Woods and Allen might not, but Dog couldn’t see the use of flying around all day and not launching. They had to take a shot sooner or later.
“Give us that launch point again,” Colonel Bastian told Delaford.
Twenty minutes later, Dog and his copilot took Iowa down to five hundred feet, surveying the ocean and preparing to launch a buoy and the device. After a last check with the Orions to make sure they hadn’t found anything, Dog dipped the plane’s nose. Piranha splashed into the water like an anxious dolphin, freed from her pen.
“Contact with Piranha,” said Delaford, reporting a link with the robot. “We’re running diagnostics now. Looking good, Colonel.”
They ran the Megafortress in a slow, steady oval at approximately five thousand feet above the waves. As they completed their second pass, Rosen got contacts on the radar — a pair of Shenyang F-8’s were heading south from China.
“I have them at one hundred twenty-five miles,’ said Rosen. “They’re between eighteen and twenty angels, descending.”
“They see us?” said Dog.
“Not clear at this time,” said Rosen.
“Check and record our position,” said Dog, who wanted the record clear in case of attack. They were, irrefutably, in international air space.
“Absolutemento.”
“Which means?”
“You got it, Colonel.”
“Still bored? I thought the launch would perk you up.”
“Just call me Mr. Perky, sir.” Rosen worked in silence for a few minutes, still tracking the pair of interceptors as they headed south, not quite on an intercept vector. It was possible a land-based radar had picked them up as they opened their bay to complete the Piranha launch. On the other hand, it was also possible the planes were merely on a routine mission. The F-8IIMs looked like supersized MiG-21’s. though their mission was considerably different. Intended as high-altitude, high-speed interceptors, they were not quite as competent as the more maneuverable Sukhois that had recently tangled with Iowa. Nonetheless, they were capable aircraft, and their Russian Phazotron Zhuk-8 multimode radars would be painting the Megafortress relatively soon.
“We have a surface ship, thirty miles west, thirteen degrees from our present heading,” said Rosen, “Unidentified type — trawler-size.”
“Yes, we have it on the passive sonar,” said Delaford. “We’re looking at our library now. Probably a spy ship.”
“Not in the library,” said Ensign English after comparing the acoustical signal picked up by Piranha with a library of known warships.
“We can swing over and take a look,” said Dog.
“Good idea, Colonel,” said Delaford. “We’ll keep the probe its present course.”
“Keep an eye on our F-8’s,” Dog told Rosen as he nudged the stick to get closer to the ship.
“They’re turning it up a notch — on an intercept now at forty miles.”
“Surface ship is tracking us for them?”
“No indication of that,” said Rosen.
By the time the ship appeared in the distance, the F-8’s were roughly ten miles out. The two planes had cut their afterburners and were now descending in an arc that would take them about a half mile off Iowa’s nose. If everyone stayed on their present course. The fact they were heading in that direction, rather than trying to take a position on Iowa’s rear, seemed a significant tactical shift to Dog. Maybe shooting down the cruise missiles yesterday had won some friends.
Not that they necessarily wanted them.
The ship in the distance looked like an old trawler. Ensign English, working off the video feed piped down by the copilot, identified it as a Republic of China or Taiwan ship, one of a class of spy vessels the Taiwanese used to keep tabs on their mainland brothers.
“He may be looking for subs,” said Delaford. “He’s got active sonar.”
“Can they find us?” asked Dog.
“I don’t believe so.
“F-8 pilots are challenging us,” said Rosen. “In pretty good English too.”
Dog tuned his attention to the Chinese fighters, giving them the standard line about being in international airspace and having no “hostile intent.”
The Chinese replied that the Yankees were overrated and would have no chance in the World Series this year.
“Couple of comedians,” said Rosen.
In the exchange that followed, Rosen proved to be a ridiculously committed LA Dodger fan, predicting the Dodgers would “whup” whomever the American league managed to put up. The Chinese pilot — he was apparently the wingman in the two-plane flight — knew more than enough baseball to scoff at Rosen’s predictions. The man inexplicably favored the Cleveland Indians, and in fact, seemed to know the entire lineup.
As the two pilots traded sports barbs, the F-8’s took a pass and then came back to work themselves roughly parallel to the Megafortress’s cockpit. This was undoubtedly their first look at an EB-52, and the pilot complimented Rosen on his “choice of conveyance.”
“Quite a vocabulary,” said Dog.
“Claims he went to Stanford.”
After the tension of the past few days, the encounter seemed almost refreshing.
Excitedly, Delaford brought the laughs to an end.
“We have a contact. Definite contact,” he said. “Shit, yeah!”
The GPS readings showed the submarine exactly thirteen miles to the south by southeast.
“They’ve made good time submerged,” Delaford answered. “These are them — Trafalgar signature. Wow! Colonel, this is pay dirt. Pay dirt. These submarines don’t exist — this is a serious coup.”
“Relax, Commander. There’ll be plenty of time to pick up the Navy Cross at the end of the mission,” said Dog. Not that he didn’t share at least some of Delaford’s excitement — especially since it meant his decision to launch without a sighting from the Orions had been vindicated. One less thing for Allen to look down his nose about. “Make sure we’re recording.”
“Oh, yeah. Big time.”
“Thirty-five knots, submerged,” said Ensign English.
“Is that fast?” asked Dog.
“It’s good. It’s very good,” said Delaford. “And they may not even by trying. We’re twenty miles behind, at forty-two knots, our max. I’m going to settle in at sixteen miles behind them. If they’re like our guys, they’ll accelerate a bit, then stop. Jesus, I wonder if they consider slow.”
“F-8’s holding their position,” said Rosen.
“I’d like to shoot south and drop a buoy ahead of the subs,” Delaford added.
“We’ll wait until the F-8s go home,” Dog told him. “They ought to be leaving pretty soon; their fuel should be just about out.”
“Copy that,” said Delarod. “This is great, Colonel. This is really great.”
The distance from their target, their need to avoid the escort ships, and the storm all greatly complicated matters. When they were finally able to analyze all of the data, Admiral Balin was faced with the inescapable, if unpalatable, conclusion that their vaunted weapons had somehow missed. To add further insult to this grave disgrace, one of the Chinese escort ships somehow managed to get close enough to him as he doubled back to reconnoiter; two of its Russian-made ASW rockets had exploded close enough to do some damage to
