Petty Officer Third Class Dwayne Pitcock leaned out the yawning side hatch of the helo and peered down. Although the eastern sky was beginning to brighten, the water below remained black except where the helo’s searchlight created a lens of brilliant blue. The lens slipped this way and that, revealing chunks of fiberglass and foam rubber, a coffee table, a couple of ottomans, a glass coffeepot bobbing along. Tons of junk everywhere.
And then it passed over a human body, a woman in a sequined gown, floating facedown over a brown-red cloud of blood. Her back had been ripped open like the doors of a cabinet, displaying muscle and bone.
“Jesus,” Pitcock said. Since he was going to be hitting the water pretty soon, he didn’t have a headset or helmet on, and he couldn’t hear himself over the hammering blast of the Seahawk’s engine and rotor noise.
The searchlight moved on, finding more bodies, one after the other, all floating with the distinctive liquid movement of the dead, all trailing slicks of blood behind them. The bodies turned slowly as the helo’s downwash shoved at them. “Jesus,” Pitcock said again.
Then the light found the largest piece of wreckage he had yet seen — a sleek white expanse like the lip of a dying iceberg, with more of it slanting down into the water below, vanishing into indigo depths. A man’s body sprawled across the exposed section As the light hit him he stirred, turned, and raised an arm to wave.
The Seahawk immediately swooped over. Leery of the bloody water, Pitcock popped the seals on a couple of anti-shark packets and tossed them down beside the hull. They stained the water bright yellow as they emitted a chemical that supposedly drove sharks away. Pitcock, who had known sharks to swim
The crew boss manned the winch, spinning out a length of cable with the rescue collar attached. Before the collar hit the water, Pitcock jumped.
Still thinking of sharks, he practically bounced off the surface of the water and scooted up the tilted hull of the half-sunken yacht. He snagged an upright on the chrome guardrail a few feet away from where the man clung, then squinted up against the salt spray and pounding air and signaled the helo. It drifted forward until Pitcock was able to grab the rescue collar.
The man was staring at him now. He was Chinese — well, some kind of Asian — and maybe thirty, thirty-five years old. He was wearing a tuxedo. His expression was more vacant than grateful or even comprehending. But at least he was alive.
“I gotcha!” Pitcock shouted. “You’re okay now, sir.”
The man didn’t respond. Pitcock slid toward him across the slippery fiberglass, dragging the collar behind. The man barely reacted as Pitcock maneuvered one of his arms through the collar, then his head. His other arm was locked around the guardrail. When Pitcock tried to pry it loose, the guy started flailing around and shouting in some shrill, staccato language.
“Easy, easy,” Pitcock said as soothingly as he could, considering he had to bellow. He signaled “raise” at the chopper, and “slowly,” and waited until the cable began to pull before trying again to pry the man’s arm loose of the rail. Apparently calmed by the firm grip of the cable, the man finally relaxed his arm, and it slipped free. Pitcock whirled his arm, signaling for a faster winch.
There was a moment when the man in the tuxedo seemed to be standing on the canted hull of his own volition. His black eyes met Pitcock’s. “Thank you very much,” he said in clear English.
Pitcock grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, and he sailed into the sky.
“COS, what’s the situation?” Batman asked as he stepped into the small compartment located within a few feet of his cabin.
William “Coyote” Grant,
“Good morning, Admiral,” Coyote said. “Thirty minutes ago we got a report from one of our BARCAP Tomcats. Lobo. She spotted a PLA helicopter firing on an American civilian vessel and its passengers. Her wingman pursued the helicopter to the edge of the twelve-mile limit, then turned back when a flight of four SU-27s scrambled.” He gestured at the screen. “I made the decision to claim the wreck site as our own until all the bodies have been picked up.”
Batman nodded as he examined the display, noted the positions of icons representing the Chinese assets, including a couple of surface vessels. “Looks like the bogeys are hanging back.”
“For now. I vectored two more flights of Tomcats to the area to establish a perimeter, and so far there’s been no challenge. The bogeys just keep cruising their side of the twelve-mile limit.”
“Have we heard from the PRC yet?”
“Oh, sure; they’re claiming rights over the entire area. Of course. Demanding we back off. Naturally. We keep reminding them the wreckage is in international waters, and they keep ignoring us — but like I said, so far they’re not pushing it.”
Batman frowned. His first thought after being awakened had been that he would be facing another Spratleys-type situation. There, the PLA had committed carefully planned atrocities designed to look like the work of the United States… and publicized, immediately and loudly, as such.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said, mostly to himself. He knew that the Chinese military was willing to murder its own people, as well as those of its allies, in order to lure the U.S. Navy into a self-defeating combat situation. But killing American civilians could only damage their own international human rights reputation, which had never been exactly laudable. Why would they do that when there was apparently nothing to gain?
“How sure is Lobo of what she saw?” he asked.
“Absolutely sure, sir.” To Batman’s surprise, Coyote half smiled. “Evidently she gave the helo a low enough pass to scare the bejeezus out of it; that’s why it took off. But Lobo was cool; she never even switched on her targeting radar.” The smile vanished. “She reports bodies in the water, sir. A lot of them.”
“SAR?” Batman asked. In warm waters like these, the sooner Sea Air Rescue got under way, the better the chances for survival of anyone who had been on that boat. Hypothermia wasn’t the problem — sharks were.
“Two Seahawks are already on station,” Coyote said.
Batman weighed the situation. “I want everything picked up, COS,” he said. “The bodies, the survivors, whatever’s left of the boat, everything. Clear space in
“Yes, sir.”
Batman looked back at the tactical display, all the assets arrayed there, and again found himself wishing for the relative simplicity of the combat pilot’s role. Then he thought about Lobo, and the kind of near-instant decisions she’d been forced to make out there in the darkness, and decided maybe there were no simple answers for anyone anymore.
God, he wished Tombstone were here.
If there was one thing Tombstone Magruder hated, it was admitting that he enjoyed flying something other than a Tomcat.
He’d earned his call sign because of the lugubrious cast of his face and the fact that he was supposedly devoid of emotion. Yet here he was, grinning like a fool as he cranked the toy-like Pitts Special through its sixth barrel roll in a row, spinning the biplane so fast the ocean and sky turned into one mottled blur. Six rolls, seven, eight — it could go on forever, or at least as long as his stomach could take the abuse.
He eased the stick to the right to end the last roll, being careful not to overdo it: The Pitts was a sensitive beast, with a damned impressive power-to-weight ratio… for a prop-plane, anyway.
