Flame Out

CHAPTER 2

“Launch the Alert aircraft! Launch the Alert aircraft!” The launch order rang out from the ship’s 1-MC loudspeakers.

“We’re on!” Lieutenant Commander Edward Everett Wayne, running name “Batman,” set his magazine aside and checked the lacing on his boots carefully before standing up.

Lieutenant Terry Powers was already on his feet, zipping up his heavy flight-survival vest and reaching for his helmet in eager anticipation. “Finally some action!” he said, sounding excited and impatient. Batman thought he detected an underlying current of nervousness as well. Powers hadn’t been on carrier duty long, and there was a big difference between training flights with a RAG back in the States and genuine blue-water ops off a carrier deck.

“Whoa there, kid,” he warned. “Throttle back and level off.”

Powers looked at him uncertainly. “Sir?”

“Alert Fifteen means we launch fast,” Wayne continued. “But it doesn’t mean we launch dumb. Don’t be in such a hurry you forget about safety precautions, kid, or you’ll cut off a promising career before you’re properly started.” He pointed at the lieutenant’s feet. “Lace up those boots tighter. If you have to eject, you don’t want them catching on something in the cockpit on the way out.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Powers said, looking sheepish. He crouched to do as he had been told. “I guess I’m just excited, sir.”

“Two things, Tyrone,” Batman said. “First off, lay off the ‘sirs’ for a while. Makes you sound like a midshipman who can’t find his way home. When there’s nobody here but us aviators I’m Batman. Got it?”

“Yes, sir … uh, Batman.”

“Secondly, chill out a little, kid. Take a leaf from Malibu here.” He pointed to his Radar Intercept Officer, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Blake, whose running name of Malibu had been bestowed because of his blond good looks and carefully cultivated California-surfer persona. “He’s so cool we use him to keep the beer cold.”

Malibu flashed a careless grin. “Maybe so, dude,” he said with a deceptively laid-back drawl. “But that just means I always have a supply close by.” Despite the banter and the casual tone, Blake was ready to go, helmet under one arm, flight suit zipped up tight.

The fourth man in the ready room of the VF-95 Viper Squadron looked irritated. “Come on, let’s get moving.” Lieutenant William “Ears” Cavanaugh, who was assigned to fly the RIO position with Powers tonight, could never be described as a patient man. Every word, every motion, was quick and decisive, and the man had trouble dealing with anyone who wasn’t in tune with his particular rhythm of life.

The four men left the ready room, not running but moving briskly through the door and toward the flight deck. They emerged on a steel catwalk on the starboard side of the carrier, hanging right out over the angry black sea below.

Batman followed the others up the ladder that led up to the wide expanse of the ship’s “roof,” the flight deck, thankful for the moonlight that glinted off metal and made it unnecessary to unclip the flashlight hanging from his belt.

As he reached the flight deck he heard Powers enthusing. “Tonight’s the night for some action, Ears. We’re gonna go out there and get us some Bear!”

He could hear the eagerness in the young voice, and remembered the first time he’d been on one of the flights the Navy called a “Bear hunt.” That had been almost three years back now, during the crisis in North Korea. He could still remember his own enthusiasm that day … and the chewing out his squadron commander had given him after he had pulled a foolish stunt that had almost resulted in a collision between his Tomcat and the Russian bomber they were investigating.

“Hold on, there, nugget,” Batman said. “This isn’t a game, Tyrone. You fly this by the book, got it?” He heard Malibu snort, a comment on Batman telling anyone to fly by the book, but ignored it.

But Powers was suitably deflated. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said. “By the book.”

I’m starting to sound like old Tombstone, Batman thought with a grin. He could still remember Matt Magruder’s harsh words after that Bear hunt over the Sea of Japan. I don’t have room on this team for a goddamned hotdog! the squadron leader had said, We’re already in the middle of one crisis. The last thing we need now is dragging the Russians into it!

It had been a rough beginning, but he and Magruder had come out of the mess in North Korea as friends. Now Batman was Executive Officer of VF-95, a graduate of the Navy’s famous Top Gun school, and for all of his showmanship he had learned the value of caution and teamwork. If he really was starting to sound like Tombstone, he thought, then he really had made something of himself as an aviator after all.

Caution and teamwork … that would have to be the watchword tonight. Bear flights over the Atlantic were nothing new. They’d been a familiar routine all through the Cold War and well after the day the Berlin Wall came down. There had been times in the past when American pilots would swap signals with the Russian Bear crews, even talk on the radio. Some old-timers told about incidents where one side or the other would obligingly move their aircraft around so their opponents could take home photographs for their intelligence people.

This time, though, things were liable to be different. For the past five days Soviet troops had been engaged in hostilities against Norway, a one-time NATO ally and still a good friend of the United States.

That first time over the Sea of Japan Batman hadn’t really given much thought to the crisis brewing in North Korea or how the Russians might react to it. Like a lot of people he’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of them as the enemy. After those exciting days near the end of 1989 when the Cold War had suddenly come to an end, decades of fear and hate had turned overnight into new feelings of optimism and friendship. Soviet-American cooperation had made the victory in Operation Desert Storm possible, and the failure of the hard-line coup in August 1991 had seemed to mark the end of Communism and the beginning of a brand-new era of world history. Even after the Communists staged a successful military takeover the following year, after harsh winter weather and widespread famine had totally discredited the reform movement, it had seemed that the Soviet Union would never again be able to occupy center stage in world affairs. Communist or not, the new rulers had seemed willing enough to get along with the West. Just a few months after his first Bear hunt Batman had found himself flying alongside Soviet naval aviators of the aircraft carrier Kreml during the UN intervention in the war between India and Pakistan.

America had been too wrapped up in domestic affairs to stop the Soviets when they renounced the agreements recognizing the independence of their breakaway republics, and just as slow to react to the invasion of Norway, but now tensions were running high. And Batman now understood the lesson Tombstone Magruder had taught him back on that first cruise. The crisis in Norway had brought Russia and America to the brink of war. Batman Wayne didn’t plan to be the man who pushed them over the edge.

He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind as they reached their planes and started on the serious business of checking the Tomcat over before they entrusted their lives to it. Chief Bergstrom, the brown-shirted plane captain responsible for maintaining and inspecting the aircraft, joined Batman and Malibu as they circled the big interceptor. Bergstrom was a good man, and Batman trusted him, but not to the point of going up without making sure there wasn’t some careless mistake by one of the maintenance crewmen just waiting to be overlooked.

Satisfied, they moved to the left side of the Tomcat. Bergstrom folded down the cockpit ladder. “Good hunting, sir!” he shouted over the din of the flight deck.

Batman gave him a quick thumbs-up and climbed into the front of the cockpit. Malibu settled into the backseat a few moments later, while Wayne was still settling his kneeboard into place on his leg.

He went carefully through the pre-flight checklist, suppressing a grin at the thought of how conscientious he’d become in the last three years. It all went back to the tour with Tombstone Magruder, who’d taught him that it didn’t always take glitz and glitter to make a first-rate fighter pilot.

The checklist finished, Batman powered up the Tomcat’s two General Electric F110-GE-400 engines, first the right, then the left. He nodded in satisfaction at their sound and adjusted the throttle by his left hand to idle. Tradition maintained that as squadron Exec he should fly Tomcat 202, but it had been one of the victims the day the A-6E had crashed on the flight deck. Number 204, this bird, didn’t have his name or Malibu’s stenciled below the canopy, but aviators traded off aircraft assignments often enough. This Tomcat seemed to be in top shape.

Outside deck crewmen were unhooking parking chains and clearing away the chocks around the wheels. A deck crewman whose yellow flashlights identified him as a plane handler signaled Batman with quick gestures of the wands, and Wayne followed his instructions and taxied the aircraft toward catapult number one. A constellation of other colored lights closed in around the Tomcat. Blue wands were crewmen checking the control surfaces of the Tomcat, while ordnance specialists with red wands prepped the air-to-air missiles, radar-guided Sparrows and heat-seeking Sidewinders hanging suspended from their launch rails. Four times a low hum sounded in Batman’s headphones as the ordies passed their flashlights close to the noses of each Sidewinder. The heat-sensing guidance systems were sensitive enough to detect even a flashlight as a heat source and alert the pilot that they were locked on a potential target.

A deck crewman appeared to the left of the Tomcat holding up a lighted board showing the number 65,000, the takeoff weight of Tomcat 204. It was vital that the steam catapult be properly set for the weight of the plane to ensure a safe launch. Behind Batman, Malibu waved a flashlight in a circular motion to acknowledge the 65,000-pound figure.

Underneath the plane a hookup man connected the launching bar on the F-14’s nose gear to the cat shuttle. Once it was hooked up, Batman knew, another crewman would check the holdback bar that would keep the Tomcat from breaking free until the moment of the launch, and the jet-blast deflector would rise into position behind the plane. The dance on the deck was a complex ritual, graceful and intricate, with every move designed to send the plane on its way safely and quickly.

The catapult officer, identified by his green and red flashlights, waved the green light horizontally. Batman obeyed the signal and moved the twin throttles to full military power. He could feel the fighter straining against the holdback bolt, like a wild animal eager to return to its own native element. Batman went through the time-honored ritual to test the control stick between his knees, left, right, forward, back. Then he checked the rudder pedals. All working. All ready.

The catapult officer waved the green light up and down, and Batman shoved the throttle to full afterburner. Light bathed the flight deck from the plumes of flame that twisted and writhed from the two jet engines. “Give ‘em the light show, Malibu,” Batman ordered. Blake acknowledged the instruction and flicked on the Tomcat’s navigation lights, the signal to the deck crew and the Air Boss watching from Pri-Fly that Tomcat 204 was ready to launch. Batman bent his head forward and tensed, anticipating the thrust of the cat shot.

Dropping to his knee, the catapult officer touched the deck with the green wand, the “go” signal to the crewman who controlled the catapult. Acceleration shoved Batman back into his seat as the plane surged forward and rose from the flight deck, leaping skyward.

“Hound Two-oh-four,” he said, opening a radio channel to the carrier. “Good shot. Good shot.”

“Two-oh-four, good shot,” the radio confirmed.

A few moments later the second Tomcat pulled alongside. “Two-one-oh,” the pilot announced. “Good shot.”

“Hound Two-oh-four, this is Tango Two-fiver,” another voice said, cutting in. “Vector left to zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, and go to buster.” That was one of the Jefferson’s E-2C Hawkeyes, using its sophisticated suite of detection equipment to track the incoming Russian bomber and direct Hound Flight to intercept it. Batman set his throttles to full military power—”buster” in aviator’s lingo — and banked his Tomcat to the left to take up the new heading. “Roger, Tango Two-fiver,” Batman replied. “Coming to zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, buster. You copy, Tyrone?”

“I copy, Two-oh-four,” Powers replied crisply. He sounded professional enough now, but Batman glanced across at the other plane through narrowed eyes. He found himself wishing it was Tombstone back in that old, familiar position off his wing.

But it wasn’t. This time out, it was Batman Wayne who was the veteran, flying with an eager young hotshot who might not understand just how deadly serious this Bear hunt could be.

He wasn’t sure he was fit for his new role.

Welcome home, Tombstone.

The tanker pilot’s words kept coming back as Tombstone guided the Tomcat through the darkness. A layer of low, thick clouds blocked his view of the ocean, but he knew that Jefferson and the other ships of CBG-14 awaited him somewhere below. Soon he would see the carrier again, feel the deck beneath his feet once more.

For two long years he had thought of little else. Now Tombstone Magruder was coming home.

What would it be like, he wondered, to be back aboard the Jeff again? He’d served in plenty of duty stations over the years, but none of them had been like that last tour aboard the carrier in those exciting days of the confrontation with North Korea and the intervention in the war between India and Pakistan. As squadron leader of VF-95, the Vipers, Tombstone Magruder had flown his Tomcat into action time and time again, earning an unprecedented string of air-to-air kills in the process. His promotion and reassignment to a Pentagon staff post had been inevitable, the accepted next steps in a professional naval career. But that hadn’t made the transition any easier.

A glint of pale moonlight on the wing of one of Mercury Flight’s two A-6E Intruders caught Tombstone’s eye. It was what naval aviators called a “Commander’s moon,” bright enough to help older pilots — the ones who held ranks of commander and higher — compensate for less acute vision in difficult night carrier landings. Commander Matthew Magruder hadn’t really thought of himself in that category until tonight, but the difficulty with the tanker had made him all too conscious of the fact that he wasn’t the hotshot Top Gun pilot who’d joined the Jefferson three years back. Three years could be a lifetime to a fighter pilot.

It also made him realize that this could be his last chance to recapture that old life. And the long ferry mission had made him aware all over again of just how much open skies and thundering jets really meant to him. Coming back to the Jefferson again was only part of what was driving him tonight. The carrier was special, of course, but Magruder would probably have jumped at the chance for an assignment anywhere beyond the confines of Washington, Anywhere he could recapture the feeling of freedom this long flight out of sight of land had brought back.

Two years chained to land hadn’t dimmed the sheer joy of strapping on an F-14 and reaching for the limitless skies.

Of course he’d flown often enough those last two years, but it hadn’t been the same. Getting in enough hours to qualify each week wasn’t like the day-to-day cycle of carrier ops. He had always felt tied to the land, bound to that hated Pentagon office that would reclaim him when each flight was done. It had been two years of Hell but it was over now.

Now he was going home to the Jefferson. It should have been the happiest day of Tombstone’s life … would have been, if not for the circumstances that surrounded the new assignment. Seemingly overnight a minor boundary dispute between Norway and the Soviet Union had blossomed into armed conflict. With NATO virtually a dead letter and the United States hesitating over unilateral intervention, the crisis was still a local one confined to Scandinavia. But everything pointed toward a change in the wind, and it looked as if Jefferson would once again be sailing into harm’s way. Why else would Mercury Flight be ferrying planes out to replace aircraft destroyed in the flight deck accident the carrier had suffered almost a week ago? It wasn’t normal practice … except when it looked like those planes would be needed.

He supposed the same could be said for himself. That same accident had cost CVW-20 her Deputy CAG. Someone back in Washington must have thought the carrier’s air wing would be needing a new second-in-command soon, or they wouldn’t have tapped Tombstone for the job. It had been a hurry-up job all around, with no time at all for Magruder to be properly briefed on his new job. It was nice to know that someone thought he could handle the position all the same.

Of course, there was always the chance that this was just another public-relations ploy. The hero of Wonsan and the Indian Ocean crisis was a useful card to play when public support was the goal. And America’s new President, the first Democrat to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter, needed every good card he could lay his hands on now that it looked like the Soviets were bursting back on the world stage with a vengeance.

The thought made Tombstone cringe inwardly. He had never been comfortable with the hero treatment even though he’d come to terms with it after North Korea. But his staff job at the Pentagon had been little more than an excuse to keep him available for public appearances, Congressional testimony, and media events. He had joined the Navy to become an aviator, to fly a fighter like his father and his uncle before him. Boring paperwork and exercises in public relations had never been his goal. A sleek fighter and open sky were all Matthew Magruder wanted or needed.

If his return to active duty on the Jefferson was intended or just another piece of PR work, Tombstone thought, then the people who’d ordered it were going to be surprised. He wouldn’t allow anyone to saddle him with another rear-echelon role. Never again, he vowed silently.

The moonlight gleamed off the Intruder’s wing again. The bomber was drifting right, out of formation. Magruder bit his lip and keyed in his radio. “Mercury Five-one-one, Mercury Leader,” he said. “Let’s tighten it up, there, Lieutenant.”

The reply was a startled “Sorry, sir.” Slowly the Intruder nudged back into formation.

It had been a long flight, and all four pilots were tired. This had been the most sustained flying Magruder had done in two years, and he imagined the others weren’t much better prepared. They’d been drawn from Reserve Air Groups in the States, and like Tombstone they wouldn’t have had much excuse for practicing any of the types of operations that were routine for carrier-based flyers.

Two Tomcats, two Intruders … and at that they’d still be short of a full complement by three more planes. That accident on Jefferson’s flight deck had been a messy one. It wasn’t the best way Tombstone could think of to get the assignment he’d coveted, especially when the Deputy CAG he was replacing had been a friend from the old days. Commander Isaac “Jolly Green” Greene, who’d survived a shoot-down during the Wonsan operation, and had played a key role in the Alpha Strike that had stopped the war between India and Pakistan, hadn’t been all that well liked by his comrades on the Jefferson back then, but he’d been a first-class Intruder pilot and a fine squadron commander with a reputation for guts and determination. He’d beaten Magruder out for the coveted Deputy CAG post when Jefferson’s new deployment had first been announced, and despite his own disappointment Tombstone had been glad that it had been Jolly Greene who took it away from him.

It seemed wrong somehow that the big, sarcastic man had bought it in a flight deck accident. He had survived deadly Triple-A fire over Wonsan and the icy waters off the Korean coast, only to die when the Intruder he was riding in as an observer had skidded while landing on a wet deck. His ejection seat had thrown him clear of the carrier … but hours of searching by SAR copters had never found him.

That wasn’t how Tombstone would have wanted his homecoming to start … but now he’d be stepping into the dead man’s shoes whether he liked it or not.

Tombstone buried the thought. At least he was back on carrier duty again, where he belonged. That was what really counted.