Kevin Miller - Declared Hostile

From 10,000 feet, Trench checked the time. He had almost 40 minutes to screw around.

His Hornet , 302, had needed a routine post-maintenance check flight for a new right trailing edge flap actuator. After Trench had “wrung it out,” he was satisfied the sailors in the airframe and aviation electronics shops had done their jobs well, as usual. He was now alone, 50 miles south of the ship, on yet another gorgeous blue day in the Caribbean. Chances were he could find a sailboat down there hoping for an impromptu air show. Trench was the perfect guy to deliver.

His radar was showing several blips to the southwest, and he reduced power to near idle to conserve his fuel so he could show off later. In an easy turn, the midafternoon sun moved left to right across the top of his canopy bow, and he opened the distance between him and Mother .

Alone — and free! Only the single-seat Hornet pilots could really be away from others at moments like this, free to roam over the open ocean in silence, alone with their thoughts. Away, even, from wingmen in formation, away from the ship controllers, airspace controllers, the CO and XO. Away from ball-busting Macho and all the crap back there aboard Coral Maru .

Yes, Macho, Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong … ugly freakin’ bitch. She was the reason for the come-around with the XO. Screw them , he thought. For an hour or so, away from the ship and the regimented military control of it, he could be free in his single-seat rocket ship. Want to whip the stick hard left and do an aileron roll? Go ahead. Want to cloud surf, rolling and pulling the jet along the nooks and fissures of the brilliant cumulus buildups that dotted the sea all around? Why not? The weather was perfect and such opportunities didn’t happen every day.

In another ingrained habit, he kept his head moving to search for other airwing jets around him. They were also free to roam and goof off in this beautiful tropical playground before the ship summoned them home. Running into each other would ruin everyone’s day.

He rolled out due south in a shallow dive, headed for a small canyon of cloud, an opening like that between the thumb and hand of a mitten. The cloud formation reminded him of Michigan and his home, Bay City, at the base of Saginaw Bay. Nothing for him there anymore, not that there ever was. His jag-off high school friends were going to drink 12-packs of Pabst from the back of their pickup trucks until the day they died. They were already dead with their bitchy, ball-and-chain wives and rat-tailed kids who spilled cereal everywhere. He was flying through, and past, Saginaw Bay, the scuffed rust-belt patina of his youth, which in his mind was washed away in the radiant whiteness of the clouds here, or the Med, or the Indian Ocean. Lieutenant James was free — and powerful— flying a high-performance jet with firepower at his fingertips they could only imagine. He had used it, too, in Afghanistan last cruise, strafing a mortar position to the cheers of the Marines on the radio. Angel of death. Agent of deliverance. An officer and a gentleman when it suited him. And God’s gift when….

Trench spotted a squall up ahead and continued down to 500 feet as he put it on his nose. He knew the maintenance chiefs would appreciate a freshwater wash for 302, so he decided to bring them an “up” jet with the sea-salt and shipboard grime cleaned off by a natural, 300-knot spray hose. He leveled off under the bottom of the gray cloud… no lightning observed… and, as he entered the veil, the rain beat down hard on the canopy, drops rapidly moving aft from the slipstream. In less than a minute he was out of it, sunlight and air friction drying the water on the jet’s skin, entering an open area, his personal playground, and on the blue surface he saw what he’d been looking for… some toys to play with.

The big blip on his radar was not a gleaming cruise ship but a drab merchant heading northwest trailing a white wake, and far to the south was a white object he would check out later. Disappointed, he banked left to approach the ship from the starboard quarter. It appeared to be 500-feet long with a black hull, superstructure aft, cranes amidships. Old bulk cargo carrier. Slewing the radar cursor over the return on his digital data display, he bumped the castle switch with his right thumb to lock it. When the computer settled down, it showed the ship on a heading of 315 and making 10 knots. He scribbled the latitude/longitude numbers on his kneeboard card and noted the time: 1054.

He slowed as he crossed the wake to fly up the port side. On the stern he read the name and noted the country of registry: Panama, like most merchants in these waters. Light gray smoke trailed from a single stack, and four sets of large horizontal doors lay on the deck. As he flew past the lonely ship, Trench figured it to be a grain carrier of some sort. He looked for signs of life on the bridge or weather decks and found none. Damn thing must be on autopilot , he thought, and figured the sudden roar of a Hornet whizzing past the bridge would be the only excitement these guys would get all day.

Reversing his turn to the left, he doubled back to the surface contact to the south, and spotted the white object at 20 miles. He locked it with his radar and tracked it heading west at five knots with no other contacts around it. This one could be interesting. Remaining low on the water, Trench picked a heading to let it slide down his right canopy so he could sneak up behind it like the merchant. He commanded the radar to air-to-air and scanned the sky around him. Nobody else out here .

A wall of white buildups hovered over the eastern boundary of his playground, but he saw the silhouette of another merchant to the southeast. Checking his fuel—7,000 pounds — he had more than enough fuel and time to check out his personal contact of interest to the south.

As he expected, he soon identified a motor yacht with a pointed bow and sleek, raked lines. A smile formed under Trench’s mask. Yachts meant money, and money meant girls… and girls in the tropics are outside.

The yacht was cruising west, the dazzling sun still climbing toward its noon apex. Trench rolled easy right and peered left over his leading edge extension to check for any other airwing knuckleheads who had the same idea he did. Doing his duty, he wrote down the course, speed, lat/long and time.

Like he had with the merchant ship, he approached the yacht from the aft to surprise it, and got down to 300 feet as he came up along the boats’ starboard side. The noise from his engines would alert the people on the yacht to his presence only seconds before he roared over unless somebody happened to be scanning the horizon. Inside a mile, he didn’t see anyone on the fantail. He surmised it was about 100 feet, with a rigid hull inflatable boat hanging from davits on the top deck aft of the flying bridge. Atop the mast was a SATCOM dome and marine radar spinning around looking for surface returns.

Approaching the bow, his suspicions turned out to be true. There, Trench’s trained eye saw two bikini-clad girls lying on their backs, and one was waving at him.

Jackpot!

With heart pounding, Trench shoved the throttles to afterburner and pulled hard across the bow. He craned his head to keep sight of the yacht while he formed a plan. He would turn hard, extend for a few seconds, then pull hard again back to the yacht. He would then slow himself down to 200 knots and descend to 100 feet for another pass.