“Do you wish to send a runner to Fleet Command, Lieutenant?” Hoong inquired, unfazed.
Shan hesitated only a moment more before angrily shaking his head. “Fleet Command be damned! We’re getting out of here now. Start engines and prepare to cast off all lines. Signal the rest of the squadron to follow us. We’ll take our chances out in the river.”
“At once, Lieutenant,” Hoong replied, sounding faintly pleased.
More bombs racked the shipyard area; the Huangpu River was lit blood-red by the growing fires as the Five Sixteen boat backed into the channel. As Hoong had said, it had to be the Americans, and somehow, in a way that he couldn’t explain, Zhou Shan also knew that it had to be the ghost ship as well.
It had returned and it was waiting for him out there in the burning night. They had affairs to conclude.
56
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.”