Damage Control (21 page)

Indeed, a dirt road curved from the towers at one end of the pink pile around the green trees and then off to the west.

“What kinda classy hotel gets reached by a dirt road?” Djalik growled.

“We’re not coming by dirt road.” Both looked down as the plane tipped and Moad took them along the airstrip on his way to turning back for an approach. “What kinda hotel is only reachable by air?”

Fidel sat back and snapped his seatbelt together. “We spent more fucking time going up and coming back down than we did getting from point A to point B.”

“Yeah, but point B looks kind of interesting.”

Moad banked again and turned, banked and turned in a longer arc and then they heard the wheels come down, and the brown landscape was fleeting by under them, marked now by green-brown scrub, a field of just-harvested sugarcane, and a village seemingly made out of the earth it stood on. And then they were down.

Fourteen thousand feet over the Indian Ocean, six hours after taking off from Trincomalee and lighter by sixteen thousand pounds of fuel, Evan Soleck knew the names of his crew and felt he had lucked out in the lottery of random assignment. He’d never flown with two women in his crew, but in addition to Garcia, he had LTjg Dothan, a nugget TACCO fresh from the RAG in Jacksonville, who had a degree in aeronautical engineering and a mile of enthusiasm. Her lack of experience was balanced by Master Chief AW Simcoe, who had been the work-center supervisor for the ASW shop at Fifth Fleet and had twenty years in S-3s. By the time they’d made their last scheduled tanking run, they had the computer singing along in the back, with Garcia’s additions in an overlay and a working datalink with fixes on every ship in the US battle group. Now it was time to have a look at the Indians.

“Okay, folks. I’m going for altitude; I’ll try and get up around thirty-two thousand before we turn north. You can start the radar anytime you like. Don’t be shy about asking me to maneuver for a duct or whatever. We’ve got plenty of gas and all the time in the world. Master Chief, have you got AsuW on the
Jefferson?”

Garcia cut in. “I’ve got the freq in radio two, ready to rock.”

“Want to leave me some work, ma’am?” Simcoe said with a deep chuckle. And after Soleck had climbed another thousand feet, he said, “I got LT Madje, the TAO.”

“Just keep him informed as we put stuff in the link. Garcia, put the CAP freq in one. I’d hate to find an Indian fighter up here all alone.”

“Roger that.” She played with the radio and then gave him a nod.

He cycled his comms to the radio. “Racehorse One, this is Oats, over?”

“Roger Oats. Got you.” That was Rose Siciliano, flying CAP.
Small world,
Soleck thought—she was already back from Colombo, hot to trot. “Racehorse One, I’m climbing to Angels 32 for a look around as briefed. Copy?”

“Roger, Oats. I’m going up high to cover you. Racehorse Two will stay low. I’ll need to hit you again before I head for the barn, over.”

“Roger, Racehorse One. I have three thousand in reserve to give. Out here.”

“Racehorse One out.”

They continued to climb into the night.

The runway was as black as if it had never been used; near its eastern end, it had a taxiway that led to three parking pads, the most easterly of which put the aircraft’s stairs practically in the shade of the ring of trees.

“Wow!” Benvenuto said when he came out of the plane’s doorway. “Wow!” For a kid from the edge of the Adirondack State Park, the former palace of His Serene Highness, the Maharajah of Baipurjat, was a lot to take in. Its towers rose four storeys against an evening sky that was itself turning from lavender to cobalt; the towers, caught by the setting sun, were magenta. Lower down, the stone was paler but still pink. Arches and pierced screens and balconies marked
its façade, with carvings so intricate they couldn’t be taken in from that distance.

“Nice,” Harry said as he stepped out, gently shoving Benvenuto along.

Alan, caught by a back spasm, was helped down by Fidel and Djalik and didn’t pay much attention.

By the time they were down the steps, an ancient stretch limo had pulled up, behind it an even more ancient Land Rover. Indian servants in white turbans, orange shirts, and red pants piled out until they outnumbered the people from the airplane, and at once luggage began to disappear into the Rover. A tall, bearded man in a uniform that could once have belonged to the dressier formations of the Raj held open the limo door.

“Hey, we can walk,” Djalik said, “it’s only—” It didn’t matter what it was only. They were going to be driven to the hotel door whether they liked it or not.

In fact, it was a hundred and sixty feet away.

“Wow,” Benvenuto whispered when they were inside.

The entrance foyer was thirty feet high and at least a hundred feet long; one-storey red pillars surrounded it at ten-foot intervals, creating the effect of a kind of cloister with, in its center, a pool of blue water among living trees inside a golden cage, within which parrots flew from tree to tree and croaked.

Standing with his hands folded in front of the cage was a small, brown, white-haired man in a blue business suit. He was smiling, and the smile lit up his face with what seemed to be real pleasure. Next to the newcomers, a larger, younger man, also in a suit, said, “If you will, please? His Serene Highness has made an especial effort to greet with you.”

The rest let Ong and Harry go first. The others formed a kind of human herd behind them, as if for defense. Alan brought up the rear, carried on their cross-gripped hands by two turbaned men who refused to put him down.

“His Serene Highness, the Maharajah of Baipurjat.”

He greeted them as, for example, the prime minister of a country only slightly less important than, let’s say, Sweden might expect to be greeted. He gave a little speech about the palace (never called by him “the hotel”) and about Baipurjat, which until independence had been one of those separate principalities that the British had made theirs in exchange for a large annual stipend, and which was now absorbed into the state of Pondicherry. “We are no longer a principality,” he closed, “but we wish to entertain you with what we hope you will find a princely hospitality. What you do not see, demand; what you do see, command.” He smiled and looked over the others’ shoulders at Alan. “My personal physician is waiting for you in his office, Commander Craik.” He turned to the younger man who had brought them forward. “Adeeb, if you will show him the way—”

And Alan was carted off while the others were shown to their rooms.

Which were about the size of basketball courts.

The bathrooms were about the size of squash courts.

Room phones and televisions were unknown.

If they had recognized the signs, they would have understood that the palace’s life had been arrested at about 1939, but only Harry knew what the porcelain faucets in the baths, the toilets shaped like swans, the brass lamps, meant. No matter: they were giddy with the charm of the place.

Alan had a brisk examination from the maharajah’s medical man, who was short, plump, oily, and efficient. “Nothing serious. Bed rest will have you tippy-top in three or four days.” He held up a plump hand. “You are about to tell me you do not have three or four days. Of course not! Not only the times we live in, but also this wretched disturbance that has left us without electricity. Therefore, half an hour in a piping hot bath, followed by a good night’s sleep and a touch of medication, and you’ll be ambulatory.” He
shook out pills from an old-fashioned bottle. “Muscle relaxants. Take one with water now, one every four hours thereafter, never more than one, and stop taking them three or four hours before you plan to drive an automobile.” He poured a glass of water from a pitcher. “As for the gash on your back—a bullet? challenging life you lead, I shan’t ask why, although I shall have to file a report with the local police, but you’ll be long gone before they get it—it’s been well tended to and I don’t intend to meddle with success, other than what I’ve already done with topical antibacterials. You take aspirin? Of course you do! Two every four hours; don’t take them with the muscle relaxant if you can help it, but alternate.”

“I need to keep my wits about me,” Alan said.

“You need to
sleep.
The bath and a bed will do that. As for the medication, nothing there will affect your mind.”

Alan started to ask about payment, and a raised hand stopped him. Minutes later, he was lying back in a bathtub that represented the very best of 1930s technology.

At twenty-four thousand feet, the plane moved sluggishly, the rate of climb down to a crawl, and Soleck had to watch his speed. He had spiraled up through the night air, describing an ever more gradual clockwise corkscrew as his turbofans had less air to bite. Somewhere above him and a little to the east was Commander Siciliano in her F-18, her position noted on his datalink.

“Back seat’s got something,” Garcia said over the intercom.

“Want to take the plane?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

There was just a hint of the acerbic to her response, and Soleck realized he’d had the controls for two hours.
Oops, I’m the mission commander. Time to command.
“You got her.”

“I have the plane,” she said formally.

Soleck eased back in his seat, stretched, and switched his comms from front-seat-only to cockpit. “You guys have hits?”

“Just putting the first one in the link.” Master Chief Simcoe grunted, cleared his throat noisily. “Probable Delhi-class destroyer, course SSE, speed nine knots, radiating Top Plate. Probably has us on his radar and on ESM.”

“You going to image him, Master Chief?” Soleck was looking at his own screen.

“Ms Dothan’s got the ISAR warm.”

“Go ahead. Anybody know what a Delhi-class
looks
like?” Soleck asked. For once, he didn’t know himself.

Simcoe grunted again. “I’ve got a length and a radar set. Both match. Best I can do.”

“Holy shit,” Dothan said. “Look at the ESM.”

Soleck switched screens. The ESM was lit up like LA viewed from Hollywood, hits spread across the screen, representing eighty miles of ocean. Soleck could just see Dothan, her head down over her console, her fingers flying on the keyboard. The two backseaters were silent except for muttered words.

“Kashin.” The Kashin-class was a slightly dated Russian destroyer design with a Big Net air-search radar easily identified by the S-3’s system.

“Another Kashin.” Dothan murmured seconds later.

“Godavari!” Simcoe said with triumph. “Don’t see that every day.”

“They weren’t up a minute ago. What got ‘em stirred?” Simcoe asked.

“We did,” Soleck muttered. “Picket ship rotated once, saw us, and told somebody.”

“Wow,” Garcia said. “This is real.”

Captain Alex Fraser of the Canadian corvette HMCS
Picton
stood in the darkness of his blacked-out bridge wing and
sucked on his unlit pipe. His ship had been at action stations for thirty-six hours. So far the men were holding up well. The sea was relatively calm, with the monsoon blowing gently over his shoulder and frustrating his occasional attempts to relight the pipe.

A sailor leaned out of the hatch. “Sir? Plot would like a word. Launches in southern India.”

Fraser gave up on his attempt to smoke, tucked the pipe in his breast pocket and went in to the bridge, dogging the hatch behind him. He picked up a phone.

“Captain,” he said. He listened for a few seconds and said, “Got it. You’re sure? Very well. Thanks, Doug.” He hung up. “Petty Officer Lawrence? Get me Captain Lash.”

“—two pos bandits launching southern India pos intercept of Oats ETA seven minutes, do you copy, Oats? Third pos bandit course un-ID.” Even through the digital encryption and the static, Alpha Whiskey sounded nervous.

Soleck noted the two new symbols on the link. “I copy, Alpha Whiskey. Break, break. Racehorse One, you copy?”

“Roger, Oats. Three pos bandits heading our way.” Commander Siciliano sounded bored. Soleck couldn’t help thinking that she was really a helo pilot with a couple of hundred hours in F-18s, all with NASA, and none of it combat training.

As he watched, the screen’s air symbol on the lead pair of bandits pulsed and moved suddenly, indicating that one or both of the planes had radiated a radar and been caught, and the information in the link had updated their position from predicted to real. Soleck put his cursor on the symbol. The last time he had looked at it, it had said, “UNID.” Now it said “MiG-29.”

Rose watched the three bandits on her screen while she turned her plane to the east. They were below her by several
thousand feet and hadn’t climbed since the last update. It was probable that they knew she was there, knew where her wingman was. She flicked her eyes over her instruments, noted that her fuel state was not great, looked at the indicators for her missiles, which showed that she had nothing aboard but a pair of Sidewinders. Sparrowhawk mediumrange missiles would have given her a head-on superiority that no Indian plane could match, but the only two Sparrows were on Donuts’s plane, and Bahrain hadn’t sent any more out yet.

On another level, she confronted the notion that she was about to engage in air-to-air combat. She wasn’t afraid. She
was
flooded with adrenaline, and that made her remember that she was three months pregnant and thirty-eight years old. She wondered what effect a load of adrenaline and some high-g turns would have on a fetus.
On her daughter.

Win first, she told herself. Live. Then worry about the baby.

The bogeys were two hundred miles away and now it would all happen very fast. And she had to let them make the first move—not a winning strategy in jet combat. She called her wingman. “Racehorse Two, ready?”

“Roger.”

She put her nose on her possible adversaries, activated her radar.
Here I am. Want to dance?

Sitting in the TAO chair, alone with a crisis, Madje didn’t hesitate to order a runner to get Captain Hawkins, even while his gut told him that this would be over before anyone could come through the hatch and rescue him from the decisions he was about to make. He felt tempted to shout,
I’m a fucking two-bar!

Only fifty miles to the north, the ocean was crawling with Indian ships, and it was clear that they were still fighting with each other. He
thought
that the new action had been
provoked by the appearance of the S-3’s radar and the subsequent mass illumination of air-search and surface-search radars, as if someone had shown a light in a dark basement and the cockroaches had gone to war.

“Racehorse One has her radar on.”

“Bogey One turning to 040.”

Madje thought, If one of those planes fires a missile, we’re at war. Jesus, we’re probably already at war.