there. But still, he’d left Batman in command of the carrier battle
group, and implicitly placed himself under Batman’s command by
undertaking to fly this mission. And if the battle group commander
thought there was a more valuable use to be made of his aircraft, then
it was up to Stoney to toe the line.
He sighed, then swung the Tomcat around in a hard, tight 160-degree
turn as Tomboy fed him new fly-to points.
It took only three minutes to cover the distance between him and the
SEAL boat. At once, in his first overflight, he saw the nature of the
problem.
The SEAL boat was bobbing uneasily in the stiffening wind, held at
gunpoint by the submarine-mounted machine guns to the west. Two small
boats were approaching from the east. Cuban patrol boats, no doubt
unreasonably pissed off after the destruction of their communications,
command, and control vessel earlier that day. If the Cubans got ahold
of the SEALs, Tombstone wouldn’t give a plug nickel for their chances
of survival.
He stayed high on the first pass, five thousand feet, staring down to
assess the scene before making his decision.
Batman had been right this was a guns-only mission.
Good thing he probably wouldn’t need them for the rest of it.
He swung the Tomcat around and dove for the deck, picking up speed as
he descended. He stayed to the west of all participants, hoping to
avoid silhouetting himself against the rising sun. He stopped his
descent barely one hundred feet above the churning ocean, made a small
course correction, and arrowed in toward the submarine.
Four hundred feet away from the Foxtrot, he fired his first short
burst, made another small course correction, then walked the guns in
toward the submarine. There were men running around the fo’c’sle
frantically, trying to clear the conning tower and decks in response to
his gunfire. However, a Tomcat traveling at three hundred knots covers
a lot of ground quickly. The first of them had barely started down the
ladder into the interior of the submarine when the rounds stitched
their way down the submarine’s hull. He saw two men crumple and fall
to the deck and another one topple off the narrow flat surface into the
sea.
With the decks cleared, the SEAL boat immediately kicked it in the ass
and took off for the carrier. Tombstone watched them go, made sure
that the submarine crew stayed out of sight long enough for them to
escape, then turned his attention back to the approaching small
boats.
The SEALs could probably outrun them, but there was no point in taking
chances. Two low-altitude passes, four sharp sparks of gunfire, and
the small boats were out of action.
“Mission complete,” Tombstone radioed back to the carrier. “Now, may I
please get back to my original mission?”
“Permission granted,” Batman said crisply. “And when you get back to
the boat, I think you’re going to find there are a couple of SEALs on
board who want to buy you a beer.”
0630 Local (+5 GMT) South-southwest of Cuba Her face slammed into the
side of the boat as an unexpectedly rough portion of chop caught the
small rubber craft sideways. She yelped, then quickly stifled
herself.
Huerta had taught her the value of silence. She wondered if she’d ever
be able to scream again without experiencing an anticipatory dread of
that steel-banded hand closing over her mouth.
No, her time with the SEALs on this mission had been singularly
unrewarding. They’d done nothing but abuse her, gag her, try to run
her into the ground and drown her, and now, batter her against the side
of a small boat that had no business skimming across waters as quickly
as it was. She felt anger well up and something else.
For a moment, Pamela paused, her hand gingerly resting on her aching
cheekbone, her body a mass of lactic acid laden muscles and bruises,
and thought. What was it that she actually felt about this? Hate for
SEALs? Yes, that certainly but something more. Underlying it all was
a grudging respect, the beginnings of an understanding as to why these
men were the way they were, and what their purpose in the world was.