Arsenal

FIFTEEN

By the time Sikes and his cadre reached the beach, the sun was already nibbling away at the darkness that had been their primary protection. Behind them, they could hear sirens and explosions. Whether it was a new attack by the American forces, one not noted in the original plan, or simply secondary detonations of munitions lockers and stored aviation fuel, they didn’t know. And it didn’t matter, really. What was important was that the chaos on the base was providing a needed distraction while they made good their egress. Sikes glanced back at Drake and Thor. The Marine was holding up as well as he’d boasted he would, and had not even broken a sweat on the quick run-jog back to the beach. Drake now that was a different matter. She had guts, he had to admit. She was clearly exhausted, at the very edge of her endurance, yet was grimly putting one foot in front of the other as fast as she could. She had slowed down a little, but not much. Then again, sometimes “not much” was the difference between life and death.

When they reached the point where they’d stashed their wet suits, Sikes parked the two in deep cover while the SEALs quickly slipped back into their gear. Minutes later, he rejoined them, his face mask hanging down around his chin. “As I asked earlier how well do you swim?”

“Well enough,” Drake answered immediately. She looked over at Thor.

He spread his hands out in front of him, palms up. “I’m a ground pounder, but I imagine I can keep up.” Unlike before, there was a small note of uncertainty in his voice.

Sikes tried again. “Mister, play straight with me. I don’t have time for games. Can you swim or not? If you can’t, we’ll just make other arrangements.” He wondered exactly what those “other arrangements” would consist of, but put the matter off for a moment while he waited for the Marine’s response.

“I can swim. Not real well, and I’ll never win any speed records, but I can churn my way through the water and stay afloat, at least well enough to pass the water-survival flight test.”

Sikes groaned inwardly. While every pilot had to demonstrate the ability to stay afloat for thirty minutes, and to use his or her gear to provide flotation while waiting for rescue, the test was hardly a grueling one. But if that was the extent of the Marine’s water skills, so be it; it would have to be enough. He turned back to Pamela Drake.

“You’ll come with me. It’s only about a mile swim, but it will feel like longer if you’re not used to it. Especially after what you’ve been through today. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drown.”

He assessed her candidly, noting the long, smooth muscles rippling beneath her flawless skin. Yes, probably a swimmer. She had the build and the musculature for it.

“Garcia and Huerta, you stay with the major,” Sikes ordered. As hefty as the Marine was, it might take more than one man to keep him afloat if he needed help. He saw the Marine start to protest, and cut him off with a quick motion.

“My mission, my expertise. Major. You just do what you’re told. We won’t tell anybody when we get back to the boat, okay?”

There was no point in wasting any further time. Sikes turned, started down to the water with Pamela Drake in tow, and let the warm ocean slip over him.

The first cramp in his gut brought him back to full consciousness. Bird Dog woke abruptly, coughing and sputtering, trying to eject the seawater from his lungs and to take a deep, shuddering breath. His brain was demanding oxygen, but the gray unconsciousness still lurking there was more than drowned out by the agonizing cramp in his gut.

He choked, came to his senses, and leaned back into the life preserver.

It had done its job well, keeping his head out of the water, though not by much. At any rate, he hadn’t drowned after losing consciousness, and that was good enough.

Gator. Where was he? He must be somewhere near the two had punched out fractions of a second apart, although the RIO’s offset angle of trajectory away from the cockpit might have led to some separation when they hit the water.

Had Gator even survived? He tried to remember whether or not he’d seen his chute open. Yes, a chute. Had there been motion below it? If there had been, it had been indiscernible from the motion generated by swaying to and fro under the canopy. Whether or not his backseater was still alive was an open question.

The life raft where was it? Seawater on the seat pan would have activated it automatically. The theory was that the pilot would remain conscious and thus be able to swim over and grab it before it drifted out of range.

He hoisted himself up out of the water as he topped another wave and scanned the ocean around him. There was not a sign of the bright orange life raft, nor of his backseater.

They’re coming for us, though. He was certain of it. He fished out his emergency radio and tried to raise the carrier.

A voice immediately answered his transmission.

With the prospect of SAR helicopters immediately inbound his location.

Bird Dog curled up in a ball, let the life jacket support him, and tried to massage the cramp out of his gut.

Sikes heaved himself into the boat first, then reached over the gunwale, lying flat on his stomach, and grabbed Pamela Drake by the waist. He heaved back, dragging her over the rigid inflated side and onto the cold, clammy deck-On the opposite side of the boat, the other SEALs and Thor were executing the same maneuver.

They took a SEAL rest period, approximately two seconds of stopping, orienting themselves, and taking three quick, deep breams to flush carbon dioxide out of their systems. The immediate influx of oxygen generated a temporary feeling of well-being, but Sikes knew that the draining effect of the swim out from shore could not be avoided indefinitely. They needed to get moving now, back to the carrier, back to safety.

As the small boat topped a wave, he could see the carrier outlined against the rising sun to the east, just barely visible above the horizon. Fifteen miles, he decided maybe a bit more. Twenty minutes to safety, if all went well.

But so often it didn’t, not in the final stages of a mission.

The prospect of safety, the illusion of relative security, tempted SEAL teams into mistakes. Mistakes that were likely to be fatal at this point.

Garcia slipped into the stern of the boat and gunned the muffled, sound-suppressed engine. It caught the first time.

The other men settled into their accustomed spots in the boat. Drake and Thor sat on the deck, holding themselves steady by grasping the lines that ran around the gunwales.

“Let’s get going before it’s full daylight,” Sikes ordered.

The boat surged beneath his feet.

The unexpected struck when they were halfway back to the carrier. The massive floating airfield had grown from a gray, semisolid haze to the massive floating fortress that it was.

Sikes could even catch glimpses of the combatants and escorts around her, identifying them mainly by their running lights.

The seas were running smooth, with the morning winds picking up, flecking the swells with whitecaps. Sea state two or three, he decided. Uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

Ahead in the water he noticed a log. No, not a log. He turned to shout at Garcia to throttle back. Whatever it was, they didn’t need to run over it. If the impact didn’t kill them, it would most assuredly toss them all into the ocean, thus necessitating rescue by the carrier.

As the boat slowed, he faced forward again and studied the anomaly carefully. It looked like part of a dry dock that had broken loose somehow and floated out to sea, or maybe the rusted remains of an old houseboat, oroh, hell.

The rest of the submarine emerged from the sea, and figures appeared on the conning tower. He noticed them scampering quickly up, mounting stanchions and machine guns on brackets on the conning tower, and quickly bringing the focus on the SEALs’ boat. By the time he had turned to give the order to Garcia to get them the hell out of there, the submarine had them covered.

“Stoney, break off, break off!” Batman’s voice was commanding.

“What the hell?” Tombstone reached over to flip his communications switch to tactical. “Roger, copy RTB.

What the hell?” Tombstone asked.

“Not RTB, but you’ve got a new primary mission. That SEAL team I sent in a couple hours ago they’ve run into some problems on their way back to the carrier. I need you to get in there and cover them. Stoney, there’s no one else close around it’s got to be you. We’ll vector you back to the primary mission when you’re done with them.”

“A SEAL team? But what good will” “It’s a guns mission. They were headed back to the carrier when the Cuban Foxtrot surfaced and held them off at gunpoint. Now there’s two small Cuban boats inbound on them, and it looks like the Cubans are planning on taking them hostage.

The SAR helo’s still somewhere off chasing down Bird Dog, and I don’t have anything else in the area.

Here, I’ll have the TAO give the coordinates to your RIO.”

Tombstone wanted to scream. It seemed that everything in the world was working to prevent him from accomplishing his primary purpose for being there. But still, he’d left Batman in command of the carrier battle group, and implicitly placed himself under Batman’s command by undertaking to fly this mission. And if the battle group commander thought there was a more valuable use to be made of his aircraft, then it was up to Stoney to toe the line.

He sighed, then swung the Tomcat around in a hard, tight 160-degree turn as Tomboy fed him new fly-to points.

It took only three minutes to cover the distance between him and the SEAL boat. At once, in his first overflight, he saw the nature of the problem.

The SEAL boat was bobbing uneasily in the stiffening wind, held at gunpoint by the submarine-mounted machine guns to the west. Two small boats were approaching from the east. Cuban patrol boats, no doubt unreasonably pissed off after the destruction of their communications, command, and control vessel earlier that day. If the Cubans got ahold of the SEALs, Tombstone wouldn’t give a plug nickel for their chances of survival.

He stayed high on the first pass, five thousand feet, staring down to assess the scene before making his decision.

Batman had been right this was a guns-only mission.

Good thing he probably wouldn’t need them for the rest of it.

He swung the Tomcat around and dove for the deck, picking up speed as he descended. He stayed to the west of all participants, hoping to avoid silhouetting himself against the rising sun. He stopped his descent barely one hundred feet above the churning ocean, made a small course correction, and arrowed in toward the submarine.

Four hundred feet away from the Foxtrot, he fired his first short burst, made another small course correction, then walked the guns in toward the submarine. There were men running around the fo’c’sle frantically, trying to clear the conning tower and decks in response to his gunfire. However, a Tomcat traveling at three hundred knots covers a lot of ground quickly. The first of them had barely started down the ladder into the interior of the submarine when the rounds stitched their way down the submarine’s hull. He saw two men crumple and fall to the deck and another one topple off the narrow flat surface into the sea.

With the decks cleared, the SEAL boat immediately kicked it in the ass and took off for the carrier. Tombstone watched them go, made sure that the submarine crew stayed out of sight long enough for them to escape, then turned his attention back to the approaching small boats.

The SEALs could probably outrun them, but there was no point in taking chances. Two low-altitude passes, four sharp sparks of gunfire, and the small boats were out of action.

“Mission complete,” Tombstone radioed back to the carrier. “Now, may I please get back to my original mission?”

“Permission granted,” Batman said crisply. “And when you get back to the boat, I think you’re going to find there are a couple of SEALs on board who want to buy you a beer.”

Her face slammed into the side of the boat as an unexpectedly rough portion of chop caught the small rubber craft sideways. She yelped, then quickly stifled herself.

Huerta had taught her the value of silence. She wondered if she’d ever be able to scream again without experiencing an anticipatory dread of that steel-banded hand closing over her mouth.

No, her time with the SEALs on this mission had been singularly unrewarding. They’d done nothing but abuse her, gag her, try to run her into the ground and drown her, and now, batter her against the side of a small boat that had no business skimming across waters as quickly as it was. She felt anger well up and something else.

For a moment, Pamela paused, her hand gingerly resting on her aching cheekbone, her body a mass of lactic acid laden muscles and bruises, and thought. What was it that she actually felt about this? Hate for SEALs? Yes, that certainly but something more. Underlying it all was a grudging respect, the beginnings of an understanding as to why these men were the way they were, and what their purpose in the world was.

She didn’t like their tactics to be honest, she didn’t like their tactics when they were applied to her but after watching them in action, she was beginning to understand the necessity for them.

She glanced across the boat at Thor. He was large enough to brace himself midships, his ribs resting on one side of the craft, his feet planted snugly against the opposite side for security. The pilot he would have been dead by now, had it not been for the SEALs.

And would she herself have survived? She tried to believe that her Cuban captors/friends would have freed her from her cell, would have warned her of the incoming attack.

Tried, and failed. In the three days she had been in their country, they had shown no more concern for her safety or well-being than a spider does for a struggling fly caught in its web. They’d used her, steered her toward sights and sounds they wanted broadcast to the world, tried to subvert her from her true purpose of getting the facts out.

And she’d let herself be used, she admitted. She had thought she’d be able to play the delicate cat-and-mouse game with them, pretending to do what they wanted while managing to sneak such shots to her audience as her cunning and wile would allow. In the end, they’d come out almost even, she suspected.

She suddenly realized with a chill that if she’d stayed at the compound she would have been dead by now. The SEALs had saved her life, and more than that, earned her grudging respect.

Not that that meant they’d be getting favorable coverage for this little episode. Oh, no, far from it. But she’d find a way to bring some balance to the picture, to show the necessity for such men in a world like today’s, and to explore the political considerations and checks and balances that held their deadly power in leash.

She turned to Sikes suddenly. “The dog did you kill it?”

He gazed back at her, eyes a dark steel blue, face carved out of granite. There was no way that she could make him answer, none at all.

But something must have shown in her face. Finally, he nodded his head frantically. “Didn’t like to do it, but there was no other way.”

She settled back against the rigid gunwale and thought about it. Why should she judge them harshly for killing a dog, when Cuba had made few bones about murdering thousands and thousands of its countrymen?

Should Americans be held to a higher standard of honor than foreign nations? And if so, how does one fight rogue nations like Cuba, those barely civilized hordes of hotheaded fascists now in possession of some of the world’s latest technology?

Fire with fire, she decided. That’s what it would have to be. But some part of her mourned the death of that dog.

The Cubans hunkered down in the command bunker twenty feet below ground had escaped the bombardment with minimal damage. Plaster had crumbled off the walls as a result of the vibrations bombarding the center, and a few chunks of ceiling had detached themselves from the steel beams overhead and shattered on the concrete floor below, but everything was still operable.

Santana wished he could say as much for the launchers above. How had the Americans managed to locate the underground launch tubes? A satellite, he supposed, or perhaps one of those damnable reconnaissance flights. No matter he glanced at the weapons status indicator panel again, and was relieved to see it was unchanged.

The rows and columns of idiot lights looked like Christmas. At least half of them were glowing steady red, indicating that their components were beyond reinitialization or repair. Another half was blinking red, clamoring for operator attention to either reset critical parameters or simply clear something obstructing a launch hatch. Finally, on the far right-hand side of the board, three columns of lights glowed bright, steady, reassuring green. At least three missiles were still operational, if the damage indicators could be trusted. Three chances to strike, either at the mainland, or at the battle group poised to strike from the south.

The mainland, he decided finally. That had been their intent all along, and the first hint of attack against their landmass would no doubt send the Americans sputtering and sniveling to the United States.

That alone would tie up their forces for days, while Cuba negotiated a massive aid package in exchange for an apology from the United States for their uninvited incursion into a foreign nation. The fact that Cuba had retaliated all out of proportion to the alleged violation would be ignored, as it always was. In terms of politics, the Americans were the perennial patsies.

The crew in the command center was still alert and coherent, although some of them appeared shaken by the man-made earthquakes they’d experienced in the last five minutes. He thought he could count on them he would have to count on them, at least until relief crews could be brought in, the rearming process could be started, and his country could begin working back toward full military power.

In the meantime, only one thing mattered getting off that one shot at the U.S. mainland that would show them just how capable Cuba was, and how serious it was about its sovereignty.

He gathered the technicians around him, soothed them with words about their courage and the greatness of the act they were undertaking, and sent them back to their stations recharged and energized. As their missiles would be shortly.

Tombstone, get the hell out of the area,” Batman snarled over tactical.

“No argument, just do it. Now!” Puzzled, Tombstone flipped the Tomcat into a tight turn, slinging it around like David lining up against Goliath. It was an article of faith among aviators that when the air traffic controller insisted on immediate obedience, you obeyed first, questioned later. That the man directing his tactical disposition was another admiral made little difference to Tombstone.

Surely Batman had good reasons for it, although it frustrated the hell out of him to be taken off his mission once again.

What was it about this island? Would he ever get a damned look at the BDA?

“Roger, coming right to one-eight-zero now, angels ten and ascending.”

Tombstone waited for a moment, then asked, “What now?”

“The UAVs,” Batman said. “I need you well away from the ground site.”

“Why not send me in?” Tombstone asked. “I’ve got five-hundred-pound bombs on the wings, and I think I still remember the basics of strike warfare. We can be in and out before” “No time,” Batman said.

‘Tombstone, the Cubans are getting ready to launch. I don’t want you anywhere near that area when the first missile heads out toward the United States. Your electronic emissions, the fire control radars that are lit off buddy, get your ass out of there. Buster. I’m going in with everything I’ve got in one last try to blast those burrowing moles out of the ground. I don’t want you anywhere near the fireball.”

Tombstone switched his microphone back to the ICS.

“You listening?” he asked Tomboy.

“I am. And there’s something missing from this equation,” she said thoughtfully. “Surely the UAVs don’t carry tactical nuclear warheads?”

“I don’t think so,” Tombstone said, although suddenly he wasn’t nearly as certain as he’d have liked to be. “Deploying tactical nuclear weapons in my theater of operations even that would be going too far.

Sure, they might put UAVs on the Arsenal ship without my knowledge, but to get us involved in a nuclear conflict no, I don’t think so. It was bad enough that they tried to micromanage the targeting, but surely they wouldn’t” “What if the Cubans have them, and the U.S. knows it?”

Tomboy persisted. “And Batman’s so worried about us being close init’s not the blast, it’s the EMP he’s worried about. What else could it be?”

EMP-electromagnetic pulse was the first and most devastating effect of a nuclear explosion. The deadly forces unleashed by the weapon disturbed the electromagnetic field of the earth, shorting out sensitive microelectronics and transistors for miles around. Cars would stop, computers would fail, and the delicate instrumentation of the fly-by-wire Tomcat would immediately cease to function.

He’d be left with only manual hydraulics, if that. And no electronics whatsoever. That meant he couldn’t fire missile shell, he’d be lucky if the EMP didn’t trip something in the fire control circuitry and inadvertently ignite something while they were on the wings.

“Nukes. My God. And if they miss, or don’t fire?” He let his voice trail off.

“Then we’re in the middle of the biggest political cluster-fuck in twenty years,” Tomboy finished. “Tombstone, that command center it’s gotta be destroyed. And we can’t trust a UAV that’s never been tested in combat to do it.”

His RIO his wife was making eminently good sense.

There was no longer any question in his mind about BDA.

What he needed now was complete and total destruction of the command center before it could launch weapons possibly nuclear weapon sat the continental U.S. Furthermore, he needed to make that happen before the United States was tempted to use its mobile nuclear arsenal, now circling, he suspected, in the skies over Cuba.

“You’re right,” he said softly. He paused for a moment, then asked, “Are you up for this? You know it’s dangerous.”

Tomboy’s voice was calm and level. “You know I’m in.

We’re all in this together. Tombstone. This was our role in life before we met each other, and right now it’s more important than anything I’ve ever done. Except maybe no, let’s go on,” she concluded firmly.

Something in her tone of voice bothered him, but he let it pass, pressed as he was by the need for an immediate decision on the mission.

As pilot in command, he had the ultimate say-so in where the Tomcat went and how she executed her mission. And in this case, that would include disobeying orders from the rightful battle group commander. He flipped the switch back over to the tactical circuit. “Batman, you’re coming in weak and broken. I can’t read you at all.” He felt oddly amused at that old, hoary trick that pilots and aviators used everywhere for avoiding complying with directions from the ground they didn’t like.

Batman knew the ploy, too. “Damn it, Stoney, don’t you pull this crap,” he roared, his rage clearly evident over the crystal-clear circuit. “You’re not having radio problems.

Don’t you even” “Switching to secondary,” Tombstone announced calmly.

“Home Plate, this is Tomcat Two-zero-two, switching to secondary.

Primary circuit is weak and broken, possibly from some form of, uh.

.

sunspot interference. Yes, sunspots. I do believe that’s it.”

Tombstone switched the radio off.

“What will he do?” Tomboy asked softly. “I know he doesn’t believe you.”

“You’re almost right he doesn’t believe me about the radio, but he does believe I’m going to ignore his orders. It’s up to him now. Give me a vector back to the command post.”

Tomboy spieled off a series of numbers, directions, and speeds, and Tombstone jerked the Tomcat around in a tight turn. He finished off with a barrel roll just for the hell of it, not bothering to let Tomboy know about it beforehand. Her yelp from the backseat registered her protest.

“Ten minutes,” Tomboy said, her voice still a few notes higher than normal. Among other things that he’d have to pay for the barrel roll would be among them.

“See if you can find that UAV for me,” Tombstone said.

“It’s probably over water, though I gather it’s inside the twelve-mile territorial limits. If it weren’t. Batman wouldn’t be as worried as he is about us bustering out of here we’d have a little bit more time.”

“No sign of it,” Tomboy said promptly. “I’ve been scanning for it in tracking mode ever since Batman mentioned it. Those little bastards are hard as hell to find, Stoney. I wouldn’t count on our gaining contact.”

Unless we’re both inbound on the same target area and our separation decreases dramatically, he added silently.

That may be the first time we’ll get contact on it as we’re both launching at the target. And if that little bastard is nuclear. God help me. And Tomboy. Again, something in her comments over the last few minutes, coupled with an odd sense of resignation in her voice, nagged to be understood. He let his thoughts linger on it for a moment, on how he’d met her on board Jefferson during a cruise, how they’d gradually come to know and respect each other, first as aviators and then as lovers. And on the impact she had made on his life, in marked contrast to that of Miss Pamela Drake. What had he ever done to deserve such a wonderful woman? A superb, giving lover, tender and supportive spouse, and dynamite bulldog tactical officer in the air if he’d made up his own wish list of what he wanted in a wife, he would have sold Tomboy far short.

But her voice … he pushed the thought aside, and concentrated on the land coming into view ahead. By now, the sun was nearly half visible over the horizon, and streaks of rose and orange striped almost the entire sky. Night was no longer a protecting cloak.

As the minutes passed. Tombstone could feel the tension mount in the cockpit. It was a familiar sensation, but still fraught with all the fear and anxiety that going into combat always brought. He and Tomboy had been here before, done this time after time together, both over the Spratlys and the Aleutian Islands. Why should this occasion be any different? It wasn’t, he suspected; it was just the fact of their marriage that made it seem odd.

An odd silence hung in the cockpit as well, unalleviated by any tactical chatter from the secured radio or communication with other pilots. According to the radar, the furball to the southeast was still in frantic action, American pilots chasing the nimble MiGs across the sky, periodic flashes of increased radar detection indicating that another airplane had exploded into a massively reflexive ball.

American or Cuban there was no way to tell until the flash settled down and Tomboy could verify whether Or not the surviving blip showed IFF transmission.

As far as he could tell, it looked like the Americans were winning. An EMP would change that, knocking both the American and Cuban aircraft out of the sky more effectively than the smartest air-to-air weapon in either inventory.

“Tombstone. I think I’ve got it.” Tomboy’s voice sounded forced, but calm. “Look out at zero-nine-zero; see if you can see anything. It’s an intermittent blip on radar. Could be the UAV.”

Tombstone turned his head right and stared into the rising sun. Just occulting in front of it was a small, dark blip, barely more visible than a pinprick. The UAV he was almost sure of it. It was all the wrong shape, had all the wrong movements for a fighter aircraft. “I’ve got it. Yes, I think that’s it.”

“Good. I hold it inbound toward the same target area.

Speed Mach one-point-two, altitude five thousand feet.”

Tombstone nodded. That matched his visual identification. “So Batman’s going in with it.”

“Maybe. Remember, he’s still holding us on radar as well.

Did you secure the IFF?”

“No. So he’s at least got that to break our radar blip out of the pack. He knows where we are, and he knows his newest play toy is headed dead for us. This is one decision I can’t make for him.”

“Feet dry,” Tomboy announced, refocusing him on the mission. Tombstone nosed the Tomcat down, heading for the deck. He’d make his initial run at five hundred feet, see what intelligence he could gain from his first pass. Then, time permitting and depending on what Batman did with the UAV, he’d vector back in on a bombing run.

The command post was reportedly located under twenty feet of dirt, but the five-hundred-pounders at least had a chance of damaging it. Maybe fatally. It was better than losing all the aircraft currently airborne to EMP if the UAV held the warhead he suspected it did.

“Two minutes,” Tomboy said. She suggested a tiny course correction, which Tombstone promptly adopted.

Again, the odd silence descended on the cockpit. With nothing else to do except watch for antiaircraft fire and wonder if some prehistoric idiot armed with a Stinger would be sitting on a hill waiting for them.

Tombstone found odd pictures flashing into his mind. Tomboy, the first time he’d seen her, climbing into an aircraft. Her face at their wedding, brilliantly radiant. And later. Tomboy in bed, the small, voluptuous frame responding to his every touch, her passion rising to meet and, exceed his. He shook his head, let his mind linger one last time on the lush curves and smooth swells of her body, and then”Tomboy?

You’re not pregnant, are you?” There was horror in the voice, as much as he hated to have it there. If she were, and she hadn’t told him, then flying this mission was perhaps the most foolhardy thing she had ever done in her life. Her condition would require an evaluation by a flight surgeon before she could remain in flight status.

“No, you idiot, of course I’m not pregnant. What in the world gave you that idea?” Tomboy’s voice was lightly amused. “Jesus, Tombstone get your head in the game.”

“Okay, I just wanted to never mind.” Now was not the time; then again, there might never be a decent time to discuss it, not after the blunder he’d just made with his new bride. “Where did you say that UAV was?”

“There.” Tomboy inserted a special target designator in his heads-up display. “Our only chance to keep Batman from using the UAV is to go after the target ourselves. You know that, I know that. Let’s get moving.” Her crisp tone of voice brooked no argument.

Tombstone corrected his course and bore in on the Cuban naval base.

“Trouble,” Tomboy announced calmly. “Stoney, I’m getting targeting indications from the carrier. I think they’re talking to our little unmanned friend over there. Now if I see there it goes. It’s changing course, Stoney, climbing, getting some altitude.”

“How far behind us is it?” he asked.

‘Ten miles now.”

He shook his head. Not enough time. Air distance, in this case, though in the arcane geometry of the sky, time, and distance seemed to merge into a single lethal pucker factor.

How much fuel did the UAV have left on board? Would it be able to accelerate to a max cruising speed of Mach 3, or would it have to choose a more fuel-efficient speed?

That depended on how long it had already been in the air, and whether he’d be required to make any other moves to avoid detection. Two other factors he didn’t know.

Damn it. Batman, you could have told me. It might have given me an edge might even have talked me out of this last-ditch effort. As it stands now, I have no choice about it.

If I can stop you from making a possible nuclear strike on Cuba, I have to. The EMP-we’ll kill more of our own pilots than the Cubans can.

“You know, there’s one other possibility,” his backseater said. “This UAV may not even be under Batman’s control.

Remember the arguments on installing that remote targeting and firing option on the Arsenal ship? Sure, they would have needed some cooperation from Arsenal to launch UAV, but what if all targeting and deployment control is directly under JCS now? Arsenal may have some relay communications gear or some other way to override, but I doubt it. That’s what the politicos would have wanted direct control over the missiles once they’re launched. That turns the whole carrier battle group into just a remote control weapons launch platform, doesn’t it? Next thing you know, they’ll be able to fly an F-14 off the deck with the pilot sitting in it like a monkey. I don’t like this one little bit.”

Tombstone considered the matter. “It’s possible, I suppose.” Even as he admitted it. Tomboy’s explanation seemed more and more probable.

“If Batman’s not controlling it, you can bet he’ll be on the circuit telling JCS we’re inbound on the target. Might make them abort the launch.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Tomboy answered. “The hard way.”

The water was almost blood temperature. It soothed his strained muscles like a hot tub, coaxing the pain and soreness out of his back and legs. Bird Dog gradually relaxed into the flotation device, letting it carry his weight.

It was over now for him at least for this battle.

And maybe permanently for Gator. Every time Bird Dog crested a wave, he scanned the sea around him, looking for the distinctive orange color that would pinpoint his backseater’s location.

There was no trace of him.

He felt his mind starting to drift, lulled into an odd state of relaxation by the warm water and the release of tension following his violent ejection from the aircraft. It felt so odd, to float so peacefully on the water while to the east the rest of the squadron still battled off the Cuban aggressors.

He could hear his blood pounding in his ears, a gentle rhythmic whop-whop that he jerked violently upright in the water, shifting his gaze from the sea to the air. That was no heartbeat he recognized the sound all too well, although he’d never heard it from exactly this angle.

An odd, ungainly insect was hovering mere inches above the water-at least at first glance that’s what it looked like.

As he refocused himself out of the temporary euphoria that always followed unexpected survival, the shape resolved itself into the ungainly figure of the SAR helicopter.

He felt a wild surge of hope, a reorientation toward reality. From that altitude, he’d have an excellent view of miles and miles of surrounding ocean. They’d be able to spot Gator immediately.

At least, one part of his mind said, they would if his backseater’s seat span had deployed properly. And if Gator hadn’t impacted the canopy on the way out of the aircraft.

And if Bird Dog shoved away the myriad possibilities of what could have gone wrong with Gator’s egress from the aircraft. It didn’t pay to think about it not now, not with the helicopter inbound. He hoped if they saw Gator, they’d vector over and pull his backseater out of the water first. He watched for any jink in the aircraft’s course, hoping it would veer away to pursue some other target. But no, it bore steadily in on him.

Five minutes later, the rescue swimmer plunged into the ocean beside him. The water was spread out flat around Bird Dog, evidence of the powerful downdraft from the helicopter’s blades. As he horse-collared up into the helicopter, Bird Dog was already shouting questions to the pilot. He fumbled with the catches, flung the rescue device away from him, and stumbled to the edge of the open hatch. A crew member grabbed him, slapped a safety line on him.

“You’re not going back into the water. Not after I just hauled you out of it.”

“Leave me alone.” Bird Dog scanned the water frantically, then darted to the other side of the cabin and peered out the small window. Miles of ocean stretched out before him. Blue, solidly blue except for tiny scraps of white topping the waves.

There was no sign of Gator.