Typhoon Season

TWELVE

Jackson would be almost relieved when night arrived. At least he couldn’t see the ocean sweeping past the open doors. The seas just kept getting taller; now, the biggest ones completely blocked the doorway as they rushed past. You could hear them hissing, too; avalanches of water.

On the other hand, darkness did not bring rest, at least not for long. Except for brief breaks, everyone kept going, doing what needed to be done. Lots of welding up above, where the missile had come through the side and whalloped the overhead. This was a life-and-death matter, and they all knew it.

Finally, after the majority of the heaviest moving and cleaning was finished, Jackson headed for the plane now assigned to Bird Dog, to see if anything had happened to it. To make absolutely sure that nothing he was responsible for was wrong with it.

He was halfway across the bay, waiting for two men to cross in front of him bearing a section of fractured catwalk, when he saw Orell Blessing stroll out from under the wing of Bird Dog’s plane. Orell glanced both ways, but casually, as if expecting to find a friend, then meandered off toward his parked tractor. He appeared to be whistling. He hadn’t seen Jackson.

Jackson stood where he was for a long minute, thinking. Then he headed toward the plane.

“What exactly are you saying?” Beaman asked. He was standing near the disassembled tail wing of an F-14 that had been damaged by falling metal.

“I’m saying I didn’t mess up Bird Dog’s plane, or anybody else’s,” Franklin said in a low voice. “I’m saying Orell Blessing did it. And I can prove it.”

Beaman tapped the heavy wrench against his palm. “Now, why would Orell Blessing want to sabotage Bird Dog’s plane?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Well, just a little while ago I saw him walking away from Bird Dog’s new plane. So I went over and started checking it out. Hydraulic lines on the nose gear strut had been cut. First time you put some extra pressure on it — like in a landing — and pop.”

Beaman was looking grim now. “Nobody screws with my plane, Franklin, so you can bet your ass I’ll check this out. But what you say still doesn’t prove Orell did anything. Nothing personal, Franklin, but how do I know you didn’t do it just so you could put the blame on someone else?”

Franklin clenched his jaw. It wasn’t a completely unfair question. “ ’Cause like I said, I can prove it.”

“And like I said — how?”

“Well, I already set it up. I made sure Orell saw me checkin’ out the plane, and replacing that cut hydraulic line. I didn’t let on I was thinking anything suspicious. So Orell will think he needs to cut that line again. And that’s when you can catch him.”

Beaman stepped out onto the hangar deck and almost fell over. The wind was simply unbelievable, a solid hand pushing him toward the bow of the carrier. And the rain — although he was wearing a complete slicker outfit, the water somehow slashed him to the skin, even blowing up under the pant legs. He felt like he was breathing underwater.

But he wasn’t alone up here. Other men were moving around, clinging to lifelines and carrying flashlights and tool boxes. Defying death to keep the carrier intact. True heros, as far as Beaman was concerned.

He moved carefully across the nonskid, his body pressed down in what resembled a wrestler’s posture. A nice, stable position. Slipped past the island to the area where several planes were being stored on deck, their fuselages bobbing to the hammering blows of the wind.

And he saw a small, blurred glow bobbing around the deck at waist level.

Flashlight. Nothing wrong with that, not when we’re not in the middle of flight ops. During flight operations, the personnel directing the movement of aircraft on the deck carried lighted wands, and all other extraneous sources of light were verboten.

Still, Beaman felt a rill of vindication run through him. This weather, no one was supposed to be out on the flight deck alone. No one. Beaman pointedly ignored the fact that he was on the flight deck alone in violation of all standing orders. What the air boss would do to him if he caught Beaman — just one more possibility to be ignored.

A single flashlight bobbing around, that meant one man. One man meant trouble.

Just like I do.

Beaman watched the light flick out. He waited, certainty chasing the cold chill out of his bones. Another brief flick of light.

Forward refueling station. He knows the deck, but not well enough to be certain. Doesn’t want the light on all the time, not in case someone’s watching. Beaman’s own flashlight was clenched in his hand, his forefinger resting on the push switch.

If it’s him, he’s almost here. Beaman traced out the man’s movements in his mind, running the time and distance problem as accurately as any RIO ever did in the backseat of a Tomcat. Just about now — wait for him to touch it —

There. The whiney scrap of an avionics compartment hinge resisting opening.

Beaman darted forward, grabbed the dark figure poised next to his bird, and thumbed the flashlight on. The other man howled, jerked back, and started to run. As he turned, his foot caught in the loop of an extra tie-down chain that encircled the aircraft. The man stumbled, went down on one knee, and Beaman tackled him.

“I knew it was you. I knew it.” Beaman slammed Orell Blessing in the side of his face with the flashlight. “You trying to kill people — you trying to kill our people! In my bird.”

“No, I wasn’t — I wasn’t doing anything,” Blessing howled, his voice pulled out of his throat by the gale force winds. “Nothing.”

“Right. What’s those wire snips doing in your hand, then?”

Blessing stared down at the tool he held as though the hand belonged to a stranger. “Maybe a lot of things,” he said, confidence seeping back into his voice. “You got some ideas, but you can’t prove a damned thing.”

Beaman dragged him to his feet and punched Blessing in the gut. He lofted the other sailor, now groggy, over his shoulder and walked the ten steps to the side of the ship. He flung Blessing down on the nonskid then shoved the other man forward until he was hanging over the end of the flight deck. Beaman kept a firm grip on Blessing’s ankles. “Tell me the truth. You tell me now — or else.” By way of illustrating “or else,” Beaman loosened his grip on Blessing’s ankles for a moment. The wind tore at the prone sailor, pulling him further out over the sea.

Blessing howled. “Oh god pull me up pull me up pull me up oh god you can’t — ”

Beaman cut him off. “Tell me.”

“He had it coming, I was just going to — nobody was supposed to die. Slow them up, that’s all he said. I was just supposed to — ” The wind surged again, drowning out the babbled confession.

Beaman stared down at the chaotic ocean, surging and pounding against the side of the ship. He knew what would happen next. Captain’s Mast, followed by referral to a courts-martial. Blessing would be transferred ashore for it, get some fancy lawyer. Get some brig time, maybe. All those excuses about how he was an abused child, how he hadn’t really meant to kill anyone — reality at a trial was far different that the reality that every man and woman faced on the flight deck every day.

Reality was dead pilots. Reality was the wind and the sea and the typhoon and aircraft getting shot down and ordnance on the wings. Reality was paying for mistakes.

Beaman turned loose of Blessing’s ankles, giving God one last chance to intervene. “You can get up now.”

Blessing started to scuttled back onto the nonskid, hunching his back to draw his head back from the sea. His hands flailed, searching for something to hold on to. The fingers of his right hand grazed the rain-slick edge of the flight deck, tried to clamp down around it as Blessing reared back.

The wind gusted again, catching his exposed torso like a sail. Blessing howled, surged momentarily upright and off balance, then cartwheeled out and away from the flight deck.

Beaman watched him go, counted to ten, then turned on his flashlight and ran like hell to the Handler’s office located just inside the island. He burst into it and shouted, “Saw a light in the water. MAN OVERBOARD.”

The search was called off after an hour, fifty-five minutes longer than anyone figured a person could survive in the typhoon-lashed waters.

Bird Dog paced in the passageway outside of Sick Bay, fighting down the fear surging through him. Okay, maybe not fear. He was a fighter pilot, after all, one with well over a hundred traps onboard the carrier. Maybe half of those at night. A combat veteran — hell, he had the medals to prove it.

So what was the big deal about talking to Lobo? Just stopping by, one pilot to another, to make sure she was okay. No big deal. Happened all the time. Had nothing to do with direct and indirect battles, none of that crap. Just a straight-out friendly professional courtesy call that he’d —

Crap, it wasn’t working. The thought of seeing her again was worse than fighting off G-force gray out, worse than tanking at night in the middle of a storm. Worse than facing down the Chinese again, worse than —

Wait a minute. Good ol’ Sun had bailed him out before — maybe it’d work with the chicks, too.

Indirect. That’d done it with the carrier. He paced for a moment longer, puzzling out his approach. Dangerous ground, indirect — finally, he had it. He pushed open the door and stepped into sick bay.

Lobo was curled up on her side in a hospital bed facing away from him. The rails on the sides of the bed were up. A thin cotton bedspread in hospital dingy white was pulled up to her neck. He could see the outline of her body underneath it and saw the shallow, regular breathing change as she came out of a light doze. She twisted slightly, groaned, then shoved herself up into a sitting position.

“Hey,” Bird Dog said. He looked around for a chair. Some ancient prohibition against sitting on the side of a hospital bed rattled around in his mind, momentarily displacing his well-thought-out indirect approach. “Hey,” he started again.

Lobo’s eyes blazed brilliantly in her pale face. Traces of grime clung to one edge of her jaw and her hair was a tattered, spiky mess. She tried to speak but started coughing. Bird Dog glanced around helplessly and started to leave to get a doctor. This coughing — hell, she wasn’t going to die, was she?

In between spasms, Lobo managed to point at the pitcher of water by her bed. When Bird Dog didn’t move, she fixed him with a steely glare. Bird Dog almost knocked the pitcher over scrambling for it.

Finally, he managed to get a glass of water poured into a plastic cup. He handed it to her, then kept his hand over hers to still the trembling in her fingers.

Lobo sipped slowly, grimacing as each mouthful slid down. Finally, when she’d finished half of the water, she moved their hands over the table and loosened her grip on the cup.

“You’d make a rotten RIO,” she said, her voice hoarse and slightly slurred. “Can’t even figure out refueling.”

“I see too good to be a RIO,” Bird Dog said.

“Yeah, well. Sometime seeing’s not enough, you know?” She laid back against the pillows. “So’d you just stop by to gloat? You want to know if they did it to me again?”

“Christ, no, I just — ” Suddenly, his indirect plan was in shambles. How the hell could you sneak up on someone who was always on the attack? She never slowed down enough to be lured into the quiet, sincere discussion he’d had planned, to listen to the few lines of poetry he’d dredged up from ancient English classes.

“I love you,” he said finally. “I came down to see you.”

Lobo stared at him, the shock deepening her pallor. “This would never work,” she said finally. She started shaking her head, winced as some new pain made itself known. “Never in a million years — pilots don’t get involved with pilots.”

“Pilot this.” He leaned over and poised his lips above hers. “Just once.” He moved in slowly, feeling the fear turn into anticipation. Their lips met. Electricity arced between them, fusing their flesh together. For long moments, neither pulled away.

Lobo finally gasped and pulled back. Bird Dog blinked, opened his eyes, and found her hands wrapped around the back of his neck.

“Not fair,” she said. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

Bird Dog felt a lazy smile of sheer joy spreading across his face. “Let me tell you what my old friend Sunny would say about this.”