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.