Retribution (5 page)

Dog pushed the Megafortress toward the waves, trying to get as low as possible without turning his plane into a submarine. The radar in the Chinese destroyer, originally intended for tracking targets tens of thousands of feet higher, lost the aircraft at about a hundred feet, leaving both missiles to use their onboard infrared detectors to find the target.

The first missile, either incorrectly believing it was near the Megafortress or simply deciding it had had enough of the chase, imploded a good mile from the
Wisconsin,
harmlessly showering the sea with shrapnel.

The second missile continued in the right direction. The launch trajectory had sent it climbing over the Megafortress by a few thousand feet. As it corrected, Dog pushed hard to the south, taking his juicy heat signature away from the missile’s sensor. The radar on the frigate picked up the plane as it turned, then lost it again, though not before its fitful guidance beam sent the missile into a half loop back toward the target.

Dog didn’t know what was going on behind him; he only knew that the farther he flew, the better the odds of survival. He’d been chased by countless missiles, some radar guided, some infrared, a few like this one—a combination of the two. Even with countermeasures, it was always a question of outrunning the thing—“getting where the missile ain’t,” as an instructor had taught him a million years ago. Jink, thrash the pedals, lean on the throttle—just go.

Drenched in sweat, Dog felt the water rolling down his arms, saturating the palms of his hands. He slid his left hand farther down the stick, worried that his fingers would slip right off.

As he did, there was a low clunk behind him and the plane jerked forward, its tail threatening to rise. He used both his hands to keep control, but even as he did, he felt a surge of relief—the shock had undoubtedly come from the warhead’s explosion, and while it must have been close enough to shake the plane, he could tell it hadn’t done serious damage.

Leveling out, Dog took a moment to wipe the sweat from the palms of his hands, then pulled back to climb. He glanced over his left shoulder, looking for the frigate in the distance.

He didn’t see the ship. But he did see a silvery baseball bat, headed straight for him.

It was another HQ-7 antiair missile, and it was gaining fast.

Northern Arabian Sea
0912

T
HOUGH IT WAS SMALL
,
THE
W
EREWOLF KICKED UP A PRETTY
good amount of wind from its props and engines. Mack had trouble keeping his eyes clear as the robo-helo edged in, its rope and sling swinging below.

What Starship had called a collar looked like a limp rubber band—a wet, slimy one that packed the wallop of a wrecking ball. As Mack reached for it, a swell pushed him forward faster than he expected and he was whacked in the neck. He grabbed for the rope but couldn’t quite reach it.

“Get that mother!” he yelled.

He put his left hand on the raft and lurched forward, jumping across the tiny boat for the collar. He managed to spear his arm through it and immediately began to spin to the right. T-Bone jumped at the same time and also grabbed part of the collar. Dish reached but missed, grabbing T-Bone instead. The three men crashed together, none of them daring to let go. The tied-together rafts twirled beneath them, one of them nearly swamping.

“I got it, I got it!” yelled Mack. He hung on as the rope bucked back and forth. “Just grab me. Grab onto me and hold onto the rafts. Stabilize them!”

Starship was trying to tell him something, but Mack couldn’t hear. He felt the helicopter pulling him upward and tried locking his grip by grabbing his flight suit, so that the sling was tucked under his arm. His right leg tangled in the line they’d used to lash the two rafts together, and he felt as if he was being pulled apart at the groin.

“Hold me and the raft! Hold me and the raft!” he shouted, though by now his voice was hoarse.

They were moving, though he had no idea in what direction. It wasn’t exactly what he’d in mind, but it was something.

Aboard the
Abner Read,
northern Arabian Sea
0916

S
TARSHIP DIDN’T KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER THE MEN IN
the raft had snagged the line until he had to struggle to correct for a shift in the wind. He nudged the Werewolf forward and the rafts came with her, pulling through the water at about four knots.

The frigate was still coming toward them.

“Major, I’m going to try increasing the speed,” said Starship. “Are you guys all right?”

Mack’s response, if there was one, was drowned out by the roar of the Werewolf ’s blades directly overhead. The engineers who had advertised the chopper as “whisper quiet” obviously had a unique notion of how loud a whisper was.

Starship notched the speed up gently, moving to six knots and then eight. He knew it had to feel fast to the men on the rafts, but it was less than half the frigate’s speed, and the ship continued to close. While the helo was too low to the water for an antiair missile, it was only a matter of time before the frigate’s conventional weapons could be brought to bear.

“Come to ten knots,” he told the computer, deciding to use the more precise voice command instead of the throttle.

As the computer acknowledged, a warning panel opened on the main screen—the frigate’s gun-control radar had just locked onto the helicopter.

Aboard the
Wisconsin,
over the northern Arabian Sea
0916

D
OG DROVE THE
M
EGAFORTRESS DOWN TOWARD THE
waves, hoping he could get low enough to avoid the radar guiding the missile toward him. He hung on as the
Wisconsin
shook violently, the aerodynamic stresses so severe that he
thought for a moment the missile had already caught up. He kept his eyes on the ocean as he slammed downward; when he thought it was time to pull up, he waited five long seconds more before doing so.

By then it was almost too late. The controls felt as if they were stuck in cement. He put his feet against the bulkhead below the control panel and levered his entire weight backward. The plane reluctantly raised her nose, and was able to level off at just over fifty feet, so close he worried that he was scooping the waves into the engines.

Dog’s maneuver had cost him so much airspeed that the missile shot past, still flying on the last vector supplied by the guidance radar. He saw it wobbling a few hundred feet overhead; instinctively he ducked as the warhead blew up two or three hundred meters in front of him.

Fourteen kilograms of high explosive was more than enough to perforate an aluminum can, even if that can was covered over with an exotic carbon resin material. But the truly deadly part of the HQ-7’s warhead was the shroud of metal surrounding the explosive nut; the metal splinters the explosion produced were engineered to shred high performance fighters and attack aircraft. Fortunately, the designers envisioned that the warhead would be doing its thing behind the plane it was targeted at, not in front of it, and the majority of the shrapnel rained down well beyond the
Wisconsin
.

Not all of it, however. The left wing took a dozen hits, the fuselage another six. A fist-sized slab of former missile punched through the top of the cockpit behind Dog. It crashed into the bulkhead at the rear of the flight deck, spraying more metal around the cockpit. Dog felt a hot poke on his right side, and winced as a splinter rebounded off one of the consoles and hit his ribs. It barely broke the skin, but still hurt like hell.

Clearly, the shrapnel had damaged the plane. He decided a poke in the side was a small price to pay for the near miss, and started to climb again, angling southward, well out of the frigate’s range.

Aboard the
Abner Read,
northern Arabian Sea
0920

H
ANDS ON HIPS,
S
TORM WATCHED THE VIDEO FEED FROM
the Werewolf in astonishment. The downed airmen seemed to have formed a human chain connecting their rafts with the robot helo. Any second now, he thought, one of them would suggest the helicopter turn around so they could try boarding the destroyer chasing them.

More guts than brains, that bunch.

He turned back to the holographic table, rechecking the positions of the Chinese ships. Then he reached to the com switch on his belt.

“Sickbay, how’s our guest?”

“Conscious, Captain. In shock, though. Looks like a concussion, but no other serious injuries.”

“Can he be transported?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, sir.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“If it were absolutely necessary.”

Storm flicked the controller. “Communications—send a message to the captain of the
Khan
. Tell him I have one of his pilots and I’m on my way to return him. Tell him I need to talk to him right away.”

T
HE
W
EREWOLF’S SMALL SIZE AND SHIFTING LOCATION
made it difficult for the gun radar to lock, but the Chinese were definitely out to earn an A for effort. The radar warning receiver kept flashing and then clearing, only to flash again.

Finally, a shell arced toward the helo. It missed by nearly a half mile, short and wide to the right. The 56mm gun at the bow was effective at about 10,000 meters; the computer calculated it would be within range of the rafts in another sixty seconds.

Starship notched the speed up to twelve knots.

“Mack, can you get the raft tied in better?” he asked.

When the major didn’t respond, Starship tried again, this time yelling into the microphone.

Still no answer. The frigate was now forty-five seconds from range.

“Fourteen knots,” Starship told the computer.

Northern Arabian Sea
0923

M
ACK’S LEGS FELT AS IF THEY’D BEEN PULLED FROM HIS
hips. The waves cracked across the bottoms of the two rafts, punching them up and down. This wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if they bounced together. Instead, they rumbled unevenly, thumping and jerking in a madly syncopated dance. It was as if he were standing on the backs of two rodeo bulls, each of whom were riding in the back of a poorly sprung pickup truck.

T-Bone had his right leg and Dish his left. The others, except for Cantor, were holding onto them.

“Hey, this is fun, isn’t it?” yelled Mack, trying to cheer them up.

As if in reply, the Werewolf gave him a fresh tug. He suddenly jerked forward, the ride smoother—too smooth, he realized as he began to spin. He’d been pulled completely from the raft.

“Starship, get me back! Starship!”

Mack spun to his right. He caught glimpses of the destroyer as he spun. The Chinese warship seemed to gain a mile every time he blinked.

Dizzy, he closed his eyes, then quickly opened them as the ocean bashed against his leg. Something flew at him—a bullet from the frigate’s gun, he thought. But it was only Dish, leaping out to grab him as the Werewolf swung back with him.

The rafts twirled as the Werewolf once again changed direction.

“Hang on, hang on!” Mack shouted to the others.

“Look!” yelled Dish, pointing behind him in the direction of the frigate.

Mack wanted to scream at him; there was no sense pointing out how close the frigate was. Dish turned around, then looked back up at Mack, a grin on his face.

What the hell are you smiling about? he wondered, then glanced over Dish’s shoulder and saw that the frigate had turned off.

Aboard the
Wisconsin,
over the northern Arabian Sea
0925

“T
HE
K
HAN
HAS TOLD THE FRIGATE TO KNOCK IT OFF,”
Storm told Dog. “They’ve turned away.”

“Why were they firing in the first place?”

“Why do the Chinese do anything?” said Storm. “They gave me some cock and bull story about the frigate captain believing he was rescuing Chinese pilots, but I don’t trust them to tell the truth. I don’t trust them at all.”

Dog wasn’t sure what to believe. It was possible that the captain of the frigate believed he was rescuing his own men; the
Khan
had lost most of its aircraft, and the frigate probably wasn’t aware that the crew of the Megafortress had jumped out—after all, the plane was still flying.

On the other hand, the transmissions on the emergency or guard band should have made it clear that the downed airmen were American.

Unless, of course, the captain suspected a trick.

“Now don’t you go screwing things up, Bastian,” added Storm. “Don’t use your weapons on the Chinese, as tempting as it may be. Don’t even power them up.”

“What do you think, I’m going to crank open a window and take potshots at them with my Beretta?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Dog snorted. All this time fighting together, and Storm was still a jerk.

“I’m going to have to go south real soon if I’m going to make that tanker,” Dog said. “Can you handle the pickup?”

“Go. We have the situation under control.”

Under other circumstances, Dog would have flown over the raft, dipping his wings to wish his men luck and let them know he was still thinking about them. But he didn’t want to press his luck with the plane.

As he found his course southward, he reached into a pocket on the leg of his speed jeans, fishing for a small pillbox he kept there.

He rarely resorted to “go” pills—amphetamines—to keep himself alert. He didn’t like the way they seemed to scratch his skin and eyes from the inside. More than that, he didn’t like the idea of them. But there was just no getting around them now. The long mission and the physical demands of flying the Megafortress without the computer or human assistance had left him drained. He worked up some saliva, then slipped a pill into his mouth and swallowed.

It tasted like acid going down.

“Dreamland Command, I’m heading south,” he told Major Catsman. “See if you can get the tanker to fly a little farther north, would you?”