Flight of the Intruder

THIRTEEN

The Shilo was under way at 0800 the next morning the sun crept over the scalloped rim of the mountain bordering the bay. The tugs helped her from the peer and then, under her own power, she turned and made for the channel to the sea. Two destroyers steam ahead and four astern. Once into the open ocean the escorts fanned out, taking up their stations around the giant flattop. The task group soon turned to a western heading and stood away from the land. Within three hours the highest peaks in the Luzon shore range had sunk into the ocean. Once again the horizon was empty. Small puffy clouds drifted along on the trade wind.

At noon the ship swung into the southwesterly trades and slowed until the relative wind down the angled deck was thirty knots. Then she began to recover aircraft that had been flying from Cubi Point while she had been in port. F-4s, A-7s, an E-2, and an EAProwler came aboard in order.

Only one of the the Intruders that had been ashore appeared over the ship. When word reached the ready room, a hurried conference was held and it was decided that a repair crew would be transported back to Cubi on the daily cargo plane.

“Looks like Corey Ford and the Boxman will enjoy an extra night on the beach,” Parker remarked.

“Hope it doesn’t kill the boy,” said the Old Man, thinking of Box.

Jake Grafton watched the Devils’ pilot, New Guy, from the air boss’s vantage point in Pried-Fly. This enclosed space, high in the island, protruded out over the flight deck and offered an unimpeded view of the flight deck and of the aircraft in the air near the ship.

After six landings aboard the carrier in daylight, each pilot new to the ship would make three night traps that evening. After this final exam there would be no graduation or diploma. The air wing LSO would debrief each man individually, and unless a negative comment was made to the operations officer of the squadron to which the man belonged, the new pilot’s name would appear on the flight schedule. Without fanfare or celebration, the young aviator was now a carrier pilot. He would stand his watches and fly the scheduled missions and, if he were skillful enough and lucky enough, he would live through his tour of duty.

Jake enjoyed his Pried-Fly stints. Throughout a cruise, each of a squadron’s junior officers had to take his turn in Pried-Fly, observing not only the new pilots but the experienced ones as well. In the profession of flying, a man was good enough or he wasn’t any good at all, and that fact was written in blood. In the crowd of young officers who gathered behind the chairs of the boss and assistant boss, the action was fast and the comments swift. It reminded Grafton of the grandstand crowd at a horserace. What was needed, Jake thought, was some enterprising soul to offer bets on which wire the next plane would snag. The air boss kept up a running commentary on the performance of the fledglings for the benefit of the squadron observers, and Jake wrote copious notes in his squadron’s log book.

Jake watched the new Intruder driver, who caught the target third wire three out of six times with no bolters. He flew the pattern at the proper distance an kept the right interval between himself and other aircraft, although twice the air boss complained that he was late turning from the downwind leg crosswind toward the ship’s wake. Grafton scribbled down that remark.

When all the aircraft were back aboard, the Pried-Flight observers and the recently landed crews made the way to their ready rooms for a debriefing and a written examination. The textbook was NATOPS-Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures-which came in a separate volume for each type of aircraft. Jake and Sammy regularly drilled each other on the Intruder’s hydraulics, electronics, engines, crew safety and comfort systems, and performance under any possible flight condition. They also practiced using the computer graphs from which fuel consumption, airspeed, maximum G loads, and similar information could be traded. NATOPS quizzes were heavy on emergency procedures, although any fact from the book was fair game. A classified exam, based on the secret supplement to the NATOPS manual, was given less frequently than the emergency and operating procedure quizzes.

“What if I don’t pass?” Little asked loudly.

“If you don’t pass, you don’t fly,” Big Augie answered from across the room.

“But what if I don’t want to fly?” Little quavered.

“Then we’ll think of something else,” four voices sang in unison.

Later that night, Jake looked up Chief Styert to discuss Hardesty and his marriage certificate. “So where is our newlywed?”

Jake asked. Chief Styert sent for Hardesty.

While they waited, Jake filled the chief in on some of the administrative items that were discussed at the all-officers meeting. “The Skipper says we’re going to be doing a lot of high-priority night work, as well as daytime Alpha strikes. We’ll be pushing it this time out, but on our next in-port period we may go to Singapore.”

“The men would rather go back to Subic Bay,” the chief said. The liquor and women were cheaper and the raunchy night life more to their tastes. Jake sighed. Join the navy and see Po City.

“Yeah, I know that and so does the Captain, but there’ll be another carrier in port then, so we’ll have to suck it up and go to Singapore.” The chief looked glum. Maybe he had a girlfriend in Po City, too.

Hardesty arrived, looking pale. “How did your leave go?” Jake asked.

“Okay.” The boy had not shaved in several days and a dozen or so scraggly whiskers had sprouted like weeds amid the pimples on his chin.

“Did you make it down to Manila?”

“Hmm,” replied the boy, averting his eyes toward the deck.

“The Chief tells me you went down to Personnel this morning and filled out the paperwork on your wife.”

Hardesty merely nodded. This was like pulling teeth, Jake thought. “Got a copy of the marriage certificate with you?”

Hardesty drew some papers from his shirt. He shuffled through them, selected a large parchment document, and handed it to Jake without looking at him.

The officer unfolded it. It was the original and in Spanish. Hardesty’s name was there. John Thomas Hardesty and Consuelo Maria Garcia Lopez de Hernandez. Lots of official signatures, a couple of wax seals, and a date. Jake glanced at the calendar over the chief’s desk, then back to the document.

“This date is just two days ago,” he said. “Yessir.”

“You were married only two days ago?”

“Yeah.”

“After I told you less than a week ago that you needed official permission from the navy to marry a Philippine national, you went out and did it anyway?” Anger crept into Jake’s voice. “You stood there a we ago and lied to me, one lie after another. You lied to me and you lied to the Chief.” The boy glanced up, ready to reply, but Jake cut him off. “You violated a general regulation. You signed a false official document when you requested leave.” The volume went up.

“Goddamn, Hardesty! You think this is a Boy Scout camp? What the hell else are you going to lie about? Are you going to come in here and tell the Chief you fixed a plane when you haven’t? How in the name of God can we trust you?” Jake lapsed into silence and sank back into the chair. The chief cleared his throat. “If you want to toss your oar in, Chief, go right ahead.” As Styert tongue-lashed the boy, Jake pondered the problem. The kid had wanted to marry, decided not to wait for Uncle Sam’s official blessing, and lied to get the time off. Is it really any of the navy’s business when or whom a sailor marries? So he had said “fuck the navy So what?

“You’re a real fucking dummy,” the chief told the boy. “You could’ve gotten leave if you’d just said you wanted some time off. Didn’t you know that?” Hardesty shook his head. “If your goddamn brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow your nose. Why in hell didn’t you come to me and talk it over? What do you think your chief is for, anyway? Do you think I’m some kind of freak that just hatched out as a chief? I was a sailor before you were born. I was getting laid in Olongapo when you were in diapers. Son, you really piss me off.”

“Go on up to the berthing compartment, Hardesty,” said Jake.

When Hardesty had disappeared, the officer and the chief talked about what he had done. “Looks like one for mast, Chief.” Styert agreed. “And you sit that boy down and make damn sure he and the rest of the men know enough to come to you with problems.”

“Yessir,” said the chief, who seemed to realize that he had just been reprimanded.

Jake found the maintenance officer, Lieutenant Commander Joe Wagner, in his stateroom immersed in the paperwork necessary to keep sixteen state-of-the art aircraft repaired. After Grafton explained the problem, Wagner rummaged through a drawer and gave Jake a blank report chit. “I think you should talk this over with the Skipper before you fill out the report. It’s a little unusual, I know, but this sounds like one of those tar babies that could stir the interest of some congressman. Might as well let Camparelli have his say before we make it official.”

Commander Camparelli, clad only in his underwear, sat at his stateroom desk. “Hello, Grafton. Pull up a chair.” The skipper slipped his glasses down his nose and peered over the rims. “What’s on your mind?”

Jake told him about Hardesty and showed him the parchment. “I ought to write him up for lying to me and the Chief,” he concluded. “But Joe Wagner suggested checking with you first before this becomes official.”

“Lot of merit in that,” the commander said as he studied the marriage license. “There’re a lot of things I’d just as soon not know about officially. Like that little fracas in front of Pauline’s that I heard about unofficially.

Seems one sailor from the deck department somehow took a plunge in the alligator pond and some other fellows were injured-just scratched really-in the scuffle that followed.” His eyes locked with Grafton’s.

“One man lost a couple teeth.”

“Too bad,” Jake said.

“You know anything about that incident unofficially, of course?”

“A little.” The skipper waited. “Well, I sort of helped toss the guy into the pond. We were just trying to dip his hair in the water, but he was a little too heavy for us.” He paused. The skipper remained silent. Jake felt ashamed of himself for minimnizing his part. “Actually the whole thing was my idea. We wanted to give the kid a good scare, but I didn’t intend for him to go swimming. And I took a swing at another fellow after he swung at me. I had a good crack at his mouth and may have knocked out some teeth.”

“Who helped you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“That’s what the Boxman said, too.”

Camparelli took off his glasses and chewed on one of the plastic earpieces.

“Captain Boma’s a bit peeved about this incident. He mentioned that the shore patrol officer complained. It’s the opinion of Captain Boma and the shore patrol officer that fights off base are liable to be handled with more force than necessary by the local authorities, who, as you know, are now Philippino Army.

Those macho muchachos would like nothi better than an excuse to use their grease guns. Then we’d have a few corpses on our hands and maybe an international incident.”

Camparelli replaced his glasses on the lower part of his nose.

“So Captain Boma asked me to investigate unofficially. I’m glad you decided to come in for a chat.”

“Oh.”

“I think you’d better stay aboard the ship next time in port. That’s unofficial. No messy paperwork. The term is ‘in hack.”‘ He could do it officially, too, Jake knew, with a discipline report that would torpedo any chance the pilot might ever have of being promoted.

“Yessir.”

“Back to the original subject, which is our lovestarved sailor. Your gripe is that he lied to you in order to get leave, rather than that he married in violation of a general reg.” The skipper leaned back in his chair and crossed his bare legs. To Jake he looked much like a chairman of the board solving a million-dollar problem, except that he wore only skivvies. “How many leave chits have you seen with the reason for the request stated?”

Jake thought. There was not even such a section on the form. He pointed out to Camparelli that Hardesty had inked in his reason in the margin.

“Precisely. And if you ask a sailor where he’s going or why, you can bet he probably lies about half the time. A sailor figures that it’s none of the officer’s business. I’m pleased to hear you aren’t too enthused about the violation of this general regulation. The navy’s requirement for permission before you commit holy matrimony with a foreign national is a chicken reg, in my opinion, and probably unconstitutional. God only knows what the Supreme Court would do with that one. In any event, I tolerate a lot of high jinks around here. You’re a case in point. So long as the bombs keep falling on target and the planes keep coming back, I’ll stay off people’s backs.

Hardesty’s bitten off a big chunk and about all we can do is watch. If he fails to support her, or abandons her, or any of that stuff, then we’ll do what we can under the regulations. Nothing else.”

“I want to put in a special evaluation on Hardesty.”

“That’s fair. He doesn’t seem smart enough to become a petty officer anytime soon. And don’t think Hardesty’s off the hook. Chief Styert will make his life miserable for a while. He’ll probably do a better job of it than you or I could.”

Jake felt worn out. “Anything else, Skipper?”

“No.” Frank Camparelli sipped a glass of Coke with ice in it.

Jake stood and reached for the door. “Don’t feel too bad about being restricted to the ship,” the commander said. “Any junior officer who isn’t in hack at least once a cruise is nothing on any water.”

“Yessir.” Jake opened the door.

“Oh, and by the way, tell your roommate that if I hear of him shitting anywhere but in a head, he’ll eat the damn stuff off the deck.”

Jake’s mouth dropped open.

“That’s all, Jake. Good night.” The Old Man chuckled.

Jake started through the door, then paused for another look at the commander, who took a long pull from his drink. “Don’t slam the door on your way out” Camparelli said smugly.

“Sit down, Sam.” They were in their stateroom. “Huh?”

“Sit down. I have something to tell you.” Sam complied, his eyes on Jake’s face.

“The Skipper knows you’re the Phantom.”

“What?” Sammy searched Jake’s face. “Are you sure?”

“For a fact. He knows.”

“Good God!” Sammy jumped up. “Damn. Who told him?”

“I think I did.”

“Gimme a break-come on-“

“I think he took a shot in the dark and hit the bull’s-eye.” Jake repeated the conversation to Sammy.

“Man, I’ve never been so surprised-and it showed. When he saw my face, he knew he’d hit the mark.”

“That old fox. That’s it? Nothing else?”

“No. That was the whole conversation on that topic, He fired that salvo as I was going out the door.”

Sammy threw himself on Jake’s bunk. “I’ll be damned,” he howled. “Who’d have guessed it?”

“Camparelli seems to have done just that. Maybe Cowboy suggested you to him.”

Sammy thought a moment. “No way, man. Not Cowboy. No, I think you’re absolutely right. The Skipper guessed.” He laughed.

“Don’t get too tickled, asshole. I’m in hack.”

“What for?”

“Throwing that guy to the alligators.”

“Tough. But don’t sweat it. Any junior officer-“

“I know, I know.

‘-Drawing any water.” But I’m not taking your turn as duty officer next time in port, so don’t even ask. Jesus, I hope I don’t have to make any more of those little trips down to his room.”

Sammy lay back and mused, “Where can the Phantom strike next?”

Jake strolled over to the door. “If I were you, shipmate, I’d be a little concerned. Already the Phantom has imitators. Now that Camparelli knows, it may get a little warm for the Winged Wraith if his helpers take it upon themselves to add to his fame and legend.”

Jake stepped out, leaving Sammy to his thoughts. He wandered along the passageway, his hands deep in his pockets. Stuck aboard the ship the next time in port! It would be three months before he could see Callie again. Camparelli got a pound of flesh, Jake thought glumly, even though he didn’t know it.

Somewhere a compressor was pounding, and Jake could hear the muffled whine of a power drill, perhaps from the hangar deck above his head. Five thousand men, every one of them leading his own life with his own cares and worries and problems. And every one of them thinking the world revolves around him.

As he walked through the enlisted men’s mess deck he heard music. He followed the sound. The music throbbed, a driving beat that bounced off the steel bulkheads and echoed down the passageways.

He found the musicians on a ladder turnaround, similar to a stairwell landing.

Four black sailors in T-shirts whanged away on electric guitars while one beat a set of drums. The singer, who had a microphone, moved aside without missing a note to let the pilot pass. Jake climbed up to the next deck and went down the passageway a frame or two until the volume did not assault him. He leaned against the bulkhead and closed his eyes.

The music was Motown, the big city sound, the pulsating beat of Detroit.

It was the sound he remembered from the radio of his ‘57 Chevy as he blasted along on summer evenings with the smell of mown hay and plowed earth in the air. The music made him long for home.

On the 0-3 level Jake went outboard until he reached a light-trap, a series of turns in the passageway that prevented light within the ship from escaping.

He felt his way through and found himself on a ladder leading up four steps to the catwalk that lined the flight deck. Because the shape of the hull funneled air upward, a chilly, spray-laden wind rushed up through the catwalk. The flight deck was at chest height. above Jake’s head, the tails of aircraft were just visible in the dim glow of the masthead lights. The aircraft were parked in rows, wheel to wheel with wings folded. Each plane was backed up with its main mounts against the steel curb around the deck; fifteen feet of its fuselage and tail protruded over the ocean.

Jake walked forward on the catwalk until he stood at the very bow of the ship. Here the wind came head on. By leaning out over the railing he could see the white curl as the bow cut the black water.

He rested his arms on the railing.

He thought of Callie. He tried to recall her face, her voice, her warmth, but it was difficult in the overpowering presence of the night sea. Was it love he felt for her?

Get a grip on yourself, Grafton. Reality is another long line period.

More worthless targets, more flak, more SAMs. More bombs to drop.

Only now McPherson’s dead. Dead for a few acres of splintered trees.

And what had Morgan believed in? They had never discussed the war, except professionally. War is night cat shots and going in low and fast and hard. And death.

McPherson. Dead.

“You should have talked to me, Morg. You should have talked to me.” The sea wind swallowed his words. He was talking to the infinite night that Morgan McPherson was now a part of. “How come we never talked? You should have told me. . . .”

What would Morgan say to me? I flew with you, Jake, and I lived as you lived and I felt what you felt and I was ready to die when you died. But I died alone. Yet I died swinging, laying the bombs in with a good radar and a good computer.

McPherson would tell him to keep swinging. Keep riding the cat and laying them in. Keep swinging at a good target. Swing at something that will make a difference. Swing at something that will make them bleed. Swing with a blade in your hand.

But what can you attack with weapons designed to destroy industrial targets when the enemy has a nonindustrialized, agrarian economy?

Bridges, railroads, and power plants had all been hammered. There were no oil refineries; fuel was stored in fifty-five-gallon drums, and storage areas were hit wherever they were identified. The one steel mill had been flattened. The Haiphong shipyards had been reduced to servicing only fishing boats. Munition storage sites? When they could be found by photoreconnaissance, they were pounded. Big factories making chemicals, cars, guns, glass, cans, television sets, radios, airplanes, dishes, furniture? Not in North Vietnam. Cottage industries, little shops, did all the manufacturing. There weren’t even any food processing centers, just outdoor markets so typical of Asia where rice and seaweed and rotting fish were sold from flimsy stalls. The dams and dikes were vulnerable, but the politicians refused to target them. So what was left Nothing. Except the people. Their only real resource was people.

Maybe that was the answer. Maybe the VietNamese communists couldn’t afford to lose their leadership What the hell! He could at least look into it. First, he would need a map of Hanoi that showed the streets an major buildings.

Abe Steiger was in the Mission Planning space “Don’t you ever sleep?” the pilot asked.

“Could ask you the same question,” Steiger said a he placed his index finger on the bridge of his glasses and pushed them back.

Jake shrugged. “It’s been a busy day.” He glanced around, hoping to see a map of Hanoi on the bulkhead He walked over to a chart index of Indochina. “Do you have any large-scale charts of Hanoi? Something that shows the streets?”

Steiger consulted the index, then searched through the drawers.

“It’s no big deal,” Grafton added. But he knew Steiger would be curious “I’ve been wondering what Hanoi really looks like.”

“I know what you mean,” Steiger said as he took a chart from a chest with deep, thin drawers and laid it on one of the tables. “I’ve taken out this one from time to time for the same reason.”

The chart showed the main streets and major buildings and the bridges across the Red River. That was about all. A bombardier would have a hell of a time constructing a radar prediction from this. “Got anything more detailed?”

“Naw, this is about it. We’re not National Geographic, you know.”

‘Where’s the Hanoi Hilton?”

Steiger’s finger went directly to the spot where the POWs were kept.

“This old prison here.”

Jake lit a cigarette and leaned over the chart. The French, who had been in Indochina for almost a hundred years before being evicted, would have located the important buildings on traffic circles and avenues.

“Got any pictures?”

“Some,” Abe said. “Just a minute.” The intelligence officer went next door to where reconnaissance photos were developed, studied, and cataloged.

About three minutes later he returned with a pile in each hand. “We have a few, but they aren’t too recent.”

Grafton flipped through the photos. Vertical and side-view shots were mixed together. He glanced at the captions of each, hoping that he would find one marked “Capitol” or “Communist Party Headquarters.” He did find two photographs that showed prominent buildings, and one of the structures had a flag in front of it. But that could be the post office. He continued slowly through the stacks, careful not to show too much interest in any one picture.

Jake had not yet apologized to Abe for the wardroom scene, although he intended to at some point. He and Steiger were now alone together for the first time since the incident. Jake sensed a coolness between them, but he avoided the subject and limited himself to occasional remarks about the pictures.

For the most part, the city consisted of endless blocks of three- or four-story apartments-the pictures showed laundry in seemingly every window-and drab squat little factories with smoke stacks. No hotels or tourists here, and no big public monuments like those in most national capitals. Even Karl Marx, Jake thought, would be appalled at this dreary, cheerless workers’ paradise. He found a picture of the remnants of the Paul Doumer bridge and studied it closely. Men had died and airplanes had fallen putting an end to the bridge.

Jake spread out the photos and scrutinized them one by one. If you could pick any target in the country, he asked himself, what would you bomb? Well, it would have to be here, inside the capital. If they have anything worth a damn, it must be here, in these pictures. But what?

“Got any infrared photos back there? Steiger looked doubtful. “I’ll see.” As soon as he had disappeared, Jake slipped half a dozen of the most interesting prints into his shirt. He was trying to pinpoint the major buildings on the chart when Steiger returned with three eight-by-tens taken from directly above the city.

These pictures could be mistaken for time-exposures of the city at night, but the light came from heat sources, not street lamps. The paved streets that had absorbed the sun’s energy showed as faint ribbons Some of the brighter hot spots were probably factories The pinpricks of light might be kitchen chimneys. What else can I learn from looking at these pictures? Jake wondered.

Would hot or cold air flow out of public buildings? Wouldn’t it depend on the time of day?

A magnifying glass might help. He realized he didn’t no know enough to interpret the pictures, so he finally handed them back. “Mind if I borrow this?” he asked as he rolled the chart into a tube.

Down in their room, Sammy was asleep. Jake sat quietly on his bottom bunk and examined the stolen photos again before locking them in his desk safe.

A significant target-perhaps Communist Party headquarters? If he could drop two or three thousandpounders into it, what a message that would deliver to the Hanoi leadership! The Communists would assume that the American government had ordered the bombing. Perhaps that would drive them to end the war.

He watched his cigarette tip glow in the dark as he considered the implications of such a raid. It was tempting. This would not be a “suspected truck park” or another raid on a bombed-out rail yard. No, this would be a real target, something worth the trip, a hit that might have a positive effect on the outcome of the war. Communists have a sure feel for gun-barrel politics, Jake told himself. They’d get the message. Of course, they’ll throw everything they own into the air to defend Hanoi, and we’ll have to get through it.

Morgan would have agreed readily to go after party headquarters, Jake decided, but would Cole? If Cole were a competent bombardier and a fighter, as Jake suspected, perhaps he could be approached. The next few days would tell the tale.

Jake stubbed out the butt and undressed in the dark.

It would be so great to smash them!