The pair of Sea Comanches flew below a cathedral ceiling of scintillating fire. The shells from the flak emplacements on the northern and southern banks of the great river were converging high overhead.
It was easy to read the caliber of the guns by their tracer patterns. The wavering spark streamers were issuing from the light, ultra-rapid-fire ZSU-23s. The deliberate beads-on-a string issued from the older 37-millimeter single mounts, while the more intermittent twinned rounds came from the more potent 57-millimeter doubles.
The really heavy guns, the 85- and 100-millimeter semi autos, threw no tracers at all. There was just the ground flare of the battery firing, mated to the flash of the shells detonating 25,000 feet above the Earth. Three times, Arkady also saw the inverted meteor trail of a Guideline SAM climbing into the sky.
Fortunately, none of this lethal ironmongery appeared to be coming in the direction of the Retainers. Amanda’s strategy was working. No one was noticing the two rotor-winged mice creeping in under the edge of the holocaust.
“Approaching second datum point by GPU fix, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks, Gus. I see it. Coming left to two nine zero on the hack.”
“We’re in the groove. Zero Two is following.”
Arkady was careful not to nod a reply. He was “seeing” through the eyes of the Sea Comanche’s Forward Looking InfraRed Scanner. Each movement of his helmeted head was being translated into the swiveling of the camera turret beneath the helicopter’s chin. Through those electronically enhanced eyes, the world was delineated in shades of heat. The darker shapes were cooler; the lighter, warmer. Open flame was revealed as a scintillating white.
There were several patches of that blatant white visible within the sweep of the FLIR, but Arkady watched for two that should be burning out over the river.
“Got, Gus. Got the quays in sight. Looks like the cruisers messed ‘up pretty good.”
“I ain’t gonna cry over it, sir. We are now entering the search area. We are now free-fly.”
“Rug.” Click. “Retainer Zero Two, this is Zero One. We are on station. Initiate MAD search.”
“Roger, Zero One. Initiating now.”
The trailing Sea Comanche swung out of line angling out toward the center of the river and slowing to search speed.
Arkady flared back as well, holding his altitude at fifty feet.
“Extend the stinger, Gus. Hunt’s on.”
“Doing it, sir. MAD is active.”
Any massive body of ferrous metal, be it a deposit of iron ore, the body of an automobile, or the hull of a ship, will create a disturbance in the Earth’s electromagnetic field. At close range, it can make the needle of a compass divert away from magnetic north. At greater distances, the effect can be registered on a sensitive device called a Magnetic Abnormality Detector. In the shallow waters of the littoral battlefield MAD systems became the sub hunter’s best friend.
The counterpoint was that a MAD search mandated that one fly low, straight, and slow for an extended period of time.
“Can you say ‘duck’?” Arkady murmured. “I thought you could.”
“You say something, Lieutenant.”
“Negative, Gus. Stay on it.”
So far, there had been no indication that the helos had been spotted. Arkady wasn’t even particularly worried about radar or visual detection. But if they ran out of air strike before they found that submarine, on audio stealth, or not, somebody on the beach was bound to hear them poking around out here. If that happened, things were going to get real interesting real fast.
Off the mine barrier, the flames of the battle registered only as a wavering glow in the sky, the sounds like the rumble of summer thunder. The Cunningham circled slowly, awaiting the cue for her next move.
“Captain.”
Amanda looked back from her position on the bridge wing.
“What is it, Stewart?”
“We’ve just got word up from CIC,” the watch officer replied. “The Retainers are on station and have commenced the search.”
“Very good.” The watch officer paused in the hatchway for a moment, looking off to the southwest just as Amanda had been. “You think we can pull this off, Captain?”
“Well, I thought so when I came up with the idea.”
She flipped the weather cover off the bridge wing repeater and called up the mission schedule. “We’re still on the time line. The cruisers should all be in by now. From here on, it’ll be up to the fast movers to keep them busy.”
“The woman is driving me crazy, Bub. Feet dry at Waypoint Golf. Going tactical.”
“Confirm we are on the tactical grid. Steering two nine zero true. We have acquired target-approach base leg. As far as I’m concerned, Digger, it won’t be a drive, it’ll be an easy-money putt.”
“Thank you, ever so much, Lieutenant Zellerman.”
The blackness beneath Moondog 505 subtly changed texture as the Sea Raptor crossed the coastline and headed northwest across a blacked-out Chinese landscape. As had the cruise missiles, the naval strike aircraft were fanning out to englobe their target. At staggered intervals, they would turn in toward Shanghai on a series of “wheel spoke” approach paths, no two aircraft crossing the target on the same bearing.
“I mean it, Dig. You needed to tell that woman where to get off a long time ago.”
The two aviators weren’t actually paying attention to the personal thread of the conversation. It was an instinctive exercise in mental stabilization, a counter to the tension load that was growing as the range to their objective shrank.
“Yeah, but then that’s what I’m afraid she’ll do, get off. She’s sure drawn a line in the sand now, though. How we lookin’ on return limits?”
“Clear sky. No tactically valid search systems active within range. Intermittent target-acquisition traces, but no locks. Shanghai zone defense is down.”
“Right. GPU tracking check?”
“Ordnance and aircraft GPUs are coordinated and tracking. Looking good, Dig.”
“Okay, we are approaching Waypoint Hotel. Time check?”
“On the line.”
“Okay, Bub. Here we go. At Point Hotel in three … two … one … Coming right to zero one zero.”
The stars crawled past beyond the canopy as the plane banked away to the north. Gradually, the needle nose of the big fighter bomber came to bear on a series of smoky pools of light on the horizon. The fiery beacon of a burning city.
“… Mark, zero one zero. We’re in the groove.”
“I confirm that. We are on attack heading. Range to target thirty-four miles. Digger, either you get out of the Navy, or you flat out tell your wife that you’re going to stay, and take whatever happens.”
“Yeah.” Digger Graves shifted in his parachute harness and settled deeper into Moondog 505’s ejector seat.
The flames of Shanghai grew closer.
“Let’s not take all night about this, Gus. This guy has got to be out here somewhere.”
“So is just about every other piece of shit sunk since the Ming fucking Dynasty. The floor of this goddamn river has got to look like the bottom of a goddamn garbage can!”
“Just find us the piece that’s still alive, man.”
It was black magic time again in the rear cockpit of Retainer Zero One. Gus Grestovitch totally fixated on the rippling waves of green light that danced across the oscilloscope display. Half a dozen times, he had almost called out a contact.
But each time something, some undefinable sense of wrongness, had stayed him. The MAD pod said maybe; his instincts said no.
Instinct, in the end, was what it was all about in this the most totally human of all endeavors. It was an edge man would always maintain over even the most sophisticated of technologies. It was why man would always remain a player, and not just a spectator, in this great game called war.
Another broad jag rolled down the oscilloscope line. Identical in appearance to the half a dozen others that had gone before … except for how it felt down in Gus Grestovitch’s guts.
“MAD man! MAD man! Solid contact! We have a solid contact!”
“Going to hover!” The Sea Comanche check reined like a good cow pony. “What d’you have, Gus?”
“Major contact, Lieutenant. Lookin’ solid. Right underneath us.”
“Check it out,” Arkady ordered. “We’re getting tight on time.”
“Aye, aye.”
Swiftly, Grestovitch reconfigured the cockpit workstation, sliding the MAD pod readout onto a secondary telescreen and calling up the primary dunking sonar display.
“Dunking sonar is up. Ready to drop dome.”
“Roger D. Maintaining hover. Depth by the chart is forty meters. Down dome to thirty.”
“Doin’ it. The dome is down.”
A thin Kevlar coaxial cable began to peel off the internal reel of the lightweight SQR/A1 sonar pod slung beneath the helicopter’s portside snub wing. Swiftly, the sound head of the system dropped through the rotor-wash-riffled surface of the estuary.
In the rear cockpit of the helo, Grestovitch sat poised with his earphone gains turned up, ready to begin a passive audio search the second the dome reached depth. Accordingly, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a tremendous echoing crash exploded in his ears. Then, beyond the ringing, he could hear everything.
There was the humming throb of a multitude of pumps and motors. There was the clang and clatter of numerous metallic transitories. There was even the unintelligible but unmistakable murmur of human voices.
“Gus, is this guy down there?”
“I’ll tell the world, sir! We just dropped our sound head right onto the sucker’s deck!”
“Gray Lady, we have located the target!” The radio call electrified the Combat Information Center. “We have positive lock and positive ID!”
“Bridge, this is the Combat Information Center,” Ken Hiro began to report. “Retainer Zero One has—”
“We were monitoring it, Ken,” Amanda Garrett’s filtered voice interrupted. “Commence your engagement sequence.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. All stations, secure EMCON. Aegis systems manager, bring up your radars. Mister Beltrain, take him out.”
“Yes, sir.”
This was Dix’s moment, his and Weapons Division. They had drilled through this a score of times as a computer simulation. Now it was time to expend the hardware.
“V-ROC and SLAM controllers, bring up your initial flights. V-ROCs, start your firing sequence.”
Beltrain keyed into the air-operations circuit. “Retainer Zero One, Retainer Zero One, Vince, this is Dix on line.
We’re setting the datum point now. Give us a short count on your IFF.”
“Gotcha, Dix. Radar beacon is up for a short count.
Three … two … one … “
On the Alpha screen, an active radar display was overlaid on the graphics map of the Yangtze estuary and the surrounding coast. Now, well up the southern estuary channel, a target hack materialized. The Identification-Friend-or-Foe transponder aboard Arkady’s Sea Comanche was interreacting with the destroyer’s radar sweep.
“We have the datum point!” the Aegis systems manager announced. The Duke had fixed her enemy’s position. Now all that was left was the final killing spring.
“Yeah! V-ROC systems, verify we have a full pattern set of VROC’s.”
“Full pattern set, Mr. Beltrain. Hot birds on the rails!”
“Integrate your datum point. Stand by to fire. Vince, get your ass out of there!”
Twelve miles to the west, over the river, Arkady called back over his shoulder. “You heard the man, Gus. Up dome.”
“Dome coming up, sir. This guy sounds like he’s powering up to get under way.”
“We’re not going to let that happen. Retainer Zero Two, do you copy?”
“We copy, Zero One.”
“Secure search and disengage to the east. Expedite!”
“Roger.”
The Sea Comanche bobbled in hover as the sound head clicked up into its carrying mount in the sonar pod.
“Dome up, Lieutenant.”
“Right.”
Arkady pedal-turned the helo around the axis of its rotor head and came forward on the pitch and collective, gaining way. Retainer Zero Two blazed past a few moments later, heading for safety outside of the target zone.
“Gray Lady, Gray Lady, the Elvis has left the building. You are clear to engage!”
“V-ROCs, fire!”
Spaced at one-second intervals, four Vertical Launch Antisubmarine Rockets blazed out of the Cunningham’s VLS arrays, their boosters flickering balls of orange light arcing away toward their distant objective.
The face of sub hunting had changed radically during the past decades. At one time, the foe had been the great pelagic hunter-killers of the Soviet nuclear submarine force. Now, though, the threat had moved closer inshore.
Third-world states were turning to the modern diesel electric submarine as the fast, cheap road to sea power. Sophisticated and silent, these “mobile minefields” were the stingray to the nuclear submarine’s shark.
A new generation of weapons had been needed to deal with this new shallow-water threat. The V-ROC L (Littoral) was one of them.
Instead of the Mark 50 torpedo carried by the standard weapon, the V-ROC L carried a throwback to an earlier age of ASW, a scatterpack of miniature depth bombs similar in design and intent to those of the World War II Hedgehog.
With their boosters burned out, each V-ROC came over the peak of their parabolic trajectory. Plunging in toward their target, a laser proximity fuse gauged each round’s distance from the surface of the water. At the appropriate instant, the scatterpack’s bursting charge fired, dispersing the ten shaped-charge bomblets carried by the warhead bus. Ten bomblets per round, forty bomblets in all, striking the water in an interlocking pattern. A net to trap the biggest fish in the world.
East of the target area, the two Retainers had returned to a hover, reversing again to observe the weapon impact. Through the night-vision visor, Arkady watched as the wave of impact splashes swept across the target zone. Then came the long breath-locked moment as the bomblets sank. The submunitions were each magnetically fused to fire only on contact with a submarine hull.
Two slender columns of water jetted up from the disturbed surface of the river.
“Yeah! Gus, down dome and see if we put a hole in this guy. Gray Lady! Gray Lady! We have weapon impact and detonation! Two hits out of the pattern. We are trying to verify the kill.”
“Acknowledged, Zero One,” Amanda’s voice came back.
Any triumph she might be feeling was being tightly locked down. “Hold on station. If you’ve hit him, he’s going to try and surface.”
Gus Grestovitch cut in abruptly. “Lieutenant, massive transitory on the target bearing! Submarine blowing ballast!”
“Gray Lady! We got him! He’s coming up!”
Out in the center of the target zone, a submarine’s conning tower broke water. Silt-enslimed from its long concealment on the estuary floor, the Xia lifted its head sluggishly above the surface like some long-entombed dinosaur.
“There she blows! Gray Lady, we have visual confirmation of the target! We’ve got the boomer! I say again, we have got the boomer!”
On the Cunningham’s bridge, the exclamations of victory were more restrained: a fist lightly thumped on the chart table, the whispered release of a contained breath.
Amanda leaned forward in the captain’s chair, holding her headset mike close to her lips. “Zero One, current status on the target?”
“On the surface and holding stable. We’ve hurt him, but we haven’t killed him.”
“Stand by, Zero One.”
They’d put the barbs into their whale and they’d run it down. Now they had to drive the lance into its lungs.
“Tactical Officer.”
“TACCO, aye.”
“Finish the job, Dix. You know the drill. You can’t miss on this one!”
“Final-phase safeties are off. All prelaunch systems are green, sir.”
Dix Beltrain leaned in over the Sea SLAM operator’s shoulder. “Don’t commit the round. Keep the missile under manual control all the way in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And remember, forward of the sail! Target only forward of the sail. If you can’t drop it in right, abort the round.”
“I know, sir,” the systems operator replied with as much laconic forbearance as a gunner’s mate first could afford with a full lieutenant.
“Okay. Shoot.”
Among the arsenal of “smart weaponry” proliferating in the twenty-first century, the Sea SLAM was without doubt one of the most brilliant, because a human mind could guide it to its target.
Hurled out of its launch cell, the modified Harpoon Missile extended its cruciform fins and followed in the trajectory of the V-ROCs. Coming over the peak of the arc, the infrared imager in its nose activated, beaming a supra-eagle’s-eye view of the Yangtze River environs back to its mother station aboard the Cunningham.
The Sea SLAM operator entered the loop. His fingers curled around a joystick and he sent steering commands back up through the datalink to the missile, guiding it to its target in exactly the same way a hobbyist might fly a radio controlled model airplane. Only, this “model plane” carried a quarter of a ton of high explosives at the velocity of a .45-caliber bullet.
There was a further complication as well. There was a zero tolerance for failure. The SLAM round would have to be brought in on the forehull of the Chinese submarine, far enough back to smash the missile-control center and sink the boat, yet far enough forward not to directly involve any of the IRBM silos in the Xia’s central launching bay.
If one of the boomer’s armed Ju Lang II rounds was hit, the worst that could be expected would be a limited-yield nuclear explosion. The best would be that particles of hyper radioactive plutonium would be sprayed throughout the Yangtze estuary, contaminating the river’s mouth for the next fifty thousand years. The fate of one of the great port cities of the world lay in the hands of a twenty-year-old American seaman from Meade, Kansas.
In the crosshairs of the SLAM guidance screen, the target grew from a dark pencil stub afloat in a pale-green creek to a cigar, to a toy, to a looming black hulk all in the space of half a dozen heartbeats. With his joystick, the systems operator rode the nose of his missile down, keeping it fixed on the one exact point he had chosen just beneath the submarine’s sail.
The screen flared and went to static.
Upriver in the estuary, the Sea SLAM gave no warning of its arrival, its turbojet power plant leaving no flame trail behind it.
The river rose up under the forward end of the Xia’s hull, lifting the boomer’s blunt nose into the air. Almost in slow motion, the submarine’s bow cap and conning tower tore away, electrical arcs dancing around the opening wounds.
Then the boomer’s main hull settled back, wallowing sluggishly like a waterlogged tree trunk. A moment more and it was gone, sinking in its shallow water grave, the eternal Yangtze pouring in through its breached bulkheads.
“Yes!” Vince Arkady’s voice rang out of the bridge speakers. “Good shot! Boomer is down! All the way, the boomer is down!”
Somewhere behind Amanda, a hand slapped down on the chart table and the sound-activated intercom links sputtered for a moment as someone down in the CIC whooped.
Amanda tilted her helmeted head back for a few moments, her eyes closed in silent gratitude. Coming forward again, she keyed the command mike. “Acknowledged, Retainers. Boomer is down. Disengage and return to the ship. I say again, disengage and return to the ship.”
“Retainers, wilco.”
Amanda toggled across from surface-to-air to intercom.
“Radio Shack, transmit the following to Task Flag … ”
“Admiral, signal from the Cunningham. Stormdragon is dead. Mission accomplished. ASW assets are withdrawing.”
Subdued cheers and a round of applause sounded within the Enterprise’s Pri-Fly. Admiral Tallman’s fist stabbed the air in a victorious uppercut.
“Congratulations, Jake.” Macintyre slapped the Task Force commander on the shoulder.
“Yeah, well, we’re still doing ‘far, so good,’ Eddie Mac. We still got to count ‘all home’.”
Tallman turned to his air boss. “Status on the diversion strike, Commander?”
“The last bird should be making its run now, sir.”
“Okay, two minutes more and we can start letting our weight down.”
Bubbles Zellerman stared into her targeting screen like a fortune-teller into a crystal ball. Moondog 505 had been preceded by her eleven squadron mates, all of whom had “plowed the farm” quite effectively.
Their target was the Hudong shipyards, the facility that had resurrected the Xia and its hunter-killer escorts. It was a logical target. A strike here would focus Chinese attention away from what was taking place a few miles north on the Yangtze. It would also ensure that no more nuclear-powered snakes would issue from this particular hole.
Bubbles was imaging the target through the Sea Raptor’s FLIR turret. However, she could almost have done as well using visual light. Half a dozen major fires were raging within the shipyard boundaries.
Cranes, warehouses, and machine shops had been bomb shattered and left in flames. The water gates of the main yard dry dock had been blown out and the facility flooded, and a Romeo-class conventional submarine had been lifted half out of the water and draped broken-backed across a quay. Burning oil from its ruptured tanks leaked into the Huangpu channel and spread slowly downstream, lighting off the finger piers like a string of birthday candles.
The huge, covered, graving dock was ablaze from the inside out. A score of burnthroughs flamed on its roof, and a multispectral tongue of fire, fully half the width of the river in length, roared out the open ship doors.
That holocaust had to be caused by missile fuel stacks burning off. There must have been another Chinese boomer moored in the dock. Bubbles hoped for the sake of everyone downwind that the damn fools had kept their warheads unshipped and stowed elsewhere.
“Okay, Bubbles.” From up front, Digger’s voice sounded totally level, totally controlled, almost uninterested. “Ten miles out from target, four miles from release point. Angle off, point nine. Verify.”
“Verified. We are still in the groove.”
“GPU rechecks?”
“Checked and checked. Checked and checked. Ordnance is up and safeties are off. Intervelometer setting is point five.”
“Looking good, Bub. Two miles out. Enable system to drop.”
Bubbles keyed a sequence on her weapons panel, unlocking the ordnance releases and freeing the fighter-bomber’s firecontrol system to engage the target. Flipping the safety guard up and off the manual bombing trigger on her joystick, she rested her finger against it.
“System enabled.”
It became quiet in the cockpit, the only sound being the soft humming whine of the Sea Raptor’s twin turbofans.
There was quite a fireworks display going on outside of the canopy, however. The air below Moondog 505 scintillated with tracer streams, while above her the shell bursts of heavy antiair fire danced among the clouds like chain lightning.
Running fast at 16,000 feet, she skimmed deftly between the two threats, too high to be reached by the fire of the lighter flak and too low to be trapped within the proximity fused destruction of the larger guns.
The fighter-bomber was cutting almost directly across the heart of urban Shanghai from south to north, the Huangpu River channel off her right wingtip. The fires of the Hudong shipyards were just coming up on their one-o’clock position.
Digger and Bubbles made no effort to aim their aircraft or their weapons at the target. The bombs themselves would take care of that detail when the time came.
Moondog 505 bucked delicately twice. The light patterns on the weapons panel shifted.
“Bombs away,” Bubbles reported quietly.
The weapons released by the Navy strike plane each were named with a tongue-tying acronym: JDAM/CSV (Joint Direct Attack Munitions System/Conformal Stealth Variant). Jacketed in the same radar absorbent material as their carrier aircraft, they had clung remora-like beneath its wings as it had transported them within range of their target. Now, falling free, they set out on the last leg of their journey.
Extending tail fins and glide wings, the airfoil-shaped bomb units peeled off toward their target, steered in by their integral Global Positioning Units. The same essential satellite technology that guided airliners and lost campers around the world now delivered two one-ton charges of high explosives to two specific points — said points being the exact center of the second floor of the central administration building of the Hudong shipyards, precisely fifty feet in from the northern and southern walls.
Moondog 505 was passing the target area now. Bubbles Zellerman kept the FLIR turret locked on the administrations center, recording the images for postmission bomb-damage assessment. “Three … and two … and one,” she murmured.
On the screen, the southern wing of the building spewed light and smoke from its windows and collapsed in upon itself. The central bay followed a half instant later.
Not bad bombing, Bubbles thought judgmentally. Not perfect, but not bad.
“Ordnance is in,” Digger Graves heard his backseater report.
“Good run! In the pickle barrel.”
“Roger. We are outta here!”
Digger rolled his hand controller to starboard and increased pressure on his right rudder pad. Moondog 505 banked away smoothly to the east in response. He came forward on the HOTAS grips as well, kicking the Sea Raptor up into super cruise mode. The g-load of the turn grew and the whisper of the turbofans grew into a rushing roar as the jet accelerated for the sound barrier.
Off the right wingtip, a last lick of firelight glinted off the surface of the Yangtze. In seconds, they would be “feet wet” again, across the Chinese coast and clear.
Combat pilots refer to it as “catching the golden BB.” The shell hadn’t even been aimed at Moondog 505. It was a 100-millimeter round fired blindly into the sky over five miles away. A malfunctioning safety had kept it from detonating as it had reached its peak altitude, and it was actually plunging downward when its trajectory intersected the fighter bomber’s flight path. Its fuse cap just barely ticked the trailing edge of the Sea Raptor’s portside elevator.
Fortunately, Digger Graves blacked out for only a couple of seconds. He regained awareness in a world gone insane. The wild shifting of the gravity vector told him that Moondog 505 was tumbling wildly. He wrenched at the hand controller, instinctively trying to stabilize the aircraft, only to find that he didn’t have any functional control surfaces left.
The few remaining instrument displays were pulsing red or yellow crisis warnings. Orange firelight glared on the canopy, and Graves could hear the moaning and cracking of an air frame breaking up. There was no doubt in hell that their contract to fly this aircraft had just expired.
“Eject!” he screamed. “Eject, eject, eject!”
Digger reached over his head for the combined blast curtain and ejection-seat trigger, groping for a panic-stricken moment against the g-loading until his fingers closed through the wire and plastic loops. Trying to keep his back straight and his limbs centered over the seat, he yanked the curtain down over his face.
The canopy blew off and a tornado’s worth of wind poured into the cockpit, screaming and clawing. Over it, Digger heard the faint ripping thud of Bubble’s ejector seat firing, and he felt the flash of heat from its rockets. Then it was his turn, and Digger lost consciousness for the second time.
Downriver, almost at the mine barrier, Vince Arkady stiffened as a piercing sound stabbed at his ears. An electronic blipping sounded in his helmet phones; shrill, penetrating, specifically pitched to be impossible to overlook or ignore.
It was the herald of disaster, the Emergency Locator Beacon of a downed aircrew.
“Gray Lady, Gray Lady,” Arkady was speaking over the beacon tone on the air circuit. “I’m getting an ELB out here.
Are you guys reading the same?”
“Roger, we got it,” Christine Rendino replied from Raven’s Roost. “We have a bearing on it. Triangulating now. Okay, signal source is to your west. Back upriver.”
“Can you confirm that this beacon is one of ours? Have we just lost a strike bird?”
“Stand by, Zero One. We’re working it.”
From the bridge Amanda had listened to the exchange, tense and silent. Now she keyed her own microphone. “CIC, try and get a skin track or a transponder burst off of that last strike aircraft. Communications, inform Task Flag that we might have a plane down.”
“Sir, the Cunningham reports that Moondog 505 might just have gone down.”
“Goddamn it!” Tallman’s exclamation was explosive and bitter. “When are we due to reacquire that aircraft?”
“She should be clear of the coast now,” the Enterprise’s air boss replied.
“Then try and reestablish commo with her,” Tallman demanded. “Contact the E2D and have them try and lift a return off her radar transponder. Verify if she’s still airborne or not!”
“Sir,” one of the communications ratings looked up from her console, “the Hummer is now confirming that they are receiving two ELB signals on the same bearing as reported by the Cunningham. IFF subsignal codings match those assigned to the aircrew of Moondog 505.”
“That’s it,” the air boss said flatly. “We lost one.”
“Goddamn it to hell!”
Macintyre could only share in Tallman’s moment of frustration and rage. This was the nightmare that had haunted every American military commander since the Korean War. An aircrew down in enemy territory. The hostiles of this world seemed to demand that the United States always play by the rules, while reserving the right to treat American POWs in whatever manner they saw fit.
Macintyre stepped swiftly across to one of the chart boards. “Do we have a fix on those beacons yet? An exact one.”
“I believe so, sir,” the air boss replied, joining Macintyre at the flatscreen display. “It’s just being linked in from the Duke.”
“Yeah. Jake, come take a look at this.”
“What is it, Eddie Mac?” Tallman shouldered in around the screen.
“It’s not as bad as it could be. Take a look at these ELB location hacks. Your aircrew is coming down over the estuary. They’re going to be feet-wet. Just barely, but I think we might be able to get them out of there.”
“Might my ass! We are getting them out! Now!”
The first thing Digger Graves noticed was the quiet, broken only by a riffling whisper like the wind in the leaves. Then came the pain, the tearing agony in his left shoulder.
That popped his eyes open and restored full awareness. He was hanging in his harness beneath a full parachute canopy.
The wind-in-the-leaves sound was the air flowing through the risers and chute gores. The pain? He wasn’t so sure. The arm was still attached, and there didn’t seem to be any blood, but something was sure as hell wrong with that shoulder.
Maybe a dislocation from the ejection.
His next thought was for his backseater. He twisted in his harness, looking around and mentalizing an incoherent fragment of prayer that there would be another parachute in the sky.
There was. Bubbles’s canopy was above him and to the right, her lesser weight giving her a reduced sink rate. Both chutes were descending into a black void some distance from the nearest fire or cluster of lights. That was just as well.
Digger suspected that the locals wouldn’t be any too pleased with them at the moment.
Digger tried to run a fast inventory of his escape-and evasion gear, seeing how much had stayed with him during the bailout. Much of it had, most importantly the emergency transponder and the Combat Search and Rescue radio. The tiny check light on the transponder was already glowing, indicating that it had been triggered into action by the shock of the ejector-seat launch. His survival kit and life raft had stayed with him as well, dangling twenty feet beneath him on their lanyard.
With his right hand, he reached up and broke the inner capsule of the IR light stick on his life jacket. Producing no visible spectrum illumination, it would burn bright for several hours on a FLIR scanner.
There was a sudden tug on the gear lanyard. The darkness and the residual confusion from his blackout had made Digger misjudge his altitude. His startled curse gagged off as he hit the river.
He went deep, then his Mae West inflated and lifted him back to the surface, retching and spitting out the putrid, brackish water of the estuary. He pulled the Capwell releases of his parachute harness and tore off his helmet, looking around. A few yards away, another ghostly cloud of white nylon was collapsing into the river.
“Bub! Hey, Bub?”
There was no answer.
Clumsily, restrained by the combination of his injury and burdening equipment, he tried to swim to her. He found that he couldn’t gain any ground on the drifting parachute and he paused for a second to cut loose the survival-kit lanyard.
Survival my ass, he thought. They’d either be pulled out of here by their own CSAR people or they would end up in a Chinese prison camp.
Finally, he snagged a handful of wet nylon and drew Zellerman in to him. She still didn’t move, unconscious or dead.
Feverishly, Graves freed her of her chute harness and helmet and felt for a pulse at her throat. It was there, weak, but there. Fumbling one-handed, he dug out his rescue strobe and used it for a moment in flashlight mode. Bubbles was unconscious, blood streaking from her nose and from a cut on her chin, but she was alive.
He pulled her against him, her back supported against his chest, his functional arm looped around her protectively as they floated with the sluggish current.
“It’s okay, Bub!” he whispered hoarsely, looking around at the hostile night. “They’re coming for us.”
“All Stormdragon elements, this is Task Flag. We confirm that we have a Moondog element down. We also confirm that we have two aircrew down within the Yangtze estuary. We have a valid recovery scenario. I say again, we have a valid recovery scenario. All CSAR assets commit as per Ops Plan Alpha Five. Panda Three Three, initiate rescue and recovery. Retainer elements, initiate search and top cover. Cunningham, assume station off the Yangtze estuary and stand by to render support as possible. All elements acknowledge.”
“Panda Three Three to Task Flag. Initiating CSAR. Taking departure from holding pattern.”
“Retainer elements to Task Flag. We have reversed course and are proceeding to transponder location.”
Arkady might have been flying the pattern at his home airfield.
“Cunningham to Flag. Proceeding to support station at this time.” Amanda turned in the captain’s chair to look aft at the watch officer. “Mr. Freeman, move us to the mouth of Beicao Hangcao channel. Assume station keeping five hundred yards off the mine barrier by GPU reckoning.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
“Information Center, we have been tasked to support a search-and-rescue operation upchannel in the estuary. Let’s look sharp. We’re going to be all the cover our people are going to have.”
Amanda was pleased with the steadiness in her own voice as she spoke. Down deep inside herself, she had flung her helmet to the deck and had screamed a denial to the gods.
“At least the damn flak’s eased off,” Gus Grestovitch commented from Zero One’s rear cockpit.
“Yeah, that’s what’s got me worried.”
“How come, Lieutenant?”
“Nobody’s firing wild anymore. Somebody’s passed the word to stop shooting. We’re running out of shock effect, and the command-and-control nets are coming back up. The bad guys are bound to start paying attention to what’s going on out here pretty soon.”
“Yeah.”
Retainer Zero One was flying back upriver again, retracing her previous search pattern. Only this time, the object of the search was quite different.”
“Gus, you take the FLIR turret. I’m going over to low light goggles. Keep your eyes open for the bad guys.”
“Aye, aye, sir. What kind of weapons status do you want?”
“Systems hot and bays open. That’ll increase our RCS, but I don’t want to have to fool around if I have to fast draw.”
The primary air tactical channel was still saturated with transponder squeal, so Arkady dropped down to the alternate.
“Gray Lady, this is Zero One. Match my fix with the targets, please.”
“Zero One,” Ken Hire’s voice came back promptly.
“You are on the bearing and in the ballpark. They should be in your immediate vicinity.”
“Rug.”
Arkady did another frequency shift to the CSAR channel.
“Moondog 505, Moondog 505, do you read? Do you read? This is Retainer Zero One on cover. Talk to me, guys, we’re looking for you.”
He lifted his thumb off the mike button. The response was mercifully swift in coming.
“Retainer Zero One, this is Moondog 505.”
There was the rasp of strained breathing, but the voice was strong.
“Moondog 505, what is your status?” Arkady demanded.
“We are in the river, Retainer. Maybe a hundred and fifty yards offshore. My systems operator and I are together. She is unconscious and I am injured. Left arm isn’t working so well.”
“Is there any enemy activity in your area, Moondog?”
“Not that I can see, Retainer.”
“What can you see? Can you give me any landmarks?”
“It looks like … two piers burning. Upriver. Maybe half a mile.”
Okay, those had to be the quays that the Duke’s cruise missiles had taken out. Arkady glanced up and spotted the same blaze. They were in the ballpark.
“Moondog 505, can you hear my rotors?”
“Affirmative, I can hear you down river. We have flares and strobes. Shall I illuminate?”
“No. Negative, Moondog. Let’s not advertise before we have to. Do you have I-R sticks lit?”
“Affirmative.”
“That ought to be enough. Stand by, we’ll pick up on you in a second.”
Arkady eased Zero One into a hover. “Gus, surface scan with the FLIR. Forward arc. You’re looking for active sources in the river.”
“Searching … got! Two active sources in close proximity.”
“All right!”
“I also got enemy vehicle activity on the bank, right beyond ‘em.”
Five miles offshore, Panda Three Three roared through the night. The SH-60 Oceanhawk had been lurking on call below the coastal radar horizon. Now she raced for the mouth of the Yangtze at full war power.
The helicopter had been especially configured for this mission.
The ASW systems console had been downloaded, along with the dunking sonar and torpedo racks. Replacing them were extended-range fuel tanks, a personnel winch, and a .50-caliber heavy machine gun mounted in the cabin door.
Instead of LAMPS system operators, a team of rescue swimmers, a gunner, and a hospital corpsman grimly rode the passenger benches in the cabin.
“Panda Three Three, this is Retainer Zero One.”
“Go, Zero One.”
“We have a fix on the Moondogs. They are in the southern estuary channel about one click east of Waigaoqiao. We are orbiting them at this time. The recovery zone is still cool, but this state of affairs will not last. Come a-runnin’.”
“We are balls to the wall, Zero One,” Three Three’s pilot replied. “Maintain the even strain. We’ll be up with you in about eight minutes.”
Nonetheless, the CSAR pilot twisted the grip throttle on the end of his collective lever a little harder, trying to nurse a few more horsepower out of his twin T-700 turboshaft engines. There was always a degree of friction between the rotor and fixed-wing factions within a carrier air group, but it was friction within a family. One of their own was in trouble now. This was not just a mission, this was a keeping of the faith.
“The air boss reports we have gunships over our aircrew, sir,” Commander Walker said quietly. “They are still clear and the recovery helo is inbound.”
“So far, so good, Jake,” Macintyre commented, crossing his arms and leaning back against the Pri-Fly chart table.
Tallman produced a noncommittal grunt. “Maybe, Eddie Mac. But just remember, victories come singularly. It’s the fuckups that gang up on you.”
In all probability, it was just a coincidence that the albatross is considered a sign of ill omen by mariners. A thousand miles west of the usual north polar-to-south polar migration route of its kind, this one had been driven off course by a summer storm. Gliding silently through the darkness on its ten-foot wingspan, it rested in the flying quasitrance that served as sleep for it on its months-long aerial odyssey.
So deeply oblivious was the great seabird that it didn’t even notice the approach of the other swift-moving night flier.
There was no warning. Just a flash of white and a tremendous slam.
“What the hell?” Panda Three Three’s copilot yelled, grabbing for his controllers.
“I dunno, Danny! It felt like a rotor strike!” the aircraft commander yelled back. A savage, jackhammering vibration was racking the big helo, blurring the instrument readouts almost into illegibility.
“We got rotor damage.”
“Oh, really? You think? Notify Task Flag that we’re aborting! Then notify the Cunningham that we’re coming in for an emergency recovery!”
“Skipper, we got men in the water!”
“Yeah, and sure as all shit, we’re going to be joining them in about two minutes if we don’t get a deck under us!” The copilot noticed some kind of matter smeared on the outside of his windscreen. Tearing open his side window, he took a swipe at it with his glove. Bringing his hand back into the cockpit, he examined it by the instrument lights. His glove was covered with blood, a single, bedraggled, white feather matted in it.
“Ah, for Christ’s sake! We hit a goddamn seagull!”
The chill of the water was starting to sink inward as well.
Neither Digger nor his S.O. had elected to wear anti-exposure suits on this run, and despite the mildness of the night, he was beginning to feel it.
Then there were the sounds carrying across the surface of the river. He’d heard trucks changing gears over toward shore a couple of times and had seen the flash of hooded headlights. Once, when the circling helicopters had swung clear, he’d even made out human voices.
Graves dug the waterproof SAR radio out of his sleeve pocket again. “Retainer Zero One, this is 505. The natives are starting to get a little restless down here, guys.”
“We see, Moondog. Don’t sweat it. We’re still with ya.”
“Roger that, Retainer. How far out is our pickup?”
“Yeah. Moondog, we’re having a little problem with that.”
Already cold, Graves suddenly felt considerably colder. A good friend of his had once used that “a little problem” phrase in just that same carefully offhand manner. He’d died in the crash that had followed thirty seconds later.
Suddenly, from upstream, a searchlight lanced out across the river, a blue-white beam that wavered through the darkness like a probing sword blade.
“Shit!” Arkady tore the night vision visor up and away from his eyes as it overloaded.”
“Searchlight truck on the bank, Lieutenant!”
“I see him.” The Sea Comanche darted toward the source like an angry hornet. “Select Hydra pods. Four rounds. Flechette.”
“Hydra’s hot, sir!”
The searchlight swiveled to target the diving helo, its glare flooding the cockpit and drowning out the Heads-Up Display.
Arkady’s hand flicked up to his helmet again, flipping down the sun visor. Then, boresighting down the light beam, he salvoed the rockets.
Four rounds were launched, but four rounds didn’t arrive on target. The Hydra 70 air-to-surface rockets were carrying M255 flechette warheads. As each round reached peak acceleration, a bursting charge exploded within it, releasing a swarm of 585 finned steel needles. A wave of more than two thousand hypervelocity projectiles swept over the searchlight vehicle, killing both it and everything else within a fifty-yard radius.
Night-blinded and a flier’s instinct away from a killing bout of vertigo, Arkady pulled out of the firing run and swung back over the river.
“Well, fuck a duck, Gus. It looks like we’re going to be putting in a little overtime tonight.”
“No shit, sir.”
On the aft monitors, the crippled Search and Rescue Seahawk could be seen settling onto the Duke’s helipad.
“One, this is the bridge. Get that helo stricken below with all possible speed. I want that pad clear!”
“Will do, Captain.”
The crisis load was building. Amanda’s hand danced across the communications pad, shifting constantly between the CSAR and command channels and the ship’s interphones, striving to maintain situational awareness.
“Gray Lady, Gray Lady, this is Zero One! Do you copy?”
Arkady’s urgent call caught her attention.
“Go, Retainer.”
“How long until we get a recovery bird out here?”
“Task Flag is estimating an hour and a half to two hours, Retainer.”
“Then we got problems. I don’t think we have that much time. We are getting Red reaction, and I’ve already had to put fire in on the beach. They know that we’re out here, and they’re going to be swarming all over us.”
“Can you keep them off the aircrew?”
“For as long as our ordnance holds out. Ah, shit! Zero Two, pilch out! You’ve got ground fire on you! Gray Lady, stand by, I’m going to be a little busy here for a minute!”
“Acknowledged, Zero One.”
With great deliberation, she yanked the jack of her headset out of the communications link. She needed a few seconds to think — a few seconds out of the loop, away from the urgency and the emotion.
Her fist lifted and slammed down on the chair arm. Getting to her feet, she took two fast steps to the quartermaster’s chart table. Swiftly, she began to call up the Yangtze approach block and the maps of the estuary mine barrier.
“How in the hell was this allowed to happen?” Admiral Tallman demanded.
“The CSAR Operations file called for the Cunningham’s helos to back up our aircraft in case anything went wrong,” his chief of staff replied. “Apparently, whoever set up the file didn’t realize that the Cunningham only had gunships aboard.”
“How long will it take to get that new angel in the air?”
“Another five minutes. They’re gearing her up now.”
“How about the support strike?”
“On the elevators, sir.”
“Admiral,” one of the radio operators interjected. “Report from Retainer Zero One. They are taking small-arms fire from the bank of the estuary.”
“Goddamn it all to hell! Acknowledge signal to Zero One.” Tallman paced off the length of Pri-Fly, seeking to vent some of his growing frustration in movement. Macintyre could only silently empathize with him. There is possibly no worse situation in the world than to be a military commander who senses that he is falling behind the curve. To know that events are creeping out of your control in a headlong slide into bloody chaos.
“Hang in there, Jake,” Macintyre said. “You’ve got some good people out there working the problem.”
“That’s true, sir,” Walker interjected. “And if we’re not careful, we could have some more of those good people in the water as well. It may be necessary to cut our losses.”
Tallman only grunted in reply, staring out into the darkness beyond the windscreen.
“Admiral,” the communications liaison spoke up again. “Message coming in from the Cunningham. ‘We’re on station at mouth of channel through Yangtze mine barrier. Request permission to proceed upriver to recover downed pilots.’”
“My God,” Walker exclaimed. “What in the hell is that woman thinking of!”
The radioman’s voice continued, slightly bewildered.
“There’s something else as well, sir. ‘Matthew, chapter eighteen, verse twelve.’”
“What’s that all about?” Walker said.
“I know,” Macintyre replied slowly. “How ‘think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, cloth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which has gone astray?”
Macintyre found that Jake Tallman’s attention was suddenly focused totally on him.
“What do you think, Eddie Mac?”
“Jake, this is your show. I am just an observer here.”
“Fine! Then make an observation! Could she pull it off? Could she get my people out of there?”
So much for being out of the loop.
“I don’t know if it’s feasible or not, Jake,” Macintyre replied. “But I suspect that if it can be done, Amanda Garrett is the one who can do it. If you’re asking my opinion, I’d say ride with her.”
“Admiral,” Walker interjected urgently. “If you send the Cunningham into that river estuary, you will be placing a multibillion-dollar warship and two hundred Navy personnel in extreme peril. We’ve lost one plane and two aviators. If we lose the Cunningham in trying to get them out, we will literally be compounding the disaster a hundredfold. Taking a risk like that isn’t logical, sir.”
Tallman shook his head slowly. “Nolan, you’re absolutely right. It’s not logical at all. But then, we’re not talking about logic here, son, we’re talking about the commitment we’ve made with our people.
“It’s not logical for these kids to go out there and lay their necks out on the line purely at my command, so I can’t afford to be all that logical about getting them back again.
“Make a signal to the Cunningham. ‘Proceed with rescue operations. You are authorized to enter the Yangtze.’”
“Attention, all decks,” Amanda Garrett’s voice rang out of the 1-ME. The watch in the Combat Information Center instinctively looked up at the overhead speakers, awaiting the word.
“Here is the situation. We have a Navy aircrew down in the Yangtze River estuary. The helo on recovery station has been disabled, and those pilots won’t last until another can be brought up. We are going to have to go upriver after them.
This … is not going to be easy, but we are going to take care of our own. Good luck to us all.”
“Ohhh, brother,” Dix Beltrain murmured under his breath.
“Status of the SQQ-32, Mr. Beltrain,” Ken Hiro asked flatly.
“System is up, sir. Diagnostic checks are green.”
The mine-hunter display windowed into one corner of the Alpha screen. Within it, clear water was indicated dead ahead of the ship. But on the outer perimeters of the sweep, ominous shadowy outlines could be made out guarding the flanks of the channel.
“Stealth systems.” Amanda’s voice again: cool, imperturbable.
“Stealth, aye.”
“Activate the deck sprays, Mr. Mckelsie. That may help us if the Reds have FLIRs covering the mine passages.”
“Will do.”
“Very good. We’re going into the passage now.”
“Engines now going ahead slow, Mr. Hiro,” the battle helmsman reported from his station. “Making turns for five knots.”
Slowly, the mine contacts began to drift astern, out of the scan field. They were entering the single, narrow corridor that led through the barrier.
“Quartermaster,” Hiro ordered. “Execute a series of GPU checks at thirty-second intervals and lock down a series of navigational datum points in the Navicom. I want us to be able to find our way back out of here if we lose the sonars.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The quartermaster’s reply sounded as if he were being lightly strangled.
Christine Rendino emerged from Raven’s Roost and came to stand at Beltrain’s side, her attention fixed on the mine hunter display. “Fa’ sure, I hate it when she does stuff like this,” she whispered.
“Scared?”
The Intel nodded. “But that’s only half of it. The other half is a feeling of inferiority. I’d never have the guts to try something like this in a million years.”
“Yeah. I wonder if I ever will.”
A building and two vehicles burned on the riverbank, with the firelight more of an interference then an aid to the two hovering helos. Retainer Zero One and Zero Two sidled downstream, covering the drifting dot that was the aircrew of Moondog 505.
Vince Arkady mentally reviewed his munitions list for the hundredth time. He still had both Hellfires on board, but only five Hydra rounds were left. There were troops and Armed People’s Police out there in the straggle of boatsman’s shacks and saltgrass. The two Retainers had taught them the folly of swapping shots with a Sea Comanche. Unfortunately, they had found an easier target.
“Retainer, we’re getting fire from the shore again.”
“Roger, Moondog. Tuck your head in. We’re layin’ it on ‘em. Retainer Zero Two. Suppressive fire in the beach. Select target and fire. One round Hydra each.”
“Roger, Zero One. On the way.” Save your powder, Hoss, Arkady thought grimly, for the death hug’s a-comin’.
He laid the helo’s thermal sights in on a reed bank along the muddy shore. He’d been seeing stealthy movement in there for the past couple of minutes, and he doubted that it was a beaver colony. The Hydra blazed and the wall of reeds shredded and flattened as if under the sweep of some gigantic scythe. Zero Two’s round kicked up a haze of muddy spray farther downstream.
“How’s that, old buddy?”
“That’s put the fear of God back in‘, Retainers. Thanks.”
That weary voice on the other end of the CSAR circuit sounded as if it was coming from the loneliest place on Earth.
Arkady groped for something valid to say under the restrictions of radio discipline, just to keep him talking.
“How’s your S.O. doing, Moondog?”
“Bub’s still breathing, Retainer. She’s still hangin’ in there.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You won’t be so glad to hear this, Retainer. I think we’re drifting in closer to shore.”
Arkady swore under his breath. “Stand by, Moondog. I’m going to see what’s holding up the cab.” He toggled over to the air operations channel. “Gray Lady, Gray Lady. We need an ETA on that recovery helo. Things are getting tight out here!”
“There isn’t going to be a helo, Retainer,” Amanda Gar rett’s voice came back levelly. “We are going to have to come upriver and make the recovery ourselves. We are transiting the mine barrier now. Barring delays, we should be up with you in about another forty-five minutes. You will have to hold until then.”
“Roger, Gray Lady.” There was nothing else to say.
“Bearing is still three hundred degrees true, Captain,” the bridge helmsman announced. “The passage corridor is still trending north.”
“I see it,” Amanda said, peering over his shoulder into the navigation screen. “The Reds put a dogleg in the corridor to make things difficult. Watch for the turn. And watch for the shallows. We’re going to start running tight on water as we get over to the far side of the channel.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Even a Red Chinese ship, with a port minesweeper running interference and a pilot with a marked set of mine charts at the helm, would find this tricky maneuvering. Not to mention that a Communist vessel would not have to worry about being fired on.
The windscreen wipers were hissing softly, just as they had been the last time they had penetrated into these waters. Only, this time the mist engulfing the Cunningham was of her own creation. High-pressure water jets on her weather decks and upper works were soaking down her decks and hazing the air around her, hopefully smothering any thermal signature that she might be leaving.
“Stealth systems.”
“Stealth systems, aye.”
“How does the local radar environment look, Mr. Mekelsie?”
“Still sterile. We’ve killed ‘all, Captain. Nobody out there is looking for us.”
“Acknowledged.”
He was wrong, of course. The Cunningham was just starting to creep past the southern headland of the estuary. There would be a lot of hostile eyes out on the dark bulk of that headland. Eyes that would be alert and staring into the night for the next indication of their enemy.
Don’t pay any attention to us, Amanda silently said to them. We’re just a shadow on the sea.
They were spotted because they were a shadow on the sea.
No radar detected them. No high-tech thermographic spotted their passing. But there was a sentry at his station in a bunker on the southern headlands. Ever since the start of the bombing raid on Shanghai, he had been peering warily into the night.
There was little to be seen. The only light anywhere within his field of vision was a single flickering patch of illumination low to the north-northwest. The sentry had seen the flash of manmade lightning that had given birth to it. A cruise missile hit on the radar station on Jiuduan Sha Island. Now a fire burned in the wreckage.
As the sole spark in the darkness, it had the tendency to draw the sentry’s attention. Thus, he noticed instantly when the spark went out. Something moving at sea level had just occulted it. After a few moments, it reappeared as that something moved on. The sentry picked up his field phone and began to speak urgently into it.
Elsewhere in the night, gleaming steel gun barrels lifted out of camouflaged emplacements. With a predatory howl of hydraulics, they began to index across the sky.
“Bridge!” Ken Hiro’s voice barked from the overhead speaker. “Channel is turning to port!”
“We see it, Ken!” Amanda dashed back behind the steering station. “Helm, come left to two six … make it two six five. Smartly, now!”
“Coming left to two six five, Captain!”
“Okay, we’re coming around … Two seven five … two seven zero … Okay, meet her! Steady as you go! Watch it! You’re off-angling in the channel!”
Amanda’s hands flashed to the throttles and propeller controls, trimming the propulsor pod outputs, kicking the Duke’s stern over. With agonizing slowness, the Duke’s position hack realigned itself between the rows of wide-set mines.
Amanda and both of the hands at the helm console shared a shaky breath. Straightening, Amanda rested her hands on their shoulders for a moment.
“CIC, this is the bridge. We’re around the dogleg and back in the groove. How much more of this?”
“Maybe another half a click,” Christine Rendino replied.
“This minefield is humongous! There must be thousands of them out there!”
“And all it takes is one,” Amanda whispered under her breath.
Abruptly, the mines became the least of her worries.
Something rumbled in the distance. A few seconds later, a whispering whine began to grow in the air, building swiftly into an express-train roar that swept overhead. The roar terminated in a series of crackling thuds and a flickering glare that shredded the night.
Someone on the bridge swore as the harsh metallic light stabbed at their eyes. A row of four meteorlike balls of flame were arcing down into the river off the destroyer’s starboard bow.
“Bridge! This is the CIC. Our night optics just went down! Captain, what’s going on up there?”
“Starshells, Ken,” she snapped into her command mike. “Someone just put a pattern of starshells over us. We’re spotted, sure as anything. Lieutenant Beltrain, can we increase speed while maintaining image clarity on the mine hunting sonar?”
“No way, Captain. We push it and we’ll start to degrade from flow noise.”
“Dix. Bring up Sea SLAMs and Oto Melaras. Stand by to initiate counterbattery fire. There’s going to be a fight.”
The guns were old, coastal-defense twin mounts forged over fifty years before in the Soviet Union. They had been adequately maintained, however, and their current generation of gunners had drilled for long hours for this moment. To a shouted loading cadence, hydraulic rams drove a second set of 152-millimeter illumination rounds into their chambers.
Breechblocks slammed shut and the tubes lifted and traversed again.
Cannoneers fell back and pressed gloved hands over their ears. Triggers were squeezed and another shell group shrieked on their way.
Out on the headlands hooded concrete director towers perched atop the low hills, looking out over the estuary approaches.
Inside them, forward observers swiveled their twin headed panoramic range finders around, bringing them to bear on the distinctive shark’s-fin silhouette revealed out in the main estuary channel. New ranges and bearings were barked into the phone lines that led back to the battery control center.
In the CIC, they couldn’t hear the shells coming in. But they could see the geysers erupting out of the river on their television monitors and they could feel the thudding impact of the shock waves against their hull.
“Lieutenant Rendino, what’s the word on these shore batteries?” Ken Hiro demanded.
“Four twin mounts. Eight guns in all. Six-inchers in concrete pop-up emplacements,” Christine replied, rattling the facts off from her memory. “on the southern headland.”
“They’re only dropping four-round salvos in on us. They’re holding back some of those tubes.”
“No, sir,” Beltrain replied. “They’re alternating fire, using half of the battery at any one time to keep us illuminated. Mckelsie, are we being painted?”
“Negative!” the stealth boss yelled back from his systems bay. “The EM environment is still clear. No radiation detected on any frequency.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Dix muttered, “they’re going to kill us with antiques.”
“Clarify that, mister,” the Exec snapped.
“Old-fashioned iron munitions aimed by optical sights! World War-vintage stuff. In this particular tactical situation they nullify every advantage our stealth systems and ECM give us. It’s an even field, sir.”
“What would the old-timers do in a situation like this?”
“Go fast and zigzag like crazy!”
Ken Hiro looked back at the mine-hunter screen and at the ominous, shadowy spheres that hemmed them in. “I hope that there’s an alternative to that,” he said.
From his station upriver, Arkady saw the sudden glare of the starshells to the east.
“Damn, Gus, what’s going on back there?”
“I dunno, sir. The Duke’s Aegis system just came up, though. I’m getting a tactical display over the datalink.”
That wasn’t right. That really wasn’t right. The Cunningham must have been spotted. That would be the only reason Amanda would clear away for a fight like that. Shit! Shit! Shit! This was going to hell.
His thumb moved to the channel control switch on the collective lever, on the verge of switching over to the Duke’s air-operations frequency when his S.O. yelled a warning.
“Lieutenant! Surface contact on the tactical display! Proceeding down river toward us. Speed, twenty knots. Range to this datum point, fifteen thousand yards and closing. Threat board data annex identifies one Skin Head military surface search radar.”
“Goddamn it! Moondog 505, we have a problem. We are departing covering pattern, but we will be back. Hang in there, guys!”
“We aren’t going anywhere, Retainer.”
“Rug. Retainer Zero Two, this is Zero One. Depart covering pattern and form up on me. Stand by for Hellfire engagement. We got a gunboat coming in on us.”
Floating in his life jacket, Digger Graves heard the rotor growl of the two covering helos begin to fade out over the broad reaches of the river. There was still sound out there in the light. The rumble of artillery, the ghost of a siren wail out toward the city.
But around the two drifting fliers, there was a momentary pocket of stillness. Graves could hear the trickling ripple of wind wavelets, and the whisper of his unconscious S.O.‘s breath. Thoughts of his wife, his past, and his future tumbled disjointedly through a mind made sluggish by his growing hypothermia.
God! Was there anyone left alive in the world?
Accordingly, when someone touched his arm, Digger’s heart nearly stopped.
Graves lunged forward, dragging Bubbles with him. There was something else in the water, a dark unmoving mass.
Almost without conscious volition, he went for the survival light clipped in his sleeve pocket. He snapped it on in its flashlight mode, letting the narrowest of beams leak through the fingers of his working hand.
It was someone else who had met their destiny on the great river: a coverall-clad Chinese seaman, dead, the open eye on the unshattered side of his face staring past Graves into the night. Digger switched the flash off and watched as the body merged back into the blackness. Slowly, the current carried the body off downstream, heading in the same direction as his S.O.
A prolonged shuddering shiver racked through Digger, and he held Bubbles closer.
The Five Sixteen boat and her three sisters rafted together in the shallows just below the point where the Huangpu River entered the estuary. Downstream, a battle storm raged — the lightning of starshells and the distant thunder of guns in the darkness. Closer in, they had heard the faint crackle of small arms fire and had several times seen the meteor trail of rockets lash the shoreline.
Still they waited. Lieutenant Zhou Shan wasn’t sure just what it was he was waiting for. But deep down in his belly, he knew it was coming soon.
“Radio operator. Any contact with Shanghai Fleet Command yet?”
“No answer on any naval command frequency, Comrade Lieutenant. No traffic at all except for the river patrol. They are asking for information and orders just as we are.”
“There she goes,” Bosun Hoong interjected from his station beside the port torpedo tube. He pointed to the north.
A pale wake streak gleamed in the darkness, a rakish shadow riding atop it. It swept by out in the deeper channel, heading downstream.
“They must be going to look into that fight out by the minefield.” The bosun looked back into the torpedo boat’s cockpit. “We could follow them out, Lieutenant.”
“No,” Shan replied flatly. “Not yet.”
The first salvo had dropped long, exploding off the Cunningham’s starboard bow. The second dropped off her port quarter, astern. Amanda recognized what was happening: They were starting to walk their shellfire in on her ship, correcting with each salvo until they started dropping rounds right down the exhaust stacks.
Praise God that they didn’t have the minefield channel preregistered. Probably no one had ever thought that an enemy would be mad enough to attempt a penetration of fortress Shanghai like this.
“CIC, how much farther until we’re out of these damn mines!”
“It’s got to be soon, Captain,” Christine replied. “Another couple hundred yards at most.”
Another blaze of light came from beyond the windscreen as the Reds renewed their illumination pattern. In the glare, she could read the growing fear in the eyes and faces of her bridge crew. Flow noise be damned, she had to get them out of this.
“Lee helm, increase speed. Make turns for ten knots.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Making turns for ten knots.”
“Stealth system, fire RBOCs. Full concealment pattern.”
“Stealth acknowledging. Firing full concealment pattern now!”
Out on the bow and from the forward end of the superstructure, rocket grenades ripple-fired into the sky, bursting like muddy fireworks over the Duke, obliterating the stars.
The Rapid Blooming Overhead Chaff rockets would not serve any of their purposes this night. There was no radar for their metal foil packets to jam. But the grenades also produced thick clouds of multispectral chemical smoke, enough maybe to throw off the targeting of the coastal batteries’ forward observers. Just for the few seconds more they needed.
“Captain, stop the ship!” Dix Beltrain’s voice rang in her headset.
His demand was so totally unexpected that Amanda mentally fumbled for a moment, trying to put his urgent words into some kind of logical perspective. Her TACCO’s next, even more frantic cry, however, blasted her into action.
“Captain, for Christ’s sake! Ring her down!”
“All engines! Back emergency!”
On possibly any other ship in the world, it would have been too late. However, the Duke’s integrated electric drive saved her. In a battle situation like this one, where sudden bursts of speed might be required, her huge Rolls-Royce/GE turbogenerator sets could be held at their maximum output.
Her actual speed through the water could be controlled through the throttles of her electric motors. With no spooling up lag, she was granted nearly instantaneous access to 100 percent of her power output.
Likewise, her reversible-pitch propellers allowed her to direct that thrust to go forward or astern with equal swiftness.
As the lee helmsman shoved his throttles forward to the stops with his left hand, he also yanked the propeller controls hard back with his right.
The blades of the Duke’s contrarotating propellers pivoted in their sockets, and the water under her quarters lifted and boiled under the impact of 80,000 horsepower. The Duke shuddered to a halt in less than half her own length.
“Stop all engines! Helm, initiate station keeping on auxiliary hydrojets. Don’t let her drift! Dix, what in hell is going on?”
“Watchdog, Captain.” Beltrain’s voice was as bleak as the tolling of a funeral bell. “Right in the middle of the channel.”
“Are you sure, Dix?”
“We don’t have enough definition on the SQQ to be certain, Captain. It could be somebody’s old hot-water tank, for all I know. But we do have an object on the bottom in the center of the channel. It’s the right size for a pressure mine, and it’s sure as hell in the right place for one.”
The same bleakness that had been in Dix Beltrain’s voice settled around Amanda’s soul. Consider a minefield as a wall that you must occasionally pass through. You must leave a passage — a doorway, as it were. And to keep the enemy from using your doorway, you needed a door.
You used a watchdog, a sophisticated naval “smart” mine fused to detonate whenever it detected the pressure changes caused by a ship’s hull displacing water nearby. You deploy the watchdog in your passage channel, then you connect it by underwater cable to a land station, permitting you to arm or de-arm the mine. The door can then be opened, or shut, at your desire.
Since it had appeared that the Chinese had not used any high-tech mines anywhere else within their defensive line, Amanda had gambled that they wouldn’t have one to use here. She had been wrong. The Cunningham was trapped.
“Zero Two, ordnance check.”
“Two Hellfires. Two Hydras,” Nancy Delany replied.
“Two and four here. This is going to be tight. Watch your round placement. Make ‘count.”
“Roger.”
The two Sea Comanches swung wide over the river to the north, moving around to flank the oncoming gunboat before it could reach the area of the two Moondog aviators.
“Gus, bring up your laser targeting. Boresight the FLIR and give me a screen display.”
“Doin’ it, sir.”
Arkady shifted vision systems again, flipping the low-light goggles up on his helmet and focusing his attention on the image that snapped up on the central panel telescreen: a pale negative-image ship on a darkened river, a swirl of thermal wake trailing behind it in both the sea and air.
“Autocannon mounts forward, aft, and amidships,” Arkady murmured. “Single small deck house. Freestanding mast. No stack.”
“Looks like another one of those Shanghai gunboats, sir.”
“No, Gus. No, the scale’s wrong. It’s too big. Way too big. That’s a Hainan-class. Twice the size, twice the firepower, and about four times harder to kill.”
“Oh, thank you, God. Thank you ever so fucking much! Lieutenant, maybe we need to call the ship in on this one.”
“The Lady’s busy, Gus. She doesn’t need us tugging on her shirtsleeve just now. Zero Two, follow me in! Point fire procedures! Take out the bridge and the main gun mounts!”
Amanda kept her voice low and controlled. She could not, she dare not, exhibit an instant of panic or confusion now.
“Lee helm, all engines astern, dead slow.”
“All engines backing astern, dead slow, ma’am.”
She measured the helmsmen’s voices the way a pharmacist might measure the components of a critically needed drug.
Was any tremor there that might foretell a catastrophic failure under load?
“We won’t have much rudder control backing at this speed, so you’ll have to hold her in the center of the channel with the engines. Helm, stay on the hydrojet controls. Lateral thrust. Same orders. Keep us centered.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
They both were steady. Nobody was breaking yet.
Another wavering howl. Another shell cluster impacted. Closer. The bridge deck plates rang. That had to be dealt with next.
“Tactical Officer. Initiate counterbattery fire. Oto Melara and Sea SLAM. Stealth systems, keep that smoke coming!”
“Aye, aye, ma’am. Aegis systems have shell tracks to active hostile batteries.”
Up forward, she could hear the bow 76mm turret begin to traverse.
“Ken, this is the plan. I’m going to reverse us back up channel. I don’t think we’ve got enough swing room to turn.”
“Then what, Captain?”
“That depends. Tactical Officer, could we detonate the watchdog mine with a command-guided Mark 50 torpedo?”
“I’ve never heard of it being tried, Captain.”
“I don’t give a damn whether it’s been tried or not. Can it be done?”
The forward Oto Melara began to rage during the moment that Dix Beltrain paused, the high-angled gun barrel slamming abrupt three-round bursts into the sky.
“I can’t see any reason that it can’t.”
“How much room will we need?”
“I’d like about a thousand yards.”
“How much will we need?”
“Three hundred and fifty.”
Out on the long reach of the foredeck, the car-length cylinder of the first Sea SLAM counterround sprang out of its launching cell. Its booster rocket blazed, illuminating from within the smoke cloud that engulfed the Cunningham.
“Okay, Dix, set it up. Quartermaster, back us upchannel three hundred and fifty yards by the GPUs.”
Caught in the heart of her own firestorm, the Duke began to gain way astern.
At this moment, Vince Arkady’s world consisted of the green tunnel of vision drilled through the darkness by the FLIR sights. With turbines fire walled and with their airspeed peaking out at a 190-plus miles per hour, he and his wingwoman went for the gunboat’s flank.
Tracer fire flickered past outside the canopy, tentacles of deadly light reaching up from the river to enmesh the two diving helicopters. The Reds were chronically short of state of-the-art technology, but they had been able to equip at least one of their gunboats with night-vision sights.
The rub was that to merely hit the target, they didn’t need to work in this close. Their laser-guided Hellfire missiles had a ten-mile range, more then enough to stand out of the reach of the autocannon.
Unfortunately, the Hellfire was also designed to kill a fifty ton main battle tank, not a four-hundred-ton surface combatant. It was not enough to simply hit the gunboat. To take it down, they would have to precision-strike at specific points aboard it.
On his own targeting screen, a glowing crosshair spider crawled around the image of the Chinese gunboat. Gus Grestovitch was lying in the beam of the laser designator.
“Get the bridge … Get the bridge … Get the bridge … ”
Arkady chanted softly.
The crosshairs fixed on the gunboat’s wheelhouse.
“Illuminating … got designation. Missile’s hot!”
“Taking the shot,” Arkady keyed the radio. “Zero One … missile away!”
He squeezed the initiator, fixing his eyes on the instrumentation so he wouldn’t be blinded by the Hellfire’s exhaust flare.
Riding the dials, Arkady started his turn away, anti-IR flares kicking out into Zero One’s wake. He heard Nancy Delany call her own round away, then another sharp cry.
“We’re hit! Zero One, we are hit!”
“Ah, shit!”
Arkady racked the helo through the remainder of the turn. Aimed north again, and skimming twenty feet over the river’s surface, he took a split second to look out into the night again.
“Gus, try and pick up on Zero Two. Did you see a fireball out there?”
“Negative, negative. I’m not seem’ nothin’!”
“Zero Two, Zero Two, talk to me! Nancy, state your status?”
“We’re still in the air, Zero One,” a weak return came back. “We are hit. I think a single twenty-five-millimeter round. Smoke in the cockpit and all kinds of systems failures. Nothing left but basic cockpit and engine instrumentation. Nothing will reboot. I think that one of the subsystems bays was blown right out of the aircraft.”
“Can you stay in the air?”
“I have flight and engine control, and the airframe appears intact. I have no fire control and no night vision except for my low-light goggles.”
“Then get out, Nancy! There’s nothing more you can do here. The Duke is engaged. Head for the Task Force. You should be able to stretch your fuel far enough to reach the missile trap cruiser. If you can’t, ditch as far off the coast as possible. They’ll pick you up.”
“Zero One, I—”
“Zero Two, the only thing you can do is to leave me one less thing to worry about! Goddamn it, Nancy, take departure now!”
“Zero Two, taking departure. My round hit, sir. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
“I know, Nancy. Thanks for doing what you have.”
Arkady flared Zero One around again.
“Okay, once more into the breach, of’ buddy. Let’s see what we’ve done to this guy.”
“We got a hit on him too, Lieutenant.”
The image on the targeting screen panned around as the Sea Comanche completed its turn, picking up the Chinese gunboat once more. Fires were burning amidships and astern. The aft 57mm mount was clearly destroyed and its mainmast canted off center, but the 190-foot war vessel still stood resolutely downstream. It had closed to within a mile of the two drifting Moondog aviators.
“This guy is going to take a little more discouragement, Gus.”
“I guess so, sir. How you want to work this?”
“We try for the wheelhouse again. Only, this time we follow the Hellfire in. We close to point-blank range, then we shove the last four Hydras right down his throat.”
“Oh, man!”
“The shock effect of the Hellfire hit will throw them off long enough for us to close the range. Set us up. We’re going in!”
The Sea Comanche skated in across the river, the surface glittering like hot dark oil beneath her belly. The Hainan’s forward mount challenged again. Tracers arced over the canopy, descending as the Chinese gunners sought for the range.
“Illuminate!”
“Illuminating target … We got laser lock!”
“Taking him out!”
Arkady’s finger closed on the actuator. There was a faint lurch. But there was no hot flame in the night.
“Shit, Gus, we got a misfire! Reset!” Arkady yelled, futilely crushing down on the actuator trigger again.
“Negative! She’s gone! The fucker dropped off the rail! She didn’t ignite!” Grestovitch’s voice lifted an octave. “Lieutenant, pitch out! This isn’t going to work!”
“It’s got to!”
Arkady fought the rudder pedals and the collective lever, playing death tag with the twinned fire streams lashing at them, attempting to sidle out of the way while still maintaining his headlong charge toward the enemy. All he had left were the Hydra rockets. They were superb antipersonnel weapons, but they were no damn good for ship killing. Not unless you got so close that you could shove them right through the side of the hull.
They were hit.
A flash of light, a crash like they’d been broadsided by a pickup truck, and a pattern of cracks on the right side of the canopy. The Sea Comanche roared out of the far side of it, still a viable aircraft. Arkady could feel a change in the flight dynamics, but he didn’t have time to sort it out now.
The image of the gunboat filled the targeting screen, overfilling it, scurrying figures of crewmen throwing themselves on the deck as a screaming, rotor-winged hunterbird dove on them. Arkady fought off the weird, deadly mindlock of target fixation and sent the Hydras on their way. The fire trails of the four 2.75-inch rockets momentarily linked the helicopter to the gunboat before vanishing within the hull. Arkady rocked hard back on the collective and sought sky.
The rockets exploded within the gunboat’s engine room.
Diesel oil is normally not a particularly volatile substance. But shred the tanks and fuel lines that contain it, aerosol it through the atmosphere with multiple hypervelocity impacts, ignite it by exposure to the star-temperature flame of high explosives, and it can be.
A massive chunk of the Hainan’s midships weather deck blew off its framing, a massive, incandescent wound bleeding fire into the night.
“Yeah! We are living!”
“I’ll take your word for it, Lieutenant.”
Arkady backed off the power and circled to get back over the estuary. Twisting in his seat harness, he tried for a damage inspection. “We caught something back there. How bad are we hit?”
“The MAD pod’s gone. I think the right wingtip, too.”
“We’re okay, Gus. I think we’re okay. I got green boards.”
“We gonna have to do that again, Lieutenant?”
“Hell, old buddy. We can’t. The cupboard’s bare.”
Another voice abruptly intervened over the CSAR link.
“Retainer, Retainer, this is Moondog, do you copy?”
“Roger, Moondog, we’re still out here. Just having words with a Red gunboat.”
“So I see, Retainer. Thanks, guys. But we got another little problem here.”
Oh, shit. “Go, Moondog. Whatcha got?”
“We’re getting small-arms fire from the beach again. Not too close yet, but we need you to lay a little more nasty on these guys.”
Oh shit! “Roger, Moondog. We’re on our way.”
Both pilot and systems operator tuned out the darkness beyond their cockpit and refocused themselves on their job and their instrumentation. As a result, neither of them noticed the faint, chromatic blurring begin on the outside of the canopy.
The rotor wash was whipping an almost microscopic spray of oily fluid through the air. The transmission pressure warning alarm would not trip for several minutes yet.
Like an enraged mountain cat, the Cunningham clawed back at her attackers. Her SPY-2A radars traced the incoming artillery rounds to their points of origin, and her Aegis battle management system apportioned death and destruction among the guns of the Chinese battery.
A Sea SLAM burned down out of the sky like a vengeful comet, diving full into one of the open gun pits. Its quarter ton warhead scooped the big twin mount and the vaporizing remnants of its crew into the air. A microsecond later the wreckage was scattered farther afield as the ready-use ammunition in the adjoining bunker succumbed to its torment, the entire emplacement area erupting like a miniature volcano.
Oto Melara rounds rained down on the other battery sites. The autocannon shells were too light to damage the massive concrete fortifications themselves, but proximity-fused, they exploded overhead, raking the open mounts with hypervelocity shrapnel.
Steel found flesh, and gunners died. Their comrades maintained the loading cadence, however, hunkering down against the storm and continuing the rituals. Round in the breech!
Breechblock closed! Lanyard pulled! Round on the way!
“Captain, we have reversed three five zero yards by GPU … ” The helmsman was by the shell howl and rippling roar of the salvo detonation. The plumes were closer now. The rounds were walking in to mate lethally with the Cunningham.
“… awaiting orders, ma’am.”
“Stop all engines. Hold position. Resume station keeping.”
“Engines answering all stop, Captain. Station keeping on hydrojets.”
Amanda slid one hand under her helmet and held the command-set earphone more tightly against her head.
“Dix, status on the torpedo?”
“System’s hot and the fish is spinning up now. Targeting datum point and range safeties set. Ready to shoot. But no promises, ma’am.”
“None asked. Shoot!”
“Fire one!”
From near the Duke’s waterline amidships, a Barracuda torpedo sliced out of its fixed launching tube. Trailing the hair-fine filament of its guidance wire behind it, it curved away from the ship’s hull.
Abruptly, the sea domed up off the Cunningham’s starboard bow, an upheaval of shattered water far greater than any shell hit. The destroyer leaped in the water like a startled horse, the shock coming as a blow through the soles of the feet.
“Dix, what happened?”
“We lost the torpedo, Captain. It swung wide in the channel and clipped one of the contact mines.”
“Reset systems and try it again! Expedite!”
“Acknowledged. Fire two!”
This time there was only the briefest of howls. Three jets of spray lifted out of the river to port. And one to starboard.
“Captain!” one of the lookouts cried. “They’ve got us straddled!”
“I’m aware of that, mister. Stand easy.” Amanda silently counted out seconds of running time, willing the torpedo to make the turn, willing it down into murky depths of the river.
Backlit by the starshell glow, a massive, muddy column of water lifted out of the center of the channel, straight on beyond the Cunningham’s bow.
“Yes!” Amanda leaned forward in the captain’s chair.
“Dix, did we get the watchdog?”
“Torpedo detonation is on target, Captain.”
“Dix, did we get the mine? Do we have a clear channel?”
“Can’t tell, Captain. Not yet. Bottom conditions are disturbed. We do not have clear imaging.”
“Dix, we have got to get the ship out of here … “
Amanda Garrett would never be able to explain just what made her do what she did at that instant. Possibly, she felt the brush of the incoming shell’s shock wave. Whatever the reason, she threw her arms up in front of her face and curled forward in the captain’s chair. A fragment of a second later, a wall of orange flame caved in the thermoplastic of the windscreen.
“They aren’t buying it anymore, Lieutenant,” Gus Grestov itch reported from the rear cockpit. “They’re just shooting at us now too.”
“I know.” Arkady had felt two small-arms strikes on that last pass. They had been making dummy firing runs on the beach to try to keep the Chinese troops at bay. Unfortunately, the bluff was wearing thin. As he swung back over the estuary, Arkady keyed the CSAR again.
“Moondog, how you doing down there?”
“Not so good, Retainer. We’re getting fired on again. That damn gunboat is drifting down on us, and I think they can see us from the beach.”
Arkady glanced upstream at the flaming hulk. “Sorry about that, Moondog. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yeah, well, I think we could use another one, guys.”
“Coming up, Moondog.”
Arkady lifted his thumb off the transmitter key. “Any brilliant notions?”
“Just one, sir.”
“What is it?”
“Call the fucking ship.”
“I think you’re right.”
As he toggled across frequencies to the command channel, Arkady looked downstream to where the starshells still rained down.” As he did so, however, he saw an atypical flash of light play across the mouth of the estuary like heat lightning. That had to have been an explosion.
“Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. Do you copy?”
He was answered with dead air.
“Gray Lady, this is Zero One. Do you copy?”
Arkady tasted sudden copper fear.
“Gray Lady, this is Zero One. Do you copy? … Amanda, Goddamn it, you answer me!”
She didn’t.
Amanda straightened slowly. The burning stench of cordite hung thick in the air and soured her throat. Behind her, over the ringing in her ears, she could hear the soft, mindless wail of a human reduced to the level of a wounded animal.
She could also hear a quiet, cool voice speaking from deep in the center of her being: You aren’t hurt that badly. The ship is in trouble. Get moving! Do something!
She found that she was on the deck beside the captain’s chair, and she used it to pull herself to her feet. The bridge structure was essentially intact, but the windscreen was gone and there was systems damage: telepanels broken and electronics chassis lifted out of their bulkhead mounts.
She staggered over to the grab rail and peered out and down onto the foredeck. They had been lucky, extremely lucky. A few feet farther forward and the Chinese 152mm round would have struck the number-three Vertical Launch System with its scores of closely ranked guided missiles. A few feet farther aft and the bridge would have been gone. A few feet to either side and it might have pierced through to the forward Oto Melara magazine.
As it was, however, it had struck the gun mount itself. The turret shell had been blown away completely, and the distorted wreck of the autocannon stood centered in the deck like some scrap-yard sculpture. The plating was torn around it, and Amanda could see a flicker of flame down between the framing.
“Damage control, this is the bridge … Damage control!”
The command headset links were down. Amanda tore off her helmet and headset both and snatched one of the emergency sound-powered phones from out of its clips.
“CIC, this is the bridge!”
“Bridge, what is your status?”
“We have wounded. We need first-aid parties. The forward gun mount has been hit. Get damage control up there. Flood forward Oto Melara magazine. I say again, flood forward Oto Melara magazine.”
“Acknowledged. Do you wish to shift the con to the CIC?”
“Negative. Not at this time. Have Mr. Beltrain standing by.”
Amanda stumbled across to the helm console. The lee helm operator was the one producing the agonized keening as he sprawled on the deck. The helmsman was still slumped, bloody-faced, at his station. Gripping the collar of his life jacket, Amanda pulled him out of the chair, not allowing herself to care too much as she lowered him to the deck as well.
There was blood on her hands as she dropped into the helmsman’s seat. She didn’t know if it was hers or his. The console screens were dark, but Amanda hit the systems reset and they lit off again. Most important, the Navicom came on line, showing the path the Duke must follow to get out.
Amanda verified that the ship was still aligned with the passage, then she spoke deliberately into the phone again.
“Tactical Officer. Do we have a clear channel?”
“Captain, the mine-hunter sonar is still not imaging clearly. There is no way to tell!”
“Yes, there is.”
Amanda’s right hand went to the main throttles and shoved them forward.
She felt the faint surge of acceleration across the small of her back, and the indicator bar of the iron log began to creep up its scale.
Amanda took the throttles to their stops. The mine-hunting sonar was irrelevant now; she had the bearing she must steer.
Her left hand had gone to the helm controller, her fingers closing around the tiny spokes of the miniature ship’s wheel, holding the course line.
She heard the building wail of the next incoming salvo, building into the ripping roar of their arrival. With the bridge open, the shell detonations were as loud as the word of God … and away beyond the Duke’s stern.
For the moment, she had jerked her ship out of the enemy’s gun sights. Scylla had been passed. Now came Charybdis.
The Cunningham was rolling down on the datum point of the watchdog mine. Impassively, she watched as the image of her ship and the mine merged on the screen. There was nothing else to be done, except to take a deep living breath a moment later as they passed over it and swept clear of the minefield.
Another Chinese salvo dropped farther astern. Amanda became aware of the other people crowding onto the bridge, corpsmen tending to the injured and replacement hands taking over the functional workstations. A new helmsman was standing by at her shoulder.
She also became aware of the breeze flowing in through the empty windscreen frame, clearing away the stench of blood and explosives.
“Keep her in the main channel,” she said. “We have some people waiting for us.”
Inland, the Communist guns grated against the limits of their traversing range, no longer able to track their target. The engineers who had laid out the battery had never visualized a foe that would dare to pierce so deeply into Red territory.
The men who manned them were patient, however. They would clear away their dead and wounded, and they would wait. Their enemy had passed them to gain entry to the river.
They would have to pass once more to escape.
“What in the hell is the holdup on that support strike, No-I an?”
“We had to upload a new set of Mission Data Modules, sir. Those coastal-defense installations were not classified as a potentially critical target. We never visualized one of our ships having to go upriver like this.”
“Admiral,” the communications rating called out from his station. “Battle-damage report coming in from the Cunningham.”
“How bad?” Tallman demanded, striding across to the communications console.
“Shell hit … ” the radioman relayed. “Forward gun mount out … Casualties … Ship still operational … Clear of the minefield. Proceeding to recovery point.”
“Acknowledge the message.”
Jake Tallman looked as if he wanted to hit something, just once, very hard.
“Take it easy, Jake,” Macintyre said slowly, leaning back against the Pri-Fly bulkhead.
“It’s going to pieces, Eddie Mac. This operation is going to pieces, and we’re going to lose all those people out there, and it’s my fault.”
“Every operation always goes to pieces. And then we have to trust in the people we send out there to put it all back together again. Don’t count Amanda Garrett out of this, Jake. The Lady has the touch.”
“I get that impression. I just hope I haven’t wasted it, and her.”
The Pri-Fly windows buzzed softly and a booming roar leaked in from the flight deck. Twinned cones of blue-white exhaust flame climbed away from the end of the carrier’s catapult as an F/A-18 Super Hornet hit the sky.
“Support strike launching now, sir,” the air boss reported.
Tallman shook his head slowly. “Too late. Too damn late. By the time they can form up and get over the target, this thing is going to be over. One way or another.”
Digger Graves again heard the angry slap of a rifle slug skipping off the water. He was becoming too familiar with that sound. Thanks to the light from the burning gunboat, the Communist riflemen were beginning to get their range.
The current was also drawing them closer to the bank. He had tried swimming farther back out into the channel, but burdened with a dislocated shoulder and Bub’s limp form, he hadn’t been able to make much headway. In growing despair, he groped for the CSAR radio.
“Retainer, we are getting down to the wire down here! We are getting fired on! Can you get these guys off of us?”
There was a long pause before the cool, steady voice Graves had come to hang on to replied. “No can do, Moon dog. No ammo left.”
No ammo left. That was going to be one shitty epitaph.
“Retainer. How long till pickup?”
“I don’t know, Moondog. I’ve lost contact with my ship. I’m out of contact with everybody. No relays. We’re sort of alone out here.”
He wasn’t going to have to make that decision about staying in the Navy after all. It took Graves a second to work up the will to lift the radio to his lips again. “I think that’s it, Retainer. You’d better call it quits, man.”
“Hang in there, Moondog. We’re still working the problem.”
“Jesus, Retainer! Don’t be stupid! There’s nothing more you can do! We’re going to be dead here in a second anyway. There’s no sense in you going out with us. Beat it!”
“I said, we are still working the problem!” the helo pilot’s voice snarled back. “I am fucking well not giving up on this thing yet, and you fucking well aren’t either. Stand by!”
Graves felt a hysterical laugh build up within him. Somehow he had never conceived of anyone ever having to order him to stay alive. Another bullet strike close enough to spray water in his face sobered him up abruptly. Digger Graves suddenly hoped that Retainer Zero One knew what he was talking about.
“Moondog, you still with me?”
“Still here, Retainer.”
“But not for long. I’m getting you guys out of there right now.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t do a lift-out?”
“I can’t. But I do have a dunking sonar onboard. I’m going to lower the sound head so you can grab on to it. Then I’ll tow you guys back out into the center of the channel. That’ll at least get you out of rifle range. Got it?”
“I’m not arguing, Retainer.”
“Rajah! Stand by, we’re coming in.”
The noise of the circling helo began to grow. Scanning the darkened sky upstream, Graves picked up the angry insect silhouette of a Sea Comanche, outlined against the flames of the gunboat. The sound head was lowered, and it swung pendulously fifty feet beneath its sonar pod.
“Yeah, Bub,” he whispered. “Maybe he’s right.”
“Okay, old buddy,” the voice of the Retainer said over the CSAR. “You’re going to have to talk me in the last couple of feet. I can’t see you once you’re in under my nose.”
“Roger, Retainer. Just get close.”
The rotor growl was dominating now, beginning to drown out all outside noise. But Graves could see a growing number of slug strikes on the water’s surface around him. The locals were apparently unhappy with the notion of losing their prey.
The tracer stream of a light machine gun cut the night, not aiming at the two downed fliers but up-angled at the approaching helicopter.
The blast of the downdraft began to sheet-spray across the river’s surface, and the sound head struck the water some twenty feet away. All too fast, it began to swim in his direction.
Graves had to have a hand free! He laced his left arm through the straps of Bubbles’s life jacket. Ignoring the pain of his dislocated shoulder, he watched the tether approach through narrowed eyes. Waiting for the right instant, he lunged. A grunt of agony escaped him as he felt the drag on his injured limb and his fingers brushed braided Kevlar.
Ashore, someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the rescue attempt. The projectile struck water and exploded some fifty feet away, the concussion striking Graves in the groin and abdomen like a booted kick. He buckled over in the water, gagging, and the tether was gone, passing beyond all reach. Graves groped for the CSAR radio on its lanyard.
“Back!” he screamed. “Back!”
Retainer Zero One forged ahead for another twenty feet, then went to hover. Gingerly, the helo began to reverse in Graves’s direction, blindly trolling for the aviator.
A rifle slug tugged at the collar of his flight suit and seared a welt into the skin of his throat. Graves ignored it. It was now. He would do it now or he and Bubbles would die here.
He grabbed for the tether again and his fist closed around it.
He pulled Bubbles to the sound head and wrapped his arms about both her and it. Every movement of his distorted shoulder was excruciating, but he forced his limb to move.
“Go! Go! Go!”
The helo nosed down and gained way, heading out into the channel. The speed was low, possibly five knots, but the drag through the water was heavy. If the pain in his shoulder had been severe before, now it was unbelievable. It tore a cry out of him and set sparks dancing in front of his eyes.
He held his arms locked, however, simply because he had to.
“We still got‘, Gus?”
“Can’t tell, Lieutenant.”
Arkady held focus on his flight instrumentation, not daring to let his speed and altitude drift in the slightest. He literally had two lives hanging on a thread underneath him.
The plastic canopy beside his head starred under a glancing slug impact. He could feel other faint but decisive taps ripple through the helo’s airframe as well. More bullet hits.
The Sea Comanche was armored against rifle-caliber fire in many critical areas, but not in all. Almost as if answering his concern, Arkady heard a warning tone begin to sound.
“Gus, I’ve got my hands full. Check it out.”
“Engine systems warning! Low transmission fluid pressure!
We got a leak!”
“Verify it.”
“We got a rise in the gearbox temperature. Shit! We got transmission fluid all over outside the canopy back here! This is for real, Lieutenant! We’re going to lose it. We got maybe ten minutes at this throttle setting.”
Arkady kept his hands steady on the pitch and collective.
There was only one card left to him now. He had been afraid to try bringing it into play again. He had been afraid that there would still only be dead air on the other end of the radio circuit.
“Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. Do you copy?”
“Retainer Zero One, this is Gray Lady. We read you.”
It was her voice. Arkady suddenly found himself believing in a future again. It felt great.
“Gray Lady, what is your position?”
“We had a degree of difficulty in the minefield, Retainer. We are clear of it now and are proceeding upriver to pickup point. What is your situation?”
“Better than it was two minutes ago. We are towing the Moondogs out into the central channel with the tether of our dunking sonar. We’ve had shooting problems. We are having systems problems, and we need to get these guys out of the water now.”
“We will be up with you in ten minutes,” the weary, static-ridden, and incredibly beautiful voice replied.
“That’ll be just about right.”
“Lieutenant, you will wish to see this.”
Zhou Shan ducked into the low deck house and crouched down beside the radar operator. Together they peered at the grainy sweep crawling around the circular screen of the torpedo boat’s “Skin Head” search radar.
“Surface target, Comrade Lieutenant. It just appeared in Beicao Hangcao channel. Large target. Proceeding upriver at eighteen knots. Estimated range at this time, eight miles.”
“Comrade Lieutenant,” the radio operator spoke up from the other side of the cramped compartment. “Some of the enemy jamming has cleared. I have acquired contact with Army coastal artillery command. They are reporting that a hostile warship has forced passage of the estuary mine barrier. It, too, is reported as proceeding upriver.”
Shan spoke no reply. He only returned swiftly to the cockpit.
Taking up his night glasses, he braced his elbows against the rail of the bridge combing and peered downstream. The blaze that had marked the hulk of the river-patrol gunboat had abruptly gone out a few moments before, the Hainan’s agony ending as it had settled beneath the river’s surface. The only light to the east came from the intermittent showers of starshells still falling out at the estuary mouth. One of them flared exceptionally bright, and Zhou Shan momentarily made out a shadowy shape. A silhouette too sleek for any ordinary ship to have, and the narrowed outline of a tall shark’s-fin mast.
“Radio Operator.” Shan’s voice was totally level as he spoke. The voice of a true commander. “Contact Army Artillery Command. Request they continue to fire illumination shells. We will need the target backlit when we attack.”
“Bosun Hoong!” he continued more loudly. “Signal all boats to start engines!”
“Stealth systems, RCS status?” The bridge-wing repeater panel on the port side was intact and functional, and Amanda had shifted her point of operations there.
“We have no stealth capacity, Captain. The Wetball systems are grounding out and we can’t isolate the shorting point. We are also reporting heavy RAM damage to the front facing of the superstructure.”
“Well, it’s not as if they don’t know we’re here. Carry on, Mr. Mckelsie.”
The Duke was well clear of the artillery now and was running fast through shadows again. Aboard the destroyer, the only transitory noises were the quiet clink of tools and the murmur of voices from the wheelhouse and the foredeck as the damage-control parties and rescue details went about their grim tasks. The only steady-state sounds were the moan of the turbines and the hiss of the bow cutting the river’s surface. Over them, Amanda thought she could just make out helicopter rotors.
“Lieutenant! High-temperature warning light on the rotor transmission gearbox! We got almost zero fluid pressure now!”
Arkady didn’t bother to comment. “Moondog, you guys still with us?”
“Still down here, Retainer.” The strained voice over the CSAR was almost drowned out by the fed-back thunder of the helo.
“Almost home, Moondog. Almost home. Hang in there. The ship’s almost up with us.”
“Or at least I hope she is,” Arkady muttered under his breath. “Gray Lady, Gray Lady. This is Zero One.”
“We read you, Zero One.” Amanda’s voice had lifted slightly. “We have just acquired you visually. We are preparing for pickup.”
“Roger, Gray Lady. Request helipad be prepared for immediate recovery following pickup.”,
“Do you have a problem, Retainer?” she demanded sharply.
“Not yet.”
The drag and the searing agony eased away as the towing helicopter returned to a hover once more. Digger Graves clung to the sonar tether and drew down great, gasping lungs full of air. Trying to keep Bubbles’s face out of the water, he had come close to drowning himself. At least out here, they weren’t being shot at.
“Hey, Moondog!” This time. Retainer Zero One’s voice sounded jubilant as it issued from the CSAR. “You want to see something pretty? Look downstream.”
It took a moment to orient himself, and then a moment more for the shades of night to differentiate themselves. Then Graves made out the ghostly slash of a bow wave and a curved prow blotting out a growing number of stars.
He didn’t realize it then, but he was becoming part of a masterpiece — the eventual masterwork of noted naval artist Wilson Garrett: The Lost, Found. An image frozen for posterity.
The pilot clinging protectively to his wounded comrade, the helo hovering in a black sky like a guardian falcon, and the great dark ship looming out of the night before them.
“Aegis systems manager, do we have anything coming off the forward SPY-2A arrays yet?” Ken Hiro demanded from the CIC command chair.
“Negative, sir. All three forward planar arrays are nonfunctional. I’m getting an intermittent feed off of some of the cells in number two, but it’s not enough to process.”
“Deck teams are reporting heavy fragmentation damage on the front face of the superstructure,” one of the DC officers called forward from his station to the Cunningham’s exec. “Look’s like she’s trashed, sir.”
Hiro frowned. At the moment, the Duke was radar blind in her critical forward arc. She couldn’t see upriver, and that was just where the threats would be coming from.
“Go to visual surface-search sweep with the Mast Mounted Sighting system,” he ordered. “Cover the forward arcs. Aegis Systems Manager, do we have any alternatives?”
“Yes, sir.” The S.O. looked back from her station in the command cluster. “Have the Aegis access the navigational radar and process a tactical overlay from that. The Nav set is still fully functional. Range and bearing only and no fire control, but we will be able to produce a surface-search image off of it.”
“Very well, make it happen and make it fast.”
She did. On the Alpha screen, the glowing details of an active radar display began to flesh out the computer-graphics chart of the estuary.
“Multiple surface contacts!” the radar operator called out. “Bearing two seven zero at ten thousand yards. Four targets! Speed, thirty-eight knots. Range is closing!”
“Get the MMS on that!” Hiro commanded, straightening.
“Threat boards, what do we have on these guys!”
“Stealth systems have no data!” Mckelsie called back from the Spook bay. “We lost our receptors with the SPY array.”
“Signal Intelligence?”
“We have shock damage!” Over in the intelligence bay, Hiro heard a fist slam down on the top of a console chassis.
“Work, you son of a bitch!” Christine Rendino snarled.
“Okay … we are now reading four Skin Head search radars active in that arc. Given their speed and aggressive maneuvering pattern, I’d say we’ve got a group of Huchuan torpedo boats out there.”
“I concur. Bridge, we’ve got a problem! … ”
The rapid hammering of the waves faded away as the Five Sixteen boat lifted smoothly onto her hydrofoils. Lieutenant Zhou Shan felt the surge of elation that he always did at such moments. This night, however, the sensation lingered on.
All hands were at their battle stations. Bosun Hoong crouched at the base of the portside torpedo tube, his strong hand ready at the launching lever. Over the martial drumbeat of the racing engines Shan could hear the cracking of China’s flag in the slipstream. Ahead awaited his nation’s enemies.
This was the war he had searched for.
“… got a problem! Four hostile torpedo boats bearing two seven zero upriver. Closing the range. Attack posture. Intent is hostile.”
Amanda dialed the tactical display up on the bridge-wing repeater. “I see them,” she replied, holding the heavy handset of the sound-powered phone in place against her ear with a shrugged shoulder.
“Captain, this is the tactical officer cutting in. I have no firecontrol designation capacity remaining in the forward arcs! Advise we maneuver to unmask the functional arrays.”
“Acknowledged, Mr. Beltrain. We’re doing it now. Designate targets as you bear. Stand by to fire.”
“Helm,” she yelled in through the open bridge-wing hatch. “Hard right rudder. Engines ahead slow. Bring her around to three five zero.”
The ship began to ware about. As the Duke began to turn, Amanda snatched a set of low-light binoculars from a rack inside the hatchway. Switching them on, she lifted them to her eyes.
A mere hundred yards away, Retainer Zero One station kept low over the river. Two dots were afloat directly beneath the helo: the two downed aviators. And beyond them, upstream, were another row of pale dots: bow waves out at the limits of the binoculars’ imaging.
Lieutenant Zhou Shan buried his face into the foam-rubber eyepiece of the torpedo sight, focusing the lenses on his target.
The coastal guns were still hurling their illumination rounds, and now a new cluster silhouetted the enemy perfectly.
They were turning! They were coming broadside-on to give him a perfect shot! There was no mistaking that sleek, uncluttered design, that rakish mast array. It was an American — Cunningham. And Shan somehow knew that it was the same one that had decimated his squadron and that had killed his first crew. He felt the hand of destiny rest upon his shoulder.
“Stand by, torpedoes!”
On the Cunningham’s bridge, Amanda Lee Garrett was feeling the touch of destiny as well. The Red Chinese were launching a classic Jeun Ecoulle torpedo-boat attack, possibly the last one ever to be attempted. It was the equivalent of witnessing the last great cavalry charge at Omderman or the last clash of the dreadnoughts at San Bernardino straits.
She was seeing the turning of a page in the history of warfare. Historic or not, however, they threatened her ship.
“Captain, this is the tactical officer. We have designated the torpedo boats. Harpoon flights are hot. Ready to fire!”
“Shoot!”
The sound of the booster ignition startled Amanda. With her eyes narrowed and her hands pressed over her ears, she let the golden light and hot breath of the missile launch surround her.
Zhou Shan recognized his death, the four cometlike streaks of flame leaping from the foredeck of the American destroyer.
Yellow fire that changed to blue as the antishipping missiles converted from rocket to jet propulsion.
He had only seconds to act. One move left to him.
The first Harpoon struck the northernmost boat of the squadron. Fused for anti-small-craft use, it detonated instantly on impact — a rifle bullet striking an eggshell filled with nitroglycerin. The hydrofoil vanished in the heart of a cataclysmic explosion.
The second boat disintegrated. The third … a wave of annihilation rolling down on the Five Sixteen.
“Shoot!”
The magnificent Hoong wrenched upward on the manual firing lever. The propulsive charge fired and the cold, greased length of a Type 53 torpedo lunged out of the portside tube.
It seemed to hang suspended for an instant, then it plunged beneath the waves like a leaping fish returning joyfully to its home. It was the last sight Zhou Shan’s eyes recorded before his world vanished into the fire.
In the CIC, the last target symbol blinked off the Alpha screen. But an instant later, a hostile torpedo hack materialized.
“Fish in the water!” Charles Foster yelled from Sonar Alley. “Torpedo data annex has identified a Type 53 in active acquisition mode. Convergent bearing! We are targeted!”
“Mister Beltrain!” Hiro barked. “Initiate Mark 50 antitorpedo program. Set range safeties to minimum and set for intercept shot!”
The Exec tore the phone handset out of its clips.
“Captain! The Reds got a torpedo off! They’ve got us boresighted! Propping Mark 50 for antitorpedo intercept!”
“Execute intercept! Fire at will!”
She had to protect the ship. Above all else, she had to protect her ship. Then the rumble of helo rotors again shouldered past her surge of concern to register on her awareness.
“Oh, my God! Radio room! Patch me through to Zero One! Expedite!”
“Arkady! Get them out of the water! Now!”
He knew which “them” Amanda was referring to, and the urgency in her voice brooked no questions or even an acknowledgment.
Swiftly he toggled over to CSAR. “Moondog! Hang on to the sound head! For Christ sakes, hang on!”
He squeezed the throttle trigger on the collective and poured power into the helo’s failing rotor system. Slowly, the Sea Comanche started to lift away from the river. Arkady could feel a load come on the sonar tether. The Moondogs were coming with him.
“Lieutenant!” Gus yelped in pure terror. “The fucking gearbox is going to come apart!”
“Do fucking tell!”
Something was going on. Graves had watched the Harpoons launch from the Cunningham and had seen them hit. Now something else had torn past him submerged, heading out in the same direction as had the missiles. He had felt the turbulence wave of its passage and the vibration of its propulsor through the water.
Then had come the yell over the survival radio. Graves felt the tether start to slide through his fingers and the sound head shoulder up against him. Frantically, he embraced it and Bubbles both, locking his arms tight. As they lifted out of the water their full, sodden weight came onto his dislocated shoulder. Graves screamed and clung to his consciousness as tightly as he had hung on to his systems operator.
“Unit is tracking, sir,” the torpedo operator reported.
Dix Beltrain, nodded, silently looking on over her shoulder.
What they were attempting was still as experimental as all hell. Theoretically, the Duke’s sonar system was accurate enough and her firecontrol processors fast enough to steer one of her own Barracuda torpedoes into the path of the weapon that had been fired at her. Also, theoretically, the American unit would then recognize the hostile fish and score a proximity-kill with a warhead detonation.
Even if everything worked as planned, it would be the equivalent of two dynamite trucks running headlong into each other.
“Get a good hold! This is going to be close!”
Out on the bridge wing, it was as if a giant flashbulb had gone off just beneath the surface of the Yangtze. A blue white glare, and then the river ripped itself open. There wasn’t enough water over the explosion to dome. Rather, it sprayed into the night sky in a thousand berserker jets, an ear-shattering thunderclap radiating outward from its core.
Amanda grabbed for the bridge railing as the Duke leaned away from the blast. “All stop! Initiate station keeping!” she yelled. “Hold us in the channel!”
As the destroyer rolled back on an even keel, she lifted her binoculars and feverishly swept the night. The ringing in her ears was too loud for her to focus on the sound of the Sea Comanche’s rotors, but she reacquired the helo in only a few seconds.
Amanda could see a misshapen mass at the end of the sonar tether, four legs dangling. He’d done it! Arkady had gotten them out of the water before the shock wave. They all still had a chance!
Amanda was granted a single heartbeat’s worth of relief.
Then she saw the helo lurch in midair, a fireworks stream of sparks belching from its engine.
“Lieutenant! The rotor drive’s going!”
Arkady didn’t bother to try to answer over the vibration rattle and the squalling of the engine warning alarms. In the vernacular of the helicopter aviator, the Sea Comanche was “starting to lose the Jesus nut.” It was entering into the first phase of a catastrophic main rotor assembly failure. Short of flying into the side of a mountain, things were suddenly as bad as they could get.
More so because of the Moondogs. Arkady could feel their weight swaying at the end of the tether.
The book said that he should be getting down out of the sky just as fast as possible, which would mean setting down right on top of the two aviators. Instead, Arkady did just what the book said not to. He firewalled his throttles, forcing the power from the turbines through the incandescent wreckage of the disintegrating transmission and up to the rotors.
Hemorrhaging, the helo staggered toward the Cunningham.
“Gus, stand by to jettison the sonar pod!”
No time for subtlety. No time for care. Maybe just enough time to get his charges to safety.
They were coming up on the ship with just enough altitude for the sonar head to clear the rail. Arkady had the briefest glimpse of a slender figure looking up from the bridge wing, and then they were over the foredeck.
“Gus, cut ‘loose!”
Arkady felt the sonar pod detach from beneath the snub wing, falling to the deck below. Please God, don’t let the damn thing land on the poor bastards.
Shedding the sonar pod had gained them a scant decrease in weight and boost in maneuverability. But now the gearbox was literally going to pieces. A new volley of screaming systems alarms heralded an incipient turbine failure.
Crossing over the foredeck, Arkady kicked the tail of the dying helo around and staggered down the length of the destroyer’s hull, trying for the helipad aft.
“Brace yourself, Gus! This is going to be a bitch!”
Another pedal turn and a wild side-slip to try to line up over the giant H in the landing area. The belated flash of the landing markers. The flicker of flame reflected in the marred canopy plastic and the shriek of metal binding on metal. The sight of the deck crew scattering away from the developing disaster. A single, sudden, panic-stricken thought.
LANDING GEAR!
“Aw, to hell with it.” Arkady released the throttle trigger.
Hitting the “Power Kill” switches, he let Retainer Zero One fall.
The helo hit hard and flat on her belly, then rolled onto her side. Her rotor blades exploded into flying composite fragments as they touched the deck, the fuselage floundering on the flailing stubs like a landed fish.
As the helo went still, there was a rush to open the cockpit as the crash crew moved in. Arkady released his seat harness and shoved at the canopy overhead. It didn’t budge, and the aviator was suddenly very aware of the smell of hot metal and smoke. He heard crash bars start to pry into the cockpit frame.
Arkady got his feet up into the seat pan and his back braced against the top of the canopy. He heaved with adrenaline-fueled strength. The canopy tore loose, and he sprawled out onto the antiskid.
Half a dozen fire extinguishers were being emptied into the engine compartment as Arkady rolled to his feet. Joining in with the aviation hands, he helped to yank open the rear cockpit and drag his S.O. clear. Only when Gus was out and on his feet did Arkady take a second to enjoy taking a breath.
He turned to face the superstructure and the monitor camera that he knew would be there. Lifting both arms, he clasped hands over his head, sending a message to someone he knew would be watching.
On the Cunningham’s foredeck, Digger Graves groggily lifted his head from the deck. Bubbles lay at his side, and he heard the faint whisper of a moan from her.
Damage-control hands and a first-aid team were hurrying toward them from the destroyer’s deck house. Graves tried to come up on one elbow and suddenly realized that something was missing. The burning pain that had been ravaging his shoulder was almost gone. The strain of the lift or the impact of his fall had popped the dislocation back into place.
The aviator goggled at his free-moving arm for a moment and murmured, “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Then, for the third time that night, Digger Graves passed out.
On the bridge wing, Amanda looked up from the helipad image on the repeater screen. Arkady was home. Up forward, the two rescued aviators were also being carried belowdecks.
She still had to get them out, but at least they all were under her hand now. She bit her lower lip lightly and wiped away a couple of unbidden tears.
“Helm, rotate on station by hydrojet. Come about to one zero zero degrees true. Set reciprocal course downchannel.”
The Duke came about within her own length, aiming her prow toward the sea, gathering herself for the dash toward freedom.
Suddenly, flickering light outlined the headlands to the south and the sound of a new volley of explosions rolled upstream from the mouth of the estuary.
“CIC, something’s taking place down river. Do you have anything on this?”
“Oh yeah, Boss Ma’am. Indeed we do!” Christine Rendino’s jubilant voice responded. “We have the word from Task Flag. We have a support strike rolling in on those bad boys down on the beach! The coastal batteries are being taken out now. They are holding the door open for us!”
“And we are going through it! Lee helm, all engines ahead one third! Let’s get out of here!”
“Sir, signal from the Cunningham. They have just cleared the Yangtze mine barrier and are taking departure from the Chinese coast. All personnel accounted for. All mission objectives completed. They are closing out the Stormdragon time line!”
“Yeah!” Admiral Tallman’s fist crashed onto the console top. “Yeah!”
The tension in Pri-Fly snapped like a rubber band. Yells, cheers, and whistles made the round in the compartment, men and women alike slapping palms and exchanging embraces as they welcomed a shipload of fellow warriors back to life.
Macintyre smiled in the semilight. “Well, Jake. I told you she could pull it off.”
“That you did, Eddie Mac! Goddamn! I wish my son wasn’t already married. I’d like that woman in my family!”
“I wouldn’t mind it myself.”
“Admiral Macintyre.” Nolan Walker handed across a sheet of hard copy. “message in from the Cunningham. Personal. Captain Garrett to CINCSPECFORCE.”
“Thank you, Commander.” Macintyre couldn’t help but note that even Walker had a grin on his face.
Stepping back to the bulkhead, Macintyre held the message form up to one of the battle lights.
All sheep have been returned to the fold.
Macintyre smiled again. Folding the paper, he slipped it into his shirt pocket.