But maybe it liked using sight the best. If it did…
That reminded him of something else: The UAV was subsonic.
The missile-lock alarm sounded in his headset at the same instant he yanked the stick to the left and slammed the throttles forward. A brilliant yellow streak ripped the darkness, passing beneath the Tomcat as it pulled into a vicious, diving left turn. Hot Rock had already tightened his belly against it, but the special darkness of blackout spiraled in from the fringes of his vision. He waited until all he could see was the center of the HUD, then eased the stick forward. The darkness receded; in comparison, the edge of the typhoon looked almost bright and cheery.
The Tomcat was diving now, afterburners throbbing, propelling the aircraft past mach one, and then mach two. Below, the gloom peeled back and he saw the ocean, a savage froth of white and gray. Back came the stick, as did the spiraling darkness. Then he eased out, a hundred feet above the water. “Two Tone!” he cried. “Check our six!”
No answer. “Two Tone!”
Nothing. He realized he’d lost his backseater to G-force blackout. He was on his own.
And he realized something else: That made him happy. Relaxed. Now, whatever he did was entirely his own responsibility. No one to blame, no one to receive blame from.
He banked to the right, then the left, looking over his shoulder. Thought he saw a discoloration dropping out of the clouds. Eased back on the throttle. Let it catch up a bit. Let it —
There was nothing on his radar screen. No one to keep an eye on his tail. He grabbed the control to manually extend the wings, and did so. From behind, the extension would be invisible. Then he waited. Waited…
Over the headset, a moan. “Wha… Hot Rock — ”
“Goodnight,” Hot Rock said, and simultaneously yanked back on the stick and jammed the throttles full forward. This time he actually felt the blood rush out of his head, like water swirling down a drain; the spiral of darkness closed down fast. He pushed the stick forward and grunted as he slammed up against the shoulder straps of his harness. Below him, through his clearing vision he saw the manta-shaped UAV zip through the airspace he had lately occupied.
Putting the nose over, Hot Rock dove and opened up with his cannon. The tracers cut across the UAV like bright needles, but the UAV immediately cranked to the right in one of its physics-defying maneuvers.
Hot Rock executed a more gentle turn in the same direction, and watched his radar screen. There it was. There it was! The cannon hits might not have put the UAV out of commission, but they had holed it, destroyed the integrity of its radar-deflecting slants and curves. There was its signature on his screen, bright as daylight.
“Fox One,” Hot Rock said calmly to anyone who might be listening, and triggered his next-to-the-last Sparrow. The missile leaped away, boring off into the haze. On the HUD, its signal merged with the UAVs. Up ahead the clouds brightened, then dimmed, in artificial lightning.
On the HUD, both signals were gone.
Hot Rock realized something strange had happened to his face; it had an achy, stretched feeling to it. God, what if all the high-g maneuvers had permanently damaged something? Some muscle or nerve? What if…
Then he realized what it was: He was grinning.
Like everyone else in the hanger bay, Jackson was expected to help battle the fires and damage the missile had done in the hanger bay. There were tons of debris to get out of the way, blackened and useless aircraft to shove into the passing waves, bodies to help move. Time passed in a sweaty, terrifying blur.
And outside, the storm just got worse and worse. All the exterior doors were wide open because of the smoke, and wind-driven rain kept blasting in, hard enough to hurt if any of the spray caught you. It also made the decking slippery and dangerous. But the most terrifying thing was the waves. You didn’t expect to look out through those doors and see the crest of a wave pass by, all white and sharp on top like something with teeth. You never expected to see waves that big.
And yet despite his fear, Jackson carried on, doing whatever needed to be done. He worked alongside brothers and sisters at times, and alongside white men or brown men or yellow men at other times. Officers snapped orders, of course, but the next thing you knew, that same man or woman would be right beside you, helping lift a piece of metal off some trapped sailor.
Once he and Plane Captain Beaman were both commandeered by some firemen to help move debris out of the way of a hose. Together, they heaved against a jagged chunk of metal plating that had once been on the outside of the carrier. It seemed to weigh a ton, but they got it out of the firemen’s way. Afterward, for a moment Jackson found himself staring straight into his plane captain’s eyes. There was something speculative there that infuriated Jackson. He knew what it meant. He knew that Beaman didn’t trust him, thought he’d screwed up Bird Dog’s plane. Been incompetent, been lazy. Thought that this kind of work, hauling pieces of metal around, was probably more Jackson Ord’s speed.
But then Beaman gave a slanted, tired smile and clapped Jackson on the shoulder. “Good work,” he said, and turned away to do something else.
Jackson stared after him, trying hard not to be pleased. You couldn’t buy his forgiveness that easily. No way.
Still, he went back to work with renewed energy.
“You can’t be serious,” Lobo shouted in Tombstone’s ear. In other circumstances, it would have been a whisper. “Why do you want to go back
“I’ve got to check something out.”
“What?”
“You’ll see… if I’m right.”
“What if the guards’ bodies have been discovered?”
“With any luck, they’ll be out in this mess searching for us.”
She grinned. “Good point. Okay, Admiral — lead on.”
Bird Dog stumbled onto the fantail for some air. Because the carrier was steaming head-on into the wind, it was actually rather dry and pleasant back here… if you could ignore the traces of smoke still whipping off the flight deck overhead.
Disaster. Unbelievable disaster, and he blamed himself. If only he really understood the Chinese mentality. If only he could really comprehend the thinking behind
Well, Sun Tzu had been the first to say it:
Those junks. The missile attack. A beautiful illustration of using the direct and indirect forces. And Bird Dog Robinson, War College graduate, hadn’t expected it.
On the other hand, whoever was planning the Chinese assault had missed out on something, too: the storm. Only Dr. George had seen that one coming. Ironically, the typhoon had probably been
Okay, fine. If this was Difficult ground, then Encircled ground was next. He knew that. The weather? It sucked; he knew that, too. Okay… so where was his total victory?
Difficult, encircled, death.
