It wasn’t worth it. His head ached too much for an argument and —
He saw a missile.
One of Spam’s HARMs was streaking from beneath her wing toward Basra. Devo watched in disbelief as the anti-radiation missile arced away in a smooth flight path.
“Magnum, magnum,” came Spam’s voice over the strike common frequency. “Nail 42, magnum — Burner 3, Basra.”
She was announcing that she had launched a radar-seeking missile against a SAM threat.
For a moment the strike frequency was silent. Then bedlam. Everyone wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“Say type and direction of threat!”
“Who’s being targeted?”
“Burner three where? Anyone got a visual?”
Devo was checking his own HARM display. It was blank. No indication of an enemy radar. He reset the RF gains and looked again. Nothing. He was getting a bad feeling.
On the back radio he said, “Spam, tell me what kind of threat you saw.”
“I had an SA-3 on the HARM display,” she answered. “The box was there and it showed active tracking. So I took the shot. They were probably tracking the last of the strike group.”
“What do you mean, a box? An SA-3 displays as a triangle. What the hell did you shoot at?”
Her voice became more insistent. “I just told you, an SA-3 site near Basra. Box, triangle, who cares? I know very well what I shot at.”
Devo’s headache came back. He had seen the way the HARM left Spam’s Hornet. It was flying in a smooth arc, not the jerky, snakelike path a HARM took when it was locked on to a radar-emitting target. It wasn’t tracking.
Fucking beautiful, he thought. When they returned to the carrier, it would be his job to explain why he let his knuckleheaded wingman pickle off a half-million-dollar missile. At nothing.
It had been a milk run. They were en route back to the Reagan. Except for Spam’s HARM, they had expended no weapons.
Then, a hundred-fifty miles out, they received a call from Surface Watch aboard the Reagan: “Nail Forty-one, this is Alpha Sierra. We need you to check out a surface contact that is approaching the battle group.”
Alpha Sierra gave Devo the range ad bearing of the unknown vessel.
Devo groaned to himself. “Nail Forty-one copies,” he said. “Descending to have a look.”
Devo reduced power and lowered the Hornet’s nose. SPAM was late following. She floated high, then had to use full speed brakes to keep from shooting out in front.
Devo leveled off at 1,000 feet above the water, flying at a comfortable 300 knots. “Fly abeam, slightly high. Keep at least a mile separation and watch for small boats and gunfire.”
“Roger.”
Devo’s radar was painting the surface contact straight ahead. “Alpha Sierra, Nail Forty-one flight has the contact on the nose twenty miles, stand by for ID.”
Half a minute later, he could see the profile of the ship on the horizon. “Tally ho on the nose,” he called to Spam. “I’ll take it up the vessel’s starboard side and arc around to the left. Stay a mile abeam my right wing and hold your altitude.”
“Roger that.”
She still was out of position — too high, and closer than a mile abeam. But she wasn’t in a position to hurt anything, It was the best he could expect for now.
“Devo’s descending out of a thousand. Keep me in sight at all times.”
“Roger.”
He eased down to 100 feet. He could see white caps and the varied colorations of the sea below him. Salt spray was peppering the windscreen. At this altitude, there was no room for error. With only a second’s inattention, he would be fish food.
As he streaked over the stern of the ship, Devo saw that it was a merchant vessel. He could see the ensign of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but he couldn’t pick out the vessel’s name painted on the stern.
He would have to come back for another pass.
Devo started to pull up and turn back. It was then he saw a blur over his right shoulder.
Spam’s Hornet! The belly of the jet was coming at him.
Shit! She had lost sight of him.
Devo jabbed the stick forward, punching the jet’s nose down. Instinctively he hunched down in his seat. He saw — and felt — the roaring mass of Spam’s Hornet slide over his canopy.
Somehow they missed.
Devo’s heart resumed beating. It was close, too damned close. He’d missed a collision by inches and —
“Altitude! Altitude!” It was the synthesized voice of “Bitchin’ Betty,” the Hornet’s aural warning system.
Devo yanked back on the stick. He glimpsed the digital altitude indicator counting to zero.
Chapter Fourteen
Inquest
Where the hell is Devo?
Spam eased the nose up and started her climb back to ten thousand feet. She glanced around, left, then right. No Devo.
“Devo, you up?” she said on the number two radio.
No answer.
That was just like him, she thought. Take off and leave his wingman. Particularly if the wingman was a woman.
Leveling at 10,000 feet, she tried calling Devo again. Still no answer. She was getting a bad feeling about this. Something weird had happened back there over the freighter. Like a good wingman, she had stayed with him as they passed over the ship. She remembered looking down at the ship, and then when she looked back up — Devo’s jet wasn’t there.
He should have been more explicit in the briefing about what he wanted her to do. Instead, he had wasted time with all that picayune shit about where they would rendezvous. As though she needed lecturing from a… drunk.
He had probably hauled ass back to the Reagan and left her out here. That would be the typical move of your classic male chauvinist fighter pilot who thinks women ought to be darning their socks. She’d get his ass roasted on a spit when they got back to the ship. She’d tell Killer what a jerk his executive officer really was.
Now she had to get back to the ship by herself, and she wasn’t sure what the hell she was supposed to do. One more thing he didn’t cover in the briefing.
She could hear the other returning jets calling on the CATCC–Carrier Air Traffic Control Center — frequency. Spam checked in using her call sign: Stinger 42.
“Roger Stinger 42,” said the controller. “You got Stinger 41 with you?”
“Negative.”
Several seconds ticked past, then a different voice came over the frequency. “Stinger 42, this is the Captain. Look, we’re not painting Stinger 41’s transponder squawk, and we think he might be a nordo.” A “nordo” was an aircraft with lost radios. “Take a look around and see if your flight lead is with you, maybe on your wing.”
Spam took a quick glance to either side of her jet. Empty sky. No radioless jet flying on her wing. “Negative. He’s not here.”
Spam wondered what the hell was going on. The captain of the ship? They were worried about Devo. It didn’t occur to them that he had abandoned his wingman. She was getting a feeling that something had gone wrong, and she had learned by now how the male-biased Navy operated: The bastards were going to blame it on her.
Spam stopped thinking about Devo. It was time to land on the thing.
Her first pass was unstable, causing the LSO to give her a frantic wave off close to the ramp. Overcorrecting on the second pass, she missed all three arresting wires and boltered, back into the pattern.