Typhoon Season

TWO

Tai Ling placed his call from a public telephone booth outside the busy tourist attraction known as Ocean Park. Even this late in the evening, the place was overrun with tourists from America, Germany, England, Japan. Tai preferred the view he had of Hong Kong from his SU-37. He couldn’t get used to seeing so many foreign faces up close at one time, especially in a city that should be exclusively Chinese.

“What happened?” the voice on the other end of the phone demanded after a single ring. Tai was surprised by the lack of protocol, which before now had always called for the exchange of inane passwords. The sound filter was working, though, imbuing the voice at the other end a constantly-shifting variety of tone, depth and even accent. Tai knew the owner of the voice only by his code name: “Mr. Blossom.”

But the big shock was that Mr. Blossom already knew that something had gone wrong during Tai’s patrol flight today. Tai had left his commander’s office not a half hour ago. Just how far, and how deep, did Mr. Blossom’s connections run?

Never mind. So long as Mr. Blossom believed he had a sound investment in the pilot Tai Ling, that was all that mattered. “My lead saw something he shouldn’t have,” Tai said. “I had to shoot him down. I reported it as an accident; I said he had a flame-out at low altitude and went into the water before he could eject. The incident will not be investigated; Hua was known for occasionally flying recklessly.”

There was a long pause, filled with the strange clicks and hums of a scrambler or random line-routing device. Not far away, a fat blond-haired child was squalling furiously as he was led away from the park. Tai visualized the child roasting on a spit.

Finally Mr. Blossom said, “Your lead did not report this sighting?”

“No. He wanted to destroy the aircraft before reporting it.”

“Then what you did… was the right thing to do. Congratulations.”

Tai did not respond. He didn’t feel that he had done the right thing, only that which had to be done. “The project remains on schedule, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Blossom replied, and the line went dead.

“How does it feel to help finance your own biggest enemy, eh, McIntyre?” blared Myron Carstairs, waving a cut-crystal tumbler of Scotch through the air.

Martin Lee winced and glanced at his boss, Phillip McIntyre. But, as always, Mr. McIntyre remained unruffled. He just smiled, his hands folded in front of him, his feet spread slightly on the polished wooden deck of Lady of Leisure. A waiter offered him a tray of canapés; McIntyre shook his head politely.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Carstairs,” McIntyre said. “Financing my biggest enemy?”

“Well, your country’s biggest enemy. I’m talking about CITIC, right? The bloody China International Trust and Investment Corporation, right? We both know who owns it: the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. Now, why would the United States want to be letting the Red Chinese government invest in American securities, eh?”

A few other guests on the fantail of the yacht looked a bit uncomfortable, but McIntyre just continued to smile. He was very erect and trim in his tuxedo, and looked much younger than his sixty-odd years. “I guess they need the security,” he said. “Like anyone else.”

“Security for what? To finance food shipments to starving peasants out in the countryside?” Carstairs let out an extravagant snort and staggered slightly, his diminutive Filipino wife clinging ineffectually to his arm. Lee frowned. Carstairs had arrived drunk, lumbering up the gangplank like a great red bear, his wife staggering behind him. She’d been drunk, too. Still, the Carstairs were among the one hundred fifty wealthiest people in Hong Kong, which made them one of the wealthiest couples in the world. Their invitation to the annual McIntyre Electronics International Victoria Harbor Cruise was a given.

“I run an engineering company, Mr. Carstairs,” McIntyre said. “PRC national politics aren’t my business.”

“You ‘run an engineering company?’ Phillip, that’s like saying Bill Gates runs a software company.” Carstairs gulped half his Scotch. “It also means you sell to Poly, right?”

“Poly Technologies is among McIntyre Industries Limited’s customers, yes,” McIntyre said mildly.

“Never mind that they’re owned by the PLA and sell weapons to bloody Libyan terrorists, right?”

“What’s the matter, Myron?” a voice called derisively from near the stern rail. “Did someone outbid your firm on a Poly job?”

Yet another guest, Pablo Cheung, stepped forward. “I did read that Poly sold several thousand AK-47 rifles to American street gangs, didn’t I?”

“That’s right!” Carstair’s voice foghorned over the bright tones of Hayden being played by the string quartet on the upper deck. By now, Martin noticed, most of the guests were staring at Carstairs. “Bloody cheap Chinese knockoffs, at that. But gunrunning isn’t the big problem, not by a long shot. No, it’s what’s going to happen when the People’s Republic decides it has built its military up enough, and suddenly defaults on — what — eight hundred million dollars’ worth of American bonds and securities? What are you Yanks going to do then, eh, Phillip?”

McIntyre raised his hands, palms up. “I’m an American by birth but a Hong Kong resident by choice. This is where my future lies, and where my decisions must be made.”

“That’s pretty damned evasive.”

“There’s a proper time for everything, Myron; that’s a fundamental rule of both business and war. To quote a popular Chinese sage, ‘Make timely and proper change of tactics, according to the conditions of the units and of the terrain — both on the enemy’s side and on our own.’ ”

“Oh, hell, is that Sun Tzu? I might have known you’d be one of those blokes who uses The Art of War as a business primer.”

“Actually, the quote is from Mao Zedong. Of course, he was a great aficionado of Sun Tzu.”

“Mao? You’re quoting Mao?”

“Even Mao didn’t dare take on Hong Kong!” Cheung cried, and raised his glass high. “Here’s to the real eternal city!”

Several guests on the fantail cheered and raised their glasses in return.

Carstairs snorted. “Where’s that bloody waiter? I need a drink.”

The Englishman wandered away, wife in tow, and Lee relaxed a bit. As McIntyre’s personal assistant, he had been responsible for organizing the yacht cruise this year, and he wanted everything to go perfectly. For most of Hong Kong society, the McIntyre Systems annual harbor cruise was a must-do outdoor event prior to the beginning of typhoon season.

Not that Lady of Leisure, with her sumptuous private cabins, multiple wet bars, lounges and saloons, exactly represented “roughing it.”

Two hundred feet long, Lady of Leisure was a floating mansion under ordinary circumstances; tonight, she was a palace: draped bow to stern with twinkling golden bulbs and silk banners, dotted with buffet tables holding prawns, raw vegetables, hundred-year eggs. And everywhere you turned, you saw another movie star, industrialist, banker, pop musician.

The view from the decks was just as spectacular: glittering Hong Kong to port; dazzling Kowloon to starboard, the cities like fountains of light sliding slowly past Lady of Leisure. It would be four A.M. before the yacht returned to her enormous slip.

“Martin,” McIntyre said. “Would you come with me for a moment?” Lee followed his boss to an empty spot at the stern raid. “Martin,” McIntyre said, “do you feel comfortable keeping an eye on things back here for a while? I want to make the rounds, make sure everyone’s happy.”

“Of course, Mr. McIntyre,” Lee said. He would have said “Of course, Mr. McIntyre” if the man had asked him to jump in the water and push Lady of Leisure for the rest of her sedate journey. But in truth, he thought he’d rather push the boat than try to keep Carstairs in line.

Sure enough, not five minutes after McIntyre vanished, Carstairs was at it again. This time, for some reason, he’d cornered Lisa Austin, a world-famous clothing designer.

“So the PRC is getting rich,” Carstairs bellowed, “and meanwhile Hong Kong is getting buggered. But we’re supposed to think it’s a coincidence, eh? Right! The People’s Republic takes control of Hong Kong, and within the year the bloody stock market crashes and the rest of the Asian economy goes down the loo? No connection? Bollocks.”

“Now, Myron,” Lisa Austin purred. She was slim and diaphanous in one of her own creations. “You have to admit, the People’s Republic has been very hands-off with Hong Kong so far.”

Carstairs snorted. “ ‘One country, two systems,’ right? Well, dear, the only problem with that philosophy is that nobody bloody buys it. Investors are taking their money elsewhere because they know that sooner or later the Reds will nationalize the whole mess, and nobody wants his willie caught in the door when it slams shut.”

His wife giggled in the Asian way, with her mouth hidden behind her fingers.

Ms. Austin rolled her eyes. Other guests were discreetly moving away. Time, Lee thought, for polite intervention. “Mr. Carstairs, the New Rule absolutely forbids the PRC from interfering in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. And really, why should they? What’s good for Hong Kong is good for Beijing, isn’t that so?”

“Good God, am I the only one around here with my eyes open? Tell me, Mr. Lee — what was the first thing the PRC did after the Handoff? Eh? They marched that bloody PLA garrison into the city, that’s what. Tanks, planes, ships — and five generals! To defend us from whom? Indonesia?”

At that moment, as if on cue, a fierce white glare swept over Lady of Leisure. Lee looked around, startled. The yacht was crossing the broad reach of West Lamma Channel at the place where it opened into the South China Sea. Captain Chin had, as always, timed the turn to avoid any passing ship that might produce an uncomfortable wake — no easy task in one of the busiest harbors in the world. Lee would have sworn there were no other vessels within a mile of Lady of Leisure.

But the searchlight was real enough, its beam growing fiercer by the second, and now Lee could hear the thunder of diesel engines accompanying it.

“What the hell?” Carstairs raised a hand to shield his eyes. “Oh, Christ, speak of the devil.”

Lee squinted, and then saw it: the legend COASTAL DEFENSE FORCE HONG KONG in both Chinese and English on the bow of a fifty-foot vessel painted maritime gray. From a radar mast flew the Hong Kong flag — the new one, of course; a red bahinia flower on a white background — as well as the flag of the People’s Republic of China.

An amplified voice crackled across the water: “Attention. Attention. This is the Coastal Defense Force of the People’s Liberation Army.” The words were crisply English, the accent Cantonese. All members of the Hong Kong PLA garrison were required to have at least a high school education, and to be familiar with both Cantonese and English, the two official languages of Hong Kong. “Do not be alarmed. We are boarding your vessel. Everyone remain where you are. Repeat. Remain where you are….”

The throb of Lady of Leisure’s engines abruptly dropped off to a burble. There was a slight braking sensation, and Carstairs staggered into his wife, cursing.

“Martin, may I have a word with you?” Lee jumped slightly; he hadn’t noticed Mr. McIntyre approach. They moved to the rail, McIntrye smiling blandly. With his silver hair, his sun-bronzed face, his casual silk suit, he looked perfectly relaxed. But his words were as clipped as if he were in the boardroom: “Martin, I don’t like the looks of this. I’m going up to the pilothouse to make a couple of calls. Please stay here and keep everyone calm.”

“Of course,” Martin said. He glanced at the patrol boat, which was slowing as it pulled up to the starboard side. “But… what do you think this is about?”

“I have no idea.” McIntyre’s smile remained in place. “That’s what bother — ”

The yacht jolted as the patrol boat cut in hard, crunching her metal plating against the fiberglass gunwale just forward of the stern plate. McIntyre gasped. “Bloody hell!” Carstairs shouted, doing a clumsy dance to keep from spilling the rest of his drink.

“Everyone remain where they are,” the amplified voice repeated from the patrol boat. At the same moment, grappling hooks and ropes wound around Lady of Leisure’s railing, followed by a swarm of uniformed men. There were at least a dozen of them, all armed with pistols in side-holsters and some kind of large, ugly rifles. Staring at them, Martin wondered if they were AK-47s, like Pablo Cheung had been talking about. There was no mistaking the uniforms the men wore: The special cut and color, and the bahinia blossom shoulder blaze were reserved for members of the Hong Kong garrison of the PLA.

The guests backed away from them like a herd of cattle. Three of the soldiers took up positions on the fantail; the rest ran forward.

McIntyre’s voice rose above the confusion: “Calm, everyone, please. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Another man vaulted from the patrol boat onto Lady of Leisure and stood quietly, looking around. He was small and agile, with fiercely slitted eyes, and although he wore the same CDF uniform as the other men, he carried no rifle.

After a moment his gaze lit on McIntyre and he strode across the width of the fantail. As he drew close, Lee read the nameplate on his uniform: Cpt. Wang I. He halted in front of McIntyre. “You are Phillip McIntyre?” he demanded in the same voice that had come over the patrol boat’s loudhailer. Lee was amazed the man could speak in anything but an adenoidal whine; his nose had been flattened completely, as if by a cricket bat. “You own this vessel?”

“I own Lady of Leisure,” McIntyre said calmly. “What can I do for you… gentlemen?”

Something dangerous shone in Wang’s eyes. “We have learned that this boat is being used to transport opium. The People’s Republic of China does not tolerate drug activity of any kind.”

“Commendable,” McIntyre said. “But I thought drug smuggling control fell under local police jurisdiction.”

Wang stiffened. There was a pistol in a holster at his side; he rested one hand on the butt. “Not in a vessel known to travel internationally. Opium is the curse of Hong Kong. It gave the British an excuse to enslave our ancestors and rob them of their heritage, and it continues to do the same today.”

“Possibly so, Captain Wang. However, Lady of Leisure does not carry opium, internationally or locally. And I’m an American, by the way — not British.”

“I know that,” Wang said sharply. “I am not stupid. But the Americans are the worst of all; you think you are exempt from any law, including Chinese.”

McIntyre smiled. “You’re referring to Hong Kong common law, I’m sure.”

“China is China. Now, you will move all these people into the main cabin. When we have completed our search of the vessel, you — ”

“Oh, bugger this!” The shout came, unmistakably, from Myron Carstairs. The burly Englishman shoved forward, planting himself in front of Wang. The back of his neck was the color of a pomegranate. “Look here, you bloody sod, I’m not about to moon around in some bloody saloon like a bloody sheep while you perform an illegal search, you understand? And neither is anybody else. This is Hong Kong, not Tibet, you wanker. You people can’t — ”

Wang’s hand rose smoothly from his side. The sound of his pistol was startling, not much louder than a New Year’s firecracker. As Lee watched, the back of Carstair’s head opened like a flower — red and white; a bahinia blossom. A thick, warm spray hit Lee’s face, and something like a fragment of ivory ticked off his forehead and bounced across the deck.

Carstairs dropped straight down and lay still. The Scotch glass was somehow still clutched in his hand, extended forward.

Lee heard screams, very loud in his ears….

Then came one blur leading into another. Wang marched toward the bow, shouting orders. The guests were herded briskly into the main saloon and forced to sit on the floor. Lady of Leisure eased into motion, slowly at first, then faster until her diesels thrummed. Soon Lee felt the earnest rocking motion of the open sea beneath the yacht.

Some time later, Wang reappeared and said they were free to move about the upper decks, so long as they remained quiet and orderly. As people rushed out of the saloon, McIntyre touched Lee’s shoulder. “I’m going to have a word with our host,” he said. “Wait for me at the stern rail. Wait for me right there, you understand? No matter what.”

So Lee planted himself at the stern rail of the upper deck and stared aft to where the lights of Hong Kong receded in the distance. They looked very far away. The city burned white-hot against mainland China’s black hulk.

Down on the fantail stood a guard, his stance relaxed, his rifle held across his chest like a lover. His gaze never left the upper deck.

“So, Mr. Lee,” a voice said, “where do you think they’re taking us?”

Lee glanced over and saw that Pablo Cheung had joined him. The rest of the guests — more than a hundred of them — clustered near the darkened windows of the main cabin, murmuring nervously amongst themselves. Cheung alone seemed perfectly relaxed. Of course, he was from Macau, and it was rumored that all successful Macau businessmen were members of Chinese triads. Perhaps Cheung was used to having another man’s brains splattered all over his tuxedo.

Lee made an effort to concentrate on Cheung’s question. “I haven’t seen another boat since they let us back on deck. We’ve left the regular shipping lanes.”

Cheung lit a cigarette. “Perhaps they intend to motor all the way to Hawaii. Perhaps they’re defecting.”

Lee barely heard him. He kept thinking about his wife, Lila, too pregnant to come along on this year’s company harbor cruise. She’d been so sad to miss it….

Cheung was looking at him. “Relax, Mr. Lee. Whatever this is about, your boss will fix it. Phillip McIntyre fixes everything, isn’t that right?”

Lee was silent. Two hours ago he would have said, yes, of course, without hesitation. But now…

Where was Mr. McIntyre?

At that exact moment, a distinct sound came out of the main cabin: slightly muffled, but unquestionably the same sound as the one that had burst Myron Carstair’s head. Lee spun, but there was no movement, no light behind the curtains.

The crowd murmured uncertainly.

There was sudden, complete silence as Lady of Leisure’s engines cut off. Then the patrol boat reappeared from somewhere ahead of the yacht, cutting a wide circle aft, then moving up on the stern again.

Uniformed men began appearing down on the fantail, gathering in a silent group. Lee searched for the gleam of silver hair, but was not rewarded. All he saw were the CDF uniforms, dark hair, gleaming rifles. His stomach tightened. Where was Mr. McIntyre?

“Look,” Cheung said. Far to stern, a searchlight beam winked on. It was too high off the water, and moving much too fast, to come from a boat. Then Lee heard the beating rhythm of helicopter blades.

“This could be interesting,” Cheung said, and lit another cigarette.

Guests surged to the rail, staring hopefully toward the light.

Below, the patrol boat banged into Lady of Leisure again. The PLA sailors swarmed back across the rail, and the instant the last one was clear, the patrol boat heeled away and roared off across the South China Sea, all lights off.

A cheer rose from Lady of Leisure. Clearly, no one cared that the helicopter didn’t seem to notice the departing patrol boat. It descended toward the yacht, its rotor noise escalating into a painful thunder, its searchlight beam snapping back and forth. The guests at the rail waved, jewelry and sequins flashing. The helicopter slowed, moved to the starboard side of the boat, then hovered at a distance of fifty or sixty feet. Its rotor wash flattened the sea. Through the glare of its spotlight, Lee glimpsed a sleek silhouette not unlike that of the French-built helicopter Mr. McIntyre used for business trips. He looked closer. This helicopter was painted in irregular gray stripes, with a red star on the side.

And mounted in its open rear hatch was a machine gun with a man behind it. As Lee watched, the barrel pivoted.

Cheung said something sharp in Cantonese, but his words were eradicated by a sudden, pounding roar. Flames leaped from the helicopter, and a column of water exploded up from the sea and marched toward Lady of Leisure.

The guests stood staring silently.

Then the screaming began.

“Oh give me a home… where the buffalo roam…” Lieutenant Commander Chris Hanson, call sign “Lobo,” held each note as long as she could, until she heard her Radar Intercept Officer’s groan through the Internal Communication System: “Please, God, make it stop.”

Lobo grinned, even though she knew Handyman couldn’t see her face from the backseat, least of all at night. “Honey,” she said, “before you start praying, remember that there’s only one God up here… and that’s me.” She yanked back on the yoke and slammed the throttles forward to full afterburner. As raw jet fuel spewed into the twin exhausts of the General Electric F-100 turbofans, the F-14D stood on its tail and shot up as if yanked by the Milky Way. Lobo felt her weight double, then triple, trying to shove her backward through her seat. She breathed in harsh grunts, tightening the muscles of her torso to force the blood to back into her head and extremities. Nothing better than flying an F-14 to keep the old abs in shape. Even so, gray haze crept in at the edges of her vision. She loved that. It never ceased to amaze her: A Tomcat was so powerful it could leave consciousness itself behind….

Through the ICS came a loud yawn. Handyman always made a show of being unaffected by even her most violent maneuvering. A great backseater, Handyman; not a compulsive whiner like so many RIOs.

She eased the yoke forward with leaden arms, rounding out of the climb. Now the reverse occurred: She grew light in her seat, shoulders squeezing against the shoulder restraints of her ejection harness, breasts trying to rise beneath her tight flight suit.

She started as a comet shot past the canopy, whacking Tomcat 302 with an enormous fist of displaced air.

“Jesus, Hot Rock!” Lobo shouted over the tactical circuit. “You want to give us a little clearance here?”

Lieutenant Commander Reginald Stone’s voice was calm. “You want to warn your wingman before you go ballistic like that? How am I supposed to know what’s going on?”

“What were you doing so close in the first place? You’re supposed to be flying loose deuce on me, not sitting on my… tailpipe. Get back where you belong.”

“Rah-jah.” Hot Rock’s F-14, a collection of strobe lights and twin exhaust flames in the darkness, drifted backward and higher, receding to the high position favored by American fighter pilots. Lobo didn’t believe for a minute that Hot Rock had buzzed her by accident. Although he hadn’t been her wingman for long, she’d already seen hints of the outstanding flying skills that had earned him his call sign. Still, he was young and clearly had a few things to learn about working as a team.

“Don’t sweat it, Lobo, babe,” Handyman said over the ICS. “Personally, I love it when you pull high ’g’s and start panting that way. Puts me in the mood.”

“Ah, you’re too easy, sweetheart.” Lobo grinned again. That was another thing about Handyman. He knew about her experience in Russia, what had happened to her there, but didn’t tiptoe around certain subjects the way most people did.

Above, stars filled the canopy. A beautiful night, a tanked-up Tomcat, and a righteous backseater… what a life. She wasn’t even concerned about trapping onto Jefferson later, although night carrier landings were amongst the most stressful activities in the world. Tonight, the South China Sea was smooth as a linoleum floor.

She rocked the F-14 to the left a bit and looked down. The water was purest black, dotted with the small clusters of jewelry that were ships, which grew very dense dead ahead, indicating the merging of shipping lanes into and out of Hong Kong. To the east and north were the scattered glints comprising Carrier Battle Group 14. The glow of USS Thomas Jefferson, the carrier itself, was lost in haze almost three hundred miles away.

Tonight, Lobo and Hot Rock were flying BARCAP, Barrier Combat Air Patrol, acting as the sharp point of the enormous knife that was CVBG-14. Strictly routine activity, of course, since there had been no overt conflict between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in several years. Just an enjoyable evening cruise.

As if disapproving of this, the voice of the carrier Tactical Action Officer, or TAO, came over her headset: “Viper Leader, be advised we’re picking up an SOS on IAD, to the north. There’s no response to hailing, so it’s probably an automatic repeater. Should be right in your area. Keep your eyes peeled, okay?”

Lobo clicked her mike. “Homeplate, Viper Leader; copy that. Peeling our eyes.” Well, this was interesting. When an SOS came over the International Air Distress frequency, maritime law — and hundreds of years of seafaring tradition — bound all naval vessels, including Navy fighter jets, to respond. Not that an F-14 at altitude had much chance of spotting a single boat in the blackness below, but still… she whipped the Tomcat upside down to offer an unobstructed view of the ocean.

“I knew you were going to do that,” Handyman said.

“Well, do you see anything?” she asked. “Flares? Smoke signals? People waving their arms?”

“What about that fire right below us?” Handyman asked.

“Huh?” Even as she spoke, she saw it — a tiny, unsteady flicker. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Still inverted, she keyed the mike. “Homeplate, we’ve spotted what might be a fire; we’re going to investigate.” She switched to the tactical circuit. “Hot Rock, you get all that?”

“Roger, Lobo. I’m with you.”

Suddenly something occurred to Lobo. Considering the political orientation of the nearest nation, the SOS could be a ruse of some kind, designed to lure a couple of Tomcats down to killing position. “Hang on, Hot Rock,” she said, and switched circuits again to call the E-2C she knew was airborne. “Spook One, Spook One, this is Viper Leader.”

“Spook One,” came the voice from the E-2C Hawkeye buzzing along a hundred miles to the east. “Go ahead, Viper Leader.”

“You guys see any bogey activity at all in our area?”

“Negative, Viper,” came the voice from the Hawkeye. “Commercial traffic only. A couple of Flankers were playing footsie with each other last night, but that was on their own side of the limit. Skies are friendly.”

“Copy, Seven-Niner. Be advised I’m heading down to investigate a surface vessel SOS.”

“Copy, Viper Leader. But speaking of the limit, remember you’re right on the edge of it, so be careful.”

“Roger.” She switched back to tactical. “Hot Rock, follow me down to angels fifteen, then hold. Watch my back, and make sure you don’t wander over the twelve-mile limit.”

The sigh that came over the circuit was unmistakable: the grumpy whine of the guy forced to sit the game out on the bench. Hot Rock was young, unblooded. She wondered if he’d be so eager to fight after his first real battle. “Sure, Lobo,” he said. “I’ll make sure not to color outside the lines.”

Lobo grinned, rolled the Tomcat upright, then punched it over into a near-vertical dive. “Oh, give me a home…”

“I knew you were going to do that, too,” Handyman sighed.

By the time Lobo finished the first stanza of the song, the F-14 had devoured almost twenty-five thousand feet of altitude. She eased back on both stick and throttle, letting the plane’s momentum carry it down under five hundred feet on a steadily flattening trajectory. The flicker of light now lay dead ahead. The Tomcat’s nose would soon blot it from view, so Lobo flipped upside down again and ticked the throttles back as far as she dared. With a slight, rumbling buffet, the Tomcat’s onboard computers automatically swept the wings forward to increase lift at the lower speed.

Still, even at its slowest pace, an F-14 was not exactly a hovercraft. In a heartbeat, the flicker of light flashed across the canopy.

Plenty of time.

“Holy shit,” Handyman said breathlessly.

Mouth dry, Lobo rolled the Tomcat right side up and switched the radio to tactical. “Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Viper Leader. That SOS is coming from a civilian vessel taking heavy fire from a military helicopter. Repeat, a civilian vessel is under attack.” She cranked the F-14 into a savage 180-degree turn.

“Whoa, watch it, Lobo,” Handyman said. She knew he wasn’t troubled by the G-forces so much as the fact that the Tomcat’s extended wings expanded its wingspan from thirty-eight feet to almost sixty-four. The inboard tip had to be reaching for the water. But she didn’t bother to reply; she knew where her goddamned wingtips were.

“Viper Leader, Viper Leader, this is Homeplate — are you sure it’s a civilian vessel?”

As she leveled out, the sea below her was black and smooth, a waxed floor in which she could see the reflections of stars. She knew that to the rear, matters would be different. There, the horizontal vortex of air uncoiling from each wingtip would be lashing the surface into a froth.

But all her attention was focused dead ahead, where the flame leapt into life once more.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.” Her finger had gone to the weapons selector switch. But… did she really have cause for action? Maybe this was target practice on some derelict boat. Or a legitimate shoot-out of some kind. Through her mind flashed the mantra of the few female Navy fighter pilots: Don’t fuck up; they’re watching you soooooo closely….

Then she saw the American flag dangling, shredded, from a pole on the remnants of the sinking boat’s fantail — and the red star painted on the side of the helicopter. Below her, the water was suddenly full of floating lumps. Lobo’s finger jumped back to the weapons selector switch. Too close for missiles, but the Tomcat’s M61A1 Vulcan cannon could shred that helo into a pile of tin cans…

… And drop it right on top of any possible survivors in the water.

Don’t fuck up….

Snarling, she slammed the throttles forward, turning the Tomcat into an arrowhead sixty-one feet nine inches long, and leaping toward the speed of sound.

Martin Lee clung to the rail of what had once been the starboard side of Lady of Leisure, but now substituted for her slanted deck. He had moved to the starboard rail from the stern only when the yacht began to roll over, yet even then he had stayed as close as possible to the stern. Wait for me right there, no matter what. What a fool he was; what a brainless, unthinking lackey. Now, with one arm wrapped around an upright and his body sprawled across the yacht’s slick fiberglass flank, he pretended to be dead. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

They had already shot most of the others. First they’d blasted Lady of Leisure herself, hammering rounds into her fragile body at the waterline, until she toppled over far enough to dump most of her passengers into the sea. Then the helicopter turned its attention to them. Circling slowly behind the bright eye of its searchlight, it picked out the passengers one by one and shot them, until the water turned scarlet-and-blue.

Lee watched all this from beneath his arm as he dangled against the side of the boat. He didn’t want to watch, but closing his eyes was much worse; the noise, the screaming…

He saw Pablo Cheung diving under the water, pursued by silver spears where slugs yanked bubbles after them. Cheung stopped diving and turned into a red rug drifting just below the surface. Lee saw Lisa Austin, the clothing designer, raise her hands toward the flames, and disintegrate. He saw the helicopter hesitate, its searchlight beam probing the water, scanning back and forth, then sliding back toward the yacht.

He closed his eyes. Tried not to scream as the light blazed over him, turning his eyelids red, prickling his skin like the heat of the sun…

Then he did scream as something crushed down on him, driving the wreckage of Lady of Leisure deeper into the water, boring into Lee’s ears, then releasing them so hard they popped. Water sprayed up around him, so dense he could not breathe. He jerked erect, gasping, his blood pounding in his ears. When he opened his eyes he saw the water falling back, and beyond that the helicopter’s searchlight beam jumping erratically between the sea and the sky. The helicopter was bobbling in the air like a toy on a rubber band, the silvery disk of its rotor nearly touching the water on one side, then the other, its machine gun blessedly silent. Finally it steadied again, hovered for a moment, then pivoted, lifted its tail high and raced away to the west.

A few moments later, the air thundered again and something flashed overhead; enormous, silvery, pursued by two long cones of flame.

Even before the burnt-kerosene aroma of jet exhaust reached him, Lee knew what had passed over. Clinging to the remnants of the Lady of Leisure with one arm, he waved frantically at the sky.

“What’s going on, TT?” Hot Rock demanded over the ICS. He banked his Tomcat slightly, maintaining his altitude at the prescribed fifteen thousand feet, searching the ocean below. He couldn’t believe this was happening. According to Lobo’s last radio transmission to Homeplate, the boat under attack was carrying an American flag. An American boat, clear out here — what were the odds? “Come on, what’s happening down there?”

“Hang on, hang on, I’m checkin’.” Hot Rock had long ago noticed that the more intense the situation, the more the accent of his RIO, Tony “Two Tone” Cappelli, reverted to its Brooklyn roots. “Getting nothing but surface clutter; looking straight down ain’t what AWG-9 is made for, you know?”

“Do you pick up the chopper at all? I see Lobo; she’s going around again. She didn’t take a shot, did she? Is the chopper still there? Talk to me, Two Tone!” Sweat slicked the space between his palm and the yoke. Blood sang in his ears.

“Lookin’ for your first kill, youngster? Well, I’m getting a little signal here, something maybe runnin’ west.”

“Should I chase it or not?”

“Hey, you’re the pilot. Or you could call Mommy and ask her permission if you like.”

Hot Rock felt as if cold water had been dumped over his head. He could hear his father’s voice: What’s the matter, Reginald? You scared to take the horse over that jump? Scared of a little fall? Your brother was clearing that jump before he was six years old.

He flicked the radio to tactical. “Viper Leader, Viper Two. I’m in pursuit of the helicopter. Repeat, in pursuit of the helo, departing on a heading of two three zero.”

“We’re right on the edge of the twelve-mile limit,” came Lobo’s clipped tones. “Watch your position.”

“Copy.” He was proud of how dry and sarcastic that came out. Just the way his father would have said it if someone had challenged his expertise.

Nosing the Tomcat over, he started searching the dark water ahead. Of course, odds were he wouldn’t spot the helicopter at all; the Tomcat wasn’t equipped with infrared targeting, and for that matter Two Tone could have just been picking up random surface clutter, the bane of airborne radar.

Then he saw something. “Tally ho!” he cried, the words for “target sighted” leaping automatically to his lips. That pleased him. He’d said exactly what he had been trained to say, without thinking about it. Perhaps everything else would work that way, too. “I see his rotor disk, TT. Right on the deck.” He licked his lips. “Um, he’s heading for the twelve-mile limit. Better call Homeplate for orders before we do anything; this is a weird situa — ”

Just then the voice from the Hawkeye interrupted. “Viper, Viper, you have incoming bogeys, bearing zero niner zero. Four bogeys, repeat, four bogeys inbound on your position. From their radars, they’re Flankers.”

The carrier TAO’s voice cut in sharp and hard. “Vipers, remain on station. Keep bogeys away from that site; backup is on the way. Repeat, maintain control of that site if at all possible. You’re over international waters. Backup and SAR on the way.”

“Roger,” Lobo’s voice said. “Hot Rock, Hot Rock, break off and beat feet back to your previous position. I’m going to stay down here and make it real clear nobody gets near this mess but us — especially a helicopter. You copy?”

“Copy, Viper Leader.” Hot Rock heard the slight tremor in his voice, but that was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew from experience that other aviators would interpret it as springing from anger and disappointment. Because they’d be feeling anger and disappointment at being called off potential target to play watchdog. “Damn it!” he cried, cranking the F-14 into a hard right turn and headed back and up.

“Tough luck, man,” Two Tone said from the backseat. “Unless the bogeys will want to play.”

Hot Rock said nothing. His climbing turn was smooth, powerful, and perfectly balanced, and the higher he got, the better he felt. Nobody could take this away from him; nobody could say there was a finer stickman in the entire U.S. Navy. When it came to carving up the sky, Hot Rock Stone was unsurpassed. He should be in the Blue Angels.

He should be flying in air shows….

As Rear Admiral Edward Everett “Batman” Wayne yanked on a fresh flight suit, he tried to clear his head. Before being awakened by the hard buzz of his direct line to the Tactical Flag Command Center TAO, he’d been dreaming about the last time he was in the South China Sea, about the Spratley Island campaign. Of course, back then he hadn’t been a Rear Admiral, in charge of an entire Carrier Battle Group. Back then he’d been assigned to the Pentagon, helping test the new JAST Tomcats with their advanced Doppler look-down, shoot-down radar. When the Spratleys problem heated up, he’d helped ferry a pair of the new birds to Jefferson, and even piloted one in combat, going head-to-head against the finest Chinese pilots above the oil-rich chunks of rock they were trying to claim as their own.

What he hadn’t had to do back then was worry about the “whys” of it. He hadn’t had to concern himself with the deployment or tactics of the hundreds of assets that made up a carrier battle group. Back then, that responsibility had fallen on the shoulders of his friend and onetime lead, Rear Admiral Matthew “Tombstone” Magruder.

And Tombstone had risen to the occasion… well, admirably. He’d orchestrated the battle group in such a way that it not only fended off the Chinese, but kept the South China Sea open to all naval traffic… while managing not to start a full-scale war with the People’s Republic in the meantime. An amazing job.

Now, ironically, it was Stony who was back in Washington, fighting the very different war that was life in the Pentagon while Batman was left to deal with the latest Chinese mess… whatever it turned out to be.

He mentally reviewed the brief summary the TFCC TAO had given him that had yanked him out of sleep: A Tomcat on routine patrol had engaged a Chinese helicopter it caught firing upon an unarmed American pleasure boat. Chinese bogeys were now en route to the site. Batman wasn’t sure yet what “engaged” meant, or any other details concerning the episode, but he was about to find out.

Petty Officer Third Class Dwayne Pitcock leaned out the yawning side hatch of the helo and peered down. Although the eastern sky was beginning to brighten, the water below remained black except where the helo’s searchlight created a lens of brilliant blue. The lens slipped this way and that, revealing chunks of fiberglass and foam rubber, a coffee table, a couple of ottomans, a glass coffeepot bobbing along. Tons of junk everywhere.

And then it passed over a human body, a woman in a sequined gown, floating facedown over a brown-red cloud of blood. Her back had been ripped open like the doors of a cabinet, displaying muscle and bone.

“Jesus,” Pitcock said. Since he was going to be hitting the water pretty soon, he didn’t have a headset or helmet on, and he couldn’t hear himself over the hammering blast of the Seahawk’s engine and rotor noise.

The searchlight moved on, finding more bodies, one after the other, all floating with the distinctive liquid movement of the dead, all trailing slicks of blood behind them. The bodies turned slowly as the helo’s downwash shoved at them. “Jesus,” Pitcock said again.

Then the light found the largest piece of wreckage he had yet seen — a sleek white expanse like the lip of a dying iceberg, with more of it slanting down into the water below, vanishing into indigo depths. A man’s body sprawled across the exposed section As the light hit him he stirred, turned, and raised an arm to wave.

The Seahawk immediately swooped over. Leery of the bloody water, Pitcock popped the seals on a couple of anti-shark packets and tossed them down beside the hull. They stained the water bright yellow as they emitted a chemical that supposedly drove sharks away. Pitcock, who had known sharks to swim toward the stuff, figured pissing into the water would do just as much good, but he was in the Navy, and sailors had a long tradition of superstitious behavior.

The crew boss manned the winch, spinning out a length of cable with the rescue collar attached. Before the collar hit the water, Pitcock jumped.

Still thinking of sharks, he practically bounced off the surface of the water and scooted up the tilted hull of the half-sunken yacht. He snagged an upright on the chrome guardrail a few feet away from where the man clung, then squinted up against the salt spray and pounding air and signaled the helo. It drifted forward until Pitcock was able to grab the rescue collar.

The man was staring at him now. He was Chinese — well, some kind of Asian — and maybe thirty, thirty-five years old. He was wearing a tuxedo. His expression was more vacant than grateful or even comprehending. But at least he was alive.

“I gotcha!” Pitcock shouted. “You’re okay now, sir.”

The man didn’t respond. Pitcock slid toward him across the slippery fiberglass, dragging the collar behind. The man barely reacted as Pitcock maneuvered one of his arms through the collar, then his head. His other arm was locked around the guardrail. When Pitcock tried to pry it loose, the guy started flailing around and shouting in some shrill, staccato language.

“Easy, easy,” Pitcock said as soothingly as he could, considering he had to bellow. He signaled “raise” at the chopper, and “slowly,” and waited until the cable began to pull before trying again to pry the man’s arm loose of the rail. Apparently calmed by the firm grip of the cable, the man finally relaxed his arm, and it slipped free. Pitcock whirled his arm, signaling for a faster winch.

There was a moment when the man in the tuxedo seemed to be standing on the canted hull of his own volition. His black eyes met Pitcock’s. “Thank you very much,” he said in clear English.

Pitcock grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, and he sailed into the sky.

“COS, what’s the situation?” Batman asked as he stepped into the small compartment located within a few feet of his cabin.

William “Coyote” Grant, Jefferson’s Chief of Staff, looked away from the blue screen in the front of the room. The blue screen was the focal point of this information, distilling input from all over the battle group down to a series of icons representing friendly, unfriendly and neutral assets in the area.

“Good morning, Admiral,” Coyote said. “Thirty minutes ago we got a report from one of our BARCAP Tomcats. Lobo. She spotted a PLA helicopter firing on an American civilian vessel and its passengers. Her wingman pursued the helicopter to the edge of the twelve-mile limit, then turned back when a flight of four SU-27s scrambled.” He gestured at the screen. “I made the decision to claim the wreck site as our own until all the bodies have been picked up.”

Batman nodded as he examined the display, noted the positions of icons representing the Chinese assets, including a couple of surface vessels. “Looks like the bogeys are hanging back.”

“For now. I vectored two more flights of Tomcats to the area to establish a perimeter, and so far there’s been no challenge. The bogeys just keep cruising their side of the twelve-mile limit.”

“Have we heard from the PRC yet?”

“Oh, sure; they’re claiming rights over the entire area. Of course. Demanding we back off. Naturally. We keep reminding them the wreckage is in international waters, and they keep ignoring us — but like I said, so far they’re not pushing it.”

Batman frowned. His first thought after being awakened had been that he would be facing another Spratleys-type situation. There, the PLA had committed carefully planned atrocities designed to look like the work of the United States… and publicized, immediately and loudly, as such.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he said, mostly to himself. He knew that the Chinese military was willing to murder its own people, as well as those of its allies, in order to lure the U.S. Navy into a self-defeating combat situation. But killing American civilians could only damage their own international human rights reputation, which had never been exactly laudable. Why would they do that when there was apparently nothing to gain?

“How sure is Lobo of what she saw?” he asked.

“Absolutely sure, sir.” To Batman’s surprise, Coyote half smiled. “Evidently she gave the helo a low enough pass to scare the bejeezus out of it; that’s why it took off. But Lobo was cool; she never even switched on her targeting radar.” The smile vanished. “She reports bodies in the water, sir. A lot of them.”

“SAR?” Batman asked. In warm waters like these, the sooner Sea Air Rescue got under way, the better the chances for survival of anyone who had been on that boat. Hypothermia wasn’t the problem — sharks were.

“Two Seahawks are already on station,” Coyote said.

Batman weighed the situation. “I want everything picked up, COS,” he said. “The bodies, the survivors, whatever’s left of the boat, everything. Clear space in Jefferson’s hangar bay if necessary. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Batman looked back at the tactical display, all the assets arrayed there, and again found himself wishing for the relative simplicity of the combat pilot’s role. Then he thought about Lobo, and the kind of near-instant decisions she’d been forced to make out there in the darkness, and decided maybe there were no simple answers for anyone anymore.

God, he wished Tombstone were here.

If there was one thing Tombstone Magruder hated, it was admitting that he enjoyed flying something other than a Tomcat.

He’d earned his call sign because of the lugubrious cast of his face and the fact that he was supposedly devoid of emotion. Yet here he was, grinning like a fool as he cranked the toy-like Pitts Special through its sixth barrel roll in a row, spinning the biplane so fast the ocean and sky turned into one mottled blur. Six rolls, seven, eight — it could go on forever, or at least as long as his stomach could take the abuse.

He eased the stick to the right to end the last roll, being careful not to overdo it: The Pitts was a sensitive beast, with a damned impressive power-to-weight ratio… for a prop-plane, anyway.

Hell, why deny it? Flying this thing was fun as hell. No, the Pitts wasn’t capable of crushing you into your seat hard enough to make you black out; couldn’t rip a hole in the fabric of the sound barrier; couldn’t fly with impunity in clouds or fog. On the other hand, it didn’t make you concentrate on a Heads-Up Display instead of the sky and ground; didn’t feed your hands and feet synthetic control surface pressures because a set of computers stood between you and the ailerons, rudder and elevator; didn’t have an E-2 Hawkeye peering over its shoulder all the time. There was just you, the pilot, all alone with a single propeller, a pair of wire-braced wings, and a solid blast of wind in the face.

Wonderful.

And there was no denying that this little bird could do things a Tomcat couldn’t. Rolling… hell, the Tomcat’s roll rate was terrific given the plane’s size and mass, but the Pitts could whip around twice in the time it took an F-14 to make it through one full revolution. And landing a Pitts was as easy as stepping off a curb; nothing like the sweaty-palm work of dropping 72,000 pounds of Tomcat onto the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier.

Time to be meandering back to the field, though. His wife, Joyce — although he still thought of her as “Tomboy,” her call sign from her days as his RIO — would probably be waiting for him, and none too patiently. They were supposed to have dinner with his uncle, Admiral Thomas Magruder.

He sighed. Not that he didn’t enjoy his uncle’s company, but the conversation was certain to turn to politics and Pentagon infighting. God, he missed the straightforward banter of Tomcat drivers: clean traps, aerial maneuvers, missiles launched, bogeys splashed.

Thank God for the Pitts Special, and for a wife who knew her husband well enough to insist that he buy it. If it weren’t for those two things — and the stick time he still occasionally got in an F-14, of course — he didn’t think life would be bearable. During what the media called the Second Cuban Missile Crisis, he’d flown his last combat mission. He knew that. He’d never go up against a MIG again. For that matter, he’d even given up the command of Carrier Battle Group 14 for a billet in Washington. A promotion, supposedly.

But now… he was at loose ends. An advisor here, a consultant there. A guy standing around in the hallways of the Pentagon, looking for something to do. Waiting, he supposed, for a war.

It didn’t help that Tomboy’s assignment took her down to Pax River all the time, where she got to test fly the latest Navy aircraft while he sat around in stuffy meeting rooms.

Life just wasn’t fair.

But a smart man could make it fairer. Grinning again, he put the biplane’s nose down hard and listened to the wind’s shriek rise in the rigging as the surface of the ocean swooped up at him. Turned a couple of barrel rolls in the meantime. Too bad there was nobody to watch except the herons and ducks in the nature preserve a mile or so to the west.

Although he tried to resist, he pulled out of the dive too soon — another holdover from flying Tomcats, with their infinitely greater inertia. He’d have to pract —

He cringed as something shot underneath the Pitts with a whistling shriek. What the hell? That had sounded for all the world like a jet engine. The Pitts jolted through a disrupted airstream, then steadied. Looking down, Tombstone glimpsed a dark arrowhead shape racing just above the waves, then shooting upward. It rose vertically, trailing a faint string of vapor behind it. Against the pale glow of the eastern sky, it was shaped not like one arrowhead but two, joined in tandem. The impression he’d gotten during its close pass was that it was only a little longer than the Pitts — but far faster. As he watched, it arched over in the sky, then seemed to disappear. Finally he spotted it — a tiny dot, growing larger by the second. Coming straight at him.

In his career, Tombstone had flown against a wide variety of aerial weapons, including fighter planes, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and, once, an UAV — an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that he’d pursued and shot down before it could deliver a nuclear warhead on Cuba. This thing didn’t resemble any of them.

Its intent, however, was unmistakable.

From this angle Tombstone couldn’t begin to judge its speed or trajectory. He had no RIO to feed him radar data, and no countermeasures to dazzle its radar or confuse its heat-seeking head — whatever it was using to track him.

So he used instinct instead, jamming the stick forward and firewalling the throttle. The Pitts dove as if fired straight down out of a cannon, jolting Tombstone into his shoulder harness.

The bogey missed again, but it seemed to Tombstone that it adjusted at the last second, almost clipping the Pitts’ tail. Whatever it was, if it carried a warhead the explosive wasn’t detonated by proximity; that was something. Tombstone hauled back on the stick, pulling the biplane out of its screaming dive. This time he was afraid he’d let it go too long, that he was going to strike the surface of the ocean at a speed that made water every bit as unyielding as concrete.

Then the crests of the waves were whipping past so close he was sure the biplane’s bulbous tires were getting wet. Tombstone kept the stick pulled back, but easier now, lest he lose all his airspeed. Now he really wished he was back in his Tomcat, with enough thrust to yank him quickly up where he could maneuver. The Tomcat might even be able to flat outrun this little bogey, whatever it was.

He swiveled his head back and forth, squinting against the setting sun, wishing he had Tomboy in the backseat to help. If there were a backseat. Meanwhile, the coolest part of his mind debated his options. Found them to be limited. He had no idea what he was up against. He was flying in an unarmed plane. A propeller-driven plane. An unfamiliar propeller-driven plane.

But he was a pilot, damn it — not just a pilot, a naval aviator. No one, and no thing, was better in the air.

He spotted the bogey again, zipping in from the rear, and he executed a left turn so sudden and violent it stalled the inside wings. As he dropped the nose to restore airspeed and circumvent a spin, he heard the whistle of an oncoming jet turbine growing shriller, and pulled his head down into his shoulders instinctively… then the sound faded again. He straightened the Pitts out and let it dive slightly, building up airspeed.

Meanwhile, the cold part of his mind was steadily examining impressions and making decisions. The bogey was obviously not manned; it was much too small and made turns that would black out any human pilot. On the other hand, it was not an ordinary missile. Which left only two choices: a Remotely-Piloted Vehicle, or a UAV like the one he’d shot down over Cuba. If the former, then someone was flying it by joystick from a distant location, using an onboard video or infrared camera for guidance. If the latter, then the bogey was a fire-and-forget weapon, with an onboard navigation computer guiding it to its destination.

He immediately discounted that option; all the UAVs he’d ever heard of, including the one he’d shot down, found their destinations through a combination of ground-mapping radar and Global Positioning Satellite navigation. They were programmed to locate and strike at stationary targets; they couldn’t dogfight. So: This was an RPV.

Not that the information helped him much right now. All it meant was that the pilot of this bogey could turn, accelerate and climb his vehicle at the limits of the plane’s capabilities, not his own.

Limits…

Tombstone suddenly remembered the BD5-J, a stubby homebuilt jet even shorter than the bogey. He’d watched them fly at air shows, and spoken to their pilots. Although fast and agile as hummingbirds, the little jets had strictly limited ranges due to greedy engines and minute fuel tanks. The bogey that was chasing him around had to be subject to the same restrictions. Given enough time, it would simply die of starvation.

But how much time was enough? Trying to drain the bogey meant juking and jiving for as long as it took. But every maneuver would have to be a miracle of timing. Too slow, and the bogey wouldn’t be fooled. Too fast, and the bogey would simply reacquire. Either way, the result would be the same.

All this went through his head in the time it took the bogey to complete a quick half circle and come back at him again. This time Tombstone noticed the round maw of an air intake, mounted in a depression atop the vehicle. If it weren’t for that black circle, the damned thing wouldn’t be visible at all from this angle.

He kept his eyes on the circle, timing its approach, making himself wait… wait…

Too long! He knew it even as he slammed the Pitts through an ugly maneuver that was half barrel roll, half loop. Holding his breath, he thought about Tomboy and waited for the impact.

But then the bogey was past him, slanting off toward the shore. Too startled to recover from his maneuver, he stared through the tunnel formed by his spinning windscreen. The bogey began to turn again, but this time without the relentless certainty he’d come to fear. In seemed to settle into a lazy arc. Perhaps it was running out of fuel.

Tombstone leveled out.

Instantly, the bogey jinked toward him, accelerating.

Without thinking about it, Tombstone put the Pitts into a fresh series of barrel rolls. The bogey flashed past, thirty feet to the rear, as if he’d vanished from its sensors. It didn’t make sense. Snap rolls were hardly an evasive maneuver for missiles, especially one approaching from the side.

The moment he leveled out again, dizzy and ready to retch, the bogey made an abrupt turn back toward him. He glanced around. He was almost to shore, but there was no hope there: nothing but low marshland, without a hill or stand of trees to hide behind.

The bogey grew larger in the corner of his eye. Tombstone held his breath and started another series of rolls, meanwhile letting the Pitts plummet toward the ocean.

The bogey flashed through the space he’d occupied a moment earlier. It kept going, then entered into another of its broad, lazy turns.

“Okay, you,” Tombstone said, still spinning, blood pounding in his head. “I’ve got you now.”

The beach passed by, no more than a hundred yards below. Feet dry, Tombstone thought automatically, trying to keep his stomach from erupting through his teeth. He’d lost track of the bogey. Hoped it had really run out of gas this time. Hoped it had dropped into the water like a shotgunned mallard.

But if not…

Leveling out, he pulled the Pitts into as steep a sustained climb as it would endure. He looked back and forth, up and down, searching the sky, trying to blink the dizziness away. In a moment he knew that the bogey hadn’t run out of gas after all. He saw a triangular flash of red light to the north, then the air intake racing toward him. He watched it, watched it… and jammed the stick forward, diving back toward the marsh as hard as he could. Although he didn’t look back, he sensed the bogey swinging onto his tail.

“Now!” he shouted, and yanked the stick hard right. The swamp began to whirl around the cockpit. Timing it carefully, Tombstone stomped on the left rudder pedal, then hauled back on the stick. The vertical spin abruptly hooked into a flat-out climb. Looking over his shoulder, Tombstone saw a geyser of water shoot out of the marsh and rise so high its tip glowed orange in the last light of the sun.

Whooping, he rolled the Pitts Special one more time… for joy.