Typhoon Season

minute that Hot Rock had buzzed her by accident. Although he hadn’t been her wingman for long, she’d already seen hints of the outstanding flying skills that had earned him his call sign. Still, he was young and clearly had a few things to learn about working as a team.

“Don’t sweat it, Lobo, babe,” Handyman said over the ICS. “Personally, I love it when you pull high ’g’s and start panting that way. Puts me in the mood.”

“Ah, you’re too easy, sweetheart.” Lobo grinned again. That was another thing about Handyman. He knew about her experience in Russia, what had happened to her there, but didn’t tiptoe around certain subjects the way most people did.

Above, stars filled the canopy. A beautiful night, a tanked-up Tomcat, and a righteous backseater… what a life. She wasn’t even concerned about trapping onto Jefferson later, although night carrier landings were amongst the most stressful activities in the world. Tonight, the South China Sea was smooth as a linoleum floor.

She rocked the F-14 to the left a bit and looked down. The water was purest black, dotted with the small clusters of jewelry that were ships, which grew very dense dead ahead, indicating the merging of shipping lanes into and out of Hong Kong. To the east and north were the scattered glints comprising Carrier Battle Group 14. The glow of USS Thomas Jefferson, the carrier itself, was lost in haze almost three hundred miles away.

Tonight, Lobo and Hot Rock were flying BARCAP, Barrier Combat Air Patrol, acting as the sharp point of the enormous knife that was CVBG-14. Strictly routine activity, of course, since there had been no overt conflict between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in several years. Just an enjoyable evening cruise.

As if disapproving of this, the voice of the carrier Tactical Action Officer, or TAO, came over her headset: “Viper Leader, be advised we’re picking up an SOS on IAD, to the north. There’s no response to hailing, so it’s probably an automatic repeater. Should be right in your area. Keep your eyes peeled, okay?”

Lobo clicked her mike. “Homeplate, Viper Leader; copy that. Peeling our eyes.” Well, this was interesting. When an SOS came over the International Air Distress frequency, maritime law — and hundreds of years of seafaring tradition — bound all naval vessels, including Navy fighter jets, to respond. Not that an F-14 at altitude had much chance of spotting a single boat in the blackness below, but still… she whipped the Tomcat upside down to offer an unobstructed view of the ocean.

“I knew you were going to do that,” Handyman said.

“Well, do you see anything?” she asked. “Flares? Smoke signals? People waving their arms?”

“What about that fire right below us?” Handyman asked.

“Huh?” Even as she spoke, she saw it — a tiny, unsteady flicker. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Still inverted, she keyed the mike. “Homeplate, we’ve spotted what might be a fire; we’re going to investigate.” She switched to the tactical circuit. “Hot Rock, you get all that?”

“Roger, Lobo. I’m with you.”

Suddenly something occurred to Lobo. Considering the political orientation of the nearest nation, the SOS could be a ruse of some kind, designed to lure a couple of Tomcats down to killing position. “Hang on, Hot Rock,” she said, and switched circuits again to call the E-2C she knew was airborne. “Spook One, Spook One, this is Viper Leader.”

“Spook One,” came the voice from the E-2C Hawkeye buzzing along a hundred miles to the east. “Go ahead, Viper Leader.”

“You guys see any bogey activity at all in our area?”

“Negative, Viper,” came the voice from the Hawkeye. “Commercial traffic only. A couple of Flankers were playing footsie with each other last night, but that was on their own side of the limit. Skies are friendly.”

“Copy, Seven-Niner. Be advised I’m heading down to investigate a surface vessel SOS.”

“Copy, Viper Leader. But speaking of the limit, remember you’re right on the edge of it, so be careful.”

“Roger.” She switched back to tactical. “Hot Rock, follow me down to angels fifteen, then hold. Watch my back, and make sure you don’t wander over the twelve-mile limit.”

The sigh that came over the circuit was unmistakable: the grumpy whine of the guy forced to sit the game out on the bench. Hot Rock was young, unblooded. She wondered if he’d be so eager to fight after his first real battle. “Sure, Lobo,” he said. “I’ll make sure not to color outside the lines.”

Lobo grinned, rolled the Tomcat upright, then punched it over into a near-vertical dive. “Oh, give me a home…”

“I knew you were going to do that, too,” Handyman sighed.

By the time Lobo finished the first stanza of the song, the F-14 had devoured almost twenty-five thousand feet of altitude. She eased back on both stick and throttle, letting the plane’s momentum carry it down under five hundred feet on a steadily flattening trajectory. The flicker of light now lay dead ahead. The Tomcat’s nose would soon blot it from view, so Lobo flipped upside down again and ticked the throttles back as far as she dared. With a slight, rumbling buffet, the Tomcat’s onboard computers automatically swept the wings forward to increase lift at the lower speed.

Still, even at its slowest pace, an F-14 was not exactly a hovercraft. In a heartbeat, the flicker of light flashed across the canopy.

Plenty of time.

“Holy shit,” Handyman said breathlessly.

Mouth dry, Lobo rolled the Tomcat right side up and switched the radio to tactical. “Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Viper Leader. That SOS is coming from a civilian vessel taking heavy fire from a military helicopter. Repeat, a civilian vessel is under attack.” She cranked the F-14 into a savage 180-degree turn.

“Whoa, watch it, Lobo,” Handyman said. She knew he wasn’t troubled by the G-forces so much as the fact that the Tomcat’s extended wings expanded its wingspan from thirty-eight feet to almost sixty-four. The inboard tip had to be reaching for the water. But she didn’t bother to reply; she knew where her goddamned wingtips were.

“Viper Leader, Viper Leader, this is Homeplate — are you sure it’s a civilian vessel?”

As she leveled out, the sea below her was black and smooth, a waxed floor in which she could see the reflections of stars. She knew that to the rear, matters would be different. There, the horizontal vortex of air uncoiling from each wingtip would be lashing the surface into a froth.

But all her attention was focused dead ahead, where the flame leapt into life once more.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.” Her finger had gone to the weapons selector switch. But… did she really have cause for action? Maybe this was target practice on some derelict boat. Or a legitimate shoot-out of some kind. Through her mind flashed the mantra of the few female Navy fighter pilots: Don’t fuck up; they’re watching you soooooo closely….

Then she saw the American flag dangling, shredded, from a pole on the remnants of the sinking boat’s fantail — and the red star painted on the side of the helicopter. Below her, the water was suddenly full of floating lumps. Lobo’s finger jumped back to the weapons selector switch. Too close for missiles, but the Tomcat’s M61A1 Vulcan cannon could shred that helo into a pile of tin cans…

… And drop it right on top of any possible survivors in the water.

Don’t fuck up….

Snarling, she slammed the throttles forward, turning the Tomcat into an arrowhead sixty-one feet nine inches long, and leaping toward the speed of sound.

0515 local (GMT -8)

South China Sea

Lady of Leisure

Martin Lee clung to the rail of what had once been the starboard side of Lady of Leisure, but now substituted for her slanted deck. He had moved to the starboard rail from the stern only when the yacht began to roll over, yet even then he had stayed as close as possible to the stern. Wait for me right there, no matter what. What a fool he was; what a brainless, unthinking lackey. Now, with one arm wrapped around an upright and his body sprawled across the yacht’s slick fiberglass flank, he pretended to be dead. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

They had already shot most of the others. First they’d blasted Lady of Leisure