by Stuart Slade
One of the APD destroyer-transports was limping slowly to the shore. The fires aft were dying down but the ship visibly settling as she plugged grimly for the shallows. Beaching her, Gitta thought, only thing to do. Miraculously, the other two APDs seemed to have escaped. Then he became aware that Udagiri's bridge was black and .....smoking?
"Number One, are we hit?"
Lieutenant Murray looked at his ops officer with grim humor. "Despite your best efforts, no." Gitta looked confused. "That pair of Jabirus you squeezed off cleared the bridge by less than two feet. If we'd had an open bridge, you would have roasted us all. You know, you are due for promotion, you don't have to create the vacancies."
B10N-1 Shuka Mi-121, Over South China Sea, West of Pattle Island
Genda eased back on the throttles and swept the wings forward into the subsonic cruise position as he climbed away from the sea surface. Something had changed in the wild ride over the Indian fleet. They'd started as three; a pilot, his WSO and their aircraft. Somehow, they'd become fused together into a single working entity. He glanced at his WSO and knew the bomb-nav operator was feeling the same.
Behind them, they could still see the angry red glow on the horizon that marked Pattle Island. It looked like sunrise; the evil sunrise that told of a thunderstorm coming. Beside them, the remaining five aircraft were closing in, resuming the loose formation they'd held on the way out. Six had come out; six were going back.
"‘Any damage?"
The radio negatives came in. They weren't quite true. All the aircraft had minor damage, some of it self-inflicted, but the distinction was academic. They were going home and the Shuka had proved itself as deadly as its designers had promised. At last. Not only that, the Navy had scored a victory. At last.
"Well done, Ken-san."
The formal, polite, words, in the shared intimacy of the side-by-side seating sounded good. Suddenly a name popped into Genda's mind and he thought of the third member of the team. He reached forward and patted the instrument panel. "‘And well done Kiku-San."
"Proud to have been of service."
The words, quiet and deferential, sounded in the crew's earphones. Pilot and WSO looked at each other in amazement. So the legends were true!
Dawn, INS Mysore, Off Pattle Island, Paracel Group, South China Sea
"Dear God what a mess." Admiral Kanali Dahm looked at the smoking ruin of the base. Two ships sunk in the lagoon. Huge black pyres of smoke rising from the island. Two frigates sitting outside, one with its bridge blackened. Ashore he could see the evergrowing lines of white patches. The dead in their shrouds. Hundreds of them. His ships had got the message as the raid had struck and returned at 32 knots. Too late to help but, hopefully, early enough to stop a follow-up raid. Or a full-scale attack. He'd also radioed the report back to India.
"Message Sir. From Command." The Sparks brought the flimsy in. Dahm read the orders. Well, that made sense.
"Captain, we're to remain here, render assistance ashore and also land reinforcements from our ship's guard. The Main Body has been ordered to make all speed here, not to wait for the Viraat or the other division of the Flying Squadron. They have three more frigates with them. Above all, we're to hold on here and repel any further attacks."
"Any air cover coming Sir? Without Viraat?"
"None. We're too far out. The message says the raid was by Harry bombers. We didn't think they were operational yet. It was the sort of raid one can pull off once, when somebody isn't on guard, but we'll be ready next time. They won't try it again. If they do, they won't get in clear like they did this time. Tell Ghurka to get her AEW bird up dusk to dawn though. Just in case."
Hainan Airfield, Hainan.
The roosters crowed first, then the dogs started barking. The sky, ever so slowly, was lightening in the east. The stars were still bright glowing through the pre-dawn. Then, without warning, a new star appeared, one lined up with the end of the runway. The new star quickly grew a shadow behind it and became a B10N on its final approach, nose up, wings outstretched, wheels and flaps down. It sank quickly towards the runway, a tired bird, one that had seen a rough night.
"ICHI!" The chorused number, the cheer went up from the airbase personnel who had been waiting all night for their aircraft to return. The first B10N was on the runway, slowing down, its parachute streaming behind it.
"NI!" The second Shuka was down, following the first along the painted runway to the hangars at the end.
"SAN!" The third was down, also rolling past the crowd whose numbers swelled as duty personnel ran out to see the bombers return.
"‘YON!'" Number four safe. By this time the lead B10N had turned off the runway onto the taxiway and was heading for its pen.
"GO!" Number five down and safe and the cheering men also saw the last making its approach. If nothing went wrong now, then all would be well.
"ROKU!" Number six was down and safe.
The cheering went wild as the skies around Hainan lightened. The roar of the taxiing jets competed with the wild outbursts of cheering from the base, drowning out the sounds of the countryside coming to life. Most of the men were running alongside the runway, trying to keep pace with the bombers as they moved down the taxiway in a stately procession. Then, they turned off, into their designated revetments and the engine noise died down.
On Mi-121, now privately named Kiku-san, the two halves of the cockpit canopy pivoted upwards like a bird lifting off. A set of steps was already being pushed up and the tired aircrew tried to release their harnesses, fending off the over-zealous help of the ground personnel. Then the steps were cleared for an Admiral had come up. Genda tried to salute but the Admiral grabbed his arm and stopped him. To the stunned disbelief of the crowd of onlookers, the Admiral raised his hand in the traditional salute and held it. Beaming down with pride and respect at the two pilots in the Shuka, he passed across two small glasses filled with steaming sake and lifted his own in a toast. At last, after years of obscurity, the Imperial Japanese Navy was back in business.
Seer's Office, NSC Building, Washington D.C.
"Boss, Anne's arrived from the Pentagon with the pictures. She's got Brigadier General Kozlowski with her." Lillith released the button on her intercom phone and smiled at the visitors. "Please step right in Anne. General, how's Xiomara liking Washington?"
"She's a bit bored, Lillith. She sits down at Andrews most of the time, we only get to fly often enough to keep my hours up. We'll be glad to get back to the 3O5th." Kozlowski thought that was indeed the truth. Every officer knew that tours of duty in the Pentagon were required for an ambitious officer but the job of a pilot was to fly and the job of an RB-58F was to find things and break them. Flying a desk just didn't compare.
"Seer, I've got the pictures from last night's raid. Boy, the Chipanese really did a number on Pattle. Used the B10Ns based out of Hainan." Anne Bonney put the file she was carrying down on the table top.
"That was fast, how did we get them. Oh, welcome to The Building Mike. You haven't been here before, have you?"
"No Sir. In answer to your question, we put an SR-71 over them first thing. Chuck Larry's boy flew the mission. He wanted bombers, his old man wanted fighters so they compromised on SR-71 s. Good pictures."
Kozlowski spread the pictures of the shattered base over The Seer's desk. The Seer looked them over and whistled quietly. "What's your opinion Mike? Professionally."
"Damned fine job Sir. You can see how they did the runs over the island, each aircraft knew exactly where it was going and why. I'll bet if we check orbits, we'll find there was a photorecon satellite over Pattle just before dusk. They were lucky though, nothing moved after nightfall. If they'd been Russians, they'd have shifted everything around out of force of habit." Kozlowski looked thoughtful. "I wonder if Harry can download data directly from a satellite. We're playing with that. Look, you can see how they plotted their course in. . ."
Kozlowski spoke for ten minutes, carefully analyzing the raid and the havoc
it had caused. When he finished, he sat down and Lillith quietly put a cup of coffee into his hands. "Black, no sugar isn't it?"
"That's right ma'am. And thank you."
Meeting over, Lillith closed the doors. "Well Boss, what do you think."
"Before you answer that Boss, you should read this." Anne Bonney passed over a message flimsy. "Statement from the Japanese high command. They state that due to ongoing military operations, they are declaring a maritime warning zone 200 miles wide around the Paracels. Neutral shipping is warned to keep clear of that area in case they get attacked by accident."
The Seer nodded. "That's a message to us. They're telling us they want to keep this whole business confined to the area they've just defined. Smart of them. That only leaves one question, how long before Snake starts trying to persuade us to help the Triple Alliance out? Lillith, organize an office pool on it. Ten bucks entry fee, winner gets, ohhh I don't know, think of an interesting prize. Take the extra out of petty cash if you need to."
"Will you help them, Boss?" Anne's voice was curious.
"Can anybody think of a single interest of the United States at risk here? As long as the incident stays confined to the area the Chipanese have defined and doesn't interfere with maritime movements or start to spread, I can't. Anyway, the Indians stuck their neck out here. They're on their own."
"Snake won't like that."
"Snake will have to learn to live with it. She knows the rules. Our country's interests come first and we just don't have a dog in this fight. Anyway, we've got other problems.
17,000 feet over Defensive Area Annaliese, French Algeria/Caliphate Border
The Ki-115 was following a flight plan that had been carefully and expensively worked out. For weeks, martyrs flying Ki-127 bombers had flown into the airspace claimed by unbelievers. They had flown on steady courses, at varying times, speeds and altitudes. Watched on radar, they had all been intercepted and shot down. On each occasion, the time taken for the unbelievers to respond, where their fighters had come from, the type of aircraft they had used, how they had conducted the shoot-down, all had been watched and noted. As a result the Caliphate observers knew where the weak points in the defense screen were and when was the best time to exploit them.
This was one such weak spot. On the border between two defensive areas, where the fighter ground control should overlap but sometimes didn't. An area where the defending fighters were the older Super-Mysteres, not radar-equipped Mirages. In daylight that made little difference since the piston-engined Ki-115 was just as vulnerable to one as to the other. In fact, a case could be made that the older, cannon-armed Super-Mystere was better suited to a daylight destruction of a Ki-115 than the all-missile Mirage IIIF. At night the radar on a Mirage made a lot of difference.
The Ki-115 made its scheduled turn and started flying parallel to the border, towards the sea. This was where the weak point in the unbelievers air defenses ended. As soon as the turn was made, alarms would be ringing all over the defense system and the Super-Mysteres would be scrambling to take off. Inshallah, by the time they made it and were able to intercept the Ki-115, its tanks would be empty, its deadly cargo unleashed on the faithless ones down below. The ones who'd rejected the leadership of the Caliphate and spurned its teachings of the True Faith. There were apostates down there who'd thrown their hand in with the unbelievers and so they could share the same fate.
In fact, the Ki-115 pilot was wrong. He'd been spotted several minutes earlier since the weak point in the French screen was indeed weak, but it was not a gaping void. The Ki-115 Slime had been spotted later than it should have been and it had taken the defense a little longer to respond but that was all. A Super-Mystere was already closing on the Slime when the Caliphate aircraft started spraying its cargo. It was closing fast with clearance to open fire already in the French pilot's hands.
As usual, the Super-Mystere was steered in so that it came up on the Slime from below and behind. The pilot of the Slime simply didn't see the French fighter until the glowing tracers whipped past the Slime's cockpit. The French pilot had made a slight mistake; he'd over-estimated the speed of the Slime slightly and most of his first burst missed. Two did not. One ripped into the port wing, disrupting the chemical spray system built into the wing structure. The other hit squarely on the fuselage aft, ripping open the large tank behind the Slime's cockpit. The damage caused the contents of that tank to pour out in a dense cascade. The result was that what was supposed to be a fine mist covering a large area was, instead, a dense mass.
The two hits threw the Slime out of control. Never an easy aircraft to fly at the best of time, the sudden damage caused the aircraft to rear upwards, stall and then lurch into a spin. A competent or capable pilot would have averted that. He would have brought the aircraft under control quickly and started his evasive maneuvers. The Caliphate pilot was neither skilled nor well-trained. In fact, he had fewer than ten hours flying the Ki-115. In a strange way, that aided him. An untrained pilot should have panicked and made desperate attempts to correct the spin, each of which would have made the situation worse. The Caliphate pilot simply took his hands off the controls and started to pray. Without him making any mistakes to make matters worse, the Slime automatically stabilized and was now diving steeply downwards. His faith vindicated, the Slime pilot resumed his grip on the controls and pulled out of the dive, heading north for the sea.
The French Super-Mystere pilot was stunned by the evasive maneuver and assumed he was facing one of the Caliphate's few veteran pilots. From his seat, the Slime's maneuver looked like a wingover followed by a dive to extend range. His jet was closing on the enemy aircraft's position too fast to copy the maneuver directly, his turning circle and response times were just too great. He performed a steep climbing turn to bleed off speed, then brought the nose sharply around and dived after the Slime. By now, the Caliphate aircraft was flying low over the sea, heading for home. More significantly, it was now lost in the sea clutter and the ground control radars could no longer coach the Super-Mystere in on its target. The French pilot searched visually for his enemy but the piston-engined aircraft was lost in the darkness. With his fuel running low, he decided to head for home, while the Caliphate pilot made for his base.
It never occurred to either pilot that, in their maneuvers, both aircraft had flown through the cloud released from the Ki-115s tanks.
The Presidential Suite, Tropicana Hotel Havana, Cuba
"Senor Presidente, your 3 o'clock is here to see you."
"Thank you Estrellita. Send him in."
Meyer Lansky took his seat behind his desk. He'd had reports of Gotti's investigations and had been pleasantly surprised. The young man had done quite well; he'd picked up on some unusual affairs and developed the leads further while avoiding confrontations with the Capos and Captains in the area. In fact, they'd spoken well of his tact and discretion. Interesting.
"Dapper John. You got news?"
"Meyer, sorry this is happening at short notice. You gotta see the scene of the latest incident. Gonna help make many things a lot clearer."
Lansky's face was impassive but he looked on the invitation with suspicion. Private meetings in the families all too often turned out to be terminal for one of the parties. This wouldn't be the case here though, could it? Anyway, he had his precautions in place.
"Another incident? Where?"
"Coffee shop downstairs. Not a real big thing but worth your attention."
Lansky relaxed. The busy coffee shop was a fully public place, noisy and crowded with tourists; it wasn't any place for a hit. "Sounds good. Estrellita, I'll be out of the office for a while. Field any calls for me." The middle-aged Cuban secretary nodded and flipped a switch that directed all of Lansky's calls to her own terminal.
"What have you found, John?" The two men were standing in the shop, leaning with their backs to the wall, eyes watching the door. This place wasn't just safe, the noise levels made eavesdropping impossible.
"W
e picked up a dealer last night. An unauthorized one. He was harassing a couple of tourists so a waitress called the boys and they handed him over to us. Smart tourists by the way. They stalled the heel until the boys got there. They got their meal free and I slipped the waitress a couple of hundred." Lansky grimaced slightly, those were details he didn't need to know. He took it for granted that the people who'd helped had been properly rewarded.
Gotti saw the expression and mentally kicked himself. He was too newly Made to be entirely confident in his actions but it was bad policy to let it show. "Sorry Meyer. Anyway, we reasoned with the guy and he spilled everything. He was dealing right enough. Heroin and cocaine , all of it smuggled in."
That made Lansky start. "Smuggling? H and Coke? In the name of God, why?" His amazement was genuine. Smuggling drugs into Cuba was absurd. If somebody wanted to import them, all they had to do was package them up and put them onto an aircraft for delivery. So much was being flown in, quite legally under ‘Cuban Law,' that pilots of cargo aircraft from Colombia and Turkey had adopted the traditional SAC salutation ‘Fly High!'.
It wasn't even a case of avoiding import duties, because Cuba didn't have any. Cuba's proud boast was that it was a tax-free society. The casino's fabulous profits saw to most things and, of course, the mob skimmed the take. Tax free wasn't quite true. Is there any difference between property taxes and protection money? Lansky briefly reflected. After all, a family paid their protection money to their button man and he looked after them. Fixed the roads and sidewalks, made sure the residents on his block were safe and helped them out if they were struck by misfortune.
