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He felt his engine sputter with a sudden loss of thrust but kept his attention focused on the runway. There was nothing he could do to stretch the fuel he had remaining and knew the engine was likely running on what was left in the fuel lines. If it quit, he would have to punch out. But he was less than a mile from the runway and had a better than fifty-fifty chance of making it.

“ENGINE… ENGINE…”

He felt the engine spooling down and knew he had exhausted every drop of JP-5 jet fuel they had put into his aircraft. His rate of descent increased, and he glanced down at the ground, one thousand feet short of the runway where the earth ended at a steep cliff falling away to the ocean.

Come on, baby…

Colt kept his right hand on the stick, trying to stretch his glide to the concrete while shifting his left hand from the worthless throttle to the black-and-yellow-striped ring between his legs. His eyes were wide, absorbing his airspeed, altitude, and position over the ground as his exhausted brain performed a continuous assessment of whether or not he was going to make it.

Come on…

He sensed the coastline drift by underneath him, and he coaxed back on the stick to increase his angle of attack and arrest his descent. As his speed bled off, he knew the wings would eventually give up trying to create lift, and he would slam into the ground no matter what he did. He just hoped it happened over the runway and not the soft grass that would likely send him cartwheeling across the ground.

One hundred… fifty… thirty…

He counted down his altitude over the ground, still spring-loaded to pull the handle and eject from the fifth-generation fighter, when he felt his main landing gear touch down on the smooth concrete runway. He kept back pressure on the stick, keeping the nose off the ground as he used aerodynamic braking to slow his ground roll. When the nose fell to the earth, squarely on the runway centerline, he exhaled loudly in his mask.

“Thank you, Jesus,” he said.

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)

Adam sat in the chair in front of his ODIN terminal, chewing on the inside of his lip. Gunny and Sarge bickered over his shoulder, but he hadn’t heard a single thing either man said. He kept replaying the events of the last twenty-four hours over in his head, from the TOPGUN pilot who had almost crashed his jet into the strike group’s cruiser to his communications with Chen.

When did it all go wrong?

She had made him feel important, worthy of her time and attention. She had given him her love and made him feel as if his job was the most important job in the world. His fellow Marines looked down on him for the job he performed, but Chen had seemed genuinely interested. She had wanted to know how it all worked and actually listened to him when he talked about his day.

Sure, he knew what he was doing when he started passing her information. He knew what she was and what that made him, but he was past caring. If the United States Marine Corps wouldn’t value him, then maybe Chen could. He looked over his shoulder at Gunny as he spit a long stream of tobacco juice into his taped Gatorade bottle. All he wanted to do was escape to the aft Sea Sparrow launcher with his Nintendo Switch and check for messages.

Surely she’s warned me.

He turned back to the computer in front of him, then abruptly stood.

Of course, Gunny took notice. “Where you think you’re going, Garett?”

“I need to go—”

The bald senior staff noncommissioned officer interrupted him. “The head. I know.”

He felt flustered but couldn’t focus unless he checked for messages. “My stomach…”

“Just be quick about it,” Gunny said, then turned back to berate Sergeant Narvaez for something he had said.

Adam darted for the door and a few minutes later had reached the watertight door he used to access the Sea Sparrow launcher. He rotated the long-armed handle and pushed it open, once again exposing only pitch black. He stepped out onto the catwalk, then closed and dogged the door behind him, standing with his back to the steel hull as he tried calming his racing heart and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Pushing through his fear, he made his way along the bulkhead to the railing aft of the Sea Sparrow launcher and stood on the platform just above the Phalanx Close-in Weapon System. With a furtive glance over his shoulder, he removed the Nintendo Switch and entered the faux-Konami code to access the Covert Communication Partition.