Payback

men were tight in their H-harness, their heads cushioned in the dense “memory foam” cranial cushions, with a broad foam head strap immobilizing each commando for the series of body-slamming hits that ensued as they raced at 50 mph through a confused chop made up of residual Force 9 surge and vicious crosscurrents. Maximum speed in this witches’ brew would have caused multiple contusions and even fractures, had they not been restrained. Even so, the general had a headache, brought on not by the severe juddering caused by the RS’s high speed but rather a question that was gnawing away at him after the nearly disastrous depth charging, namely, had somebody alerted the PLA navy about the Galaxy and its palletized cargo? Even if they didn’t know exactly what that cargo was?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“We have the RS-XP on radar,” announced Blue Tile’s OOD.

“I see it,” said John Cuso, the white blip on Big Blue pulsating along a line over a hundred clicks east- northeast of Kosong.

“Man,” said one of the junior EWOs, his eyes fixed on the RS, “that thing’s doin’ fifty or I’m a duck.”

“You’re a duck,” said the OOD on the main console. “Data block says he’s clipping near sixty miles an hour.”

“Oh, that’s what I meant, sir. Fifty knots.”

“Yeah, right!”

The ripple of laughter that ran through the Signals Exploitation Space bespoke high morale, but captain of the boat and admiral of the carrier battle group Crowley didn’t join in. He was doing morning rounds and as usual there was much on his mind. He was purportedly in the short list of admirals for the next CNO, the United States Chief of Naval Operations worldwide, one of the most powerful offices and officers in Washington, and rumor had it that he and Admiral Jensen, COMSUBPAC-GRU 9 (Commander Submarine Pacific — Group 9) at Bangor, Washington State, were in a dead heat with COMSUB Atlantic. It was a matter of honor among carrier proponents that Crowley win out against the “pig-boat duo,” the latter’s derogatory name derived not from the reputed pig-style conditions of life aboard the old water-rationed, nonnuclear subs, where the only two men allowed to shower daily were the cook and the prop’s oiler. In fact, the term “pig boat,” as Freeman knew, originated from the scenes of the relatively small subs all gathered about a tanker and/or replenishment vessel like so many piglets around a sow.

“Old man has a few more wrinkles this morning,” Air Boss Ray Lynch quipped to John Cuso.

XOs made it a career-saving habit to be noncommittal about their bosses, and so the tall, slim officer said nothing.

“Well,” continued Ray Lynch, “he should be smiling. Scuttlebutt is that they found COMSUB Atlantic in flagrante delicto with a SIG skirt.” He meant a female signals officer.

“Really?” said Cuso disinterestedly.

“Yeah,” said Ray Lynch, not so tired from launching another Combat Air Patrol that he wasn’t up to more idle chitchat. Despite his general fatigue, his demeanor changed into a rather good imitation of a Brit naval officer of the kind he’d had to cooperate with during joint NATO fleet exercises: “No, not good at all, old boy. Waylaying young damsels on the high seas. My spies tell me his executive officer did knock before barging into COMSUB Atlantic’s stateroom with a ‘Most Urgent’ form—” Ray Lynch affected a slight mental lapse, finger on lips, brow furrowed. “—from the base at Bangor, Maine, but alas, said admiral was apparently all the way up channel and didn’t hear his exec because of huffing and puffing and attendant ‘ooh-ahs’ from said skirt.”

“Haven’t you got some planes to park?” Cuso asked wryly.

“Oh, all chained up in the hangar. Brown shirts down there are swearing like that Australian Black Ops guy — Stewart?”

“Lewis, Aussie Lewis,” said Cuso, glad to change the subject from gossip about the rivalry for the CNO, though secretly he welcomed the news if it was true. If Crowley got the CNO spot, Cuso, God willing, should be on the very short list to have his own command. Suddenly the ejection from the F-14 Tomcat that had almost killed him seemed as if it might have been a blessing in disguise. He’d always pooh-poohed his mother’s old Southern Baptist conviction, which she held to this day, that God listens to us but doesn’t answer prayers right away, that the answer comes in different guises. He still was an atheist, a paid-up member of the glass-always-half-empty society. But, John Cuso mused, if he got command of the “boat,” one of the greatest ships afloat, maybe he’d write a special thank-you letter to his mom.

“Heard about the MEU?” asked Lynch. MEU was the battle group’s Marine Expeditionary Unit.

“No,” said Cuso, straining to be polite but growing weary of Ray Lynch, who, he figured, was about the best air boss in Pacific Command’s six carriers but was definitely on the short list for CNG — chief naval gossip. John Cuso understood it. After the hair-raising business of landing 80-million-dollar planes on the roof for four hours, the need for relief, the temptation to talk about anything other than flight-deck ops, was too strong. “What about the MEU?” he asked dutifully.

“It’s throw-up central over there. Crew says you can see ’em hanging over Yorktown’s side. Looks—” Ray began to laugh. “—like it’s covered in flies.”

The Yorktown was the battle group’s Wasp-class LHD-26B, Landing Helicopter Dock ship, part of the U.S. Marines’ “Gator Navy,” so called because of the potent amphibian force the Marines had proved to be in the great and bloody amphibious landings from Guadalcanal to Saipan. It was a measure of the storm’s ferocity that even the 45,000-ton carrier that housed a 1,700-man battalion of Marines, 45 assorted choppers, several of the hybrid Ospreys, 2 F-35s, and 3 LCACs, or Hovercraft Landing Craft, was rolling and pitching enough in the storm to make so many Leathernecks ill. In fact, only 150 or so Marines had felt the urge to deposit their breakfasts into the Sea of Japan, but the crews in the battle group’s protective screen took perverse pleasure in seeing their indisputably tougher and, from the point of view of the women aboard McCain, aggressively politically incorrect Marines on the receiving end of things for a change.

“Serves ’em right,” chortled Ray Lynch. “Yorktown’s old man should be keeping her into the wind ’stead of beam-on, for cryin’ out loud.”

Cuso shrugged noncommittally. He’d seen a radar zoom shot of the Marines on the big blue screen. It told him why the skipper of the LHD Yorktown, the ship named, like all new LHDs, for an illustrious World War II forebear, was not heading into the wind. The skipper was probably giving the Marines, his men, and a few women, a taste of what it was like to be readying to go forth in a relatively light 160-ton hovercraft while taking the big Pacific swells broadside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The RS was fourteen minutes from docking with the McCain, or, as Gomez was suggesting, given the rough weather, being picked up by the special girdle-equipped helo from the Yorktown. But already General Douglas Freeman had the sinking feeling of a man about to meet his Waterloo. Deep within the general’s psyche there arose the conviction that just as another military legend, Napoleon, had lost it all, albeit by the skin of his teeth, in what the victorious Wellington had called a “damn near run thing,” Douglas Freeman would lose it all. He felt that he’d been convinced, or rather had convinced himself, that he might be the victim of an Intelligence ruse that would heap humiliation on top of failure if there was nothing in the box after all. “After all” included the loss of Bone Brady, who’d committed himself to Freeman’s command largely on the basis of the general’s quick thinking and to-date successful derring-do. What had he, Freeman, always said? “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!” He had gone in with audacity, banking on surprise, and he’d succeeded in blowing the target to smithereens and grabbing what he had told the team would be the prize of a shoulder-fired launcher and missile. In short, he had convinced himself that, following Gomez’s suggestion, when he and the team reached the Yorktown and the world wasn’t the eye-juddering experience it was here as the RS planed the ocean swells like a Hummer on a corrugated speed-bump road, he would find nothing but a pile of rocks or dirt, the box’s only resemblance to that of