“And yourself, Captain.”
He turned abruptly, breaking off the meeting of their eyes, and started back to the hangar bay. Amanda headed forward again, clenching her fists to stop the trembling of her hands.
This was all part of the world she had chosen for herself. But she also knew, deep down in her heart, that she didn’t have many more good-byes like this one left in her.
Reaching the bridge level, she paused at a gear locker and donned her own armor: the foam and Kevlar combat vest and the gray ballistic helmet that bore her rank stenciled on its brow. She twisted her hair up onto the back of her head and settled the helmet over it, containing her mane with the helmet’s inner webbing. Stepping forward again through the light curtain, she heard the old, traditional cry.
“Captain’s on the bridge!”
Four decks down and a hundred and fifty feet aft, stars glittered over the open pit of the hangar bay. Retainer Zero One was on the elevator platform, ready to be lifted topside.
Zero Two stood poised to follow as rapidly as the helipad could be cleared for her. All conceivable preflight checks had been made. With every system double-tested, the AC hands stood back against the bulkheads, awaiting the order to launch.
Someone else waited as well. Christine Rendino leaned in the hatch frame, her arms crossed, an unusually somber expression on her face.
“Hey, sis, seeing me off?” Arkady said.
“Yeah,” she replied quietly. “I need to tell you something.”
“Like what?”
“Like this. Don’t push it! You are going to be going downtown on this job. Right where all the bad boys live. If it looks too hot, or if things start to go strange on you, abort! Don’t play Mr. Hero. Don’t stretch the envelope. Just tell the Chinese you don’t want to play and get your ass out of there.”
“Aw, shucks, I didn’t know you cared.” Arkady grinned back.
Christine looked up, the battle lights flashing in her eyes.
“This is a no-shitter, man!” she whispered fiercely. “You are staying alive for another person now! You no longer have the right to do stupid! You hear me?”
Startled by the intensity of her words, the aviator stepped back a pace.
The arch came out of the Intel’s spine and a rueful humor came into her voice. “She can’t tell you stuff like this, but I can. Okay?”
Arkady suddenly understood what she was saying. “I hear you, sis,” he replied with a smile.
They exchanged a silent thumbs-up, putting a seal on their corners of the new pact, then the aviator moved on to his waiting mount.
Gus Grestovitch was already aboard the Sea Comanche, running his preflights. “Good morning, Mr. Grestovitch,” Arkady said, lifting himself into the forward cockpit. “All ready for your moonlight tour of the mystic Yangtze.”
“None of this is my idea, sir.”
“You just lack imagination, son.” Arkady’s harness buckles clicked as he locked them down. “Let’s hear that stores list one more time.”
“Fuel cells, flare and chaff dispensers: full, full, and full. SQR/A1 dunking sonar pod on port-wing mount. Magnetic Abnormality Detector on starboard. Internal weapons bays, two Hellfire rounds, and two seven-round Hydra pods.”
They would be doubling in brass this night. Not only would the Duke’s Sea Comanches be hunting the Chinese boomer but, should a strike aircraft be downed in the Shanghai area, they would be tasked with flying cover for the Combat Search and Rescue mission.
“Check, check, and check. DTU is coming back.” The aviator passed the loaded Data Transfer Unit over his shoulder to the S.O. Grestovitch, who in turn socked the cassette into the helicopter’s systems access slot, downloading the mission profile into the onboard computer. Telescreens lit off, computer graphics sketching out the environs they would be operating over and the flight path they would follow.
“We’re set.”
“Roger D.”
Arkady caught the eye of the waiting pad boss. “Take us up,” he said, gesturing with a quick vertical jerk of his thumb.
The elevator moaned under its burden and Retainer Zero One was borne smoothly to deck level. The lift pad sealed off the red light of the hangar bay, leaving the helo isolated in the night.
“Ready for the engine-start checklist, Lieutenant … Lieutenant? You okay, sir?”
Vince Arkady had been given a few seconds to think during the elevator ride.
“Yeah, Gus. I’m okay. I was just studying all of the different ways life can get complicated on you.”
“Do fuckin’ tell, sir.”
On the bridge, the time hack repeater metered away the passage of seconds. A column of digital clock readouts on the CRT screen, it counted down the scheduled events on the Stormdragon time line. Amanda looked on as the uppermost hack approached zero.
Back aft, the howl of aircraft turbines became intermingled with the growling drone of rotors grabbing for lift. The lead hack zeroed out and disappeared.
“Retainer Zero One taking departure,” an emotionless voice reported over the intercom.
Amanda stepped out onto the bridge wing and watched as a thundering shadow swept past the flank of her ship, momentarily hiding the stars as it climbed away into the night.
Zero Two followed within five minutes.
“Communication, this is the Captain,” Amanda said into the command mike. “Advise Task Flag that our helos are away on schedule and that we are proceeding to the next phase.”
Lifting her thumb from the transmit key, she turned to the watch officer. “Come right to two seven zero. Close the range with the Chinese coast.”
54
Macintyre and Tallman had been sipping desultorily at mugs of coffee that neither particularly wanted. Now both admirals looked up sharply at the approach of Tallman’s chief of staff.
“The Cunningham reports that her helos are in the air and that she is moving into firing position,” he reported. “The Strike Boss also reports that the line of battle has been formed. We are two minutes and thirty seconds away from launch. The Strike Boss reports all boards are green. He is standing by for strike commit.”
“Any word in the pipeline from D.C.?”
“Negative, sir. We are maintaining open links with both the Joint Chiefs and the National Command Authority at this time. No change in mission authorization. We are still good to go.”
Tallman studied his tepid cup of coffee for a moment more before speaking.
“Very well, then. Inform the Strike Boss that he has strike commit.”
Tallman set his mug on a console top. “Come on, Eddie Mac, let’s go out on deck and have a look at this. It’s going to be something to see.”
The carrier had swung to the east, screening herself with her own helicopters and freeing her destroyer escorts to form the line of battle. Now, off to starboard, half a dozen big Spruances and Ticonderogas swept through the darkness, nose to tail, clearing their firing arcs for an objective far over the horizon.
At one time, massive gun turrets would have been indexing around; now, silo doors snapped open and launcher tubes elevated with a nasal whine of hydraulics.
Down in the Combat Information Centers, firecontrol systems murmured cybernetically across the datalinks, apportioning targets, cycling through prelaunch checklists, counting away the seconds.
The count reached zero, and the human-born cry of “Fire” that sounded through the 1-MC circuits was a mere formality.
Warning horns blared and boosters ignited. The first cruise missile flight salvoed into the night sky, each round trailing a curtain of golden flame. More flights followed, the crackling roar of their launch building and reverberating across the sky.