Retribution

“That wasn’t the question.”

“If it were absolutely necessary.”

Storm flicked the controller. “Communications — send a message to the captain of the Khan. Tell him I have one of his pilots and I’m on my way to return him. Tell him I need to talk to him right away.”

* * *

The Werewolf’s small size and shifting location made it difficult for the gun radar to lock, but the Chinese were definitely out to earn an A for effort. The radar warning receiver kept flashing and then clearing, only to flash again.

Finally, a shell arced toward the helo. It missed by nearly a half mile, short and wide to the right. The 56mm gun at the bow was effective at about 10,000 meters; the computer calculated it would be within range of the rafts in another sixty seconds.

Starship notched the speed up to twelve knots.

“Mack, can you get the raft tied in better?” he asked.

When the major didn’t respond, Starship tried again, this time yelling into the microphone.

Still no answer. The frigate was now forty-five seconds from range.

“Fourteen knots,” Starship told the computer.

Northern Arabian Sea

0923

Mack’s legs felt as if they’d been pulled from his hips. The waves cracked across the bottoms of the two rafts, punching them up and down. This wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if they bounced together. Instead, they rumbled unevenly, thumping and jerking in a madly syncopated dance. It was as if he were standing on the backs of two rodeo bulls, each of whom were riding in the back of a poorly sprung pickup truck.

T-Bone had his right leg and Dish his left. The others, except for Cantor, were holding onto them.

“Hey, this is fun, isn’t it?” yelled Mack, trying to cheer them up.

As if in reply, the Werewolf gave him a fresh tug. He suddenly jerked forward, the ride smoother — too smooth, he realized as he began to spin. He’d been pulled completely from the raft.

“Starship, get me back! Starship!”

Mack spun to his right. He caught glimpses of the destroyer as he spun. The Chinese warship seemed to gain a mile every time he blinked.

Dizzy, he closed his eyes, then quickly opened them as the ocean bashed against his leg. Something flew at him — a bullet from the frigate’s gun, he thought. But it was only Dish, leaping out to grab him as the Werewolf swung back with him.

The rafts twirled as the Werewolf once again changed direction.

“Hang on, hang on!” Mack shouted to the others.

“Look!” yelled Dish, pointing behind him in the direction of the frigate.

Mack wanted to scream at him; there was no sense pointing out how close the frigate was. Dish turned around, then looked back up at Mack, a grin on his face.

What the hell are you smiling about? he wondered, then glanced over Dish’s shoulder and saw that the frigate had turned off.

Aboard the Wisconsin, over the northern Arabian Sea

0925

“The Khan has told the frigate to knock it off,” Storm told Dog. “They’ve turned away.”

“Why were they firing in the first place?”

“Why do the Chinese do anything?” said Storm. “They gave me some cock and bull story about the frigate captain believing he was rescuing Chinese pilots, but I don’t trust them to tell the truth. I don’t trust them at all.”

Dog wasn’t sure what to believe. It was possible that the captain of the frigate believed he was rescuing his own men; the Khan had lost most of its aircraft, and the frigate probably wasn’t aware that the crew of the Megafortress had jumped out — after all, the plane was still flying.

On the other hand, the transmissions on the emergency or guard band should have made it clear that the downed airmen were American.

Unless, of course, the captain suspected a trick.

“Now don’t you go screwing things up, Bastian,” added Storm. “Don’t use your weapons on the Chinese, as tempting as it may be. Don’t even power them up.”

“What do you think, I’m going to crank open a window and take potshots at them with my Beretta?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Dog snorted. All this time fighting together, and Storm was still a jerk.

“I’m going to have to go south real soon if I’m going to make that tanker,” Dog said. “Can you handle the pickup?”

“Go. We have the situation under control.”

Under other circumstances, Dog would have flown over the raft, dipping his wings to wish his men luck and let them know he was still thinking about them. But he didn’t want to press his luck with the plane.

As he found his course southward, he reached into a pocket on the leg of his speed jeans, fishing for a small pillbox he kept there.

He rarely resorted to “go” pills — amphetamines — to keep himself alert. He didn’t like the way they seemed to scratch his skin and eyes from the inside. More than that, he didn’t like the idea of them. But there was just no getting around them now. The long mission and the physical demands of flying the Megafortress without the computer or human assistance had left him drained. He worked up some saliva, then slipped a pill into his mouth and swallowed.

It tasted like acid going down.

“Dreamland Command, I’m heading south,” he told Major Catsman. “See if you can get the tanker to fly a little farther north, would you?”

II. Lost and Not Found

Indian Ocean, off the Indian coast

Time unknown

It happened so gradually that Zen didn’t notice the line he crossed. One unending moment he was drifting in a kaleidoscope of shapes, thoughts, and emotions; the next, he was fully conscious, floating neck high in the Indian Ocean. And very, very cold.

He glanced around, looking for his wife Breanna. They’d gone out of the plane together, hugging each other as they jumped through the hole left by one of the ejection seats in the Flighthawk bay of the stricken Megafortress. Eight people had been aboard the plane; there were only six ejection seats. As the senior members of the crew, they had the others bail first, then followed the old-fashioned way.

Ejection seats had been invented to get crew members away from the jet as quickly and safely as possible, before they could be smacked by the fuselage or sucked into a jet engine. While certain aircraft were designed to be good jumping platforms, with the parachutists shielded from deadly wind sheers and vortices, the Megafortress was not among them. Though Zen and Breanna had been holding each other as they jumped, the wind had quickly torn them apart.

Zen had smacked his head and back against the fuselage, then rebounded down past Breanna. He’d tried to arc his upper body as a skydiver would. But instead of flying smoothly through the air, he began twisting around, spinning on both axes as if he were a jack tossed up at the start of a child’s game. He’d forced his arms apart to slow his spin, then pulled the ripcord for his parachute and felt an incredibly hard tug against his crotch. But the chute had opened and then he fell at a much slower speed.

Sometime later — it could have been seconds or hours — he’d seen Breanna’s parachute unfold about two