Outlaw

As the vessel came into view, she chuckled. “That’s five bucks.”

“I didn’t take…”

Colt fell silent, and Doc looked forward to see what had distracted the pilot. Suddenly, the jet banked hard to the right, and she caught sight of a dark object floating from right to left across the canopy. It disappeared under the LEX and was followed a moment later by a sudden jolt and a sickening screech of metal.

“What the hell was that?”

But Colt didn’t answer.

“ENGINE LEFT… ENGINE LEFT.”

Doc tensed with the first of several audible bangs that sounded like somebody was taking a ball peen hammer to the side of their jet, and her eyes were drawn to the left display when the first caution appeared.

“What’s going on, Colt?”

“Fuck,” the normally calm pilot replied.

* * *

In a matter of seconds, Colt had processed the flood of information assaulting him from every direction — the dark speck that caught his attention as they reached the stern of the fishing trawler, followed closely by the engine surging, rising exhaust gas temperature, and loud banging and violent shaking consistent with a compressor stall. He didn’t even need the cautions to help him diagnose the problem, because the remedy was the same.

Throttle affected engine — Idle.

He pulled the left throttle back while beginning a climbing turn away from the trawler to put altitude between them and the water.

Speed is life. Altitude is life insurance.

“What the hell was that, Colt?” Doc asked.

“Looked like a drone,” he said, but his focus was on his engine indications that showed a steady increase in temperature and decrease in RPM. Without thinking about it, he raised the left finger lift and pulled the throttle to OFF, cutting fuel to the engine.

“A drone?”

Colt understood Doc’s confusion, but he had more important things to worry about. Foremost was the presence of a miniature drone flying in the middle of the East China Sea that brought back memories of a swarm of mysterious lights swirling around a Navy cruiser off the coast of Southern California. He had never learned what the lights actually were, but the memory of losing control of his F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter immediately after seeing the orbs was more than enough to give him a healthy dose of skepticism about unidentified aerial phenomena.

“Diamond one hundred, Tiger, status?”

Colt shook his head to clear away the memories. “Tiger, I’m declaring an emergency,” he said, keeping his tone calm and measured. “We hit something and took damage to our left motor. I’ve shut it down.”

“Copy,” the Hawkeye controller replied.

As Colt continued climbing away from the water, he noticed long lines of contrails made by commercial jets arcing across the sky from the east, destined for China’s most populous cities, like Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou. Shaking away the thought that the airlines’ passengers were oblivious to the dangers lurking beneath them, he glanced back over his shoulder at the blue-and-white fishing trawler and noted that it looked almost identical to the others they had rigged during their SSC mission. Maybe it was coincidence, but it sure looked like there was truth to the claims that China was flooding disputed waters with a fleet of fishing vessels.

“What did you hit?” the controller asked.

Colt didn’t answer right away. “Doc, what did you see?”

“Not much. Just a speck, really.”

“Was it a bird?”

“I don’t think so,” the flight surgeon replied.

Colt keyed the microphone switch on his right throttle. “Tiger, we think it was a small commercial drone.”

“Copy,” the controller replied again.

“Why do you think there was a drone flying way out here?” Doc asked.

But Colt didn’t have a definitive answer for her. On the one hand, it was entirely possible that fishermen were now using drones to help guide them onto a school. But, on the other, if the fishing trawlers were employed in a military or intelligence-gathering capacity, the drones could be used in a more nefarious manner.

Like the ones around the Mobile Bay?

“I don’t know,” Colt replied. “I’ll let intel figure that one out. How about we focus on getting ourselves back to the ship in one piece?”

“You don’t think they’ll divert us?” Doc asked with a slight tremor in her voice.

Honestly, Colt thought it was fifty-fifty and depended on who was in the tower and had the Air Boss’s ear. Ultimately, it would be the captain’s decision to either recover them aboard the carrier or send them to the divert at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.

But before he could answer, the Hawkeye controller spoke again. “Diamond one hundred, push button twenty for your rep.”

“One hundred,” Colt replied, then reached up to select the right channel on his secondary radio.

“Colt, it’s Rucas. You up?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” he replied.

“What’s going on?”

Colt ran him through what had happened, including each of the cautions that had appeared on his display.