Outlaw

Connor looked over at the orderlies carrying an immobile Lisa into the Gulfstream. “If Langley is right, and she knows about an attack that is coming, we’re running out of time.”

“And that’s why they sent you.”

Connor nodded, then started walking across the tarmac toward Lisa. The sooner he found out what secrets she had brought back with her, the sooner they could stop whatever attack was coming. He paused as he crossed paths with a pilot in a soaking-wet flight suit making his way toward the hangar.

“Hey, good work out there,” he said.

* * *

Colt eyed the stranger suspiciously but nodded in acknowledgment. “Just doing my job,” he said.

The man continued toward the Gulfstream, and Colt hesitantly made his way across the tarmac, trying to figure out what to do next. He knew the carrier was under quarantine, but he felt uncomfortable being on solid ground when his shipmates were still on board the Reagan. Even more so, knowing that many of them were probably fighting off illness.

“Are you Lieutenant Bancroft?” a voice called out.

Colt stopped and turned toward a sailor dressed in the green Type III Navy Working Uniform. “Yeah, that’s me.”

The sailor handed him a satellite phone. “It’s for you, sir.”

Colt took the phone and brought it to his ear. “Lieutenant Bancroft.”

“Colt, it’s Cutty.”

His heart raced with anxiety. Even though he knew he had done everything by the book, he still had a nagging doubt that second-guessed every decision he had made. From shooting down the Chinese fighter to running out of gas going after the attack helicopter, he knew he was about to be put under the magnifying glass again. “Sir, what’s going on?”

“First thing’s first,” the old man said. “Are you okay?”

He felt himself relax. “Yes, sir. I’m fine.”

“Fever? Headaches? Nausea?”

“No, sir. I’m fine.”

“No symptoms?”

“Sir, what kind of illness is this?” he asked, worried that DCAG seemed more concerned with him being sick than what he had just gone through.

Cutty sighed heavily into the phone. “We don’t really know, to be honest. Lots of people are in really bad shape.”

Colt thought back to Sierra and wondered how she was handling things. “How’s Doc doing?”

“She was the one who examined the first person to get sick.”

Colt felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. Though he knew Doc often ran sick call with the other medical officers on the ship, it was more likely that the flight surgeon had been called to check on someone he knew. “Who was it?”

Cutty paused, and Colt knew it was a violation of patient privacy to reveal that information. But laws like that had a way of being overlooked when an aircraft carrier was being sidelined because of a strange illness. “Andy Yandell,” Cutty said. “He’s a…”

“COD guy,” Colt finished for him. “Yeah, I had a few beers with him in Iwakuni the other night.”

“I know. That’s why I asked how you were feeling. We still don’t know where he got it.”

It could have been that he was being overly paranoid, but he started to feel his stomach churning. “I feel good, sir. What do you want me to do?”

“Normally, we’d want you back out to the ship to do a complete medical workup on you…”

Colt had expected as much. One didn’t run a seventy-million-dollar fighter jet out of gas and crash it into the South China Sea without having some sort of investigation launched into the incident.

“…but with the ship in quarantine, we’re going to keep you and Rucas there until things settle down.”

“Rucas is here?” In the excitement of shooting down the Chinese helicopter and flaming out near Scarborough Shoal, Colt had forgotten all about his wingman. As if in answer to his question, Colt heard his name being shouted from across the tarmac. He turned and saw Rucas with a wide shit-eating grin on his face. “Never mind, sir. He just found me.”

“Sit tight, Colt. I’ll be in touch.”

“Aye, sir.”

He ended the call just as Rucas reached him and pulled him in for a hug. He was still soaking wet from his brief dip in the South China Sea, but the other fighter pilot didn’t seem to mind. “You made it!”

“Did I?” Colt asked, still trying to process everything that had happened.

Rucas released him and stepped back. “Just what do you think you were doing out there?”

He scrunched up his face in confusion, but one of the SEALs walked up and answered for him. “His job, I reckon.”

Colt glanced over at the SEAL and did a double take. “Senior Chief?”

“Hey, flyboy.”

Rucas saw the bewildered look on Colt’s face and the bemused expression on the SEAL’s. “Do you two know each other?”

Colt opened his mouth to answer, but the SEAL was quicker. “Yeah, your flyboy here crashed his jet on my island last year.”

“I didn’t crash,” Colt said. “This is Senior Chief Dave White.”

“Seems like a dark cloud seems to follow you wherever you go,” Dave said, though Colt could tell the SEAL was only poking fun at him. “First you crash on my island…”

“I didn’t crash,” he said again.

“…then you eject from a perfectly good airplane.”