Typhoon Season c-14 Read online

  Uniformed men began appearing down on the fantail, gathering in a silent group. Lee searched for the gleam of silver hair, but was not rewarded. All he saw were the CDF uniforms, dark hair, gleaming rifles. His stomach tightened. Where was Mr. McIntyre?

  “Look,” Cheung said. Far to stern, a searchlight beam winked on. It was too high off the water, and moving much too fast, to come from a boat. Then Lee heard the beating rhythm of helicopter blades.

  “This could be interesting,” Cheung said, and lit another cigarette.

  Guests surged to the rail, staring hopefully toward the light.

  Below, the patrol boat banged into Lady of Leisure again. The PLA sailors swarmed back across the rail, and the instant the last one was clear, the patrol boat heeled away and roared off across the South China Sea, all lights off.

  A cheer rose from Lady of Leisure. Clearly, no one cared that the helicopter didn’t seem to notice the departing patrol boat. It descended toward the yacht, its rotor noise escalating into a painful thunder, its searchlight beam snapping back and forth. The guests at the rail waved, jewelry and sequins flashing. The helicopter slowed, moved to the starboard side of the boat, then hovered at a distance of fifty or sixty feet. Its rotor wash flattened the sea. Through the glare of its spotlight, Lee glimpsed a sleek silhouette not unlike that of the French-built helicopter Mr. McIntyre used for business trips. He looked closer. This helicopter was painted in irregular gray stripes, with a red star on the side.

  And mounted in its open rear hatch was a machine gun with a man behind it. As Lee watched, the barrel pivoted.

  Cheung said something sharp in Cantonese, but his words were eradicated by a sudden, pounding roar. Flames leaped from the helicopter, and a column of water exploded up from the sea and marched toward Lady of Leisure.

  The guests stood staring silently.

  Then the screaming began.

  0510 Hours (-8 GMT)

  Tomcat 302

  South China Sea

  “Oh give me a home… where the buffalo roam…” Lieutenant Commander Chris Hanson, call sign “Lobo,” held each note as long as she could, until she heard her Radar Intercept Officer’s groan through the Internal Communication System: “Please, God, make it stop.”

  Lobo grinned, even though she knew Handyman couldn’t see her face from the backseat, least of all at night. “Honey,” she said, “before you start praying, remember that there’s only one God up here… and that’s me.” She yanked back on the yoke and slammed the throttles forward to full afterburner. As raw jet fuel spewed into the twin exhausts of the General Electric F-100 turbofans, the F-14D stood on its tail and shot up as if yanked by the Milky Way. Lobo felt her weight double, then triple, trying to shove her backward through her seat. She breathed in harsh grunts, tightening the muscles of her torso to force the blood to back into her head and extremities. Nothing better than flying an F-14 to keep the old abs in shape. Even so, gray haze crept in at the edges of her vision. She loved that. It never ceased to amaze her: A Tomcat was so powerful it could leave consciousness itself behind….

  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 th
e 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.

  “Whoa, watch it, Lobo,” Handyman said. She knew he wasn’t troubled by the G-forces so much as the fact that the Tomcat’s extended wings expanded its wingspan from thirty-eight feet to almost sixty-four. The inboard tip had to be reaching for the water. But she didn’t bother to reply; she knew where her goddamned wingtips were.

  “Viper Leader, Viper Leader, this is Homeplate — are you sure it’s a civilian vessel?”

  As she leveled out, the sea below her was black and smooth, a waxed floor in which she could see the reflections of stars. She knew that to the rear, matters would be different. There, the horizontal vortex of air uncoiling from each wingtip would be lashing the surface into a froth.

  But all her attention was focused dead ahead, where the flame leapt into life once more.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.” Her finger had gone to the weapons selector switch. But… did she really have cause for action? Maybe this was target practice on some derelict boat. Or a legitimate shoot-out of some kind. Through her mind flashed the mantra of the few female Navy fighter pilots: Don’t fuck up; they’re watching you soooooo closely….

  Then she saw the American flag dangling, shredded, from a pole on the remnants of the sinking boat’s fantail — and the red star painted on the side of the helicopter. Below her, the water was suddenly full of floating lumps. Lobo’s finger jumped back to the weapons selector switch. Too close for missiles, but the Tomcat’s M61A1 Vulcan cannon could shred that helo into a pile of tin cans…

  … And drop it right on top of any possible survivors in the water.

  Don’t fuck up….

  Snarling, she slammed the throttles forward, turning the Tomcat into an arrowhead sixty-one feet nine inches long, and leaping toward the speed of sound.

  0515 local (GMT -8)

  South China Sea

  Lady of Leisure

  Martin Lee clung to the rail of what had once been the starboard side of Lady of Leisure, but now substituted for her slanted deck. He had moved to the starboard rail from the stern only when the yacht began to roll over, yet even then he had stayed as close as possible to the stern. Wait for me right there, no matter what. What a fool he was; what a brainless, unthinking lackey. Now, with one arm wrapped around an upright and his body sprawled across the yacht’s slick fiberglass flank, he pretended to be dead. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

  They had already shot most of the others. First they’d blasted Lady of Leisure herself, hammering rounds into her fragile body at the waterline, until she toppled over far enough to dump most of her passengers into the sea. Then the helicopter turned its attention to them. Circling slowly behind the bright eye of its searchlight, it picked out the passengers one by one and shot them, until the water turned scarlet-and-blue.

  Lee watched all this from beneath his arm as he dangled against the side of the boat. He didn’t want to watch, but closing his eyes was much worse; the noise, the screaming…

  He saw Pablo Cheung diving under the water, pursued by silver spears where slugs yanked bubbles after them. Cheung stopped diving and turned into a red rug drifting just below the surface. Lee saw Lisa Austin, the clothing designer, raise her hands toward the flames, and disintegrate. He saw the helicopter hesitate, its searchlight beam probing the water, scanning back and forth, then sliding back toward the yacht.

  He closed his eyes. Tried not to scream as the light blazed over him, turning his eyelids red, prickling his skin like the heat of the sun…

  Then he did scream as something crushed down on him, driving the wreckage of Lady of Leisure deeper into the water, boring into Lee’s ears, then releasing them so hard they popped. Water sprayed up around him, so dense he could not breathe. He jerked erect, gasping, his blood pounding in his ears. When he opened his eyes he saw the water falling back, and beyond that the helicopter’s searchlight beam jumping erratically between the sea and the sky. The helicopter was bobbling in the air like a toy on a rubber band, the silvery disk of its rotor nearly touching the water on one side, then the other, its machine gun blessedly silent. Finally it steadied again, hovered for a moment, then pivoted, lifted its tail high and raced away to the west.

  A few moments later, the air thundered again and something flashed overhead; enormous, silvery, pursued by two long cones of flame.

  Even before the burnt-kerosene aroma of jet exhaust reached him, Lee knew what had passed over. Clinging to the remnants of the Lady of Leisure with one arm, he waved frantically at the sky.

  0515 local (-8 GMT)

  Tomcat 306

  South China Sea

  “What’s going on, TT?” Hot Rock demanded over the ICS. He banked his Tomcat slightly, maintaining his altitude at the prescribed fifteen thousand feet, searching the ocean below. He couldn’t believe this was happening. According to Lobo’s last radio transmission to Homeplate, the boat under attack was carrying an American flag. An American boat, clear out here — what were the odds? “Come on, what’s happening down there?”

  “Hang on, hang on, I’m checkin’.” Hot Rock had long ago noticed that the more intense the situation, the more the accent of his RIO, Tony “Two Tone” Cappelli, reverted to its Brooklyn roots. “Getting nothing but surface clutter; looking straight down ain’t what AWG-9 is made for, you know?”

  “Do you pick up the chopper at all? I see Lobo; she’s going around again. She didn’t take a shot, did she? Is the chopper still there? Talk to me, Two Tone!” Sweat slicked the space between his palm and the yoke. Blood sang in his ears.

  “Lookin’ for your first kill, youngster? Well, I’m getting a little signal here, something maybe runnin’ west.”

  “Should I chase it or not?”

  “Hey, you’re the pilot. Or you could call Mommy and ask her permission if you like.”

  Hot Rock felt as if cold water had been dumped over his head. He could hear his father’s voice: What’s the matter, Reginald? You scared to take the horse over that jump? Scared of a little fall? Your brother was clearing that jump before
he was six years old.

  He flicked the radio to tactical. “Viper Leader, Viper Two. I’m in pursuit of the helicopter. Repeat, in pursuit of the helo, departing on a heading of two three zero.”

  “We’re right on the edge of the twelve-mile limit,” came Lobo’s clipped tones. “Watch your position.”

  “Copy.” He was proud of how dry and sarcastic that came out. Just the way his father would have said it if someone had challenged his expertise.

  Nosing the Tomcat over, he started searching the dark water ahead. Of course, odds were he wouldn’t spot the helicopter at all; the Tomcat wasn’t equipped with infrared targeting, and for that matter Two Tone could have just been picking up random surface clutter, the bane of airborne radar.

  Then he saw something. “Tally ho!” he cried, the words for “target sighted” leaping automatically to his lips. That pleased him. He’d said exactly what he had been trained to say, without thinking about it. Perhaps everything else would work that way, too. “I see his rotor disk, TT. Right on the deck.” He licked his lips. “Um, he’s heading for the twelve-mile limit. Better call Homeplate for orders before we do anything; this is a weird situa — ”

  Just then the voice from the Hawkeye interrupted. “Viper, Viper, you have incoming bogeys, bearing zero niner zero. Four bogeys, repeat, four bogeys inbound on your position. From their radars, they’re Flankers.”

  The carrier TAO’s voice cut in sharp and hard. “Vipers, remain on station. Keep bogeys away from that site; backup is on the way. Repeat, maintain control of that site if at all possible. You’re over international waters. Backup and SAR on the way.”

  “Roger,” Lobo’s voice said. “Hot Rock, Hot Rock, break off and beat feet back to your previous position. I’m going to stay down here and make it real clear nobody gets near this mess but us — especially a helicopter. You copy?”

  “Copy, Viper Leader.” Hot Rock heard the slight tremor in his voice, but that was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew from experience that other aviators would interpret it as springing from anger and disappointment. Because they’d be feeling anger and disappointment at being called off potential target to play watchdog. “Damn it!” he cried, cranking the F-14 into a hard right turn and headed back and up.