River Smoke (Black Ponies Book 2)

The convoy is under the smoke, and the smoke is lying on the river.

With his usual airplane out of action, Cormack flies one one seven, a Bronco whose left gun pair stops for reasons nobody has found. His call is a river convoy caught in a bend with a fuel barge burning in the middle of it. Black smoke covers the inside of the bend, the convoy commander has lost radios with three boats, and then both banks open fire.

Cormack will not fire over a column he cannot see, and Lieutenant Quillen cannot tell him where his boats are. So Baines asks a different question: not where the boats are, but what they are going to do. The answers have to come from a sailor named Fossey, who can see from the water what the airplane cannot.