Final Flight

11

It was five minutes to four in the morning when Jake Grafton walked into the Carrier Air Traffic Control Center (CATCC) space and dropped onto the vinyl-covered couch beside the air operations officer, Commander Ken Walker. As usual, he surveyed the plexiglas status boards that lined the front of the compartment and listed all the aircraft waiting on deck to be launched and all the aircraft airborne awaiting recovery while he bantered with several of the squadron skippers and executive officers who were trailing in. The launch was scheduled to go on the hour, and as soon as the launch was complete, the recovery would follow.

CATCC, pronounced “cat-see,” was the nerve center of carrier operations at night. Two monitors suspended near the overhead displayed the video from the island and flight deck cameras continuously. Enlisted “talkers” wearing sound-powered telephone headsets stood behind the status boards and updated the information with yellow grease pencils. The air ops officer sat on the vinyl couch where he could see it all and dictate orders to his assistant, who sat in front of him at a desk surrounded by a battery of intercom boxes and telephones.

The room was dark except for a minuscule light over the desk and red lights that illuminated the yellow words and numbers on the status boards. Behind the couch where the heavies sat, junior officers from each of the squadrons with planes aloft stood shoulder to shoulder. They were there to give advice and answer questions, if asked.

The status boards tonight listed twelve airplanes to launch and thirteen to recover.

“How’s tricks?” Jake asked Walker when he finally got off the telephone.

“Terrible. There’s about fifteen knots of wind and it’s shifted sixty degrees in the last hour. We’ve meandered all over compass trying to get it down the deck.” On the bridge the officer-of-the-deck would be ordering course changes as he chased the wind. This would cause havoc with the air controllers’ efforts to stack, or marshal, the planes to be recovered aft of the ship, somewhere near the final recovery bearing. No one knew what the final bearing would be.

“And Five Oh Six hasn’t checked in to Marshal yet.”

Jake glanced at the status board again. 506, Majeska. No fuel state was given. Majeska was the commanding officer of the A-6 Intruder squadron.

Jake stood. “I’m going next door.” As he walked away he heard the assistant air ops officer on the phone to Captain James.

The adjoining compartment housed the radar displays, communications equipment, and status boards to control airborne aircraft. The scopes cast an eerie green light on the faces of the specialists who sat before them. Dim red lights shone down from the ceilings. A senior chief petty officer wearing a headset that allowed him to listen to all the radio transmissions walked back and forth behind the scopes, listening and looking and occasionally issuing an order. The senior chief was a chain-smoker who carried his own ashtray. Consequently the area near the door was a haven for refugees from the clear air of the air ops compartment next door. Here in the inner sanctum amid the scopes the smoke wafted about visibly, alternately green and red, swirled constantly by the ineffectual air-conditioning.

The conversations between the airborne pilots and the controllers came over a loudspeaker and provided the background noise. The same conversations could also be heard next door, in air ops.

The chief saw Jake standing near the door and came over, his headset cord trailing after him. “Where’s Five Oh Six?”

The chief led Jake to one of the radar consoles, where together they stared at the large scope, searching for the coded blip of Majeska’s aircraft. Jake fumbled in his shirt pocket for his glasses. Even with the display expanded to show the airspace within a fifty-mile radius of the ship, the correct blip wasn’t there. “We’ve been calling him for ten minutes,” the chief said to Jake. “Ask Strike if they hold him,” the chief told the controller.

The sailor did as ordered. The chief listened to the conversation. The strike controller hadn’t talked to the A-6E for almost fifteen minutes. He broadcast the Intruder’s call sign over the air several times, but received no reply.

“Could he be just outside the range of your radar?” Jake asked.

“No, sir. And Combat doesn’t hold him either.” The operators in CDC would be querying the NTDS computer.

“Skin paint?” If the aircraft’s IFF gear had malfunctioned, it was no longer coding the radar energy it received and broadcasting it back to the ship. The shipboard radars could also look at raw blips — that is, uncoded energy bouncing off the skin of the aircraft.

“No, sir. We tried. We can’t find him up there.”

Jake felt the swoosh and thud of a catapult firing. He glanced at the monitor. The launch had started.

An officer stepped up to Jake’s elbow. “Sir, Commander Walker wants you.” Jake thanked the chief and followed the lieutenant through the smoke.

Walker had a telephone to his ear when Jake sat down. “A Greek freighter called on the commercial net. Says he thinks a plane crashed near his ship about twenty minutes ago. You want to go over to Combat and see what they know?”

“Yeah.” Jake heaved himself up. Every eye in the place was on him. He walked out, feeling very tired. The door to Combat was only forty feet or so forward, on the same starboard O-3 level passageway as CATCC. As Jake walked he could feel catapult pistons thudding into the water brakes. More airplanes aloft.

The NTDS computer consoles and their operators were scattered all over the compartment. The watch officer, a lieutenant, was also sucking on a cigarette. Jake wanted one so badly he could taste it.

“Any sign of survivors?”

“The freighter hasn’t found any.”

“What was that plane doing out there?”

“Surface surveillance. Their last transmission was that they were going to check out that freighter that’s in the vicinity. The freighter says it is looking for survivors, but it can’t find any. We’re sending the fighters that just launched to that position to orbit overhead. Maybe they’ll hear a survival radio or see a flare.”

The two men discussed the situation; the location of the destroyer steaming toward the crash site, how long the fighters could hold overhead, the estimated time en route of the helicopter which would be launched from the carrier in a few minutes, when the current recovery was complete. Jake called his deputy air wing commander, Harry March. When he arrived the recovery was in full swing and the compartment vibrated as the planes smashed down on the flight deck, which was the ceiling of all the O-3 level compartments. Jake and March went out in the passageway and walked the fifty feet to the strike ops office, whose denizens wrote the daily air plan, the document that created missions for the ship’s aircraft. A plan for a wreckage and personnel search at first light by air-wing aircraft was quickly put together as the strike operations officer conferred on the telephone with the admiral’s operations officer. Everyone, Jake reflected, had a finger in the pie.

“This would have to happen just before going into port,” one of the strike ops officers said glumly.

“Is that chopper still on deck?”

“Yessir.” Everyone looked at the monitor. The chopper was spreading its rotors. “Harry, tell Walker to hold that chopper on deck until I get there,” Jake said. “I’m going with them. In the meantime, I want you to get all the people you need, right now, and check out the liquid-oxygen system of every A-6 on this boat. And check all the lox servicing gear. If any of those systems are contaminated, seal them.” March nodded. “Go. I’m going to get on that chopper.”

Jake borrowed a filthy flight suit in flight deck control and dashed across the flight deck toward the waiting helicopter, an SH-3 Sea Knight. The men around it began breaking down the tie-down chains when they saw him coming. The breeze down the flight deck was brisk and the sky clear. The first pale hint of the coming dawn was just visible in the east.

Inside the chopper, one of the two rescue crewmen passed him a helmet which trailed a long black electrical lead. He pulled it on and the crewman plugged the end of the lead into a socket on the forward bulkhead. Now he could hear the pilot and copilot running through the pretakeoff checklist. Jake sat on the floor and wiggled into the flight suit, pulling it on over his uniform. Then he donned an inflatable life vest which the second crewman passed to him.

Even with the helmet, the noise level was extremely high as the helicopter lifted off and transitioned to forward flight. Out the open door, Jake saw the lights on the bow of the ship pass from view. Then there was nothing to see in the featureless darkness of night sea and sky. He motioned to the crewman who had given him the helmet and, when he was close enough, shouted in his ear. “How long until we reach the crash site?”

The crewman spoke into his lip mike and Jake heard the answer from the cockpit. An hour and twenty minutes. As the crewmen closed the sliding side door to improve cruising aerodynamics Jake found a kapok life vest to lay his head on and tried to relax. He gnawed a fingernail already into the quick from too much chewing and half listened to the cockpit crew chanting the litany of the post takeoff checklist on the ICS. Why in the name of God had Bull Majeska crashed, a man with three thousand hours in jets, over twenty-five hundred in A-6s? What could have gone wrong? Was the wreckage afloat or had it gone down? Could it be recovered?

Disgusted at himself for his impatience, he finally spit out the fragments of fingernail and forced himself to close his eyes and breathe regularly.

After ten minutes he gave up trying to sleep and stood behind the pilot and copilot where he could see the flight instruments. He exchanged pleasantries with the crew as the dawn chased the stars away and gradually revealed the restless gray sea and blueing sky.

The new day had completely arrived when the radio gave them the news. One of the orbiting jets had located a survivor. He was talking on the radio. It was Bull Majeska.

“Ask them to ask Majeska if the bombardier ejected.”

The chopper pilot spoke into his mike. In a moment he turned back to Jake. “The pilot doesn’t know, sir.”

“Tell the guys in the jets to search for the second man. And tell them to be careful. I don’t want anyone to fly into the water on a search-and-rescue.”

“I see you,” the tinny voice on the radio shouted. “I’m gonna pop a smoke.” Orbiting jets overhead had guided the helicopter toward Bull Majeska in his life raft.

“There he is!” The copilot pointed toward eleven o’clock. A trace of orange smoke was just visible rising from the surface of the water. The swells were running three to four feet, and there was enough wind to break a whitecap occasionally. From a thousand feet up you could just see the tops of the low mountains of Cyprus peeping above the northern horizon and the superstructure of the freighter, hull down to the east.

The helicopter pilot approached the little raft from downwind, flying about forty feet above the water, coming up the trail of orange smoke toward the tiny bobbing figure.

Jake moved back into the cargo compartment and watched the hoist operator run the orange horse-collar down toward the sea. The rescue swimmer in full wetsuit adjusted his goggles and leaned out the open door. He would only go into the sea if the survivor could not get into the horse-collar.

Majeska had trouble getting out of his raft, so the helicopter sagged toward the water and the swimmer slipped out of the door. In less than two minutes the crewman pulled Majeska onto the floor of the cargo area and Jake helped get the collar off him. He was so exhausted he just lay there streaming water.

“Did Reed get out?” Jake shouted.

“I don’t know.”

Jake helped Majeska out of his survival gear and wrapped him in a dry blanket. When the swimmer was back aboard, he gave him a blanket too.

“CAG,” the helicopter pilot called on the ICS.

Jake leaned into the cockpit.

“There’s no sign of the other guy and we’re running low on fuel, CAG. We’re going to have to break off and get back. There’s another chopper on its way here.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That guy may need medical attention.”

“Has anyone spotted the wreckage?”

“An A-6 has spotted a few pieces. The destroyer will be here in about three hours and they will pick up everything they can find.”

“How come that freighter didn’t wait around until dawn and help look for survivors?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell one of the guys upstairs to make a low pass over it and get some pictures. Then let’s get back to the carrier.” Jake went back to check on Majeska.

“Are you hurt?” Jake shouted at Majeska over the noise.

“Don’t think so.”

“What happened?” He was referring to the crash.

Bull Majeska shook his head. “Don’t know. I blacked out.”

“Did Reed eject before you did?” Since the A-6 lacked command ejection, each crewman must eject himself.

“Don’t know. I didn’t hear him on the radio when I was in the water. I called and called.”

Jake wrapped another blanket around the shivering A-6 pilot. He stood in the door and looked at the gray ocean, thinking about the bombardier and watery death. Later the crewman derigged the hoist and shut the side door.

Doctor Hartman hovered over the patient, listening to his lungs and heart. They were in a two-man room in sickbay, but the second bed was empty. Majeska had already been X-rayed and had urinated into a bottle. Now he was sitting on the side of the bed.

“So just exactly what happened?” Jake asked.

“Like I said, CAG, I don’t really know. We were making a low pass by that freighter and the next thing I knew, I was in the water. I don’t know if the ejection seat fired when the plane hit the water or whether the plane broke up on impact and tossed me out. I just don’t know! And I don’t know if Reed got out.”

“Were you in the seat when you came to?”

“No. My life vest was inflated and there were parachute shroud lines everywhere. I had to cut my way out of them and get my raft deployed. Jeez, I haven’t worked that hard in years, and I swallowed a couple gallons of salt water. I must have cut every shroud line three times.”

The life vest, Jake knew, had two carbon dioxide cartridges that automatically activated when immersed in salt water and inflated the vest. But the parachute should have deployed only if the ejection seat had fired.

“Did you see the freighter after you were in the water? They said they looked for survivors.”

“I saw it. But I was so wrapped in shroud lines I couldn’t get my flares out for a while. And when I finally did, they left anyway. At least I think they did; after the first flare burned out I spent at least a half hour trying to get into the raft, puking my guts out all the while. There were shroud lines everywhere and the raft kept getting hung up. I kept thinking the parachute might pull me under. I was flailing away with that shroud cutter and swallowing water and heaving my guts.”

“CAG,” Doctor Hartman said, “I can’t finish this examination with you two talking. Could you …”

“Come back after a bit, Doc,” Jake said. The doctor opened his mouth, thought better of whatever he was going to say, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Jake sat on the other bed, facing Bull. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

Majeska set his jaw. “Just what the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean I don’t believe you. I think you know a lot more than you’re telling and I want to hear it. Now.”

“You’re calling me a liar.”

“Don’t you puff up on me, you sonuvabitch. There’s one man dead and a thirty-six million-dollar airplane at the bottom of the ocean. Now I want the whole fucking truth.”

Majeska lowered his gaze. “There’s nothing we can do to bring Reed back,” he said softly.

“I want it all, Bull. Now.”

“I’ve said everything I’m gonna say to you, Jake. I’ve told you how it happened. Now I’ll tell it again to the accident board, but I’m not saying anything more to you. Sir.”

“I’m your boss, Bull. I write your fitness report. That accident report will come to me for my comment before it goes off this ship.” Jake took a deep breath. “You idiot, I’m responsible for all these airplanes and every swinging dick that gets in them. I don’t want any more people dead.” Majeska’s face was covered with a fine sheen of perspiration and he was biting his lip. “I’m not here to just chew on your ass. If you fucked up, you fucked up. But I need the truth!”

“You already have the truth, sir.” Bull Majeska said at last.

Jake rose and walked out of the room.

Will Cohen was waiting for him in the CAG office, along with Harry March.

“We checked out all the liquid-oxygen servicing equipment and the lox system in the A-6s, CAG. Couldn’t find anything wrong, except one A-6 had a leaky seal. We downed it for that. Take a couple hours to fix.”

“One leaky seal. Could a seal leak have contaminated the system?”

“No way.” Cohen shook his head.

“Do every other airplane on this ship. And have the senior parachute rigger check every oxygen mask on this boat.”

“Gee whiz, CAG. If some fighter puke has a mask that wasn’t inspected when it should have been, that doesn’t have anything to do with why Majeska crashed.”

Jake just looked at Cohen.

“You want it, you got it, Toyota,” Cohen said and made for the door.

Jake headed for his office. “What do you have, Harry?”

“Photos of that Greek freighter, the Aegean Argos. It seems she probably came from a North African port and is on her way to Beirut now. She’s headed in that direction at twelve knots. Making plenty of smoke.” When Jake was behind his desk, March tossed the photos in front of him.

Jake examined them. There were no visible weapons, but the deck cargo was covered with a tarpaulin. “What do the Air Intelligence guys say about this?”

“They say there are no visible weapons.”

“Send off a message. Somebody should check that ship out when it docks.”

“Beirut isn’t New York. The port authorities aren’t going to be falling over each other trying to help us.”

“I know that. And I know that half the people in Lebanon are probably on the CIA payroll or would like to be. Send the message.”

“You think maybe the Argos shot Majeska down?”

“I don’t know what to think. Maybe they nailed him with a hand-held missile or a machine gun mounted on a rail. Maybe a wing fell off, catastrophic failure. It’s happened before. Maybe the plane just blew up. I don’t have the foggiest. Bull says he blacked out and came to in the water. One thing is sure, the captain of that freighter didn’t want to give us a real close look in the daytime. It’s almost as if he started to look for survivors, then realized if he found any we’d come aboard to get them, so he sailed away.”

“A real nice guy.”

“There’s a lot of them here in the Med. Majeska says he had a flare going and the freighter left anyway. They should have seen him. There wasn’t that much of a sea running and visibility was good. Go talk to the strike ops guys. And see what the admiral thinks of all this.”

“I’m on my way.”

As the officer departed, Farnsworth came to the door. “Admiral Parker wants to see you, at your convenience.”

“What about?” Farnsworth had probably been talking to the yeoman in the admiral’s office. The yeomen usually knew more about what was going on than the officers did.

“That little shindig you have planned tonight in the wardroom.”

Jake had forgotten. After every at-sea period he liked to get all the aviators together in the wardroom. The LSOs gave out certificates to the crew with the best boarding average and the catapult officers put on a little skit about the worst mistake they had witnessed on the flight deck. Tonight Admiral Parker was supposed to present centurion patches to the crews that had logged a hundred landings aboard this ship. And he had asked Cowboy to participate in a skit. He had also forgotten about the skit.

“That will have to wait. Since the skipper of the A-6 squadron had the crash, I think I’ll probably have to convene the accident board.” Normally the commanding officer of the squadron that had the crash convened the board.

Farnsworth held up his hand. He stepped out the door and returned with a large, black binder, which he laid on Jake’s desk. Farnsworth opened the binder to the accident instruction. Between the pages was a draft of the appointing order for Jake’s approval.

Jake looked it over. It was complete, except for the names of the officers who would do the investigation. Jake gave Farnsworth the names. “Type them in. You know, someday you and I are going to have to trade jobs for a day or two. I want to see if I know as much about running an air wing as you do.”

“Thanks anyway, sir. But I just type.”

“Any ideas on the A-6 crash?” Cowboy Parker asked. He was seated in his raised easy chair on the left side of the flag bridge. From this vantage point, he could see the activity on the flight deck without rising from the chair. A stack of paperwork lay on the window ledge in front of him.

Jake told him what Majeska had said. “I think he’s probably lying,” Jake concluded. “We’ve checked these lox systems from here to Sunday and they’re perfect. Jelly Dolan may have had the oxygen system in his Tomcat go out on him, but I don’t think Bull did. The probability of that happening twice without defective shipboard oxygen equipment is astronomical.”

“And you’re damn sure the shipboard equipment is okay?”

“Positive.”

“Did you tell Majeska you think he’s lying?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“And he stuck to his story.” Cowboy Parker cocked his head and scratched it. “So if he lets it lay like this, he’ll get hammered in the accident report. And he knows you’ll rip him on his fitness report. He might even be relieved of his command. He’s finished in the navy.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Yet for him that’s preferable to telling the truth.”

Jake held both hands out. “If he’s lying.”

“What the hell could he have done in that cockpit?”

“It’s probably something he didn’t do.”

“But what?”

Jake shrugged helplessly.

“If you know he’s lying, why don’t you relieve him now?”

“I don’t know anything. I have a hunch he probably is. He even hinted he was. But you don’t can a guy on hints or hunches.”

“We have a missing bombardier. What’s his name? Reed? He’s undoubtedly dead. I expect some answers. We aren’t going to flush this down the John and go on our merry way.” Cowboy Parker’s face was devoid of emotion. “If you can’t get the truth out of Majeska, you send him up here to me.”

“Give me some time, Admiral.”

Cowboy turned his face toward the deck below. Sailors in blue and yellow jerseys were busy moving aircraft. The snorting of the flight deck tractors was inaudible this high in the island.

“Has the Wedel recovered any of the wreckage?”

“Some skin panels. A piece of the radome. Half a flap.”

“What do you want me to do in this skit of yours tonight?”

“Let’s cancel the skit. I’m fresh out of chuckles. Just plan on presenting those centurion patches. Maybe make a few remarks.”

Cowboy picked up a document from the stack on the ledge. “See you there.”

“Yessir.” Jake saluted.

Jake stopped in a berthing compartment on the O-3 level, aft of the arresting gear machinery spaces. The passageway went right through the compartment, which berthed over eighty men. In one small area where two passageways met, the sailors in their underwear sat on folding chairs around a metal cruise box, playing cards. Jake leaned against a bunk support and watched the game. Several of the men acknowledged his presence with a nod, then ignored him. This was their territory and he was a senior officer, an outsider.

The air was musty, laden with the tang of sweaty bodies and dirty clothes. Air circulation in here was impeded by the curtains that isolated the various bunks. The place resembled an old railroad Pullman car. In the last few years the upper echelons of the navy had devoted much thought to improving habit-ability in sailors’ berthing compartments and getting rid of these curtains, yet the curtains remained. A curtain on his bunk was all the privacy a sailor had. Only in his bunk could a man write a letter or read a magazine without someone looking over his shoulder.

Soft music came from one of the top bunks. A male voice sang slowly, clearly,

“Turn that damn thing off, Willis, you jerk.” The speaker was one of the cardplayers, about twenty, with intense eyes and sandy hair that needed trimming.

“I live here too, Ski,” came the voice from the bunk. The piano was light and haunting.

“Don’t you have earphones for that blaster?” called the black man seated beside the sandy-haired guy.

“Yeah.”

“Then either use them or turn the damn thing off, man. We don’t want to listen to that crap.” The saxophone wailed plaintively.

“I ain’t gonna ask you again, Willis,” the black man said ominously.

The music died abruptly.

“Who’s dealing the fucking cards?”

An endless army of small clouds drifted across the face of the sea. Jake stood on the forward edge of the flight deck with his hands in his pockets and braced himself against the motion of the ship’s bow as she met the swells. The clouds were puffy and white and cast crisp shadows that turned the water a darker, deep intense blue that was almost black. The clouds and shadows moved from starboard to port, spanking along in a stiff breeze.

The Mediterranean under an infinite sky with the clouds and shadows cast by a brilliant sun — this had been the inspiration for poets and singers ever since the days of Homer, and probably even before. Odysseus had sailed these waters on his way home from Troy, as had Phoenician galleys, Roman traders. This ocean was the living heart of Western civilization.

And now another man lay beneath the waters in a sailor’s grave.

Twenty-three years in the navy, nine cruises, one war — he had seen it and lived it so many times. Flight deck accidents, crashes, lives twisted and smashed and snuffed out … bloody threads woven into this tapestry of young men far from home, young men trying to grow up in a man’s world.

And what of you, Jake Grafton? Have you made a contribution? Has the price you paid made a difference? To whom? What have you done that another couldn’t have done in your place?

Tired and depressed, he walked over to the port side and went down the short ladder into the catwalk. At the for-wardmost portion of the catwalk was a mount for a set of binoculars which a lookout could use when the ship entered or left port, or in foul weather. He leaned against the binocular mount and watched the cloud shadows move across the white-caps.

Being a navy wife had not been easy for Callie. She had grown up in a family where the father had come home every night, where the rituals of dinner and socializing with neighbors and colleagues and going to church on Sunday had all been complied with. Married to Jake, the only rituals scrupulously observed were good-byes and homecomings. Not that he and Callie had ever really had a home, of course, what with two years here and two years there.

Maybe he would have left the navy if there had been children. They had wanted children, and it never happened. It was in the third year of their marriage that they decided to have a child. After six months off contraceptives, they had consulted a doctor. Jake recalled the experience vividly, since he had been required to take a bottle to the restroom and masturbate into it. Never in his life had he felt less interested in sex than he had at that moment, with his wife on the other side of the door and fully aware of what was going on in here.

When at last he emerged from the little room with his semen sample in hand, slightly out of breath, Callie and the woman doctor were discussing the sexual act in graphic, explicit terms — clinical details that somehow sounded more obscene to Jake than any locker room comment he had ever heard. He had handed the sample to the nurse and sat at attention in the chair beside Callie while the women plowed the territory — ovulation and timing and body temperature and the position of the penis in relation to the cervix — with only occasional glances in his direction. “Be fruitful and multiply,” the doctor had said, and sent them forth armed with a complex chart that Callie posted on their bedroom wall and annotated diligently.

He had received telephone calls from Callie in midafternoon at the squadron, joyous proclamations that now was the hour. He remembered whispering embarrassed excuses to the operations officer, dashing madly home, and ripping off his clothes as he charged through the door.

Callie collected a library of sex manuals. He could still see her sitting naked in bed, legs folded, studying an illustrated manual he had purchased from a giggling female clerk whose eyes he had been unable to meet. Their lovemaking became desperate as they experimented with positions, Callie’s hunger a tangible thing. He suspected she was continuing to see the doctor, but he didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer.

Then, finally, the crying began, hysterical sobbing that continued for hours and he could not console. He had felt so helpless. After almost a month the crying jags stopped. Their love-making became relaxed, less athletic, more tender. Those gentle hours he now treasured as the high points of his life. One day he noticed the wall chart was gone. The sex manuals were also missing from the closet. He pretended not to notice.

And he had spent so many months, so many years, away from her!

For what?

Tired beyond words, Jake Grafton turned and walked aft along the catwalk.

The squadron skits were over and the centurion patches handed out that evening when Jake finally stood up at the air wing officers meeting in the main wardroom. Apparently no one noticed that the air wing staff officers hadn’t seized this opportunity to make fools of themselves. Every chair in the room was taken and people stood along the bulkheads. Bull Majeska sat in the front row with the other squadron skippers. Admiral Parker had excused himself earlier and left for the flag spaces. The dinner service had been completed an hour before the meeting started, yet the stained tablecloths remained on the tables. The combined body heat was overloading the air conditioning system.

“Okay, gentlemen. Now we find out who the real carrier pilots are and who just talks a good line. Without further ado, the LSOs.” Jake clapped as he sat down, but he was the only one. A resounding chorus of boos made the walls shake.

Lieutenant Commander Jesus Chama, the senior landing signal officer — he was attached to Jake’s staff and flew F/A-18s — stood up with a wide grin and motioned for silence. He was of medium height and sported a pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip. “Thank you. Thank you all. I can’t tell you how gratifying a welcome like that is. It warms our teeny little hearts.” More boos.

“The list, please.” Chama held out his hand with a flourish. One of his fellow practitioners of the arcane art of “waving” aircraft, of scrutinizing an approach to the ship from a small platform beside the landing area and helping the pilot via radio when necessary, handed him a sheet of paper. Chama held it at arm’s length, squinted, and slowly brought it toward his face. When he had the paper against his nose, he lowered it with a sigh and took a set of glasses from his trouser pocket. The glasses were a prop Chama had slaved on for hours in the air wing office. The bottoms of two Coca-Cola bottles were inserted in the frame in place of lenses. Chama had had to heat the plastic frame and bend it to make it hold. He had destroyed three frames in the process. Now he carefully placed his masterpiece on his nose, hooking the earpieces behind each ear.

As the laughter rose to a roar Chama started the list at arm’s length again and slowly worked it inward. When it reached his nose, he shouted, “Third place, squadron boarding average, the Red Rippers.” The VF-11 skipper stood up beaming while his officers cheered and clapped behind him. Everyone else hooted derisively.

The LSOs graded every approach to the ship, and a running score sheet for every pilot was posted in the ready rooms. A squadron average was an average of the individual scores of every pilot attached to that squadron.

Chama handed out the second- and first-place squadron awards, then began on individual awards. After third and second were handed out, he motioned to Jake. “Sir, maybe you better give this last one out, I don’t have the stomach for it.” Jake stood and looked over Chama’s shoulder at his list.

“Him?”

“Yessir.”

“Couldn’t you have fudged it up or something? Everyone knows you guys rig the scores, anyway.”

“Sir!” Chama feigned outrage.

“This is very painful,”

“You must do your duty, sir,”

“I suppose.” Jake sighed and looked through the faces in the crowd for the one he wanted. When he found it, he said, “Okay, Wild, get up here and collect your award.”

A storm of applause followed as Major Wild Blue Hickok, an exchange pilot from the U.S. Air Force, made his way through the crowd. By the time he arrived beside Jake, his face was flushed.

“Wild here, in his grungy air force flight suit, had a boarding average for this at-sea period of 98.2. That’s figured on ninety-two passes over almost four months. Gentlemen, that is one hell of an accomplishment and, so far, stands as a record for United States. Wild, have you ever given any thought to an interservice transfer?”

“No, sir. Not since the air farce announced it’s going to issue leather flight jackets again,”

Howls of glee greeted this remark. After forty years of nylon and nomex, the air force had recently announced leather jackets would soon be issued to combat-qualified flight crewmen as a career retention measure. The navy men were suddenly extremely proud of the fact that the navy — their navy — had never abandoned its World War II policy of issuing leather jackets to its aviators. Wild had been ribbed unmercifully by his navy comrades, many of whom had taken it upon themselves to personally inform Wild that anyone who would stay in any military service to get a leather jacket was a damned fool.

When Wild Blue and the LSOs were finally seated, Jake had the floor to himself. He waited until the crowd was silent. “We’ve been at sea for almost four months, flying every day but three, and you guys have done an outstanding job. You’ve kept the airplanes properly maintained and in the air. We’ve met our commitments. We’ve done the job the navy sent us here to do. I’m proud of each and every one of you.”

He faced the squadron skippers. “I want you gentlemen to let every enlisted man in your squadrons know that I am equally proud of them. Without our troops the planes wouldn’t fly.”

He directed his attention back to the faces in the crowd, the bulk of whom were young pilots and naval flight officers on their first or second cruise. “This profession of ours requires the best that we can give it. Three men who were here for our last little soiree aren’t here tonight. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough, and you have to live with that. Sometimes nobody’s best is good enough. Those are the hazards.”

Out of the corner of his eye Jake saw Bull Majeska staring at the floor. Jake picked out a young face he did not recognize about ten rows back and tried to talk to him. “In wartime officers are promoted due to their ability to lead in battle. In peacetime, too often, they are promoted because they are good bureaucrats. In case you guys haven’t figured it out, the navy is a large bureaucracy.” Chuckles stirred the crowd.

“Pushing paper isn’t enough. And driving an airplane through the wild black yonder isn’t enough. There is something else, something that’s a little difficult to put into words.” All this had seemed so simple this afternoon in his office as he doodled and thought about what he wanted to say.

He put his hands in his pockets and walked to a new position, then searched again for that anonymous, smooth young face he had been talking to. “You have to have faith — faith in yourself, faith in the guy beside you, faith in your superiors, and faith in the people who work for you.

“You see, a military organization is a team of people who have to rely on each other. The more complex our equipment becomes, the more intricate our operations, the greater the reliance has to be. We can’t function unless every man does his job. We must all do the absolute best we can, each and every one of us. We’ll each do our part. We’ll stick together. We’ll accept responsibility. Not for personal gain, not for glory, not for promotion, not for …” He ran out of words and searched the faces looking at him.

Did they understand? Could they understand? It sounded so trite when he said it aloud. Yet he had believed it all his adult life and had tried to live it.

“You must have faith. And you must keep the faith.” The faces, these faces, tan, black, brown; he had been looking at these faces for twenty years. Even the names were the same, American names, from every dusty, weary corner of the earth. And the nicknames — Slick, Box, Goose, Ace — all the same. He felt old and worn. He walked toward the door and a lieutenant standing near it called the room to attention.