“Sure. Next time.” He watched her eyes close, her breathing slow down and deepen. “Next time it will be different, you’ll see.”
There was no reaction. Hot Rock rose to his feet and walked quietly around the privacy curtain. As he was passing the only other occupied bed in the hospital, a voice cried cheerfully, “Excuse me, young man, but could you tell me what the weather’s like this morning?”
“Sorry about the rough air, Tomboy.” Bird Dog’s voice sounded soft and pensive over the ICS. If Tomboy hadn’t seen him get into the front seat, she wouldn’t have believed it was Bird Dog Robinson up there.
“I doubt — you had — anything to do with — the weather,” she said from behind her radar hood, her voice cracking every few words as the Tomcat hit a particularly violent spot in the sky. Although no RIO could afford to be prone to motion sickness, she was definitely feeling greenish.
“Dr. George says this is just the start of the bad weather,” Bird Dog said. “He predicts a super-typhoon. What do you think?”
“I’m no meteorologist geek.”
“Me neither. According to Lab Rat, the National Weather Service is predicting no more than a mild tropical storm.”
“Bird Dog, you — seem distracted today. Are you — keeping your eyes peeled — up there?”
“Yes. Sorry. Didn’t mean to babble. Catwoman’s going to make it. I saw her this morning.”
“That’s great news, Bird Dog.” Which was true. Still, he
She was losing hope for a quick encounter with the bogey. Bird Dog had made innumerable passes up and down the coastline of the SAR, and had seen and passed both commercial and military aircraft, but so far nothing had challenged them. Not even one of the ubiquitous PLA fighters that periodically moved in disturbingly close, then peeled away again.
Tomboy was painfully aware of how helpless they were out here, without support and armed with nothing but a cannon. On the other hand, their wings-clean configuration probably explained why the PLA was not pressing them too hard.
She realized she’d lost all her concentration. She had the feeling Bird Dog wasn’t adequately focused on doing his job today. She leaned back, extracting her face from the hood, and winced as the sunlight crashed in on her through the greenhouse bubble of the canopy. She flipped down the tinted visor of her helmet. “Bird Dog?” she said over ICS.
“Yes?”
“Want to talk about it?” It was easier to converse in a level voice when you could see around you, even if the bounces themselves remained unpredictable.
“Talk about what?” Bird Dog asked in an elaborately casual voice.
“What happened the other day, at the end of the ACM. You aren’t feeling guilty about coming back when other people didn’t make it, are you? Because — ”
“It’s not that. I know there was nothing I could do, the way my plane was acting.”
“Then what’s eating you? Your backseater’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah, but… I’m kind of worried about Lobo. She took that missile for
“She was just doing her job, Bird Dog. Besides, I understand she’s still MIA, which means there’s hope.”
“Maybe. But it also means if somebody did pick her up, it must have been the wrong people.” Then, in a fast, gruff voice, he added, “She saved my ass, man. I owe her.”
Tomboy was silent, frowning. Then her eyes widened. Could it be…?
But the idea that had occurred to her wasn’t something she could say out loud, not on a mission, not even over the privacy of ICS. “Tell you what,” she said. “When we get through with this gig, I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” he said. “Speaking of finishing, we probably ought to head back, unless you want to call up a Texaco for refueling.”
“I don’t think so. But tell you what. When you make your turn, let it get you closer to the twelve-mile limit. Let’s really push it on the way back, see if it stirs up any wasps.”
“Roger.”
The Tomcat leaned into a slow, smooth bank. Tomboy looked to the west, where the mountains of China winked in and out of sight between billowing piles of cloud clearly visible in the full moonlight. Then, instinctively doing her job as backseater, she turned and looked over her shoulder to check their tail. And suddenly she was shouting, “Bogey at five o’clock! Bogey at five o’clock! It’s right on our ass, Bird Dog!”
“Countermeasures,” he said in a steely voice.
“Right.” She calmed herself and twisted in her seat as far as possible, trying to keep the thing behind them in view at all times. Meanwhile, her hands did their work unseen. She didn’t bother glancing at the radar screen again, either; if it hadn’t detected the bogey creeping up behind them, it undoubtedly didn’t display it now.
In fact, she could barely see the aircraft even now. If the shadow of a passing cloud hadn’t wrapped over it briefly as it banked behind the Tomcat, she wouldn’t have noticed it in the first place.
But what she
“Hold your turn,” she said to Bird Dog as she groped for her camera. “Don’t let him know we’ve noticed him.”
“Swell.”
She got the camera out and started snapping. The bogey stayed exactly where it was relative to the Tomcat, as if both aircraft were sliding along on the same set of rails.
“This is sure fun,” Bird Dog said, “but I’d be happy to go buster anytime you say.”
“Another few seconds. Hold the turn, hold the turn; the bank gives me a better view of — ”
Her words were sliced off by the insistent beeping of the ESM gear. “Fire control radar!” she cried, but even as she dropped the camera and reached for the chaff-release controls, she knew it was too late. A corona of flame appeared beneath the bogey as a missile’s rocket booster ignited and hurled the warhead forward at speeds far greater than human reflex.
For a half heartbeat, Tomboy actually saw it: a white circle trailing flame and smoke, growing larger as if by magic.
Then she was staring only at the smoke trail, just below them. What —
She slammed back in her seat as Bird Dog hit the afterburners. “Missed!” he shouted over ICS, and the Tomcat cranked into a neck-snapping left turn. “Sucker missed us!”
With her helmet locked against the inside of the canopy by centrifugal force, Tomboy watched the missile’s smoke trail billowing away into the distance, puncturing each cloud that stood in its way, lacing them together. Then she saw what lay beyond the clouds.
“My god,” she said.
“What? What?”
“It’s heading straight for Hong Kong.”
“Hey, Bubba.”
Franklin smelled the stink of diesel fumes, and turned slowly. “I’m busy, Orell.”
“Know who I saw down here earlier? Ol’ Bird Dog.”
Franklin wiped his hands on a rag. “So?”
“He was checkin’ this bird out real careful. I mean
