Flight of the Intruder

EIGHT

In their white uniforms, the men in ranks were in a crescent in the morning sunlight. A modest breeze ruffled the flags and pennants flying from the mast on the ship’s island. Jake Grafton sat behind the podium in the chairs reserved for the officers of the A-6 squadron. He kept his gaze on the ever-changing points of light on the swells of the South China Sea.

How did they know there were forty-seven men? Why not forty-six, or forty-eight? What did they count to get forty-seven? Noses, tongues, penises? What could be left after four tons of high explosive shrapnel had ripped and pulverized human bodies and had welded together flesh and earth?

When he had been in flight training, Jake had been assigned to an accident-investigation team. Walking in rows through a pasture in Mississippi, they had searched for the pieces of a training plane that had slammed into the ground at more than 400 knots.

The engines had dug long furrows, but the rest of the machine had disintegrated and scattered parts over a third of a mile. He had found a little patch of skin, a piece about the size of a quarter, which he had carefully placed in a transparent bag. It had been just a little piece of a man, from somewhere on his body-no telling where-lying there in the grass. A crash would be a good way to die. The two guys in that training plane were gone in less time than it takes for a single sensation to register on the brain. Maybe dying under the bombs had been fast like that. Morgan hadn’t been that lucky.

When they came off target, he had made that turn for the coast. Morgan had reset the armament panel and was working on the computer. If only…

“Time to go, Jake.” Sammy was standing beside him.

Everyone was leaving.

Morgan hadn’t been lucky at all.

That evening Harvey Wilson called Jake to his stateroom and handed the pilot the evaluations on Jones and Hardesty. “These aren’t good enough, Grafton. You must’ve spent four years trying to pass freshman English. I want them redone before you fly off the ship in the morning.”

“Yessir.”

“You just don’t know how to do paperwork, Grafton. You should talk to your roommate Lundeen. The awards stuff he writes is outstanding. Have him give you some tips.” Wilson leaned back in his chair. He had a stateroom to himself but a smaller one than the skipper’s. Jake stood by the desk.

Wilson tapped his pencil on the desk. “I was down in C A T C C the other night when you ’saved’ that F-4.” He let the statement hang in the air. After a moment he stopped playing with the pencil and scrutinized the lieutenant.

“That little trick of giving Lundeen gas might have backfired on you.”

“Yessir.”

“These people think you’re some kind of hero, Grafton, but I know different. You bend the rules, and one of these days it’s going to blow up in your face. You’re a fucking hot dog.”

Jake just looked at the man. The Rabbit had a way of jutting out his jaw when he was on the offensive.

He was living proof of the imperfections in the navy promotion system. Next would come the threat.

“You’d better shape up.” Surely he could do better than that. “Another stunt like that and you’ll be flying one of these things”-he waved the pencil full time. Now go work on those evals.”

“Yessir.” Out in the passageway, Jake added, sir, yessir, three bags full.

Grafton regarded the doctor with an irrepressible grin. The medical man looked slightly ridiculous with his girth encased in forty pounds of flight gear.

He looked, Jake thought, like a giant pear or even-a Jake smiled more broadly-an egg with legs. “Ok Jack, you’ve flown in these pigs before?” Mad Jack nodded reflectively. A sheen of perspiration was visible on his forehead, and the pilot decided his passenger looked paler than usual.

“Have you ever had a cat shot? No? Well, you’re in for the thrill of the month. This will be about the most exciting thing you’ve ever done with your clothes on. Just keep your hands in your lap, don’t touch a single switch, knob, or anything at all, and do like I tell you.” Mad Jack bobbed his head. “The only time you’ll have to do anything is if I tell you to eject. The command will be ‘Eject, Eject, Eject.” Three times.”

“And if I say ‘Huh?” I’ll be talking to myself.”

“If you say anything after I give you that comma You will be all alone on your first, and probably last solo in an A-6. And, of course, if I get too busy and forget to tell you and you see me eject, then you’d better hurry right along.” More head bobs, nervous ones, Jake observed with a trace of satisfaction.

“Now, I want to go over how the ejection seat works with you.” Jake took the doctor to the blackboard, drew a rough sketch of the seat, and explained the ejection sequence. Jake knew the doctor had heard it all before, but both he and Mad Jack had been around navy airplanes long enough to know the value of, and not be bored by, repeated instruction.

Grafton went over the intercom system. “Your ICS mike switch is the toe pedal by your right foot. Just stay silent if you hear me talking on the radio. I’ll have my switches set up so that I can hear any radio transmission coming in even if you’re talking. Feel free to ask questions, talk, tell jokes, whatever. I want you to enjoy the hop.” Jake smiled. He really meant it.

As they left the ready room, Jake put the evals he had polished in Wilson’s mailbox. The sonuvabitch could read them when he got out of bed.

Lundeen’s plane was ahead and to the left of Jake’s as, ten minutes after launching, they approached the coast of Luzon. Low green mountains rose out of the cobalt sea, and early-morning shadows played across the white-sand beach.

The two planes dropped to 200 feet and turned northward, about five hundred yards out to sea, parallel to the surf. Occasionally they saw a fishing boat, but mostly the airmen looked at an empty sea separated from unbroken tropical forest by a filament of beach that ran from horizon to horizon. Here and there a fisherman’s shack broke the lonely sweep of beach.

Jake Grafton felt refreshed. It was good to be flying again with nothing to worry about, to be sightseeing and sporting along. The cockpit was as comfortable as a living-room armchair.

“How about that cat shot, huh?” Jake asked. The doctor, who was still on hot mike, was breathing hard “Next time be sure to give a war whoop as you go down the cat. That seems to magnify the sensation.”

The doctor chuckled, and his breathing slowed toward normal.

Up ahead, Lundeen dipped lower and lower. A low hut was visible far ahead.

The warplanes dropped to about 50 feet. Crossing the surf, they thundered down the sand toward the structure. They passed over the shack at 300 knots. As they pulled up into a steep climb, Lundeen shouted “Yahoo” over the radio and did a victory roll. Jake came alongside Sammy’s right wing. Lundeen waved and Marty Greve flashed him the finger in salute.

They turned east, inland, and threaded their way through a valley at 500 feet.

Jake dropped astern, assuming the tailchase position, about one hundred fifty feet aft an just above the leader. After a few sharp turns, they crossed the ridgeline, shooting through a narrow gap where the clouds almost rubbed the mountain rocks. The uplands fell away quickly to forests and occasional fields.

Every so often, a winding road or village punctuated the landscape.

Sammy’s voice boomed in Jake’s ears. “Let’s go and tangle -” Without waiting for a reply, he angled and came on with the power. Soon they were climbing through a great hag of clouds illuminated by sunlight Riding their winged steeds, they soared effortlessly through Valhalla toward the open sky.

They passed the cloud tops at 12,000 feet. Thunderheads were building and would reach great heights by early afternoon, but now there was plenty of room to play. Leveling at 23,000 feet, Lundeen waved and turned thirty degrees to the left. Grafton return the wave and veered thirty degrees right. Jake concentrated on Lundeen’s rapidly receding plane. How quickly the vastness of the sky swallows up the tiny machines that bear men aloft. “Better tighten your harness and lock the shoulder restraint,” he advised the doctor, who did as suggested.

“Damn pilots,” was the radio comment Grafton and the doctor heard from Marty Greve.

“Turning in,” Jake broadcast.

“Turning in, Mother,” he heard his roommate chuckle. “I’m going to wax your ass.”

The aircraft approached each other head on. Jake had the throttles wide open and his ship accelerated nicely. This was the fair way to start a dogfight, a head-on pass so that neither pilot had the advantage. Jake glanced about. The sky was empty. Jake’s eyes flicked over the gauges, and he noted automatically the information displayed there. The oncoming jet grew larger.

“Loser buys.”

They came together at a combined speed of well over a thousand miles per hour. Lundeen went past Jake’s left side, his wingtip a scant fifty feet away.

Grafton yanked the stick back and to the left.

The G forces tore at his body but he scarcely noticed. He was craning his head over his left shoulder, trying to see which way Lundeen had turned. For several seconds he couldn’t locate his opponent. He rolled the ship into ninety degrees of bank and pulled harder on the stick. “Six Gees,” Mad Jack groaned. At-least he knew where the G-meter was.

Then Jake saw the other Intruder. Lundeen and he were canopy to canopy on the opposite sides of an invisible circle, headed in opposite directions. His eyes fixed on his opponent, Jake decreased the angle of the plane’s bank and kept the Gees on. The nose of his machine came up, and his airspeed was converted into altitude. As the plane slowed it needed less room to turn, so now Jake increased the angle of bank and the nose tracked around. In seconds he was only ninety degrees off Lundeen’s heading but several thousand feet above him in a lopsided loop, one hundred thirty five degrees of bank, and coming in on his opponent’ stern quarter.

Lundeen was having none of it. He sheered away from Grafton and dived.

Jake relaxed the stick and did a slow roll into a wings-level dive.

Only 300 knots. Lundeen had more airspeed and drew steadily away going downward.

Both machines accelerated, but Sammy’s lead was almost three miles; he was far below and still diving. Then Jake saw the nose of Lundeen’s ship come up. He’s doing a Immelmann turn, thought Jake, a half loop with a half roll on top. He shallowed his dive, and the two planes flashed past head-on again, Grafton right side up an Lundeen upside down at the top of the loop, flying a little over 200 knots.

Jake pulled the stick back hard. This time he kept his eye on the instruments and applied a steady four-G pull until the nose was pointed up, away from the earth, like a missile.

The airspeed bled off quickly. The lowest reading on the indicator was 50 knots and here was where the needle came to rest. The jet hung motionless in the sky at 30,000 feet, its nose aimed up and the exhaust pipe aimed down at the rain forest. The thrust of the engine held it poised for several heartbeats as the men in the cockpit floated weightlessly. The pilot released the stick and cuffed the doctor lightly on the arm. “Great fun huh?”

The sensation became one of falling as the bird began a tail slide toward the earth. Then the machine lurched and tumbled over backwards.

The weight of the nose and the streamlined shape took effect, and within seconds the gyrations ceased and they were plummeting earthward, gravity and engine thrust acting together to wind the airspeed-indicator needle around the dial at a dizzying rate.

Jake was busy again. He chopped the engines to idle and opened the wingtip speed brakes while searching for Lundeen.

“Do you see him?” he asked his passenger anxiously. They scanned the sky.

“I see you.” It was Lundeen.

Jake swallowed hard and brought his gaze up. There was the bastard, level and coming in head on. As fast as thought itself he rotated the plane, retracted the speed brakes, added power, and began a pull to go under Lundeen and force the opponent into an overshoot.

It was good to feel the plane respond to the slightest pressure on the controls, good to see the earth and sky tumble and change positions, good to fly free. Occasional scans of the fuel gauge and engine instruments were the only concessions to the machine. The pilots worked their sticks and rudders instinctively, as training and experience had taught them to do. Each focused entirely on the location of the other aircraft and tried to anticipate his opponent’s next maneuver. It was as if men and machines were fused: the fuel was blood, the engines muscle, the wings and speed and soaring flight their spirit. This was flying as the ancients had dreamed of it, when they watched the birds swoop and dart, The doctor rode in silence, enduring a ride worse than that of any roller coaster. This was a job for a younger man with a cast-iron stomach. Mad Jack managed to remove his oxygen mask, but the little bag he had thoughtfully placed in the lower leg pocket of his G-suit was beyond reach. He ripped off his left glove and vomited into it.

The plane was no longer maneuvering; it was glued to one-G flight as firmly as if it had been welded to a pedestal in a museum display. Mad Jack looked left and met the smiling eyes of Jake Grafton. The pilot winked at him as he told Sammy Lundeen to join up.

Once on the ground at Cubi Point Naval Air Station the planes taxied to the parking mat near the carrier. A sailor guided them into their parking place and another man chocked the wheels.

With the canopy open and the engines sighing in silence, Grafton removed his helmet and let the afternoon breeze cool his soaking-wet hair. The doctor did the same. Jake ran his hand over his hair and used a finger to squeegee the perspiration from his eyebrows.

“What do you think, Jack? Is it worth the final crash?” Before Mad Jack could answer, they were interrupted.

“Hi, Jake.” A khaki-clad figure tossed a can of beer up to the cockpit. The pilot fielded it and handed it to Mad Jack, then caught the next one tossed. The beer was ice cold, an elixir as it raced down Jake’s throat. The doctor sipped his.

“Welcome to Cubi again, Jake,” the beach detachment officer shouted.

“Thanks.” The pilot saw Lundeen walking toward him with his helmet bag in hand. “Sam, I want the beer you owe me.”

“You can have anything they got, Jake. You’re buying.”

“Ha! I whipped you so bad I thought you were on autopilot there for a minute.”

Lundeen gestured at the heavens. “Have you honor? God is watching you, Grafton, to see if you pay a debt of honor, a wager fairly made and fairly lost.

There are two gates up there, you know; one for winners and one for welshers- You’ll be going in that back gate while I’m around front with Saint Pete listing my virtues.”

“And that,” called Marty Greve, “will be a damn short list.” The carrier rounded the headland and by the time the carrier entered the channel, all four men were sitting in the officers’ club drinking beer. The view from the club, which sat high on a hill overlooking Subic Bay and Olongapo City, was breathtaking. Each man had time to drink another beer before the great ship drifted to a stop a hundred yards from the pier and four tugboats nestled against her.

“We’ll take some rooms. Let’s go up to the desk, before the guys on the boat get here,” Marty suggested, “and maybe work in a dip in the pool.”

“Well, fellows,” Mad Jack told the airmen as they stood up, “I’m on duty today so I have to go back aboard.” He stuck out his hand to Jake. “Thanks for the flight.” The doctor smiled. “I won’t forget that ride for a while. Maybe you’re right. Living fast might be worth the final crash. Maybe that’s the secret you fliers know.”

Grafton grinned and shook the offered hand. “See you later, Jack.”