tracking of anyone, is it? And even if it just fouls the sail, it will make it noisy enough that it’ll be easier for air assets to attack. That about it?”
The Coast Guard officer nodded. “Additionally, if you checked the aft deck closely, you’ll see that it’s capable of handling a small helo. The sort fishing vessels use. And I think I might just be able to rustle one up.”
“But who’s going to fly it? And what about the maintenance?” the Air Force officer asked.
“I believe I might be able to handle the helicopter myself,” Tombstone said quietly, well aware of the fact that it had been years since he’d flown rotary wing. But under the circumstances, who would quibble about his lack of current quals? Besides, he spent enough time recently flying his Pitts Special to feel fairly confident he could handle any civilian aircraft. “And maintenance — well, maybe we can draft a Coast Guard sailor who knows something about helicopters.”
“I can handle that end of things, Admiral.” The Air Force master sergeant stepped forward. “Before I got too senior to turn wrenches, I worked on rotary wing.” Something in the master sergeant’s voice left Tombstone with no doubt that the Air Force technician was more than up to the task.
For the first time in several hours, Tombstone felt the beginning of hope. He’d run the gamut of emotions during the day, from the exhilaration of starting his honeymoon with Tomboy to the agony of watching Pearl Harbor bombed. Now, listening to his team gel, coming up with solutions to problems he hadn’t even anticipated, he started to believe success was possible.
FIVE
IWA Captain Henry Mitchell stared down at the fuel indicator and ran the figures one more time. It was hopeless. Back in the old days, he would have had enough fuel to divert completely out of the area. But cost-cutting measures and penny-pinching bureaucrats had set up a new protocol. After examining the weather between San Diego and Hawaii, and allowing a comfortable margin for safety, the flight was fueled with a partial load.
Mitchell’s second in command, Commander Liam Nevins, glanced over at his captain and said, “It’s not like we have a choice, is it?”
“No, it’s not.” Captain Mitchell resigned himself to the conclusion both of them had reached independent of the computer program. “We’ll divert sixty miles north of Oahu and come in from the west. It’s the best I can do.”
Landing at another island wasn’t something that either of them felt comfortable with at all. But certainly they couldn’t go into their primary divert since there wasn’t enough fuel left at the time they first heard the news to divert back to San Diego. Consequently, after discussion with his ops center in San Diego, Mitchell made the decision. He would try to stay clear of the area with the fighter aircraft, consistent with fuel constraints, and still land somewhere in the windward chain. Over the last hour, the possible landing sites had been narrowed down to two.
Additionally, during his discussions with flight control, another problem had surfaced. His hydraulics indicator light was flickering and the computer printout indicated that there might be a problem with the braking system. Of course, there were backups upon backups, but if he couldn’t say for sure that he had a functional braking system, there was no way he was going to divert to any shorter airfield. Regardless of the military situation, he was responsible for these passengers and he needed safety equipment, foam trucks, and immediate repair parts and expertise available.
How was this all possible, anyway? Captain Mitchell had grown up during the days of the Cold War when there were still generations of soldiers who remembered Pearl Harbor. Hell, even today, there were people around who were there during the first attack. If asked, he would have said that foreign troops would never set foot on American soil. It was, even after Pearl Harbor, simply inconceivable.
Still, there had been indications throughout the world that the concept of the all powerful United States, respected throughout the world and virtually invulnerable, had been crumbling. It had begun, he thought, with the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Iran. It had degenerated since then, as America expended her military might on a series of small conflicts that really made no major differences he could tell in the state of the world. For every ethnic conflict that the U.S. or NATO stopped, another one sprang up. The much-publicized activity in Kosovo had gone on while the world ignored decades of ethnic cleansing operations in Africa. Now, with its assets and energy frittered away on inconsequential causes, the United States no longer demanded the respect of the rest of the world.
“Why did they do it?” he asked, shooting a look over at his younger second in command. “Why?”
Nevins shook his head. “I can see no good reason for them to do it,” he said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are recall orders waiting for me when we get back to the U.S. mainland.” While Captain Mitchell was a retired Air Force fighter pilot, Commander Nevins still had a few years remaining on his reserve commitment. As often as his civilian flight schedule would allow, he flew KC-135 tanking missions for the California National Guard.
The National Guard was completely funded by the federal government, although nominally under the command of the governor of the state of California. If so requested, however, the governor was obliged to federalize the troops immediately and transfer them to the Department of Defense. During any conflict, the tankers were among the first units recalled, as they had been in Kosovo.
“I don’t like it,” Mitchell said flatly, voicing the concern that was on both of their minds. “This aircraft has no business being anywhere near the combat region. We’ve got 320 souls on board — and they don’t even know what happening.” At the first hint of the conflict, Captain Mitchell had elected to terminate direct feed of news radio channels into the passenger compartment. “We’re taking them into a danger area, and they don’t even know it.”
Nevins smiled wryly. “Well, it’s not like we give them a vote, will we? Besides, no matter what they want — or what
“Don’t remind me. So, just for the sake of argument, what do we do if we run into any hostile activity? Or even a Chinese air patrol?” Mitchell’s voice had taken on a more strident military tone. It was the voice of a senior officer quizzing a junior one, not of one uncertain as to what he himself would do.
“Evasive maneuvers first,” Nevins said promptly. “We go low, get down to the surface of the ocean. Hope we can distract any missiles by wave action. In a worst-case scenario, at least that gives the passengers a better chance of survival, too. At low altitude, we can ditch fairly safely.”
They spent the next ten minutes discussing the unthinkable, planning how they would react if they ran into what they were beginning to call delicately “any problems.” Finally, when they both were certain they’d exhausted the short list of possibilities, they fell silent.
“Keep an eye on the radar,” Mitchell said, knowing that every moment he’d been talking to Nevins the man had had his eyes glued to it anyway.
“Roger, sir.”
Mitchell kept his hands poised lightly over the throttle quadrant, his gaze roving over the compartment and the airspace around him in a continuous scan. Old habits were coming back quickly, and he could feel the familiar thrill of adrenaline surging through his body. This might not be a fighter aircraft, but he was still a combat pilot. If there was anything that could be done to keep their passengers safe, it was up to him.
Chan leveled off at 31,000 feet. The MiG-33 felt superbly responsive under his hands, as though she had no need of the powerful engines to remain airborne. This was her natural element, where she belonged. Not sweltering on a hot deck of a merchant ship deck outfitted as a combat, nor baking on the tarmac under the sun. The MiG belonged airborne, far from the surface of the earth.
He would have thought of her as a butterfly, had she not been so deadly. Antiair missiles bristled under her wings, each one with a range of almost sixty miles. They were fire-and-forget weapons, each with miniaturized
