Alpha Strike c-8

by Keith Douglass

  0800 local (Zulu -7)

  Tomcat 205

  “How are you holding up?” Bird Dog asked, glancing at the rearview mirror. “You ready for some aerobatics? Tell me if you’re not — you’ll be cleaning it up if you puke.”

  The backseater nodded.

  “Use the ICS. If I’m not looking, I can’t see you nod,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the answer came finally. “I think some aerobatics would be just great!”

  “Okay, Shaughnessy, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Bird Dog jammed the throttles forward, pitched the nose of the Tomcat up, and headed into an Immelmann.

  She may own it on the ground, but up here it’s all mine! And the more she knows about that part of it, the better she can do her job.

  He’d never been too good with words, but a highly illegal and damned well-deserved ride in a Tomcat ought to make up for a hell of a lot of mistakes!

  A war whoop echoed over the ICS as he reached the pinnacle of the maneuver. He felt a grin split his own face and added his best imitation of a rebel yell to her voice.

  Damn, it was nice to have a backseater that appreciated the fancy stuff! Maybe it was time to talk to Shaughnessy about getting some college under her belt and going to AOCS. In six years or so, Gator might just find he had a little competition.

  Then again, if her eyesight held up, she just might have her eyes on the front seat! From the way she was enjoying the aerobatics, she just might.

  1100 local (Zulu -7)

  Admiral’s Cabin

  USS Jefferson

  “Admiral? Lieutenant Commander Flynn to see you, sir,” COS said.

  Tombstone looked up from his desk and frowned. He’d known this day would come soon enough, and he still hadn’t decided how to handle it. The more he tried to ignore Tomboy, the more he found her creeping into his thoughts. He could spot her in seconds in the crowded dirty-shirt mess in the forward part of the ship, and lately he’d taken to avoiding the VF-95 Ready Room. Every time he stepped into it, she was there.

  She’d noticed, he was certain. How could she not know something was wrong when the man she’d flown with for a year, day in and day out, in combat and on routine hops, suddenly started avoiding her?

  “Show her in, COS,” he said. Well, absent a plan, he’d have to play it by ear.

  “Commander,” he said formally, while COS lingered at the door.

  “Admiral, thank you for seeing me,” she responded. Her voice was low and steady, although her usually light complexion looked starkly pale against the flaming red hair. She wore khakis, ribbons, and her wings, every inch the professional naval officer and pilot that she was. Suitable dress for a junior officer to see the admiral.

  “Please — sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair in front of his desk. For a moment, he considered asking her to sit on the couch, to put her at ease. After all, if this meeting was difficult for him, it had to be doubly so for her.

  “Thank you — I’d prefer to stand, if that would be all right with you, Admiral. This won’t take long.” She paused and took a deep breath. Then she placed her hands at the open collar of her khaki shirt, slid one hand inside, and tugged. Her wings popped off and lay, shining gold, in the palm of her small hand. She looked down at them for a moment, and then sighed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tombstone snapped. For a moment, as her hand went inside her shirt, he’d been afraid that — no, it wouldn’t have been possible. Tomboy make a pass at him? On the ship? Never.

  “Quitting. You won’t ask me to — you wouldn’t ever ask that of your own backseater. But it’s obvious to me that that’s what you want. I thought I’d save you the embarrassment.” She stepped forward, reached across the desk, and gently placed the wings in front of him. Her hand lingered on them for a moment, as though saying good-bye. Then she stood, straight and proud, and looked him in the eyes.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Admiral. I’m sorry to have disappointed you.” She turned and walked toward the door.

  Shock held Tombstone in place for a few seconds. Tomboy quit? Why would she ever think that’s what he wanted? How could she?

  As she reached for the doorknob, his throat suddenly unfroze. “Commander! Tomboy! Now just hold on one damned minute!” He was out of his chair and around his desk in a split second. He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around to face him. Face to face, her head barely reached his wings. She was looking down, but he saw one tear trace its way down her pale cheek.

  “Sit down, Tomboy,” he said, shoving her gently toward the couch. Her call sign came to his lips automatically. “That’s an order.”

  She resisted for a second. “Please don’t make this any harder than it is, Admiral. You don’t know what it took to come here. I won’t change my mind, no matter what you say.”

  “Just sit down. I’m not asking you to change your mind-” not yet, anyway, he added silently “-I just want to talk to you for a moment.”

  She nodded jerkily and walked around the coffee table to sit perched on the edge of the couch. Her eyes were still locked on the floor.

  Tombstone sighed, berating himself for having let it come to this. Of course she’d thought he wanted her out! How could she not, when he’d avoided getting near her for the last month.

  He lowered himself into the chair at right angles to the couch and leaned back. It was his mess, and it was up to him to straighten it out.

  “I have a problem, Tomboy. Not you, me. Somewhere between the Kola Peninsula and the Spratly Islands, you started to be something to me besides a RIO. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I do know that’s true. When I realized it, I started avoiding you. I didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, I told myself. You couldn’t handle it — at least that’s what I wanted to believe. The truth is that I couldn’t.

  “Do you know I almost called you every day while you were on shore duty and I was at the war college? Every day I thought about you, wondered what you were doing. I didn’t, though. I was afraid that I’d call you and hear you act surprised, or that you’d just treat me like your old pilot. I’m ten years older than you are, Tomboy, so I use that word literally. Or maybe you’d feel uncomfortable with a rear admiral calling you, asking if you’d like to go to a Patriots game some weekend. So I took the easy way out. I was afraid of rejection.”

  “I wish you’d called,” she said softly.

  “Let me finish,” he said abruptly. “In the last month, I’ve been running scared. You’re one of the finest RIOs I’ve ever flown with, male or female. You’re good, so good it almost scares me. I’d rather fly with you than anyone else. But then you and Batman seemed to hit it off, and — and, damn it, you’re assigned to my ship! I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything. Do you understand?”

  Finally, she looked up. Miraculously, the tears had cleared from her eyes. “That’s not what I thought.”

  “I know what you thought, and I should have figured it out before. You can’t quit, Tomboy. I don’t want you to, and the Navy needs you. Those junior women pilots coming up behind you need you, too.”

  “And what about us? Is there an us?” she asked. “Not now, I mean. But this tour won’t last forever, Tombstone. In another year, we’ll both be rotating back to shore duty.”

  “Do you want that, Tomboy?” he asked, suddenly afraid his voice would crack.

  “Yes. Very much so.” Her eyes were shining, and the color had returned to her cheeks. “I can live with where we are now. And a year from now, things will be different.”

  He stared at her, hope growing in his heart. “You mean that?”

  “You’re an idiot, Tombstone, if you can’t see that I do,” she replied tartly. “If I’m allowed to call the Admiral an idiot, that is.”

  “Sometimes the Admiral is,” he answered softly. “And he’d like to do something idiotic right now.”

  “Then I’d better be leaving before I compromise your reputation,” she said, abruptly stan
ding up. She held out her hand. “We have a deal, I believe.”

  He unfolded himself slowly from the chair and took her hand. For a second, the urge to pull her close to him, to feel the lithe body mold itself to his, was almost unbearable. Then he focused on the sharply pressed uniform, the rows of combat medals on her chest, and the empty spot marked with two little holes in the shirt above the ribbons. He released her hand and crossed over to his desk in one step.

  “I believe you’re out of uniform,” he said gravely, and handed her the wings.

  “It’s customary for a senior officer to pin the wings on,” she said, closing her hand over his.

  He slipped one hand inside her shirt, feeling the silky softness of her breast on the back of his fingers. He positioned the wings above her ribbons and pressed the two prongs through the holes already in her blouse. Fumbling under her shirt, he slipped the two retaining clips, commonly known as nipples, over the back of the prongs, firmly attaching her NFO wings to her uniform.

  “There,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I could stand to do that on a cruise. That’s the last time I ever take my hand out of your shirt without getting a hell of a lot more physical. You ever try to quit on me again and I’m going to charge you with sexual harassment.”

  Tomboy laughed. “I won’t quit on you again, Tombstone. Especially not now. Hell, with what I’ve got to look forward to in a year, I don’t want you flying with anyone else!”

  “Then get the hell out of here and let me get some work done,” he snarled in mock ferocity. “And by the way — stop by air ops and see if you can get on the schedule for tomorrow. Among other things, I’m real overdue for five day traps.”

  “And we’ll talk about the night traps later,” she said.

  1400 local (Zulu -7)

  Kawashi Mara

  “What the hell is this all about?” Third Mate Gringes asked the master of the ship, waving the radio message in his hand. “Since when did we start taking on Navy helicopters?”

  “Since they decided one of their people wanted to have a little chitchat with us,” the master replied. “Evidently our complaint about the fly-overs got some attention. And there’s no reason why they couldn’t land here,” he continued, pointing out to the broad, empty expanse of deck. “When we were in the Navy, we had helicopters setting down on a lot smaller deck than that.”

  “Guess I’d better dig out that emergency gear,” Gringes replied. “It’s been a while since I was an LSO.”

  An hour later, following a hasty FOD walk-down, Gringes saw the helicopter appear on the horizon. The SH-60F made two exploratory circles of the deck, getting a look at the area, and got an update on relative wind from the bridge of the massive RO-RO. Finally satisfied, it settled neatly onto the deck.

  One flight-suited crew member hopped out and darted over to the Third Mate.

  “Hi! Commander Busby, USS Jefferson,” the man said, offering his hand. “I gather you were expecting us.”

  Gringes stifled the reflex to salute. “Yes, sir, we sure were. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you up to the master — uh, captain.”

  “Any chance you could ask him to meet us in your radio room?” the Navy officer said. “It’ll save some time, and things are getting a little urgent out here.”

  “Don’t we know it! We’re cranked up to max speed to get away from you people. Guess it didn’t do much good, since you were able to hunt us down so quickly. What’s all this about, anyway? The Navy want to give us a permanent helo detachment?” Gringes asked, his curiosity rising to unbearable levels.

  “I’ll brief you in with your master, if he says it’s okay. And, no, we’re not staying. In fact, I’ve got to get back to the carrier as soon as possible. We’re just coming over to ask a little favor, that’s all.”

  “I guess we could try to pretend we’re a decoy carrier,” Gringes said over his shoulder as the officer followed him into the skin of the ship. “Don’t know that our owners would like that much, though.”

  “Nothing as serious as that. We just want you to send a message out for us.”

  “A message? With all the communications gear you’ve got over there, you want us to send a message?”

  They paused on a landing between flights of stairs, and Gringes thought he saw a flash of amusement in the other man’s face.

  “Let’s just say that the source of this particular message is important,” the officer said finally.

  “What kind of message?”

  A smile lit Commander Busby’s face. “A weather report.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Saturday, 6 July

  1400 local (Zulu +5)

  United Nations

  The ambassador’s stomach churned uneasily. Even with the president’s words of confidence still ringing in her ears, the thought of the next few hours filled her with an ineluctable dread. She paused for a moment, and the flock of staffers and assistants behind her almost ran her over. She heard a few angry whispers, the almost imperceptible thud of elbows on ribs.

  None, save her Chief of Staff, had any inkling of what was about to happen. There were no position papers, no carefully thought out amendments or resolutions. Just her own instincts, honed in years of political maneuvering and international intrigue, to get her — and the nation — through this crisis without irrevocable harm to America’s interests.

  She sighed and started forward again. This, as the president had said, was why they paid her the big bucks.

  “The ambassador from the United States.” The chairman of the Security Council recognized her. She ignored the puzzled flurry of comments from her own staff behind her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The United States appreciates your courtesy in allowing us to proceed with our message of support for our valued allies in China.”

  T’ing looked up sharply. His features quickly smoothed themselves back into inscrutability. He started to speak, then thought better of it.

  “Support?” the chairman said doubtfully.

  “Yes, of course. By now each member has probably received reports from their own sources,”—read “spies” here, my esteemed colleagues, she thought, allowing a faint smile to reach her lips—”and are no doubt preparing their own statements. However, we wished to be the first.”

  She glanced around the room. Only years of experience allowed her to read the turmoil bubbling within the other delegations. Not an ambassador flinched, nor were there any guarded whispers to their respective staffs. Instead, each one adopted the same expression as T’ing wore on his face, an air of calm knowingness.

  She wiped the smile off her face. Be damned hard for them to know anything about it — since it never happened.

  “I’m advised by our military staff that at 0600, during joint operations off the coast of Brunei, the People’s Republic of China suffered a tragic accident. While all peace-loving nations of the world understand that such incidents are an unavoidable part of the price of freedom, we nonetheless extend our deepest sympathies to the families of those injured and killed during the incident. The ambassador from China, no doubt not wishing to slow down the work of this important body, will not mention the incident. But I feel compelled to publicly recognize the bravery of the military forces involved.”

  She glanced at the faces again. Still no reaction.

  “This morning in the South China Sea, operational forces from Vietnam and China were performing joint maneuvers off the coast of Vietnam. According to the Master of the Kawashi Maru, a commercial vessel in the area,” she continued, holding up a message, “winds and seas reached typhoon strength in a matter of hours, completely without warning. Fifty aircraft engaged in training exercises were lost. The United States carrier group on hand in international waters attempted to offer aid in locating the downed airmen and the sailors from the ship. Working together with our allies, a few men were recovered. As soon as practical, they will be repatriated to their respective homelands. In the meantime, the United States regrets th
at a tragedy of this proportion could occur, and offers its condolences to the families of the men involved.”

  T’ing cleared his throat and looked down, as though overcome by emotion. A staffer reached around from behind him, placing a piece of paper before him. T’ing slapped the hand away, glanced at the paper, and then shoved it aside.

  “Does the ambassador from China wish to respond?” the chairman asked uncertainly.

  She intercepted a keen look of distrust and anger from T’ing, a millisecond-long flash of belligerence. It was gone as quickly as it had come. Then T’ing stood.

  “On behalf of my government, we thank the ambassador for her condolences. The events of this morning …” T’ing stopped, feigning momentary emotion, and thought furiously. If he disputed the ambassador’s version of that morning, it would inevitably follow that word of China’s defeat would be circulated immediately. It was intolerable — the loss of face in front of the Pacific Rim tiger nations would set China’s plan for regional leadership back generations. On the other hand, her proffered explanation would buy China time, time to rebuild and rearm, time to further insinuate itself into the countries bordering the South China Sea.

  He glanced at Vietnam and saw Ngyugen’s almost imperceptible shrug. Whatever China decided, the Vietnamese ambassador would support. Brunei didn’t even matter, and Malaysia had no proof. In that instant, pitted one-on-one against the American devil, he decided.

  “… are indeed a tragedy,” he continued. “We thank the United States for her assistance and look forward to the immediate return of our airmen and seamen.”

  The ambassador from the United States rose again. “Those events only point out the ever more pressing need for a regional plan for the South China Sea. We must be prepared to move swiftly, to act in concert, to prevent further loss of life in future storms.”

  T’ing gritted his teeth and nodded. It would do no harm to agree now. Sun Tzu would have understood using the tactical advantage of peace to buy time to prepare for the next conflict.