Damage Control. Gordon Kent

cell-phone system’s swamped.”

      “Hotel.”

      “Yeah, exactly what I think.” They were staying at a beach hotel ten miles away. The hotel was as close to a home as they had.

      Fidel nodded. “Car park, the van, then hotel, gotcha. You any good with that gun?”

      “Not bad.”

      “I’m a lot better than not bad.” Fidel held out his hand for the gun. “You lead, I shoot, Commander.”

      AG 703

      “Sri Lanka,” Soleck said quietly. Every airfield he could find and plot, he had entered into a chart on his computer, complete with range rings.

      “203 is inbound for gas, figures he has eight minutes of fuel remaining.” Gup still spoke in a monotone, but tracking the fuel for eleven other planes was keeping his mind occupied.

      Soleck had walled off the emergency, taken a bite out of his own responsibilities and was chewing hard. He cycled frequencies on the radio until he had AW. “AW, this is 703, over.”

      “Go ahead, 703.” Different voice.

      “Any luck on a bingo?”

      “Negative, 703.” The speaker’s voice went up an octave. “We’re trying to raise anyone in southern India and we’re—”

      Soleck cut him off. “Can you raise Trincomalee in Sri Lanka? They’re a little over five hundred nautical miles from us. Different country. Maybe whatever’s going down in India isn’t there. We’re going to splash a Hornet if we don’t start tanking.”

      “Wait one.”

      Soleck watched his instruments for a few seconds, thinking of the decision process that would have to happen on the bridge of the Fort Klock—the country clearance, the levels of military bureaucracy. He made his decision and turned the plane east, pointing the nose toward the distant island of Sri Lanka. Then he dialed up strike common, which was being used by all the pilots airborne. “203, this is 703, over.”

      “703, this is 203, go ahead.” Donitz sounded professional, unhurried, despite the fact that his plane was running on fumes.

      “203, am I correct that you are strike lead?”

      “703, no one has told me that, but yeah, I think I’m the only el kadar in the air.”

      “Sir, I’d like to get the stack moving towards Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. I’m assuming that their field is open and they’ll let us in. The distance is five seven five nautical miles from my position and my best guess is that we can get all of you there with enough gas to land.”

      “Soleck, I don’t even have Trincomalee on my bingo card.”

      “Me, either, sir. But Alpha Whiskey says southern India is down and it’s the best I can come up with. Every minute we stay here wastes gas. Worst case, we’ll be feet-dry in an hour and someone will give us a vector to an Indian field.”

      “Do it. I don’t have the comms or computers to figure this out. You sure?”

      “Sure as I can be. It’ll be close. Break, break. All planes, this is 703. 706 will rendezvous on 703 at angels one-one course 110, speed two hundred knots. Planes will tank as called by 703 in fuel priority. Sound off.”

      Soleck was pleased to watch Gup making check marks next to the planes he had listed on his kneeboard as they called in.

      The thing was doable.

      Mahe Naval Base, India

      They parted company with the Marines and the Indian sailors outside the headquarters building and then huddled in a window embrasure while shooting sounded in the street. A car had been blown up down the block, maybe by a rocket-propelled grenade, and the Marine sergeant said that a lot of the firing was coming from a security building down there.

      “We’ll have to go the back way,” Alan said. He pointed. Down behind the buildings was a chain-link fence and then weeds—grass, scrub bushes, a few trees. “There’s a creek down there somewhere. Wasteland.” He knew what the base looked like on a map, knew that the creek divided it so completely that a bridge had been built over it. The wasteland might give them cover. He looked at Fidel. “Unless you want to hole up inside again.”

      Fidel held up the CZ. “With one handgun? Any kid with a weapon could waste the lot of us.” He shook his head. “Lead us to the wasteland, Commander.”

      AG 703

      A voice in Soleck’s headset said, “This is AG 101, two hundred miles north of your position, will rendezvous en route; I’m good for fuel and can probably make Trincomalee from here, over.” 101 was a Tomcat up north, which rang a bell in Soleck’s head. Two bells, in fact.

      “Where’s Stevens?” he said aloud. And he remembered the ESM cut on the rescue frequency. He pressed buttons on his armrest, minimizing the display of the Indian airfields and going back to his ESM screen, where the computer had taken enough cuts on the transmission to locate the original transmission to a point. He overlaid 101’s position and grunted.

      “101, this is 703, I have you in the link. Can you turn east to my mark in the link and investigate a transmission on search and rescue, over? We’ve got a plane missing.”

      “Roger, 703, I see your mark. I’ll be there in two. Stand by.”

      Soleck switched freqs to Alpha Whiskey. “AW, this is 703, over.”

      “Go ahead.”

      “AW, I’ve conferred with Strike Lead in 203 and we’re taking the stack east toward India with hopes of making Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Hope you’ll get us permission to land there or another field in the area.”

      “703, this is Captain Lash. Make it so, 703.” Lash was decisive, which helped. It was going to be close. Worse than close, if Soleck’s fears for his squadron commander were proven correct.

      “Roger. Out.”

      “203’s six minutes to empty, two minutes out from us.” Guppy was trying to do three things at once and having some success.

      “Get the drogue out, deploy the FLIR camera. We’ll watch them come in, save time and gas.”

      “Roger.” The sound of the fuel line deploying was audible even through his helmet.

      “203, you’re first at the basket. Drogue should be out and deployed.”

      “Copy. I see it. On the way.”

      “Roger.”

      Strike common was blinking. Soleck dialed it up. “Go ahead?”

      “703, this is 101. I have eyeballs on a man in the water, no response on the radio, over.”

      “One of ours?” Soleck knew it was. It had to be somebody from Stevens’s plane; there was no use pretending otherwise. Even strict emissions-control procedures wouldn’t have kept Stevens from hearing what was going on on virtually every frequency.

      “I’m turning again. Yeah. He’s not waving. Not moving much—shit!”

      The last was in a different tone of voice. Soleck listened for a moment and called, “101? This is 703, please respond, over.”

      Silence. Not static, but silence. Soleck switched to cockpit-only. “Sorry, Gup. Recalculate your fuel assuming no give from Commander Stevens. Get Air Ops to do it, too. Tell me how it comes out.”

      He already had a figure in his head, and it wasn’t good. He looked down, flipped his screen image to FLIR and rotated the FLIR pod to look back and down at the refueling drogue. Almost immediately, he saw