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miles off.”
    Caskey brought the nose around five degrees in a gentle turn. They stayed at five thousand feet: high enough for a good radar horizon and low enough to quickly descend and check out any ship they found. “Range?”
    “Seventeen.”
    Caskey squinted as he looked toward the ship, but saw only the blue unbroken ocean. No ships. The radar screen made the Java sea look crowded. To his eyes it looked empty. They flew toward the contact at five hundredknots, carefully watching their fuel and distance from the carrier.
    “Ten miles,” Messer said.
    “Tally,” Caskey said, seeing a large whitish ship on the horizon. He couldn’t tell what it was, other than a cargo ship, and big. He lowered the nose of the F-14 and pointed at the ship.
    “Five miles,” Messer called.
    “I’ll take him down the starboard side,” Caskey said. “He’s heading south—not a good sign,” he added.
    “I don’t think they’d be heading back to port,” Messer said.
    They leveled off at five hundred feet and five hundred knots and flew down the port side of the ship, keeping it on their right. They could see quickly it was the wrong ship. It had a white superstructure, like the Pacific Flyer, but it wasn’t the right shape at all. They couldn’t make out the name as they passed by, but they could clearly make out the Red Star on the stack, from the famous Russian Red Star line, formerly one of the largest cargo lines in the world—state owned, of course. Crewmen standing on the decks looked up at them as they flew by. Caskey could see the white faces turned upward. They waved and the crew waved back.
    Caskey pulled back on the stick gradually until the Tomcat was pointing straight up. As soon as they reached four thousand feet he rolled the plane over on its back heading south again, then rolled wings level at five thousand feet. “Next,” Caskey said.
    “Thirty right, fifteen miles,” Messer replied immediately.
    “Tally,” Caskey said coolly. “It’s bigger than the last ship. Can’t tell if it’s the one,” he said as he lowered the nose.
    They approached the second ship from the bow. It was headed directly toward them, but not fast; the bow wave was small.
    Caskey breathed in sharply. “I think this is it, Messer. Set up the camera. I’m coming left, then right. I’ll take it down the starboard side.”
    “Okay,” Messer said as he checked the settings on his camera.
    “Here we go.” Caskey banked hard left as the Tomcat continued its descent, then hard right. They flew by the ship a quarter mile away at five hundred feet and five hundred knots. No one was on deck. With a telephoto lens on his hand-held 35mm camera Messer took as many pictures of the ship as he could while looking for evidence of a missile launcher. They passed the ship and banked hard right. The G forces pushed them down into their seats. Caskey saw the ship’s name in large white letters against the red hull: Pacific Flyer . Caskey pulled up sharply to get away from the ship without passing down the other side. He went into afterburner to keep the Tomcat climbing at a forty-five-degree angle and increase the distance from the ship.
    As they reached ten thousand feet Caskey rolled the plane over on its back and pulled hard. The G forces built up again as the nose passed through the horizon and he pointed the Tomcat directly at the ocean. Caskey looked straight up and back through the canopy to the ocean and picked out the ship, stark in its white and red against the blue sea. Caskey kept his eye fixed on the ship and held the stick back; he held 7 Gs as the nose came up toward the other horizon, completing a split S. As the nose approached the ship he relaxed the back pressure on the stick and pushed the throttles into full afterburner. “Speed,” Caskey said.
    “Passing six hundred knots, sixty-five hundred feet,” Messer said.
    The G forces left the airplane as Caskey bunted the nose down to keep the Tomcat pointed at the