“Where are we?”
“A half mile ahead of them, dead on their bow.”
Fisher called, “Bird, give me the ramp!”
“Ramp coming down.”
Sandy yelled, “Okay, we got the
The ramp groaned down and locked into position. In the predawn gloom, Fisher could see the Osprey’s prop wash kicking up twin rooster tails on the surface. Farther back, he could just make out the Cat’s bow plowing through the waves.
“Start decreasing speed, Bird,” Fisher ordered. “How far, Will?”
“Quarter mile.”
Fisher knelt down. He flipped open the front right ratchet holding the Skipjack to the deck. He moved to the next one, repeated the process.
In the cockpit, the missile alarm starting wailing.
“They’ve got us again!” Bird yelled.
Fisher scrambled for the rear tie-downs, flipped one, then moved to the next. He glanced out the ramp and could see, silhouetted by the rising sun, a man standing on the Cat’s port bridge wing. A long, bulky object was resting on his shoulder. Even as Fisher thought
“Missile launch,” he yelled, and flipped the last tie-down.
He put his shoulder to the Skipjack and shoved.
In his mind, time seemed to slow. The wail of the missile alarm faded, along with the voices of Bird and Sandy talking to one another in the cockpit.
The Skipjack slid off the ramp, bounced once on the surface, then nosed over and started tumbling end over end. In the final second, the Cat’s helsman must have seen the collision coming. He tried to turn, but too late. The Skipjack slammed broadside into the Cat’s bridge. Fisher had a fleeting glimpse of the bridge disintegrating in an eruption of debris before Bird banked hard right.
“… hold on… Active homing!” Bird was yelling. “Get that ramp up, get it up! Fire chaff!”
“Chaff away!”
Fisher felt a hand on his shoulder dragging him away from the rising ramp.
“Brace for shock!” Bird called. “It’s got us… ”
The Osprey lurched to the right as though struck by a giant hammer. A jagged hole the size of a basketball appeared in the fuselage.
Bird’s voice: “Engine hit, engine hit!”
“… shut it down!”
“… fire suppression!”
It took two minutes, but working together, Bird and Sandy managed to get the damaged engine shut down and the fire extinguished. With only one engine, the Osprey yawed to the right.
Fisher turned to Redding. “Rig the fast-rope.”
He made his way to the cockpit. Sandy was sending out the Mayday: “
“Where is it?” Fisher asked. “Where’s the Cat?”
“Hell, I don’t know—”
“Find it. Put me over the deck.”
“What?”
“We need to be sure, Bird. Get me there.”
Bird rotated the undamaged engine to three-quarters vertical and coaxed the Osprey around until they spotted the Cat out the side window. It was sitting dead in the water. Bird slowed to a hover over the afterdeck. Fisher clipped into the fast-rope, jumped out the door, and zipped to the deck. He unclipped, drew the SC-20, and flipped the selector to Sticky Shocker.
The boat was a wreck. The Skipjack had exploded on impact, oblitering the upper half of the Cat’s lightweight superstructure. Chunks of fiberglass and aluminum littered the deck. Glass crunched under Fisher’s feet.
He saw movement to his right. He spun. A crewman was stumbling up the ladder from belowdecks. His face was bloody. He held a pistol in one hand. Fisher fired. The shocker hit him in the chest. He stiffened, quivered for a few seconds, then fell back down the ladder.
Fisher heard a moan. He cocked his head, trying to pinpoint it. The moan came again. Fisher turned and saw a man lying on the bridge wing. He was feebly reaching for the railing as he tried to stand. Fisher left him whre he was and kept moving, heading aft. As he ducked under the starboard Silkworm launcher, he heard a steady beeping coming from his left. He crouched down and peered around the launcher’s mount.
A man was kneeling beside before an access hatch on the port-side launcher. A red light flashed inside the panel. The man punched more buttons. Fisher rose up and creeped up behind him.
“Hey,” he called.
The man froze for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder.
“What did I tell you about playing with missiles?” Fisher said.
The man spun back to the panel, fingers flying over the buttons. Fisher shot him in the back.
He found an an interior ladder and followed it belowdecks. He found three more crewman, one dead, two alive and in various states of consciousness. He entered the engine room and located the last man hiding in a corner behind a steam conduit.
Fisher leveled the SC-20 at him.
“Kill me,” the man muttered. “Kill me… ”
Fisher shook his head. “Sorry, pal, can’t help you. You’ve got a date with an interrogator.”
56
The Air Force captain opened the conference room door and waved Fisher through. Fisher had changed out of his tac-suit and had been given a spare pilot’s jumpsuit. It was too tight in the crotch. It felt funny when he walked.
The conference room was empty save for a dozen chairs and some prints on the walls depicting various events in Air Force history. On the far wall above was a plasma screen. Lambert was there. “Hello, Sam.”
“Colonel.”
“Nice duds.”
“When do we get out of here?”
The Cat’s aborted attack on the battle group had caused a dramatic reaction. Led by her Aegis cruisers, the
The cruiser and frigate that had peeled away from the group to intercept the Cat arrived forty minutes after Fisher dropped onto the boat. The frigate’s boarding party found Fisher sitting on the afterdeck, surrounded by five of Abelzeda’s men, each one bound and gagged.
Now, twelve hours later, he, Redding, Bird, and Sandy were still being kept incognito. Clearly, they had been vouched for and labeled off limits, which was fine with Fisher — except that no one could or would tell them what was happening in the outside world. Of course, given how they’d arrived on scene and what they’d brought with them — a stolen Iranian fast-patrol boat loaded with two Silkworm missiles; a handful of Iranian radicals; and an indignant former Turkmen Minister of Defense — Fisher couldn’t blame them.
