The silence stretched on through the crackling static.
1406 hours
Flag Plot, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
The radioman raised one hand to his earphones, narrowing his eyes as he listened to words filtered through static, "One aircraft down, Admiral. No chutes. Rodeo Leader is still calling on the SAR frequency.
"Damned idiot," Admiral Magruder muttered. "Didn't CAG flash him an RTB?"
"Yes, sir. I guess he's stretching it a little."
"I'll stretch him." The words sounded angrier than he'd intended. He was feeling an inner, guilty tug of relief that his nephew had come through the dogfight in one piece, and he was covering his emotions with an acid manner. A yeoman handed him a mug of black coffee from the Flag Plot mess. He kept his face impassive as he raised it to his lips, sipped it, accepting its scalding heat. "What about his wingman?"
"There's been no more contact with Coyote or Mardi Gras, Admiral. Backstop will be over that area in another ten minutes now."
"Captain on deck," a marine sentry announced. Magruder glanced up, acknowledging Captain Fitzgerald with a nod and a tight smile.
"Hello, Jim."
"Admiral." Fitzgerald's voice was tight, rigidly in control. "What's Tango Seven-niner say about our gomer friends?"
"Seems they've had enough. Hightailing back to Wonsan and a nice, safe bed."
The captain nodded. He looked worried ― for his ship, for his men. "So. What now, Admiral?"
"We've engaged." He sighed. The responsibility was a yoke across his shoulders. Fitzgerald wasn't the only one who was worried. Magruder's responsibility extended to five other ships of the carrier group besides the Jefferson.
Worse, what he did or didn't do in the next few minutes might well start a war ― a real war.
Magruder turned to his chief of staff, who stood nearby. "Brad, get me CINCPAC. Secure net. FLASH for Admiral Bainbridge."
"Aye aye, Admiral."
Flag Plot grew quiet. The seizure of a U.S. ship on the high seas was an act of piracy by international law, but now the situation had escalated drastically. Shots had been exchanged between the military forces of two countries. The dogfight off the Korean coast might well touch off a domino-chain of events which would end… where?
Tensions in East Asia had been running high for weeks. Rioting students in the streets of Seoul, calls by the United Korean Democratic Faction for a withdrawal of American troops from South Korea, a steady barrage of propaganda from the North Korean leadership in P'yongyang, all had served to create the hottest world crisis since the Gulf War. The clash of political wills between Washington and P'yongyang could have far-reaching implications. By attacking American aircraft over international waters, Kim II-Sung had just raised the ante in that eyeball-to-eyeball poker game. It was time to see him, and raise.
"I have CINCPAC on the secure net, Admiral."
Magruder accepted the red phone.
Jefferson's captain looked as though he wanted to say something more but seemed to think better of it. "I'll be on the bridge, Admiral."
"I'll keep you posted, Jim." He brought the phone to his ear and pushed the handset button. "This is Admiral Magruder, sir. We have a situation here."
1407 hours
In the Sea of Japan
Coyote spat brine and fought for air as he rode the swell. The skin along the angle of his jaw already felt raw where the collar of his life jacket ground against him with each surging mountain of cold, dark water. A wave passed and he rode the slope of water into the trough. Momentum carried him down, plunging his head for one icy instant under water, and he felt the shrill jangling of panic in the back of his mind.
The shock of ejection, of hitting the cold water, had left him stunned, his thinking cloudy. Somehow, Coyote pushed the panic aside. Survival now depended on a cool head, and on his training.
His life raft had deployed from his seat on impact and inflated automatically. He managed to throw himself across the side and cling to it, gasping for breath. A SAR radio was strapped inside a vest pocket of his life jacket. Coyote pulled it free and opened the channel.
There was a hiss of static, and then he heard Tombstone's voice, faint and faraway, but clear despite the slap and slosh of water against his raft. "Rodeo Two, this is Rodeo Leader. Do you copy, over?"
"Rodeo!" he called. His mouth filled with salt water again and he choked. He spit, drew a wet and ragged breath. "Tombstone! This is Coyote!"
"Rodeo Two, this is Rodeo Leader." Tombstone's voice crackled with excitement, as though he'd been calling for long minutes with no answer. Coyote's own emotions soared as well. "I hear you, Coyote! Are you okay?"
Coyote did a mental inventory. He could move his feet… both arms. He felt bruised from head to toe from his rough ride during the ejection and numb… numb from cold more than anything else.
"I'm okay!" he called back. He managed to roll the rest of the way into his raft. "Wet, but okay!"
"That's great, Coyote. SAR's on the way."
"Roger that." It would take time for the rescue chopper to reach him, but at least he was in contact with friendly forces. He'd be warm and dry on the Jefferson before lunch.
The thought of food brought a sour taste to his mouth, an unpleasant twist to his stomach. Oh, God, he thought. Don't let me be seasick…!
"Coyote, give me thirty seconds of beeper."
"Rog." He shifted the selector on his radio. After a minute he switched back to the voice channel.
"We've got you, Coyote," Tombstone said after they'd reestablished contact. "You're south of us."
But how far? "Copy, Leader. Do you want smoke?"
"Not yet, Coyote. Let's make sure we're in the same county before You pop your flares. Do you see Mardi Gras?"
"That's negative. Do you have him on radio?"
"No joy, Rodeo Two. But we're looking."
Coyote thought he heard a distant growl now, a far-off and muted thunder that might be almost anything. He fumbled at his life vest, checking by touch that his flares were in easy reach. He didn't want to show smoke until Tombstone was closer… and he'd need to save one for the search and rescue helo when it arrived.
Only then did the real danger of his situation hit him. He was in contact with friendlies, but the nearest ship of Jefferson's battle group capable of launching a search and rescue helo was still a couple of hundred miles to the east at least. SH-60B Seahawks had a top speed of 145 mph, which meant he was going to be bobbing around in frigid water for hours before a helo could get to him.
And the cold was already penetrating his flight suit. He was shivering as he spoke again. "Rodeo Leader, Rodeo Two. It's going to be a while before anyone gets here."
"No sweat, Coyote. We'll mount CAP for you until the SAR helos get here."
"Copy, Tombstone. Uh… what's your fuel look like, over?"
There was a long pause, and Coyote's worry grew. "We've got enough to find you first, Coyote. Stay cool."
Stay cool, yeah. Very funny. Coyote twisted, trying to face the rumble of sound he could now hear quite plainly. The movement brought with it another cold slap of water, the biting taste of salt. "Tombstone, you've got to be running pretty lean right now. Better break off and RTB."
"Copy, Two. A Texaco's on the way."
Yeah, and you'll never make rendezvous if you don't break off and didi for the Jeff, Coyote thought.
"Rodeo Leader, this is Rodeo Two," he said after a long, cold moment. "Listen, Stoney, with this cloud ceiling you're never going to spot me down here." He felt the hard truth of those words even as he said them. He'd overflown pilots down in the water before. Glimpsing something as tiny as a raft in the middle of all that water was next to impossible despite dye markers and signal flares; it got worse when low clouds kept you close to the sea. Even idling along with the wings full out, a Tomcat simply could not move slowly enough to give her crew a decent look at the water. He swallowed, tasting salt. "Suggest you break off and make for Homeplate. I'
ll be okay."
This time, Tombstone's hesitation seemed to drag on forever. "Rodeo Two, Leader. I… yeah, you're right. If I lose this airplane, we're going to have some very sore taxpayers on our case. You sure you'll be okay?"
"Affirmative, Rodeo Leader. I'll put on some light music, relax a bit-"
"Copy that, Two. Listen, you'll have Backstop overhead in… ten minutes. They'll orbit until the next relay gets here. It shouldn't take more than an hour or two for the SAR boys to get here. Think you can hold out that long?"
"No sweat, Tombstone. Tell 'em to keep me a warm spot by the fire." He listened again. Was the thunder closer now? He couldn't tell.
"Put your radio on beeper, Coyote. I'll tell 'em you're waiting. See you at home!"
"Roger that. See you… back home."
Home. The word brought a rush of thoughts, of memories, and the nostalgia was so surprising it momentarily crowded out of his mind thoughts of survival, of cold, of being abandoned in this vast expanse of water. For a moment, he could see Julie's face as clearly as if he could touch her. She was in San Diego now, with Jimmy.
Something caught his vision, tugging at his awareness just as he slid down the back slope of another ocean swell. What was it? Helplessly, he waited out the approach of another swell, felt himself rising… rising…
At the peak of the wave, he strained his eyes toward the something he'd glimpsed before and felt a thrill of recognition. A parachute! At first he thought it might be his, but then he realized the lines were still caught on something, that the canopy was still partly inflated and billowing in the stiff, chill wind.
Mardi Gras! That was his chute! After setting the radio to send out its steady, homing beep-beep-beep, he secured it to a strap on his shoulder, then began to paddle with clumsy strokes toward the chute. It was at least a hundred yards away, and he lost sight of it every time he slid into the trough between one wave and the next.
But if he could reach Mardi Gras, the job of the search and rescue choppers would be one hell of a lot easier. Grimly, he kept stroking and slowly closed the range.
Yes, the thunder definitely sounded a little louder now.
1415 hours
Tomcat 232
Batman Wayne looked from side to side as his Tomcat roared low over the Sea of Japan. The ocean was gray and empty, with a heavy swell under a stiff northeasterly breeze. "Well, are we getting closer or what?"
"Try south," Malibu replied from the fighter's backseat. "Uh… make it one-eight-five. We're close, but I don't know how close."
"Can you get a triangulation with the other aircraft?"
"Affirm. We've got him to within a couple of miles. Wait one."
"Rog." Batman dropped to four hundred feet, trying to focus on the water rushing past his aircraft's belly at better than three hundred knots. He was ashamed of himself for snapping at Malibu, but the pressure was on for some high performance. MiGs he could handle, he thought, but how the hell was he supposed to spot a couple of guys swimming in all that ocean? The string of beeps his RIO was listening to would vector them in. The only question was how long it would take.
"Surface contacts," Malibu said. "Three miles, bearing two-five-oh. Inside the line."
"Shit. Maybe Homeplate'll let us go have a peek. Raise 'em, will you?" Batman wanted to concentrate on flying, on the gray swell of sea and whitecap below.
"We'll have to go through Tango," Malibu replied. "Too low to hit the Jeff… Tango Seven-niner, Tango Seven-niner, this is Backstop. Do you copy, over?"
"Backstop, Tango Seven-niner," the familiar voice answered. "Go ahead."
"We have multiple surface targets at two-five-zero, range three miles. Request fly-by, over."
Batman shut out the radio chatter as he brought the Tomcat around in a low, slow turn, wings fully extended, streamers of white contrail blasting from the trailing edges in the humid air. Far to the east, sunlight spilled through a rare break in the cloud deck, then flashed from an aircraft canopy. That would be his wingman, Nightmare Marinaro, quartering another piece of the ocean. The other two aircraft of Backstop Flight were searching behind them, further to the north.
Even with the damned beeper, this was going to take some looking. The fact that the invisible line marking North Korean territorial waters now lay only a mile or so off his starboard wing didn't make it any easier. What if Rodeo Two had gone down on the wrong side of the line?
"No go, Batman," Malibu said over the Tomcat's ICS. "We're stuck with the ROES."
"Aw, shit!" Batman replied. "They already shot one of our people down! We gotta go through that ROE crap every time we meet gomers?"
"Don't take it out on me, amigo! I'm right behind you, all the way."
"Yeah." Batman stifled the surge of emotion ― it wasn't anger he was feeling so much as excitement, a keyed-up, high-pitched eagerness to come to grips with an unseen enemy. There were MiGs out there, damn it, and he wanted one so badly he could taste it.
That realization only fanned the flames hotter. Every aviator in the Navy lived his whole career for one thing, and one thing only… the chance to come up head-to-head with an enemy MiG, to engage in combat and prove that mix of skill, training, and ego which made a combat fighter pilot.
It wasn't that he'd forgotten about Coyote and Mardi Gras. He hadn't… couldn't. But pilots went for unscheduled swims in the peacetime Navy too. It was a part of duty aboard a carrier that every aviator trained for… and kept as far to the back of his thoughts as was possible. Ditchings happened.
Turning and burning with real live MiGs, now, that was something else! The last time an American aircraft had tangled with MiGs had been during the Gulf War, and the dogfights over Iraq had been Air Force victories, more often than not. But how he would have liked to have been a part of that set-to!
Lieutenant Edward Wayne was a victim of one of the paradoxes of modern Naval service… especially service with a carrier air wing. He'd spent eight years of his life so far training for only one thing: meeting an enemy pilot in air-to-air combat and shooting him down. It wasn't that he wanted a war; nobody did. But air-to-air combat, real combat, and not the mock dogfights aviators engaged in with one another on an almost daily basis, was the crowning test of any fighter pilot's career.
And Tombstone and Coyote, those lucky sons-of-bitches… it had been handed to them on a plate!
He dropped the Tomcat a little lower, his eyes watering as he tried to focus on the water rushing past, searching for smoke, for parachutes, for anything. "Ho, Malibu," he said. "How about doing the radio for a while? Maybe he'll tune in."
"Sure thing, man. Rodeo Two, Rodeo Two, this is Backstop. Rodeo Two, this is Backstop…"
CHAPTER 4
1420 hours
In the Sea of Japan
Coyote was exhausted. The struggle to make his way toward the other chute through the heaving sea had left him so tired he could hardly move his arms. After almost fifteen minutes of paddling, he still wasn't sure whether he was getting closer to Mardi Gras… or whether his RIO's chute was dragging Mardi Gras closer to him.
"Mardi!" he shouted. Water slapped him in the face again and he spat it out. "Mardi! You okay?"
There was no answer, no indication that Mardi Gras was even there, that he was still connected with his chute. Somehow, Coyote found the will to keep going. His hand closed on wet nylon and he began pulling hand-over-hand, dragging fistfuls of guideline as he pulled himself and the raft past the collapsing parachute and toward the dark form he could now see each time it rode to the top of another ocean swell.
Vince Cooper's helmet was blue with white stripes, the call sign Mardi Gras picked out in red letters on either side of the visor knob. The RIO's head sagged back against the collar of his life jacket, completely limp with the roll and swell of the waves. Unconscious, Coyote decided. Their life preservers were designed to inflate automatically when they hit salt water. Fortunately, Mardi's had functioned as advertised.
"Mardi! It's gonna be o
kay!" He dragged himself closer. "You hear me, Mardi?" His hand closed on Mardi Gras's life preserver, dragging the bobbing form against his body. "It's gonna be okay, Mardi! Just…"
Mardi Gras's head lolled sideways with sudden movement, and Coyote saw the shattered side of the helmet, the crimson color staining the water. He pulled Mardi Gras partway onto the raft, clinging to him as he searched for signs of life.
Coyote could feel the sickly crackle of bone fragments grating as he touched the RIO's head. Mardi Gras was dead, the left side of his skull crushed within the damaged helmet. "Oh, God, Vince!" He peeled off one of his gloves, probing his RIO's throat searching for a pulse. "Don't die on me!"
For the first time in some minutes, Coyote was again aware of the deep-throated rumble of an engine in the distance. Numb with cold and exhaustion, with one arm still thrown across Mardi Gras's chest, he fumbled with his free hand for a flare. His radio squawked, the words thin and indistinct. He couldn't reach it, not and still hold onto Mardi. No matter. They sounded close now. They'd see his smoke. The rumble was too throaty and deep to be jet engines. It was more like the heavy thud-thud-thud of a helo. Hell, that was fast work. If the SAR helo could pull them from the drink in time, they might still do something for Mardi back on board the Jeff.
By feel, he found the end of the flare for day use and twisted savagely at the cap. Red smoke spilled from the end, boiling across the water in a thick, churning cloud. With the last of his strength, he waved the smoke marker back and forth. Where was the helo? The engine noise was much closer now… and behind him.
"They'll have us back aboard Jeff in no time, Vince!" he told his RIO. Clinging to the man's body, he twisted around so that he could watch the helicopter's approach.
The shock of recognition brought bile to his throat. It was not a helicopter approaching him with the deep-throated growl of triple diesels, but the angled gray bow of a missile boat. The turreted, automatic 30-mm gun on the forward deck, the huge, blunt canisters on either side housing Styx anti-ship missiles identified the craft as a Soviet-built Osa 1.
Carrier c-1 Page 4
