Call to Duty Page 2

  “Red One, bandit turning south,” Falcon said.

  “Turn to one-eight-zero,” Ruffy said. They were in a tail chase again.

  “Red One, vector now one-eight-zero,” Falcon said, reacting slower than Ruffy to the bandit’s heading changes.

  “Red One,” Falcon said, “the bandit has dropped from my coverage. Maintain your current heading.”

  “The bastard’s taking advantage of a break in the clouds,” Zack said over the intercom. “He’s dropped below Falcon’s radar coverage and running for home on the deck.” The flickering of a light on the horizon caught his attention. “Ruffy, get your binocs on that light at ten o’clock.” He waited for his navigator to rotate his seat forward and focus the binoculars he always carried.

  “Can’t tell much,” Ruffy said. “Maybe a fire. Hold on…I believe it’s growing. Yes…much bigger now. Definitely a fire on the surface.”

  Zack relayed the information to Falcon. “Red One,” the GCI controller answered, “Air-Sea Ops reports a sweep in that area.” Zack acknowledged the transmission. The RAF had its own fleet of small, very fast launches known as the Air-Sea Rescue Service that operated in the waters around Britain, rescuing airmen forced down in the sea. If one of their boats was on patrol, that fire could mean trouble.

  “Ruffy, I’m going to check it out.” Zack radioed his intentions to Falcon, retarded the throttles, nosed over, and headed straight for the glowing beacon. He descended to five hundred feet and slowed as they circled the brightly burning fire, sizing up the situation and not closing. Now Zack could clearly see a burning boat and rafts in the water. He gauged the boat to be about sixty feet long—the right size for an Air-Sea launch.

  A stream of tracers reached out of the night, slicing across the dark directly in front of them. Zack’s reflexes were razorsharp and he wrenched back on the yoke and ruddered the Beau around, easily avoiding the tracers. “At your four o’clock,” Ruffy shouted, “on the surface, another boat.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Zack caught a dark movement in the water—the source of the tracers. The shape took on a harder definition as he circled and maneuvered until the unknown boat was between him and the moon. “I think it’s an E-boat,” he said, climbing to three thousand feet. “Falcon, Red One,” he transmitted over the radio. “We are in contact with what looks like an E-boat and a smaller launch that is burning in the water.”

  “Red One,” Falcon answered, “I hold you in the area where bandit last observed.”

  A warning signal started bonging inside Zack’s head, jolting his emotions. Without thinking, he hauled back on the control column and firewalled the throttles. At the same time he sawed back and forth on the rudder pedals. “What…” Ruffy said over the intercom, the sudden erratic maneuver throwing him around. A dark shape materialized out of the darkness, skidding across the sky beneath them.

  “A Junkers Eighty-eight,” Zack said, breathing hard, working against the heavy control loads. “Night fighter. Where the hell did he go?”

  “Tallyho!” Ruffy shouted. “At your three o’clock. Low.” Zack rolled the Beau and pulled down to his three o’clock position. He caught a glimpse of the German plane as he turned, its nose on him and climbing. He skidded the Beau to the right and jabbed at the gun button. A short burst of tracers reached out for the Junkers as he passed under the German, going in the opposite direction. He missed. Now he pitched back after the German, trading his airspeed for altitude.

  “Falcon,” Zack radioed, “help please.” He wanted to know where the Junkers had gone.

  “The bandit is to the north,” came the immediate reply. Zack turned northward and continued to climb.

  “I have him on the box,” Ruffy said, his voice amazingly calm. “Four miles, slightly left and above you.”

  “Contact,” Zack radioed to Falcon as they entered the cloud deck. “Christ! We’re in the clouds,” he told Ruffy.

  “It’s okay, he’s not maneuvering,” Ruffy said. “Come left five degrees; we’re closing.” Zack followed Ruffy’s directions as he played the throttles. They slowly closed. “Range, half mile,” Ruffy said.

  The cockpit filled with light as they broke out on top of the cloud deck, directly behind and underneath the Junkers. Zack drove in closer. The German filled the lighted gun ring on his reflector sight and he selected the cannons. His right thumb brushed the firing button but he hesitated, wanting to close. Suddenly, the Junkers skidded to the right and pitched into a steep dive. The German crew wasn’t going to be surprised.

  Zack hauled the Beau around, following, determined to get the Junkers, and chased him down into the cloud deck. Now they were in a sixty-degree dive in the clouds. “On the nose, two hundred yards,” Ruffy said. “Lost him in the ground clutter. Sorry.”

  The engines howled and the fuselage shook as Zack pushed the dive past 350 miles per hour. He concentrated on the instruments. “Come on, baby,” he coaxed, hoping the artificial horizon wouldn’t give up. He was sweating from the strain of muscling the ten-ton fighter through the sky. Again, that internal warning screamed at him and he hauled back on the control column and raked the throttles aft. The warnings grew louder and he pulled back harder while he spun the elevator trim wheel with his right hand, feeding in nose-up trim. He used both hands to pull back on the yoke, forcing the nose of the plane to lift. Slowly, the nose came up and the wind noise quieted down.

  They bottomed out of their dive as they broke out of the clouds, two hundred feet above the choppy surface of the North Sea. The Junkers screamed by them, going straight down. “What the hell,” Zack shouted as the German crashed into the sea, “we overshot him in the dive.” He pushed the throttles forward and circled the sinking wreckage. Silence. An empty feeling that had replaced his stomach and a weariness from hauling the Beau around the sky mauled his emotions. Then it hit him: Only that eerie warning, that strange sixth sense he had never experienced before, had saved them—twice. He wondered about that. Another thought occurred to him. “Did we get a kill?” he asked, more to himself than to Ruffy.

  “Looks like Sir Isaac got him,” Ruffy allowed.

  “Beg pardon?” Zack asked, confused.

  “Sir Isaac Newton. Gravity.”

  Zack returned to business and headed south, hugging the surface and staying below the clouds, returning to where they had last seen the burning boat. When they broke free of the clouds, they could see a glow on the surface in front of them. “Got it,” he told Ruffy. As they approached, the pilot could make out the silhouette of the E-boat, motionless on the surface. A burst of tracers reached out from the boat toward them and Zack hauled the Beau around, staying out of range. “What the hell…” he muttered.

  “I’ve got the glasses on him,” Ruffy said. “He’s picking up survivors still in the water.”

  For a moment, Zack considered attacking the E-boat—a strafing run with the twenties. But an attack would drive the E-boat off and leave the men to their fate in the frigid waters of the North Sea. “How long do you think they can last in the water?” he asked.

  “In December?” Ruffy answered, “Not bloody long.” He was thinking the same thing. “Why don’t you drop it in Falcon’s lap? Let him make the decision.” Zack agreed and climbed above the E-boat, staying out of range. He could see it start to move while he established contact with GCI. Falcon asked him how certain he was that it was an E-boat and Zack admitted that he could not be positive as it was night. Falcon gave them a vector back to their patrol area and said he would pass the sighting on to Coastal Command and Air-Sea Ops. “It could be one of ours, old chap,” the controller told him.

  “You think it might be Young Ernst?” Ruffy asked. Young Ernst was the name Intelligence had given to Enrst Hofmann, a twenty-four-year-old E-boat captain whose reputation had reached legendary proportions as he worked at will along the British coast, sinking targets of opportunity with impunity.

  It all came together for Zack. “Ruffy, I’ll bet you a pint that Junkers wa
s working with that E-boat.”

  “Flying cover?”

  “Perhaps. Maybe finding targets. The Jerries might have come up with a new tactic.” He made another mental note to mention it when they debriefed Intelligence.

  An hour later Falcon told them to return to base and they headed back to land.

  THE PRESENT

  The Andaman Sea, Between India and Malaysia

  The girl’s head popped above the coaming of the cockpit and her eyes blinked, driving the haze away. Nothing had changed from the day before—the water’s surface was mirror smooth and the sails hung empty in the still, unbelievably clear morning air. Frustration clouded her eyes and she refused to accept the lack of motion, the sense of nothing happening, a world at rest. She kicked out a long leg and banged her foot against the lifeless wheel of the sixty-five-foot sailboat. The only response was a sharp pain in her ankle.

  Roll with it, Heather Courtland told herself as she rubbed her foot. So you’re becalmed in the Andaman Sea, about two hundred miles north of nowhere. She studied the horizon, trying to see the coast of Malaysia or Thailand to the east. You can’t get any further out of it, she moaned to herself. Why did I ever do this? The haze was threatening again, moving onto the shoreline of her awareness.

  Again, she swept the horizon, wondering how far she could see, looking for the telltale signs of a wind stirring the sky or water. Nothing. Then she caught a smudge on the horizon but dismissed it. Probably a freighter sailing between Singapore and Calcutta, she thought, or maybe a supertanker headed for the Straits of Malacca on its way to Japan. She was too lazy to reach for the binoculars hanging from the compass in front of the wheel. A mistake.

  The top of Troy Spencer’s mass of tangled blond hair appeared in the dark of the cabin’s companionway and hesitated as he stumbled up the ladder. Then the rest of his head appeared in the sunshine. He scooped up the bottom of her bikini and tossed it overboard when he reached the deck. She watched without comment as it drifted beside the boat before sinking. They were a matched pair: naked, skinny, blue-eyed, and with blond hair that reached to their shoulders. Even the single diamond earring that dangled from their pierced nipples was part of a matched set that had cost over four thousand dollars on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Only their tattoos differed. His was a bold spiderweb on the right shoulder, hers a small coiled snake and impossible to see unless she wanted to show it. That was one of the many deferences paid to her father—something they both understood.

  “You still with it, babes?” he asked.

  “No way,” she groused. “I need a blast. Gimme a bullet.” Troy Spencer grunted and disappeared back down the companionway.

  She slapped the teak deck surrounding the cockpit as she waited impatiently for him to return. She drew her fingernails across the well-oiled teak, not caring about the beautiful sloop that belonged to Ricky Martel and Nikki Anderson, the other couple with them. The sailboat was a masterpiece of yachting perfection with its gleaming varnished woodwork and polished brass fittings. Down below, the cabins were comfortable and the boat was packed with the latest electronic gear for communications and navigation. Only the constant attention of the professional crew, Mark Livingston and his wife, DC, had kept the boat in tiptop shape and in good order. Heather wasn’t sure which of them, Ricky or Nikki, owned the sailboat and doubted if they really knew or cared. Ricky Martel and Nikki Anderson had made a small fortune from their heavy-metal band, Poison Pig, and its number one hit song, “Cock the Bitch Silly.” Not that they needed the money, since both came from wealthy families.

  Heather wished she had never let Troy, Ricky, and Nikki talk her into flying to Mombasa, Kenya, to board the boat, which Mark and DC had sailed down from Cannes, France. But Troy had promised her an endless supply of good coke and that had been enough. Once at Mombasa, Ricky and Troy had purchased a kilo of coke from a contact Troy knew and they had set sail for Karachi, Pakistan. There, Ricky had wheeled and dealed a half kilo of high-grade heroin from a dissipated, and very rich, fan of Poison Pig and stashed it aboard the boat. Then they had sailed around Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India and called in at Madras. But the Indian authorities had proved to be less than tolerant of the rich Americans and only a large and well-placed bribe had allowed them to escape with their cargo intact. Rather than retrace their steps, they had decided to sail into the South Pacific and consume their hoard of drugs in the idyllic solitude of a blue lagoon. Now they were becalmed in the Andaman Sea between India and Malaysia.

  “Come on, Spencer,” she urged, impatient at the long delay in his return. The corners of her lips pulled down and she smothered her irritation. Instead, Heather Courtland contrived ways to make Troy Spencer more attuned to her desires. It was a lesson she had learned from her father. “Dear old father,” she said as a mental image of Senator William Douglas Courtland in a full rage played in front of her. Her soft lips pulled into a dark frown and she forced the image away. She never wanted to experience the reality of that rage again. Heather had learned discretion.

  Her father had driven that lesson home to her from that very first time when she was eleven and later when she was a teenager. He had made it most clear that discretion was a key to survival, especially in the political jungle he prowled. Rebelling and determined to be free of him, Heather tried to do as she pleased. He had been most gentle and kind trying to persuade her to follow his rules. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of continuing to go against his wishes and ran headlong into the impenetrable wall of resistance her father built around her. Overnight, her privileges and pampered way of life started to disappear. The more she rebelled, the more things disappeared. Then she found herself in an all-girls school in Colorado that operated on the principle that good conduct had rewards of many kinds. Heather Courtland soon learned how to change her behavior to get what she wanted. Her education was complete.

  Loud voices echoed up from the cabin and she could hear Mark Livingston’s loud bellow. “Heather! Get your ass down here!”

  “What now?” she mumbled as she pulled herself up.

  Mark’s wife, DC, short for Dana Claridge, was standing in the galley as she climbed down the ladder. “For God’s sake, Heather,” DC snapped, “put something on.” She threw Heather one of the T-shirts from Ricky and Nikki’s band. Heather threw the shirt onto the settee and ignored DC. The hired help would not tell her what to do. She deliberately rubbed past Mark as she moved forward to where Troy and Nikki were standing. Heather admired Nikki because she was living proof that a girl could never be too skinny or too rich. Unlike Heather, Nikki Anderson was wearing clothes—the bottom of a bikini. Nikki’s small breasts were firm and pointed. A fine gold chain was strung between the gold rings that pierced each nipple.

  “I got this off Troy,” Mark said, his voice low and full of anger. He was holding one of the plastic bags that contained three “bullets” and a vial of cocaine. “You are the stupidest collection of dumb shits I have ever met.”

  “Not your fuckin’ worry,” Ricky Martel said. He was sitting at the table eating the breakfast DC had cooked, seemingly unconcerned about Mark’s anger. Ricky and Troy were mutual clones and both were highly ranked in the heavy-metal hierarchy with masses of teased hair, tattoos, and a hard-core drug habit. Like Troy, Ricky was skinny but his arms and legs were sticklike with no muscular development. The other noticeable difference was their hair. While Troy’s was a natural blond, Ricky’s was dyed jet black and had a hairpiece woven in to give it the fullness required by his rank.

  Heather had never seen Mark Livingston so angry and she felt a tingle in the area below her navel as she watched the heavy chest muscles of the former football player from the University of Miami contract and expand. She liked Mark’s well-conditioned body and her eyes dropped, studying his cutoff shorts. She wondered what he was like in bed.

  “Look,” Mark growled, now in control, “we’re low on water, food, fuel, and just about everything else except this goddamn shit.” He wa
ved the plastic bag. “I told you we’re going to Penang in Malaysia and you promised me the boat was clean.”

  “Like I said, dude,” Ricky replied, “it’s not your worry.”

  “I guarantee you it won’t be after we reach Penang,” DC said from the galley. Mark’s wife was the image of the all-American college girl, athletic with an eye-catching figure, pretty face, and light brown hair pulled back into a pony tail.

  “You thinkin’ of jumping ship?” Troy asked.

  “For-get-it,” Ricky snarled. “No way I’ll pay you. What you gonna do without bread in shit-ass Malaysia?” He had kept Mark and DC from leaving earlier by threatening not to pay them. He was confident the threat would work again.

  “Watch,” Mark said. He threw the plastic bag to DC, who threw it out the hatch and overboard.

  “What the fuck you think you’re doing?” Ricky roared. He and Troy ran up the ladder and dove overboard to save the bag. Heather and Nikki raced after them. Once the two couples were out of the cabin, Mark banged the hatch shut and dogged it down, sealing them in. “Hey, you assholes!” Troy yelled when he climbed back on board, “Open the fuckin’ door.”

  “No way,” Mark yelled back. “Come on,” he told DC, “let’s shake the boat down.” They made sure the other hatches were secure and started a methodical search for the rest of the drugs.

  DC found a small sealed plastic bag with white powder and threw it out a porthole. They heard a splash as someone dived in after it. “We’ll have to scatter it,” she said, pouring another bag of cocaine out of the same porthole. They went about their work with a vengeance and ignored the threats coming from the deck.

  On deck, Heather kept looking from Troy to the first plastic bag he had saved from sinking. “Come on,” she begged.

  “Okay,” he said and opened the bag. He fished out a “bullet,” a small transparent plastic capsule about an inch long. It was shaped like a Mercury space capsule, big at one end and then tapering to a small neck at the top. Heather turned a valve on the side that released a charge of cocaine inside and sniffed sharply at the neck. Troy snatched the bullet out of her hand and dropped it back into the bag. Heather relaxed as the cocaine did its work.