None of this mattered. Cal still sweated out the time between the approach of the small boat and the boarding team leader's first report.

"Munro, Mark 1, ops normal."

"Mark 1, Munro, ops normal, aye," Ops said into the mike.

Cal raised his binoculars. The small boat had closed to within a mile of the skiff and was making a big, slow circle. They all jumped when the radio erupted into life. "Munro, Mark 1, we see four new Yamaha 200s on the stern of the vessel!"

Before Ops could reply, through the binoculars Cal could see three men appear suddenly in the well of the vessel. A wake boiled up from its stern.

"Holy shit," someone said.

"Set go fast red!"

"Go fast red, aye, Captain!" Behind him he heard BM3 Stamm pipe, "Now, set go fast red, set go fast red!"

"Set flight quarters!"

"Now, set flight condition one!" Stamm's voice echoed over the ship so immediately on the heels of the order that Cal knew Stamm had been anticipating it. "Close all doors and hatches! Remove all hats topside! The smoking lamp is out!"

"Munro, Mun 1, ops normal!"

"Mun 1, Munro, ops normal, aye." Cal watched long enough to see the small boat settle into pursuit of the go fast and then went out on the bridge wing in time to see the aviators head aft at a run toward the hangar deck. Back inside the bridge had become crowded with deck officers, phone talkers, ETs, and HCOs, and loud with radio chatter between the officer of the deck, the helo communications officer, the landing signals officer, and Combat. At one point the noise level got so high the XO raised his voice and said, "Okay, everyone, take it down a notch."

Cal couldn't blame them. Part of their mission was to act as sentry between the wholesale drug smugglers in Central and South America and their retail market in the United States. Insofar as Munro's very presence

was a deterrent, well and good, but going a whole patrol without even the smell of a bust was disheartening to even the most motivated, best-trained crew. Everyone was excited at the prospect of a chase.

The closed-circuit television screen showed the helo on the flight deck, its rotors accelerating into a blur. A voice sounded over the speaker. "Hangman, this is Tin Star, we're ready for the numbers."

Suppo's voice was quick and sure as he went down the list: wind speed and direction, altimeter, the pitch and roll of the ship. The aviator, a lieutenant commander who had driven ships for two years before going to flight school and who consequently had a better idea than most aviators of what was going on on the bridge at that moment, read the numbers back and requested a takeoff to port. Suppo looked at Cal. "Permission to conduct flight ops, Captain?"

Cal nodded.

Suppo keyed the mike. "LSO, HCO, helo is cleared for takeoff to port, take all signals from the LSO, green deck."

"Green deck, aye," the conn officer said.

"Green deck!" the phone talker said, and switched the hangar lights to green.

"HCO, LSO, green deck." Cal recognized Chief Colvin's voice on the speaker. On the screen he watched the chief make a counterclockwise circle with his right arm and point to port. The pitch of the rotor blades increased and the helo lifted off, put its nose on the small boat, and shot down the length of the ship with neatness and dispatch, fifty feet off the deck.

"Get us up on turbines," Cal said.

The OOD, a newly minted ensign named Schrader, relayed the order to the engine room, which order was repeated back at the usual full-volume engine room bawl. A moment later main gas turbine one kicked in with its distinctive whine and Munro began to move over the water like she had a purpose.

"All ahead flank," Schrader said.

"All ahead flank, aye," the helm answered, and then she said, "Wait a minute."

"What's the problem, Roberts?" Schrader said.

"The rudder, sir," she said, a little uncertainly. She looked up at the rudder indicator and with more decision said, "It's stuck."

"Stuck?"

"Yes, sir, stuck, at five degrees port." In sudden indignation she said, "We^: re in the middle of chasing a go fast and they're throwing a drill at us, too?" She looked at Cal accusingly.

"This isn't a drill," Cal said. He exchanged a look with the XO, and had to admire the way both of them refrained from screaming with frustration. "All stop, and pipe the EO to the bridge."

"All stop, aye."

"EO, lay to the bridge, Lieutenant Raybonn, lay to the bridge immediately."

Almost before the words had stopped echoing around the ship the EO stepped onto the bridge. The XO explained the situation tersely. The EO, a tall man with neat features and a calm expression, listened without comment and retired immediately to aft steering, where they heard later MK1 Bensley and EMI Ryals were already wrestling with the rudder.

For the next few minutes, Munro went around in a very big, very slow circle. Everyone on the bridge waited for word from the helo. They sent an ops normal message and weren't due for another for fifteen minutes, but the boats hadn't been that far away, they should have made contact by now. Cal imagined Mun 1 getting farther and farther away from home and the go fast getting farther and farther ahead of the small boat.

"OOD, MKl."

"MK1, OOD," Schrader said into his radio.

"OOD, we've manually brought the rudder amidships."

They all looked at the rudder indicator.

"MK1, OOD, rudder amidships, aye." Schrader lowered the radio and said, "Rudder amidships, Captain."

"All right," Cal said. At least now, with twin screws, they could steer the ship.

Ops was on the radio to Mun 1. "They still have the go fast in sight, Captain."

"Good to know." Cal 's phone rang. It was the EO. He listened and hung up. "It was a dust bunny," he announced.

There was a brief silence, unusual in the middle of launching the helo. "I beg your pardon, Captain?" the XO finally said.

"A dust bunny," Cal said. "That's what jammed the steering linkage at five degrees port."

No one believed him, but he was the captain so no one said so, until the EO reappeared on the bridge with the dust bunny in question, a tiny scrap of fabric, oil-soaked and well-chewed, on display in the palm of his hand. "We figure someone was mopping oil out of the steering linkage with a rag and left this behind."

"Of course at the most inopportune possible time," the XO said tartly.

From the expression on the EO's face, a normally very unflappable man, Cal rather thought the XO was right.

They spent the rest of the day chasing the go fast.

"He would not stop for anything," he said to Kenai.

"I thought you could shoot out the engines."

"We could," Cal said, "if, a, the.50-caliber on the helo hadn't jammed, and b, we didn't have a problem fueling the helo when she came back to gas up."

"Yeah, gas is kinda important," Kenai, the veteran pilot, said. "What happened?"

"We thought at first something was wrong with the fueling system, but it turned out during the last refit the helo manufacturer had installed a new fuel coupling without telling anyone and without updating the specs. You know at a gas station when your car is full the handle clicks off?"

"Yeah?"

"That was what was happening when we tried to fuel the helo. It took us a week to figure out what the hell was going on."

"So you didn't fly for a week?"

"Oh no, we flew, the engineers figured out a way around it."

"Must have been frustrating."

"Yeah, well. Been nice to have caught ourselves a live one." He sighed. "We aren't seeing a lot of action this side of the isthmus since we got the smugglers here pretty much bottled up."

"Bottled up where?"

"There are three natural chokepoints in the Caribbean. Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, and the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico. If they're coming north, they are most likely coming through one of those. We know it, they know we know it, and they've gotten a lot cagier because of it."