The Identity Mine

XXIV

The SH–60 Seahawk touched down on the deck of the enormous aircraft carrier, and despite the ear protection he was wearing Ethan could hear the tremendous noise soaring across the decks as they climbed down from the helicopter’s interior. A buffeting gale whistled across the carrier’s flat deck as it sailed at twenty knots into the prevailing wind, the ocean churning by far below her massive hull.

Crewmen in colored shirts corralled them against the Seahawk, which had folded its tail back upon itself and turned its rotors into a single stack that lay back across the length of its fuselage to minimize the amount of space it required upon the ship. Steam from the launch catapults billowed across the deck from the bows as Ethan saw a Grumman EA–6B Prowler aircraft thunder down the catapults and roar off the deck into the turbulent dawn sky.

A terrific shriek made him flinch and he whirled in time to see an F–18E Super Hornet land just thirty feet away from where he stood, its arrestor hook catching the number three wire as fifteen tons of fighter jet was dragged from a hundred fifty knots to a halt in less than two seconds.

A crewman appeared before him and he waved for Ethan and Lopez to follow as they circled around the front of the helicopter. The sound of countless engines whining seared the deck, the smell of aviation fuel tainting the air as Ethan saw the carrier’s enormous control tower looming before him.

The crewman led them down a series of steps along the edge of the carrier’s hull, the ocean sweeping past in turbulent white eddies sixty feet below, and then they walked inside the ship and the crewman removed their ear protection.

‘You don’t have much time so we gotta move quickly,’ he informed them. ‘Follow me and do everything I say.’

Ethan obeyed without question as they walked, but the urgency of the situation demanded questions and answers.

‘Please inform your captain that we need to send a priority signal to Washington DC, the Defense Intelligence Agency.’

‘Your signal will be sent in the air. Right now you need to get to Saudi Arabia.’

‘Why are we going there?’ Lopez asked.

‘You’ll find out on the way,’ came the response as the crewman led them to a doorway emblazoned with the legend: Strike Fighter Squadron 81. The door was open as they walked in and two pilots awaited them, both holding flight suits in their hands.

‘Oh, not again,’ Lopez murmured.

Ethan grabbed a proffered flight suit and began pulling it on as the older of the two pilots briefed them.

‘We’ll get you to King Abdulaziz Air Base in no time,’ he said. ‘Just sit back and enjoy the ride, okay? We’ve been told you’ve done this before?’

‘F–15s out of Eglin in Florida,’ Ethan confirmed, ‘couple of years ago.’

‘Air Force? Okay,’ the pilot replied, ‘that means you haven’t seen anything yet.’

Ethan was handed a gray helmet with a glossy black mirrored eye — shield, an oxygen mask and a pair of fire retardant gloves. As soon as they were ready, the pilots led them back through the endless corridors inside the carrier and then ordered them to don their helmets before climbing the steps back out onto the flight deck.

The sound of jet engines shredded the air as they ascended onto the aft deck, and Ethan saw rows of F–18E Super Hornets parked tightly together, their wings folded up as crewmen swarmed across them. Two of the sleek, angular fighter aircraft sat with their canopies open as the pilots led them toward them, both aircraft’s tails emblazoned with the 81st’s emblems.

Lopez stared at the fearsome looking aircraft with some trepidation.

‘This is down to Jarvis,’ she said finally. ‘He knows I hate this stuff.’

Ethan ascended a ladder beside the nearest F–18’s cockpit and climbed as directed by the ground crew into the rear seat, the pilot climbing into the front. A galaxy of television screens, dials, switches and lights confronted him as he was strapped into the ejection seat by a crewman. To his right, Lopez was likewise strapped into her seat, her head leaning on one gloved hand as she shook her head in dismay.

The canopy on Ethan’s F–18 closed and the raucous of the flight deck was silenced as Ethan heard the jet’s turbofan engines whine into life, crewman pulling power hoses from beneath the jet even as, right in front of them, a massive Grumman E–2C Hawkeye slammed down onto the deck. Ethan’s pilot called a series of radio commands to the control tower and within minutes they were taxiing across the crowded deck toward the bow catapults, directed by yellow — shirted crewmen using nothing more than hand signals, radios useless on the aircraft carrier’s violent and noisy deck.

‘You like fairground rides, Mr Warner?’ the pilot asked over the intercom.

‘That a leading question?’

The pilot laughed. ‘Brace yourself.’

The two jets lined up on alongside each other on the catapults at the carrier’s bow as crewmen again swarmed around them and Ethan saw the F–18’s wings fold down, the flaps being extended as the Hornet’s nose sank a little under the tension of the catapult.

A series of barked radio commands that Ethan could not decipher crackled over the RT, and he saw the pilot give a thumbs up and a salute to one of the deck crews as the Hornet’s engines whined up to full power, the jet vibrating like a leashed beast straining to escape.

Suddenly the aircraft jolted and then Ethan was shoved back into his seat as though he had been literally fired from a cannon. The deck flashed by in a surge of blurring motion and Ethan felt his lungs compressed against his spine and his head slam against the headrest as the F–18E Super Hornet was hurled from zero to a hundred eighty knots in a little over two seconds.

The deck blasted by and then suddenly the vibration was gone as the fighter soared into the air and banked gently right over the sparkling ocean. A scattering of cumulus cloud shot by, light and shadow flickering through the cockpit as Ethan saw the altimeter climbing through two thousand feet.

He looked over his shoulder out across the F–18’s wing, and saw Lopez’s aircraft move into close formation as they climbed up through broken cloud layers to twenty thousand feet, the bulbous canopy of the aircraft providing a spectacular panorama of the ocean below.

The pilot’s voice sounded in his ear.

‘I’m opening a data — link channel, stand by.’

Ethan waited for a moment and then Doug Jarvis’s voice crackled in his ear as one of the screens in the cockpit showed the old man’s face as he spoke from what must have been the DIA’s Watch Center in Washington DC. A second screen showed Lopez’s face obscured by her oxygen mask, dark eyes glowing with discontent.

‘Ethan, Nicola,’ Jarvis greeted them. ‘I trust that you’re enjoying the ride.’

‘Up yours,’ Lopez muttered in reply.

‘Many people would give their right arms to be sitting where you are now,’ Jarvis chided.

‘They can have mine,’ Lopez shot back. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Have you apprehended Abrahem Nassir?’

‘No,’ Ethan replied. ‘He escaped us and is likely heading for America even as we speak.’

‘I’ll alert the relevant authorities,’ Jarvis replied. ‘We’re already on high alert but it’s not possible to figure out where Nassir might strike, or whether he has allies already in the country we can neutralize. Do we have any further intel?’

‘Abrahem was in the company of an older man with plenty of money according to the prisoners questioned by the SEAL team, somebody called Tariq.’

‘We’ll look into it,’ Jarvis promised.

‘There’s also further evidence of Chinese involvement,’ Lopez added. ‘It looks like whatever Abrahem got his hands on, it doesn’t belong to him. If this entire thing is being funded by one man then this Tariq is at the head of the money chain — pin him down and it’ll lead to anybody else working for these two who are already Stateside.’

‘I was worried about the possibility of China’s involvement,’ Jarvis echoed. ‘The President is hosting a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House tomorrow evening for the President of the People’s Republic of China, some sort of major new Asian Trans Pacific Trade agreement.’

‘Abrahem might have plans to attack that ceremony,’ Lopez replied. ‘From what we can gather he may have obtained technology from the Chinese, perhaps the implants that were used to control Major General Thompson.’

Jarvis nodded.

‘There have been some further developments here. The FBI has people on the ground in Hong Kong and Kowloon trying to trace the connection between four NSA agents abducted there in 1997 and Abrahem’s involvement now. They’ve sent a pair of agents, a friend of yours I believe Ethan?’

‘Hannah Ford?’

‘The same. Quite an interest she has in you, courtesy of Director LeMay.’

‘The FBI are fishing for the same technology out there,’ Ethan said. ‘If Majestic Twelve are behind LeMay, then Mitchell might also be out there. You need to send her a warning.’

‘Correct,’ Jarvis replied. ‘But my men haven’t been able to locate her yet.’

‘She could be in danger and we can’t let that technology fall into the hands of Majestic Twelve, either through LeMay or Mitchell.’

‘Where do we start?’ Lopez asked Jarvis. ‘We need to pin this down before Abrahem can make his move.’

‘You’ll be flown to Saudi Arabia, where an aircraft is waiting to bring you back to the States. I’ve obtained one of the highest security rating’s our unit has ever achieved, because there’s something waiting for you here when you get back and you’re going to have to see it to believe it. Get your heads down, because whatever Abrahem has coming is going to keep you very busy when you get back. For now, you’d best be on your way. Jarvis out.’

The screens in the F–18’s cockpit blinked out, and Ethan saw Lopez’s aircraft drift away out of formation until it was a bright speck on the horizon.

‘Time to hustle,’ the pilot said, ‘I feel the need.’

‘The need for what?’

Then reply came back from the other Super Hornet pilot. ‘Speed!’

Ethan felt the F–18 rocket forward as the throttles were pushed to the firewall. Full afterburner punched the Hornet through the sound barrier and the G — force acceleration crunched Ethan down into his seat as the fighter’s nose was hauled up into a steep climb as it searched for the rarified cold air of the upper atmosphere. The F–18 soared through forty thousand feet and rolled through the inverted, Ethan hanging onto his lunch as he was finally returned to right — side up. The sky above was a deep indigo blue and the clouds below tattered blankets of white stretched across the azure ocean.

‘We’re supersonic and heading for Mach Two,’ the pilot informed him calmly, ‘courtesy of Uncle Sam’s Navy.’