diminutive redheaded Naval Flight Officer had been one of the first women assigned to a combat squadron.

“What the-what do you mean, a blip?” Spider demanded.

“Just that. A couple of hits on the AWG-9, then it disappeared.”

“Sea clutter. Ain’t nothing out here high speed,” Bird Dog said. He shrugged, and felt a moment of sympathy for the two Radar Intercept Operators. If the presence patrol missions were boring for a pilot, they were doubly so for the RIO. Few radar contacts, nothing to track or shoot at, and not even the simple pleasure of flying to make up for it. Even if there had been adversary air, Bird Dog wouldn’t have been inclined to worry. He took it as an article of faith that there wasn’t an aircraft built or a missile launched that could touch a Tomcat. RIOs always worried too much.

“You’re probably right. Nothing in the LINK on it,” Gator said uneasily. The AWG-9 had its problems with look-down capability, a problem partially remedied on the later versions of the F-14 and somewhat improved on the F/A-18. “Then again, this area’d be out of range of the surface search radars off the ships. And it’s awful calm down there to be generating much sea clutter. We got time to swing back and take another look?”

Bird Dog glanced at the fuel gauge. “Nope, not unless you really need to. We stay around too much longer and Jeff’s gonna have to launch a Texaco. Then we’ll catch it when we get back.”

“No, not solid enough for that,” Gator answered. “Probably just sea clutter, like you said. Still …”

“How about we drop down a little lower while we head back to the boat?” Bird Dog asked. “You take a quick look around on the turn. Maybe it’s a fishing boat or something.”

It was, he thought, the least he could do for the RIO, who’d suffered through an occasional barrel roll or period of inverted flight to break up Bird Dog’s own boredom. Chasing down sea clutter ghosts would give them both a break from the monotony of straight and level flight.

A high-pitched whine, barely audible at the edge of his perception, caught his attention. Chu Hsi paused, halfway out of the tank. Was it barely possible that there might be another aircraft in the area? Some unexpected event to relieve the unending tedium?

He scanned the horizon, turning in a circle, looking for the source of the noise. He selfishly said nothing to the others, keeping this experience all for himself. Then he would be the one with the new experience to relate, rather than having to share it with the humorless gunner.

A hint of movement on the horizon caught his attention. Too small and too low to be an aircraft, unless it were driven by a suicidal pilot, the shape skimmed over the tops of the waves, barely clearing the water. It was impossible — no! He’d watched the American aircraft during their entire transit, and he would have seen anything leave their wings.

Four seconds had passed since the flash had caught his attention. Chu Hsi opened his mouth to yell at the rest of the tank crew.

The missile streaked in from the horizon, traveling at Mach 4, about 2400 miles an hour. The first guttural scream barely had time to start out of Chu Hsi’s throat before the missile hit his tank.

The fuel and ammunition flashed the interior of the tank into a searing hell, reducing the gunner inside to ash and cinders. A split second later, shards of shrapnel shredded Chu Hsi into barely recognizable chunks.

Fragments of tank, island, and men exploded outward and upward on the crest of an explosive fireball. Responding to the inexorable insistence of gravity, the debris eventually hung in midair for a split second, two hundred meters above the water, before beginning its descent back into the warm waters of the South China Sea.

Had he still been alive, Chu Hsi would have been pleased to see that the Spratly rock he hated so much no longer existed.

“Holy shit!” Gator screamed over the ICS. “Shit, Bird Dog, get this baby turned around! Helluva explosion back there!”

“Tell me about it!” Bird Dog said, fighting a blast of turbulence that shook the aircraft from behind. “Whatever it was, it shook the hell out of the atmosphere!”

Bird Dog thumbed the switch over to the tactical frequency reserved for aircraft to combat direction center communications. “Homeplate, Viper 205. You see that?”

“Roger, Viper 205. Say state?” the Operations Specialist, or OS, on board USS Jefferson responded. The OS had been monitoring Bird Dog’s mission continually on the radar on board the carrier.

Reflexively, Bird Dog reeled off his fuel status and then said, “What the hell was it?”

“We don’t know. Tanker airborne in ten mikes for Viper flight. TAO requests you swing back over those islands and take a look.”

Bird Dog threw the Tomcat into a tight left turn and said, “Roger, on my way. I’m gonna need gas in about thirty mikes, sooner if I have to go buster.”

“On its way now, Tomcat 205.”

What the hell was it? And where did it come from? If it’d been aimed at us, would we have seen it? Of course we would.

Lost down in the sea clutter, it can’t touch us. It’d have to gain altitude to reach a Tomcat, and we’d have plenty of time to react. Ain’t nothing can reach out and touch a Tomcat, nothing!

But if they were so damned invulnerable, why the hell was his stomach clutched in a knot and his heart beating faster than the thrum of the Tomcat? And why the hell did he have to pee so bad?

Three minutes later, Bird Dog slowed to three hundred knots, after Gator assured him that there was no hostile activity in the area. His RIO’s voice had lost all traces of his earlier good mood and was now flatly cool and professional. Bird Dog knew Gator’s face would be glued to the soft plastic hood surrounding the radar screen, his hands moving nimbly by rote over the different shaped knobs and dials that controlled the display. His own heartbeat had slowed to almost normal, and he felt the easy invulnerability he’d always felt flying.

The air caught the aircraft and buffeted it slightly as the Tomcat’s wings automatically swept forward into the low-speed configuration. The additional wing area increased lift and enabled the Tomcat to stay aloft at slower speeds.

“See anything, Bird Dog?” Gator asked. His RIO’s head would stay buried in the scope until they were certain there were no other contacts around.

“Not me. How about you, Spider?”

“Just the Mischief Reef tree house. Nothing else. That’s the problem. Five minutes ago, there was another rock out here, one with a T-54 and Stingers. Damned tough to see anything at this speed, but I know it was there.” Even at three hundred knots, the surface of the ocean flashed by too quickly for close observation.

“This is a job for a Viking or a helo,” Bird Dog agreed. “Let’s see what Mother can scare up for us. Homeplate,” he continued, switching from ICS to the tactical circuit, “Viper 205. We need a slow-mover out here. Suggest we tank, and then provide cover for supporting units.”

“Roger, understand. Wait one.” The OS monitoring the two Viper aircraft fell silent, and the hiss of static filled the circuit. A few moments later, the distinctive two-tone warble of a secure circuit being activated cut through the static.

“Viper 205, you’re cleared to tank. Vikings are airborne in fifteen mikes, along with SAR.”

“SAR? What for?”

A new voice cut in on the circuit. “Viper flight, TAO. The only thing that could have blown up out there are those rocks. Just in case anyone made it out, SAR will cover.”

Well, great. What the Tactical Action Officer really meant, Bird Dog knew, was that since no one had any idea of what had hit the rocks or where it’d come from, no one could tell him whether there was another one on the way.

So just to be on the safe side, they’re launching SAR. Just in case they have to pull my happy little ass out of the drink. Like I don’t know that, even if they won’t say it that way.

“What the hell was it? Come on, people, I need some answers!” Rear Admiral Matthew Magruder, commander of carrier group 14, stared at the tactical display in the tactical flag command center, usually called TFCC. No signs of trouble there, with every aircraft and surface ship positively identified as neutral or friendly. “And what’s that damned Aegis cruiser doing this time?”

“Don’t know, Admiral,” the TFCC watch officer said. He pulled one of his radio headset earphones away from his head so that he could hear the admiral better. “An explosion of some sort. Vincennes requested permission to go take a look. From the looks of the screen symbology, she didn’t wait for permission to change course.”

The tall admiral gazed at the screen impassively. His slate-gray eyes were set in the expression of permanent neutrality that had earned him the call sign “Tombstone” at his first F-14 squadron. The shortened version of it, “Stoney,” was an even more accurate description of his usual expression. Aviators who’d flown with him for years swore that they’d seen him smile before, but the TFCC watch team had their doubts.

“Tell Vincennes I said to get her Aegis ass back into screen position,” Tombstone ordered. “Until we know what that was, I don’t want her charging off into the unknown and leaving the carrier unprotected. I’ll be in Supp Plot.”

Supplemental Plot was the high-security intelligence module next door to TFCC. Tombstone ducked out of TFCC, into the common vestibule the two spaces shared, and was inside Supp Plot in four steps. He nodded to the enlisted Intelligence Specialist, or IS, guarding the door, and was met by the watch officer, Commander Busby.

“You crypto guys got any information on this?” Tombstone asked.

“No hard data, Admiral, but there are several possibilities,” Commander Busby said. “The Chinese might be using the island as a depot for material they don’t want to risk underneath their Mischief Reef tree house. Mix volatile compounds with bad safety practices, and you’ve got the right conditions for spontaneous combustion. Or there might have been a fire in the tank. Not a likely explanation. A diesel fire alone wouldn’t cause a fireball that big.”

“Any evidence to support either theory? That rock’s been photographed more times than Cindy Crawford. No signs of oil drums or construction of any bunkers that I’ve seen.”

“No, Admiral. That brings me to the second possibility. A missile.”

“From where? More importantly, who shot it? There was nothing in the area except Tomcat 205.”

“Submarine, maybe. Could be a land-launched sea-skimmer, too. That would explain the blip the RIOs saw. Breaking those things out on the radar picture is chancy at best. They get lost in the sea clutter. But on a nice day like this, sea state one, there’s a possibility of detecting one,” Busby said.

“Same problem as your first theory. We’ve had no contact on any submarines, and no HUMINT on any deployed in this area. And you’re talking about a hell of a long range for a sea-skimmer — couldn’t have been shot from land,” Tombstone said.

“Not according to current intelligence, no. But the range is within the capability of a U.S. Tomahawk.”

“Which they don’t have. That we know about.”

“That we know about,” the intelligence officer echoed. “But the theory fits the facts that we do have.”

“Set Condition Two,” Tombstone ordered. “Until we figure out what caused this, I want every eye peeled for hostile activity. I’ll be in TFCC if you need me.” And all the more reason to keep the Aegis in close. That blasted cruiser’s been more of a pain in the ass than any other ship in the battle group. Killington would choose this particular time to do it, too!

When you got right down to it, he decided, Captain Jake Killington, Commanding Officer of the USS Vincennes, had been a marginal pain in the ass for the entire cruise. Vincennes was often not where she was supposed to be, off doing something more interesting than protecting the carrier or pursuing some tangential interest of her CO. They’d expended more “giant tomatoes,” the inflatable targets used for surface gunnery practice, and more five-inch shells than all the other ships put together. To top it off, after the last onboard conference with Killington and his operations officer, the flag mess chief had reported that two gallons of ice cream and a silver sugar-and-creamer set were missing.

Back in TFCC, Tombstone stared at the symbols crawling across the big-screen display. Wonder if those pilots know how lucky they are? My list of things to worry about was a lot shorter when I was just a pilot. Sure, it’d been dangerous, but it was just me, my RIO, and my wingman.

The more senior Tombstone got, the more people depended on him to make the right decisions to keep them from getting killed. On top of that, he barely got a chance to fly enough to stay qualified. Flying actual combat missions was out of the question. The whole battle group, over ten thousand men and a billion dollars worth of equipment, was his responsibility now, not just a couple of aircraft or even one squadron’s worth.

Add to that worrying about new Chinese weapons systems, ones the intelligence communities might have missed … Tombstone stared at the screen. “If they do have something equivalent to the Tomahawk then we’ve got a serious problem. If the Vincennes is half as capable as she thinks she is, it might be enough — just barely. “Get me a secure line to Commander, Seventh Fleet. I have a feeling he’s not going to be too happy about this.”

It couldn’t have been more than a minute after I saw them. The guy standing outside the tank, one just getting out. One second they were there, then BOOM! It seems like they ought to have known they were going to die. That’d be only fair — some sort of premonition, or something. Bird Dog tried to concentrate on the deck of the carrier, repressing the train of thought that was making him distinctly uneasy.

After taking on more fuel from the KA-6 tanker, Bird Dog and Gator had circled overhead for two hours while slow-flying S-3B conducted a detailed search of the area where Island 203 had been located. Neither the Lockheed Viking nor the SH-60F helicopter had found anything of interest, although both reported an oil slick and small amounts of floating debris in the area. There was no trace of the two men Bird Dog had seen earlier on the rock.

The flight of Tomcats headed back to the carrier. Spider trapped first, catching the three-wire neatly. Finally, it was Bird Dog’s turn to descend from the Marshall stack and make his approach.

The controlled crash that passed for a successful landing on an aircraft carrier stimulated the highest readings of blood pressure and muscle tension of any profession ever measured. For Bird Dog, moving his hands, feet, and eyes in the intricate patterns necessary to land, coupled with the expected stress, always acted like a strong dose of caffeine. Time slowed down — except when the approach went wrong — and he found his mind racing over myriad details unrelated to the landing.

“Wave off, wave off!” the LSO yelled over the circuit. “Go around, Viper 205. Let’s give it another shot. And this time, when I say you’re high and fast, I damn well better see you bleeding off some frigging airspeed and altitude! You got that, Bird Dog?”

“Roger,” Bird Dog acknowledged, suppressing the impulse to swear at the landing signals officer. He hadn’t been high on final approach to the carrier; he hadn’t! What the hell did the LSO know? He wasn’t flying this Tomcat!

The LSO was stationed on the port side of the aircraft carrier, slightly below the level of the flight deck and in front of the meatball. It was his job to guide the landing aircraft into the perfect approach profile, supplementing the visual clues that the Fresnel lens, or meatball, provided to the approaching pilot. Too high or too low, and the pilot’s lineup with respect to the meatball would make the lighted signal appear red. In the groove, at the right altitude and range from the deck, and the meatball glowed green. The meatball provided guidance, but the LSO, an experienced aviator himself, was the final word on whether an approach was safe or not.

“Take it easy, Bird Dog,” Gator said quietly. “Little off, that’s all. You’ll snag it next time.”

“Asshole’s got it in for me,” Bird Dog muttered. “I was good for at least the four-wire, if not the three. No way I was high — no way!”

“Okay, Okay,” Gator said soothingly. “These guys are just human. They make mistakes like the rest of us.”

Gator’s well-intentioned words irritated him even more. Until this afternoon, when something had streaked undetected below him to smash the rock into gritty mud, Bird Dog hadn’t really believed he was just human. He was a Tomcat pilot, for Chrissake! Invulnerable in the air, entitled by birthright to be arrogant on the ground. Immune to the dangers of wrestling his aircraft back onto the pitching deck of the carrier, and perpetually blessed by the gods of the air.

Until now. On final approach, he’d suddenly realized how small the deck of the carrier looked, and how fast it was coming at him. His skin had prickled as it’d occurred to him what the rough nonskid on the deck could do to the skin of his aircraft, and he’d felt the tiniest quiver of — of what? Nervousness? God, could he be afraid?

Bird Dog swallowed hard and forced himself to concentrate on his instruments. He rejoined the Marshall stack, the aircraft circling on the port side of the carrier waiting for their turn to land.

Nothing was different, nothing, he insisted to himself. This was just another landing on the carrier, something he’d done at least two hundred times before.

“Piece of cake, Bird Dog,” Gator said when they finally broke out of Marshall and started their final approach. Bird Dog felt sweat bead on his forehead as he listened to the LSO and his RIO. The pitching deck rushed up at him, and he ignored the flash of unfamiliar emotion that threatened to distract him.

“Three-wire!” Gator crowed as the F-14 slammed onto the deck. “Good trap, buddy!”

Bird Dog felt the tension seep out of his body as he lifted the tailhook and released the thick steel cable. He taxied slowly toward the yellow-shirted flight deck supervisor, wondering what the hell had gotten into him up there, acting like he’d never trapped on the carrier before.

Well, whatever it was, it was gone now. And the bitch of it was, he still had to pee.