Pirate (26 page)

“HELL OF AN AIRPLANE,” THE NEW AND IMPROVED CIA MAN
Harry Brock said, squinting his brown eyes in the midafternoon sun. The wind was out of the northeast and ripping whitecaps from the crests. Large ocean swells of clear turquoise water were heaving the broad steel deck fore and aft. Brock and Alex Hawke were standing on the USS
Lincoln
’s flight deck along with a group of sailors, fellow admirers who’d come up on deck to take a look at the future.

The experimental stealth fighter had drawn a crowd as soon as Hawke touched down six hours earlier. The F-35 Strike Fighter would soon complement or replace all the U.S. Navy F/A18 Super Hornets it now shared the carrier deck with. And, pending further development and the rigorous assessment of many more former U.K. combat aviators like Hawke, the Royal Navy would shortly be flying F-35s instead of the Sea Harriers.

The plane Hawke had landed on the
Abraham Lincoln
’s flight deck early that morning was simply the most advanced piece of flying machinery on earth. Capable of speeds approaching Mach 3, the single-seat supersonic fighter could also stop in midair. Literally, as Hawke had learned to his delight on his flight out from RAF Uxbridge. Fighter jocks liked this feature. It meant that when you hit the brakes in a dogfight, your pursuer rocketed past you to become your prey in a nanosecond. Confused the living hell out of them before they died.

The supercarrier USS
Abraham Lincoln
(CVN 72) was the flag-ship of the
Lincoln
Carrier Strike Group currently on station in the Indian Ocean. At 660,000 tons, with four and a half acres of flight deck, and in excess of six thousand men and women on board, it took two nuclear reactors generating a half-million horsepower to move her at battle speeds through the water. The good news was, once her reactors were topped off she was good for fifteen to twenty years without stopping for gas.

On orders from the navy’s Seventh Fleet, the
Lincoln
was now proceeding from a port visit in Hong Kong, steaming due west at flank speed some two hundred miles southwest of Sri Lanka. Neither Hawke nor Brock had been made privy to her ultimate destination; of course, they were only aboard for the emergency powwow recently hosted by the
Lincoln
’s new skipper, Admiral George Blaine Howell, and CIA director Brick Kelly. It had been a long meeting, full of bad news and frightening scenarios.

Hawke had been asked a question by Howell toward the end. “Commander Hawke,” the admiral said, “you’ve been very quiet during this briefing. You’ve seen all the projections, all the war-gaming, all the scenarios. The buildup of Chinese troops in the Gulf. I’d like to know what you think the navy’s strategy for dealing with this god-damn Chinese situation ought to be.”

“I think there’s only one long-term strategy for dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, Admiral Howell.”

“And what might that be, Commander?”

“We win, they lose.”

Howell had looked at him for a second and then a smile broke across his face.

“I think Commander Hawke has pretty well summed up my feelings as well, gentlemen. Any further comments? No? Thank you, everyone. Dismissed.”

Another bloody meeting, blessedly, over. Afterward, as the smoke cleared, Brock had ambled over to the corner where Hawke and Director Brickhouse Kelly were huddled in serious conversation. Brock waited at a discreet distance until the talk was over, then approached Hawke. He asked if he minded if Harry followed him down to Flight Ops. There were a number of things they needed to discuss, he said.

Brock wanted to see the plane, and he wanted to thank Hawke personally for snatching him from the Chinese. And the director had told Brock the night before he would be working with the Brit on an extremely sensitive mission in the Gulf. First, Hawke was to test the new no-fly zone the Americans had in place over Omani airspace: Operation Deny Flight. Then he was to link up with Brock on the ground.

This was an operation authorized by Hawke’s old flame Conch. Consuelo de los Reyes was the American secretary of state. She and Alex had a complicated past. It involved an on-again-off-again romance that just wouldn’t seem to die. For now, the best word to describe their relationship was comatose. Hawke had made a serious mistake. He’d gone running to Conch when his wife had been murdered. Deliberately or not, she’d misunderstood his intention. He’d only been looking for a port to weather the storm. She’d thought the mooring was to be permanent.

Now, after long months of tears and bickering, their relationship was back on a business footing.

De los Reyes had picked up hard intel from an asset inside the Muscat embassy. She’d learned that the sultan had been smuggled back into Oman and was possibly still alive although held hostage. Conch had decided that Hawke and Brock were to lead the small task force that would slip into Oman and gather hard intelligence on the sultan’s possible whereabouts. It was a straightforward assignment. Find him, get him out, get him in front of a camera speaking the truth about Bonaparte’s ruse. To discredit the Frenchman would go a long way toward resolving the current crisis without a war.

Oman is widely reputed to be one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Hawke was hardly surprised to learn Conch was sending him there. But, Brock? What the hell did she have against him? Brock was apparently headed straight to Oman, catching a ride aboard one of the Agency’s Citations. He would coordinate Kelly’s CIA operatives now moving from Saudi Arabia into Oman. Locate the sultan. Then he and Hawke would have to get him out.

Hawke had barely recognized Harry Brock. It had been well over two weeks since he’d last seen him. His eyes were clear. The shaggy hair and beard had been shorn, and Brock looked tanned and very fit. Part of his recovery had clearly taken place in the weight room. The broken, drugged, and wasted prisoner Hawke had found in the filthy storeroom aboard the
Star
was gone.

“Holy Jesus,” Brock now said, staring at the jet fighter. “Thing looks like the tip of a spear. Most beautiful damn airplane I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah,” Hawke said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the airplane either. Viewed from any angle it was a powerful work of engineering art. He was anxious for the techs who’d flown out to the carrier from Pratt & Whitney Europe to complete their work so he could climb back into that seat and light the monster up again.

One of the techies had found a glitch with the F-35’s STOVL nozzle while Hawke was in Admiral Howell’s briefing. Part of the new propulsion system was a nozzle that directed exhaust gases for short takeoff and vertical landing capability. The STOVL system was working beautifully when Hawke took off in England and also when he had landed. But brand new fighters were full of surprises.

The techs had fixed that particular glitch, the Pratt & Whitney rep had told him, but they were still checking and rechecking the entire aircraft. A discernible glitch often hid an indiscernible glitch. The obsessive tech squad’s exhaustive inspection was understandable. Hell, it was a fifty-million-dollar airplane. And, although it had been in development for ten years, the lift fan and propulsion system was still in P&W’s System Development and Demonstration Phase. Translation: It had taken the better part of a decade and they’d got a lot of the bugs out. But maybe not all of them.

Hawke had already completed his own preflight inspection. But right now, at least ten guys were crawling all over his airplane. He was supposed to be airborne in thirty minutes. His next stop was an airfield in Italy where U.S. and U.K. representatives of the Joint Strike Force fighter project were waiting to debrief him. From there, he had just learned in the briefing, he would be flying the plane to Oman.

“You some kind of test pilot, Hawke?” Brock asked.

“I guess I am now. Used to be an ordinary fighter jock.”

“Is that an upgrade or a downgrade?”

“Beats me. But it’s some ride.”

“Bat out of hell, huh? Christ, it looks like one.”

“More interesting than fast. The damn thing has a mind of its own. Practically flies itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hard to explain. That airplane takes advice, not orders. It’s always one step ahead. You even think about something, the plane does it. You think, Okay, I’ll pull the nose up fifteen degrees, right? Sorry. Airplane’s already done that.”

“Just don’t think about crashing,” Brock said with a wry smile.

“Never crosses my mind.”

“Good. We got a lot of work to do in the next few weeks, you and me.”

“Right. My new partner. The director just told me. Whose mind did that wicked idea spring forth from?”

“Don’t look at me, sir. I’m just a lowly field wonk.”

“Just because I saved your life doesn’t mean I have to dance with you.”

Brock laughed. “Somebody at Langley thinks we’re good casting is all I can tell you, Hawke. Listen, I gotta ask you this. You think we’ll go to war with China? Is that where we’re headed?”

Hawke looked at the American carefully and considered his heavily loaded question. He liked the man well enough, and he’d just learned he was going to be working with him; at some point he had to trust him. But he hardly knew the guy. Brick Kelly had told him Brock was mean and clean. The CIA docs had finally determined that the Chinese hadn’t planted any bugs in his brain. They’d eliminated the Manchurian Candidate scenario completely.

Agent Harry Brock, Brick said, knew more about what the hell was going on inside China than anyone else at Langley. The intel he’d gathered during six months inside her borders was one of the key reasons so much brass had gathered here on the
Lincoln.
Because of what Brock had been able to learn, the current mood in Washington and London was more than a little tense. As a result, everybody in both capitals was tiptoeing around, walking on eggshells these days. Times like this, you wanted to watch every word you said.

So Hawke said, “I think they’re testing our resolve. What do you think, Brock?”

Over the American’s shoulder, Hawke saw crew disconnecting the external power lines that ran across the deck to the gleaming F-35. It was a hopeful sign he’d be airborne shortly.

Brock said, “Hell, Hawke, I think we’re back in the nuclear soup is what I think.”

Hawke just looked at him.

Brock shook his head as if trying to clear the cobwebs. He was edgy. Hawke was edgy. Hell, everybody was. According to everything the two men had heard in the last three hours, the whole bloody world was going to hell in a handbasket. It looked like a return to the bad old days of a nuclear standoff and mutually assured destruction. Yesterday, a huge bomb had blown the French president Guy Bocquet sky high along with one whole wing of the Elysée Palace. France was teetering on the brink of revolution.

The last thing they’d seen in the briefing room was French television video of cheering throngs held back by police cordons as Bonaparte rode up the Champs Elysées on a big white stallion. Kind of picture you didn’t forget.

The new French government, now firmly in Bonaparte’s hands, had just announced it was seriously considering the sultan of Oman’s invitation. Many in France viewed this as an invasion of a sovereign Gulf state, but no one dared say such things openly anymore. Oman was a small nation of some three million souls that had had a long and important relationship with both Britain and America. But the leadership of France was claiming they’d been “invited” into Oman by the reigning sultan, the British-educated Aji Abbas.

The clip of the missing sultan’s press conference ran endlessly on France 2 television. In it, the sultan claimed French troops were desperately needed to quell a radical insurgency supported by the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

Kelly wasn’t buying it. Nor was the American president. It was, they both believed, a French fabrication backed by Chinese muscle. The sultan had disappeared shortly after his speech. The United States had Omani intel indicating that the sultan’s family was under house arrest in a former seaside fortress on the coast of Oman. Why? The Americans knew the men holding them there were French secret service and military abetted by a large number of Chinese “technical advisors.” In any case, Hawke was fairly certain neither his country nor the Americans would just stand idly by and let France invade Oman.

There was now a French diplomatic mission in the capital of Muscat ironing out the logistics of the impending French deployment. And sat photos depicted a squadron of French Mirage fighters parked on the ramp at Oman’s Muscat Airfield.

As of this morning, Oman still honored an understanding to allow the United States to use port and air base facilities. Hawke’s first F-35 mission was to test that understanding. He was to enter Omani airspace unannounced and land at Muscat International. See if anybody tried to shoot him down. Meet briefly with airport authorities and then get the hell out of there and report what he’d seen. Both America and Britain, who still imported Oman’s oil, had a vested interest in the tiny country’s sovereignty. Economically, politically, and morally.

It should come as a surprise to no one that the
Lincoln
Carrier Strike Group was now headed for the Indian Ocean. From there, it was an easy move north into the Gulf of Oman. The interesting part would come when they encountered the Chinese fleet, now en route to join forces with the French.