Free Warriors by Ted Bell

the slightest.
    “You awake down there, boy? I’m inclined to pull your ass right out of the lineup.”
    “Sir, no, sir! I’m good to go.”
    “You damn well better be. I’ve got my eye on you now, honey. You screw up even a little bit on this morning’s mission and your ass is mine. You believe me?”
    “Sir, I always believe you. Sir. But I’ll come back clean, I swear it.”
    “Damn right you will. Now, you get the hell off my boat, Passionflower. I got more important things to deal with up here than to worry about little pissant pilots like you. Taxi into position. You’re up.”
    Hawke throttled up and engaged the catapult hook inside the track buried in the deck. He heard the blast shield rumbling up into place behind him and looked to his left. He nodded his head, a signal to the launch chief that his aircraft was poised and ready. The chief raised his right arm and dropped it, meaning any second now.
    Hawke’s right hand immediately went to what fighter jocks fondly call the “oh-shit bar.” It was located just inside the canopy and above the instrument display. The reason for the handhold is simple: when a pilot is violently launched into space, the gut reaction is to grab the control stick and try to climb. It’s terrifying to feel out of control when the plane’s wheels separate from the mother ship. In the tiny amount of time it takes a pilot to move his or her right hand from the oh-shit bar to the joystick, a nanosecond, the catapult has done its job and the pilot can safely assume control of the aircraft.
    Adrenaline was pumping, flooding Hawke’s veins as he gripped the bar with his right hand. A “cat shot” from a modern carrier is as close as any human being can come to the experience of being in a catastrophic automobile crash and surviving. It was that intense.
    The cat fired and he was thrown violently backward, leaving the leading edge of the deck.
    He stifled an intense scream of pain at the back of his throat.
    He was airborne.
    He craned his head around and looked back down at the deck lights of Varyag, the carrier growing rapidly smaller as he swiftly gained altitude. He deliberately suppressed any feelings of joy over having escaped an agonizing death at the hands of the most sophisticated torturers on the planet.
    He wasn’t out of the woods yet, he told himself as he climbed upward to form up with “his” squadron’s flight. Their heading was a WNW course that would take them directly over the disputed Paracel Islands. Exactly the wrong direction, in other words. He needed to be on a heading north-northeast and he needed to get moving.
    The rim of the earth was edged in violent pink as Hawke slipped into his designated slot at the rear of the tight formation. The squadron leader acknowledged his arrival and went quiet. There was a minimum of radio chat for which he was grateful. There was normally a lot of banter at this stage and he didn’t want to hear any questions or inside wisecracks over the radio, things he couldn’t respond to without sacrificing his cover.
    He needed precious time to remain anonymous until he could figure out the next step of the plan he’d hatched in those few hours he spent alone and in pain. Namely, how the hell to get away from the squadron without a dogfight. A dogfight that would pit him against seven of China’s top guns was a bad bet.
    If he simply peeled off and made a run for it, and didn’t respond to radio calls, the squadron leader would immediately radio the carrier and report what was going on. One of their pilots was behaving very strangely. It wouldn’t take a second for the Chinese carrier skipper to put two and two together: the missing American pilot had somehow gotten inside one of their fighters. He was about to steal it. Blow him out of the sky.
    The Chinese would then use the incident as clear-cut proof the West was being deliberately provocative. Instead of preventing a confrontation, Hawke would now be the cause of