Joint Operations

TWENTY-TWO

Lieutenant Brett Carter stared up at the speaker as though he could convince himself that the words that were coming over were true. His operations chief was already putting his watchstanders in motion, anticipating the lieutenant’s next command.

Finally, Carter picked up the microphone and answered up. “Puller, roger. Out.” He turned to the chief, his mouth still slightly open. “You heard.”

The chief nodded. “I did indeed.”

A new fire seemed to infuse the lieutenant. It had been a long day, longer than any one that he had ever had, fraught with uncertainty and the unexpected challenges of command. It had been his decision to get Puller under way at the first warning, his decision to steam straight out from port rather than wait for orders. At the time, he’d experienced gut-wrenching uncertainty alternating with the conviction that he’d screwed up so very badly that Shore Patrol would be waiting for him on the pier when Puller steamed back in to port.

But now… now this. Vindication, if he’d needed it.

“Firing keys,” Carter ordered, and it all went rather swiftly from that point on. The three Chinese vessels were already designated in the system as hostile targets and it was a simple matter to assign two Harpoon anti-ship missiles to each one. The six missiles rippled out of the quad canisters mounted along the sides of the ship with a slight jar.

As Carter watched the symbols materialized on the screen, each on arrowing straight and true toward its intended target, he felt a surge of pride. Challenges, responsibilities, crisis — all in all, he figured it had been the kind of day that he’d joined the Navy expecting. No matter what his next operational tour, it would be years before he would again have command — albeit only temporary — of a warship. And after today, he knew that nothing else he could do would ever equal that experience.

“Kelly, my dear, are you ready for this?” Bird Dog said over tactical. He glanced over at his new wingman as he asked it, taking his eyes off his heads-up display briefly. “You’re about to get blooded, woman.”

After four hours in Sick Bay, complaining at the top of the their voices that they were fine, Bird Dog and Gator had been released to full duty. Sure, they had a few cuts and bruises, but no worse than after any of their previous ejections. Gator insisted that, because of their experience, they were more qualified than the doctors to assess their own physicial conditions.

“I’m ready,” the calm voice of his new wingman said. “So is Tits.”

“Hell of a name for a RIO,” Gator cried happily. “You get Tits, I get Gator — now how did that work out?”

“Perhaps if Gator’s full name were Theodore Irving Turner, he might be Tits as well,” came a deep bass voice from Green’s backseat. “It’s just like your mother always told you, Bird Dog — don’t mess with tits.”

Gator suppressed a snort of disgust. His head was buried in the soft plastic cover surrounding his radar scope as he worked the angles and dangles, the relative velocities and kill ratios in his mind. Four MiGs headed out against two Tomcats and two Hornets — well, the odds were in their favor, weren’t they? Still, in Gator’s ever so humble opinion, Bird Dog had never taken this shit seriously enough. No, not seriously enough by half. And from the sounds of it, neither did Lieutenant Kelly Green or her RIO, Tits.

“Thor, you come in and get that first pair tied up,” Bird Dog said a second later. “Me and Kelly are going to go high and come in on the second two. You think you can handle them?”

“Oh, I imagine two Marines are more than enough to take care of a couple of MiGs,” a slow Southern drawl came from Hornet 106. “Hellman can pull his share of the load.”

“All right, weapons free,” Bird Dog said. “We don’t know who the hell is in that boat down there, but evidently the Chinese are as interested in him as we are. They want him, they can’t have him. That’s the rules of the game.”

“Are you going to get us in the game or not?” Gator demanded from the backseat. “Or is this little mutual admiration society taking up too much of your time?”

In answer, Bird Dog slammed the Tomcat into afterburner and went into a steep, tail twisting climb. Gator gasped as the G-forces pounded against him, sucking the blood down from his head and toward his feet. “Dammit, asshole,” he squeezed out, simultaneous grunting in an M-1 maneuver designed to force blood back up to his brain. He could feel the pressure suit activating around his legs and torso, but Gator was never one to leave the question of whether or not he stayed conscious entirely to automation.

“I thought you were in a hurry to get somewhere,” Bird Dog said innocently, but he backed off the throttles and eased off on his rate of ascent. “AMRAAM as soon as we’re ready.”

“About five seconds, I make it,” Gator said, breathing more easily now as the G-forces subsided. “Stand by — now!”

The ATG-71 radar with advanced avionics held solid contact on the incoming bogey. The aircraft shuddered slightly as the AMRAAM dropped off the wing, the advanced avionics automatically retrimming the aircraft.

“Fox One, Fox One,” Bird Dog sang out. Fox One was the call assigned to a medium-range missile, such as an AMRAAM or a Sparrow. “Looking good.”

“Not good enough,” Bird Dog said. He punched the Tomcat into afterburner. “Let’s get up close and personal for some knife fighting.”

Bird Dog wasn’t the only one flying with an inexperienced pilot on his wing, and for the Hornet pilot, the problem was particularly challenging. At least in the Tomcat, the pilot had a RIO sitting right behind him, ready to double-check plans and provide a sanity check if the pilot became overwhelmed. Not so in the Hornet — the pilot took over all the RIO’s duties in addition to his own.

As confident as Thor had sounded over tactical, he had his own private doubts about his wingman. First Lieutenant “Hellman” Franks was on his nugget cruise, still learning that there were old pilots, there were bold pilots, but there were no old, bold pilots.

Not that Thor had anything against showing balls. No, not at all. After all, they were both Marines weren’t they? And Marine fighter pilots at that.

And it wasn’t that Hellman wasn’t a damned fine pilot, either. He was, as Thor had seen all too often on the bombing range and during workups. He’d sailed through basic and pipeline training at the top of his class, achieved near miraculous scores on the bombing range, and was considered by all to be one hot shit pilot. If he lived long enough, he’d be looking at fast promotions in the Corps.

Still, there was an edge to the man that bothered Thor. Sure, you want to get airborne and get the other guy fast and hard, but you want to do it clean. You take chances, but only those you have to. And you remember that you’ve got a multimillion-dollar aircraft strapped to your ass that Uncle Sam would really prefer that you bring back in one piece.

“Okay, Hellman, just like in refresher training,” Thor said over tactical, switching to the private frequency the two of them shared. “You know MiGs, and this is no different than training. Except no mistakes.”

“You ever see me make a mistake, Thor?” a Virginia drawl asked. “Anywhere?”

“You’ve never been in combat before,” Thor said bluntly. “You suck it in, Marine, and do it the way we taught you.”

“Don’t worry about me, old man,” Hellman shot back. “I’ll keep your ass out of trouble.”

Old man — why that little punk better… Thor pushed the thoughts aside, saving sorting that out for another time. Compartmentalization, that was the key to survival in the air. You keep focused on your task, don’t let your wife, your dog, your wingman, your anything, not even your bladder, distract you from what you’ve got to do.

“Take high,” he said abruptly. “Follow my lead. We take the first one with AMRAAM, the second with Sidewinder.”

“Or guns,” Hellman added.

“That bastard better be real dead before we get within gun range,” Thor said. “Now get your ass high.”

Hellman peeled off and put the Hornet in a steep, almost vertical climb. Thor shuddered as he thought of the fuel the light aircraft was sucking down. Another thing you learned early on, flying the Hornet. You had a maneuverability and speed that the Tomcat couldn’t touch, but God were they thirsty aircraft. You saved fuel when you could, knowing that it might be longer than you liked between tanking.

“Tally ho,” Thor said over tactical, acknowledging to the air traffic controller in CDC onboard Jefferson that he had contact on his incoming bogeys. “Hornet One-zero-six engaging lead flight of MiGs.”

Second Lieutenant Tai Huang curled his hand around the stick of his MiG, thankful that the thin cotton glove between his hand and it would absorb the moisture he felt seeping out of his palms. As section leader and lead for the forward-most pair of MiGs in this flight, it was his responsibility to order his disposition of forces, along with the assistance of the air traffic controllers on board the Chinese carrier. It was a new way of working, one that none of the four were completely at ease with yet, even after countless practice sessions before they’d left their homeland. But even after two hundred hours of concentrated airborne coordination, he still felt uncomfortable without a ground control intercept, or GCI, whispering guidance in his right ear over the circuit. Still, if the GCI could learn his job, then Tai could do it as well. No matter that the GCI didn’t have to concentrate on dancing a powerful aircraft through the air, evading missiles, and generally remaining airborne while he thought out the disposition of forces. It would have been impossible with earlier MiGs, but the 33 was so advanced it virtually did his thinking for him. Automatic trim control, heads-up display to prevent him from ever having to look away from the battle in front of him, and a host of electronic and weapons avionics that could virtually fight the battle on their own.

Almost, but not completely. As long as there were men in the cockpits of the enemy, there would be men in the cockpit of a MiG.

Just as now. While the MiG avionics was already suggesting that the section of two aircraft behind him be vectored to meet the oncoming Hornets, Tai knew better. Huan Tan, the lead in the second flight, was an excellent pilot and a particular master of the intricate geometries when a lighter, more maneuverable aircraft such as a MiG took on a monster like a Tomcat. Tai didn’t like admitting it, but it was one of his responsibilities as a section commander.

He himself, on the other hand, excelled in quick reflex actions, the bumblebee dance of equally matched foes in midair, the split-second decisions required when a MiG took on an equally agile Hornet. Yes, the correct thing to do was send Huan Tan after the Tomcats while Tai and his wingman took on the Hornets.

He made his orders clear over the circuits linking the four aircraft, even as he gained altitude and changed course slightly to put himself nose on to the lead Tomcat U.S. Marine or U.S. Navy? Too far away to tell. Not that it mattered anyway. Either way, the Tomcat would die. His wingman, Chan, chattered quietly over tactical to him, keeping him posted on every minute decision he made as he gained altitude and came in to form on Tai. They were fighting in the loose deuce position, the one that had been the favorite of American fighter forces for decades.

“On my mark,” Tai said. He wasn’t referring to a verbal mark, but to the notation that the avionics system would make in the link between the two aircraft data systems when Tai fired his first missile. Tai toggled the weapons selector switch into the proper mode, waited a split second, then pickled it off.

The missile shot out true and straight, descending quickly, its tail fire a bright phoenix in the sky. Seconds later, he heard his wingman cry out in exultation as he, too, fired his first real weapon in anger.

“Climb, climb,” Tai cried, gaining more sky even as he spoke. Altitude was safety, granting the aircraft room to recover from fatal mistakes, forcing the Hornet into a level game.

A harsh warning buzz went off just behind his left ear, and a missile symbol popped into being on his heads up display. An AMRAAM, one of the advanced medium-range missiles that all Hornets carried. Well, soon the Tomcat pilot would soon be too busy worrying about Tai’s missile to be so rash.

Tai put his aircraft into a hard, spine shattering turn, then pivoted about and waited at an angle just behind the Tomcat’s side as the other aircraft climbed. Behind him, he could hear Huan Tan chanting quietly to himself as he chased after the two Hornets.

They waited for what seemed like minutes, but in reality it must have been only a couple of seconds. Tai jinked hard, kicking out countermeasures, flares and chaff, then spinning his MiG away from the burning, noisy metallic cluster that he hoped would suck the AMRAAM in. He turned back to face the Tomcat, and saw empty sky, even though his heads-up display was chattering away that —

Wait. There he was. How the hell had he managed that? He stared at the heads-up display, glancing rapidly between the symbol displayed there and the actual airframe hurtling toward him at over Mach 1 in the sky. Before he could decide what had caused the discrepancy, the Tomcat had wheeled in and over him, the aircraft inverted and then rolling back into level flight to place himself squarely into the position that Tai had hoped to occupy on him.

“No, no, no, nononono — ” His wingman’s voice shattered up the scales, high, frantic and frightened. The heads-up display told him the reason — an AMRAAM missile inbound on him as well. There was the metallic cloud of chaff and flares, but Tai could already see it would not work.

“Brake hard. Descend, descend,” Tai shouted, frantically trying to coach his wingman back into basic sound defensive flying while simultaneously trying to figure out how to avoid the Tomcat now on his own ass.

Another AMRAAM? No, there would be no need at this angle. Better choose the Sidewinder, the potent small missile designed for short-range night fighting. The Sidewinder was infrared guided, and would seek out the bright, hot fire of his tailpipe. No chaff, no flare would be bright enough to distract it from his aircraft exhaust once it saw it. There was only one possibility — they’d tried it so often in practice and — there was the shot. Yes. Wait for it one second, then —

Tai pivoted the aircraft virtually in midair, overriding the automatic trim and anti-stall avionics to throw the MiG into a hard, flat spin. It was one of the most deadly emergencies any pilot could face, particularly in an aircraft such as the MiG. They had spent countless hours in the ready room discussing how to recover from one, had drilled repeatedly in the simulator, and even the most skilled of them had managed to achieve only a fifty percent recovery rate from a flat spin at this speed.

Still, fifty percent was better than the certainty of perishing in a hard white blast of noise and fire. If he could just pull it out, at precisely the right moment, he’d have a chance.

The sky spun dizzily around him, and Tai fought to keep his consciousness from fading away. It was important that he try to maintain some sense of where he was in the air, his orientation to the sun, whether the Tomcat had fired another missile.

Just as he felt his consciousness starting to gray out, he instinctively recognized the correct configuration of sun, Tomcat and MiG.

He snapped down hard, throwing the MiG into a steep descent. An almost deadly maneuver, one that usually resulted in an out-of-control tumble through the sky, ending in an uncontrolled impact with the ground. But it was his only chance.

Would the Tomcat follow him down? No, probably not. He would go help his wingman take on the remaining MiG, certain that no pilot could recover from the deadly tumble through the air.

But Tai could. He’d thought through the problem too many times, and now he felt instinctively that the right moves were his to make. The shudder slipped through the steel frame of his aircraft and passed without attenuation into his bones. He was no longer a separate entity, he was part of the aircraft, an integral whole with the fuselage and wings now in such odd orientation to the ground and sky. He steepened the descent, and felt the spinning motion of the aircraft lessen as the MiG fought for what it was designed to do, maintain an aerodynamic profile with the wind. A little more, a little more… he patted gently on the control surfaces, again overriding the automatic trim controls. The spin started to slow.

Finally, when he felt the nose in the proper orientation with the rest of his direction of movement, he stomped hard on the rudder, brutally countering the remaining spin with his control surfaces. For a moment he felt the MiG shudder, scream protests as G-forces wrenched structural members past any tolerance they were designed to accommodate. Then, as he knew it would, the MiG straightened out.

Altitude. He felt a cold punch in his stomach as he realized how far he’d tumbled trying to regain control of his aircraft. Seven thousand feet, no more. Barely enough time to pull it out.

He jerked back hard, demanding, asking with every atom of his being that the MiG honor this one last request. Pull up, pull up, and we will kill the ones who did this, he prayed silently. Pull up, just pull up.

The water rushed up at him at a dizzying rate of speed.

“Got him,” Bird Dog howled over tactical. “You see that, Kelly? Now that’s the way it’s done.” He heard Gator sigh in the backseat, and ignored him.

“I saw. Just one question, Bird Dog,” Kelly’s voice was cool. “What are you going to do about his playmate that’s trying to climb up your ass?”

Chan watched Tai spiral down toward the ocean, and swore quietly. They were short enough on airframes as it was, and there were no replacements within three thousand miles. All the more necessary that he eliminate the Tomcat that had gotten his wingman.

He saw the Tomcat now, just ahead. It was doing wingovers, dancing around its wingman like a bumblebee. How foolish, to lose one’s grasp of the tactical scenario over just one kill. It would be the last mistake that this particular American pilot would make.

Chan bore in on the American, fixated on his target. A warning beep on his ESM gear was his first hint that all was not well. He broke off, pivoted off of his former course, and searched for the threat.

Without warning, a Hornet descended on him like a hawk swooping down on its prey. It had been hiding high overhead in a cloud bank, watching the action below, waiting for just such a moment. Was it possible that the Tomcats had intentionally feigned inattention in order to entice him into just this sort of position? No, surely not — the Americans were not that subtle, and they were known to have an almost fanatical fear of taking casualties. While Chan would have risked Tai in just such a manner, he knew that the Americans would not.

Chan slipped off some altitude, turning hard to his right at the same moment. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction at his final position. He was between the sun and the Hornet, thus complicating the task of using a heat seeker against him. Additionally, he had slipped behind the foolish Tomcat, and was in decent if not superb firing position. He also had the Tomcats between his MiG and the Hornet, and there was no way that the Hornet would be foolish enough to shoot through his shipmates just to kill one MiG.

The missile, when it came, was all the more surprise. He heard the warning tone and had just one second to look around before he saw it, arrowing off the wing of another Hornet also coming down from the clouds. He knew it was a killing shot the moment he saw it, and just before it nestled in to the hot target source of his engine exhaust, Chan jerked down on the ejection seat handle.

Tai was tumbling toward the ocean. Finally, at the last moment, he felt the wings bite into the air, and control returned to him as the heavy vibration shuddered out. The air was flowing smoothly over his laminar surfaces again, keeping the MiG airborne.

How far had he been? He dared not glance at the altitude indicator during the mad plummet from air to sea, knowing that if he watched the numbers unroll as he fought for control of the aircraft that he would never, ever believe he could accomplish it. Yet accomplish it he had. Now, as the aircraft eased into level flight, he glanced at the altitude indicator. Four hundred feet above the hungry surface of the ocean. Merely microseconds at the speed at which he’d been traveling. Adrenaline pounded through every inch of his body as he realized just how close he had come to dying.

No pilot that he knew of could have recovered from the deadly flat spin and tumble. He had no equal, not in this chunk of airspace. And now he would prove to the Tomcat just how right that was.

Thor spared a few moments to watch that crazy Chinese bastard lose control of his aircraft before he returned his attention back to the other MiG. They’d finish this one off, no big deal now. Two Hornets versus one MiG wasn’t even a fair fight.

But nobody ever said aerial combat was supposed to be a fair fight. That wasn’t the point — the point was to get there, take care of business, and get home in one piece, hopefully with everybody in the squadron making it back, too.

As he turned his attention back to Hellman and the other MiG, he let out a short, heartfelt, “Shit.” While Hellman hadn’t been taken in by the MiG’s initial maneuver to swoop in from above and take position astern, he had made the fatal mistake of trying to turn inside the MiG’s turning radius. It hadn’t worked — the two were too evenly matched to do that while fighting on the vertical. The best thing to do was disengage from a yo-yo, pull out and away, and circle back in to get in position.

But how had the MiG bastard beat him back into a tail chase? It didn’t matter — it would be thoroughly covered in the squadron debrief, and Hellman would get a chance to make his explanations in before an entire crowd of experienced aviators. Thor was tired of being the one carping on him about his dangerous tactics. Maybe hearing it from the squadron’s skipper would beat some sense into the young jarhead’s brain. But for now, it was time to bail his wingman out before he took it up the ass.

Hellman and his MiG were caught in a flat loop, chasing each other around in ever tightening spirals. Hellman kept trying to cut inside the radius of the circle to take up position on the MiG, spurting afterburner fire as he recklessly waded through his onboard fuel allowance. Thor swore quietly. Even if he did manage to pull the asshole out of this one, he had less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it back to the tanker in time at the rate he was spending fuel.

They were still five thousand feet above him, so Thor came in on a long, flat turn, gradually ascending, timing his intersection with their loop so that he would fall neatly into position behind the MiG. He almost made it without the MiG noticing, but at the last second, Hellman pulled up hard and tried to barrel roll over and around into position. That’s when Hellman evidently noticed his returning wingman for the first time.

“Shit!” Thor pulled the Hornet into a hard right turn, standing the aircraft on its wing and then rolling inverted. He lost sight of Hellman behind the breadth of his canopy, and felt cold, clear dread run through his veins. Bitch of a thing, to put away a MiG and then get nailed by your own wingman. “Where the hell is that little bastard?”

A second later, Hellman screamed past him, still gouting afterburner, his canopy just feet below Thor’s own. Thor screamed obscenities at him as he went by, not daring to take his hands off the controls long enough to render a salute with his middle finger. And where the hell was the MiG? There — coming in from on high, Thor desperately out of position, Hellman now having completely lost the tactical picture, while Thor’s own, more experienced mind immediately worked out the geometries. He yanked hard, pulling the Hornet into a screaming loop, narrowly missing a mid-air collision with the MiG as he did. Just as he went by, Thor toggled the weapons selector to gun and mailed off a short blast. He saw the tip of the MiG’s wing dissolve in a spray of shrapnel. One hit his canopy with a hard, ringing blow, and Thor started swearing again, alternately swearing and praying that it hadn’t hit a hydraulics line. Or a control surface line.

He rolled upright as he reached the top of his barrel roll and saw that the MiG had Hellman on the run. Too close for an AMRAAM, and too dangerous an angle on his own wingman to take a chance with a Sidewinder. No, this would have to be up close and personal.

“Hellman — break right, break right. Now!” Thor shouted. Immediately, Hellman’s aircraft went into a hard dive toward the surface of the ocean. For the first time since they’d been airborne, Thor shoved his Hornet into afterburner and felt the hard kick of acceleration mold his spine and back into the familiar curves of the Hornet’s ejection seat. The force snapped his chin up, and he felt the skin pull back from the corners of his eyes and his mouth. He grunted, panting heavily to keep the oxygen flowing to his brain as he dove down on the offending MiG.

“Circle around and come up behind me,” Thor ordered, now gaining on the MiG

“Get behind me, get behind me.” He wondered if the hotheaded young Marine would obey. It was just the sort of thing Hellman would hate, being aced out of his own kill.

But there was no room in the air for pride, not of that kind. When you were out of position to make the kill and your wingman had it, you let him take the shot. You spend precious seconds arguing about who gets to nail the bastard, and odds are one of you will make a mistake.

Thor yelped in glee as Hellman’s aircraft cleared his Sidewinder field of fire, and he toggled off the missile with a harsh, jubilant cry. He watched it go, angling off his wing and reaching hungrily for the burning exhaust streaming out of the MiG’s tailpipe.

The MiG realized its danger too late. Chaff and flares exploded out from it, and Thor heard the warble of his ESM gear that indicated the MiG 33 was equipped with some pretty sophisticated electronic countermeasures as well. But the Sidewinder was a relatively simple missile, designed for only one thing, to seek out the hottest source anywhere around, and bury itself in it.

As he watched, the long, slender missile seemed to slide up the tailpipe itself, with the smooth grace of chambering a round in any weapon. Then, with its short, stubby tail fins still visible, it detonated.

Thor broke high, determined to avoid another shower of shrapnel. Already he could tell that the previous blast had nicked something, maybe just a control surface. The Hornet felt slightly sluggish under his hands, as though she wanted to obey his every order but was simply too tired.

Off to his left, now, an expanding fireball of red and orange filled the sky. It was fiery incandescent in the center, darkening to yellow then red, and finally fringed in black, rolling smoke. He heard the tinkling ping-ping of shrapnel pelting his fuselage, and prayed that none of it would reach the remaining missiles hung under his wings.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Hellman’s voice asked angrily. “I would have had him.”

“Save it for when we get back to the boat,” Thor said curtly. “What’s your state?”

“Who gives a shit? I — shit.” The bravado seeped out of Hellman’s voice as he realized just how low on fuel he was. “Oh, man, I’m really in the shitter, here.”

“Jeff, this is Hornet 106. We’re in bad need of a tanker, like within the next five seconds,” Thor announced over tactical. He hated emphasizing the blunder his wingman had made in public — the place to air dirty laundry was in the confines of the ready room — but he had to make sure that the Hornets were given priority for tanking.

“Hornet One-zero-six, One-zero-six, come right, course two-three-zero at seven miles. Texaco standing by.”

“Wingman goes first, Jeff,” Thor said quietly. He switched over to the private frequency he shared with Hellman. “You got that?” He could see by his heads-up display that Hellman was already making the course change and heading for the tanker. “You’ve got one plug at this, Hellman.”

“I’ve never missed a plug yet,” Hellman shot back.

“Not until you had to plug that MiG,” Thor observed. “It’s time to lose the attitude, buddy. You splash that aircraft with a MiG, you’ve got a chance of surviving as an aviator. But you splash one because you ran out of fuel, you’d better believe your flying days are over. Lose the attitude and take the plug, you got that?” Thor’s voice bore not one ounce of mercy. Not now.

“Yes, sir,” came back the short reply.

Thor circled overhead as he watched Hellman slide the Hornet in for a plug on the first tank, and watched as he hungrily sucked down five thousand pounds of JP8 from the KS-3 tanker.

And now for his own trip to the Texaco — 106 was lower on av gas than he needed to be to take a pass at the boat.

Chan stared up at the sky as the most brilliant stars made their first tentative appearances of the evening. It would be, he thought, perhaps the last night sky he would ever see, and he felt a slight surge of gratitude that at least the skies were clear.

He didn’t need radio contact with his carrier to know just how badly the entire mission had turned out. The oily black plumes of smoke towering the sky, still dark smudges against the sunset, told him everything he needed to know. If there were to be a rescue, it would come from the American forces. Chan knew only how he would have treated a downed American pilot had their situations been reversed, and he was not certain that he even wanted rescue. Not at that price.

A split second later, he was quite certain that he would undergo any sort of insidious torture or mistreatment that the Americans might have in mind. Then it happened again — something hard and rough brushed against his leg, something with massive inertia that almost popped him out of the water in reaction.

A third pass, this one more insistent, and Chan started screaming to every god he had ever known for deliverance, for mercy, for a fate other than the one that was approaching too quickly.

The shark’s fourth pass was far less tentative than the previous three, and lasted quite a bit longer.