Hammerhead Resurrection Page 29

  “Did you know your dad?”

  “No. I only have photos.”

  “He was… an amazing pilot and a good man.”

  “I didn’t ask for generalities.”

  “Nate, his name was Nate Mikelson.”

  The hardness in the Master Sergeant’s eyes diminished somewhat, but still he said, “I didn’t ask for his name. I asked for his call sign.”

  “His call sign was Great White.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Master Sergeant Mikelson motioned for Jeffrey to enter the hangar. As Jeffrey’s eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw, parked row after row into the distance of the huge underground space, scores of Lakota. With them the glimmer of hope he’d felt, rushed into full life.

  “How many do you have?” Jeffrey asked Mikelson.

  “Two hundred Lakota and twenty C240 fuelers.”

  “Twenty?”

  Mikelson nodded, his expression blank. Jeffrey took him by the shoulders. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in the last three weeks.” He looked over his shoulder to the some fifty Marines he saw standing behind him. “The only way it could be better is if you tell me that they’re pilots.”

  “All, sir. The pilots remained here to utilize the Lakota if needed.”

  “They any good?”

  “They’re decent for Marine pilots,” Mikelson said with a shrug, “but compared to Navy pilots they’re amazing.” With that a smile broke out across his face, and he laughed. “Admiral Holt, I’d like to formally offer our services to your command. I’m tired of hiding.”

  “I appreciate that more than I can say. You have,” Jeffrey asked, “some fifty pilots here?”

  “Here? Yes, fifty.”

  Jeffrey no longer had to split his force between Wraiths and Lakota. He’d have more in space for the final assault on the last Sthenos destroyer, and more for clean up.

  As Mikelson said, “But,” Jeffrey held his hope carefully, “this is only one group. I’ve got them on duty in shifts. I have another one hundred bunked down and fifty in the back at mess.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “A total of two hundred one including me.”

  Jeffrey hugged him.

  …

  Mikelson walked out the main door of the base into the afternoon heat of the canyon. The day had progressed quickly with flight preparations, yet he felt drained. Like a boulder falling in a still lake, the sudden appearance of Holt had dashed his thoughts into a diffused mess.

  Most young boys grew up interested in stories of super heroes. The only stories Eric Mikelson had grown up asking his mother to tell were of his father. She would tell him about meeting him, falling in love. She would tell him how strong he’d been and how sweet—he’d pick up roses for her on Fridays. None of that, however, is what Eric wanted to hear.

  Whenever he asked about his father’s military career, she’d find some distraction to pull her away. He’d resented her for it, but he’d been resourceful. At sixteen, he’d gone to the Navy recruiter’s office in town. He told the recruiter that he wanted to meet someone who could tell him about his father. The recruiter had taken his number and asked what he had planned after high school.

  “No idea,” Eric had told him.

  The recruiter seemed satisfied with that answer.

  A week later the recruiter called. “Your father’s service records have been sealed.”

  “Who sealed them?”

  “That’s not for us to know.”

  That had been the end of it.

  Now, after so many years, he’d found a man who’d fought beside his father, perhaps been with him the day he died… and he couldn’t muster the guts to ask him about it.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They’d finished prepping the aircraft as the sky darkened and the first stars came out over the canyon. Jeffrey went through flight plans with Mikelson. With the added Marines, they would be bringing all the aircraft home. The fuelers would have copilots, leaving only twelve Lakota with additional pilots in the navigation officer’s seat.

  When they finished their discussion and briefed the pilots, Mikelson called out, “Crack it open.” With a ground-shaking vibration, a large section of the cavern’s ceiling dropped several feet toward them before rolling aside, exposing the twilight sky. Air rushing through the side door flushed the cavern with a desiccated desert fragrance, heated rock and cactus.

  They’d filled the fuelers from the base’s deep reserve tanks. The fueler teams would leave fifteen minutes apart for the next five hours. The extra time was painful, but the gaps were necessary to prevent any large signatures or obvious flight paths. The paired Lakota’s would leave after, and due to being smaller, only ten minutes apart. Still, flight groups would be departing throughout the night.

  Jeffrey would leave with the last fueler group, piloting one of the heavy busses as had been the plan.

  An approaching Marine said, “Sir, request permission to take your fueler from you. You should be in one of the Lakotas. With your abilities, should we need you, you’ll need to know one inside and out.”

  Jeffrey nodded his approval, fighting off a smile.

  Mikelson assigned Jeffrey a pilot called Hooka to ride navigation with him.

  Just before dawn, he sat in a Lakota cockpit with the young Marine as the last of the flights left. He didn’t ask how Hooka came by his call sign.

  The pilot of the other Lakota in Jeffrey’s pair was a Marine, call sign Obsessed. As Jeffrey lifted the Lakota off its landing skids, he felt the knife sharp flight characteristics right away.

  As they rose out of the hangar, the Lakota slipped sideways as if on ice.

  Hooka said, “These things hover like water on hot grease. To get them to calm down you have…” But he fell silent as the Lakota went table still, and Jeffery turned it 360 degrees. He’d only needed a few moments to feel the plane under him before he understood it.

  “Looks like you’ve got it,” Hooka said with a slightly disgusted tone. “Do you know how long I had to train to get a Lakota to settle down?”

  “Do you know how long I’ve been flying?”

  Hooka gave a slight laugh. “Fair.”

  Shoving the throttle forward, Jeffrey barrel rolled one hundred feet off the ground. Hooka grunted against the maneuver, but made no complaint.

  As they flew just off the deck, Hooka walked him through the two weapons systems the Lakota had been armed with. “First, we have the fifty cal machine gun, still the best way to put the hurt on something at close range.”

  “Fully gimballed?”

  “Yes, the crosshairs on your helmet HUD target it. Second are the mambo proximity missiles. As you know, guided missiles don’t work air-to-air anymore.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, “Too many effective countermeasures.”

  “The mambos work like old anti-aircraft guns.”

  “Flack?”

  “Exactly. You need only detonate one within five hundred feet of your target to inflict critical damage. A payload of grenade-sized cluster warheads with armor piercing fragments deploys in a sphere on detonation. You spread a few of those into a tight flight pattern, and the whole thing goes up in smoke.”

  “Do we have anything with a bit more precision?”

  “Not at the moment. We’re set up for air-to-air. Figured we wouldn’t be doing much bunker busting. No matter the payload, a Lakota couldn’t scratch a Sthenos destroyer.”

  “I like it, but friendly fire might be a problem.”

  “The FOF system assures the mambo is far enough away from friendlies before detonation. You can shoot it right over the head of your lead and into a swarm of enemy fighters, and it won’t detonate until it’s reached a safe distance from you and yours.”

  Jeffrey fell into silence as the scenario Hooka had painted began to draw up old memories, which Jeffrey shoved aside.

  They made their way across the southwest and back over the Gulf, Jeffrey taking a heading which would bring him ju
st under Cuba before vectoring back toward Columbia. His wingman Obsessed stayed to his four o’clock. As Jeffrey looked in the mirror at the bladed shape of the Lakota behind him, he wondered how the kid was doing. He wished he could key his mic, talk with him a bit. As he watched the shape of the Lakota, it bloomed into a ball of fire. Jeffrey, unable to understand what he’d seen, thought for a moment he’d had a full-blown PTSD reaction. He’d had a few incidents in his life, memories that stopped him short, but they’d never been visceral. He’d always known they were only memories. He’d heard of those whose memories came back so hard that they found themselves literally reliving their worst moments, but not him… never that bad.

  As Hooka said, “Bogies at seven, five, six high and six low, sir,” Jeffrey’s rational mind wouldn’t take hold of it. They’d have died in that moment, as Obsessive had, but his lizard brain, reacting without rational thought, had the Lakota on its side pulling hard. Jeffrey clenched his legs and his belly as he huffed air and hauled on the ship. He heard Hooka say something muddy, then nothing. He’d gone out, while Jeffrey had pulled more than sixteen G’s and had only developed perhaps a thirty percent visual tunnel.

  He could kill unmodified Hooka doing that.

  He throttled on and the airspeed rolled up from six hundred to eight and then a 1,000 and then 1,200 and then 1,400. Slowing, he curved in, his mind settling into the situation. The Sthenos had found them.

  “What the hell?” Hooka asked in a confused tone.

  “Grip it,” Jeffrey said, and he heard Hooka huffing. Jeffrey pulled hard to the right. As he came around, fired a missile blindly into the space he’d just occupied even before he saw the Sthenos fighters flashing through it. The lancing missile exploded in a football shape. Then, like a firework on the fourth of July, a series of secondary explosions flashed magnesium-bright. The flight of Sthenos fighters had been at the edge of that cloud, four… there’d been four in a tight diamond. Two bloomed black smoke and crashed in arcing white sprays into the clear-blue ocean.

  There were two more. He scanned his instruments.

  “Jesus Holt, quit knocking me out,” Hooka said.

  “You want to be conscious or alive?”

  “Alive. Now let me target them before you do anything.”

  Jeffrey flipped the Lakota around and arced away at seven G’s Hooka growling to stay conscious in the back. He switched left, a bit up, crossed over. As the sun swept by his field of vision the helmet dimmed automatically.

  “Nice.”

  As he waited for Hooka to paint him a target, an energy beam lanced through the space he’d jigged out of. Tipping the Lakota on its side, he shoved the control stick forward, almost redding out with negative G’s as another bright-green beam lanced by the cockpit within a few feet. As they pulled away from it, Jeffrey flipped his ship on its left wing and slammed on the air brakes, turning hard, probably taking Hooka back into unconsciousness again. Jeffrey offered a silent apology for what he was doing to the poor bastard.

  He let go of the G’s a bit and Hooka came back to him. “I’ve got him,” he said, sounding tired despite the moment’s intensity. Jeffrey gave him a lot of credit for being able to go completely out three times in a row and come right back to task. Most would have no idea where they were. “The trace is on your screen now.”

  Jeffrey saw his ship on the screen as a bright green dot and the Sthenos ship as a glowing red marker. Jeffrey flipped the ship into an inverted dive and a pen flew by his face and slapped into the top of the canopy. He flipped over, caught the pen with his left hand, and stuck it to his chest loop patch as he centered his reticule and gripped the main cannon trigger. Tracers lanced away from the cannon, meeting the Sthenos ship as it passed through where Jeffrey had guessed the pilot would go. A yellow ball of fire, born in the engines, ate the ship in a thousand millisecond bites, before pluming outward.

  Jeffrey pulled away, searching for the final target.

  “You must have hit something pretty vital for—”

  “Where’s the fourth bogey? Give me something to kill.”

  Jeffrey heard and felt the bang before he saw the dark shape whip right past his canopy close enough to touch. Scraps of metal scattered by with it.

  In an incredulous tone, Hooka said, “He ran into us.”

  “Yep, that wasn’t intentional or we’d be dead. He screwed up.” Jeffrey’d never seen a Sthenos make an error like that. These guys were definitely limited in atmospheric dog fighting.

  The stick shuddered in his hand. As the nose dropped, he pulled back. His artificial horizon stayed down. The entire ship began to shake as warning lights lit the dashboard.

  “We’ve lost both engines,” Hooka said, “Nothing left but to punch it. Get us slowed down.”

  The ship had already lost a lot of speed and Jeffrey waited for the indicator to go sub-mach before he hit the airbrake. His straps hauled on him. The airspeed dropped to four hundred, three hundred, two hundred.

  “Punch it,” Jeffrey said.

  In the mirror, he saw Hooka’s arms reach up over his head and haul down on the yellow and black handles. A bang was followed by a savage wind, which cracked at Jeffrey’s flight suit and tore at his face sucking the breath from his lungs. He released the controls, pulled his feet in, and gripped his harness to keep his arms in place.

  The cockpit filled with smoke as Hooka’s seat rocketed away. Jeffrey had ejected once before. He thought he remembered how hard the acceleration was, but he’d been kidding himself. The seat crushed into him as the cockpit vanished, leaving blurring blue. Another bang and an ass smacking sensation was followed by his seat falling away. The wind stilled as he went weightless, hanging out over the broad, sun-glittering Gulf. As he began to fall, the air rushed around him again. A tremendous blustering of nylon surrounded him, crack-cracked, and his chute straps hauled on him.

  He found himself floating in silence, the whine of the Lakota’s sputtering turbines fading away before it crashed into the water with a concussion of spray.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  After cutting away from his chute forty feet up, Jeffrey had crashed feet first into the depth of the water and sank. His ears popped as he sank. The life raft did not auto inflate as it should have. As he fumbled for the location to the cord, his ears spiked with pain and the water became deeper blue. Sinking deeper his lungs began to burn and he felt panic tickling at the back of his mind. He stopped searching for the cord and went still, the weight of his flight gear dragging him down.

  Where had the cord been? See it. Small rib. Left.

  His hand went to his side, and he felt the marble-sized plastic ball attached to a cord. He yanked on it. A roar erupted behind him as he felt the shape of the back raft form a perimeter behind him. The water went lighter. He broke the surface, settling onto his back, gasping a deep lungful of air. When he’d cleared the saltwater from his eyes, he saw Hooka not far off, floating with his head back as if unconscious.

  At least his raft had auto-inflated as it should have.

  With a sweep of his feet, Jeffrey turned his back to Hooka and kicked his way over. In the paleness of Hooka’s skin and the slight gap of his mouth, Jeffrey understood he was dead. As Hooka rocked, blood trailed away from him in the clear-blue water.

  Jeffrey gripped Hooka’s shoulder, pulled him close, and placed his hand on the young pilot’s chest.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t fly well enough.”

  He went through the young man’s pockets, taking his water and nutrient bricks. Turning the body around, he went through the other pockets, taking everything out and laying it on his own belly like a sea otter.

  Lastly, he put one of Hooka’s dog tags in his chest pocket, turned himself, and shoved off the body with both feet. Kicking away in casual, easy sweeps, he moved away from the plume of blood that Hooka had left in the water. He continued at an easy pace until Hooka was a distant shape. He didn’t need any sharks finding him after getting worked up over the blood.
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  Sipping at the water, he considered his location. They’d travelled approximately halfway across the gulf, headed for the Yucatan Peninsula. Beneath his back lay nearly two miles of water. The depth felt malicious, the rocking of the easy swell deceptively pleasant, putting him at ease before it killed him.

  Jeffrey had lived through so much that, when he told the young pilots that anyone lost could not be saved, he hadn’t considered it would be him. But it was, and there would be no location beacon, no last known position, and no rescue team, as was the plan.

  He thought of the Sthenos ships that had taken them down. He’d given somewhat better than he’d gotten, but had any of the other pilots encountered resistance? Perhaps all? It was possible that the Sthenos had tracked them the entire way. The Lacedaemon crash site had been left alone, perhaps not because the Sthenos were unworried about the possibility of resistance, but because they’d had them in crosshairs the entire time. He thought back to how quickly they’d lost the first and second engagements and felt intense despair. Had the Sthenos swatted them aside once again?

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The Lakota pilots, after spending their allotted three days in secondary locations, began arriving in the Amazon at dawn, which relieved Leif and, he felt sure, the rest of the personnel. Captain Donovan had coordinated the clearing of small landing zones, but as more and more Lakota came in, they realized the cleared forest wouldn’t be enough. Donovan ordered brush to be cut away and the uneven ground leveled with axes and shovels. The aircraft were rolled into those spaces under the canopy. After several hours, the men and women, backs soaked with sweat, had all the landing sites packed with aircraft.

  When the slower fuelers came in on broad wings hulking downward as if great vultures with shoulders hunched up around squat necks, Donovan ordered the marine, who identified himself as Master Sergeant Eric Mikelson, to have the fuelers land in the clearings beside the Lacedaemon until more suitable landing zones could be cleared. As the fuelers’ turbines faded beyond the tree tops, the forest fell into an ear-ringing silence.