I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Steve Jackson Games.
By now, Win found the roar of his fighter jet's engines almost comforting, white noise to ease his mind into a timeless state, thinking about everything and focusing on nothing, while he stayed generally alert to his instruments and surroundings (often, as today, including Chinese fighters mirroring his flight). It was a handy state for long patrols; it certainly made patrols a lot faster—David had instantly labeled the Zen of Fighter Patrolling when he'd described it to him and Stacy.
But now he was finding it hard to fall into that Zen state, and as a result this patrol was taking forever. And it wasn't the touchy political climate that was distracting him, or the two Chinese Su-27s from that country's only aircraft carrier that were mirroring them.
He simply couldn't stop thinking about his wife. Things were getting better at home, Toshiko relaxing, becoming more natural when sharing a room with him. It helped that neither asked about off-limit areas of the other's past, Toshiko about his dead wife and he about her time in Nerima or on the run. (Oddly, she had no problem talking about before Nerima, delighted in it even—nothing seemed to make her happier than pouring scorn on her waste of space of a father ... the word baka came up a lot.)
But that same relaxation didn't carry over to sharing a bed. Every night when Win would slip under the covers his wife would be stiff as a board, even though he was careful not to touch her. And he was sure she never fell asleep before he did.
And then two more Chinese aircraft—huge turboprop bombers—from the direction of the mainland soared in to join those already there and frustrated boredom was no longer an issue as the Chinese fighters turned to join the newcomers.
The American fighters banked on an intercept heading, as their pilots pulled back to minimum afterburner, to close quickly, but still conserve fuel. "Tally-ho!" David called over the radio. "I have a tally on the bandits. Look like two Sierra Uniform Two Sevens and two Tango Uniform Niner Fives. Looks like they're on a heading for Misawa."
As they neared the Chinese formation, the American fighters matched speeds and joined the formation. "Dave, monitor button 4," Win said over the radio. "I'll try to contact them." He switched his secondary radio over to the international distress frequency—121.5—and keyed his mike. "Chinese aircraft, Chinese aircraft. This is Air Force Alfa 31. You are approaching restricted airspace. I say again, you are approaching restricted airspace and will need to divert."
Win heard the controllers on the AWACS passing information back and forth. He switched his radio back. "Dave, start falling back. Standby to go to weapons arm. Do not, I say again, do not lock your weapons on the targets."
"Roger, Win." The pair of F-22s fell back with one notch of speed brakes and flaps to slow them down. The two Su-27s broke off their escort of the two huge turboprop bombers and moved to blocking positions.
"Skywatch, Alfa. Requesting weapons hot, negative reply from Chinese aircraft. Is Bravo airborne yet?"
"Alfa, Skywatch. I copy negative reply from Chinese aircraft. Negative weapons hot at this time. I say again, negative weapons hot. Bravo is airborne and enroute to your position."
"Roger Skywatch. Dave, try contacting the Chinese. It's possible my alternate radio isn't working."
"Roger, Win." ... "Negative reply, Win."
"Understood."
The skies over the northern Sea of Japan were starting to get crowded. Two Tu-95 "Bear" turboprop bombers, a pair of Su-27 fighters and four American F-22 fighters, three miles behind and flying in a rough trail formation, all on a heading towards Japan. There had been no contact as yet from any of the Chinese planes, and Win was starting to get antsy. Every second, the formation got closer towards Japan. "Skywatch, Alfa. What's going on?"
"We're trying to contact State and DOD now. We have no notice of any Chinese exercises."
"Understood, Skywatch." Win squinted through the windscreen for the formation. Even though the fighters had a video camera mounted in an aerodynamic fairing, he preferred to use the old fashioned Mark 1 eyeball to find his targets, and the helmet mounted sights did make it easier. Ah, got them at 11 o'clock. "Skywatch, Alfa."
"Alfa, go."
"Skywatch, the Bears are banking away." Win scanned over at the Su-27s. "Su-27's are staying behind though."
"Confirmed, Alfa. I show the Bears turning on a vector for Yanji." Just northwest of the Chinese-North Korea border, west of the Russian border. There wasn't an airbase there but the base at Mudanjiang was directly north, it was the tightest flight path that didn't cross into Russian air space ... or the planes might cut the corner across Russian air space and dare them to do their worst, more saber-rattling. The Chinese had not been happy when its attempt to pull Mongolia into its orbit during the collapse of the USSR was shut down by the United States and the Russian government that had risen from the ashes, and the recent announcement of a joint US/Russian military base and school for Mongolian officers in Ulaanbaatar was why he'd and Dave had been flying patrol instead of sitting in the alert billets with Bravo playing poker and waiting for possible alerts.
Win's auxiliary radio suddenly crackled to life. "American flight leader, this is Jillin 1. Perhaps we can play a game. Would you care to play a game of tag?"
He flipped his radio over. "Perhaps. What are the rules?" He quickly switched back. "Skywatch, Alfa. Looks like we're going to be playing tag with the Chinese. Keep an eye on them. And have Bravo come over to GUARD."
"Roger, Alfa."
"The rules are simple, comrade. Two on one; your two fighters versus each of our fighters."
Win thought quickly—impromptu mock dogfights between Chinese and American fighters weren't common but they weren't unknown, and no one believed that that Chinese pilots engaged in them without direct orders from their superiors. Perhaps this was supposed to be a subtle signal of lessening tensions? "Alright then, bring it on," Win said. Ahead of the American formation, the two Su-27's split away from each other, the leader lighting the afterburners. "Dave, we're going left. Barney, you're going right. On my mark, split ... Mark." The four F-22's split formation, each section following one of the Su-27's. The six jets danced in the generations-old game, until—
"Missile! Missile! Bravo 43, evade! Evade! Eject! Eject! Eject!"
"Jesus Christ!" Win called, back on the command frequency. "Skywatch, Bravo 43 is down. I say again, Bravo 43 is down! Contact Search and Rescue; get somebody out here, two zero miles east of Reference Point Charlie. "Skywatch, request permission to go weapons hot. Those damned Chinese just flipped a missile."
"Stand by, Alfa. We're on the horn with PACAF now."
" 'Stand by' my ass," Win growled into his oxygen mask. He watched the two Chinese fighters form back up and accelerate west—towards the China, and safety for them. "Dave, form up on me. Hap, head down to the deck, see if you can spot Barney in the water ... or anything." Two sets of clicks were the reply as the first pair of alert jets streaked after the Chinese.
"Alfa, Skywatch. PACAF Operations has given you a very reluctant weapons hot. As on scene commander, you have discretionary authority, but PACAF would like you to try to force the Chinese to turn around and land at Misawa. PACAF'll relay the situation to the State Department and let them handle any repercussions. Hopefully the Chinese'll be happy with just a one for one exchange. JASDF SAR is launching, and will be enroute."
"I'm sure they would, Skywatch. But I doubt the Chinese would be so cooperative. We're also going to need tanker support for the return trip home. I copy JASDF SAR enroute."
"Roger that. We'll get a tanker airborne."
The two fighters streaked after the fleeing Su-27s on tails of fire. A pair of sonic booms later indicated that the interceptors had passed through Mach 1, and the mach meter was steadily climbing higher. "Alfa, Skywatch. Bandits at your twelve o'clock; speed 1300, range 100, at your flight level and closing. Tanker launching from Chitose Airbase at this time. They'll rendezvous with you at reference point Charlie."
"Roger," Win replied. He was keeping all his replies short and to the point. His concentration was focused on keeping after those two Su-27s, and accidental shift in the controls at speeds approaching 2000 miles an hour would throw the fighters off course. We've got a speed advantage over the Su-27's. Shouldn't be too difficult to catch up to them. And if Murphy doesn't kick us in the ass, we'll get them to turn back.
Flipping his radio back to the aux transmitter, he started calling the Su-27s again on GUARD. "Jillin 1, this is Alfa 31. Slow to 200 knots, deploy landing gear, and turn to heading 090. Jillin 1, this is Alfa 31. Slow to 200, turn to heading 090, and deploy landing gear. If you do not comply with our orders, we will be forced to fire on you."
"Alfa, Skywatch. Contact Blue Sky on button 5."
"Roger." Win switched his main radio over to the new encrypted channel. "Blue Sky, this is Alfa 31, flight of two F-22 interceptors, with you on button 5."
"Alfa 31, Blue Sky," a JASDF controller replied, "radar contact. Bandits are still at your 12 o'clock, range five zero miles, speed four five zero."
"Roger. Blue Sky, did Skywatch advise you of our status?"
"Affirmative, Alfa. You are still authorized weapons hot."
"Roger, out." Win looked at the range meter on his heads up display. "Dave, we're coming up on long AMRAAM range. Arm one missile." Win flipped the master arm on, and selected his radar guided missiles. Win chopped the throttle and popped the speed brakes, rapidly slowing the fighter down, David following his wing leader. At five hundred indicated, both pilots pulled the speed brakes back in, and continued to chase the Chinese fighters.
"Missile armed Win."
"Roger. You take right, I'll take left." Win keyed the aux radio again. "Jillin 1, this is Alfa 31. This is your last chance. Slow to 200, turn to heading 090, and deploy landing gear. I say again, slow to 200 knots, turn to heading 090, and deploy landing gear." When the Chinese didn't reply, he called over to his wingman. "Dave, on my mark, commence fire. 3…2…"
"Alfa, Blue Sky. New contacts at your 11 o'clock, altitude one zero thousand and climbing, speed five hundred and increasing."
"Crap. Dave, mark. Blue Sky, Alfa. Fox 1! Swing it back around to Misawa, Dave. Let's get the hell out of here." In the 90 degree bank they were in, turning around to get away from the incoming Chinese interceptors, neither pilot saw the fireball in the distance.
"Alfa, Blue Sky. Splash one! I say again, Splash one Chinese aircraft. Bogies are now at your six o'clock, your flight level, speed Mach 2 and increasing. Range one five zero and closing."
"Roger, Blue Sky. Dave, what's your fuel status?"
"Win, bingo fuel. I hope that tanker's close by."
"And I hope we get some cover. Those Chinese are going to be pissed. Even though they started this whole fiasco. I've got Betty bitching at me also."
"Alfa, Blue Sky. Shamu at flight level 350, range two hundred, your twelve o'clock. Contact on Button 7. Also be advised, Charlie 56 is airborne and enroute."
"Roger, Blue Sky. Dave, let's go ahead, drop down, and match Shamu's speed and altitude." David's replied with two clicks, as the fighters dropped altitude and airspeed.
Win and his wingman had just finished refueling when a thick Chinese accent came over GUARD with the weirdest sense of deja vu. "American aircraft, this is Jillin 3. Slow to 370 kilometers per hour, turn to heading 330, and deploy landing gear. American aircraft, this is Jillin 3. Slow to 370 kilometers per hour, turn to heading 330, and deploy landing gear."
"Dave, continue on heading 080. Blue Sky, ETA of Charlie 56?" The KC-767 was already hightailing it out of RP Charlie.
"Alfa, Blue Sky. Stand by." Win was starting to get edgy. The Su-27's that were approaching were coming like bats out of hell, and they were getting very close. And, there was another reason—their air-to-air missiles had a 75 mile range and burned through the air at high Mach numbers. At the most, Win and David would have seconds to try to do something after getting a "Missile Launch" warning, and it would most likely be their last. "Alfa, Blue Sky. Charlie 56 ETA five mike. Chinese are ten minutes out, raid count zero four."
"I copy five mike for Charlie, ten mike for zero four Chinese. Dave, take spacing, and be careful."
"FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! The following message has FLASH priority. Alfa 31, Charlie 56: Stand down. I say again, stand down. This is Blue Sky. Orders come from JCS and Foggy Bottom. Be advised, Chinese interceptors are turning around. Continue on heading 080 for Misawa Airbase. Contact Skywatch on button 4."
Win was suspicious. The sudden arrival of this message could be a spoof by the Chinese. Even though Charlie 56 had reported they were turning around, and they were on a supposedly encrypted. But with the number of leaks in Washington, anything was possible. He pulled up his authentication table "Blue Sky, Alfa. Authenticate 'Bravo Sierra'."
"Alfa, Blue Sky. I authenticate 'Alfa'."
"Blue Sky, Alfa. Wilco with Flash traffic. Returning to base. Dave, let's really head home."
/\
Hours later, the medic's okay given, the dogfight's actions reviewed (he was surprised to learn that Dave's missile had found a target), and his report written up, an aching Win walked heavily through his apartment's front door, then turned to close and lock it behind him. "I'm home!"
"Finally! Stacy said you'd be delayed, but not this long. I'll get your dinner in the microwave."
He followed the sound of his wife's voice into the kitchen, and she glanced over at him as she slid a covered plate into the microwave sitting on the counter—and he promptly stumbled, grabbing the back of a chair for balance, at the sight of her black eye ... and the deep scratch along one cheek ... and the singed end of the braid hanging between her breasts. Now that he thought about it, the way she'd moved when she turned had been stiff rather than her usual smooth grace. "What happened to you!?"
Toshiko grinned, a wide happy grin like he'd never seen.
/oOo\
Jason closed and locked his apartment door, then stepped over to the controls on the wall to let the security system know he was supposed to be there ... then stepped over to another wall and slid aside an (apparently) wood panel to bring the real security system to full activation. (There was no point in leaving the real security system completely on when he was out, he kept everything important—and incriminating—with him and if someone broke in while he was out and found it, it could raise questions. But it would send him an alert if anyone did break in, instead of try to incapacitate them.)
When he got the beep whose tone meant he was alone, he pulled his laptop from its pack, plugged it into the internet landline connection, turned it on, then pulled the flash drive that had all the important stuff on it and plugged it into its socket. A minute and three passwords later (one of which there was no prompt for), everything was up and running and the call sent. And a moment later, the round, blond-framed face of his section chief appeared on a pop-up window. Jason raised an eyebrow. "Mike, that was quick, miss me?"
Mike chuckled. "Just curious about what our potential recruit can do. How did it go?"
Jason leaned back. "Better than I expected, we had an unplanned drop-in join the fun—the Wanderer."
"What?" Mike exclaimed. "How did that happen?"
"Ryoga—that's his name—just happened to wander onto the street Toshiko was walking down. Apparently that's a thing, what was unusual was that he hadn't encountered her in the past year, perhaps because of how much she was on the move." He shrugged. "Anyway, they really put on a show, I just sent you the raw footage. You're going to find it entertaining as well as illuminating, smack-talking is a tradition for that pair. And it seems Toshiko's a little out of practice, she definitely came off the worst of the two ... and there isn't going to be much we can do about it, she took some hits that would send any of our grunts to the hospital if not the morgue, and when it was over walked off grinning and gushing about how much fun she'd had."
"So a tank, then?" Mike asked as he glanced away from the camera, presumably at the just-sent file.
"Armored artillery, they both started throwing around balls of some kind of energy halfway through, Combat's going to drool at the video," Jason replied, grinning at the thought of the reaction of the head of the Combat Department. "Destroyed half of the cameras I set up, and—" He broke off at the sound of a knock on the door. "Someone's here, I'll call you back."
Unplugging and pocketing the flash drive, he opened the laptop window for the feed for the camera covering the apartment door. His eyebrows rose at the sight of an elderly Asian man he'd never seen before dressed in a well-pressed but not ostentatious business suit holding a briefcase, waiting patiently on the apartment's front step. He quickly ran through the other cameras discreetly covering various places perfect for keeping an equally discreet watch on his front door, but no one was lurking about waiting to ambush him or guard his visitor's back. Whoever the man was, he was alone.
Okay ...
Jason closed the laptop and rose to open the door. Deciding to stick to English, he bowed shallowly. "Kobanwa. May I help you?"
The elderly gentleman returned the bow and responded in the same language. "Good evening, Mr. Davidson, I am Mr. Otsu. We have a situation we need to discuss."
His cover name rather than his actual name—not a surprise by itself, but the greeting had lacked any of the code phrases that would indicate the man was associated with the Company. But he had to know something about Jason's purpose in Japan or he wouldn't know even his cover identity, and Jason had to stomp on rising excitement as he stepped aside to invite Mr. Otsu into his apartment.
His visitor walked over to the table and laid his briefcase on it, then popped it open (without unlocking it, Jason noted, so whatever it contained wasn't too sensitive), then pulled out a folder and laid it on the table. "Last Friday, a plumber performing maintenance on an apartment building not far from the base disappeared," he began without preamble, causing Jason's eyebrow to rise before he forced it back down—that was unusually blunt for a Japanese. Of course, Toshiko has no subtlety at all. Don't assume the stereotypes are universal.
"Have a seat." Jason sat down, and put a hand on the folder Mr. Otsu slid across the table to him without looking at it. "So what does a plumber's disappearance have to do with me?"
"Because he didn't disappear, he was killed." Mr. Otsu took the offered seat. "When he didn't go in to work on Monday and his wife reported him missing it was assumed he was waylaid during his journey home, but several days ago it occurred to one of the investigating detectives that he might not have left the apartment building as his partner had reported. The photographs of the crime scene are in the file."
Frowning, Jason opened the folder to reveal a small pile of pages with a ziplock bag of photos on top. Unzipping the bag, he pulled out the photos and sorted through them—not a one showed a body. Instead, there were photos of a hand radio, some tools, a cell phone, some other personal items scattered on bare concrete ... and a belt buckle? Dropping the photos, he picked up the pages and quickly sorted through them, to find the reports he'd been afraid were there, then sorted through the photos again to one that had showed the concrete floor with the items removed, replaced by numbered markers, and the circle drawn on it—the large circle. The area that had been covered with blood before being cleaned up.
Sighing, he dropped the photos on top of the stack and looked up. "Have there been fewer homeless people and stray animals around than usual?"
"I do not know. Can I expect there to be?"
"Yes." Jason leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. "Ice worms. They come out of hibernation when temperatures drop below freezing, and are as omnivorous as it is possible to be. There's no body because they ate it all, including bones and clothes—right down to the blood pool. Any time you see a tunnel that's too clean in ice-cold conditions, look out."
"I see." Mr. Otsu frowned thoughtfully. "I have not heard of such creatures."
"I'd be surprised if you had, they're of extraterrestrial origin, from a single crash site. Between the single origin site and the way they devastate the landscape, making it impossible to hide from anyone that knows what they're seeing, we've been able to quickly jump on any outbreaks—until now. This is the first time I've heard of them showing up in a city, not good."
"No. And that this occurs close to a United States military base will not be a coincidence."
"Probably, which makes it our mess to clean up." Jason sighed and planted his elbows on the table as he rubbed his face again. But behind his eyes, his thoughts were racing. "We'll need some aid getting the local authorities to look the other way, we aren't set up for effective operations in Japan."
Finally, the serene non-expression on Mr. Otsu's face was broken, by a thin smile. "We'd noticed how ... polite ... your intrusion into our country has been." Pulling a card from a suit pocket, he slid it across the table. "Keep the file, and call us when you're ready. We'll clear the way for you."
"I will." Jason accepted the card and glanced at it to find it blank except for a phone number, then rose to his feet with his unexpected guest and showed him to the door. As soon as the door was closed and locked, he hastily set up the laptop with the flash drive again again and within a minute Mike was again on the screen. Jason couldn't stop grinning. "I've got good news and bad news."
Author's Note: Win's scene was a major stumbling block. I was planning to use a game I have, "Down In Flames: Locked-On," to come up with an exciting dogfight, but ran into the problem that my "experience" with dogfights basically consists of "Pearl Harbor," "Midway," and the Star Wars movies, and none of them supply the modern US military radio "language" and that lack was kicking my butt. Then it finally occurred to me that Scooter, the writer of the work that inspired this story, did. As a result, Win's scene in this chapter is largely taken from Scooter's Phoenix, modified to fit my circumstances. The next dogfight is going to be a pain.
The title is a shout out to one of my favorite series, Wearing the Cape: "When you wear the cape, you do the job."