An hour passed, a very long hour.
For whatever reason, God’s infinite mercy perhaps, the toothsome beasts had left him alone, at least for the moment. Cold had begun to claw its way inside his protective armor. He was shaking now, and his teeth were chattering away, much ado about nothing. It crossed his mind that freezing to death was a vastly better way to go than serving himself up as breakfast for the finny denizens of the deep.
He slept, God knows how long.
And then the lights came on.
Literally.
He found himself the target of a shaft of pure white light. He looked up to his left and saw its source. A searchlight mounted high on the superstructure of a massive aircraft carrier. Then another, and another, both lower and near the deck, picked him out. And then, to his right, he became aware of the deep bass thumping of helicopter rotor blades. A spotlight from the chopper picked him up, and he saw a diver appear in the opening in the side of the fuselage.
Could this possibly be a friendly? The odds were certainly against it, given China’s recent military posturing in this little corner of the world. The diver splashed down about six feet away and hopes for a miracle vanished when he told Hawke to remain calm in Mandarin. Then he went about securing the lifting harness to Hawke’s body.
Hawke had spent a lot of time in mainland China with his friend and companion, the great Scotland Yard criminalist Ambrose Congreve. In addition to being a brilliant detective, Ambrose had studied languages at Cambridge. While doing a six-month stint in a Beijing prison for “subversive activities” that had never been proven, Congreve had given Hawke a rudimentary, but substantial, working knowledge of Chinese.
“In the nick of time,” Hawke said to the diver in his native tongue.
“What?”
“You arrived just in time. I was slowly freezing to death.”
“Silence. No conversation.”
“Have it your way. Just trying to be friendly.”
Hawke and his rescuer were winched up and into the belly of the Chinese Ahkoi helo. Nobody aboard would talk to him. He was sure they knew an unidentified aircraft had entered their airspace and had been shot down (they imagined) by one of their missiles. So they were sensibly predisposed not to be chatty. Hell with them — he was still alive, wasn’t he? He’d gotten out of tougher scrapes than this one over the years.
The initial interrogation aboard the Chinese carrier was short but brutal. Still, he’d gotten out of it with little more real damage than three broken fingers and a mild concussion. They’d told him he’d never leave this ship alive, then locked him up inside a stinking crew cabin in the bowels of the bilge with room for little more than a crappy bunk bed. He now lay on the top berth thinking very seriously about how the hell to escape.
Two military policemen with automatic weapons had delivered him to this lovely boudoir. He was fairly certain the same two would come for him when it was time for the more labor-intensive interrogation. They were thugs, those two, viciously abusive but stupid. Just the way he liked them. He’d feigned a far worse concussion than he’d actually suffered, forcing them to half carry him down many flights of stairs, something that they did not appear to enjoy.
He was consciously unconscious when they slammed into the tiny space and pulled him down from the upper berth. As he expected, they yanked him to his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders in order to keep him moving. He kept his head down, mumbling incoherently. When the MP on his left paused to kick open the half- closed door, he used the moment to grab a fistful of hair on each man’s head and violently slam their skulls together hard enough to cause them to sink to the floor. He checked. They were out for the long count.
He quickly stripped the uniform from the taller of the two. It fit him badly, but it was good enough to get him up eight flights of metal steps to the carrier’s deck level without incident. Hawke had jet-black hair, which helped, and he kept the cap brim pulled down and his face lowered. He also had the advantage of carrying an automatic rifle in case things got spicy.
He saw a sailor open a hatch in the bulkhead and felt the cold blast of icy wind howl in from the flight deck. He waited sixty seconds and then stepped through to the outside himself. He had no earthly idea how he was going to execute the plan he’d devised, but that was of little concern. You had to be able to make this stuff up as you went along. He heard a sizable group of men laughing as they approached his position and stepped back into the shadows.
Pilots.
There were eight of them, all in flight suits and some wearing their helmets, some holding them loosely in their hands, kidding around, walking with that cocky jet-jock walk. They were obviously en route across the expanse of darkened deck to their covey of Sukhoi 33 carrier aircraft being readied for immediate launch. He remained hidden between two huge storage lockers behind the bulwark until just after they had passed. Then he fell in behind them, quickening his pace until he caught up with the lone straggler at the rear. Fortunately, he was by far the tallest of the lot.
He approached his target from directly behind, shot out both hands, and used his thumbs on the carotid artery, to paralyze the poor fellow and still keep him on his feet. He gave the main group of pilots time to continue on, then pulled the unconscious one back into the shadows of the storage lockers. It was the work of a moment to zip himself inside the pilot’s jumpsuit and don his boots and helmet and flip the visor down. He strode quickly, but not too quickly, across the deck and caught up with the jocular pilots just as they were climbing into their respective Sukhois.
He made a beeline straight for the sole unoccupied fighter, then saluted the two attending crewmen who stood aside for him to mount the cockpit ladder.
“Lovely night for flying, boys,” he muttered in guttural Chinese, sliding himself down into the seat. After strapping himself in, he reached forward and flipped the switch that lowered the canopy. Then he studied the instrument array and illuminated controls, quickly deciding exactly what did what. The Chinese had stolen so much aeronautical technology from the West that getting the hang of things was embarrassingly easy.
He gave a hand signal to the crewmen below, lit the candle, and taxied into position behind the last jet in line for the center catapult. The blast shield had already risen from the deck behind the first jet in the squadron, and Hawke watched as the fighter was flung out over the ocean, afterburner glowing white hot.
He must have been daydreaming because he suddenly heard the air boss screaming at him in his headphones, telling him to get his ass moving. The aircraft in front of him had advanced into position and he’d not followed immediately. Now he added a touch of power and tucked in where he belonged. There remained only three planes ahead of him.
“So sorry, Boss,” he muttered in the time-honored traditional communicative style of fighter pilots all over the world. On a carrier, the air boss is God himself.
“Don’t let it happen again, Passionflower, or I’ll kick your ass all the way back to Shanghai.”
“Roger that, sir,” Hawke said, advancing once more.
“You forget something in your preflight, Passionflower?”
“No, sir,” Hawke said.
“Yeah? Check your fucking nav lights switch for me, just humor me.”
Shit. He hadn’t turned them on. Dumb mistake and he couldn’t afford to be dumb at this point, not in the slightest.
“You awake down there, son? I’m inclined to pull your ass out of line.”
“Sir, no sir. I’m good to go.”
“Yeah, well, you damn well better be. I’ve got my eye on you now, honey. You screw up even a little bit on this mission this morning and your ass is mine. You believe me?”
“Sir, I always believe you. But I’ll come back clean, I swear it.”
“Damn right you will. Now get the hell off my boat, Passionflower. I got more important things than little pissants like you to worry about. You’re up.”
Hawke moved forward and engaged the catapult hook inside its buried track. He heard the blast shield rumble up into position behind him and looked to his left, nodding, a signal to the launch chief that he was poised and ready. The man raised his right arm and dropped it, meaning any second now. Hawke’s right hand automatically went to the “oh-shit bar” on the right-hand side of the canopy.
