“Execute intercept! Fire at will!”
She had to protect the ship. Above all else, she had to protect her ship. Then the rumble of helo rotors again shouldered past her surge of concern to register on her awareness.
“Oh, my God! Radio room! Patch me through to Zero One! Expedite!”
“Arkady! Get them out of the water! Now!”
He knew which “them” Amanda was referring to, and the urgency in her voice brooked no questions or even an acknowledgment.
Swiftly he toggled over to CSAR. “Moondog! Hang on to the sound head! For Christ sakes, hang on!”
He squeezed the throttle trigger on the collective and poured power into the helo’s failing rotor system. Slowly, the Sea Comanche started to lift away from the river. Arkady could feel a load come on the sonar tether. The Moondogs were coming with him.
“Lieutenant!” Gus yelped in pure terror. “The fucking gearbox is going to come apart!”
“Do fucking tell!”
Something was going on. Graves had watched the Harpoons launch from the Cunningham and had seen them hit. Now something else had torn past him submerged, heading out in the same direction as had the missiles. He had felt the turbulence wave of its passage and the vibration of its propulsor through the water.
Then had come the yell over the survival radio. Graves felt the tether start to slide through his fingers and the sound head shoulder up against him. Frantically, he embraced it and Bubbles both, locking his arms tight. As they lifted out of the water their full, sodden weight came onto his dislocated shoulder. Graves screamed and clung to his consciousness as tightly as he had hung on to his systems operator.
“Unit is tracking, sir,” the torpedo operator reported.
Dix Beltrain, nodded, silently looking on over her shoulder.
What they were attempting was still as experimental as all hell. Theoretically, the Duke’s sonar system was accurate enough and her firecontrol processors fast enough to steer one of her own Barracuda torpedoes into the path of the weapon that had been fired at her. Also, theoretically, the American unit would then recognize the hostile fish and score a proximity-kill with a warhead detonation.
Even if everything worked as planned, it would be the equivalent of two dynamite trucks running headlong into each other.
“Get a good hold! This is going to be close!”
Out on the bridge wing, it was as if a giant flashbulb had gone off just beneath the surface of the Yangtze. A blue white glare, and then the river ripped itself open. There wasn’t enough water over the explosion to dome. Rather, it sprayed into the night sky in a thousand berserker jets, an ear-shattering thunderclap radiating outward from its core.
Amanda grabbed for the bridge railing as the Duke leaned away from the blast. “All stop! Initiate station keeping!” she yelled. “Hold us in the channel!”
As the destroyer rolled back on an even keel, she lifted her binoculars and feverishly swept the night. The ringing in her ears was too loud for her to focus on the sound of the Sea Comanche’s rotors, but she reacquired the helo in only a few seconds.
Amanda could see a misshapen mass at the end of the sonar tether, four legs dangling. He’d done it! Arkady had gotten them out of the water before the shock wave. They all still had a chance!
Amanda was granted a single heartbeat’s worth of relief.
Then she saw the helo lurch in midair, a fireworks stream of sparks belching from its engine.
“Lieutenant! The rotor drive’s going!”
Arkady didn’t bother to try to answer over the vibration rattle and the squalling of the engine warning alarms. In the vernacular of the helicopter aviator, the Sea Comanche was “starting to lose the Jesus nut.” It was entering into the first phase of a catastrophic main rotor assembly failure. Short of flying into the side of a mountain, things were suddenly as bad as they could get.
More so because of the Moondogs. Arkady could feel their weight swaying at the end of the tether.
The book said that he should be getting down out of the sky just as fast as possible, which would mean setting down right on top of the two aviators. Instead, Arkady did just what the book said not to. He firewalled his throttles, forcing the power from the turbines through the incandescent wreckage of the disintegrating transmission and up to the rotors.
Hemorrhaging, the helo staggered toward the Cunningham.
“Gus, stand by to jettison the sonar pod!”
No time for subtlety. No time for care. Maybe just enough time to get his charges to safety.
They were coming up on the ship with just enough altitude for the sonar head to clear the rail. Arkady had the briefest glimpse of a slender figure looking up from the bridge wing, and then they were over the foredeck.
“Gus, cut ‘loose!”
Arkady felt the sonar pod detach from beneath the snub wing, falling to the deck below. Please God, don’t let the damn thing land on the poor bastards.
Shedding the sonar pod had gained them a scant decrease in weight and boost in maneuverability. But now the gearbox was literally going to pieces. A new volley of screaming systems alarms heralded an incipient turbine failure.
Crossing over the foredeck, Arkady kicked the tail of the dying helo around and staggered down the length of the destroyer’s hull, trying for the helipad aft.
“Brace yourself, Gus! This is going to be a bitch!”
Another pedal turn and a wild side-slip to try to line up over the giant H in the landing area. The belated flash of the landing markers. The flicker of flame reflected in the marred canopy plastic and the shriek of metal binding on metal. The sight of the deck crew scattering away from the developing disaster. A single, sudden, panic-stricken thought.
LANDING GEAR!
“Aw, to hell with it.” Arkady released the throttle trigger.
Hitting the “Power Kill” switches, he let Retainer Zero One fall.
The helo hit hard and flat on her belly, then rolled onto her side. Her rotor blades exploded into flying composite fragments as they touched the deck, the fuselage floundering on the flailing stubs like a landed fish.
As the helo went still, there was a rush to open the cockpit as the crash crew moved in. Arkady released his seat harness and shoved at the canopy overhead. It didn’t budge, and the aviator was suddenly very aware of the smell of hot metal and smoke. He heard crash bars start to pry into the cockpit frame.
Arkady got his feet up into the seat pan and his back braced against the top of the canopy. He heaved with adrenaline-fueled strength. The canopy tore loose, and he sprawled out onto the antiskid.
Half a dozen fire extinguishers were being emptied into the engine compartment as Arkady rolled to his feet. Joining in with the aviation hands, he helped to yank open the rear cockpit and drag his S.O. clear. Only when Gus was out and on his feet did Arkady take a second to enjoy taking a breath.
He turned to face the superstructure and the monitor camera that he knew would be there. Lifting both arms, he clasped hands over his head, sending a message to someone he knew would be watching.
On the Cunningham’s foredeck, Digger Graves groggily lifted his head from the deck. Bubbles lay at his side, and he heard the faint whisper of a moan from her.
Damage-control hands and a first-aid team were hurrying toward them from the destroyer’s deck house. Graves tried to come up on one elbow and suddenly realized that something was missing. The burning pain that had been ravaging his shoulder was almost gone. The strain of the lift or the impact of his fall had popped the dislocation back into place.
The aviator goggled at his free-moving arm for a moment and murmured, “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Then, for the third time that night, Digger Graves passed out.