Retribution by Dale Brown

the ocean, then returned, more curious. He moved to his right, then farther down the slope.
    It wasn’t a rock, he realized. It was a person.
    Breanna, he thought, throwing himself forward.
    Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
0043, 16 January 1998

    D ANNY F REAH CROUCHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE A BNER Read ’s boat, waiting for the chance to pluck one of the fliers from the water. The boat was a souped-up Zodiac, custom-made for the littoral warcraft that carried her. Special cells in the hull and preloaded filler made the boats difficult to sink, and the engine, propelled by hydrogen fuel cells, was both fast and quiet. Danny decided he would see about getting some for Whiplash when he got home.
    Jan Stewart was the first of the Levitow ’s crewmen to be picked up. Her teeth chattered as Danny helped her in. One of the sailors wrapped a waterproof “space blanket” around her and gave her a chemical warming pouch. Dork—Lieutenant Dennis Thrall, a Flighthawk pilot—was next. His face was swollen and his lips blue.
    Dork’s hands were so swollen that he couldn’t activate the warmer. Danny took it from him and twisted gently, feeling the heat instantly as the chemical reaction began.
    “Thanks, Cap,” said Dork in a husky voice. “Where’s Zen?”
    “Still looking.”
    “He and Bree were going out after us. They had to jump.”
    “Yeah, I know,” said Danny.
    “They should be south of us,” said Lieutenant Dick “Bullet” Timmons, huddling next to Dork. Bullet had been the Levitow ’s second-shift pilot. “We were flying west. They would have bailed only a few seconds later.”
    “We’ll find them,” said Danny.
    He glanced over his shoulder at the Indian frigate, sitting in an oblong splash of moonlight a mile away. The Indians had volunteered to help with the rescue, but no one knew whether they could be trusted. It had been Indian missiles,after all, that had shot down the Levitow .
    “We were jumped by Indian MiGs and Sukhois on our way to deploy the EEMWBs,” Bullet told Danny. His voice was rushed; he seemed to need to tell what had happened to them, to explain why they were down in the water. “They kept nicking us. The Flighthawks were gone because of the T-Rays. Then finally, one of the Sukhois got us with an AMRAAMski. Plane held together but there was too much damage to keep it in the air. Bree did a hell of a job getting us out over the water and just holding it stable enough to jump. Really she did.”
    “We’ll debrief back at the ship,” Danny told him gently. “It’s all right.”
    But the pilot kept talking.
    “She ordered everyone else to jump. She and Zen stayed behind. She was going to jump, though. Definitely. She was going out. Zen too. She knew she couldn’t fly it back. And there was no way she was landing in India. The Levitow was shielded against the T-Rays. She wouldn’t have let them have the plane, even if she could have landed it. No way.”
    “Relax,” Danny said, grabbing another warmer for him. “We’ll find them.”
    Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
Time unknown
    Z EN KNEW BETTER THAN TO FLAIL AGAINST THE WAVES , BUT he did it anyway, throwing himself into the teeth of the tide, pushing and pulling and swimming and dragging himself to his wife.
    It was Breanna. He knew it before he could see her face in the pale light, before he could make out the raft, or the horse-shoelike collar she still wore. He just knew it.
    What he didn’t know was whether she was alive.
    He fought against doubt, battering his arms against therocks.
    Ten feet.
    But those last ten feet were like miles. The water rushed at him as if the ocean wanted to keep her for its own. Zen clawed and crawled forward, pushing toward her, until finally he touched the back of her helmet.
    His fingers seemed to snap back with electricity. His guard dissolved. If she hadn’t even taken off her helmet, how could she be alive?
    “Bree,” whispered Zen. “Bree.”
    His voice was so soft even