Choosers of the Slain

22

They committed to the intercept. The Duke held her course to the southeast as the Argentine spy satellite arced overhead. The moment it dropped below the horizon, however, she came about to the north, closing the range with her potential foes with every beat of her racing propellers.

Both of her helos scrambled, each lifting into the sky on its assigned mission. Retainer Zero Two, with the radome of a Clear Water Airborne Early Warning pod bulging beneath one snub wing, took up its point station twenty miles ahead of the destroyer's bow, matching her course and speed. From here, serving as a mini-AWACS aircraft, her radar coverage would provide the sole link between the Cunningham and Retainer Zero One as the latter ranged ahead along their enemy's potential line of attack.

The Cunningham's first team was fully closed up in the Combat Information Center. Amanda slouched in her command chair and used the sidearm keypad to flip the Large Screen Display from augmented computer simulacra to live radar and back again. The image being received from the hovering helicopter lacked the range and definition of the ship's big SPY-2 A arrays. They were just barely pulling in, the ghostly outline of the coast of Isla Grande and Cape Horn.

Dix Beltrain rested his hand on the back of her chair and quietly asked, "Captain, may I speak with you privately for a moment?"

Her normally amiable tactical operations officer had been quiet and indrawn ever since the Argentine attack. Amanda had sensed the crisis building and she'd been preparing for it.

"Sure, Dix," she replied, sliding out of her chair. She led Beltrain to the quiet rear corner of the compartment next to the ubiquitous Navy-issue coffee urn.

The younger officer was holding himself almost at parade rest as he began to speak in a low voice. "Captain, I need to confer with you about something that happened! during the Argentine air strike."

"Presumably the total hash you made of our ESSM area defense during the engagement?"

"That's it, ma'am. I bitched it! I bitched it really bad. I saw that those Exocets were crossing into the point defense zone. The warning flags had come up on my tactical screen. I knew that they were passing out of a successful engagement envelope and I still tried to set up a shot instead of shifting fire to the Rafale flights. I… I have no excuses or explanations, Captain."

"You don't, Lieutenant?" Amanda replied mildly. "I do. It's a phenomenon my dad would have called 'buck fever,' probably mixed with a little whiff of raw terror."

"Not just a whiff, ma'am. I was scared shi— I was scared so badly that I made a critical error and I endangered the ship. I believe it's my duty to point this out to you, and to give you the option of pulling me out of the command loop."

"Dix, a short time ago, some very capable people were trying very hard to kill us. They came very close to succeeding. The individual who wasn't scared under those circumstances would be the one I'd be inclined to pull out of the loop, primarily because it would be plain that they'd become detached from reality."

Beltrain shook his head emphatically. "That isn't the point. I locked up so bad that I fumbled it. I should have been engaging those other bomber elements. I could have broken up the strike before they got within kill range. Instead, all I could see were those damn missiles coming in on us. I screwed up, ma'am!"

Amanda shrugged. "I won't argue the point, Mr. Beltrain. You most definitely screwed up. Realistically, though, wouldn't that same potential have existed for anyone I might have put on the main console?

"Someday, when you and he both have a little spare time, ask Chief Thomson about his experiences during Desert Storm. He was aboard the old Sacramento at the time, and he will vividly describe to you what it was like tending a fire room in the Red Sea in one-hundred-and-twenty-degree weather for six straight months. He's the closest thing to a combat veteran we have aboard this ship.

"Come to think of it, I believe this was the first instance of a United States naval vessel coming under air attack since the Persian Gulf tanker war. So, if I pulled you off the main console, I'd be bouncing the most experienced missileer currently serving in the United States Navy. That would be a rather stupid thing to do, in my opinion."

Beltrain ran his hand through his perspiration-damp hair. "That doesn't cover for the fact that I still committed a major error, ma'am."

"Join the club. I imagine that when we conduct a post-action analysis on this furball, we're going to discover that a lot of people made errors. I'm willing to concede that I made mine. The thing is, we survived and we learned. We're blooded now. We won't make so many mistakes next time.

"Don't get me wrong, Dix. I'm not tossing off what happened today. I just believe that you're still the best man available for the job. Now, push all of the guilt-trip cow hockey aside and give me a straight answer. If I leave you on the main console, will this happen again?"

He took a deep, deliberate breath. "No, ma'am. It will not."

"Okay, then." Amanda grinned and made a quick cross-shaped gesture in the air. "I grant you absolution. Go forth and sin no more, my son. Now get back to work."

"Aye, aye, Captain." Beltrain grinned back, the weight on his shoulders starting to lift.

From up forward, the Aegis systems operator called out sharply, "Distant contact! Slow mover turning south-southwest off Isla Grande beacon. Range two hundred and twenty miles, altitude eighteen thousand feet, bearing zero degrees relative off the bow. Multiple contacts!"

Three fast steps took Amanda and her TACCO back to their workstations. A single fast look fixed the location of the air-target symbol drifting out of the Isla Grande ground clutter. There was no precise position hack for Retainer Zero One being displayed. The Sea Comanche was running fully stealthed and radio and radar silenced, invisible even to the Cunningham's advanced sensors. There was only an outlined block of space, indicating its estimated position, dead-on between the Duke and the advancing Argentine strike. A phantom guardian waiting for its enemies to cross its path.

"Bring up your LORAIN flights, Mr. Beltrain." All trace of humor and warmth had left Amanda's voice. "Fight's on."

One hundred and fifty miles off the Cunningham's bow and a meager fifty off the Argentine coast. Retainer Zero One circled just above the wave tops, her low-visibility paint merging into the color of the sea.

Arkady used the trackball on the end of his collective-control stick to call up the fuel-status chart on his engineering telepanel.

"Okay, Gus, fuel transfer complete. Internal cells to one hundred per. Stand by to get rid of the tanks."

"Rog."

Vince slid the cursor across the monitor face to the actions menu and into the "Exterior Tank Jettison" detente and squeezed the actuator trigger. He was rewarded with the clank of releasing shackles. The drop tanks scarcely caused a splash as they hit the water.

"Green indicators. Verify me."

In the air cockpit, the AC 1 twisted in his harness to port and starboard, peering aft and down at the helo's snub wings. "Tanks are clear, sir. Can't see any system leakage."

"Okeydoke. How's the downlink look?"

"Pickup is nominal and a clear board, and I hope it stays that way."

"Show a little spunk there, fellow. Here we are, a couple of Uncle Sam's fighting bluejackets, out 'mid wind and wave, volunteering to do some of that hero shit for Mom, apple pie, and the girl next door."

"Volunteer! I didn't volunteer for nothing!"

"You were busy. I did it for you."

"Fuck you very much, sir."

"What was that, sailor?"

"I said, 'Thank you very much, sir!'"

"You're welcome, Gus."

Grestovitch went back to brooding over his systems displays. He liked Lieutenant Arkady and enjoyed flying as his SO more than with any other pilot he'd ever been teamed with. The Lieutenant was a mustang; he'd started out as an enlisted man himself. He'd laugh and talk with you like you were both real human beings, and as long as you did your job, he wouldn't get in your face over the small shit.

The downside was that you could find yourself doing foaming-at-the-mouth crazy stuff like this.

For a moment, the AC considered the possibility that Arkady might be studding off for the benefit of their new lady captain, then he rejected the notion. If the Skipper had been fifty years old, male, and as ugly as a bucket full of assholes, they'd still probably be out here.

LAMPS systems operators didn't get the chance to train in air-search mode as often as they did for other missions. So it took Grestovitch several seconds to recognize what was taking place on his screens.

"Airborne contact! Just coming off the coast. Bearing one eight seven true. Altitude one eight triple oh. Range forty-eight miles."

"Speed, Gus?"

"Uh, one hundred eighty knots."

"Relative bearing?"

"Oh two five, relative bearing off the nose. Second target just coming on-screen, closing with the first."

"Okay! That's our boy! Tallyho!"

Arkady slewed Retainer Zero One around onto a course that would intersect with that of the Argentine strike.

Captain Alfredo Cristobal applied the last-minute burst of thrust that socked his Tornado's refueling probe into the drogue basket of the Hercules. The control lights on the tanker's wingtip shifted pattern to indicate "Solid Connection" and "Transfer On." A flick of his eyes downward to the fuel-transfer panel verified that jet propellant was cascading into the fighter-bomber's cells.

Another glance took in the threat boards, currently showing that the sky around them was clear except for a distant trace of American search radar. It was safe to back his concentration down a level. Cristobal relaxed into the padding of his ejector seat.

Obviously the problem with the first strike had been the involvement of the Air Force. This was a job best dealt with by the Aeronaval alone. He would personally command this operation to ensure its success. At the same time, he would take the opportunity to heal his own wounded pride.

Cristobal came from a culture that still primarily believed that women were to be protected, cherished, but above all else, dominated. This female Norteno captain had almost knocked him out of the sky during the harassment flight he had flown against her. She had humiliated him in front of his squadron and the entire fleet, and that brand had burned deep.

Amanda Garrett had come to both enrage and fascinate him. He had pulled the dossier that the intelligence section had assembled on her and had spent hours studying it. The photographs told him more than the text. One of them was currently taped into an odd corner of his cockpit control panel. A red-haired woman in naval uniform peered out from it, sternly beautiful, coolly sensuous, totally self-confident.

Alfredo Cristobal wanted to shatter that self-confidence more than he desired anything else on earth.

This time, they would send their Exocets blazing in behind a wave of Matra STAR antiradar missiles. It would be more than enough to suppress the Americans' point defenses and assure at least one hit.

For a moment he considered whether he should have incorporated another element of aircraft into the strike, one armed with iron bombs to finish the job the missiles might start. Too late now. Besides, all four of his Tornadoes were carrying a full load of armor-piercing incendiary ammunition for their 27mm Mauser autocannon. More than enough to give anything left afloat a good beating.

There might be survivors. That would be interesting.

With Cristobal's rage and fascination had come an unbidden fantasy. One in which he took this Garrett woman as his own personal captive, as the conquistadors of old would have done. He had visualized taming her as one; would a fiery mare, stripping her of her air of authority and self-control, heating that cool sensuality into hot passion.

He shook his head regretfully. This modern day and age, no longer permitted such things. He would have to be content with merely killing her.

"Raven's Roost is confirming the emission patterns of Tornado-type aircraft," Beltrain commented from his console. "Arkady called it right. They're coming right down the turnpike."

"Um-hmm," Amanda replied absently as she studied the Alpha display. The Argentine target hack was just crawling, across the line into the estimated intercept zone. A few miles more and they would pass into the range of the Duke's long-range SAMs. She would wait, though. She had' promised Arkady the first shot.

Amanda sank back into her chair and lightly bit her lower lip in thought. In her experience, there were two kinds of individuals capable of volunteering for a mission like this.

One was the kind who believed in their own invincibility, that death only happened to the other guy.

The other was the kind who were quite aware of their own mortality but who were still willing to surrender it to the cause that they served. Amanda found herself hoping that she would have the time and the chance to learn which defined Vince Arkady.

Grestovitch' s fingers were sweat-sticky inside his Nomex flight glove as he called up the latest batch of intercept data.

"Target speed over ground still one eight zero. Altitude still eighteen thousand. Range six miles. Rate of closure sixty knots."

"We still in the groove, Gus?"

"Rog. Target bearing zero degrees relative off our tail. They'll be overflying us in about four minutes."

Arkady reflected that beyond this being the first helo-versus-jet intercept he had ever heard of, it was probably also the first ass-backward one where the bogey overtook the interceptor.

"We still being painted?"

"Negative, Lieutenant. They went active again on their radar a second ago, but all that we're getting is sidelobe."

"Okay, that means we're under their search cone. Time to take her up, ol' buddy."

Arkady squeezed the throttle trigger on the pitch lever and the twin LHTEC T800 gas turbines howled in reply. Rolling back on the collective, he lifted the little helo into a maximum power climb.

This pop-up maneuver was critical. The twin Sidewinder X missiles the Sea Comanche carried under its snub wings were state-of-the-art weapons, but they had a range of only twelve miles, a range that would be greatly reduced if they had to climb after their targets. Retainer Zero One would have to do some of that climbing for them if they were to make a kill.

"There they are, Lieutenant."

Arkady tilted his head back and looked up through the cockpit's overhead Plexiglas panel. The Argentine tanker formation was passing almost directly overhead. Eighteen thousand feet was normally low for contrail effects, but in the chill polar atmosphere, all five of the aircraft drew thin streamers of ice-crystal vapor behind them. They were clearly silhouetted against the royal-blue sky. They were also clearly pulling too damn far away.

Vince checked his altimeter and his airspeed indicator. His forward velocity was fading fast in the climb and he was falling behind his pursuit curve.

"Gus, heat 'em up!"

The air-to-air targeting reticule appeared in the center of his heads-up display and the high-pitched arming tone of the Sidewinders sounded in his earphones.

The tanker flight was opening the range, and they still didn't have the altitude Arkady wanted. There was no help for it. He flared Retainer Zero One back, lifting its nose above the horizon until the helicopter shuddered on the verge of rotor stall. Laying the death pip of his sights into the center of the enemy formation, he squeezed the actuator to give the missiles a look at their target.

The arming tone became a squalling growl.

"I got good locks! This is it! I'm taking the shot!"

Arkady squeezed the actuator again, and then again. At half-second intervals, the Sidewinders sliced off their launching rails trailing fire. He and Gus had done their best. Now it was in the hands of the gods and Ford Aerospace. Arkady dropped his helo's nose, dumped pitch, and dove for the sea.

Fully topped off, Captain Cristobal and his wingman had dropped a quarter of a mile back and to starboard of the Fuerza Aérea Hercules, clearing the way for the next element. Those two aircraft were now tucked in close beneath the tanker's wings and were taking on fuel, a task that would be completed in another minute or so.

Cristobal had been thinking ahead, mentally reviewing the next phase of the operation, when a flickering yellow light and a warning buzzer yanked his attention back to the here and now.

Tail warning radar! Cristobal jinked hard right and twisted around in his seat to check his six. He saw nothing but empty sky and a distant cloud bank.

He eased off on his controls and came back on course.

"Carcel, did you catch that?"

"Sí, Capitán," his backseater replied. "A momentary weak contact on the tail guard system. I am receiving nothing at the moment, however."

Cristobal frowned. His threat board was clear again, but now the warning was sounding in the back of his mind. He keyed his transmitter. "Tigre two, this is Tigre lead. Do you have any air-to-air contacts?"

"Negative, lead. No activity."

Cristobal acknowledged. He was about to shrug off his premonition when his tail warning system sounded again. An infrared return.

He jinked left, wildly searching the sky. This time he spotted a pair of flickering orange sparks, each pulling a faint smoky trail behind it, arcing up beneath the tanker formation. Cristobal crushed down on the transmitter button, groping for words that might avert the coming disaster. He could find none.

The Sidewinders were almost at the end of their range, with their fuel nearly exhausted and their velocity peaking. During the last second of its flight, the multiple targets presented by the C-130 and the two fighters holding formation with it confused the guidance system of the lead missile, making it bobble slightly. Instead of homing on an engine pod, it struck the tanker's belly. Punching through cleanly, its twenty-five-pound fragmentation warhead detonated amid the half-empty fuel bladders in the cargo compartment.

The Hercules dissolved into a ball of flame, a sun-colored blister against the sky that swelled to engulf both of the accompanying Tornadoes and then burst to rain a cascade of blazing wreckage down toward the ocean far below.

Buffeted by the shock wave, the surviving Argentine airmen stared in horror at the churning firestorm falling away beneath them. Someone whispered a supplication to God into the radio circuit.

Cristobal forced his shock-numbed mind to work, analyzing the attack, reconstructing how it must have been set up. The bitch had done it to him again! His curse came out almost as a sob.

His left hand stabbed at the ordnance-control panel, jettisoning his missile load and arming his cannon. Ordering his wingman to do the same and to follow him down, he rolled his Tornado into a split-S maneuver and dove for the sea. His honor had been shattered along with the air strike. This time Cristobal intended to demand a blood price in exchange for it.

"Primary target has blown up!"

Every hand in the Combat Information Center could see and recognize the distinctive "blossom" and rapid fade of a midair explosion on the Large Screen Display.

"Massive RCS dropoff on the target," Dix reported. "Looks like a couple of the fast movers were taken out along with the tanker. Way to go, Vince!"

A ragged cheer started to grow, only to be cut off abruptly.

"Belay that!" Amanda's voice rang out like a rifle shot. "Save it until we get our people home."

Retainer Zero One fled southward out of the intercept zone, its composite frame shuddering from the overload of its racing turbines. Officially, the LAMPS IV Boeing/Sikorsky SAH-66 Sea Comanche helicopter was rated at a maximum airspeed of 195 miles per hour at full war power. If the aircrew was scared badly enough, it could reach 200.

"Pick up your visual scanning, Gus. We still got a couple of fighters out there."

"I know it," Grestovitch replied. He was twisted around as far as his harness would allow, attempting to peer aft past the helo's fantail into their blind spot. "Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but just how did you figure on getting us out of this?"

"Well, speaking frankly, Gus, I was hoping that the bad guys would just sort of go home."

"Begging your pardon again, sir, but I don't think very much of your friggin' plan."

"I'm willing to concede that this may be a definite flaw in an otherwise sound concept."

Grestovitch's threat board began to flash a warning. "Heads up, we're being painted. Two Tornado air-search systems. No locks, but they're coming up fast."

"Right, I'm going to fishtail. Try and spot 'em."

Vince rocked his rudder pedals, slewing the helo slightly to give his systems operator a better view aft.

"I got 'em, Lieutenant! Two fast movers at seven o'clock descending… Hell! They're turning in on us! They got us spotted!"

"Right. We're going evasive."

Arkady enabled and lit off his own radars and radios. No sense in fooling around with emission control now. He started tracking the incoming bandits on his HUD and tried to call up what he could remember of the Army's helicopter air-combat course he had taken TOY at Fort Rucker.

"Engagements with enemy fixed-wing assets are not to be undertaken lightly…"

No shit, Dogface.

Arkady continued to seesaw lightly on his rudder pedals, maintaining his wavering flight path as the Argentine jets bored in. If they had missiles, he could counter with flares and his anti-IR systems. If they went to guns, all that he had was his maneuverability.

As the range closed to critical, Arkady flared the Sea Comanche into a hard right pitch-out. He held the rackingly steep turn for a couple of heartbeats, then dumped gee and reversed back onto his original heading.

Whom! Whom! The Tornadoes blazed past overhead, buffeting the helo with their passage as they pulled out of their run. A short distance off to port, a quarter-mile-long curtain of spray was starting to disperse. It had been struck off the ocean's surface by the cannon shells of the strafing Argentine fighters.

"They're starting to come back around, Lieutenant!"

"Rog. Stay on 'em and call 'em out. I'm going to start yelling for some help."

"Retainer Zero One to Gray Lady. Be advised we've got a problem out here." Arkady's voice rasped from one of the overhead speakers. "I confirm one tanker and two fast movers are down. I also confirm that I've got the two survivors all over me. I am on the deck and fully defensive. Can you give us some cover?"

"Push the primary and Airborne Early Warning arrays to full output," Amanda snapped. "Give me a tactical of the engagement area. I want to see what's going on out there!"

An electronic outline appeared around the block of space on the Alpha Screen that contained the air battle winding up. The image showed Retainer Zero One's beacon hack crawling southwest with agonizing slowness, while the blips of the two Argentine fighters buzzed around it like angry hornets.

"Dix, do we have range on those aircraft yet?"

"Yes, ma'am, they are within the LORAIN engagement envelope."

"Very well, then. Designate the Tornadoes and commence firing."

The Missileer bent over his console. Seconds passed, too many of them.

"Dix, what in the hell is the problem?"

"She won't lock up!" Beltrain replied feverishly, his hands playing across the fire-control matrix. "They're too damn low. They keep dropping out of our line of sight and we lose designation."

"What about Zero Two? Can we target over the horizon through her?"

"Negative. Her AEW pod is search-capable only. It doesn't have designation capacity and her integral radar systems don't have enough range."

Amanda slammed her palm down onto the arm of her chair in frustration. Overhead, the speaker came on-line again.

"Retainer Zero One to Gray Lady. The Argys just made another run on us. I don't want to be an alarmist, but we could really use some help out here."

Amanda had the answer to her question. Arkady's voice was level and controlled, yet she could hear the fear underlying it. He knew that he could die. At that moment, he was expecting to.

She let her reasoning mind race, assessing potentials and assembling possibilities.

"Dix, fire a flight of LORAINs across the engagement zone. Four missiles at ten-second intervals launched on fixed bearings at medium altitude. Fan them out across the entire area."

"Captain, I don't have target designation!"

"Just do it, Dix! Communications! Give me a patch through to Retainer Zero One."

Arkady slammed up on both the pitch and collective levers. The helo flared back like a startled partridge, using the full lift of its main rotor to kill off its forward speed. A split second later, the sea ahead of it boiled into foam under another storm of cannon fire. The Aeronaval jet veered off like a disappointed barracuda.

"To evade fighter attack, execute a tight figure-eight flight pattern around two adjacent hilltops…"

If somehow he got out of this alive, Arkady was going to kick the living hell out of the next army flight instructor he ever laid eyes on.

He nosed the Sea Comanche down and started to regain his airspeed, trying to ignore the flashing "Transmission Overheat" warning. The Argentines had split up and were coming in on him independently, reducing the time he had to recover between attacks. Sooner or later, one or the other of them had to get lucky. The SAH-66 had Kevlar armor protecting most of its critical systems, but it was proof only against rifle-caliber gunfire. It wouldn't take many hits from an autocannon to knock them down.

"Retainer Zero One, this is Gray Lady." Pushed by the Cunningham's powerful transmitter, Amanda Garrett's voice came through into his helmet phones with amazing clarity. "We can see your situation and we are sending you something to fight with. We are launching a flight of LORAINs over your position. You will have to provide target designation and terminal guidance. Time to target will be about three minutes. Do you understand me, Arkady? You have got to stay alive out there for another three minutes!"

The small solid-fuel booster of the Raytheon/General Dynamics LORAIN (LOng RAnge INterceptor) ignited as it shot clear of its VLS cell. Six seconds and six hundred miles per hour worth of acceleration later, the booster burned out and was jettisoned. Bat-ear air intakes opened at the base of the missile's forward set of cruciform fins and the sustainer engine fired. A high-efficiency, high-thrust ramjet, burning an exotic boron-slurry fuel, it smoothly pushed the missile through the sound barrier and up to its 3,000 miles per hour cruising speed.

The LORAIN was one of the showpieces of the current American arsenal, the most advanced, naval area defense SAM in operational deployment. But as it arced out over the South Polar sea, followed at intervals by three of its sisters, its sophisticated hunter/seeker systems were inert. It was only a machine. It still required a human to aim it and to tell it to kill.

Captain Cristobal had found the American helicopter to be a frustrating target. First, he had discovered that its stealth characteristics had rendered his radar gunsight useless, and then its pilot had proven to be a superb combat aviator.

Repeatedly the Norteno had reversed back under his fire streams, or had danced his machine laterally out of his sights. Already Cristobal had expended over half of his ammunition futilely.

It was time to shift tactics. He ordered Tigre Two to orbit above the copter, keeping it in sight while he swung wide to the north. Bringing the wings of his Tornado full forward, he dropped his flaps and landing gear and throttled up to full war power, converting the strike fighter into a comparatively slow and stable gun platform. Dropping down low over the waves, Cristobal began his final run in.

"That's the game plan, Gus. The Duke will give us a countdown as the missiles come in overhead, then we turn into the Argys and designate them with our own radar."

"It'd help if we had more altitude, Lieutenant."

"Yeah, but that would turn us into a sitting duck. You'll have to do the best you can."

"Aye, aye, sir. They seem to have backed off a little. Do you think they might be packing it in?"

"Nope. More than likely they're setting up something new."

Arkady gave himself a second to sweep the horizon ahead, another to check his instrumentation, and a third to try to analyze the vibration starting to feed back through his controls. Feels like a possible rotor hit. Sure hope a blade doesn't go. Then a check of the tail guard radar.

Somebody was back there, but he was coming in slower than before. Arkady skidded the helo a little and took a look aft. There was a pair of glowing landing lights on the horizon, aimed dead-on at them.

Uh-oh, he thought, this guy's been staying at home, reading his manuals, when he should have been out chasing the hot women.

A hundred and fifty miles away, Dix Beltrain reported. "First missile closing on engagement zone. Time to give them the count."

"Make it so," Amanda replied tonelessly.

"Gray Lady to Retainer Zero One. First round coming in.

We are giving you a ten count."

Arkady didn't bother to acknowledge, he just threw the helo into the tightest possible pedal turn it could make. Instead of the 20mm Galling gun carried in the nose of the Army's RAH-66 attack helicopter, the SAH-66 Sea Comanche mounted a variant of the same Hughes APG-65 multimode radar used by the F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter. The system had search and target-designation capacity, but

it covered only a 270-degree forward arc. They had to face their enemy to fight.

"Okay, Gus, light him up as soon as she bears."

In the rear cockpit, Grestovitch stared into his tactical display, struggling with his joystick controller to lay a targeting box on the blip of the attacking Tornado. Succeeding, he keyed in the lock and heard a confirmation tone.

"We got designation!"

"All right! Now let's see if we can get us a missile!"

Over the radio circuit, the distant TACCO droned down the count.

"… four… three… two… one… zero."

"Shit! Missed it!" Grestovitch yelled.

"Second round coming in. Three… two… one… zero."

"No capture! Still no capture!"

The combined speed of the two aircraft annihilated the distance between them. There was no pursuit curve to cut inside. No jinking or dodging that would make the least difference now. The Tornado would open fire in a matter of seconds.

"Third round coming in. Three… two… one…"

"Shit! Shit! Wait a second…. We got capture. We got capture!"

Twenty-five thousand feet up and five miles to the southwest, the LORAIN detected a familiar preceded pattern and frequency of radar impulses reflecting off an airborne target. Its onboard guidance package activated and fixed on it. The target's close proximity to the moving wave pattern of the sea complicated the lock. The LORAIN compensated with Doppler shift scanning and by sensing the passive microwave emissions radiating from the Tornado's own metallic structure. Its nose dipped and the missile dove.

The combined pull of gravity and the thrust of its engine pushed the LORAIN to the near hypersonic. The leading edges of its composite fins were starting to char as it punched down into the lower atmosphere. So great was its velocity that the warhead's proximity fuses didn't have the chance to function properly. It made little difference. The missile scored a direct hit.

There was a blue-white glare like a stroke of heat lightning and Cristobal's Tornado disintegrated, shredded wreckage spraying out across half a square mile of ocean.

Arkady got rid of a long-delayed breath. "Got capture? Offhand, Gus, I'd say you killed that puppy."

"Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. Splash the third Tornado. The sole survivor is bugging out for home, and so are we. Resuming EMCON and proceeding to point item for recovery."

Amanda made no attempt to stop the cheering this time.

In the fading gray glow of the Antarctic twilight, Arkady spotted the Cunningham's distinctive shark's fin silhouette ahead of him. As he circled it, the big destroyer turned across the wind and the marker strobes outlining the helipad began to pulse, welcoming him home.

He popped his landing gear and got three green indicators down and locked. As he began to ease in over the rail, he saw the slender figure in the heavy duffel coat watching from the top of the superstructure, her red-amber hair whipping in his rotor wash. He grinned and flared his landing lights at her, and she replied by lifting a clenched fist over her head in a salute of mutual victory.