Sea of Crises

by Marty Steere

  Though he wasn’t a man normally given to despair, there were limits to everything, and Cartwright had experienced his fair share of struggles with the demons. Before his most recent bout of questioning, the worst had come shortly after they’d found themselves deposited here, abandoned in the middle of nowhere like so much detritus. When it had become apparent that their circumstance wasn’t temporary, all three of them had battled serious depression.

  Ironically, it had been Kruchinkin who’d rallied them. The young man - Cartwright smiled inwardly at that - though still weak and recovering from his gunshot wound, had pointed out that, even if escape from their predicament did not seem imminent, eventually an opportunity would present itself, and they would feel foolish if they weren’t prepared to seize it. Of course, that had been a long time ago. A very long time.

  Still, it had helped keep them from just giving in. They’d adopted a regular exercise routine and adhered to it religiously. The food that came in the aerial drops was fairly bland, but it was reasonably nutritious. In the early days, Dayton had rigged a net, crude compared to the one they now used, but still effective enough to enable them to catch fish from the schools that teemed in the water surrounding them. To his own surprise, Cartwright had discovered a hidden talent for cooking, and he had become quite adept at devising recipes combining elements of the food provided them by their captors with the different varieties of fish they managed to catch.

  As a result, the men were fit, more so, Cartwright guessed, than most men their age. More importantly, and against the odds, they had managed to avoid serious illness and injury. The lone exception had occurred three years earlier, when Dayton had come down with some kind of malady that they couldn’t identify. They had plied him with the few antibiotics on hand and had experienced a fretful two weeks before the man’s fever broke.

  Naturally, they’d spent quite a bit of time trying to devise a scheme to escape their captivity. At the outset, they’d begun collecting the bags in which their water came with the intent of fashioning a raft. To their dismay, however, they discovered that the material was biodegradable, and it broke down after a few months, quicker if exposed to salt water. Other than those containers, they had no access to anything that would float. With the exception of a few hardy lichens that clung to the leeward side of the island, there was no vegetation on the Rock. And, though they kept their eyes out for flotsam, they’d never spotted anything of value. They didn’t even have a beach on which it could wash up.

  They’d tried signals to the men who flew the resupply missions. “Help us,” they’d spelled out with parachute canvas on the small Parade Ground. If the aircrew had noticed, however, they’d not responded. After a while, they’d given that up.

  At the top of the path, Cartwright deposited the water bags near the entrance to the bunker. He took a deep breath, turned, and started back down. Dayton, he saw, had stopped halfway up and set the bundle of food he was carrying in the mesh container on the ground beside him. He had his head cocked slightly.

  “What is it?” Cartwright asked.

  “Do you hear that?”

  Cartwright gave him a look.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dayton said. Then he raised a finger and turned to the northeast.

  After a few seconds, Cartwright detected a new sound. The resupply plane coming back around, perhaps?

  Kruchinkin reached them and set down his load. “What is that?”

  Cartwright was just beginning to shake his head when two aircraft suddenly materialized, as if from nowhere, and screamed over the Rock, accompanied by a huge clap of sound that shook the ground beneath them. It took Cartwright a second to realize that the clap was a pair of sonic booms.

  “Jesus,” Dayton exclaimed. “What the hell was that?”

  In the instant he’d had to observe, Cartwright had seen that they were twin engine jets, with U.S. Air Force markings. But he’d never seen this type of aircraft before. From below, the fuselage and wings on each seemed to have almost a diamond shape.

  “Wow,” was all he could say.

  Though Cartwright could no longer hear the things, apparently Dayton could, as he moved his head, obviously following them. From where Dayton was looking, Cartwright guessed they might be circling back. His heart began beating faster.

  “You think they saw us?” Kruchinkin asked.

  “Maybe,” Dayton said.

  Excitement flashed through Cartwright. “Back to the Parade Ground. Sasha, you light the signal fire. Steve, you and I work the flag.”

  The men scrambled down the path. At the bottom, Kruchinkin turned left and headed for the edge of the clearing, where a mound of material lay beneath a line they’d strung between two rock outcroppings. They’d draped over it a parachute canvas tarp in pup tent fashion. Cartwright prayed that the tinder was still dry after all the rain they’d had recently. He and Dayton made for the spot where they kept the flag anchored by four large rocks. They kicked the rocks aside, bent down and each grabbed two corners.

  The flag was composed of several pieces of parachute cloth that they’d sewn together using needles fashioned from the tines of dinner forks. It was about four feet by eight feet, and they had used dye extracted from octopi they’d netted to spell out “SOS” in large letters on the thing.

  Cartwright and Dayton took up positions in the center of the Parade Ground, holding the flag between them. Cartwright looked anxiously back to the spot where Kruchinkin had pulled aside the tarp and was hunched over the signal fire, working the two rocks they used to generate sparks. He returned his attention to Dayton, who had his head up, moving it side to side.

  “Where are they?” Cartwright asked.

  Dayton squinted his eyes. “I think they split up. Maybe,” he hesitated, then nodded in the direction over Cartwright’s shoulder, “there.” They rotated quickly, aligning the flag and holding it up to face in the indicated direction. Cartwright looked back again and saw that Kruchinkin had gotten the fire to light. A small wisp of smoke began to rise from the bottom of the pile as the cardboard caught. When it was hot enough, it would light the strips of parachute cloth, and that, in turn, would begin melting the plastic webbing material, giving off a putrid, but nevertheless visible line of smoke.

  Kruchinkin rose and joined them in the middle of the clearing, holding the tarp, ready to wave it.

  “Here it comes,” announced Dayton.

  Cartwright looked in the same direction, and he could, again, hear the whine of the jet engines. This time a single aircraft came streaking over them at a much higher altitude.

  They knew they couldn’t be heard, but each of the men instinctively called out. Cartwright and Dayton shook the sides of the flag in large motions, hoping to draw the attention of the pilot. Next to them, Kruchinkin jumped up and down, frantically waving the parachute cloth.

  A tremendous explosion shook the Rock and a huge geyser of water appeared along the north face of the island, rising a good hundred feet above them. The concussion threw each of the men to the ground, and Cartwright lay still for a moment, stunned, as sea water crashed down around him. He glanced over at Dayton, who returned his look with a shocked one of his own.

  “Holy shit,” Dayton managed after a second.

  “They’re dropping bombs,” Cartwright exclaimed. He looked at Kruchinkin who had pulled himself up onto his hands and knees and had a bewildered expression on his face.

  Cartwright’s instincts took hold. “To the bunker,” he yelled, pushing himself up and grabbing Kruchinkin’s arm to help him.

  The three of them began running toward the path. Before they’d reached it, Cartwright heard Dayton call out from behind. His blood went cold.

  “Oh, shit,” Dayton blurted, “here they come again.”

  17

  Lieutenant Colonel Willis “Bud” Budnarsky banked his F-22 Raptor slightly as he approached the small island. Then, having seen what he needed, he leveled his wings and raised his nose. He eased forward on the throttles, and
the two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 jet engines rocketed him skyward as he scanned the heads up display in front of him, looking for threats. There were none.

  “I concur,” he announced. To himself, he asked, What the hell?

  Seconds before, his wingman, Lieutenant Scott Timmons, had made what Budnarsky had thought at the moment was a preposterous statement: “There are people down there.” It had come shortly after Timmons had pulled away from his targeting run, his bomb falling short of the tiny rock, an extraordinarily uncharacteristic miss, both for the weapons system and Timmons. Now Budnarsky understood why.

  The two pilots were on a live-fire training mission out of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. Three days before, they’d received orders to target this tiny chunk of land and essentially blow it out of the water, a simple proposition for the 1,000 pound bombs he and Timmons carried in their respective weapons bays. In fact, though each had two of the devices, a strike by just one would be enough to pulverize the little rock.

  Their bombs were fitted with the Joint Direct Attack Munition, a guidance kit converting “dumb bombs,” into all-weather “smart” munitions capable of being guided to their targets. As a result, their assignment could easily have been carried out from high altitude. For that matter, it could have been done at any time over the prior three days, notwithstanding the terrible weather that had been pounding this part of the Pacific Ocean. Budnarsky, however, had decided to turn this into a close attack exercise and give Timmons, one of his younger pilots, an opportunity to practice precise delivery of the weapon. He’d held off until this morning, wanting to conduct the practice in clear weather and observe Timmons.

  The plan had been to guide the pickle into the north face of the rock. Timmons, however, had, at the last moment, re-directed the bomb away from the tiny island when he’d seen the figures below. Whoever the people down there were, they owed their survival to the keen eyesight and quick reactions of the junior officer.

  But, it begged the question: Who the hell were they? And who in the world would be inhabiting a rock out here in the middle of nowhere?

  They were at the outer edge, but still within, an area known informally as the Pacific Range, a desolate patch of ocean northwest of Hawaii in which the U.S. military from time to time conducted training exercises using live munitions. Though the vast majority of the Range was technically within international waters, and, therefore, foreign nationals couldn’t be excluded from sailing or flying through it, there was no particular reason why anyone would want to, and most nautical charts and aviation maps clearly delineated the area as one to be avoided.

  The figures he’d seen a moment before - there looked to be three of them - must have arrived by boat, though he’d seen no sign of a vessel. They were playing a dangerous game. If Timmons hadn’t reacted as quickly as he had, or if Budnarsky had elected, as originally proposed, to have the bomb launched from altitude, those people would be dead now, and no one would be the wiser.

  “Tangier Leader to Top Hat,” Budnarsky called, “we are on station at the primary target.”

  “Roger Tangier Leader,” came the reply from the combat air control center. “Has the target been destroyed?”

  “That’s a negative,” Budnarsky replied. “There are unknown persons occupying the target.”

  “Stand by.”

  There was a minute of silence from the other end, and Budnarsky assumed his report was being routed up the chain of command. Finally, the controller came back on.

  “Orders are to destroy the target.”

  That surprised Budnarsky. Something had to have been lost in the translation.

  “I repeat,” Budnarsky said, “there are people down there.”

  “That is understood. The orders are to destroy the target. No exceptions. Colonel, these orders are flagged Juliet Charlie. And that’s ‘Actual.’”

  Jesus, thought Budnarsky. These orders came directly from the Joint Chiefs of Staff? He’d never heard of such a thing.

  Off to his right, Timmons eased his Raptor into formation. They were at 10,000 feet, flying a wide circuit around the tiny islet. Budnarsky checked his radar display. No contacts. Old instincts being what they were, however, he glanced around. They were alone in this remote patch of the sky. He took slow, deep breaths.

  Budnarsky had never disobeyed an order. Never considered disobeying an order.

  “What are we going to do, skipper?” Timmons asked.

  Budnarsky didn’t answer right away. He absently tapped a gloved finger on the side-stick controller. His eyes flicked across the cockpit display, noting their fuel status. All systems were functioning properly.

  He was, he knew, stalling. Finally, he made a decision.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do,” he said firmly. “We’re not going to drop our bombs on that rock. My gut tells me there’s something wrong with that order.”

  A new voice sounded in his earphones.

  “Your instincts have always been good, Bud.”

  Startled, Budnarsky demanded, “Who’s this on my frequency?”

  The voice came back immediately. “This is General Bryce McConnell, and I’ll bet that bucket of bolts you’re sitting in right now is called the King of Clubs. And, for the record, I’m still not buying that inside draw.”

  The words came as a surprise. And, despite the tense circumstances, Budnarsky had to laugh out loud. After a moment, he said, “Still can’t get over that, huh, General?”

  “Nope,” came McConnell’s reply, “never will.”

  As a young second lieutenant, fresh out of advanced fighter school, Budnarsky had been roped into a game of five card draw late one night with several of the senior officers in his squadron. Playing conservatively, mainly because he couldn’t afford to lose the kind of money being thrown around by the other pilots, he’d managed to pretty much break even throughout the evening. Then, on the last hand, something extraordinary happened.

  He was dealt the ten, jack, queen and ace of clubs, along with the three of hearts. The initial round of bets hadn’t been too bad, and Budnarsky had decided, what the hell, he’d stay in and see if he could catch lighting in a bottle. Putting the three face down on the table, he’d called for a single card, which drew hoots from the other players. He was hoping, of course, to fill the straight or complete the flush, but he was ready to settle for a decent pair.

  What he got was the king of clubs, giving him a royal flush. An unbeatable hand.

  One of the other players, his squadron commander, then-Lieutenant Colonel Bryce McConnell, had the misfortune of being dealt three sevens and then drawing the fourth. It gave the colonel a hand that wasn’t as good as Budnarsky’s, but one that had to have seemed unbeatable to the senior officer.

  McConnell and Budnarsky raised each other so many times Budnarsky lost count. At first convinced the junior pilot was trying to bluff him, it took the squadron commander far too long to finally realize his opponent had to have a pretty damn good hand. By the time he called, the pot had swelled to an amount in excess of two months’ pay for the young lieutenant. When McConnell learned that Budnarsky had won by filling the royal flush with an inside draw, he was beside himself.

  Ever since, Budnarsky had christened each of the planes he’d been assigned to fly the “King of Clubs.” That included the stealth fighter he was flying today. And, whenever he’d encountered his former squadron commander, now the highest ranking officer in the Air Force, Budnarsky had taken good-natured grief. Happily.

  “If it’s any consolation, General,” said Budnarsky, “my wife still wears the ring I bought with your money.”

  McConnell laughed. “In that case, I feel better.”

  “General,” Budnarsky said after a moment, “what do you know about this order?”

  “I just learned about it myself,” McConnell said, “monitoring your transmissions. I think I know how it was generated, though. We’ve recently dealt with an issue I can’t go into here. This was obviously s
omething that got out before we corrected the situation. You were right to question the order. And I’m hereby countermanding it.”

  As Budnarsky took a relieved breath, he noticed that, on his cockpit readout, a blip had appeared to the east. It was unidentified, but coded friendly. “Sir, don’t tell me that’s you in the slow moving aircraft at the far east edge of my radar.”

  “Well,” McConnell replied, “I’m not sure I like the ‘slow moving’ part, but, yep, that’s me.”

  “What are you flying today, General?”

  “I’m not in the driver’s seat, Bud. I’m catching a ride out of Pearl in a Sea Stallion.”

  Budnarsky whistled softly to himself. The unidentified blip to his east was a Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter. It had a range of about 540 nautical miles. “Sir, you’re a long way from nowhere out here. What’s your fuel situation?”

  “We just topped off.”

  Budnarsky whistled again. They’d done at least one mid-air refueling. Of course that would be the only way for a land-based helicopter to be this far out. But this wasn’t just any helicopter. It happened to contain the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Something extraordinary was going on.

  “If I may ask, sir,” Budnarsky said, “where are you headed?”

  “We are inbound your position,” McConnell replied. “ETA fifteen minutes.”

  “Why in the world would you be coming out here?”

  McConnell’s answer was surprising.

  “We’re coming to collect the men on that rock.”

  #

  “Can you see them?” Cartwright asked.

  He and Kruchinkin were hunched down just inside the entry to the bunker. Dayton stood outside, head up, eyes and ears alert. Cartwright felt a little foolish hiding in the enclosure, but there was no way he’d be able to hear either aircraft before it was on them. They’d decided Dayton would perform the reconnaissance just outside, ready to dive in if the planes returned.