by Gordon Kent
Alan glanced uselessly at the ESM screen and keyed his push-to-talk switch. His brain translated the Slot Back call into a pair of Chinese Air Force Su-27s.
“Gunslinger, we have company.”
Point Dallas.
Rafe listened to the orders from his carrier incredulously.
“Big Star, this is High Noon. I have intermittent contact at best. We’re just executing Opera Glass Bravo, over.”
“High Noon, this is Big Star. Pack it in.”
“Big Star, I do not concur, over.”
“High Noon, that’s an order, not a request. Circle the wagons. Repeat, circle the wagons. Do you copy?”
“Roger, I copy, Big Star.”
Rafe felt his hands open and close on the yoke, and he looked out over the endless half-circle of sea and thought of Alan, five hundred miles ahead of him. Recalled without explanation. Had the Pentagon got cold feet? What signal were they sending to China now?
Point Denver.
Craw held his finger over the locate switch until he had three cuts on the Slot Back and then he pressed. He exhaled as the computer located the triangulation two hundred miles to the east. Then he put his cursor on the contact and pressed a button to put it in the datalink.
Seven miles behind Craw, Donitz’s RIO saw the contact on his screen and placed his own cursor on it.
“I want to put the radar on him.”
“Wait one.” Donitz flicked a switch to get the Strike Common frequency.
“High Noon, this is Gunslinger One. I have pos contact with two goblins and I want to turn the lights on.”
“…wagons, over!”
“High Noon, I read you broken and do not copy.”
“Gunslinger One, circle the wagons, over.”
Donitz was struck dumb.
“High Noon, do you copy contact with two repeat two gremlins?”
“…over?”
Donitz made up his mind. Rafe had just ordered them to turn for home, but he clearly didn’t know what was happening up here, and while Wagon Train Four and Six switched off at Dallas, there was no one to relay.
“Turn on the lights!”
Two powerful F-14 radars reached out toward the updated datalink contacts and grabbed them. Both RIOs registered the Slot Backs moments later as their ESM systems caught up. The Su-27s were beyond the useful range of their radars.
“Nose’s hot.”
“Gunslinger, Lone Ranger turning to 270 and going for the deck.”
“Tonto turning to 265 and going for the deck.”
“Gunslinger One, this is Lone Ranger. I think they’re following me.”
Both Su-27s were moving fast now, diving from almost thirty thousand feet.
Donitz knew he was supposed to avoid conflict, but if he turned and the Flankers took Craik, he’d never live with himself. He and Craik went back. Donitz called his wingman. “Press, Covey.” This sent the F-14s forward toward an engagement.
Alan was trying to raise Rafe when he heard Donitz decide to press the engagement. He was sure that Donitz had the situational awareness to make the call, but he wasn’t sure that Donitz had heard the “circle the wagons” code that ordered a general break-off. Donitz was covering their scramble to get down where they could turn and have at least a tiny chance to duck missiles. Stevens had them diving just a little faster than the peacetime airframe rules allowed. They still had a few options, and Alan scanned the chaff and flare counters while he called Rafe.
When he couldn’t raise Donitz, he knew that it would be up to him. He wasn’t really senior to Donitz; as an intel officer, even as OIC of the det, he didn’t really have the right to command in the air. But Donitz was his friend and would probably follow his lead. Why the hell had Rafe ordered them to break off? What did he know?
Seconds ticked by as the aircraft closed. The S-3s dove, big grapes falling as fast as they could. They were dead at this altitude. Alan ticked through the data available to him. The Su-27s were at the extreme limit of their range; they had to be or they would have gone to burner. They couldn’t follow the group down to the deck, whereas the two S-3s could gas their F-14 escorts and still make it back up to the tankers at Point Dallas. If Donitz turned away, the Chinese would draw the wrong conclusions. The mission would be a failure, except for the hoard of data they had collected on the Chinese group. Alan would be willing to bet anything that those ships were en route delivery to Pakistan. The radar handling had been hurried, but one of the missing Jiangwei II frigates had been imaged. Not the time to think all that through.
He had to keep Donitz from pressing in. It all came down to trust, and Alan trusted Rafe. He pressed his comms.
“Gunslinger, this is Lone Ranger. Do not engage!”
“Ranger, they’re following you down and closing. I want to stay nose hot and lined up.”
Suddenly Rafe’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Gunslinger, do not engage. Repeat, do not engage!”
“Roger, copy. High Noon, Gunslinger has two gremlins in pursuit Lone Ranger, range one four zero.”
Five hundred miles behind the action, Rafe was out of the picture, listening to the distant events, feeling the calls of the pilots in his hips as he unconsciously tried to urge his plane to be there with them.
“Big Star, are you copying this? The Chinese are 140 from my scouts and pressing.” And he slammed his fist into the windscreen next to his head.
Washington.
“…140 from my scouts and pressing.”
The CNO was grabbing the keyboard of the JOTS repeater terminal as if he could fly it. The Su-27 symbols were clearly marked. What he saw could have been coincidence or it could have been a trap. If the F-14s turned away, it was possible that the Flankers might get one of the S-3s.
“Tell High Noon he has to break off regardless of provocation.”
It felt like surrender. The Chinese pilots were being aggressive as hell, and he had just ordered his boys to run for home. He had to believe that the Su-27s wouldn’t fire at an unarmed S-3. If they did, he’d just sacrificed them to buy the day he’d need to have new crypto. Otherwise, the Chinese might be watching the same plot he was, right now.
Point Denver.
“Gunslinger, break off!”
“High Noon—”
“Now!”
The Su-27s seemed torn between the S-3s and the F-14s. Donitz gritted his teeth.
“Do it, Gunslinger!” That was from Lone Ranger. Alan had a long head. Rafe wasn’t a fighter guy, but he must know something.
“Covey, break left and go for the deck.”
“Copy.” The two F-14s turned away from each other in unison and headed for the water and Point Dallas.
Stevens kept the dive steady through eight thousand feet. Alan kept a hand on the chaff, but his mind was running on overdrive.
“They can’t come down with us. They can’t have the gas.”
“They’re at twenty thousand. Somewhere around four zero miles.”
With the F-14 radars off the Flankers, they had only the ESM gear to measure the range and rate of closure, an imperfect tool at best. Alan began to feel the change in temperature and humidity as the plane neared five thousand feet, where the S-3 dumped cabin pressure. His ears started to pop. His throat was sore. He shut off the MARI system, like a workman careful of his tools, and set his screen to ESM, getting the same picture as Craw.
Soleck was rocking rapidly back and forth in his seat, watching the sky above them.
A minute passed without an ESM hit. They were below five thousand feet, the turbofans whining away at full throttle. Here, they could at least turn, and looking down at them was the worst aspect for the Chinese radar, no matter how good the technology was. The sun dazzle off the waves could also distract an IR missile like the Flanker’s AA-10. So they had a chance, and they were ready to go a lot lower, too.
Rafe had once dumped an Iranian fighter in the water because it tried to turn low with him and lost energy.
The second minute passed, and they still had no contact.
“Playing possum or turned for home.”
“Turned for home.” Alan almost felt it unlucky to say the words, but even with a tanker, those Flankers were an incredible fifteen hundred miles from home. They had to turn. And now that they felt that they had caused the Americans to run at the mere sight of them, they’d be happy to go home. Alan shook his head bitterly and tried to outstare the screen in front of him. If the mission had been to convince the Chinese that the Americans were here to fight if they had to, they had failed badly.
Why the hell had Rafe ordered them home? Alan couldn’t believe that two Su-27s on a long fuel tether would have turned even once with the two Gunslingers. Donitz could have kept his nose hot and bored in, sending the message loud and clear. But Alan had heard the order and the tone of Rafe’s voice. Rafe had meant business. Discipline held. And now they had turned tail and run.
In all four planes, discomfort piled on anger and multiplied. They had to tank twice, and Stevens slammed the basket both times, his anger coursing through the plane. He was silent except to make the required calls. Even those had the old touch of sarcasm that had been missing on the way out.
Every time Soleck opened his mouth, Stevens told him to shut it.
Alan poured the dregs of his thermos into his cup and felt his gut heave at the bitter, metallic taste of old grounds that mingled with his fatigue and the unaccustomed flavor of defeat.
And China’s ultimatum was sixty hours away, and pressing forward.
25
Washington.
Late at night, Mike Dukas showed up at Abe Peretz’s house, soaked to the skin and looking as worried as a beagle.
“Shreed’s split,” he said when Abe opened the door. “The Baranowski woman still here?”
“We have a telephone, Mike.”
“Yeah, you ought to hang it up now and then so somebody can call in. You going to ask me through the door, or do I stand out here all night?”
Abe, flustered, drew him in and began to pull wet clothes off him. Dukas hadn’t brought a raincoat that morning, and in the end he needed to go upstairs and put on dry clothes that weren’t designed for his wide body. As he dressed and sipped whiskey, Abe asked him about Shreed: why had he gone? Where? When?
Dukas kept giving empty answers. “We’re not even sure he’s really gone. His car’s gone from the garage, we know that—the cops looked in through a window. He didn’t keep a doctor’s appointment, but the neighbors remember seeing him yesterday. He didn’t make a flight to Budapest he was supposed to be on—Agency business.” He pulled a purple sweatshirt that said “Dig Mozart” over his gut. “I want to talk to Baranowski to see if she knows anything about where Shreed might go. Anything!” He pushed his feet into a pair of Birkenstocks. “You talk to her?”
Abe shook his head. “Nothing. She doesn’t believe he’s a spy, Mike. She thinks he’s a one hundred percent prick, but she can’t conceive of him being a traitor.”
Dukas finished the whiskey. “Neither can Carl Menzes. Push comes to shove, he doesn’t really believe that George Shreed is his mole. I mean, he wants not to believe that Shreed is his mole.”
“It is kind of a stretch.”
“Not for me. If it was Shreed that hurt Rose, I’ll hammer him. First, I got to know he’s gone and where he’s gone.”
“You checked the airlines, the trains—”
“Yeah, yeah, they’re doing all that. Those goddam canes, they’d be hard to miss, right?” They were moving downstairs, Abe two steps behind and higher. Dukas half-turned to say, “If he’s the mole and something flushed him, he’s got an escape plan and they’ve jerked him out by now. He’s in Beijing or someplace.” Dukas chewed his lip. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned to face Abe and then, when they were on the same level, lowered his voice to say, “The party line is it’s China. I think maybe not. Al’s made a contact with a woman—this is absolutely hush-hush, Abe; the Agency doesn’t know—that gave us a code name for what she says is the mole inside the Agency. It could fit Shreed. But what’s more to the point, she said some stuff to Al about Bonner, the guy we got for setting up his father with the Iranians, right? So I think this woman’s got Efremov’s stuff. Efremov died last month in Tehran. I figure she got out with something of his—records, files, who knows?—and now she’s peddling it. So, suppose she’s also peddling it to Shreed? Or suppose she’s using it to get Shreed to be the new Efremov in Tehran—huh? Suppose that’s why he ran—he got an offer he can’t refuse?” He lowered his voice still further. “He was on a chat room with somebody who at least came on as female, and he says, ‘We should meet.’ What’s that sound like to you?”
Abe, too, spoke almost in a whisper. “Then it’s the Iranians got him out of the country?”
“Nah, they don’t do that stuff very well, especially over here. They’d arrange to meet him someplace. If it’s the Chinese, then he’s long gone, but if it’s the Iranians—hell, he might still be hanging around.”
“And?”
“And I want you to do me a favor.”
Abe made a face. “Let’s get another drink.” He led the way to the kitchen, where he poured more whiskey. “What d’you want?”
“I want you to get the name of the Iranian asset that got killed when Al and I were in Mombasa in ninety-one. Remember? It was the thing that got Al and Shreed crosswise of each other.”
Abe handed him a glass. “Al turned to Shreed for help, and then the two of you got jerked out of the country, and then the guy was dead. I thought Harry was checking on that.”
“He did. The guy didn’t commit suicide, as the Agency had it. He was murdered. Now I need his name.”
“What’re you saying, Mike—that Shreed killed the guy?”
“I don’t need to say that. All I need is the guy’s name, so I can tell some friends that the guy was maybe betrayed by one George Shreed, and would they please keep an eye out for him. Get his name, will you? All Al ever called him was Francey.”
Abe cleared his throat and pulled his glasses down to make his professorial face. “Franci—F-R-A-N-C-I. It’s what the Iranians call a Westerner—a ‘Frank.’”
“Whatever.” Dukas guzzled whiskey. “I need his real name. FBI must have it in a file someplace—Iranian asset, Mombasa, ninety-one—”
“You know what time it is?”
“You know how important this is?”
“Jeez, first you borrow my clothes, now you’re sending me to the Bureau at midnight!”
“Yeah, you better get going. Where’s Baranowski?”
Abe shook his head and started to hunt for his car keys. Before going, he had to have an obligatory shouting match with his wife about what he was doing, and Dukas had then to sit still for a shouted scolding from Abe’s wife. After that, he was allowed to see Sally Baranowski.
USS Thomas Jefferson 0330 GMT (0630L).
Lone Ranger was the last to land, as they had been the last to launch. Rafe watched with bitter pride as his chainsaw collapsed with discipline, each station retreating down the line, taking or giving its gas and then slipping away to join the stack over the carrier as the sun rose in a halo of fire over Africa. Now the monster that had spat them forth full of hope was taking them back. Rafe’s landing was a square three-wire and an okay.
Lone Ranger went into the break low, but Stevens corrected and put himself in the groove without a wobble. Alan knew that Stevens was exhausted because he no longer made remarks, sarcastic or otherwise. But he flew them through an unspectacular okay and survived rolling the plane to a precarious spot with their tail dangling over the water by cat three.
Alan began gathering the wreckage of kneeboard cards that he and Senior Chief had created in the back end during the last seven hours. He needed to piss, and he wanted food and sleep.
The sun was rising in a spectacular blaze of pink and orange fire off the starboard side. They were heading north, then. Still ru
nning from the Chinese.
“Al, you got any idea what happened there?” Stevens was standing behind him in the hatch. The use of the first name seemed unconscious.
“I don’t really want to discuss the decision-making.”
“Fuck that. You probably made the right call. Donitz didn’t have to listen, either. Why’d we run?”
“I don’t know—Paul.”
“Well, find out. Sir. You want to know something? In the last two weeks, you and Rafehausen almost had me convinced that I might be able to get O-5 out of this cruise. You two are like a force of nature. This op, it was like nothing I’ve ever been on, right? I mean, I missed the Gulf. I don’t have any green ink.”
Alan smiled hesitantly, caught on the wrong foot and still expecting a fight. “I want to know as bad as you.”
“I doubt that. You’re a golden boy, Craik. You aren’t overweight, your shit don’t stink, stuff that would destroy other careers doesn’t even stick to you. I want to know because this fucking op was my ticket. I was going to get my medal and my O-5. And the way I feel right now, if you tell me the President recalled us, I’m going to fly to DC and cut his balls off. You find out and tell me, okay, sir?”
“Paul, you were great. It’s worth saying, even if the mission went flat.”
“Want to know something? I’ve always been great. This ain’t bullshit, Alan. I’ve always been great, and it just hasn’t ever mattered.” Stevens turned back to his seat, jerked his comm cord hard, and dropped through the hatch in the bottom of the plane.
Under him, in the bowels of the ship, the great engines turned the giant screws to their maximum rotations. The carrier shook as the rotations increased, and a taste of spray came over the bow to touch Alan’s face forty feet above the water. With all her planes safely back aboard, the Jefferson was going back to full speed.
Washington.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Dukas said.
