Flame Out

PROLOGUE

Rain spattered the front of the cockpit, loud even against the drone of the A-6E Intruder’s two Pratt and Whitney turbojets. Bleed air blasted the rain away from the canopy, but the visibility wasn’t good. Not good at all …

“Perfect end to a perfect mission,” Bannon muttered aloud. It was true. The Intruder squadron off U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson had been practicing antiship attacks against the frigate Gridley for two hours until worsening weather had finally made further operations impossible. Bannon had made four mock passes against her, but each time the burly man in the Bombardier/Navigator’s position beside him had found some fault with the way he handled the plane. And each time Intruder 507 had ended up missing the target. He felt like a newbie aviator back at flight school in Pensacola again.

The weather had clamped down over the carrier deck just in time to screw up their landing approach, of course. That had slowed down the recovery cycle, especially after Lieutenant Commander Anderson had been waved off on two attempts. The delay had kept them circling far longer than he liked, and Bannon had been worrying about the fuel level for the past ten minutes. Ordinarily he would have Put in a request to tank up from an orbiting KA-6D tanker, but he didn’t want to elicit yet another scathing comment from his companion. Now he was regretting the decision not to ask for a shot at the “Texaco.”

“Watch your angle of attack, kid,” Commander Isaac Greene growled. He was second in command of the carrier’s Air Wing, and he was outspoken, quick-tempered, harsh in his judgment of his subordinates. It didn’t help that “Jolly Greene” was a genuine hero, a veritable legend aboard the Jefferson, who had earned the right to criticize inexperienced young aviators a dozen times over. As CO of VA-89, the Death Dealers, Greene had led the famous Alpha Strikes of the carrier’s Pacific cruise two years back — over North Korea, Thailand, India — before reaching his new post as Deputy CAG. “Save the comments for after we’re down on the deck,” Greene added.

Now Bannon was part of VA-89 … and Greene, with his long-standing proprietary interest in the Death Dealers, was inclined to ride all of the Intruder pilots in his charge. But sometimes it seemed as if the Deputy CAG had a particular wish to make Bannon’s life a special slice of Hell.

Bannon felt himself tensing up. He tried to force himself to relax, but it didn’t work.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Bannon responded. He tried to correct his approach, but it was hard to tell if he had compensated enough. Lashing rain and low clouds and the frustration of the long, fruitless exercise were all combining to sap his confidence.

He glanced across at Greene, but the commander didn’t seem to be aware of Bannon’s uncertainty. “You’re going to need to show me a hell of an improvement before I’m satisfied with your flying, kid,” he said inexorably. “The Intruder’s a precision flying machine, but you drive it like a damned truck.”

“Intruder Five-oh-seven.” The call on the radio was matter-of-fact, almost bored. The Landing Signals Officer had already brought in half a dozen Intruders from the training run, and sounded ready to come in out of the weather. “On line, slightly to the left. Three-quarter mile. Call the ball.”

Bannon squinted through the canopy, trying to spot something, anything, through the washed-out gray drizzle that made sea and sky look the same. The shape of the carrier was sketchy in the mist. How the hell was he supposed to spot the Fresnel lens that was supposed to help guide his final approach?

But he finally caught sight of it. “Five-oh-seven, Intruder ball,” he reported on the radio. “Zero point nine.” Nine hundred pounds of fuel left. A bolter now would leave him breathing fumes by the time he was ready for another pass.

“Attitude,” the LSO said quietly. The best LSOs in the fleet were the ones who avoided too much instruction when they were bringing a plane in to the deck. Lieutenant George “Hacker” Hackenberg was one of the best.

But Greene, on the other hand, was all too free with advice and criticism. “Come on, kid,” he amplified. “Your angle’s all wrong! Pull up the nose, for God’s sake, and line her up!”

Bannon gritted his teeth and corrected more. He was coming down at too steep an angle …

“Nose up,” the LSO said. “Nose up.”

The controls seemed sluggish, slow to respond. Panic gripped him. He pulled back … back …

Ahead the red lights around the Fresnel lens lit up suddenly, while the LSO screamed in his ear. “Wave off! Wave off!” He rammed the throttles forward just as the wheels touched the deck. The Intruder lifted again, but too slow … There was something wrong, but he didn’t know what, and he couldn’t make the airplane respond.

The wheels touched again. Then the Intruder was moving sideways, a sickening, wrenching motion. Bannon fought the skid, but the plane continued its uncontrolled slide across the rain-washed deck. He had a confused impression of a line of parked planes ahead …

“Eject! Eject!” he shouted, his hand already closing on the handle. The canopy blasted clear and the ejection seat tried to ram his spine through the top of his head. He was spinning up, up, over the side of the carrier, his chute blossoming above him. It snagged on some projection just as the Intruder slammed into a parked Tomcat and exploded.

The fireball blossoming on the deck lit up the overcast sky, and the roar was deafening. Bannon flinched instinctively from the sound, but the entangling shroud lines held him fast. He shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears, and thought he could hear the klaxons on the flight deck blaring their alarm.

Vaguely, Bannon noticed another chute spread out in the water below him. So Jolly Green had cleared the side of the carrier. Probably, he thought bitterly, the veteran wouldn’t allow anything so unheroic as getting caught dangling over the ocean by his chute to happen to him.

Then he passed out.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he awakened again, but he was back on deck and being lifted carefully onto a stretcher by a pair of corpsmen. Through waves of dizziness he heard roaring flames and the shouts of Damage Control technicians fighting the fire, and over it all the sound of a Search and Rescue chopper’s rotors.

They were strapping him in to the stretcher when Hackenberg’s worried face appeared behind the two corpsmen. “What’s the word, Doc?” the lieutenant asked.

“Looks like he was just shaken up a little,” one of the corpsmen replied, adjusting the strap across Bannon’s chest.

“How about Commander Greene? Where’s he?” Hackenberg asked.

The other one shook his head. “No joy, Lieutenant. SAR copter couldn’t get him. He just sank before they could get to him. Sorry.”

Bannon struggled against the straps. It didn’t seem possible … it wasn’t right. How had he lived when Jolly Green hadn’t?

“Take it easy, sir,” one of the corpsmen said. “Easy. Everything’s okay.”

But Bannon knew better. Commander Greene was dead … and it was his fault. All his fault … Darkness claimed him.