Typhoon Season

herself, hammering rounds into her fragile body at the waterline, until she toppled over far enough to dump most of her passengers into the sea. Then the helicopter turned its attention to them. Circling slowly behind the bright eye of its searchlight, it picked out the passengers one by one and shot them, until the water turned scarlet-and-blue.

Lee watched all this from beneath his arm as he dangled against the side of the boat. He didn’t want to watch, but closing his eyes was much worse; the noise, the screaming…

He saw Pablo Cheung diving under the water, pursued by silver spears where slugs yanked bubbles after them. Cheung stopped diving and turned into a red rug drifting just below the surface. Lee saw Lisa Austin, the clothing designer, raise her hands toward the flames, and disintegrate. He saw the helicopter hesitate, its searchlight beam probing the water, scanning back and forth, then sliding back toward the yacht.

He closed his eyes. Tried not to scream as the light blazed over him, turning his eyelids red, prickling his skin like the heat of the sun…

Then he did scream as something crushed down on him, driving the wreckage of Lady of Leisure deeper into the water, boring into Lee’s ears, then releasing them so hard they popped. Water sprayed up around him, so dense he could not breathe. He jerked erect, gasping, his blood pounding in his ears. When he opened his eyes he saw the water falling back, and beyond that the helicopter’s searchlight beam jumping erratically between the sea and the sky. The helicopter was bobbling in the air like a toy on a rubber band, the silvery disk of its rotor nearly touching the water on one side, then the other, its machine gun blessedly silent. Finally it steadied again, hovered for a moment, then pivoted, lifted its tail high and raced away to the west.

A few moments later, the air thundered again and something flashed overhead; enormous, silvery, pursued by two long cones of flame.

Even before the burnt-kerosene aroma of jet exhaust reached him, Lee knew what had passed over. Clinging to the remnants of the Lady of Leisure with one arm, he waved frantically at the sky.

0515 local (-8 GMT)

Tomcat 306

South China Sea

“What’s going on, TT?” Hot Rock demanded over the ICS. He banked his Tomcat slightly, maintaining his altitude at the prescribed fifteen thousand feet, searching the ocean below. He couldn’t believe this was happening. According to Lobo’s last radio transmission to Homeplate, the boat under attack was carrying an American flag. An American boat, clear out here — what were the odds? “Come on, what’s happening down there?”

“Hang on, hang on, I’m checkin’.” Hot Rock had long ago noticed that the more intense the situation, the more the accent of his RIO, Tony “Two Tone” Cappelli, reverted to its Brooklyn roots. “Getting nothing but surface clutter; looking straight down ain’t what AWG-9 is made for, you know?”

“Do you pick up the chopper at all? I see Lobo; she’s going around again. She didn’t take a shot, did she? Is the chopper still there? Talk to me, Two Tone!” Sweat slicked the space between his palm and the yoke. Blood sang in his ears.

“Lookin’ for your first kill, youngster? Well, I’m getting a little signal here, something maybe runnin’ west.”

“Should I chase it or not?”

“Hey, you’re the pilot. Or you could call Mommy and ask her permission if you like.”

Hot Rock felt as if cold water had been dumped over his head. He could hear his father’s voice: What’s the matter, Reginald? You scared to take the horse over that jump? Scared of a little fall? Your brother was clearing that jump before he was six years old.

He flicked the radio to tactical. “Viper Leader, Viper Two. I’m in pursuit of the helicopter. Repeat, in pursuit of the helo, departing on a heading of two three zero.”

“We’re right on the edge of the twelve-mile limit,” came Lobo’s clipped tones. “Watch your position.”

“Copy.” He was proud of how dry and sarcastic that came out. Just the way his father would have said it if someone had challenged his expertise.

Nosing the Tomcat over, he started searching the dark water ahead. Of course, odds were he wouldn’t spot the helicopter at all; the Tomcat wasn’t equipped with infrared targeting, and for that matter Two Tone could have just been picking up random surface clutter, the bane of airborne radar.

Then he saw something. “Tally ho!” he cried, the words for “target sighted” leaping automatically to his lips. That pleased him. He’d said exactly what he had been trained to say, without thinking about it. Perhaps everything else would work that way, too. “I see his rotor disk, TT. Right on the deck.” He licked his lips. “Um, he’s heading for the twelve-mile limit. Better call Homeplate for orders before we do anything; this is a weird situa — ”

Just then the voice from the Hawkeye interrupted. “Viper, Viper, you have incoming bogeys, bearing zero niner zero. Four bogeys, repeat, four bogeys inbound on your position. From their radars, they’re Flankers.”

The carrier TAO’s voice cut in sharp and hard. “Vipers, remain on station. Keep bogeys away from that site; backup is on the way. Repeat, maintain control of that site if at all possible. You’re over international waters. Backup and SAR on the way.”

“Roger,” Lobo’s voice said. “Hot Rock, Hot Rock, break off and beat feet back to your previous position. I’m going to stay down here and make it real clear nobody gets near this mess but us — especially a helicopter. You copy?”

“Copy, Viper Leader.” Hot Rock heard the slight tremor in his voice, but that was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew from experience that other aviators would interpret it as springing from anger and disappointment. Because they’d be feeling anger and disappointment at being called off potential target to play watchdog. “Damn it!” he cried, cranking the F-14 into a hard right turn and headed back and up.

“Tough luck, man,” Two Tone said from the backseat. “Unless the bogeys will want to play.”

Hot Rock said nothing. His climbing turn was smooth, powerful, and perfectly balanced, and the higher he got, the better he felt. Nobody could take this away from him; nobody could say there was a finer stickman in the entire U.S. Navy. When it came to carving up the sky, Hot Rock Stone was unsurpassed. He should be in the Blue Angels.

He should be flying in air shows….

0520 local (-8 GMT)

USS Jefferson

South China Sea

As Rear Admiral Edward Everett “Batman” Wayne yanked on a fresh flight suit, he tried to clear his head. Before being awakened by the hard buzz of his direct line to the Tactical Flag Command Center TAO, he’d been dreaming about the last time he was in the South China Sea, about the Spratley Island campaign. Of course, back then he hadn’t been a Rear Admiral, in charge of an entire Carrier Battle Group. Back then he’d been assigned to the Pentagon, helping test the new JAST Tomcats with their advanced Doppler look-down, shoot-down radar. When the Spratleys problem heated up, he’d helped ferry a pair of the new birds to Jefferson, and even piloted one in combat, going head-to-head against the finest Chinese pilots above the oil-rich chunks of rock they were trying to claim as their own.

What he hadn’t had to do back then was worry about the “whys” of it. He hadn’t had to concern himself with the deployment or tactics of the hundreds of assets that made up a carrier battle group. Back then, that responsibility had fallen on the shoulders of his friend and onetime lead, Rear Admiral Matthew “Tombstone” Magruder.

And Tombstone had risen to the occasion… well, admirably. He’d orchestrated the battle group in such a way that it not only fended off the Chinese, but kept the South China Sea open to all naval traffic… while managing not to start a full-scale war with the People’s Republic in the meantime. An amazing job.

Now, ironically, it was Stony who was back in Washington, fighting the very different war that was life in the Pentagon while Batman was left to deal with the latest Chinese mess… whatever it turned out to be.

He mentally reviewed the brief summary the TFCC TAO had given him that had yanked him out of sleep: A Tomcat on routine patrol had engaged a Chinese helicopter it caught firing upon an unarmed American pleasure boat. Chinese bogeys were now en route to the site. Batman wasn’t sure yet what “engaged” meant, or any other details concerning the episode, but he was about to find out.