At that moment, he heard the CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt- rotor aircraft lift off the deck. Thank God, he breathed, Wendy was going to be safe, as long as they were able to keep those fighters off its tail until they were safely wavehopping away.

“Taurus has three bandits, bearing two-five-zero, range nine miles,” Hal Briggs shouted on the command network. “Comin’ in low and smoking.’”

“Nike has contact on the bandits at two-five-zero,” Chris Wohl chimed in. “Switching to Stinger. Taurus, you hang on to the Vulcan.”

“How about we both take a Stinger?” Briggs suggested. “I can grab the Vulcan and knock down any stragglers after I launch.”

“Rog.”

“Stalkers, I have a surface contact, bearing two-two-three, range twenty-nine miles,” Dave Luger announced. “He’s hitting us with an India-band Plank Shave surface search radar and an India-band Hawk Screech fire-control radar. I make this a Koni-class frigate, probably Libyan. He’s coming in fast, almost thirty knots. He could be within missile range at any time.”

“Should’ve known it was the Libyans,” Wohl muttered on the command net.

“Think they might be pissed at us for blowing up their nukes?” Briggs chimed in.

“Pissed enough to attack every ship close enough to have based the chopper,” Patrick said. “Let’s deal with the fighters first, then the frigate.” He didn’t have to say the obvious—they were going to have a fight on their hands, one they had very little chance of surviving.

Stinger missiles soon began rippling from the starboard deck and fantail as the Libyan fighters closed in. Only the combination of the Vulcan cannons and decoys were able to keep the Catherine from being hit. Even so, one missile came close enough to rattle the deck with bits of shrapnel, caught at the last possible moment by a last-instant blast from Hal Briggs’s cannon. But their efforts finally paid off. “Stalkers, air search radar is clear,” Luger announced. “Good shooting. No radar contacts. The rest RTBed.”

“I got a problem over here, boys,” Briggs said. “I’m real low on ammo. Maybe two or three more bursts and I’m out.”

“Same here,” Wohl said.

Patrick checked his magazine and found he had just a handful of rounds remaining—not enough for even a halfsecond burst. “How about your Stingers?”

“One on the fantail.”

“Two starboard.”

“One on the bow,” Patrick said. “And there’s no way we can outrun that frigate.”

“I just got a call—the Egyptian Navy is dispatching two Perry-class frigates,” Luger reported. “ETE sixty minutes. They’ve launched patrol aircraft and helicopters, too.”

That was good news, Patrick thought, but they wouldn’t be on time before the Libyan warship struck.

He hesitated, but only for a moment. For the second time, he was going to lose another base ship to enemy attack. The Iranians had sunk another commando carrier, the S.S. Valley Mistress, in the Persian Gulf, killing several dozen men. That incident had brought Patrick out of his first retirement to start a campaign of revenge against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that had captured the survivors. He was determined not to allow that loss of life again. “Abandon ship,” Patrick ordered. “All crewmen to lifeboats. Right now.”