Page 6 of Mending Fences

He’d flown plenty of ugly patrols for the Navy, including up and down these local seas chasing pirates, and standoffs with Iranian boats. He’d thought he was doing well…until the transfer to the USS Peleliu showed up. Assigned to a ghost ship wandering the high seas? The last six months he’d watched from the sidelines of being a SAR pilot, still wondering how he’d screwed up his career so badly that he'd been assigned here.

But now? A chance at real action again? “My jam too,” he told Fin as the last of the mission personnel finished settling.

Kara flashed a map up on the big monitors. The room went silent, giving him the last word—a very rare success around Fin unless the last fourteen years had changed her. He’d count it as a triumph.

Then, as Kara drew in a breath to speak, Finella whispered for his ears alone, “We’ll see how you feel now that you’ve climbed over the fence, Fence.”

Without a good comeback, and losing the last word point, he turned to see what the hell he’d gotten into.

When he focused on the map, he blanched.

Fin’s soft curse concurred.

Parked in the Gulf of Aden where the southern end of the Red Sea squeezed tight then shat on Yemen to the north and Somalia to the south, their missions had been predictable.

Somalia was so desperate that pirates were once gain venturing out into the shipping lanes, hunting for cargo ships to capture and ransom. Pirate hunting, dormant on this coast for most of a decade, was back.

And the Yemeni to the north were simply shooting at whatever had put them in a foul mood that morning. Of course, he’d never heard of any extremist Muslim leader who wasn’t a dictatorial warmonger in a permanently foul mood. Now they were targeting passing ships like they were those moving ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. At some point the US, British, and a few other Euro-powers were either going to trounce their asses or, his bet, turn their ships for home and abandon the region. There was a strong sentiment in the Navy that some people should be left to destroy themselves to their heart’s content.

The Peleliu was perfectly positioned to confront either country. Though it had struck him as odd. The Special Operations Command base in Djibouti lay close by the Gate of Grief, the Bab-el-Mandeb, which formed the entry to the Red Sea with the Suez Canal at its far end. The 160th SOAR had been flying protection against the Somali pirates and staging strategic raids into Yemen since their arrival in the area last week. But based on what he was seeing on the big screen, he now guessed that SOAR had come racing over from offshore Pakistan for a very different mission—this one.

They weren’t taking on either incredibly annoying failed state of a country that cared more about killing people than feeding them. They were here for this single secret mission under the disguise of being here for other purposes.

The next stop north of Somalia, Djibouti made up the African side of the Bab-el-Mandeb. They had found relative safety by hosting multiple military bases. A former French colony, French forces now guaranteed the country’s military sanctity. The only major US base on the entire African continent took up a whole side of their main airport as well as a field six klicks outside the city for all the drones and UAVs launched into the region. Japan and China each had their only overseas bases, anywhere, in this city.

And the map on the screen was a detailed image of one of those—the Chinese base.

Kara, as the Air Mission Commander, started the briefing. “The US can’t take action from within the country without risking our own base’s land lease.”

“Hence, the Peleliu,” Fin whispered as if speaking to herself.

Right. A secret, stealth mission from offshore was different than an attack launched from within Djibouti itself against a Chinese base situated on Djibouti soil. If not detected, it wouldn’t matter. But he’d bet that every US asset on Djibouti was grounded tonight to prove that whatever happened, it hadn’t involved the Americans.

He leaned in to whisper back, “But what?—”

“You’ve all had a chance to recognize this place. Here’s what’s happening.” Kara cut him off as she addressed the room.

Fin’s smirk said that, yes, once again she’d managed the last word.

“The Chinese,” Kara stabbed a finger toward the map, “have been firing lasers at our jets and our pilots. They deny it, of course, but on the plus side they’re firing dazzlers, not blinders, so they aren’t doing anything that does permanent damage—yet. It’s not enough that we’re fighting Somali pirates and Iran-backed Houthi lunatics in Yemen. Our supposed ally is screwing with us. That ends tonight.”

5

Fin glanced over her shoulder into the Stealth Hawk’s cargo bay as the action team loaded aboard—looking ghoulish in the lone red night light.

“Gonna be messier than a meet against Whitney Point,” Fin told her.

That was a crazy comparison. Two tiny towns in upstate New York dairy country; their rivalry ran deep. She and Fence were both staunch Marathon Olympians against the nearby Whitney Point Eagles.

No, that had been him, not her. She’d been mostly victorious in the town library…until spring of senior year. Fence had been the star forward during fall soccer, apparently; she didn’t follow such things back then. But that final chilly spring? Fence had ruled the track-and-field meets. After the fence painting episode, she’d started taking her books to sit on the sole five-tier bleacher in all sorts of awful weather to watch Fence out there cleaning the Whitney Point Eagles’ clocks and any other cow town foolish enough to challenge the team.

Messier than a meet? Times a thousand! By, like, six Delta Force operators with their butts planted in her cargo bay. And now warming up on the Flight Deck to either side of them were three more stealth birds: two Little Birds armed to the teeth in the Killer Egg configuration and, perhaps most startling of all, a Direct-Action Penetrator gunship.

Then she caught his look and couldn’t resist the laugh. It was a ridiculous comparison. And he’d trapped her with it.

No way could she let that stand. So rather than taking off from the deck, she taxied straight ahead, adding lift, but not enough to carry them aloft. Instead, they fell off the edge of the Peleliu’s Flight Deck and plunged forty of the fifty feet down to the ocean.

Fence didn’t yelp, but he slammed back in his seat hard enough that he could have concussed himself against the padding if not for his helmet.

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