Mack watched the Megafortress disappear to the northwest, once again chased away by the Chinese destroyer. At least it had taken the ship with it this time.
They’d lashed the two inflatable rafts together and put Cantor in one. Mack told them that they’d take turns in the other once they got tired. For now, they were all going to kick in the direction of the
Forty or fifty miles on the open ocean was a very, very long distance. But Mack figured that moving was better than floating, and every hundred yards was a hundred yards away from the Chinese.
“Aw, shit,” yelped Jazz. “Ah, man.”
“What’s up?”
“My leg. Feels like I got an iron chain in it.”
“It’s just a cramp,” said Mack. “Work through it.”
Jazz continued to curse.
“Take a break, Jazz,” Mack told him finally.
“I’m OK, Major.”
“Your lips are turning blue. Get in the damn raft. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was only after Jazz pulled himself into the raft, leg twitching, that Mack realized everyone’s lips were blue.
“Kick,” he told the others. “Let’s go. Kick!”
There was only so much that could be done to make a helicopter stealthy, but the Werewolf was small and its ability to fly extremely low would make it hard for the Chinese ships to spot it until it was very close. Starship figured that if he moved fast enough, he could get by any of the ships before they could react and try to shoot him down.
A Chinese guided-missile cruiser presented a particular problem, since it sat almost directly in his path. But the cruiser had been heavily damaged in the battle, and smoke poured from three different places on the ship. The radar warning receiver aboard the Werewolf indicated that the vessel was not using its weapons or even early warning radar; most likely the radar systems had been destroyed. Still, Starship kept an eye on the infrared warning panel as he shot past no more than a mile away, worried that the ship might try firing a heat-seeking missile without locking him up on radar.
With the cruiser in the rearview mirror, Starship put the pedal to the metal and sped over the waves. About three miles from the GPS point he’d been given as the fliers’ location, he began rising to get a better view for his radar and other sensors.
The first thing he saw on the synthesized radar screen was a Chinese destroyer, six miles to the east. Dreamland
So he had the neighborhood, at least.
Starship slowed his speed to eighty knots and did a quick scan of the area around him; he couldn’t see anything in the water. He instructed the computer to set up a search pattern; when the grid came up on the screen, he chose the segment closest to the Chinese destroyer as a starting point and told the computer to go.
The Werewolf hadn’t actually reached the point when he spotted a pair of rafts and several swimmers three miles to the west. He took back control and turned toward them.
“Werewolf to Tac,” he said. “I have our subjects in view. Counting — four — no, five men — two in the raft, others in the water. Stand by for GPS coordinates.”
The noise reminded Mack Smith of his brother’s whiny two-stroke weed whacker — assuming it had a blanket thrown on it.
The water to the east seemed to bubble up into a moving volcano.
“Chopper,” said Tommy. “Ours or theirs?”
They were too far away to see it clearly, but the sound gave it away.
“That’s a Werewolf,” said Dish.
“Yeah,” said Mack. “Has to be from the
The robot aircraft banked southward, moving away.
“Yo, Werewolf — where are you going?” grunted Mack. The mouthpiece for his survival radio was integrated with the collar of his Dreamland-designed flight suit, but the radio was in a sleep mode to conserve battery power and had to be manually turned on. Mack reached down to the vest and did so, then repeated the hail, this time with more formality.
Dog, not the Werewolf, answered.
“Mack, that’s the
“
A transmission from the Werewolf overrode the reply. Neither were intelligible.
“Mack Smith to Werewolf. Yo, you just flew south of us.”
“Just getting the lay of the land, Mack,” responded Starship.
“Hey, Junior, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re flying over the sea.”
“Oh, that’s what that blue stuff is. I thought I was upside down.”
“You’re a joke a minute, kid. How long before you get that tin can you’re in up here?”
“
Mack glanced over at Cantor. He was out of it.
“Give me a vector and we’ll meet it halfway,” said Mack.
“Major—”
“Give me a vector, kid. We’re not hanging here all day.”
Dog pulled back on the stick, coaxing the Megafortress into a gentle climb. With the
He got Catsman on the Dreamland Command frequency and through her spoke to the KC-10 tanker that had been tasked to Dreamland for the operation. They arranged a rendezvous about an hour’s flying time south of his present position.
When Dog finished making the arrangements, he turned back to look for the Chinese frigate. Not spotting it right away, a shiver of panic flew through him. He’d blundered too close, he thought, and was now in range of another missile.
Then he saw the frigate in the distance. It had given up chasing him and was once more sailing back in the direction of Mack and the others.
The Werewolf picked up everyone’s morale, but Mack soon realized that could be too much of a good thing. For while they kicked ferociously for a few minutes, pushing the raft in the direction of the approaching American ship, they quickly ran out of energy. And with the
“All right, new plan,” Mack told the others, and felt his teeth chatter as he spoke. “One guy kicks at a time. Two guys, one on each side, rest. Other two stay in the raft. Jazz, how’s your leg?”
“Much better.”
“Great,” said Mack, though he knew the lieutenant was lying. “All right. I’ll kick and steer. Idea here is that we’re saving our strength. All right? We’re all about endurance right now.”
“I’ll swap with Dish,” said Jazz.
