Michael Ostrewski’s last view was a windscreen full of Flanker. The twotone gray paint scheme loomed at him, and his final willful effort was to clamp down on the trigger.
His cannon had hardly begun to fire when the little Douglas speared the big Sukhoi squarely behind the cockpit.
Liz fought the G, realizing that she had bottomed out of her desperate split-ess, knowing that the very realization meant life. I’m alive. How? She craned her head, seeking the Flanker that had to be above and behind her, positioned to shoot again.
The first thing she noticed was a corkscrewing smoky spiral as the Archer, devoid of guidance, followed its ballistic path to destruction. Vespa reversed into the threat that now was nonexistent. The visual footprint led to a dissipating fireball suspended in space, shedding fuel, flares, and aircraft parts.
Her pulse spiked at the knowledge that Michael Ostrewski somehow—somehow—had gained enough room to pull lead on the Flanker. A warm deluge of adrenaline-rich adoration flooded her veins. Ozzie, you are one superb fighter pilot! She pressed the mike button. “Three, this is Four. Climbing through four thousand.”
She waited several seconds for the reply, believing that the Only Polish-American Tomcat Ace must be savoring his triumph. When no response came, she tried again. And again. Finally, she said, “Hu, look around. Do you see Ozzie?”
The Chinese pilot turned in his seat, swiveling his head across the horizon. “No, miss.”
Realization descended on Vespa’s brain, draining downward in a chilling cascade that coagulated into a hard, insistent lump in her stomach.
She spoke to the windblown smoke and drifting shards. “Oh, Michael. What did you do?”
Twenty-nine
Last One Back
Peters and Delight were on the bridge, digesting three versions of what had happened to the renegade Sukhoi. Delight, still in his flight suit and torso harness, was coming off an adrenaline high following his kill.
“I still think Ozzie gunned the sumbitch and ejected.”
“Zack, radar saw the plots merge. And we have a secondhand report from the Coast Guard reporting a midair collision.” Peters slumped against the bulkhead, arms folded. Staring at the deck, he intoned, “They’re searching, but …”
“ … but Ozzie’s probably dead.”
Peters nodded.
“TA-4 on downwind, Captain!” Odegaard lowered his binoculars and pointed to port.
With gear and flaps down, Scooter Vespa broke at “the ninety” while Robo Robbins, Psycho Thaler, and Mr. Wei watched from the LSO platform.
Vespa rolled wings level a mile and a quarter from the ramp, making minute adjustments to keep on glide slope. Robbins, with the phone in one hand and the “pickle switch” held aloft in the other, waited for her call.
“Skyhawk ball,” she said. “State point six.”
Robbins and Thaler silently regarded one another. With six hundred pounds of fuel, she would have only two chances at the deck. “Lookin’ good, Liz. Keep it comin’,” Robbins called.
Thaler had the binoculars on the TA-4, serving as Robbins’s watcher. “Hook!” He turned to look at Robbins. “No hook!”
Robbins made a conscious effort to keep his voice calm. “Liz, drop your hook.”
Vespa chided herself for missing the crucial item. Damn it—I’ve never done that before! She reached down for the hook-shaped handle, missed twice, and had to look in the cockpit. When she returned her gaze to the mirror, the ball was a diameter high and she was angry with herself almost to the point of tears.
“Waveoff, Liz. Take it around!”
Vespa knew that she could recover and probably catch a four wire, but obedience to the LSO’s command was too deeply ingrained. She shoved up the power and ignored the usual procedure. Instead, she wrapped into a hard left turn, leaving gear and flaps down, rejoining the circuit slightly downwind of the ninety.
Thaler leaned into Robbins’s shoulder. “I think she could’ve made it, Rob.”
“I know. But she’s gotta be shook about Ozzie, and this way there’s less doubt in her mind.”
As a landing signal officer, Robbins also was a working psychologist. He knew how frustrated and anxious the pilot must be, especially with a passenger aboard. He keyed the phone. “Don’t worry, Scooter. We’ll catch you this time.”
Vespa scanned the instruments once more, pointedly ignoring the fuel gauge. Over the hot mike, she said, “Mr. Hu, brace yourself for possible ejection. If I miss this pass I’ll climb straight ahead and give you as much notice as I can.”
“Yes, miss.” His tone sounded neutral.
As Vespa rolled out of her oblong-shaped 360-degree turn, the ball was half a diameter low. She called “Skyhawk ball,” omitting her fuel state, and added throttle to intersect the glide slope. She barely heard Robbins’s “Power” call.
As the ball rose slightly she led it with pitch and power, stabilizing her airspeed at 122 knots to compensate for the light fuel load. Santa Cruz’s 328-foot-wide deck was irrelevant to her now. What mattered was the eighty-foot-wide landing area with the lifesaving arresting wires, though Vespa aimed within three feet of centerline.
For the next ten seconds Elizabeth Vespa’s attention was riveted on the glowing amber meatball. From the the backseat, Hu appreciated the fact that it remained nailed in the middle of the datum. He heard Robbins’s only additional transmission. “Good pass, hold what you got.”
Papa Four impacted the deck at eleven feet per second sink rate, the landing gear oleos compressing under pressure as the tailhook snagged the third steel cable. As Vespa added power in event of a bolter, the TA-4J was dragged to a stop.
Mr. Wei Chinglao broke all decorum and hugged Robo Robbins. Psycho Thaler pounded both of them on the back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Robbins turned to his writer. “Papa Four, low-state recovery, rails pass. Underfunckinglined OK-3!” As a group, they turned and ran up the the deck to the parking area.
Vespa sat in the front seat, listening to the J52 unspool with its vacuumcleaner whine. She wanted time to absorb what had happened to Ostrewski, and what she had just done. Hu already had descended the ladder, standing with his camcorder, intending to record his pilot’s triumph. He was immediately joined by a crowd of plane handlers, ordies, and the LSO contingent, plus Peters and Delight from the bridge.
Liz dropped her helmet over the side, where the plane captain caught it. She beaned a smile she did not quite feel, blew a kiss at Hu’s camera, then pinched her torso harness restraints and eased out of the cockpit. She backed down the ladder but had not reached the bottom before she felt eager hands plucking her up and away. She was afloat on a raucous sea of male faces, borne shoulder high toward the island. For the tiniest instant she thought back to her high-school senior prom and the condescending look of triumph that Christine LaMont had shot her as the tiara was set on the queen’s head. Take that, Christine.
The men grasping Vespa’s legs and thighs allowed her slide off their shoulders. She alit in front of Peters, who grasped her in a crushing hug. When he pulled back he exclaimed, “I am so proud of you.”
She blinked back what was rising inside her and managed to keep her voice calm. “Ozzie?”
Peters wanted to avoid her eyes. Instead, he focused on her face and shook his head. “No word, Liz. I think he’s gone.”
“Scooter.”
Liz turned at the sound of her call sign. Delight stood by her left shoulder, and she leaned into him. “Oh, Zack.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. He patted her back, exactly the way he had reassured his grandchild after a bicycle spill twenty years ago.
“Did you see it?” He knew what she meant.
“No, hon. I was …” He cleared his throat. “I was in the pattern about that time. But …”
“But my God, Zack. He died for me!” Her eyes were clear and dry, but she choked on her words. “He died for me …”
Delight grasped her by both shoulders. “Listen to
me, Liz. Listen to me!” They both were aware of the crowd melting away. The deckhands recognized that this was a moment between friends who had shared something exceptional. “If he was still here, he’d be just as proud of you as … we are.” Delight allowed her to grasp that sentiment. “Liz, you just sank a ship and got a gun kill on the same mission. Do you realize nobody’s done that in about fifty-five years?”
She allowed herself a grim smile. “You got a kill, too.”
Delight looked at Peters. “Hook and I both flew a couple hundred missions in Vietnam and never got close to what happened today. But, hell, my mom could have hosed that gomer from six o’clock.”
Vespa realized that she had instructed the dead Chinese pilot. “Do we know who was in that airplane?”
“No,” Peters replied. “But we’ll find out fairly soon.”
Delight shook his head, marveling at the pilot he had chased. “I’ll bet the ranch that my guy was Deng. I don’t think anybody else in the class could’ve flown that way.”
Robbins forced his way through the dispersing crowd. He leaned around Delight and kissed Liz on both cheeks. “Scooter, that was the best pass I’ve seen in years. You got an underlined OK-3.” He grinned hugely. “And after a hell of a mission.”
Some of the giddiness was returning even as she wondered, Have they forgotten that Michael’s dead? But she heard herself responding to the banter. “Even with the low start, Rob?”
He punched her arm. “Hell yes. That was a great recovery, and since I’m the only LSO aboard, it’s a perfect OK-3.”
“Captain from bridge.” Odegaard’s voice snapped over the 1-MC speaker. Peters looked up at the 0–9 level where a khaki arm waved at him. “Sir, the phones are working at El Toro and your wife’s on the horn. She and Mrs. Delight want to know if you will both be home for dinner.”
Thirty
Shakeout
“How many federal agencies can there be, anyway?”
Representative Tim Ottmann grinned ruefully at Delight’s plaintive query. “Hell, Zack, don’t blame me. I voted against every new bureau and agency that ever came up for funding. Even tried to make a couple of ’em go away, but it did no good.”
Peters looked around the hotel suite, assessing the collective mood. Besides himself and Jane, the Delights and Ottmann, were Vespa, Robbins, Thaler, Wei and Hu, plus two Washington attorney friends of Ottmann’s. One of them, a former A-7 pilot named Brian Chappel, specialized in transportation law, including maritime and aviation. He was cordially detested by the Navy Department and the Department of Transportation.
“In the two days since the excitement, I’ve heard from the following,” Chappel said. “DOT including FAA and the Coast Guard, FBI, ATF, and DEQ. That doesn’t count state and local agencies.”
Robbins raised his head. “DEQ? What’s their take on this?”
“Something about protection of coastal waters. They say that bombing is bad for the fish, and the Penang’s oil spill caused some concern.”
Peters was anxious to wrap up the meeting. “Okay, Brian. Where is all this likely to lead?”
“My guess is that it’ll mostly disappear in a couple of weeks.”
“Really?” Jane Peters was reluctantly eager to believe it.
“Yes, Mrs. Peters. Really.” Chappel gave her a convincing smile. “Look, the bottom line is this: Everybody on both sides wants the same thing. To make this go away. State and DOD are red-faced over the way things turned to … hash … with their Chinese program. The way that heavy ordnance like bombs and missiles were smuggled into this country, or actually purchased here, could force Congress to ask a bunch of embarrassing questions.” He looked at his D.C. colleague. “Right, Skip?”
Ottmann gave two thumb’s-up. “Guarantee it.”
Thaler picked up his glass and slurped the last of his lemonade through the straw. “Mr. Chappel, I understand the PR angle—the government’s got to look like it’s investigating all this. But you know that the fix is already in with the president and the administration. Those pardons that Skip got for us, in case we need them.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So what’ll happen in Taiwan?”
“Oh, that plan is canceled. With the assistance of Mr. Ottmann, Mr. Chappel, and some other well-placed individuals, the names and roles of certain prominent PRC officials are being made known on a confidential basis in Washington.”
“Which means”—Ottmann grinned—“that the papers and news networks will have all the details in time for today’s five o’clock news. With what we can release about bribes, kickbacks, and influence peddling, neither the U.S. nor Chinese governments will risk losing billions of dollars in trade and revenues.”
Vespa spoke for the first time. “Mr. Ottmann, what about the backpacks? Are they being recovered?”
“I shall answer that,” Wei interjected. The old MiG pilot regarded the American woman frankly. At length he said, “Under utmost secrecy, I confide to you what few people will ever know. There were no nuclear weapons.”
Liz involuntarily shuddered; Jane felt the tremors in Vespa’s body and put an arm around her shoulders. Liz leaned toward the Chinese. “Michael died for nothing?” Her hands clenched into frustrated, vengeful fists.
“Not at all, my dear. Not at all. He played a vital role in carrying out the most important part of our plan. When I said that we knew the weapons were aboard because one of my people helped load them, that was the same information that went to the Premier and the Politburo. Oh yes, packages were placed in the Penang Princess’s hold, and they would have showed a reading if exposed to a Geiger counter. But they were, ah, your word is—a placebo.”
“A fake pill to make the patient feel better.” Peters slowly shook his head, marveling at the subtle complexity of Wei’s plan.
“Exactly, Mr. Peters. In this case, the patient was the premier and his Stalinist cabal. Now that their ‘plot’ has been defeated and exposed, China may move on to more productive endeavors.”
Liz grappled with the cooling anger she felt. At length she asked, “But what about the people on that ship? Eric and I …”
“Miss Vespa, Mr. Thaler, please.” Wei managed a note of sympathy in his voice that still seemed out of place for the man. “You knew that people would die when you accepted the mission. The rationale was that a far greater number might be saved. Well, nothing has changed. The eleven men who were killed and the twenty or so injured must be balanced against the losses that would occur in an invasion of Taiwan.”
While Vespa allowed herself to accept the fact that she had been skillfully used in a geopolitical chess game, Delight intruded on the hushed silence. “One thing I’d like to ask, Mr. Wei. What caused the secondary explosions after Liz’s hits?”
“Explosive charges set near the presumed weapons, Mr. Delight. We wanted to ensure that an independent agency confirmed the presence of nuclear materials. Your emergency disaster crews have reported trace elements in the atmosphere and water—far below any hazardous level, but enough to ensure that protests and diplomatic consequences will result in Beijing.” He allowed the ghost of a smile. “Your Navy will ‘recover’ the weapons.”
Thaler swirled the ice in his glass, still shaking his head at the revelations. “How were the charges set?”
“Again, Mr. Thaler, I require utmost discretion. But you have treated me and Mr. Hu with uncommon courtesy, and provided me with the most exhilarating day of my life.” He almost smiled again. “When the attack began, one of our operatives set off a timer. Then he escaped over the side.”
“And the pleasure craft alongside?” Thaler asked.
“You may consider your effort well spent,” Wei responded. “That was a Mexican drug smuggler hired by the PRC agents in Long Beach. He was to disperse the backpacks to other agents throughout the area.”
Ottmann noticed Chappel closing his briefcase. “Well, I guess that’s about it. Brian, you have anything else for these folks?”
&n
bsp; “No, just the usual lawyer-client warning.” He smiled at the audience. “The spin doctors will take the lead, but people, please remember this. Don’t say a damn thing to anybody without consulting me first.”
Peters stood up, resting one hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Then I guess we can all go home.”
Wei and Hu looked at each other in a way that had nothing to do with family ties. “Not all of us, Mr. Peters,” Wei intoned. “Not all of us.”
Thirty-one
Scooter Flight
The memorial service at St. Francis Catholic Church was smaller than the wedding would have been. The testimonials had been spoken, the elegy delivered by Terry Peters, the rites performed by Ostrewski’s priest.
The mourners rose following the benediction and slowly filed out. The ATA contingent stood by while Maria Vasquez accepted greetings and condolences from friends and relatives.
“By the way,” Peters said, “Tim Ottmann is recommending Ozzie for a special orders Medal of Honor. With the political horse trading, he figures it’s a cinch for a Navy Cross.”
“Oz already had a Navy Cross,” Delight replied without irony. “Besides, you know how he felt about this country for the past several years.”
Peters chose to ignore the sentiment. “Additionally, everybody else on the mission probably will get a Silver Star.”
“I’ve got a Silver Star,” Delight replied—with irony.
Carol Delight leaned over the pew. “I don’t understand something. Everybody involved was civilian. How can military medals be awarded?”
“Actually there’s precedent—industry tech reps, even war correspondents have received combat decorations. Besides, Tim said something about a videotape of a former secretary of the Navy with a sheep.” Delight shrugged, then smiled. “Maybe Skip was exaggerating—I couldn’t say.”
Maria Vasquez turned from the front row, her obsidian eyes searching the pews. “Mrs. Peters,” she whispered. “I don’t see Elizabeth. I can’t believe she would miss this.”
Jane patted the young woman’s hand. “Don’t worry, dear. She’ll be here—I promise.” She nodded to her husband, who strode up the aisle in that long, ground-eating gait.
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