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.