Chapter 4

4

Not every day? Tom didn't have a good answer to that. He flew plenty, by Navy standards. Anti-sub patrol, SAR, practice and training flights. But not every day? He was thrilled when he flew more than a few times a week.

And the flying itself!

He'd never even conceived of, much less tried, a third of the maneuvers that Fin had put them through. Her pointers on his technique were like gold. He finally realized that he just might have found that next-level challenge he'd been looking for—without realizing he was looking for it. That it had arrived in the form of his teenage lover rated as a pure bonus.

By the time they returned, three more birds were being prepped on deck. In the briefing room, the space was crowded. Pilots, crew chiefs, and a six-man Delta Force action team. He picked out the ship's captain sitting at a desk that made this his deck-level office when it wasn't cluttered with a mission briefing. They traded salutes.

"Bit of a sticky wicket, but we much appreciate your filling in, Lieutenant."

"My pleasure, Commander Ramis." Because there was nothing else to say to your arcane commanding officer who thought this was a Victorian-era British Ship of the Line instead of an American warship.

"Time!" Kara called out. He checked his watch, twenty seconds past the hour. He must be running fast because nobody was as punctual as a Night Stalker. Sure enough, the big readout on the wall blinked to exactly the hour the moment he glanced at it—as if she'd anticipated even that brief delay in normal human cognition.

"You ready, Fin? Gets real now," he whispered to her as he dropped onto a sofa between her at one end and a massive Delta Force operator at the other.

"This is my jam, Fence."

He'd flown plenty of ugly patrols for the Navy, including up and down these local seas chasing pirates, and standoffs with Iranian boats. He'd thought he was doing well…until the transfer to the USS Peleliu showed up. Assigned to a ghost ship wandering the high seas? The last six months he'd watched from the sidelines of being a SAR pilot, still wondering how he'd screwed up his career so badly that he'd been assigned here.

But now? A chance at real action again? "My jam too," he told Fin as the last of the mission personnel finished settling.

Kara flashed a map up on the big monitors. The room went silent, giving him the last word—a very rare success around Fin unless the last fourteen years had changed her. He'd count it as a triumph.

Then, as Kara drew in a breath to speak, Finella whispered for his ears alone, "We'll see how you feel now that you've climbed over the fence, Fence."

Without a good comeback, and losing the last word point, he turned to see what the hell he'd gotten into.

When he focused on the map, he blanched.

Fin's soft curse concurred.

Parked in the Gulf of Aden where the southern end of the Red Sea squeezed tight then shat on Yemen to the north and Somalia to the south, their missions had been predictable.

Somalia was so desperate that pirates were once gain venturing out into the shipping lanes, hunting for cargo ships to capture and ransom. Pirate hunting, dormant on this coast for most of a decade, was back.

And the Yemeni to the north were simply shooting at whatever had put them in a foul mood that morning. Of course, he'd never heard of any extremist Muslim leader who wasn't a dictatorial warmonger in a permanently foul mood. Now they were targeting passing ships like they were those moving ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. At some point the US, British, and a few other Euro-powers were either going to trounce their asses or, his bet, turn their ships for home and abandon the region. There was a strong sentiment in the Navy that some people should be left to destroy themselves to their heart's content.

The Peleliu was perfectly positioned to confront either country. Though it had struck him as odd. The Special Operations Command base in Djibouti lay close by the Gate of Grief, the Bab-el-Mandeb, which formed the entry to the Red Sea with the Suez Canal at its far end. The 160th SOAR had been flying protection against the Somali pirates and staging strategic raids into Yemen since their arrival in the area last week. But based on what he was seeing on the big screen, he now guessed that SOAR had come racing over from offshore Pakistan for a very different mission—this one.

They weren't taking on either incredibly annoying failed state of a country that cared more about killing people than feeding them. They were here for this single secret mission under the disguise of being here for other purposes.

The next stop north of Somalia, Djibouti made up the African side of the Bab-el-Mandeb. They had found relative safety by hosting multiple military bases. A former French colony, French forces now guaranteed the country's military sanctity. The only major US base on the entire African continent took up a whole side of their main airport as well as a field six klicks outside the city for all the drones and UAVs launched into the region. Japan and China each had their only overseas bases, anywhere, in this city.

And the map on the screen was a detailed image of one of those—the Chinese base.

Kara, as the Air Mission Commander, started the briefing. "The US can't take action from within the country without risking our own base's land lease."

"Hence, the Peleliu," Fin whispered as if speaking to herself.

Right. A secret, stealth mission from offshore was different than an attack launched from within Djibouti itself against a Chinese base situated on Djibouti soil. If not detected, it wouldn't matter. But he'd bet that every US asset on Djibouti was grounded tonight to prove that whatever happened, it hadn't involved the Americans.

He leaned in to whisper back, "But what?—"

"You've all had a chance to recognize this place. Here's what's happening." Kara cut him off as she addressed the room.

Fin's smirk said that, yes, once again she'd managed the last word.

"The Chinese," Kara stabbed a finger toward the map, "have been firing lasers at our jets and our pilots. They deny it, of course, but on the plus side they're firing dazzlers, not blinders, so they aren't doing anything that does permanent damage—yet. It's not enough that we're fighting Somali pirates and Iran-backed Houthi lunatics in Yemen. Our supposed ally is screwing with us. That ends tonight."