Retribution

I. Downed Airmen

Wind whipped through the Megafortress cockpit as Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian leaned the plane as gently as he could onto her left wing, aiming to take a slow circle north of the Chinese aircraft carrier Khan and its escorts. He’d ordered his five crew members to eject when it looked as if he’d have to crash the Megafortress into the Khan to prevent it from launching its nuke-laden bomber against the Indians’ capital. Now that the Chinese had stood down, he turned his attention to his people in the water.

Ordinarily, the Megafortress’s flight computer would have recorded the plane’s position when the crew bailed, and then computed their likely landing area. Slapped into Search and Rescue mode, the computer would have projected a likely search area on the windscreen, along with convenient markers showing Dog where to look. He could have switched the Megafortress’s sensor inputs over to infrared and in a few moments picked out the bobbing bodies of his crew.

That wasn’t going to work now. Pressed into service to prevent a world war, Wisconsin had not been shielded against the T-Rays. Its brains had been fried over northern India; the only electronic device still working was a satellite radio that had been kept in a shielded box until after the explosions. Dog knew he would have to find them the old-fashioned way, with a pair of Mark 1 human eyeballs, now seriously derated due to fatigue.

Flying the EB-52 without a copilot was generally not difficult, but flying it without its computer was an entirely different story. Add the fact that his joystick, pedals and throttle were now connected to hydraulic backups, and the plane demanded every bit of his considerable piloting skills. The fuselage, ordinarily a slick, carefully streamlined airfoil, had five holes in it where the ejection seats had gone out. Dog had to alternately wrestle and baby the aircraft to get it to do what he wanted.

He found a patch of air around 2,500 feet that the Megafortress seemed to like, and rode it around in an elongated circle, looking for the orange life rafts that should have inflated as his crew descended.

“Dreamland EB-52 Wisconsin to crew — Mack, Dish, Cantor, where are you guys?” he asked over the shielded radio.

There was no answer. The survival radios the crew members carried had been in cases shielded against the T-Rays, but the otherwise stock devices had relatively limited ranges, and it was likely they were having trouble picking up Wisconsin’s transmission.

At least Dog hoped that was the case. He didn’t like the alternatives.

He pushed the plane lower and slower, trying for a better view. Displeased, the Wisconsin responded by literally flapping its wings — the flexible carbon-composite extensions at the very ends of the slicked-back wings began to oscillate.

The effect felt like a stutter in the stick. After a few hairy seconds, Dog realized that the shudder wasn’t a prelude to a nose dive; the Wisconsin chugged away at a hair under 200 knots, level as a laser beam and precisely 753 feet over the waves, according to the old-style analog altimeter.

A test pilot undoubtedly would have made a note of the phenomenon so he could discuss it with the engineers when he got home. Dog, a fighter pilot by training and inclination, did what most fast-jet jocks would do — he pushed the plane another notch, taking her down to five hundred feet and slowing her to 160 knots.

He trimmed the control surfaces like a yachtsman tacking into the final leg of the America’s Cup. The plane bucked, but then smoothed out as he reached five hundred feet. He found he had to keep a good deal of pressure on the stick to keep the nose up, but the plane felt stable. The ocean spread out before him like a smooth blue carpet, with the faint pattern of dark blue seashells arrayed shoulder-to-shoulder, uninterrupted as far as the eye could sight.

Not what he wanted to see.

He broadcast again on the emergency channel.

Still nothing.

He reached across the console, inadvertently changing his pressure on the stick. Immediately the Megafortress dipped to its left. He quickly added power and began to climb.

Something glinted to his left as he went to back the throttle off.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to crew — Mack? Anybody?”

“We’re all here, Colonel,” answered Major Mack Smith.

“What’s your situation?”

“Treading water.”

“Where are your life rafts?”

Mack explained that the men had purposely sunk their chutes and rafts to make it harder for the Chinese to find them. They had two backup, uninflated rafts in reserve.

“The Chinese stood down,” said Dog. “They’re not going to use their nuke.”

“We’d still rather not be eating dinner with chopsticks tonight, Colonel,” said Mack.

“Go ahead and inflate the rafts,” Dog told him. “I’ll get the Abner Read to come north to pick you up.”

The Abner Read, an American littoral destroyer, had been shadowing the Chinese fleet during the conflict. They were roughly fifty miles away when Dog last checked; it might take them two hours or more to get there.

“You sure the Chinese aren’t going to interfere?” Mack asked.

“They took several hits during the conflict. It looks like they’re spending all their energy just keeping the ship afloat,” said Dog. “If the Abner Read can’t come, I’ll ask the Pakistanis to send one of their ships. They have some patrol vessels to the northeast.”

“No way — they’ll just hand us over to the Chinese.”

“They’re our allies,” said Dog, though he wasn’t sure how far to trust them — the Pakistanis were allied with the Chinese as well, and during the conflict the two forces had worked together against the Indians.

“I still think I’d rather swim,” said Mack.

“Careful what you wish for, Major.”

“Colonel says the Pakistanis may rescue us,” Mack told the others.

“The Paks?” said Sergeant Peter “Dish” Mallack. “Fuck that. They were just trying to blow us out of the air.”

“They’ll turn us over to the Chinese,” said Technical Sergeant Thomas “T-Bone” Boone. “I ain’t wearing no Asian pajamas for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, I’m with you there,” said Mack.

Dish and T-Bone were radar systems operators; aboard the Wisconsin they’d kept track of hundreds of contacts — Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and American — as war threatened. Now they were just swimmers, and not particularly good ones.

Two other men had gone out with Mack — Lieutenant Sergio “Jazz” Jackson, the Megafortress’s copilot, and Lieutenant Evan Cantor, who along with Mack had been piloting the Flighthawk remote control aircraft from the Megafortress’s lower deck. Cantor had hit something on the way out of the aircraft and broken his arm; his face was deeply bruised and he seemed to have a concussion. Dish, the best swimmer of the bunch, had lashed himself to the lieutenant, helping to keep the younger man awake. Fortunately, all of their horseshoe-style life preservers had inflated; Mack couldn’t imagine staying afloat without them.

Mack turned to look to the south. He could see the mast of one of the Khan’s escort vessels, a destroyer, he thought, though he was far from an expert on ships. Behind it two thick curlicues of black smoke jutted from the water. The smoke came from ships damaged by the Indians; the Khan was farther east, marked on the horizon by a plume of white smoke — mostly water vapor rising from the hoses the crew was spraying on the parts of the ship damaged by missiles.

American missiles, for the record.

“If they pick us up, Major,” said Dish, “they’ll have a hell of a lot of questions about our plane. There’s no way they’re going to just let us go.”

“We’re not going to be picked up by the Pakistanis, or the Chinese,” Mack told them. “We’re going to get over to the Abner Read.”

“Hey, guys, I’m starting to get a little cold,” said Cantor.

Mack looked over at Cantor. His teeth were chattering.

“All right. We open one life raft,” said Mack. “We use that to get the hell out of here. Jazz, do the raft. Hang in there, Cantor. Dish’ll start a fire for you as soon as we get it open.”

Captain Harold “Storm” Gale put his hands against the sides of his head, trying to stop the ringing in his ears. He’d been slapped against the deck and bulkhead several times by salvos from attacking aircraft and missiles. His head hurt, but he decided arbitrarily that it wasn’t a concussion, and that even if it was, it wasn’t worth going to sickbay for.

The jagged cut in his leg from exploding shrapnel might deserve attention, but since the bleeding seemed to have slowed to an ooze, he’d deal with that later.

The ship herself was in good shape. The holographic damage control display on the deck of the Abner Read showed that she had sustained only minor damage despite the onslaught of missiles fired at her over the past hour.

What bothered Storm — what truly pissed him off — was the fact that his nemesis also remained afloat despite his own attack. The Chinese aircraft carrier Khan had taken three missiles from the Abner Read, and possibly a fourth from one of the destroyer’s smaller escorts, known as a Sharkboat, and the S.O.B. was still sailing.

Unlike the Indian carrier he had sunk some hours before.

“Captain, communication coming in from Fleet.”

“Give it to me.”

“Storm, Storm, Storm!” exclaimed Admiral Jonathon “Tex” Woods. “What the hell are you up to now?”

“Admiral.”

“You sunk the Shiva?”

“I believe that’s correct, sir. The Indian carrier is gone.”

“Great going, Storm.” The admiral’s voice swelled with pride, as if he were Storm’s greatest fan and biggest admirer. In fact just the opposite was true. “And you disabled the Khan?”

“I’m not sure of the damage to the Chinese, Admiral. The Dreamland people helped — they were invaluable.”

“You’re being uncharacteristically modest, Storm — a welcome development! Even if you are complimenting Lieutenant Colonel Bastian and his crew.”

Storm scowled. He didn’t like Bastian very much, but the colonel and his people had done an excellent job — and helped save his ship.

“The Abe is steaming north to take up a patrol off the Indian coast,” said the admiral, referring to the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the Seventh Fleet’s attack aircraft carriers and Woods’s temporary flagship. “Once the Abe is on station, you’ll receive new orders. In the meantime, get no closer than five miles to another warship — Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, or Croatian, for that matter.”

Storm had no intention of getting involved in another firefight; he was out of Harpoon antiship missiles, and Standard antiair missiles as well. But the order angered him.

“Why am I being ordered to withdraw?”

“You’re not being ordered to withdraw. All combatants have agreed to stay five miles apart. You have a problem with that, Captain?”

Woods’s belligerent tone was somehow more welcome than the phony proud-father routine he’d started with.

“I don’t have a problem, Admiral.”

“Good,” snapped Woods. “There’ll be a bottle of scotch with my compliments when you reach port.”

Woods signed off. Storm called up the navigational charts on the holographic display at the center of the bridge and had his navigator plot a course south. As he was about to relay their new orders to his exec and the rest of the ship, the communications specialist buzzed in with a new call.

“Cap, we have Dreamland Wisconsin on the Dreamland channel. It’s Colonel Bastian. The signal’s not the greatest; he’s using a backup radio.”

Storm fumbled with the control unit on his belt. Squelch blared into his headset before he clicked into the right frequency.

The funny thing was, it seemed to clear the ringing in his ears.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Abner Read. Can you hear me?”

“This is Storm. Dog, are you there?”

“I thought I’d lost you,” said the Dreamland commander.

“I’m here,” Storm told him. “We’ve sustained light damage. We’re rendezvousing with one of our Sharkboats and then sailing south.”

“Five of my people parachuted into the water near the Khan,” said Dog. “I need to arrange a search.”

“Give me the coordinates,” said Storm.

“I’m afraid I can’t. My locator gear was wiped out by the T-Rays. They’re roughly twenty miles due north of the Khan.”

Storm bent over the holographic chart, where the computer marked the ships’ positions with three-dimensional images. He was about sixty nautical miles away; cutting a straight line at top speed would get him there in two hours.

Except he couldn’t cut a straight line and stay five miles from the Chinese ships.

“See if you can get me a better location, Bastian,” said Storm. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Dog blew a frustrated wad of air into his mask and turned his attention back to the sea.

“Dreamland Wisconsin to Mack Smith. Mack, the Abner Read is on its way. We need to find your precise coordinates for them.”

“Not sure how I can help, Colonel,” snapped Mack. “Looks like they forgot to put lines on this part of the ocean.”

“Can you break out a signal mirror and flash my cockpit?”

There was no answer.

“Mack?”

A beam of light flashed on the port side of his aircraft.

“Keep flashing me,” said Dog. He gently nudged the aircraft in the direction of the light, then turned the radio to the Dreamland frequency. “Dreamland Command, this is Colonel Bastian. You reading me?”

“Spotty but we have you,” responded Major Natalie Catsman. Second in command at the base, Catsman was manning Dreamland’s situation and control room.

“Can you get my precise location from the sat radio?”

“Affirmative, Colonel,” she said after checking with one of the techs in the background. “The scientists tell me we can triangulate using your transmission.”

Dog heard Ray Rubeo objecting in the background that her explanation wasn’t precisely correct and the procedure would yield an error margin of plus-or-minus three meters.

“I’m going to overfly a spot and give you a mark,” Dog told her. “I’ll try it a couple of times and we can average out the location. I need it for the Abner Read.”

“Roger that.”

Dog lined up the Megafortress for a run over the splotches of light. He got his nose directly on one of the beams and ran it down.

“Now,” he told Catsman.

He took the computed position and passed it on to Storm. The navy captain grunted and told Dog it would take “a while” to get up there.

“How long’s a while?”

“A while is a while,” said Storm. “It may depend on the Chinese. They don’t appear to be in a particularly good mood.”

True enough, thought Dog. He switched back to the emergency frequency.

“Mack, can you hear me?”

“Just barely,” said Mack.

“Abner Read is on its way. It may take a couple of hours.”

“Tell those fuckers to get the lead out,” Mack replied. “The water’s starting to get cold. And that ship on the horizon looks like it’s getting closer.”

“Roger that,” said Dog. The ship was a Chinese frigate, and it had in fact turned in the direction of the downed airmen.

Dog banked too aggressively and the Megafortress sent a rumble through her frame.

“Sorry about that,” he told the plane. “I don’t mean to take you for granted.”

Lieutenant Kirk “Starship” Andrews finished the survey of the water around the Sharkboat and turned the Werewolf back toward the Abner Read.

“Sharkboat, Werewolf survey confirms no mines in the area,” he told the crew aboard the small vessel. Roughly the size of a PT boat, the Sharkboat looked like a miniature version of the Abner Read and was designed to work with the littoral destroyer. Lacking the bigger ship’s comprehensive sensors, the small vessels had proven susceptible to mines earlier in the deployment.

“Thanks much, Werewolf. We are proceeding toward rendezvous.”

Starship plotted the course back and let the computer take over the robot helicopter. Developed by Dreamland and originally intended to fight tanks and protected land positions, the Werewolf had been pressed into service as a naval helicopter gunship aboard the Abner Read. It proved remarkably adept at the job, so much so that Starship was now practically a regular member of the crew. The Navy people called him “Airforce” because of his service affiliation; the nickname at first had a ring of derision to it, but had come to be a compliment.

Starship rose halfway in the seat and turned around, trying to twist some of the knots out of his neck and back. His station was at one end of the destroyer’s high-tech Tactical Warfare Center.

Lieutenant Commander Jack “Eyes” Eisenberg gave Starship a thumbs-up. Eyes was the Abner Read’s executive officer, second in command of the ship and the majordomo of Tac, as the Tactical Warfare Center was generally known. Starship gave him a grin and turned back to his computer display.

“Object in water,” blurped the Werewolf computer.

“Identify,” Starship told the computer. He pointed at the touchscreen, obtaining a precise GPS reading as well as the Werewolf ’s approximation of its size.

“Unknown. Believed to be human,” said the computer.

“Tac — I have an object in the water. Could be a man overboard,” said Starship. He took control from the computer and pushed the Werewolf lower, slowing so he could focus the forward video camera better on the object.

The Werewolf looked like a baby Russian Hokum helicopter. Propelled by a pair of counterrotating blades above, the unmanned aerial vehicle had a stubby set of wings and jet engines whose thrust could be tapped to help push its top speed out to nearly 400 knots — roughly twice what a “normal” helicopter could do. It was quite happy to hover as well, though the transition from top speed to a dead stop could be bumpy. In this case, Starship rode the chopper into a wide arc, descending gradually around his target.

“Could be a pilot,” he said, studying the screen. “I think it might be one of the Chinese fliers.”

“Location,” said Eyes calmly.

Starship read the coordinates off. “Smile for your closeup, dude,” he told the stricken man, pushing the freeze-frame on the videocam.

“Airforce, what’s your status?” barked Storm.

“Downed flier, approximately, uh, let’s say ten miles southwest of us, Captain.” Starship was used to Storm’s gruff way of communicating, and his habit of interrupting after Eyes had already given an order. The captain could be a genuine, class one jackass, but he was a good leader when the shit hit the fan.

Not as good as Colonel Bastian, but few men were.

“How far is that Sharkboat from him?”

“Take them almost an hour to get to him, Captain,” Starship told him. “We’re a lot closer, just about ten miles, and—”

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Airforce,” Storm told him. “The Sharkboat is going to take flyboy. You’re going to hover over him and make sure they find him.”

Storm snapped off the circuit. Starship, confused about why a vessel farther away was being tasked to make the pickup, turned around and saw Eyes looking over his shoulder at the Werewolf ’s video feed. Because of the ad hoc nature of the arrangement, the Werewolf ’s video and other sensor data was not available at the executive officer’s own station.

“Looks scared,” said Eyes, bending down.

“Probably in shock,” said Starship. Punching out of an aircraft at a few hundred knots took a lot out of the body. And while the Arabian Sea was relatively warm — the surface temperature was no lower than 68 degrees — it was still cooler than a human body. “Sir, you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“How come the Sharkboat is taking him?”

“We’re heading north,” said Eyes. “Some of your Dreamland guys bailed and we’re going to pick them up, assuming we can get around the Chinese.”

Time past mixed with time future, the present a tangle unrecognizable, bizarrely shaped and shot through with pain.

Time lost meaning, and there was no meaning, there was no present or past, nothing solid, nothing reliable except confusion.

Major Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard lay on his back in the ocean, floating not on water but rocks, black rocks tinged with orange. Flames lapped at his face and his legs were packed solid in ice. When he breathed, his lungs filled with the perfumed air of lilacs.

What happened to me?

The voice came from the sky.

Am I out of the plane?

Zen tried to shake his head and regain consciousness. Instead of his head, his chest shook.

Where is Breanna? Where’s my wife?

A black blanket covered his head. He clawed at it, pulled and poked and prodded, but it would not yield. He gave up.

When he did, the blackness lifted to reveal a golden red sun no more than a foot from his head.

The voice spoke again.

I’m out of the plane, but where is Breanna?

Zen blinked his eyes, trying to shield them from the sun. His brain began to sort things out, reconstituting his memory like a computer rebuilding its hard drive. It moved sequentially, from the very beginning, everything rushing together: He was in high school, he was in the Air Force, he had just qualified as a fighter pilot, in the Gulf War.

Good shot, Captain, that MiG never had a chance.

Selected as test pilot, assigned to Dreamland, in love.

Well, you’re too pretty to be a bomber pilot, why’d you slap me?

I do, I do, I do the happiest day of my life and no, the damn Flighthawk is going to hit my tail pain just pain just dark blank nothing who cares no one cares never and I will walk damn you all damn everyone because I will walk and I won’t walk I won’t won’t won’t will not give up will come back and who I am who I am?

Where is Breanna? Where is my wife?

Bree?

The voice called louder, pleading. Finally, he recognized that it was his voice, that he was calling for his wife, that he wanted her more than he wanted anything, more than he cared for his own life, certainly.

And then time asserted itself, and he was aware of the present. Zen fell into it, consumed by the swirling ocean of gray.

“There’s an opportunity here that we hadn’t anticipated.” National Security Advisor Philip Freeman’s face was beet red as he pleaded his cause. “It’s been thrown in our lap.”

Freeman glanced at Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman, then at President Kevin Martindale. Jed Barclay couldn’t remember his boss arguing this passionately before.

“Of course there’s risk, but it’s not as great as it seems,” continued Freeman. “The T-Rays have been much more effective than we hoped. It will be days before power is restored. The Lincoln is within a day’s sail, and we still have the Dreamland assets in the region. If we recover those warheads ourselves, neither country will be in a position to challenge the other for years — years.”

“We need to know definitively where the warheads are before we give the go ahead for an operation,” insisted Secretary of Defense Arthur Chastain, speaking over the closed circuit communications system from the Pentagon War Room. “Without that, Mr. President, I can’t guarantee success. I’m not even sure I can with it.”

“Jed?” said Martindale.

“Space Command is working on the p-p-projections,” said Jed, referring to the Air Force agency responsible for monitoring satellite intelligence. “They say they’ll have something in twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours!” Martindale never shouted, but his voice was as loud as Jed had ever heard it.

“Mr. President,” said Chastain, “it’s going to take time to get the area under full surveillance. The satellites we couldn’t reposition were lost. Remember, we had to rush the operation before all the assets we wanted were in place, and even if they had been—”

“I don’t want excuses,” said Martindale. “Jed, tell Dreamland to find the warheads.”

“Begging your pardon, Mr. President, but besides Space Command, the National Reconnaissance Office is working on it, and so is Navy Intelligence,” said Admiral Balboa, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I’m sure we can cut the time down considerably. We’ll have something in twelve hours, maybe less. And the Dreamland people have done enough.”

“See what Dreamland can do,” Martindale told Jed. He was calmer now, his voice softer, though it still had an edge to it. “Those scientists can figure it out. They always have some sort of high-tech trick up their sleeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” said Chastain. “The Lincoln doesn’t have ground forces that could make the pickups.”

“We have a Marine Expeditionary Force near Somalia,” said Freeman. “We can put them into action. And the Dreamland people.”

“The Marines are two days away,” said Chastain. “At least.”

“Not if they stage out to the Lincoln and then go ashore,” countered Freeman. “What do you think, Admiral Balboa?”

Admiral George Balboa, also speaking from the Pentagon, cleared his throat. While he and Freeman had often found themselves at odds, Jed noted that the two men had been meeting together a lot recently. If Balboa’s tone was any indication, they had come to some sort of understanding.

“It might be possible,” said the admiral. “The Marine Ospreys can fly to the Lincoln, then operate from there or even somewhere onshore until their assault ship arrives. Of course, we need to know where the warheads are. That’s the key.”

“What about the Dreamland people?” asked Martindale. “Can they recover the weapons?”

“There are too many warheads for them to do it,” said Chastain. “And three of their planes have been shot down.”

“Jed?”

“Um, their ground unit is intact, but, um, it’s not big enough to do it on its own.”

“I meant, what’s the status of the airplanes?”

“There were three planes on the mission. Two were shot down,” said Jed. “The third was the plane flown by Colonel Bastian. He was preparing to crash it into the Chinese aircraft carrier when the Chinese sent their nuclear-loaded bomber back to the hangar deck. So six crews are in the water.”

“Have our people been picked up?”

“We’re still working on it. This has only happened within the last hour, sir. Thirty minutes.”

Martindale took a step toward the video conference screens. “Admiral, I want those people recovered.”

“I’m sure they’re working on it, sir,” said Balboa.

“Work harder.” Martindale turned around. “I’ll decide what we’re doing when I see the data on where the warheads are. But I agree with Philip. This is an historic opportunity. It’s worth considerable risk. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have to tell the world what we’ve done.”

Dog tacked to the east, widening his orbit. It was very possible the destroyer had noticed him circling the area and was coming over to investigate. In that case, he thought he might be able to throw them off by circling around an empty patch of water.

On the other hand, they might be pulling themselves close enough to fire short-range antiair weapons at him. He had no radar warning device, so he couldn’t even tell if he was being tracked.

“Dreamland Wisconsin, this is the Abner Read.”

“Wisconsin.”

“Dog, we’re under way toward your men,” reported Eyes, the Abner Read’s executive officer. “It’s going to take us a little more than two hours to get up there. There are some Chinese ships between us and the fliers. It’s possible they may try to interfere, despite the cease-fire. I’ll keep you advised.”

“Understood,” said Dog.

The Wisconsin had a little more than two hours’ worth of fuel left in her tanks. He’d need to go south and refuel before the Abner Read arrived. The question was, when.

Something flashed from the deck of the Chinese frigate — a missile.

The Chinese had just cast their vote in favor of sooner rather than later.

As starship spun the Werewolf to the south, the Chinese pilot’s head disappeared beneath a swell of water.

“Tac, this guy’s not going to make it much longer,” said Starship. He watched as the man bobbed back to the surface. The Chinese pilot shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Starship winced — the saltwater probably stung like hell — but at least the man was alive.

“Sharkboat is doing the best it can,” replied Eyes.

If the Werewolf were a “real” helicopter, it could have dropped a line from its belly and picked the poor sucker up. But the Werewolf didn’t have a line. Its winch pack, used for transporting objects in combat, was aboard the Abner Read, but would take at least ninety minutes to install and test.

Then again, they didn’t need a winch, just a line.

Starship suggested that he return to the Abner Read, where a sailor could tie a rope to one of the Werewolf ’s skids. He could then lift the pilot back to the ship.

“Why do you think he’ll grab onto the line?” Eyes asked.

“We’ll tie one of those rescue collars on it,” said Starship. “I think he’ll grab it if it’s in front of his face.”

“Let’s give it a shot,” said the lieutenant commander. “Head back here. I’ll have a sailor standing by.”

The Megafortress didn’t seem any happier to go fast than it had slowing down. Dog slicked the aircraft’s control surfaces back, rigging her for speed as he prodded the engines. Ordinarily, the aircraft would have responded instantaneously, jumping forward with a burst of speed. But the holes at the top and bottom of her fuselage where the crew had punched out created strong currents of air that fought against her wings’ ability to provide lift. She was unbalanced, and moved sluggishly, drifting sideways rather than straight ahead.

“Come on now,” said Dog. He tried to correct by adjusting his engines, but was only partly successful; even as he picked up speed, he felt as if he was fighting a stiff crosswind.

The missiles the Chinese ship had launched were HQ-7s, a Chinese version of the French Crotale. Guided by radar from the launch ship, the missiles used an infrared sensor to detonate once they were near their target. Ordinarily the Megafortress would have no trouble confusing the missiles, jamming both the destroyer’s radar and the guidance frequency. The aircraft’s stealthy radar profile would have helped, reducing the target the enemy had to home in on. But Dog didn’t have electronic countermeasures, and the holes in the Megafortress’s hull negated the stealthy effects of the plane’s skin.

The one thing he knew he did have going for him was the missile’s range. Though it was capable of hitting a Mach 2 target at 13,000 meters — roughly eight miles — its practical range was much closer to 8,000 meters. The Wisconsin was about 10,000 away.

Dog locked his eyes on the blue sky in front of the windscreen, fighting to hold the Wisconsin steady.

“Go,” he told the plane. “Go!”

From Mack Smith’s vantage point in the water, the missile looked like a white finger jetting across the sky, spewing a trail of cotton after it. The Megafortress seemed to hang in the air, completely unaware that it was in the crosshairs.

“Hit the gas, Colonel,” yelled Mack. “Get the fuzz buster going. Jink. Do something, for chrissakes.”

“He doesn’t have countermeasures,” said Jazz, next to him in the water.

“Yeah. Shit.”

The missile stopped spewing cotton from its rear. It continued forward another mile or so, then disappeared. The Megafortress continued northward.

Mack turned back to the others. All of them, including the injured Cantor, were staring in the direction of the ship that had fired the missile. Its bow was turning in their direction.

“All right, guys, here’s what we’re going to do,” Mack said. “Number one, we get the other raft inflated and lash it to this one. Number two, we find the Abner Read. She’s to the southwest.”

“Major, that ship has to be fifty or sixty miles from us,” said Dish, glancing at Cantor. “I don’t know.”

“I do know,” said Mack forcefully. “Let’s get this fucking done. And no more bullshit defeat talk.”

“I’m not—”

“No more bullshit, period,” said Mack, fishing for the uninflated raft kit.

Dog counted off sixty more seconds before allowing himself to believe the missile had missed. He turned the Megafortress to the west, now well north of the Chinese and his men.

“Dreamland Command, this is Wisconsin. I’ve just been fired on by the Chinese frigate. I’m all right,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “What happened to the cease-fire?”

“We copy, Colonel,” said Major Catsman. “We’re alerting U.S. forces in the area. We’re on the line with the White House,” she told him, pausing. “They’re assuring us a cease-fire has been worked out.”

“Well assure them a missile just flew by my windshield.”

“Yes, sir.” Catsman paused once more, apparently relaying the information. “There’s a possibility not all Chinese units got the message,” she told Dog. “It’s being reissued.”

A handy excuse, thought Dog — and one typically employed by the Chinese.

“I’m going to go east and circle. Hopefully he’ll think I’m over our guys and he’ll change direction,” said Dog. “I’m not sure what else I can do.”

“Colonel, be advised that our data on Chinese frigates indicate that it’s carrying HQ-7 antiair missiles similar to Cro-tales. You will be within lethal range of the missiles at seven miles.”

“I already found that out, Major. But thanks.”

The petty officer shot his arms into the air, signaling to Starship that the Werewolf was clear to launch.

“Werewolf powering up!” said the pilot, louder than necessary. His adrenaline was getting the better of him.

“Werewolf is away,” he reported to Tac as the robot leapt into the air. Starship spun his tail, got his nose down and whipped over the waves, racing for the Chinese pilot. The computer marked off his progress in a legend to the right of the red crosshair designating the man’s location. He throttled back as he reached the flier. The wash from the blades made the collar at the bottom of the rope dance back and forth. It wasn’t going to be as easy to grab as Starship thought.

The man in the water bobbed helplessly as Starship approached. He fired off a round of flares, trying to make sure he had the man’s attention, then nudged the Werewolf down until the collar skimmed in the waves. The wash from the rotors beat a circle before him as he worked slowly toward the pilot.

The pilot disappeared in a swell. Starship pushed forward in a rush, then realized that was the wrong thing to do — he was only roiling the water further. He slid the aircraft into a turn and throttled back as much as possible before trying again after the man’s head reappeared.

He stopped about four or five feet from the downed pilot.

“Grab it, damn it,” he said, sliding the collar right in front of his face, but the man still didn’t react.

He’s dead, he thought.

Not ready to give up, Starship nudged the stick back gently in the direction of the man. The collar hit the pilot in the chest as a small burst of wind nudged the aircraft downward.

“Grab it!” urged Starship. He flipped on the Werewolf ’s PA system and told him to take the line. The Chinese pilot still didn’t move.

Reluctantly, Starship started to nudge away.

“Tac, I’m afraid—”

He stopped mid-sentence as the screen from the chin cam caught his eye. The pilot had reached out his arm toward the collar.

“Finally,” said Starship, easing back.

Up on the Abner Read’s bridge, storm folded his arms as he studied the holographic projection of the ocean around his destroyer. There was no way to get to the downed Wisconsin fliers without sailing closer than five miles to one of the Chinese ships.

Obey orders and let them die?

The hell with that.

But armed with only his torpedoes, he’d be at a severe disadvantage if any of the Chinese ships became hostile. And the fact that one had just fired a missile at Bastian didn’t bode well.

He could turn off all of his active sensors and try to sneak into the area. But he couldn’t go blind, and Bastian had told him he’d have to leave the area to refuel. Putting out the Abner Read’s passive sensor array would slow him down.

“Eyes, how close to the Chinese pilot is the Sharkboat?” Storm asked, pressing his intercom connection. “How long before it can come north and scout the area for us?”

“Captain, the Werewolf has the Chinese pilot in tow and is inbound.”

“How?”

“We had a rope rigged to the aircraft’s skid. Airforce thought of it.”

Those Dreamlanders — always thinking.

“Let me know when he’s aboard.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Starship wasn’t sure how fast he could go before the injured pilot lost his grip. He started out slowly, at under ten knots, but the Abner Read had her turbines churning, and just to keep up he had to bring the aircraft to thirty knots. With one eye on the videocam showing the pilot at the end the rope below, he nudged up his speed — forty knots, fifty, then sixty. The wind rippled the man’s flight suit. Starship imagined it might feel like a motorcycle ride. Then again, it could be the most horrific experience the pilot ever had.

He reached 100 knots before the destroyer came into view.

“Tac, I have our package ready to drop under the Christmas tree,” said Starship. “If you can clear me in to land.”

“Stand by. Security team to the helipad.”

Starship adjusted his altitude as well as his speed, bringing the pilot down about five feet from the waves. Four armed crewmen waited near the bull’s-eye on the fanged fantail. Starship tried to get the pilot right between them but moved a bit too abruptly and bowled over one of the sailors. The others scrambled to help, wrestling the Chinese pilot from the collar as they fought the wind from the helicopter above.

“Tac, tell those guys to take it easy,” said Starship. Not only was he worried that they were going to hurt the pilot, but their tugs pulled at the Werewolf, wreaking havoc with the controls. The computer kept trying to compensate, fighting Starship as he struggled to hold her steady above the moving ship.

“He’s secure,” said Eyes finally.

Starship pulled up.

“Airforce, you have your ears on?” barked Storm.

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

“I want you to run ahead and get a look at the ships between us and those Dreamland people. We’re turning off our radar so the Chinese don’t realize we’re coming. I want to see what I’m up against.”

“On my way.”

Dog’s plan worked — sort of. The Chinese frigate once more changed direction, sailing toward the spot in the ocean he was circling. But he’d also attracted the attention of a smaller vessel, which was now approached from the northeast. This was a small patrol boat, little more than an overgrown speedboat, but just as deadly to the men in the water. It was also more maneuverable, and more likely to search the area and conclude that the downed airmen were somewhere else.

Dog decided he would try and shoo it away; if nothing else, the frigate would be convinced that he was trying to protect someone there.

The aircraft growled as he pushed her wing down, moving farther sideways than forward and losing altitude more quickly than he’d intended. Dog wrestled it back under control in time to pass by the bow of the patrol boat at two hundred feet — not particularly low, though close enough to see the 40mm double-barreled gun on the foredeck as it swung in his direction.

Dog babied the stick, putting the Megafortress into another turn, this one as gentle as he could manage. He slid down to one hundred feet and came over the patrol boat. The 40mm gun turned again in his direction, but if it fired, Dog never saw the shots. He pulled off as he passed, and by the time he glanced down, saw that the vessel had turned back in the direction of land.

Mack watched the Megafortress disappear to the northwest, once again chased away by the Chinese destroyer. At least it had taken the ship with it this time.

They’d lashed the two inflatable rafts together and put Cantor in one. Mack told them that they’d take turns in the other once they got tired. For now, they were all going to kick in the direction of the Abner Read.

Forty or fifty miles on the open ocean was a very, very long distance. But Mack figured that moving was better than floating, and every hundred yards was a hundred yards away from the Chinese.

“Aw, shit,” yelped Jazz. “Ah, man.”

“What’s up?”

“My leg. Feels like I got an iron chain in it.”

“It’s just a cramp,” said Mack. “Work through it.”

Jazz continued to curse.

“Take a break, Jazz,” Mack told him finally.

“I’m OK, Major.”

“Your lips are turning blue. Get in the damn raft. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was only after Jazz pulled himself into the raft, leg twitching, that Mack realized everyone’s lips were blue.

“Kick,” he told the others. “Let’s go. Kick!”

There was only so much that could be done to make a helicopter stealthy, but the Werewolf was small and its ability to fly extremely low would make it hard for the Chinese ships to spot it until it was very close. Starship figured that if he moved fast enough, he could get by any of the ships before they could react and try to shoot him down.

A Chinese guided-missile cruiser presented a particular problem, since it sat almost directly in his path. But the cruiser had been heavily damaged in the battle, and smoke poured from three different places on the ship. The radar warning receiver aboard the Werewolf indicated that the vessel was not using its weapons or even early warning radar; most likely the radar systems had been destroyed. Still, Starship kept an eye on the infrared warning panel as he shot past no more than a mile away, worried that the ship might try firing a heat-seeking missile without locking him up on radar.

With the cruiser in the rearview mirror, Starship put the pedal to the metal and sped over the waves. About three miles from the GPS point he’d been given as the fliers’ location, he began rising to get a better view for his radar and other sensors.

The first thing he saw on the synthesized radar screen was a Chinese destroyer, six miles to the east. Dreamland Wisconsin was eight or nine miles north of the destroyer.

So he had the neighborhood, at least.

Starship slowed his speed to eighty knots and did a quick scan of the area around him; he couldn’t see anything in the water. He instructed the computer to set up a search pattern; when the grid came up on the screen, he chose the segment closest to the Chinese destroyer as a starting point and told the computer to go.

The Werewolf hadn’t actually reached the point when he spotted a pair of rafts and several swimmers three miles to the west. He took back control and turned toward them.

“Werewolf to Tac,” he said. “I have our subjects in view. Counting — four — no, five men — two in the raft, others in the water. Stand by for GPS coordinates.”

The noise reminded Mack Smith of his brother’s whiny two-stroke weed whacker — assuming it had a blanket thrown on it.

The water to the east seemed to bubble up into a moving volcano.

“Chopper,” said Tommy. “Ours or theirs?”

They were too far away to see it clearly, but the sound gave it away.

“That’s a Werewolf,” said Dish.

“Yeah,” said Mack. “Has to be from the Abner Read.”

The robot aircraft banked southward, moving away.

“Yo, Werewolf — where are you going?” grunted Mack. The mouthpiece for his survival radio was integrated with the collar of his Dreamland-designed flight suit, but the radio was in a sleep mode to conserve battery power and had to be manually turned on. Mack reached down to the vest and did so, then repeated the hail, this time with more formality.

Dog, not the Werewolf, answered.

“Mack, that’s the Abner Read’s aircraft,” said Dog. “He’s scouting your position.”

“Wisconsin, can you connect me with the pilot? He’s flying to the south.”

A transmission from the Werewolf overrode the reply. Neither were intelligible.

“Mack Smith to Werewolf. Yo, you just flew south of us.”

“Just getting the lay of the land, Mack,” responded Starship.

“Hey, Junior, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re flying over the sea.”

“Oh, that’s what that blue stuff is. I thought I was upside down.”

“You’re a joke a minute, kid. How long before you get that tin can you’re in up here?”

“Abner Read will pick you up in about an hour and a half.”

Mack glanced over at Cantor. He was out of it.

“Give me a vector and we’ll meet it halfway,” said Mack.

“Major—”

“Give me a vector, kid. We’re not hanging here all day.”

Dog pulled back on the stick, coaxing the Megafortress into a gentle climb. With the Abner Read on its way and the Werewolf close enough to talk directly with the downed airmen, there was nothing more for him to do here.

He got Catsman on the Dreamland Command frequency and through her spoke to the KC-10 tanker that had been tasked to Dreamland for the operation. They arranged a rendezvous about an hour’s flying time south of his present position.

When Dog finished making the arrangements, he turned back to look for the Chinese frigate. Not spotting it right away, a shiver of panic flew through him. He’d blundered too close, he thought, and was now in range of another missile.

Then he saw the frigate in the distance. It had given up chasing him and was once more sailing back in the direction of Mack and the others.

The Werewolf picked up everyone’s morale, but Mack soon realized that could be too much of a good thing. For while they kicked ferociously for a few minutes, pushing the raft in the direction of the approaching American ship, they quickly ran out of energy. And with the Abner Read still far in the distance, they had to conserve their strength.

“All right, new plan,” Mack told the others, and felt his teeth chatter as he spoke. “One guy kicks at a time. Two guys, one on each side, rest. Other two stay in the raft. Jazz, how’s your leg?”

“Much better.”

“Great,” said Mack, though he knew the lieutenant was lying. “All right. I’ll kick and steer. Idea here is that we’re saving our strength. All right? We’re all about endurance right now.”

“I’ll swap with Dish,” said Jazz.

“Nah, it’s OK,” said Mack.

“Dish looks cold.”

“I’m OK,” said Dish.

Jazz slipped into the water next to him. Mack watched his shock as the water hit him. Then Dish pulled himself into the raft, Mack could see he was both reluctant and grateful.

Mack leaned over toward Jazz. “You hanging in there, kid?”

“I’m with ya, Major.”

“Kick slow if you have to, to stay warm.”

“Staying warm.”

Mack kicked slowly himself, pushing the raft almost imperceptibly. He told himself he was in a survival tank bank at Nellis Air Base, just having a grand ol’ time with the instructors, one of whom had been Sports Illustrated model material.

Luscious, that.

Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.

In the raft, Dish shifted around to get closer to him.

“Hey, Major,” he said in a barely audible voice. “That Chinese ship. I can see it on the horizon, getting bigger.”

Damn, thought Mack, doing his best not to turn around.

The radar detector aboard the Werewolf bleeped to let Starship know that the Chinese frigate was looking for it. The ship had changed course and was now making a beeline for the life raft.

“Tac, I need you to take a look at this,” Starship said. In an instant, Eyes appeared at his side.

“The frigate is heading in their direction. You think it knows they’re there?”

Eyes squatted and looked at the Werewolf control screen, which displayed a situational representation of the area. The sitrep provided a bird’s-eye view, augmented with information about the contacts, their speed and bearings. The control computer could gather and synthesize the information from a variety of sources, but in this case it was working primarily with the Werewolf ’s regular and infrared radar. The destroyer was about four miles from the men.

“They’re too far to know exactly where they are,” decided Eyes. “But I’d say they definitely know they’re in the vicinity.”

“How long before they actually see the raft?”

“Hard to tell. It’s too small and low on the water to be detected by any radar the Chinese have.” Eyes straightened. “That leaves human lookouts. Good glasses, good lookouts…”

Eyes didn’t finish the sentence. Starship knew that his own Mark 1 eyeballs were capable of picking out a silver speck in a bright sky at four or five miles, no sweat. Here, the lookouts would have a nice orange target on a field of deep blue.

“We have to figure out a way to get them out of there,” said Starship.

“That, or get the frigate out of there.”

The sun poured through the hatchway above the copilot’s seat as Dog turned toward the Chinese ship. Wind surged through the cockpit, grabbing at the folds of his flight suit. He could barely hear his breath in the face mask, which was just as well — he’d started to hyperventilate, too revved on adrenaline.

“Wisconsin to Werewolf. Starship, can you go over to the Dreamland Command channel?” he asked over the emergency frequency.

“Werewolf. Affirmative, Colonel.”

“Do it.” Dog guessed that the Chinese were monitoring the emergency frequency and didn’t want them listening in.

“I’m on, Colonel.”

“The Chinese frigate is heading toward Mack and the others. How close is the Abner Read?”

“Roughly an hour and a half,” said Starship.

“Are you armed?”

“Only with. 50 caliber bullets.”

The bullets were fired from machine guns in the Werewolf ’s skids. The weapon wouldn’t do much against the frigate, and to use it Starship would have to fly well within range of the Chinese ship’s missiles.

“Wisconsin, he’s activated targeting radars,” warned Starship.

“Yeah, roger that,” said Dog. He took a hard turn, hoping to “beam” the radar, flying in the direction of the waves, where it was more difficult to be detected.

“Still targeting you.”

“Just tell me if he fires.”

“Werewolf,” said Starship, acknowledging.

Dog began a bank, aiming to circle in front of the destroyer and make himself a more inviting target.

It was hopeless, wasn’t it? Sooner or later the captain of the frigate was going to figure out what he was up to, if he hadn’t already. And by now he’d have realized that the Megafortress was unarmed and impotent.

Well, he was weaponless, but was he impotent?

An hour and a half before, he’d been willing to give his life to keep the Chinese from launching a nuclear weapon and involving the world in a nuclear war.

He could do that now, he thought. If he hit the frigate right, he’d sink it.

He’d have to stay at the stick to do it.

Dog hesitated, then pushed the stick back toward the frigate. He reached for the throttle glide, ready to put the engines to the wall.

“Missile launch!” screamed Starship. And as he did, Dog saw two thick bursts of white foam erupt from the forward section of the Chinese ship.

Mack saw the missiles streak from the Chinese destroyer but couldn’t tell what they were firing at. The Wisconsin, he guessed, though he couldn’t see it in the sky.

The Werewolf was skittering around two miles to the east.

Cantor groaned.

“Maybe the chopper can take him back to the ship,” said Dish.

“Maybe,” said Mack, though he knew that the small helicopter wasn’t normally equipped with rescue equipment. “Hey, kid, you still up there? Werewolf?”

“Werewolf.”

“We got an injured airman here. It’s Jazz — you think we can rig a stretcher up or something?”

“Uh, negative, Major. I have a line running down from the bird and there’s a collar attached, but I don’t know about hooking up a stretcher. It’s a long way back, and he’d have to hold on. I don’t think he could make it.”

“That’s it, kid. You just gave me a great idea. Get overhead right now,” he added, as two more missiles flew from the destroyer.

One hand on the power controls and the other on the stick, Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian goaded the Wisconsin to the southeast, urging her away from the missiles. The weapons were smaller and faster than the Megafortress, and didn’t have to worry about dealing with holes in their fuselage. On the other hand, the Megafortress had a five-mile head start and a human pilot guiding her.

Dog pushed the Megafortress toward the waves, trying to get as low as possible without turning his plane into a submarine. The radar in the Chinese destroyer, originally intended for tracking targets tens of thousands of feet higher, lost the aircraft at about a hundred feet, leaving both missiles to use their onboard infrared detectors to find the target.

The first missile, either incorrectly believing it was near the Megafortress or simply deciding it had had enough of the chase, imploded a good mile from the Wisconsin, harmlessly showering the sea with shrapnel.

The second missile continued in the right direction. The launch trajectory had sent it climbing over the Megafortress by a few thousand feet. As it corrected, Dog pushed hard to the south, taking his juicy heat signature away from the missile’s sensor. The radar on the frigate picked up the plane as it turned, then lost it again, though not before its fitful guidance beam sent the missile into a half loop back toward the target.

Dog didn’t know what was going on behind him; he only knew that the farther he flew, the better the odds of survival. He’d been chased by countless missiles, some radar guided, some infrared, a few like this one — a combination of the two. Even with countermeasures, it was always a question of outrunning the thing—“getting where the missile ain’t,” as an instructor had taught him a million years ago. Jink, thrash the pedals, lean on the throttle — just go.

Drenched in sweat, Dog felt the water rolling down his arms, saturating the palms of his hands. He slid his left hand farther down the stick, worried that his fingers would slip right off.

As he did, there was a low clunk behind him and the plane jerked forward, its tail threatening to rise. He used both his hands to keep control, but even as he did, he felt a surge of relief — the shock had undoubtedly come from the warhead’s explosion, and while it must have been close enough to shake the plane, he could tell it hadn’t done serious damage.

Leveling out, Dog took a moment to wipe the sweat from the palms of his hands, then pulled back to climb. He glanced over his left shoulder, looking for the frigate in the distance.

He didn’t see the ship. But he did see a silvery baseball bat, headed straight for him.

It was another HQ-7 antiair missile, and it was gaining fast.

Though it was small, the Werewolf kicked up a pretty good amount of wind from its props and engines. Mack had trouble keeping his eyes clear as the robo-helo edged in, its rope and sling swinging below.

What Starship had called a collar looked like a limp rubber band — a wet, slimy one that packed the wallop of a wrecking ball. As Mack reached for it, a swell pushed him forward faster than he expected and he was whacked in the neck. He grabbed for the rope but couldn’t quite reach it.

“Get that mother!” he yelled.

He put his left hand on the raft and lurched forward, jumping across the tiny boat for the collar. He managed to spear his arm through it and immediately began to spin to the right. T-Bone jumped at the same time and also grabbed part of the collar. Dish reached but missed, grabbing T-Bone instead. The three men crashed together, none of them daring to let go. The tied-together rafts twirled beneath them, one of them nearly swamping.

“I got it, I got it!” yelled Mack. He hung on as the rope bucked back and forth. “Just grab me. Grab onto me and hold onto the rafts. Stabilize them!”

Starship was trying to tell him something, but Mack couldn’t hear. He felt the helicopter pulling him upward and tried locking his grip by grabbing his flight suit, so that the sling was tucked under his arm. His right leg tangled in the line they’d used to lash the two rafts together, and he felt as if he was being pulled apart at the groin.

“Hold me and the raft! Hold me and the raft!” he shouted, though by now his voice was hoarse.

They were moving, though he had no idea in what direction. It wasn’t exactly what he’d in mind, but it was something.

Starship didn’t know for sure whether the men in the raft had snagged the line until he had to struggle to correct for a shift in the wind. He nudged the Werewolf forward and the rafts came with her, pulling through the water at about four knots.

The frigate was still coming toward them.

“Major, I’m going to try increasing the speed,” said Starship. “Are you guys all right?”

Mack’s response, if there was one, was drowned out by the roar of the Werewolf ’s blades directly overhead. The engineers who had advertised the chopper as “whisper quiet” obviously had a unique notion of how loud a whisper was.

Starship notched the speed up gently, moving to six knots and then eight. He knew it had to feel fast to the men on the rafts, but it was less than half the frigate’s speed, and the ship continued to close. While the helo was too low to the water for an antiair missile, it was only a matter of time before the frigate’s conventional weapons could be brought to bear.

“Come to ten knots,” he told the computer, deciding to use the more precise voice command instead of the throttle.

As the computer acknowledged, a warning panel opened on the main screen — the frigate’s gun-control radar had just locked onto the helicopter.

Dog drove the Megafortress down toward the waves, hoping he could get low enough to avoid the radar guiding the missile toward him. He hung on as the Wisconsin shook violently, the aerodynamic stresses so severe that he thought for a moment the missile had already caught up. He kept his eyes on the ocean as he slammed downward; when he thought it was time to pull up, he waited five long seconds more before doing so.

By then it was almost too late. The controls felt as if they were stuck in cement. He put his feet against the bulkhead below the control panel and levered his entire weight backward. The plane reluctantly raised her nose, and was able to level off at just over fifty feet, so close he worried that he was scooping the waves into the engines.

Dog’s maneuver had cost him so much airspeed that the missile shot past, still flying on the last vector supplied by the guidance radar. He saw it wobbling a few hundred feet overhead; instinctively he ducked as the warhead blew up two or three hundred meters in front of him.

Fourteen kilograms of high explosive was more than enough to perforate an aluminum can, even if that can was covered over with an exotic carbon resin material. But the truly deadly part of the HQ-7’s warhead was the shroud of metal surrounding the explosive nut; the metal splinters the explosion produced were engineered to shred high performance fighters and attack aircraft. Fortunately, the designers envisioned that the warhead would be doing its thing behind the plane it was targeted at, not in front of it, and the majority of the shrapnel rained down well beyond the Wisconsin.

Not all of it, however. The left wing took a dozen hits, the fuselage another six. A fist-sized slab of former missile punched through the top of the cockpit behind Dog. It crashed into the bulkhead at the rear of the flight deck, spraying more metal around the cockpit. Dog felt a hot poke on his right side, and winced as a splinter rebounded off one of the consoles and hit his ribs. It barely broke the skin, but still hurt like hell.

Clearly, the shrapnel had damaged the plane. He decided a poke in the side was a small price to pay for the near miss, and started to climb again, angling southward, well out of the frigate’s range.

Hands on hips, Storm watched the video feed from the Werewolf in astonishment. The downed airmen seemed to have formed a human chain connecting their rafts with the robot helo. Any second now, he thought, one of them would suggest the helicopter turn around so they could try boarding the destroyer chasing them.

More guts than brains, that bunch.

He turned back to the holographic table, rechecking the positions of the Chinese ships. Then he reached to the com switch on his belt.

“Sickbay, how’s our guest?”

“Conscious, Captain. In shock, though. Looks like a concussion, but no other serious injuries.”

“Can he be transported?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, sir.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“If it were absolutely necessary.”

Storm flicked the controller. “Communications — send a message to the captain of the Khan. Tell him I have one of his pilots and I’m on my way to return him. Tell him I need to talk to him right away.”

The Werewolf’s small size and shifting location made it difficult for the gun radar to lock, but the Chinese were definitely out to earn an A for effort. The radar warning receiver kept flashing and then clearing, only to flash again.

Finally, a shell arced toward the helo. It missed by nearly a half mile, short and wide to the right. The 56mm gun at the bow was effective at about 10,000 meters; the computer calculated it would be within range of the rafts in another sixty seconds.

Starship notched the speed up to twelve knots.

“Mack, can you get the raft tied in better?” he asked.

When the major didn’t respond, Starship tried again, this time yelling into the microphone.

Still no answer. The frigate was now forty-five seconds from range.

“Fourteen knots,” Starship told the computer.

Mack’s legs felt as if they’d been pulled from his hips. The waves cracked across the bottoms of the two rafts, punching them up and down. This wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if they bounced together. Instead, they rumbled unevenly, thumping and jerking in a madly syncopated dance. It was as if he were standing on the backs of two rodeo bulls, each of whom were riding in the back of a poorly sprung pickup truck.

T-Bone had his right leg and Dish his left. The others, except for Cantor, were holding onto them.

“Hey, this is fun, isn’t it?” yelled Mack, trying to cheer them up.

As if in reply, the Werewolf gave him a fresh tug. He suddenly jerked forward, the ride smoother — too smooth, he realized as he began to spin. He’d been pulled completely from the raft.

“Starship, get me back! Starship!”

Mack spun to his right. He caught glimpses of the destroyer as he spun. The Chinese warship seemed to gain a mile every time he blinked.

Dizzy, he closed his eyes, then quickly opened them as the ocean bashed against his leg. Something flew at him — a bullet from the frigate’s gun, he thought. But it was only Dish, leaping out to grab him as the Werewolf swung back with him.

The rafts twirled as the Werewolf once again changed direction.

“Hang on, hang on!” Mack shouted to the others.

“Look!” yelled Dish, pointing behind him in the direction of the frigate.

Mack wanted to scream at him; there was no sense pointing out how close the frigate was. Dish turned around, then looked back up at Mack, a grin on his face.

What the hell are you smiling about? he wondered, then glanced over Dish’s shoulder and saw that the frigate had turned off.

“The Khan has told the frigate to knock it off,” Storm told Dog. “They’ve turned away.”

“Why were they firing in the first place?”

“Why do the Chinese do anything?” said Storm. “They gave me some cock and bull story about the frigate captain believing he was rescuing Chinese pilots, but I don’t trust them to tell the truth. I don’t trust them at all.”

Dog wasn’t sure what to believe. It was possible that the captain of the frigate believed he was rescuing his own men; the Khan had lost most of its aircraft, and the frigate probably wasn’t aware that the crew of the Megafortress had jumped out — after all, the plane was still flying.

On the other hand, the transmissions on the emergency or guard band should have made it clear that the downed airmen were American.

Unless, of course, the captain suspected a trick.

“Now don’t you go screwing things up, Bastian,” added Storm. “Don’t use your weapons on the Chinese, as tempting as it may be. Don’t even power them up.”

“What do you think, I’m going to crank open a window and take potshots at them with my Beretta?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Dog snorted. All this time fighting together, and Storm was still a jerk.

“I’m going to have to go south real soon if I’m going to make that tanker,” Dog said. “Can you handle the pickup?”

“Go. We have the situation under control.”

Under other circumstances, Dog would have flown over the raft, dipping his wings to wish his men luck and let them know he was still thinking about them. But he didn’t want to press his luck with the plane.

As he found his course southward, he reached into a pocket on the leg of his speed jeans, fishing for a small pillbox he kept there.

He rarely resorted to “go” pills — amphetamines — to keep himself alert. He didn’t like the way they seemed to scratch his skin and eyes from the inside. More than that, he didn’t like the idea of them. But there was just no getting around them now. The long mission and the physical demands of flying the Megafortress without the computer or human assistance had left him drained. He worked up some saliva, then slipped a pill into his mouth and swallowed.

It tasted like acid going down.

“Dreamland Command, I’m heading south,” he told Major Catsman. “See if you can get the tanker to fly a little farther north, would you?”