Code of Honor

68

The executive officer stood across the bridge from Admiral Peck, handset to his ear. “PRIFLY advises no contact with either jet.”

PRIFLY was primary flight control — the ship’s equivalent of the air traffic control tower.

“No contact?”

“No radio contact, sir. No radar contact.”

“I recommend we get the Cobras over the last known locations,” the captain said.

“Preble and Halsey?” Peck asked, checking the status of the two destroyer escorts.

“Unable to reach them via radio, sir,” the XO said. “We’re trying the satellite phone now.”

Peck nodded, his stomach in knots. “Launch the MH-60s in case the pilots went into the drink. I want recovery in the air yesterday.”

The radar tech tracking the LRASM from the console on the bridge raised his hand. “The weapon is slowing, deviating east from target by… twenty… no, forty degrees.”

“Well, shit!” Peck said. “How slow?”

“Two hundred knots… one fifty… one hundred…” The radar P2 turned and looked at his captain, wide-eyed. “It’s heading toward that trawler… still slowing.” He turned back to his screen. “Sir! Contact fifty nautical miles southeast of the trawler.”

“And we are just now seeing it?” the admiral said. This was just getting better.

“There’s a small atoll there. We knew about it, but the vessel blended in when it was sitting there.”

The XO was still on the phone with PRIFLY. “One of the Cobras just spotted what looks like a Chinese vessel, moving toward the trawler. Looks to be a Shanghai-class gunboat.”

“Have the Cobra keep it in sight,” the admiral said.

The Shanghai-class vessels were small, about thirty-six meters, but they were relatively fast at twenty-five knots and decked out with weapons including depth charges for chasing subs.

“Status report on the missile,” Peck said.

“Still tracking directly for the trawler. One hundred knots. At present speed she’ll have contact in four and a half minutes.”

“Abort,” Peck said. “Destroy the missile.”

The captain, then the XO, repeated the order.

The XO put the line with PRIFLY on speaker while he listened to fire control on his headset. He looked up. “No go, sir. We have no control of the LRASM…”

PRIFLY spoke next over the speaker, patching through the Cobra pilot. “The trawler is deploying its arms with… looks like a net.”

“Sound general quarters,” the admiral said. “Someone has taken control of that missile and both our F-35s.”

“General quarters,” the captain repeated.

The XO looked up from the handset and shook his head. “Onboard communications, alarms, and intercoms are inoperable, sir.”

Music from Iron Man, the last movie the crew had watched on the big screen in the enlisted mess, began to pour out of the speakers over the entire ship.

Peck nodded to the captain. “You have the com.” He tapped the XO on the shoulder. “You, come with me.”

The two men burst from the bridge hatch, heading for the Ready 5 Ospreys and FAST Marines. With the intercoms down, none of the sailors on the ship were aware anything was amiss. They were startled to see the XO and the admiral running.

Peck hated to be an asshole with men and women who didn’t know any better, but he growled as he shoved them aside.

As the old Navy saying went: “Gangway or sickbay.”

Someone was piping Black Sabbath over the intercoms, which was odd, Captain Goodrich thought, but pretty great for morale.

There was always good-natured ribbing between Marine FAST platoons and SEAL detachments. SEALs seemed to have classes of instruction on scrounging and were known to huddle around small camp stoves boiling water for coffee while they waited on Ready status. A few of them joked that FAST stood for Fake Ass SEAL Team, but calmed down after they worked together a few times. For his part, Captain Goodrich was content to sit along the sides of the Osprey with his eight-man squad, while the SEALs lounged on the tarmac, half submerged in big plastic tubs that were normally used to clean aircraft wheels — cooling off in their wet suits.

The FAST assistant platoon commander’s voice buzzed on the Sonitus Molar Mic. He was sitting under similar circumstances on an adjacent Osprey with his squad. “Goodrich, Arthur. You have commo with PRIFLY?”

“I’m not hearing anything.” Goodrich was seated up front, forward of the “hellhole” just aft of the cockpit. He glanced toward the open hatch.

As in most rotary-wing aircraft, the pilot in command sat in the right seat. Her name was Captain Avery Denny, call sign Scooter. She’d flown Goodrich and his platoon before. They’d sat together at dinner a couple of times. She was an extremely capable Marine — which, in Goodrich’s estimation, was about as high a compliment as he could give a person. She was engaged in an animated conversation with her copilot, tapping the side of her headset as if she, too, was having trouble reaching primary flight control.

Goodrich leaned forward in his seat, looking out the open aft ramp. The SEAL Det commander was out of his tub, braced at attention, his black wet suit draining water onto the deck.

Captain Goodrich unfastened his seat belt and, motioning the rest of his platoon to stay seated, made his way aft.

Something was happening.

Admiral Peck met him at the ramp. “Follow me, Captain,” he said, striding toward the cockpit in the way peculiar to a man who had zero doubt that his order would be followed.

Captain Avery glanced up in time to see the admiral. She started to get out of her seat but he shushed her back down with an open hand before waving Goodrich forward so he could talk to them both.

He took thirty seconds to give them a thumbnail sketch of the situation — the details of which were meager at best — then looked Goodrich in the eye. “The Chinese must be denied that missile. Are we clear?”

“Aye, sir,” Goodrich said.

“Do you have explosives on board?”

“Breaching equipment is with the second squad on the other bird.”

“You have commo with each other?”

“We do, sir.”

“Very well,” Peck said, gathering himself up to get off the Osprey. “Destroy the missile. Captain Denny, if Captain Goodrich and his men fail, send the trawler and the missile to the bottom. The Chinese will just go down and pick her up, but some of the tech might be destroyed.”

“Due respect, Admiral,” Denny said. “I know the MH-60s are in the air, but why do we not send the 35 to drop a torpedo down the trawler’s smokestack?”

“I’m moving on to that crew next,” Peck said. “With no commo on board we have to do it all in person. Nine-tenths of the people on this ship still believe everything is hunky-dory right now. But here’s the deal. The virus or whatever it is has infected the ship and both F-35s. I’m not a hundred percent sure you won’t fall out of the sky as soon as you leave the ship.” He bounced a fist on the back of the pilot’s headrest. “Now go! And Godspeed.”

Goodrich took his seat as the rear ramp began to close, and began to brief his men, including those on the adjacent Osprey. They had trained with the SEALs for this very thing and at the back of the bird, the lieutenant in charge of the SEAL Det was briefing his men as well. The Ospreys would come in low, pooping out the inflatable that now occupied the center of the hold. The SEALs would follow their boat out, then approach the trawler low from the water. FAST Marines would come in by air, fast-roping onto the deck as the Ospreys went into a hover, squad two covering squad one with the GAU .50-caliber from the second Osprey above.

“So,” Goodrich said, finishing the mission brief. “We destroy the missile or die trying!”

“Oorah!” his men said, as the Osprey’s engines spooled up.

Captain Avery “Scooter” Denny was oddly at ease, considering the gravity of her mission. She understood the admiral’s orders completely. If Captain Goodrich and his men were not able to destroy the missile, she was to destroy the Chinese ship — even if FAST Marines were still on board.

Correct takeoff procedures had to be followed, even under austere or emergency conditions. She and her copilot had already performed the necessary checks. She had no way to speak to PRIFLY, so she coordinated her takeoff with her wingman — the second V-22 she referred to as 12. As the lead aircraft, she was 11.

She turned to her copilot. “You ready to get this plopter in the air?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She spoke to her wingman again, advising her status and fuel state. “Eleven is ramps up. Ten-point-eight.”

“Twelve is ramps up. Ten-point-six.”

Captain Denny used her left thumb to set the nacelles on either wing to 90 degrees, then turned to the sailor on deck. The sailor, who’d received instructions from Admiral Peck, saluted. Denny returned the salute and increased power to eighty percent to pick up into a hover. She checked to ensure that her gauges were in the green, then looked out her cockpit window directly at the sailor on deck. He pointed forward. Cleared for takeoff, she input left cyclic and full thrust control lever to slide out over the water.

The instruments looked good. She still had commo. Relieved, she set the nacelles to 75 degrees, then checked the airspeed indicator.

“Gear is up,” she said. “Lights out. Doors closed. Cleared fast.”