“What’s going on?” she asked, even as the air crewman pressed her back in her chair and double-checked and tightened the seat harness. “What’s happening?”
“Seems we got a little company out here,” the pilot’s voice came back, calm and casual. “Nothing to worry about yet. Listen to Peacock — he’s going to review ditching procedures with few. You’ve been on a helicopter before, haven’t you, Miss Drake?”
“Ditching procedures?” She repeated his words in a stunned tone of voice. “Who is this company you’re talking about?”
There was a long pause, then the pilot said, “There are three groups of fighters inbound on our location. From the IFF and link picture, they’re Greek, Macedonian, and American. Right now, I suspect they’re more interested in each other than they are in us. But when elephants dance, helicopters get out of the way.”
Peacock knelt down before her and began reviewing ditching procedures. “Find a handhold, know where it is in relationship to the nearest exit.” He pointed to the hatch at the side. “That will be yours. Stay in your seat until all motion ceases. We may sink quickly, but just because there’s water in the cabin, don’t try to leave it. You have to stay until the water slows the rotor blades down or they’ll cut you to pieces as you leave. Got that?” Pamela nodded, remembering previous helicopter safety briefs.
“Once all motion ceases,” Peacock continued, “unstrap yourself and pull yourself toward the exit. We may turtle — flip upside down. We usually do. Don’t let that disorient you. Keep one hand holding on to something at all times.” He held up the small air canister with a face mask attached. “I will be right here in case you get in trouble. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.” He flashed her a cocky grin. “Haven’t lost a passenger yet.”
“Do you have comms with the carrier?” Pamela asked.
Peacock nodded. “Yes, this close we should be fine. But we’ll be there in—”
“This can’t wait.” She pointed at the man lying motionless on the helicopter deck. “There’s something they have to know immediately.”
USS Jefferson
TFCC
1128 local (GMT –2)
Batman stared at the small symbols converging on each other just off the coast. “I don’t like this, not one little bit. Tell that helicopter to get the hell out of the way. Where are his fighters, anyway?”
“They were running out of fuel, Admiral,” the TAO said. “Should be finished with the tanker in just a moment. Bad news on the helo, too. He’s got a hydraulics leak. Can’t tell how bad yet. He’s still got all controls, but pressure to the system is slowly dropping.”
Batman stood and began pacing in the small compartment. “Why the hell are the Macedonians doing this, anyway? It’s not like they have a chance.” He pointed at the screen. “Are they completely insane? Between the Greeks and our own forces, they’re so badly outnumbered that there’s not a chance in hell that—”
“Home plate, Angel 103,” a voice came over tactical.
Batman brushed aside the TAO and picked up the microphone. “I’ll tell him myself.” He keyed the mike. “This is Admiral Wayne. You need to be at wave top getting the hell out of there because—”
“Admiral, with all due respect, sir, this can’t wait. There’s something you need to know immediately.” The pilot’s voice was calm and unbothered by the fact that he had just interrupted the admiral in command of the battle group. There was a strange rustle over the speaker, then the pilot’s voice, sounding distant now, said “Go ahead, Miss Drake.”
Every face in TFCC turned up to stare at the speaker. Batman’s jaw dropped, and he felt the blood rush to his face. Just as he started to speak, Pamela cut him off.
“Admiral Wayne, we found the sniper who was taking shots at your Tomcats. Both of us recognize him. He’s on Admiral Arkady’s staff.”
“What sort of nonsense is this?” Batman snapped. “He’s not Greek — he’s Macedonian. I realize that they may all look alike to you, Miss Drake, but mistaking our allies for the enemy is understandable under the circumstances.”
“Give me that,” a new voice said in the background. Another rustling noise, then a new voice on tactical. “Admiral, this is Captain Buddy Murphy, Marine Corps. Drake is right. I recognize him. The Greeks are shooting at our aircraft, Admiral. They’re probably the ones who shot me down as well.” There was no mistaking the anger in the Hornet pilot’s voice.
“Greek?” Batman turned to air at the tactical display. The three waves of aircraft were now only fifty miles apart. His mind raced furiously. With aircraft spoiling for a fight and wings loaded with weapons closing in on one another, there remained one critical, all important question left unanswered: Just who the hell were the bad guys?
SEVENTEEN
Thursday, 11 May
Angel 103
Forty miles west of USS Jefferson
1129 local (GMT –2)
“Divert? No way, Jefferson. We’re inbound with casualties.” The SAR pilot’s voice was firm. “We’ll take a vector around the big boys, but—”
“Not an option,” Jefferson’s TAO replied. “Air’s clobbered with fighters for a hundred miles in every direction. You don’t have enough fuel.”
“I don’t have enough airfield, is what I don’t have,” the SAR pilot muttered, but Pamela could tell from the sound of his voice that he wasn’t transmitting. There was silence for a moment, then the circuit crackled back to life. “Roger, so do we have a bingo field?”
“We did. Until they started shooting at us.”
“Peachy. Just fucking peachy.”
“Can it, Angel 103,” a new voice said over tactical, one that Pamela recognized immediately. “It’s not like you’ve never landed anywhere except a carrier. Find a quiet spot, hole up for a while, and we’ll get you back onboard as soon as we can.”
“Roger, sir.” The surliness was gone from the helicopter’s voice. “Wilco.”
“Fine. Advise us of your LZ coordinates. Guard this circuit — you’ll know soon enough when we’ll want you airborne again. And stand by for additional tasking. I may want you to disembark your current stick and be available for SAR in the area.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral. We’ll guard this circuit and military air distress.”
“Roger. Out.”
Silence on the circuit again. Finally, the pilot said over ICS, “Everybody copy that?” A chorus of yes answers followed. “Good. I’ve got a local map, but I need some intell. Any input would be welcome, especially from you locals. And you, Miss Drake. Not that you’d need any encouragement.”
“Now that you mention it,” Pamela said, “I know where we could go. Refuel, too.”
“Fuel is good. You’re talking about the Macedonians, I take it?”
Pamela nodded, then realized he couldn’t see the gesture. Listening too long on the circuit had given her the feeling of being inside the middle of the battle, as though she were sitting right between the pilot and the copilot. “Yes. They’ll be monitoring military air distress, right?”
“Should be. They’ve got assets airborne, they’re going to be listening.”
“So we call them on MAD, make the arrangements.”
“You think they’ll go for it? Might be that the last they heard, the Americans were shooting at them.”
“I’m not going back to that camp,” Murphy said. “No way. I went to enough trouble just getting out of it.”
Pamela turned to him. “That was then, this is now. It’s the only place we can land, refuel, and be available for other SAR missions.”
“I say again for possible penetration,” Murphy said sarcastically. “You do realize that we’re talking about the same people that had me trussed up like a pig a few hours back?”
“Get it through your thick Marine head,” she snapped, losing all patience with him. “They’re not the enemy. You got it?”
Murphy nodded. “Oh, I’ve got it. I’m just wondering if they do.”
USS Jeff
erson
1132 local (GMT –2)
“You’re going where?” Batman roared. “I told you to hole up somewhere, not defect.”
“Sir, what Miss Drake says makes sense,” the helo pilot answered. “We owe the Greeks bad for what they’ve done. And if the Macedonians aren’t our allies, at least they’re the next best thing — the enemy of an enemy.”
“So you’re assuming the enemy of an enemy is a friend,” Batman answered.
“Beats the alternative. I’m losing hydraulic pressure every minute, sir. If I set this bird down somewhere, there’s every chance I can’t get her back up. Then you’ve got a SAR mission on a SAR crew and pax, and I have to tell you, I’d feel pretty foolish about that.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“It would for me.”
“That’s it,” Pamela said over ICS only, “keep him talking. He’ll calm down. Tell him I’ll blast his name over every hourly broadcast if he doesn’t.”
“Thank you, Miss Drake. Appreciate the advice, but I believe I can probably deal with Admiral Wayne on my own terms,” the pilot said.
“Fine.” Pamela slumped down against the hard cushion of the pax seat. Just like the military — you offer your help and they shit on you. After all she’d tried to do for them… after Tombstone… after…
They don’t have a lot of reason to trust you, do they? One small part of her mind interjected. Cuba, the Black Sea, Vietnam… there’ve been enough times.
That was then, she argued, infuriated. Bad enough that she had to deal with the military without having to confront her own transgressions once again.
Batman knows you.
He knows who I used to be. Back before… before I understood.
Ah, a reformed woman. Changed your ways, have you?
They didn’t need changing. I’ve always been on their side.
And were you before?
Not always, she admitted reluctantly. At least, although she’d always thought of herself as a patriotic American, perhaps a jaded, cynical — call it realistic — one, but an American nonetheless.
But on the ground, watching the reality of combat, challenged by Xerxes to reexamine her own choices and beliefs, she’d come to a new understanding of what it meant to be an American.
And what we’re required to do because of who we are. Tombstone’s starting to make more sense to you than he ever did before, isn’t he?
In that second, she understood what she’d never fully grasped before. No matter that she could recite the intricacies of foreign conflicts and the history that predated them, pronounce the names of every foreign leader and his coterie, identify the most obscure geographic regions on a map — she’d been ignorant. Even after years as a war correspondent, even after all the awards, the hoopla, the public recognition, she’d never really crawled inside the military mind. Known what it was to go out on a mission with the probability that you’d never return. Known what it was to plan those missions, knowing you were condemning the crews and ground forces almost as surely as if you’d put a gun to their heads yourself. But you sent them out anyway and learned to live with the results. Because not so long before, your superiors had faced the same hard choices, made the same agonizing decision. And in a way, executing the mission was sometimes easier than ordering others to.
“Yes, Admiral,” the pilot said, and Pamela realized she hadn’t been paying attention. “We’ll try it right now. Out. Miss Drake, were you listening?”
“Not closely — could you fill me in?” Pamela heard a new trace of humility in her voice, one she wasn’t entirely sure that she liked.
“Sure thing. Admiral wants me to try to put you in contact with the Macedonians. Tell them he’s going to come up on a frequency — hold on, I’ll write it down for you — and wants to talk. Tell them that the U.S. is withdrawing its forces from support of any Greek aggression, and that we’re standing by to enforce the no-fly zone. Against both sides. We’re going to want some time to clear this whole thing with Washington. Basically, it’s stop the problem, stop the clock. Just like in a trainer. You got that?”
“I got it. Tell me when we go to live feed. That is, when the circuit’s on. Whatever you call it.”
She heard a quiet chuckle over the ICS. “Roger. Standby—now.”
Pamela took a deep breath, and started perhaps the most important broadcast of her life with the words she’d used on so many other occasions. “Good afternoon. This is Pamela Drake, ACN correspondent, speaking to you live from…”
USS Jefferson
1133 local (GMT –2)
Batman listened to Pamela’s words echoing on the speaker. His eyes sought out Lab Rat, who was leaning against the far bulkhead with his eyes shut. Anyone who didn’t know him might have thought that he wasn’t paying attention, but Batman knew what he was doing. Lab Rat was filtering out all the distractions, focusing the entire power of his intellect on the words coming over the speaker. It was this capability for concentration, this ability to bring single-minded intensity to bear on a particular problem that made him so valuable as an intelligence officer.
And would have been deadly in an aircraft, Batman thought. As powerful as Lab Rat was as an intelligence officer, he thought that the other man might have lacked the ability to maintain his scan, to avoid being fixated on any one aspect of the problem while maintaining the overall picture and executing the mission. In the air, too much concentration was almost as deadly as too little.
But as an intelligence officer, Lab Rat was in his natural element. Deception, obfuscation, the fog of war — he sliced through them as easily as Batman could peel out of a formation and do a barrel roll. And now, he was worrying at the problem of shifting alliances, listening to Pamela’s words to detect any false notes — for if truth be known, Batman was not entirely sure he was doing the right thing, taking her up on her offer to contact the Macedonians.
But what choices did he have? With the SAR helo leaking hydraulic fluid and the shifting alliances being sorted out in the air, Batman was out of options.
Finally, Pamela finished her broadcast. There was a moment of silence, then, clearly prompted by the military men in the helicopter, she added, “Over.”
More silence. Lab Rat was motionless, his chest barely moving as he took shallow breaths. Outside the compartment, someone laughed, the noise oddly alien as it seeped into the secured compartment. Inside TFCC, no one moved.
Macedonian camp
1133 local (GMT –2)
Xerxes stared up at the speaker, a puzzled expression on his face. He turned to the radio operator. “Where is the signal coming from?”
The radio operator leaned across the room and tapped on the blip on the radar screen. “I am not certain, sir, but it appears to be correlated with this airborne contact. The American helicopter.”
“SAR, they say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm.” Xerxes felt the tension begin to drain out of his face. Was it possible she was telling the truth? And just how far did he dare to trust her? “What are the American fighters doing now?”
“They’re flying CAP stations, sir. In between us and the Greeks. Nice, tight orbits, unless one of the Greeks tries to break through. They’ve used their guns a couple of times, mostly as a warning it looks like. No missiles in the air yet.”
Xerxes picked up the microphone. “Miss Drake. This is not an encrypted circuit, so I’m not going to pass any sensitive information over it. Do you remember where I took you the first time?”
“Yes.”
“Could you find it again? From the air, I mean — things often look different when you’re airborne instead of on the ground.”
“I’m pretty sure I can.”
“Good. Land your aircraft there. I can’t have you flying directly into the camp, not just yet. They’ll track you by your transponder. Have you told them where it is?”
“No, I haven’t. Not yet.”
“Don’t. Go to — that place
— and I’ll have aircraft technicians and someone from my staff meet you.”
Silence for a moment, then, “If I can, I won’t tell them. Unless it endangers the safety of this crew or any American forces.”
Xerxes heard new steel in her voice, and in a flash, he knew what it meant. She’s chosen sides. Finally. Now maybe she can understand.
USS Jefferson
1135 local (GMT –2)
Lab Rat opened his eyes. The pale blue irises shone in the dim light. He looked across the room and into Batman’s eyes. The intelligence officer nodded once, then appeared to break the spell that had held him motionless for the last fifteen minutes.
“You think it’s legit?” Batman asked, already knowing what Lab Rat would say but having to ask the question anyway.
“Yes, Admiral, I do. I suggest we get that helo vectored in ASAP. They’re going to need some time for that hydraulics line. There’s no telling when we may need her back in the air.” A flurry of increasingly frantic calls over tactical provided an unintentional emphasis to his words.
Batman grimaced. “Okay.” He turned to the TAO. “Send her in.”
“One other thing, Admiral,” Lab Rat continued. “The Macedonians — we may not be able to choose up sides in this fight just yet.” He paused for a moment, and Batman understood what he was asking.
“I’m going to enforce status quo for now. Nobody dies, not if I can help it. No Greeks, no Macedonians, and most of all, none of our people. And if that means shooting down Greek aircraft while we’re waiting for word from Washington, I’ll do it.”
Lab Rat nodded, an almost cursory motion as though he’d already known what his admiral would decide.
And of course, Batman thought, he did.
EIGHTEEN
Enemies c-15 Page 21