Flight of the Intruder

FIVE

The altimeter recorded their upward progress. 10, 11,000, 12,000 …

They were still in clouds.

“Looks like the weather guys were wrong about the tops of this stuff,” Razor remarked. He fished a pack of chewing gum from his left sleeve pocket and held it out. “Want one?” Apparently the scene in the locker room was history.

“Yeah, open it for me.”

They climbed in a constant turn that kept the plan on a circle with a five-mile radius. The center of the circle was the carrier.

“Wonder how high this stuff goes?” Razor said.

“To the moon, probably. Maybe even halfway to Mars. Jake leveled the Intruder at 20,000 feet, still circling the carrier. “Better give ‘em the word,” he told the bombardier.

Razor held his oxygen mask to his face. “Tank Control, Devil Five Two-Two.”

“Go ahead, Five Two Two.”

“We’re in the clouds at base plus twelve. ‘ On unscrambled radio transmissions the true altitude was the sum of the reported altitude plus the never-mentioned number, tonight a positive eight. “It’s solid all the way up. Do you want us to find the tops, over?”

The radio was silent for several seconds. Then the reply came back: “Go on up to base plus twenty-two.”

“Wilco.” Jake pushed the throttles forward and eased the stick back.

The altimeter began to climb. Razor chomped on his gum. “Gonna be a bad night at Black Rock for the fighter pukes if they need gas down below,” he observed over the ICS. Tanking was a precision maneuver that required good visibility, especially at night. The aircraft needing fuel was vectored to the vicinity of the tanker, but the pilot of the thirsty plane had to acquire the tanker visually and execute a rendezvous, a join up into close formation. Once the two aircraft were flying side-by-side they could fly into a cloud, but they could not safely join up in one. Tonight the sky seemed to consist of nothing but clouds. But at 27,000 feet, the men saw the glow of the moon. At 28,000 they bounded out of the clouds. Jake climbed another 500 feet above the ragged tops before leveling off. The pale moonlight made the cloudscape look like heaps of cotton.

“Rodger Control, Five Two Two. Tops are at base plus twenty.”

“Roger. Two customers are on their way up. Request you give them three each.”

Jake clicked the mike twice in reply, then let the plane drift on up to 30,000 feet where he leveled at 250 knots and engaged the autopilot. It held the bird nicely in a twelve-degree left turn. In a few moments he saw the first Phantom emerge from the clouds, a winking red anticollision light beaconing through the darkness. The fighter pilot was on an opposite course but soon saw him and turned hard to intercept. Jake turned on the fuel-transfer panel and set the fuel counter for three thousand pounds. He streamed the drogue, a basket twenty-six inches in diameter that resembled a badminton shuttlecock, on the end of a fifty-foot hose. The unit was ready to transfer fuel when the hose was fully extended. After a ton and a half of jet fuel had been pumped, the transfer would automatically cease.

The lead fighter closed smartly on a forty-five-degree bearing; the second F4 was several miles away on the same rendezvous course. Both fighters flew across Jake’s circle to close the distance. “Here they come, Jake said.

In less than a minute the first Phantom joined on the tanker’s left wing.

As Jake watched, the refueling probe emerged from the right side of the plane beneath the canopy and locked out at a forty-five-degree angle Jake made a circular motion with his red flashlight and received in reply two flashes from the fighter’s rear cockpit. Then the fighter slid back and disappear astern- Jake disengaged the autopilot-it had a tendency to porpoise the plane when the receiving aircraft pushed in the drogue-and devoted his attention to maintaining a smooth, steady course on the great circle. The fighter pilot managed to fly his probe into the drogue on his first attempt. When he pushed the six feet toward the tanker, the green light on the refueling panel in the A-6 illuminated, and the counter began to meter the fuel in hundred-pound increments. Jake noticed the second fighter slide in alongside his wing, its grinning shark’s mouth and yellow eye just visible in the sweep of the tanker’s anticollision radar The bombardier reported to the ship that the tanker was “sweet,” that is, it could transfer fuel, so the spare tanker on deck would not be needed. When the Plane had finished, Razor reset the counter and Grafton flashed his light. The second Phantom moved behind the Intruder as the first one took up a cruising position on the right wing. This pilot made two attempts before he captured the drogue. The maneuver required a delicate, sure touch with the stick and throttles, especially if the planes were bouncing in turbulence. One frustrated fighter jockey had been heard to lament, “It’s like trying to stick a banana up a wildcat’s ass.”

When it had taken on its allotted fuel, the second plane crossed to the lead fighter’s right wing. Razor visually checked both planes to make sure they weren’t behind the tanker in the unlikely event that the drogue and hose separated during retraction. When the panel indicator showed that the drogue was stowed, the bombardier glanced again at the lead Phantom. A coning red light flashed from the fighter’s rear cockpit.

The two hunters turned away and took up a course to their assigned station one hundred fifty miles to the northwest of the ship. They constituted the Barrier Combat Air Patrol, the BARCAP, charged with intercepting and shooting down any unidentified aircraft coming out of North Vietnam.

Razor watched them disappear into the moonlit sky. He keyed his radio mike and told the ship that tanking was completed.

They ship replied, “Roger, request you fly a forty-five arc around the ship and see how extensive this cloud cover is.”

Jake leveled the wings and descended until he was just above the clouds.

Although he had slowed to maximum endurance airspeed, 220 knots, they still had the illusion of great speed as the cloud tops raced beneath. Occasionally they collided with a silver ridge, bored through, and popped out the other side. Because of the glass-smooth flying at this altitude, five and a half miles above the ocean, the men felt as though their machine were at rest in space while the earth whirled beneath them.

After they had circled the ship at forty miles, they reported that the clouds were unbroken and returned to the five-mile circle. The great tedium began. With the machine on autopilot, there was little for the crew to do except monitor the fuel and engine instruments and check the night sky for other aircraft. Convinced all was well, Jake removed his gloves and wedged them into the narrow crevice between the left side of the instrument panel and the windscreen. Then he drew his girl’s letter from his sleeve pocket. He read it in the circle of red light from the pencil spotlight mounted the overhead canopy bow.

With every line he felt a growing despondency.

On the first page she recalled the good times they had shared. On the second, she told him she was marrying another man. The third and final page contained her list of all the reasons their relationship would not have worked. He read the letter again slowly, replaced it in its envelope, and returned the envelope to his sleeve pocket.

After his first cruise, when the squadron had flown from the ship to Godbey Island, she had come to me him. She had watched while he climbed from the cockpit and walked across the ramp to her, waiting until he had reached her before opening her arms to welcome him. The other women had run toward the men.

He should have had an inkling then.

Their last time together, that Sunday in San Francisco, they had walked from Fisherman s Wharf to the Corinthian columns at the Palace of Fine Arts.

They had ridden the cable cars, listened to the folk singers and watched the soaring birds as the sun fired the past city. She had said, “You don’t belong in the navy. God, Jake, you pull off the road to look at a rainbow. Why would you want to be part of that system?

“And so many navy fliers we’ve known have died in crashes. I always wonder, after I’ve seen or talked to you, whether I’ll ever see you alive again.” Why hadn’t he known then? The radio squawked. Tanker Control directed them to proceed northwest to tank the BARCAP again. The fighters had enough fuel to stay airborne until recovery time, but it was prudent to have more than enough in case the enemy attacked the task force.

This time the tanker rendezvoused on the fighters. When each fighter had received another twenty-five hundred pounds, the tanker returned at 220 knots to the five-mile orbit.

They tuned the second radio, a luxury the tanker had that the bombers did not possess, to the Strike frequency and finally heard Cowboy Parker, then Sammy Lundeen, call feet wet. The challenge of night landings aboard the carrier lay before them now.

The minutes went by slowly. Grafton had to work to stay awake in spite of his recent fourteen-hour sleep. After a check of the altitude in the cockpit, he took off his mask and helmet and placed them in his lap. The noise level was loud but not intolerable. He extracted a plastic baby bottle from a pocket of his survival vest and poured some water down the back of his neck.

That helped wake him up. He took a swig of the warm water, which tasted of plastic. He poured some in his hair and rubbed it on his face. Then he poured more on his hair and rubbed his head vigorously. He felt it trickle down his forehead and nose, ad one little rivulet scooted down the back of his neck.

He capped the bottle, put it away, then replaced his helmet and oxygen mask.

“Five Two Two, are you up?” It was Lundeen’s voice.

“Affirm,” he replied over the radio “Go Tactical,” was the reply.

Jake rotated the radio-channel selector knob to the squadron’s assigned frequency, waited five seconds then said, “Devil’s up.”

“Where are you, Jake?”

“Overhead at base plus twenty-two.”

“I’ll be there to see you in a bit.”

Click, click.

“Let’s go secure.”

Razor keyed the ICS as Jake turned on the scrambler “What do you think?”

Grafton shrugged. He had no idea why Sam wanted to rendezvous over the ship. Maybe he needed fuel. Maybe he had a problem with his airplane. Maybe he just wanted to grin and wave and fly along together under the moon and stars because Jake was his friend and Sammy was like that. They would soon know.

The pilot checked the amount of fuel left in each drop and internal tank.

He did this by depressing the button for the appropriate tank and getting a reading on the fuel gauge. Normally the gauge gave only a total , but like every other electrical or mechanical device, the totalizer could fail. The careful man who hoped to eventually die in bed always checked. The arithmetic of fuel calculation was unforgiving of error, there were no negative numbers. They had transferred eleven thousand pounds, had used two thousand in their launch and climbout, and were now consuming a mere four thousand pounds per hour at maximum endurance airspeed. After an hour and a half of flight Jake reckoned, they should have seven thousand pounds remaining. The gauge totals came to seventy two hundred pounds. Close enough. All the drop tanks were empty, as were the wing tanks. The two fuselage tanks held the remaining fuel. With twenty or thirty minutes to go until he crossed the ramp of the carrier he should recover with about five thousand pounds. He leaned back in the seat.

“How far to Da Nang?” he asked Razor. That would be the nearest friendly airfield ashore if he couldn’t get aboard the ship for any reason.

The bombardier consulted his briefing notes. “One fifty,” he told the pilot.

“Better verify that with the ship.” Razor asked the question of the controller at the radar screen in Strike Ops, deep inside the big ship 30,000 feet below. After a pause, the controller informed them the distance was one hundred forty miles and gave them the heading. Both men jotted it down on their kneeboards.

Sammy should be coming in from the northwest. Jake began to search that quadrant for the telltale flashing-red anticollision light.

In less than a minute it caught his eye. He watched the light grow brighter as the Intruder came on and waited for it to change course to rendezvous, which would mean that the bomber crew had seen them. When no such change occurred after fifteen seconds, he keyed the radio. “I’m at your ten o’clock, Sam.” Now the other plane began to turn.

Lundeen joined up on Grafton’s left wing. “Look me over, Jake,” he said.

“I’ve got the lead.” With the lead change, Grafton now had the responsibility of maintaining the separation between the two aircraft.

Grafton clicked his mike and retarded the throttles. He slid aft and down so that the other Intruder filled the windscreen. “Hit them with your white flashlight.” he instructed Razor. McPherson would not have needed prompting.

The beam played over the pale gray skin of the bomber. The bomb racks were empty; the copper arming wires glistened in the weak beam. Each mechanical bomb fuse had a wind-driven propeller vane on the nose that the arming wire held immobile while the weapon waited on the rack.

As the bomb fell away, the wire was extracted. The wind spun the vane for a preset number of seconds, and the weapon was thus armed a safe distance from the aircraft.

An absence of arming wires on a bomber returning from a mission meant that all the bombs it had dropped had been duds, the wires had prevented the propeller vanes from spinning and arming the bombs.

Razor shone the flashlight over the right wing, then began to work aft toward the tail. Behind the wing root, on the right side of the fuselage in front of the horizontal stabilizer, they saw the holes. Many tiny jagged holes.

“Work the light aft,” Jake said. More holes splattered the right side of the vertical tail and horizontal stabilizer. Jake eased the tanker in until less than ten feet separated him from the bomber’s tail. He could feel the wash of the other plane forcing his left win down, and he compensated with right stick.

“Sammy, you have a hundred or so little holes on the right side, aft of the wings, on the fuselage and the tail. Looks like flak bursts.”

“Check the pilot tube.”

Jake’s eyes flicked to the top of the bomber’s tail. The tube that measured the bird’s speed through the atmosphere was gone. He told Lundeen.

“I thought so,” Lundeen sighed. “The airspeed indicator reads one hundred ten knots. Better check the other side, too.”

Jake slid across and Razor moved the light along the tail and forward up the fuselage. They found one medium-sized hole in the port flap.

“Now take a squint at the gear doors,” Lundeen directed.

Jake slipped forward until they were immediately beneath the bomber. The doors- were stained with grease and yellow preservative but appeared intact. If they weren’t, the tires within would probably be flat. Razor informed the bomber crew that they could find no other damage.

“We have no airspeed indicator, the computer’s frozen solid as an ice cube, the radar altimeter’s kaput, the TACAN is intermittent, and our I C S is screwed up. A D F isn’t working, either. Let me drop the hook and let’s see if it comes down.” It did and Grafton told him so.

“Maybe we had better go down on your wing,” Sammy said.

“Okay,” Jake said. He slid out to the left and pulled abreast of the bomber.

“I’ve got the lead now. Let’s go to Approach and you tell them your story.”

“Uh, while we’re doing that how about giving me a sip? I could use a grand.”

Jake checked the fuel indicator again. He wasn’t going to have any reserve as it was, and he had already informed Tanker Control he had no more gas to give. But Sammy wouldn’t ask if he didn’t need it. He flipped the power switch on the tanker package and streamed the drogue.

“You’re cutting it pretty goddamned fine,” Razor complained.

“I’ll get just as wet as you if we punch out,” the pilot said. “That could be us over there.”

Razor voiced no more objections.

After an extensive conversation with Approach, the two Intruders were issued Marshall instructions. “Your Marshall one six zero degrees at two four.

Pushover at zero one four eight. Five Two Two will drop Five Oh Six on the ball, be vectored downwind, and trap on the next pass.”

Razor repeated the controller’s instructions, received an acknowledgment, then looked at Grafton. “Nine thousand feet at twenty-four miles.”

agree.

Marshall points were holding fixes whereby aircraft were stacked to await recovery at night or in weather too bad for a visual approach. The lowest altitude that could be assigned was five thousand feet at a distance of twenty miles from the ship. Each subsequent aircraft would receive a fix a thousand feet higher and a mile farther away. So the fixes were defined as five thousand feet and twenty miles, six thousand and twenty-one, seven thousand and twenty-two, and so on. The altitude was omitted from the radio call because it is always fifteen less than the mileage assigned. When the pushover time, or moment of descent, arrived, the pilots were expected to have their planes exactly at the Marshall fix inbound to the ship.

Pushover times were assigned at one-minute intervals, and because approaches were flown at 250 knots until the landing gear was extended at twelve miles, the planes would be strung out one minute apart on the approach to the ship. Such was the theory at any rate thought Jake, and it worked out in practice most of the time, except for nights such as this when the weather was so crummy.

He listened as the other aircraft checked into Marshall. They were all assigned lower altitudes and early approach times. On this recovery, there would be only six aircraft: the two Phantoms that had been BARCAP, the two A-6 bombers, the E A-6B electronic warfare aircraft, and Jake’s KA-6D tanker An E-2 HawkEye early-warning turboprop was also airborne, but since it had such a low rate of fuel consumption it would remain aloft for its usual four hours and land on the second recovery. On this recovery Jake’s tanker would be the last plane to come aboard. If Lundeen crashed on deck or couldn’t be towed out of the landing area, then only the tanker would be stranded aloft low on fuel. This couldn’t be helped because someone had to lead Sammy down.

When Lundeen had his fuel, Jake lowered the nose of the tanker, let the airspeed increase to 250 knots then retarded the throttles. “Trim your mirror a little. Razor obligingly tweaked the rear-view mirror on the canopy rail above his right leg. Jake could now see his wingman with only a glance at the mirror. He reached for the light panel and secured his anticollision light, which would reflect off the clouds and disorient Lundeen.

They skimmed a hummock, then left the moon and stars and entered a dark world. At first Lundeen maintained about twenty feet between his cockpit and Jake’s right wingtip. But as they descended through the sodden clouds, the rainwater streaked in horizontal lines across his canopy, distorting the fading lights of the tanker. So Sammy moved closer until less than ten feet separated his plexiglass from the tanker’s wingtip. Sammy began to perspire. He knew that if he made one error-a little more or less adjustment to the stick or throttles than necessary-he would slide away and lose the tanker in the blackness, or the planes would drift together, wings would tear off, and the machines would cartwheel into the ocean.

Marty Greve informed Lundeen, “The TACAN’s dead.” Because the ICS was malfunctioning, the bombardier had to shout over the cockpit noise. Without TACAN, the radio navigation aid, finding the carrier would be possible only with the bomber’s radar. Of course, Lundeen could receive radar vectors from the ship as long as the radio functioned, but without accurate airspeed information he was getting too close to disaster for comfort. Once the gear came down, the angle-of-attack indicator would become accurate enough to use.

He had to stay with Grafton so that no matter what else went wrong electrically he could locate the ship.

As long as he had Grafton . “How much gas, Marty?” Sammy asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the tanker.

“Three thousand,” came the shouted reply. It would be tight.

Jake leveled at 9000 feet and flew toward the fix. As soon as he crossed it, Razor reported to the ship, “Five Two Two in Marshall at time three nine. State four point eight.” Marty Greve made his report.

“Five Oh Six is at Marshall at time three nine. State two point nine.”

Jake couldn’t resist rubbing it in. “Hear that?” he asked Razor. “if we hadn’t given them that gas those bastards would be sucking their seat cushions up their asses right now.”

In the bomber Marty Greve leaned toward his pilot and remarked, as casually as he could at the top of his lungs, “We should have gotten some more fuel from Jake.”

“There are other guys up here who may need a drop too.” Lundeen’s voice broke up several times on the intermittent ICS, so just to be sure Greve understood he added, “We can make it with what we have.”

Greve merely waggled his eyebrows. He had learned long ago that a king-sized ego was as necessary to a good pilot as his flight suit.

Pilots owned the space they occupied. Lundeen thought he could fly his machine through the eye of a needle and was willing to bet his life on it. The navy took them from all walks of life an winnowed out anyone who showed signs of self-doubt -in other words, anyone who carried the usual baggage of humility that weighed down most of the Human race–and retained only those with balls the size of a grapefruit and a brain the size of a pea, or so Marty liked to announce after a couple of drinks at the officers’ club. Still, he reflected, Lundeen had a remarkable ability to look disaster in the face, flip it the bird, and go merrily on his way. Tonight the bombardier’s eyes kept swiveling back to the fuel gauge.

Greve had not been able to find the target on the first bomb run. Lundeen had insisted on flying a racetrack pattern and making a second attempt Lundeen was driving, so that is what they did. But as they turned onto the final bearing for the second try, they had run right into a flak trap. Lundeen had cussed and yelled and threatened the bombardier’s life if he didn’t break the target out of the clutter this time. He did. After the drop, Lundeen had turned hard and gone back to drop the RockEyes on the concentration of antiaircraft weapons, and the plane had been peppered again.

The RockEyes were cluster bombs: each 500-pound cannister contained almost two hundred fifty bomblets that spread out to form an oval three hundred feet long by two hundred feet wide. Each bomblet contained enough wallop to disable a tank.

They had used too much fuel, stayed too long at full throttle. Lundeen had intentionally not told the ship about the little drink they needed from the tanker so that they would never have to explain that Marty couldn’t find the target on the first pass. The pilot would never tell, would pound him on the back and roar to the world that Marty Greve was the best goddamn “beenie” who ever strapped an A-6 to his ass. But right now, Greve thought, he would admit to any sin short of sodomy if that would squeeze another grand or two of gas into the tanks.

Even as he worried, the refueling drogue on the tanker streamed again.

Greve pointed out the waiting hose to Lundeen, who was not too proud to accept a gift and maneuvered aft for a plug. When the green light went out on the tanker package, their fuel state was almost thirty-eight hundred pounds.

“Jake’s a helluva guy,” Greve said.

The Approach controller announced a time check and Razor and Greve set their clocks precisely at the mark. Jake crossed the fix inbound at 0144 and settled into a lazy turn with ninety degrees of heading change each minute.

On the right wing, Lundeen moved up and aft until he was looking at the red kneeboard light on the canopy wall near Razor’s right knee. When the clamshell speed brakes, or “boards,” began to open on the wingtip, they would block the kneeboard light from his view. If Lundeen missed the opening, or “cracking,” of the boards he would not be able to slow his craft to the same degree as the lead aircraft, even with his throttle at idle.

From Lundeen’s point of view, it would appear as if he were sliding forward in relation to the leader.

At thirty seconds to pushover, Greve warned him and he intensified his concentration. “Any time,” the bombardier hollered just as the red light in the tanker’ cockpit disappeared. Lundeen squeezed out his speed brakes and jockeyed the throttles. Jake had cracked boards, waited a half-second for Lundeen to react, then brought them on out to the full open position. That was the way it should be done but too many pilots forgot.

“Five Two Two leaving Marshall on time with Five Oh Six in tow. State three point eight.”

“Five Oh Six leaving Marshall with three point six,” Greve chimed in.

Jake had kept just enough fuel for one circuit around the pattern, which he knew he would have to fly after he dropped the bomber on the glide slope.

Approach acknowledged and directed a frequency change. Both bombardiers changed the radio channel then checked in.

At 5000 feet Jake slowed his descent and changed course to intercept the final bearing inbound to the carrier. They were still in the good. At 4000 Lundeen sneaked a glance at the radar altimeter, which he knew was not functioning. The black boxes containing the electronics for the instrument were in the rear fuselage presumably damaged by flak.

At 2000 Jake reduced his rate of descent still further and retracted the speed brakes. Sammy stayed right with him. With the throttles back they descended to 1200 feet and leveled there, still in the clouds, closing on the ship at 250 knots as they bounced in the rough air. They were twelve miles from the ship when the first F-4 missed all four of the arresting gear wires and caromed back into the air. “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” the LSO shouted over the radio.

“Boards,” Jake directed over the radio, and brought out the speed brakes.

“Gear,” he added, and dropped the landing gear and flaps.

Lundeen stayed right with him through the transition to landing configuration. “Just like the Blue Angels,” he told Marty with a hint of pride in his voice, which did not escape the bombardier. A successful pilot who would be any pilot still alive-found satisfaction in the smallest things: a good rendezvous, a well-flown instrument approach, a smooth configuration change while flying on instruments. Flight instructors nurtured this tendency from the first day the fledgling pilot crawled into the cockpit by criticizing and advising on every detail of the flyer’s art. Marty Greve had once witnessed a ten-minute conversation on the best technique of bringing a taxiing aircraft smoothly to a stop.

The turbulence was not doing Lundeen’s equilibrium any good at all. He no longer knew if his wings were level or whether he was in a turn or dive. The only points of reference were the tanker’s wing and ghostly fuselage. More rain than ever streamed along his canopy.

The tanker crew tuned the backup radio to the LSO’s second frequency in time to hear Cowboy Parker trap aboard. Alternate landing frequencies were assigned to minimize the danger that the landing signal officer’s comments to the pilot on final approach would be misconstrued by the pilot immediately behind to be for him. Jake heard the second F-4 bolter and be given a downwind heading. Every plane that boltered was vectored downwind and turned into the landing pattern again with at least a five-mile straightaway on final approach. On a bad night with, say, twenty planes trying to get aboard, the bolter pattern could become jammed, the frequencies would be crammed with instructions, and the LSO would have to fight to edge in a word of advice to the pilots on the band. Fortunately only a few planes were recovering tonight. Now he heard the E A-6B successfully trap.

Jake slowed to 116 knots. The angle-of-attack needed and the indexer-a stoplight arrangement on the windscreen rail he could see as he looked toward the landing area showed he was fast. He elected to stay fast, to counteract sudden drops in airspeed caused by turbulence, until he was on the glide slope.

They were still in thick clouds. “Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path. Begin descent.”

Jake brought the power back and saw the rate-of-descent needle sag.

“Five Two Two, you are up and on the glide path.” Jake clicked the mike. “Five Two Two, call needles.”

Jake glanced at the automatic carrier landing system or A C L S , which provided a glide slope and azim display from information data-linked with a computer aboard the ship. “Needles right and centered,” he responded, which meant the instrument crosshairs showed he was slightly left of the center line but on the glide path.

“Disregard your needles. You are slightly high and right. Come left and increase your rate of descent.” Apparently the two planes in formation were descending *** the shipboard computer. Jake concentrated on instruments, scanning the heading, the rate of descent the indexer. His eyes roved constantly over the panel. They swept every instrument, taking in the information that constantly had to be correlated with the reality descending on a 3.5-degree glide slope in a sensitive machine in unstable air. Now he took off some power and trimmed the nose up a click to get to 112 knots the on-speed indication on the indexer. Then he checked the pressure altimeter and matched it with the radar altimeter. “You are on glide path and on centerline. Come right two.”

Grafton obeyed.

The LSO spoke to the Phantom ahead. “Deck heaving, keep it coming … a little power … not too much! … bolter, bolter, bolter!”

“Five Two Two is on glide path, slightly left of centerLine.” Jake dipped the right wing to correct. He was passing 500 feet. How low does this stuff go? “Five Two Two, on glide path, on centerline.”

They broke out of the clouds at 300 feet. “Ball,” Razor told him.

“Five Two Two, three-quarters of a mile. Five Oh Six, call the ball.”

Marty Greve keyed his mike. “Five Oh Six, Intruder ball, three point three.” Sammy Lundeen kept his eyes on the tanker until he saw Grafton retract his speed brakes, add power, and break away to the left. He heard his roommate tell Approach, “Five Two Two breaking away,” and heard the instruction in reply for Grafton to climb to 1200 feet and turn downwind.

Lundeen looked forward. There was the ship. He saw the ball on the left side of the landing area, the white centerline lights, and the red drop lights. These drop lights traveled down the back of the ship to the water and provided a three-dimensional reference. Instead of a windshield wiper, the A-6 used bleed air from the engines to clear rainwater from the windshield, and Greve already had it on. The indexer showed the plane was on-speed, and the ball told Lundeen he was slightly low. He made the correction.

“I’ve got vertigo,” he told Marty. He involuntarily took his eyes from the ball and glanced at the visual display indicator to reassure himself that the wings were level. He felt as though he were in a left turn and had to resist the urge to lower the right wing to correct. Even his eyes told him he was wings level, so his instincts were lying.

“Wings level,” Greve shouted. Lundeen tore his eyes back to the ball and the landing area. The ball was seesawing between the reference lights, revealing the ship’s up and down motion in the sea. He fought the nausea that came with spatial disorientation and the impulse to correct to every twitch of the glide slope indicator light, the “ball.” Out of instinct he nudge the throttles forward slightly.

“Too much power,” the LSO advised.

“Wings level,” Marty reassured him again. Lundeen jammed on the power as they sank in the turbulence created by the ship’s island, then jerked it off as they reached smoother air.

Then he crossed the ramp. Miraculously, the ball was dropping, which meant the deck was coming up toward the descending plane. The wheels smashed into the steel, the nose pitched forward, and Sammy Lundeen thrust the throttles to the firewall and automatically thumbed the speed brakes closed. He felt the welcome jolt as the aircraft began a rapid deceleration. He jerked the throttles back to idle, and the muscles in his body began to relax. “Hot damn,” he told Marty.

Carrier landings were no more than controlled crashes. On the downwind leg Jake Grafton knew Lundeen had trapped because there had been no bolter call. His attention turned to the Phantom wingman whose fuel state was becoming critical.

The wingman had bolters twice, while the lead trapped on his second attempt. Built for supersonic flight, the fighters had flight characteristics that were a result of design compromises. Their approach speeds were thirty knots faster than the A-6’s, and they were harder to handle at landing speeds. At low altitudes with their gear down the engines drank fuel at a gluttonous rate.

As Jake turned to the final bearing the lone F-4 stayed in the air, Stagecoach 203, called the ball with four thousand pounds. “Why don’t they send him to Da Nang or up to tank?” Razor asked on the ICS.

“I dunno,” Grafton replied as he dropped the gear and flaps for his approach. “They know what they’re doing.” Maybe, he added to himself.

As he slowed to an on-speed indication on the indexer he heard the tanker that had just launched check in on one of the landing frequencies. “He must have problems,” Jake said to Razor.

Now there were no “sweet” tankers–tankers capable of transferring fueling in the air. Undoubtedly, Jake thought, the ship would soon shoot the manned spare sitting on deck. If they waited much longer the lone fighter still trying to get aboard would not have enough fuel to reach an altitude at which he could rendezvous with the tanker. The fighter pilot on the ball surely knew that, too, and that knowledge would not help his concentration.

“Bolter, bolter, bolter!” the LSO shouted over the air. The frustration could be heard in his voice. “Two Oh Three, you are overcorrecting. You are trying to chase the ball. Just average it out and be smooth.”

“Be smooth” was the universal admonishment for every piloting sin. Play the stick and throttles , as if he could have fiddled in a jolting jet beating through turbulent air with rain soaking up all the light.

“Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path begin your descent…. Five Two Two, up and on the glide path…. Five Two Two, call your needles.”

“Up and right.”

“Concur. fly the needles.”

Jake Grafton concentrated on the ACLS gauge, which meant he looked at it about half the time and the altimeter, angle-of-attack, rate of descent, and gyro the other half. Flying the needles was much easier than flying the ball since the carrier’s computer stabilized the electronic glide slope regardless of the ship’s motion in the heavy swells. The optical landing system was stabilized in pitch and roll, that is, in the horizontal plane, but it could not compensate instability in the vertical plane, the up-and-down motion of the ship known as heave.

As he descended he heard the pilot of the Phantom inquire about tanking or diverting to Da Nang, the nearest jet base ashore. “Da Nang is closed temporarily due to a rocket attack and the tanker is dry. We’ll get some gas in the air shortly.”

“Shortly may be just a little too late,” was the acid reply.

The tanker broke out of the clouds at 280 feet. Instantly Jake made the transition from instrument flight to visual flight, scanning the angle-of-attack, the ball, and the lineup while Razor made the ball reports.

Razor had the breed air blasting the rain from the windscreen. As Jake approached the ship he began to see the light-the ball cycle up and down between the green reference lights. He went from high to low to high again without any movement of the stick or throttles. He tried to ensure the high cycles were not farther away from the correct, centered ball, than the low cycles. Each cycle took about eight seconds as the plane closed on the ship.

Then they were there. The drop lights swept under the nose and the ball began to rise, indicating the plan had flattened its approach angle or the deck was descending. Jake pulled off a handful of power, move the stick forward a smidgen, then pulled it aft as he shoved the power back on. This maneuver violate every rule in the book-it was called “diving for the deck” but it was a sure way to get aboard when you had to. The main wheels struck the deck with a tremendous thud and the nose wheel fell the three feet to the rigid steel as the main gear oleos compressed and the engines were winding toward full power when the deceleration threw both men forward against their unyielding shoulder harnesses.

“Shit hot,” Razor said. “God, I hate this fucking business.” The taxi director led the plane to the front of the island. When it was parked, one of the squadron maintenance chiefs lowered the pilot’s ladder, opened the canopy, and clambered up. Jake tilted the left side of his helmet away from his ear so he could hear the chief. “We’re going to fill your internal tanks and shoot you again,” the chief shouted over the whine of the idling engines. “The spare tanker went down. This is our last good machine.”

“Down” meant that the aircraft had mechanical problems that had to be corrected before it could fly again. Even as the chief spoke the purple-shirted men in the Fuels Division dragged a hose to the tanker and attached it. Jake depressurized the tanks and gave the men a thumbs up.

“We’re going again,” the pilot told Razor on the ICS “The spare crapped out.”

“Lucky us. How come we gotta go again? How come they don’t have another crew out here? Get the chief over here. Tell him to get the spare tanker crew to come hotseat this thing. Cowboy’s got it in for me because I gassed him in the locker room.”

“He just landed, Razor. Can it, willya?”

“When the weather gets cruddy I get stuck going up and down like a goddamn yo-yo. It happens every time. Doesn’t anyone else want a little of this fun?” Jake ignored the bombardier, who continued to fume on the ICS.

The refueling took five minutes. During that time the sour tanker trapped, but Stagecoach 203 boltered again in a shower of sparks as the hook point scraped the steel of the deck.

Perhaps the air boss would order the barricade rigged. That giant net of nylon webbing, raised on stanchions just forward of the last arresting gear wire could stop an aircraft on deck with only minor damage to the plane. But the pilot had to get his machine down on deck before he went into the barricade or there would be a catastrophe. Perhaps the air boss was weighing the pros and cons with the air operations officer. Jake glanced up at the air boss’s throne in the glassed-in compartment high on the island known as Pried-Fly. He was glad he didn’t have to make that decision.

“Too bad the barricade stanchions are out of whack,” Razor commented.

Jake felt embarrassed. That information must have been in the brief, and he had missed it. Damn! He wasn’t functioning as he should tonight. And he had given Sammy that gas without telling the ship. Razor had been right-he shouldn’t have flown tonight.

When the fueling was complete and the canopy once more closed, the tanker was directed forward to the foul line at the right edge of the landing area.

They would have to be launched from one of the waist catapults as both bow catapults were stacked with parked aircraft. Stagecoach 203 came out of the rain and mist one more time, but this time the fighter pilot knew his approach was hopeless and rotated to climb away before the wheels even touched the deck. The taxi directors motioned Grafton forward to the number-three catapult on the waist as the cat crew pile up from the catwalks, removed the protector plate from the shuttle, and retracted it for the shot. The pilot spread the plane’s wings, dropped the flaps, cycled the controls, and slipped into the shuttle.

Twenty seconds later the tanker was airborne and climbing.

Jake got on the radio. “Two Oh Three, what is your state?”

“Fifteen hundred pounds,” was the answer.

“Okay, listen up. You don’t have the gas to get on top, so I’ll rendezvous with you if you bolter on this next pass. Stay at about 250 feet, underneath the clouds, pull up your gear and flaps and I’ll join on you. Where are you now?”

The F-4 pilot gave him his position–downwind at 1200 feet seven miles out. Jake leveled the tanker at 1500 feet and turned to the downwind heading, which was the exact opposite of the ship’s course.

The air ops officer got on the air. “Two Oh Three, if you bolter this next pass and you can’t hook up with the tanker, I want you to climb to five thousand feet straight ahead and jettison the airplane. The Angel will pull you two guys out of the drink. Understand?”

“Two Oh Three, wilco.” As if they had a choice.

“And don’t either one of you fly into the water.”

Jake didn’t even bother clicking his mike. Neither man wanted to commit suicide. Of course, if they weren’t real goddamn careful, they’d be just as dead. More to the point, if the two men in the Phantom had to eject into this sea, they ran a good risk of getting tangled in their chutes and drowning before the helicopter moved in, Jake planned his approach. He had already screwed up twice tonight, not counting his dive for the deck, Please God, don’t let me get zapped passing sips! He concentrated on the problem before him.

The Phantom would slow when it dropped its gear and flaps, and the tanker would close the distance. They would have to be beneath the clouds then, about 250 feet over the water Jake would not have time to constantly check the altimeter. “When we get below three hundred feet I want you to call the altitude every five seconds,” he told Razor. The bombardier would have to watch the altimeter very carefully. Any unnoticed sink rate would lead to watery oblivion in a matter of seconds.

“If you kill me. Grafton,” Razor told him. “I’ll kick your ass in hell for the next ten thousand years.” When the pilot did not respond, Razor added, “Why in the fuck didn’t I have the good sense to join the goddam army?”

Jake Grafton extended his pattern downwind as the Phantom turned crosswind to intercept the final bearing inbound. When he was sure he had enough separation Jake also turned crosswind and let the plane begin a gentle descent toward the water. He was at 500 fee when he turned to the final bearing and began to close on the ship. Two Oh Three was at two miles on the glide path.

Come on, you son of a bitch, get aboard this time!

But Jake knew it was a forlorn hope. The fighter pilot had lost confidence, much like a football team that is twenty points behind. He needed something to restore his faith in himself. Maybe a full bag of gas would calm him down. Jake descended through 300 feet, still in the clouds. At 250 feet he was in and out of clouds but he leveled there, afraid to go lower.

The airspeed read 275 knots, the distance on the TACAN five miles.

The F-4 was at a mile now, calling the ball. This should work out.

He was listening to the LSO between Razor’s altitude calls when a cluster of lights loomed ahead in the darkness.

Holy-!

“Pull up!” Razor screamed.

Jake jerked the stick aft and slammed the throttle forward as confusion and adrenaline flooded him. His eyes darted to the distance indicator on the TACAN as the Gees slammed him down into the seat and the nose came up. It couldn’t be the carrier!

Oh, God! It was the plane guard destroyer.

He pulled the throttles back and shoved the stick forward. The two men floated in their seats as the plane nosed over. They were at 1000 feet and two miles from the ship. They had to get down under fast. Jake let the nose go to ten degrees down, then put two Gees on to pull out at 250 feet.

“Bolter, bolter, bolter!”

After a last check to ensure he was level, Jake looked ahead through the rain. The adrenaline kept pumping. He could see nothing and terror welled up.

He fought it back.

“Get ready to put the hose out,” he told the bombardier between altitude calls.

At last he saw the carrier, a mass of dim red light in the rain. He added power. The fighter was somewhere up ahead at 250 knots. Grafton squeezed on more power. The airspeed increased. They went by the ship at 350 knots, 250 feet. “Stagecoach Two Oh Three, call your posit.”

“Two miles straight ahead, four hundred pounds.”

The fighter’s fuel was almost down to the accuracy margin of the fuel gauge; it could flame out at any second.

“Speed?”

“Two fifty.” Jake saw him now. Elation replaced the fear that had gripped him seconds before. He levered back the throttles and cracked the speed brakes a trifle.

“We’ll tank at three hundred,” he announced. In seconds they were together. Jake passed the fighter on its left wing, stabilizing at the chosen airspeed as the F-4 pilot increased power-perhaps for the last time if he didn’t get fuel-trailed in behind the tanker, and guided the refueling probe home in one smooth, sexual motion. Grafton raised the nose when he saw the transfer light come on and began to climb. “You’re getting fuel,” he said over the air.

Apparently the Phantom’s crew didn’t trust themselves to speak, because the reply was several mike clicks.

“How much does Stagecoach Two Oh Three get?”

Razor asked the ship.

“Give him five grand and if he doesn’t get aboard on the next pass, he can divert to Da Nang. The field is open now. You copy, Two Oh Three?”

“Roger. Copy one more approach.”

As they reached 1200 feet Jake turned downwind and led the fighter back for another approach. The fighter pilot keyed his mike when the Phantom finished tanking: “Thanks for saving our assets, you guys.”

He dropped his gear and flaps and receded in the tanker’ rear-view mirror.

Good luck, thought Grafton as the lights of the fighter faded.

Confidence is so slippery: one either has it at a give instant or one does not. Now the fighter pilot, whose name Jake did not know, had it-that willow-the-wisp that had eluded his grasp so many times-now he had it, for he successfully trapped aboard on his next approach.

“Now let us get down again,” Razor muttered almost in prayer after the Phantom had trapped.

“Five Two Two, you are at seven miles on final approach. Slow to landing speed. Say your state.”

“Three thousand pounds.” Jake slapped the gear and flap handles down and lowered the arresting hook.

“Three down and locked, flaps in takeoff, slats out, boards out, hook down,” Jake told Razor, who then read the rest of the landing checklist as the pilot slowed to the on-speed indication on the angle-of-attack indexer and stabilized there.

“Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path.”

Jake retarded the power and clicked the nose trim forward.

“Five Two TWO, you are below glide path.” Damn!

He had taken off too much power too soon. He added some and checked the vertical speed needle as he tried to flatten his descent and intercept the glide slope. The plane was bouncing in the turbulence and the needles flopped maddeningly.

“Slightly below glide path. Call your needles.”

“Low and right.”

“Disregard. You are below glide path, on centerline.” He was fighting the controls. He knew it, yet there was nothing he could do. Finesse seemed impossible. No adjustment of power or stick brought exactly the right response from the machine; it was either too much or too little.

“You are below glide path, three-quarters of a mile, call the ball.”

Razor made the call. “Five Two Two, Intruder ball, two point eight.”

“You are low.” That was the LSO.

Jake clicked his mike and added power. Too much.

“You are high and fast.”

Jake could see that. Frustrated, he pulled off a wad of power and clicked the nose up, trying to descend and slow down all at the same time. It was working. The ball was sinking. He added power to catch it. Not enough. The ball sank below the green datum lights that marked the glide path, and turned from yellow to red. Can’t stay down here; the ramp’s down here, and tearing metal, black sea, and watery death. He crammed on the power and tweaked back the nose.

He crossed the ramp with the ball climbing and reduced the power. Too late! The ball squirted off the top of the mirror just as the wheels collided with the deck. He rammed the throttles to the stops and thumbed in the boards.

“Bolter, bolter, bolter The deceleration didn’t come. The engines were still winding up when the speeding aircraft ran off the deck into the night air sixty feet above the water.

He rotated to ten degrees nose up and eyed the altimeter as he began to register the climb.

He caught himself lingering upon individual instruments, taking precious seconds to decipher the bits information. His scan was breaking down.

Come on, Jake, he drove himself. Keep those eye moving. One more time! One more good approach!

Razor toggled the bleed air switch as they sank beneath the clouds on their next approach, but nothing happened. Rain drops which were swept away at knots ran up the windscreen in vertical streaks creating a prismatic miasma of double images.

“Gimme air,” Jake demanded of Razor.

“It’s not working. Your wings are level.”

The yellow ball and green datum lights were merely smears on the windscreen. Jake fought back panic and tried to respond to the half-heard comments from the LSO. The desire to trap was now an obsession. He was fast-the LSO and the angle-of-attack indexer agreed -but in this living nightmare he couldn’t reduce the power. He fought the stick with a death grip, The splotches that were the drop lights swept under the nose and he leaned sideways to view the ball through the plexiglass quarterpanel. The ball was a little high and sinking! He felt the wheels smash home and the nose drop down.

He held his breath as he jammed the throttles forward and waited for the deceleration, then exhaled convulsively when it came. Oh, that welcome sound as the arresting gear machinery below decks soaked up the millions of foot-pounds of kinetic energy. He felt the little wiggle the plane gave as it quivers on the arresting hook like a snagged bass.

Then it came to a complete stop and began to roll backwards.

Later Jake relived the entire sequence in the darkness of his stateroom. He examined his confidence and attempted to glue the missing pieces back together. He told himself no one would ever notice the damage.

When Jake Grafton and Razor Durfee got off the escalator on the second deck, the pilot went into the head. He relieved himself, then sat on the toilet and lit a cigarette. The place reeked of stale urine and disinfectant, but the cigarette tasted good after hours without one. Jake rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his chin in his hands as fatigue permeated him.

His flight boots were almost worn out. One sole had an inch-long split along the side. The leather was cracking. Not once in five years had he polished the boots.

Most of the blood stains were gone from the G-suit and survival vest, rubbed off as he sat and walked and moved around. The fire-retardant nomex outer layer of the G-suit was oily and dirty and torn in places, but the worst of the brown stains had faded to mere discolorations, difficult to see. Grief is like that, he thought. It fades in the course of living.

He closed his eyes and savored the darkness. At length he opened them and stared at his hands. They quivered, and he could not still the tremors.

The door opened and Sammy Lundeen stepped inside. He slouched against the door.

“That was a helluva chance you took to tank that guy, Cool Hand.”

“Yeah.” Jake stared at the faded brown stains, all that was left of Morgan McPherson. “Is the skipper pissed off.”

“No. He’s smoking his cigar, as usual. That fighter crew’s in the ready room telling everybody what a hero you are. They keep saying something about you saving their butts, but all fighter pukes are crazy and they’ll say anything.”

Jake took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Boy, we’re having fun now,” he said, thinking of Morgan. “What happened on your hop, anyway?”

“We flew right into a flak trap and almost got our asses shot off. Still haven’t figured out why they didn’ get us. Then we had to run the target without the computer.”

“Any luck?”

“Who knows? No secondary explosions. We probably missed that truck park by a mile or two. Some commie’s probably complaining right now to some half-wit reporter that the American warmongers just bombed another church.”

“A truck park?”

“A suspected truck park.”

“Is that worth dying for?”

“There isn’t anything in Indochina worth dying for man, and that’s a fact. But tonight those gomers shot like we were trying to bomb Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. I bet the Kremlin doesn’t have that many guns around it We were real goddamned lucky.” He shook his head “Real lucky. Got three secondaries when I dropped the Rocks on the flak trap, though.” Lundeen showed his teeth. “That made it worth the trip.”

Jake shifted enough to drop the cigarette butt into the bowl. “How come the spare tanker didn’t get airborne?”

“Haven’t you heard? A plane captain got sucked down an intake.”

“Good God! What a way to buy it.”

“He didn’t buy it, amazingly enough.

The chief saw him approach the intake, figured he was going to and made a diving grab. He caught the guy’s legs just as he went in. The plane captain went down the intake headlong to his knees. He’s shook up plenty, though. Lost his helmet and goggles and flashlight into the intake off that engine. There’s $150,000 of the taxpayers’ money down the crapper.”

“Who was the poor sucker?”

“He’s down in sick bay. Maggot.”

“Maggot! poor guy!”

Jake found Maggot in one of the wards in the sick bay suite. Mad Jack was standing beside him. The doctor said. “He’s still in shock.

Don’t stay too long.” Glancing at the stains that marred the pilot’s flight gear, he add “And don’t touch anything down here, either.”

Maggot’s face was white as the pilot leaned forward and spoke loudly “I hear you tried to get out of a little work” the boy’s mouth twitched.

Maggot nodded nervously and licked his lips. “It just sucked me up like I was a leaf or something, I Was walking and then I was going down that intake headfirst Mister Grafton. I thought I was a goner.”

“From what I hear you almost were.”

you Mister Grafton, his eyes were wet. “Damn, The boy’ was unbelievable was scared. it was Clark and the noise could feel myself I couldn’t see anything and I c _ , and I co that compressor. I Knew those being pulled toward ming, ready to chop me into blades were there, tu the ger but I couldn’t see them.”

He gazed at wall a moment and blinked back the tears. “I think I peed my pants. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell. But I know what you mean about being scared. McPherson and I have been scared so many times I lost count.” The reply was a wan smile.

*** The ready room was crowded when Jake opened the door.

The crew of Stagecoach 203 was more than grateful. The pilot pounded Jake on the back and pumped his had repeatedly. He had a dark, well-groomed mustache which was against ship policy. His teeth looked porcelain white. “Just shit hot! I owe you a fifth of your favorite some time in port, believe you me.

“It was nothing you you wouldn’t have done if our positions had been reversed. The fighter pilot, whose name tag proclaimed he was Fighting Joe Brett, released his grip on Jake’s hand.

“We’d like to think that, Grafton. But I mean it about the bottle.” A dozen loud conversations were going at once in the front of the room the while up in the offices Cowboy and the XO were conferring in low voices, getting and scratching missions were a necessary part back to earth. Just then the LSO in his white shirt strode into the group. In his hand was, the green book where he kept a record of every pilot’s approach to the ship.

“Grafton, you set some landing record with a no-grade and one cut pass. That last is the-worst-I’ve seen in many a moon-” The men fell silent. Half of them were looking at a cut grade and half were thinking a no-grade meant the pass was dangerous, almost an accident. No-grade was just above a cut.

The LSO continued. “Now you know as well as I do that with a pitching deck you have to be extra careful. You did a little dive for the deck on your first trap, overcontrolled on your bolter pass, but then on that last approach you really went for it. You could’ve easily torn the wheels off that plane or smashed it on the ramp. Some fine navy night you’re going to cram those main struts right up through the wings.”

Durfee wasn’t taking this lying down. “Hey, asshole, you heard me tell you the bleed air wasn’t working. Jake couldn’t see shit out the windscreen.”

The LSO turned to him. “Did it ever occur to you two geniuses to take a wave off and check the circuit breaker on the downwind leg? Did you check the circuit breaker?” he demanded of Razor.

Razor’s face turned red, and he leaned toward the LSO. “Did you hit the goddamn wave off lights, buttface?”

The LSO ignored the bombardier and focused on the pilot. “You ever come aboard like that again and I’ll see to it you never land another plane on this boat.” He turned and walked toward the front of the room.

Jake felt like a nude in church. He shrugged and looked at the embarrassed men around him. “Hell, I was desperate.”

Joe Brett grasped Jake’s hand again, and the skipper’s voice boomed out, “Jake, you go get some sleep. We have a brief in four hours.” Without another word the pilot turned and headed for his stateroom.

But Commander Camparelli was not finished yet. He motioned with his finger at the LSO, who obediently came over and stood in front of the skipper’s chair. “Listen, mister,” said Camparelli. “You know your job and you call ‘em like you see ‘em. But if you ever again read out one of my pilots like you just did, I’ll have your ass on a plate. Do you understand me?”

“Yessir, but-“

“I decide who flies and who doesn’t in this squadron not you. All I expect from you is your opinion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now get out of here. I’m tired of looking at you. The LSO marched out the door. The skipper looked around the room at the hushed crowd. He settled on the mustachioed fighter pilot and smiled at him. “Have you got a sister?” he asked.