Joint Operations

TWO

Along the waterfront, the piers were crowded with ships making stopovers enroute deployments, ships returning from the Middle East, ships on Pineapple Cruises, the slang name for a cruise to Hawaii. Not all were combatants — each battle group traveled with at least one, and sometimes more, underway replenishment ships. While there’d been some propositions to tether the unrep ships to theaters and treat them as theater resources rather than as part of a battle group, nothing substantive had changed yet in the way they deployed.

Onboard the combatants, in-port officers of the day were just now hearing the horrifying news being spread over the secure Navy Red battle circuit. For many of them, the first notice they had of trouble was air raid sirens groaning to life then lifting up their voices in an eerie wail. At first, most of them thought that it was a routine test of some sort, although a few older veterans immediately turned pale and raced to combat stations.

Each ship had no more than a third of its crew aboard, and in some cases, only one fifth of its crew. In theory, at least, each duty section held enough varieties of ratings and officers to get the ship under way in an emergency.

In theory. The reality was far harsher.

Still, to their credit, the majority of the officers of the day took only a few moments to understand what was happening. They immediately dispatched their operations specialists to Combat, hauled out the keys that would activate the automatic, self-contained close-in-weapons systems, and started bringing up the massive complex of computer systems and firing equipment that would enable them to launch anti-air missiles. Two ships, realizing that neither had sufficient personnel onboard to light off either one, transferred all their engineering personnel to one ship along with their operations specialists, leaving the damage-control ratings onboard.

For the most part, the ships were drawing shore power and their engineering plants were in standby. All were either gas turbine or diesel engine driven, steam plants having long given way to more efficient means of propulsion. The gas turbine ships required only five minutes to light off, while the diesels took slightly longer. Both types of engineers skipped at least eighty percent of the safety measures contained in their light-off instructions.

As the engineering plants came online, each ship was simultaneously lighting off combat systems, drawing on the shore power supplied by massive cables running from a main patch panel to the pier and commercial power. The electrical load quadrupled within the first two minutes, then doubled again. Within the base, the generators screamed in protest. One dumped offline, and the others followed shortly.

But the base power crew was just as motivated as the ships crews themselves. Pearl Harbor itself had no anti-air missiles, no Patriot batteries, no way of defending itself other than the power and might of the ships nestled up to her piers. The shore engineers slammed in battle shorts, ran their generators at 150 percent of rated capacity, and somehow managed to restore the vital flow of electrons to the ships. The break in power lasted only twenty seconds, but it was enough to trip all the ships’ combat systems offline. The light-off procedure had to be started all over.

Four minutes after the air raid siren shattered their world, the first ship, the fast frigate USS Louis B. Puller, pulled away from the pier. The lines were severed by axes by the boatswains mates when they realized that there was no one left on the pier to cast them off. The first fast frigate moved smartly away from the pier, twisting on her bow thrusters as she ran missiles out on her launch rails. Although more nimble than the larger cruisers and destroyers, the FFG carried a much shorter-range missile than the later weapons’ blocks on her larger sisters. Still, twenty-five miles of missile was enough to make a difference.

Lieutenant Brett Carter stood in the center of Puller’s Combat Direction Center, wondering if he’d just made the greatest mistake of his life. As the command duty officer, he certainly had the authority to get the ship under way in an emergency without the captain or the executive officer, but he was quite certain that neither of them had even conceived that it would be required.

He’d had only seconds to decide what to do as the news came blasting over the secure circuits, and in the first few moments the terrifying photos he’d seen of Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack were all that he could think of. The Navy had learned the hard way that ships in port might as well be counted dead in the event of attack.

Carter had taken almost twenty seconds to make his decision, enough time to hear the first rumble of explosions and see fire on the horizon. Then in a calm voice that did not reflect the panic in his gut, the young lieutenant had gotten his ship under way, declared weapons free, designated the first hostile target, and authorized the launch. Even though his fingers trembled, he turned the key that energized the weapons-release circuits.

Looking behind the ship now, he could see smoke billowing up from the pier at which they’d been moored. He felt a flush of relief — whatever consequences he would face on his return to port, he knew in that second that he’d made the right decision. Had he waited for any of the ship’s senior officers or for permission from another source, his ship would right now be fighting fires onboard — or sinking — rather than powering up to launch weapons in anger.

His crew in Combat was inexperienced, aside from a senior weapons technician chief petty officer. Men and women were filling two positions each, and the bridge crew was similarly shorthanded. Yet even operating at a dead run with a pick-up crew composed only of the on-duty watch section, the officers and crew operated as they were trained to do. Six minutes after the air raid siren, the first missiles leaped off her rails headed for the air radar contact that the USS Jefferson had designated as hostile in the LINK.

The missile arced out across the bay, searching for the target designated by the computers, talking with the ship in a quick rattle of digital positions and vectors, corrected its course slightly and bore in on the lead aircraft. It was virtually a head-to-head shot, and the targeting required the utmost in precision. The young third-class petty officer who’d actually fired the missile from the ship had never done so alone, apart from a few training simulators. He watched his screen, saw his missile — his missile — acquire the target on its own seeker head and streak across the video terminal. His foot danced out a nervous rhythm on the deck, and he never even realized that it seemed much more like the video games he’d been playing just two nights ago than actual combat.

In the two minutes it’d taken to get the missile off the rails, the lieutenant OOD had had time to get scared. As luck would have it, he was the junior-most OOD among the ships in port, and already the more senior OOD’s were howling over tactical, each trying to clear his ship of the traffic and avoid a collision while still launching missiles. Fortunately for the FFG, she was well clear of the channel, and her OOD had made the wise decision to run like hell while firing and get the hell out of the way of the cruisers.

Commercial shipping and fishing vessels crowded the port and channels, and except for those who’d heard the air raid sirens, they were mostly unaware of what was happening. From their viewpoint, the Navy had simply gone insane, trying to get that many ships under way at once without warning the other natural denizens of the waterways that they were conducting some sort of drill. Most of the civilian masters were howling to the Coast Guard and Port Control authorities, demanding explanations, protesting the interference with their rights of way. By the time the first missile was launched, however, the Coast Guard, which monitored Navy Red, knew what was happening. The civilian ships were told to clear the channel. Immediately. Ground their vessels if necessary, but under no circumstances would the Navy yield the right of way to any other vessel.

Two Aegis cruisers were the next ones to work their way out of the pierside tangle, and they entered the main channel with missiles already gouting out of their decks. The vertical launch system, combined with a computer system capable of targeting almost three hundred enemy aircraft simultaneously, was the most potent anti-air system ever developed for a military service. Under normal circumstances, the two cruisers alone should have been able to eliminate every enemy aircraft onboard the disguised Chinese aircraft carrier.

Under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, recent decisions within the Navy had put into place stringent protections to prevent U.S. Navy ships from firing on friendly units. These included certain geographic block-out areas that were programmed to not accept firing solutions within those geographic boundaries, as well as increased minimum firing ranges for the missiles each ship carried. By the time the cruisers rippled off the first wave of missiles, the Chinese aircraft were already within minimums. One missile rammed into an aircraft, but the others would not detonate.

Twenty-nine of the thirty Chinese jump jets survived. Another was picked off by the frigate. Twenty-eight arrived overhead in Pearl Harbor.

As soon as the last aircraft lifted off the deck, the Chinese carrier cut hard to the north, headed straight in for the coastline. Behind her, the amphibious assault vessel was launching its own contingent of aircraft, as well as a tanker. They remained overhead, loaded out with air-to-air missiles, as protection against the fighters from the aircraft carrier.

They need not have worried, at least not right away. The Jefferson’s assets were concentrated on the enemy aircraft heading for the coast. The battle group had seen the aircraft carrier empty her decks.

Well below the waterline, Chinese sonar technicians had heard the ghostly, drawn-out voices over Gertrude, and had managed to triangulate the transmissions from the submarine. A linguist was perched on a high stool next to the console, holding on to the metal desk beside him to keep from slipping across the steeply canted deck as the aircraft carrier turned. He listened to the transmissions, then quickly translated the words that came over the unclassified circuit.

The final firing solution was not particularly refined. The submarine knew the danger of using Gertrude, and had transmitted only the briefest acknowledgement of her new orders. Still, that blip of sound was enough to narrow down the sonarman’s search, and he selected the higher frequency active transmissions that would let him pinpoint the submarine’s location.

Of course, going active was a risk as well. The American submarine would be able to hear the sonar pings at a greater range than the carrier would be able to hear the returns from her hull. Additionally, the high speed of the carrier was producing a massive amount of noise, further degrading the Chinese ASW ability. But the carrier was counting on being able to find and attack the submarine with a barrage of weapons and at least hold her at bay until the ship popped out its final surprise.

On the weatherdecks, Ishi Zhaolong struggled across the deck, moving as quickly as he could to the port SVTT tube. The first return from the active sonar had just squeaked across the sonarman’s headphones, providing enough data for a bearing-only launch. Ishi had been sure that the submarine would be to their right, and he was slightly alarmed to find that he’d guessed wrong. Still, the other team would be loading up the port SVTT. He wasn’t critically needed there, but as the senior torpedoman onboard, he wanted to watch the evolution. With the deck now clear of both aircraft and disguises, darting back and forth between the four sets of launchers, two to the port, two on starboards, was much less of a problem than routine maintenance had been.

He arrived at the port launcher just as the tube reached one thousand pounds of pressure. The other torpedomen had hearing protectors clamped down over their ears and were stepping back from the pressurized tube. If anything went wrong now, the men would be peppered with shrapnel.

Ishi stepped forward and double-checked the settings himself. The torpedo was set to run shallow for a surface target. Its seeker head combined advanced wakehoming technology along with a relatively rudimentary acoustic discriminator. It also housed a command destruct secondary charge that could be used if the torpedo insisted on acquiring its own aircraft carrier as a target.

He nodded to the man crouched down beside the SVTT tube, then stepped back into the doubtful protection of a stanchion. He couldn’t resist peering around the metal support to watch the actual firing.

There was a surprisingly smooth blast of noise, only slightly louder than the test firings they’d practiced back in the Yellow Sea and then enroute Hawaii. A metal cylinder four feet long and a foot in diameter shot out of the tube, remained airborne for thirty feet, then slid smoothly into the ocean with only a small splash and some expanding ripples that the ocean swells quickly smoothed out. Before the last ripples had faded away, the crew was manhandling another torpedo into the tube.

“Torpedo inbound,” a voice snapped over Ishi’s headset. He shouted at the crew to move faster, now desperate to get as many torpedoes in the water as he possibly could. What had seemed so thrilling, so very daring when it involved disrobing the carrier and launching aircraft now seemed all too deadly and personal.

A snapshot, that was all it had been, he thought frantically, scanning the water around him for any trace of the incoming torpedo. A desperate shot back down the bearing the submarine had seen the torpedo on, intended to shake up the carrier and force her to react as much as to actually target her. It’d be the first — but it wouldn’t be the last. As soon as the American submarine was relatively certain she’d shaken off Ishi’s first torpedo, she’d let off a barrage of torpedoes more carefully targeted, each one individually guided in on the carrier by an experienced crew.

For a moment, Ishi felt a moment of hopelessness. The deck that had seemed so spacious and safe now seemed ominously empty.

“Only two, sir,” Otter was saying into the bitch box as Renny slid back into his seat next to him. “We’re carrying dummy loads for REFTRA, sir, not a full loadout. We’re in REFTRA.”

“And we’re damned well not supposed to be shooting war shots,” Captain Tran answered. “I know that — I know. You get me a firing solution. Make it right, Otter. We can’t afford to miss.”

Otter turned to Renny, desperation in his eyes. “We’re in REFTRA,” he said, as though that made some sort of sense.

The chief sonarman was standing behind them now, his presence a calming and steadying influence. “That’s all this is, son. REFTRA for real. You just do it like we’ve been doing it for the last five days, smooth and easy. I’m going to be watching the solution — we’ll nail that bastard.”

“What the hell is it?” Renny asked, all the while plugging in the bearings and readings he needed for a more accurate firing solution. Looking at it now, knowing that they had only been carrying three live torpedoes, getting off the snapshot might not have been that good an idea. Under normal circumstances, yeah, you’d want that. But not now.

“Bearing separation looks good,” the chief noted. He toggled on the mike in his hand. “Conn, Sonar, we have a firing solution.”

“Is it the one you want, Chief?” Tran asked, speaking to him as an equal. “Let me know.”

“I’ll take this one, sir,” the chief answered. “Single shot. We’re working up the second solution right now.”

“Very well. Weapons free, Chief.”

“Weapons free, aye.” The chief’s eyes were still fixed on the sonar screen. “Weapons, Sonar — you have — hold it. She’s turning. Captain, give me fifteen seconds, sir. I want a better solution.”

“Advise me when you have a solution.”

Renny swore quietly but passionately as he watched the odd surface contact’s acoustic signature waver across the bearings. “Zig-zag?” he asked.

“Yeah, the asshole,” the chief muttered. “S’okay. As long as we know about it, we can compensate for it. Look, he’s already starting to fall into a pattern. Get ready, Renny, Otter. I’m going to want this one off right when I say.”

Renny felt the sweat trickling down his back. It itched as it found his spine and coursed down it, soaking his undershirt and his coveralls. The waiting grew unbearable. Just as the chief started to give the order, a new sound cut through the quiet of the sonar shack. “Conn, sonar, torpedoes in the water. Two of them skipper.”

“Two, aye. Stand by for evasive maneuvers.” Even as the skipper spoke, the submarine leaned steeply to port and tilted forward. “Sonar, no change in the thermal layer?”

“No change, sir. Standing by with decoys.”

“You know when, Chief.”

“Aye-aye, sir. Renny, watch the contact — I’ve got the depth gauge — and keep your hand on the decoy.”

“Got it.” Renny knew what he was doing, had done it so many times in simulators and during REFTRA that the whole thing had a feeling of unreality to it. The chief standing behind him, Otter at his side — how many times had he done this in the last four days?

The chief would be watching the depth gauge. As the submarine approached the isothermal layer, where the temperature of the water was no longer the primary determinant of the speed of sound, the chief would eject the noisemakers. The decoys would churn up masses of bubbles in the water, enough sound to both mask the other sonar’s detection and hopefully confuse the inbound torpedoes. If the torpedoes were acoustic or active sonar, the submarine would have an excellent opportunity to make a mad dash to depth, make the ship lose sonar contact, then maneuver back around to take another shot at the ship.

Of course, acoustic blindness worked both ways. If the ship couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see the ship. No matter — if the decoys didn’t work, they’d hear the torpedo itself.

“Now,” the Chief said.

Renny slammed up the toggle that released first one decoy, then another. How many did they have? He was tempted to glance over at the status board, but the chief would have already checked.

The two decoys performed as they were supposed to, frothing up the water and blasting acoustic noise across the entire spectrum. The automatic gain controls kicked in, attenuating the noise in his headset down to a manageable level.

The first torpedo on Renny’s screen veered off to the right, clearly enticed by the attractive noise source saturating the water with acoustic energy. It reached a point that satisfied some primitive firing mechanism in its brain and it detonated.

The second one wasn’t so sure. The detonation of the first torpedo evidently confused it. It wavered along its track for a moment, then started a hard lefthand turn. “Search pattern,” the chief announced. “Conn, Sonar — it’s lost us. For now.”

“Roger,” the skipper answered. “Chief, I’m going to make a run for it back toward the contact. You see any problem with that?”

“Couple of ships between us and Sierra two, Skipper,” the chief answered. “Any word on their status?”

Renny listened to the conversation, his fingers still on the decoy buttons and his eyes glued to his screen. What the chief was asking made perfect sense, if you had to believe that someone just off the coast of Hawaii was shooting torpedoes at them.

“No information, Chief. Until I hear otherwise, every one of them is potentially hostile. Can you rule any of them out — any positive friendlies?”

“Yes, sir. I have Jefferson and her escorts, solid contact. I know where they are.”

“Under the circumstances, I’m not sure the carrier would appreciate a high-speed run toward her. Give me a course.”

“Two eight zero,” Renny whispered before the chief could ask. “That’s the straightest course that will leave us well clear of Jefferson.”

“Two eight zero,” the chief immediately repeated. Renny didn’t know whether the chief was just relying on Renny’s ability or whether he’d done the math himself. Verified it, probably. He’d seen the chief do that sort of instantaneous angles calculation before.

The submarine heeled hard in the opposite direction. She’d backed off on the down bubble and the deck was now almost level.

“Six minutes, captain. Four until we’re inside minimums.”

But we don’t want a max range shot, Renny thought. Not with only two more warshots onboard. No, Chief will want us in a good deal closer, maximize the probability of a kill.

A kill. The word sent fresh shivers down his spine, and just for a moment — not long at all, but enough to make him waver — Renny paused. The kill — it would be either them or the other boat.

The other, he decided on some level, making a full commitment to those two possible resolutions to their tactical situation. The other — and not us.

“Wait for it, now,” the chief said softly. “We’re safe right now. She’s lost us, she can’t hear us. She’s got to suspect we’re coming for her, but she has no idea where we are. Not yet.”

Renny found the words oddly soothing. He stole a moment to glance over at Otter and was relieved to see the calm, confident expression on the other man’s face. Yes, this was what they’d trained for, this was why they were here. They knew what to do, knew they were good at it. And before the hour was up, someone was going to learn that it was a very, very bad idea to shoot at the USS Centurion.

“Get them back here,” Batman roared, pounding on the TAO’s back. “Recall all fighters. Can’t you see it? Don’t you know what’s going to happen?” He grabbed the handset without waiting for an answer. “All aircraft, this is the admiral. Starboard marshall — now. If you’re getting low on fuel, we’ll handle that, but clear the area around the island’s airspace immediately. Acknowledge.” He dropped the mike from his mouth and waited for the responses.

One by one, the aircraft leads answered up. As they watched, the friendly aircraft symbols that had been boring in on Hawaii stopped, then the pixels pivoted to indicate that the aircraft were headed back to the carrier. Over tactical, it was clear that the operations specialists that normally coordinated the approaches on the carrier were quickly becoming overwhelmed. The airborne E- 2C Hawkeye stepped in, assuming control of the majority of the aircraft and vectoring them around the approach radials to a safe distance south of Jefferson.

Batman stared at the screen, the color drained from his normally ruddy face. “My god, we almost bought it that time.” By now, even the watch officer understood what he meant.

The airspace around Hawaii and the main channel was engorged with a spiderweb of long speed leaders projecting out from missile symbology as the surface ships leaving port opened fire on the hostile aircraft symbols. Had the Jefferson’s aircraft continued inbound on the island, most of them would have become missile sumps for the firepower the cruisers and frigates were unleashing.

Lieutenant Hot Rock had been next in line for the tanker when TFCC and the Hawkeye started shouting orders. After an initial period of confusion, he managed to sort out what happened. It was unbelievable, unthinkable — but there it was. An enemy attack on Pearl Harbor. One part of his mind kept insisting it was simply another part of the battle problem that they’d been working all week.

Hot Rock’s lead, Lieutenant Commander Lobo Hanson, grasped the situation faster than he did. “Come on, Hot Rock. Snap out of it. I don’t have time to baby-sit you. Get your ass up the high position.”

He yanked backed, putting the Tomcat into a sheer, bone-crushing ascent toward high position. The loose deuce fighting formation was the one preferred by most American pilots, and consisted of a team of two aircraft. One took high position, guarding the tail of the forward aircraft and providing additional area coverage because of increased radar range with altitude. The other aircraft took a lower altitude, slightly forward, and was usually the first engage the enemy aircraft.

A couple of cruises ago, high position had been Hot Rock’s favorite. Although he hadn’t been willing to admit to anyone, he had suspected that a deep streak of cowardice ran down his spine. The idea of facing incoming fire, facing it and ignoring it all as he took his own shot, had seemed beyond him. For a while, he managed to slide by on his superb flying skills, but eventually even his backseater reluctantly voiced his opinion.

But finally, when it came right down to it, he found he had what it took. Ever since that cruise, he’d finally felt a part of the fighting squadron.

Not that anyone had let on. Even Commander Magruder, CO of VF 95, hadn’t suspected just how terrified he was in the air. Oh, sure, in aerobatics, formation flying and practice bombing runs — he was above most of them when it came to that sort of stuff.

But when it came down to actually shooting, to facing down an enemy and fighting for your own little square piece of airspace, he backed off. The last time, it had almost gotten Lobo killed.

But that was behind him now. The squadron seemed to be willing to let his past go, and God knows for what reason, Lobo Hanson had decided he was all right. So when she said take high position, his hands and feet moved to obey before he could even get out a question.

But what the carrier was saying was insane, wasn’t it? An attack on Pearl Harbor?

Impossible. Absolutely impossible. As he climbed to altitude, he found himself wondering just how many men had said that before.

“Twenty miles,” his backseater announced. “You got a visual?”

“Yeah, I got it.” The islands of Hawaii stretched out as green and gray lozenges on the horizon. Even from this different distance, their volcanic origins were evident. You could see the islands’ ancestry in the rugged jagged peaks climbing up in the sky, the sheer black of hardened lava as the last of the sun hit it. From this angle, you could see the difference between the leeway and the windward sides of the island, with the former covered with lush green vegetation, and the latter less so.

So who was howling that enemy aircraft were inbound on the island? Boy, somebody was going to get their ass kicked when the admiral figured out who had screwed the pooch on this one.

The more Hot Rock thought about it, the more convinced he was that it was all a screwup. Maybe even part of the training. That had to be the explanation — some stupid-assed junior officer had seen something, maybe a weather balloon, maybe somebody burning trash, and had made the wild leap to assuming whatever it was that he saw was caused by an air attack.

Just then, he saw it, and immediately revised his opinion. Black smoke boiled up, stark and ugly against the verdant hills. He saw fire flashing up at the base of it, obscured higher up by the swirling smoke.

A civilian airliner crash, maybe. Maybe a chemical plant exploding. He was aware that he was grasping at straws now, trying desperately to find some other explanation for what his eyes told him. Anything, everything — it couldn’t be what the carrier was now saying.

“Ten miles.” Hot Rock heard the tension in his backseater’s voiced ratchet higher. So at least one of them inside this airframe believed what the carrier was saying. “Aw, shit! Look at the ships getting under way!”

He could see them now, the foamy wakes cutting swaths through the placid blue waters as the American fleet steamed toward the exit of the harbor. So many of them, crowded so impossibly close, at this distance looking more like light gray swatches against the water than actual Navy ships. But his link data confirmed it. Every combatant and every other Navy vessel capable of getting under way was steaming out from Hawaii.

But where were the other aircraft? He glanced down in his radar tactical display, and saw the picture beginning to build. The aircraft further ahead of him were picking them up on radar now, and as the ships lit off their combat systems and started feeding data to the battle group LINK, they were getting the advantage of the powerful SPY radar system.

Sure enough, there was something that looked awfully much like an enemy fighter pack clustered on the far side of the island. They were in the sort of minor disarray that normally follows a successful bombing run as aircraft break off on their assigned patterns and maneuver to avoid mutual interference. But they were starting to regroup now, probably transitioning from a land attack mode to getting ready for aerial combat.

How many of them were there? He tore his eyes away from the actual island, and tried to take a quick count. Thirty, maybe forty.

They were turning now, flying back toward the island of Hawaii. Another bombing run? Or was it simply a mad dash back to the safety of their waterborne airfield, getting within range so that their ship’s automatic weapons defense systems could help protect them.

Or were they after Jefferson? The thought made his blood run cold. No matter that they would be able to land on Hawaii if they had to, the audacity of anyone trying to take a shot at his carrier blinded him with rage in a way that the hard evidence of an attack against the ground had not.

Hot Rock pulled up and away from Lobo, throttles jammed full forward and he arrowed up toward the heavens. The enemy aircraft were just nearing the edge of the island now, and he was losing their silhouettes against the night-darkened land. Not that he had to have a visual, no, not with the array of sensors feeding data to him via the HUD and not with a RIO in the backseat making sure he didn’t miss a damned trick.

Below him, Lobo’s aircraft was boring in toward the island. There’d been a time when Hot Rock would have been silently howling his anguish and fear, a time when he’d thought — no, he’d known — that he just didn’t have what it took. Sure, he could fly the aircraft, and do it better than most. But when he compared his own courage with that of the other pilots, he’d found himself sorely lacking.

That is, until last cruise. Now he knew he could be part of the team, that he wouldn’t let his wingman down. MiG pilots had had to die to confirm that.

“Got a lock,” Lobo announced, indicating that her AMRAAMM had acquired one of the enemy fighters and was ready to launch. “Waiting for it, waiting for it — ”

“Weapons tight!” a familiar voice commanded over tactical. “Goddammit, weapons tight!”

“What the hell —?” Hot Rock’s RIO asked. “Admiral Wayne lost it?”

“Sir, I got him.” Lobo’s voice was angry and anguished. “I let him go now, I’ll just have to deal with him later.”

“No. Weapons tight, damn you!” Hot Rock heard Batman say. “Think, you idiot. Think. He’s right over downtown!”

Cold horror swept through Hot Rock as he realized the choice Batman had been forced to make. The fighters, still wing-heavy with weapons, were in transit over a densely populated civilian area. Tourist, natives, locals, all crowded together in the lush, teaming city. If they took the shot, nailed the bastards — and they would, Hot Rock had no doubt about that — they’d spatter flaming aircraft, fuel, and weapons all over the innocent bystanders. Collateral damage, the military had tried calling it, trying to de-emphasize the fact that it meant civilian deaths.

But the alternative — how much worse would it be for the countless military personnel and their families currently on the base? Was it fair that Batman was choosing to allow the fighters to proceed inbound on military targets in order to spare the civilians outside the gates?

But the military men and women knew the risks, didn’t they? And while an attack on Pearl Harbor might not have been the first one they’d be worried about, it was all part of what you signed on for.

And their families, too?

No, not the families. They were no different than the men and women outside the gates.

Yet given the two alternatives, Batman had chosen to engage the fighters on their way out, after they’d dropped the munitions.

They’d be harder targets, too, once they’d stripped off the extra weight of armament and some fuel. Lighter, more maneuverable — were they carrying air-to-air weapons? Or had they been wing-heavy with ground ordnance, certain that they wouldn’t encounter any air threats this close to American soil? If so, they’d pay for that overconfidence now, and pay heavily.

“Hot Rock, on me,” Lobo commanded. “We’re going to take the west side of the island, wait for them to start their egress. Let them get over water first.”

“Roger,” he answered, already pulling around smoothly to maintain his position. On his HUD, he could see the other fighting pairs breaking off to cover the rest of the sectors, with the majority of the fighters positioning themselves between the island and the carrier.

“Should be ninety seconds or less,” his RIO announced. If they’re headed to the base, was the unspoken qualification.

“I want weapons assigned to every little bastard,” Hot Rock growled. “This isn’t going to happen again — not on my watch.”

But yet, despite his bravado, it did. He watched, his stomach turning violently over and over as though he were caught in an uncontrolled spin, staring at the HUD then focusing past it on the actual land. The HUD and the radar showed the inching progress of the enemy shapes across the land, the moment when they passed over American coast. The blips suddenly veered off their track and increased speed. His nausea increased to the point that he thought he would puke. To stay up here, wings fully loaded, and watch it happen was the worst experience he’d ever had.

Then past the arcane symbols on the HUD, down on the actual land depicted in dotted green lines, the sudden blossoming of light. Almost pretty, in a way, unless you knew what it really was. Ground attack weapons, meeting dirt, gouting huge fireballs into the air, consuming flesh and metal and wood and brick. What didn’t burn was blasted apart into fragments and flung into the air.

Smoke billowed up in ugly black smears of dark against the darker land.