Medusa's Child

THIRTY-TWO

The huge carrier that had been his professional home for so long loomed into view as the onboard controller vectored them across the bow of the Eisenhower at a distance of a half mile.

They had already explained the ditching plan.

Scott dropped the 727 down to five hundred feet to study the wave pattern as Doc worked the radios. The winds were howling from the south at a steady sixty-two knots, but the ship was steaming at top speed to the north to keep the deck winds reasonable for the helicopter launch.

"How fast can she go?" Doc asked.

"That's classified, but it's above forty knots," Scott replied.

Doc turned back to his right and strained to check the fuel readings.

"We're down to two thousand three hundred pounds, Scott."

Scott acknowledged the information as he turned to Linda and Vivian. "Check Jerry one last time, please. Vivian, check to make sure the cockpit door is securely tied open, and both of you fasten all your seat and shoulder belts, including the crotch belt."

Another radio transmission from the ship came through the overhead speakers, but he missed the words.

"They want to know if you're ready, Scott," Doc said, holding the microphone.

Scott licked his lips and checked the altitude, then nodded. "I'm going to circle the ship clockwise and get the gear and flaps out. We'll get into position ahead of them as planned and do it then."

"Two minutes? Five minutes?"

"Tell him four to five minutes."

Doc passed the word and the controller acknowledged.

The overhead speakers came alive again with the voice of the F-15 leader.

"ScotAir, you have a visual on the ship now, affirmative?"

"Affirmative," Doc replied.

"Roger, we're bingo fuel. We've got enough navigation equipment back on-line to find our tanker, but not enough gas to stay with you."

"No problem, guys. We appreciate the escort."

The two F-15's pulled up and away and headed west. Within seconds they had disappeared into the overcast.

"Okay, Doc, flaps two," Scott ordered.

"Roger, flaps two." Doc's left hand moved the flap handle to the first indented position and monitored the gauge as the leading edge flaps and slats came out, followed by slight rearward movement of the large extendable surfaces on the rear of each wing.

"Flaps are at two," he reported.

"Flaps five, please," Scott added.

Doc repeated the command and moved the lever to the next gate. The flap gauge indicator needles began moving again, stopping at the appointed position.

"Gear down. Landing checklist."

Doc's hand reached for the handle, then hesitated. "Ah, Scott, I'm really uncomfortable with using the gear."

Scott glanced at him with a puzzled expression.

"I thought you didn't care one way or another."

Doc nodded. "So did I, but I've been thinking about it, and I reread the ditching section of the emergency pages and figured out why they don't want it used."

"Tell me," Scott said.

"Two reasons. First, it exposes some pretty weak floor beams in the gear well and gives the water a chance to breach the floor and cascade in, sinking us faster."

"That does make sense," Scott responded.

"And since the gear is behind our center of gravity, it could rotate us nose-first into the waves. Scott, they say we can expect to go no more than six hundred fifty feet once we hit the water anyway, and that's without the gear."

"That's three to five G's deceleration, right?"

"Right."

Scott was nodding. "Okay, forget the gear. I agree."

"Thanks."

"But we're going to need to pull the landing gear warning horn circuit breaker or we'll be listening to that instead of each other."

Doc had already thrown off his seat belt and threaded his way past Jerry. He leaned behind Jerry's flight engineer panel to locate the right breaker, which he pulled. He then adjusted several switches on the flight engineer's panel and turned toward Scott.

"I'm going to secure things in the cabin. Hold her steady."

"Roger," Scott said.

In two minutes Doc was back and fastening himself in his seat. "Done."

"Anything we've forgotten? You're reading the checklist, aren't you?"

"We've got it all done, Scott. I shut down the air-conditioning and closed the outflow valves on the panel, set up the fuel and opened the crossfeeds, then I went back and double-checked the aft entry door closed, and made sure the cargo net around Linda's stuff was still secure, and replaced the emergency exit hatch. With everything closed, even though the cargo door is gone, there's a chance she might even float a few minutes, if… ah…"

"If we don't break up on impact," Scott finished.

Doc nodded slowly. "True," he said simply, diverting his eyes out to the right. He could see the Eisenhower steaming north as Scott turned from west to north, keeping the carrier on the right. There would be a few more minutes of maneuvering, Doc reminded himself, then they would point their nose to the east-southeast just ahead of the carrier and descend until they were barely skimming the waves and had passed the carrier's intended course. There would be a moment of decision, then, as Scott looked for the right spot.

Why am I so calm? Doc asked himself. The prospect of surviving a crash landing in high seas and then swimming for his life was hardly calming. He'd always been a terrible swimmer and very suspicious of the sea.

He glanced at Scott, then back at Vivian. A few hours ago they had been just a nonscheduled aircrew with a couple of strangers aboard. Now they seemed like family.

Of course, he reminded himself, Scott had seemed like family since he met him—like a son—though he was always careful not to let on he felt that way.

His thoughts turned to Vivian and what she'd endured —how she'd been made the victim and the scapegoat at the same time. He was feeling very protective of her, and the feeling was growing. Whatever happened, he was determined that she survive.

Doc took a deep breath and rubbed his head as he tried to focus on the steps he was supposed to take after the aircraft came to rest in the water.

Start switches off, pull the fire switches, initiate the evacuation.

Hopefully it would be that easy.

On the bridge of the Eisenhower, several sets of field glasses were tracking ScotAir 50 as the 727 maneuvered to the northwest and prepared to turn on what would be its final approach. The two SH-60F Seahawk helicopters were up to speed and standing by, rotors turning furiously on the angle flight deck. A few additional deck crew had emerged to watch, and several television cameras were trained on the commercial jet. The sheets of rain that had pelted the carrier earlier had subsided, and nothing but high winds and angry gray skies covered the ship as it plowed repeatedly through giant waves.

"Okay, Eisenhower, we're turning in for the ditching run," Doc told them.

"Understand, ScotAir. The helos will reach you within a minute of splashdown."

"Ready?" Scott asked as he glanced behind him at Linda and Vivian.

Linda's hand had been on his shoulder for some time. He wanted to tell her to put it on the back of the seat and brace, but the reassurance from her touch was a continuous flow of energy, and he decided to wait until the last few seconds.

"We're ready," Linda said.

"Let's do it," Doc added.

"Okay. Prayers will definitely be in order. Doc? Flaps twenty-five. Set speed."

"Flaps twenty-five."

The whine of the hydraulic motors driving the flaps into position could be heard in the distance again as the aircraft slowed and the roar of the slipstream outside the open cargo door diminished.

"Flaps thirty, then flaps forty. Set target speed at one-zero-eight knots."

Doc's hand moved the flap lever to the final position and his eyes followed the flap gauge needles as they moved obediently to the full-extended position. He reached up to his airspeed indicator and set the speed at one hundred and eight knots.

"I'm starting final descent," Scott stated as he tweaked the throttles for the two remaining engines back a tiny bit and lowered the nose slightly. The altitude had remained at five hundred feet, but now the size of the wave fronts below began to take on startling dimensions as the 727 settled through three hundred and two hundred feet above the water, rocking and bucking through the turbulent air, their speed over the water less than seventy knots due to the howling crosswind.

Scott held the 727's nose twenty degrees to the right of the flight path he wanted to follow as the aircraft crabbed into the wind to stay aligned with the waves.

The Eisenhower was coming abeam them on the right.

"Doc, tell me when we've passed his centerline."

"Roger. We're very close."

"Linda? Vivian? Secure your hands on the seats in front of you and bury your faces against the back of your hands and brace."

He felt Linda's hand pat him twice as she withdrew it from his shoulder.

"We're past the centerline of the carrier, Scott," Doc confirmed.

Scott dropped them carefully through a radio altimeter reading of one hundred feet as Doc began calling off the remaining distance. The waves looked gigantic, the huge swells moving from their right to their left as they flew almost parallel to them, trying to stay somewhat into the wind. His left hand was moving the control column constantly, making continuous corrections as the wildly gusting wind threatened to destabilize their flight attitude every few seconds. It felt as if the Boeing was almost hovering over the water.

"Fifty feet, Scott. That's an average. It keeps changing."

From the perspective of the Eisenhower's bridge the 727 was all but in the water, and the various crew members watching held their breaths and waited for the plume of spray indicating contact. But the Boeing kept skimming just over the waves.

"Scott, we're moving away from the carrier! We need to put her down!" Doc shouted.

Scott felt himself overrule an immediate response. He was too busy trying to compute a flight path along an undulating landscape in constant motion in fifty directions at once. Every time he picked a monstrous swell and eased the 727 over to set down on the back side of it, the swell seemed to disappear in another monstrous mound of water that threatened to engulf them head-on.

The winds were brutal, howling from the right, the huge waves rolling from right to left as well. If he touched down ahead of a wave, instead of just behind it, they would break up. But to pick the right spot he had to cross-control the aircraft, and the aim point was constantly shifting.

Scott could see the carrier slipping away in his peripheral vision to his right. He could feel the tension in the muscles of his neck. He tried to position the 727 above yet another huge crest, but banked too sharply to the left to catch it and found himself on the forward side of the wave. With rudder and a small burst of power, he came up and slipped to the right, leaping the Boeing to the right enough to position them on the back side of the crest, then kicking the left rudder to align them.

At last, this one was working.

"This is it!" Scott cried out.

It was a long swell, maybe forty feet from trough to crest, which seemed to extend forever ahead of them—a mountain of water with a clearly defined top and a broad back side, foam streaming off the top of it close enough to touch. He worked the rudder and aileron with great care and constant motion and felt the 727 moving into the correct position, the wings aligned with the wave and not the horizon.

Almost perfect!

Time stretched to slow motion again as he let the bird down the final few feet, holding the power, feeling with the tailpipe of number two engine for what would start out as a gentle impact.

The sudden force that began with a gentle rolling motion to the left built in a heartbeat to a massive gust determined to pick up the right wing and roll them to the left in an impossible and violent motion that caught him completely unprepared.

One second they had been in perfect position, the next they were pointed too far to the left, accelerating over the top of the crest, the left wing slicing toward the front of the wave.

"NO!" Scott's voice was a constrained yelp as he yanked the control column and threw the yoke to the right, jamming the throttles all the way to the firewall.

The 727 responded instantly, the nose popping up and the aircraft rolling right wing down as he sensed too late that the right roll was going to go too far. Scott reversed the throw on the yoke, but the right wing tip was still descending toward the top of the swell, now positioned just to their right and rising.

The pitch of the Boeing increased with a strange lurching motion, a tug at the back of their seats, and Scott realized the number two engine exhaust cone was dipping into the water and sucking them in like an anchor. At the same moment the right wing tip dug into the waves by mere inches, kicking up a plume of salt spray and yawing the 727 violently to the right.

He was losing it.

The two remaining engines had taken several seconds to reach full power, but suddenly they were kicking the 727 in the rear end with over thirty-five thousand pounds of thrust as the crest passed beneath them.

And they were flying again, leaping free of the surface and clawing for altitude.

"Scott could feel Doc groping for words as he leveled the aircraft at two hundred feet.

"Jesus, Scott!"

"It wasn't right. I almost lost it."

"We'll have to log a touch-and-go. Christ!"

"Are we too far out now?"

Doc looked to the right and began nodding energetically. "Yep."

"Which way should we circle, do you think?"

Doc strained to see the carrier out of the right side. His voice echoed off the window. "Bring her left, Scott. The wind will take us far enough to the north of him and you can realign and try it again."

Scott rolled the Boeing into a thirty-degree left bank and gained more altitude.

"I'll keep us at five hundred."

"What do you want me to tell them?"

"Tell them we're coming back around to try it again."

"Okay. Okay, you want to stay at flaps forty?" Doc asked, his eyes flaring and his voice alarmed.

"Yeah. I'm just going to do a wide circle."

Doc relayed the information to the Eisenhower and watched the ship disappear to the right. The turn seemed to take forever, the howling wind bumping and bouncing them around as the compasses slowly clicked off the turn through north and west toward south.

The Eisenhower appeared again in their windscreen, perhaps three miles to the south, as the 727 flew to the west of the carrier's intended path and then stabilized on a southeasterly heading and once again crossed to the east of the ship's course.

There was a massive sigh from the left seat as Scott readjusted his hands on the yoke and throttles.

"Okay. Here we go." He repeated the final warnings and inched the aircraft down to fifty feet again to look for the right wave.

"The problem, Doc, is the cross-controlling," he explained. "I had it perfect until we caught that gust. I wasn't anticipating that. I will this time."

"Just keep it calm and steady, Scott," Doc said.

Scott nodded.

Once again the angles seemed to be impossibly complex as he maneuvered over the first wave, then another one, barely hanging over the water.

Doc found himself worrying whether Scott could actually do it. Would he run them out of gas trying? Or would he suddenly force himself to dump it in, choosing the wrong moment?

Perhaps I should take it, after all, Doc thought, immediately killing the idea. This was Scott's show. Scott's duty. And he had to trust his airmanship.

"This is nuts, Doc!" Scott's voice cut through his thoughts. "If I could land into the damn wind, we'd be far slower over the…"

Scott stopped in midsentence, his eyebrows flaring, the controls held steady as they skimmed less than twenty feet over the top of another massive crest.

"Oh my Lord!" Scott said.

Suddenly his right hand shoved the throttles forward again, this time short of the firewall, and as Doc watched in alarm, Scott pulled the 727 away from the water and began climbing.

"Max power. Flaps fifteen."

"Flaps fifteen?" Doc asked.

"Yes, dammit! Flaps fifteen."

"We're going around?" Doc asked.

"Maybe. Maybe something else," Scott said.

Doc had already positioned the flap handle. He instinctively checked the power setting as he tried to figure out what on earth Scott meant.

"What are you doing? What should I tell the ship?"

There was no answer at first as Doc watched Scott flying and calculating something at the same time.

"Scott?"

Instantly Scott turned to the copilot. "Take the airplane, Doc. Get us to a thousand feet and orbit the ship at a reasonable distance. Clean up the flaps. Conserve the fuel. I'll take the radio."

"Scott, what are you doing? We don't have that much fuel to play with."

"Just… just listen," Scott said as he confirmed that Doc's hands had closed around the yoke.

"You've got it?"

"Yes, I've got it! But why?"

Scott pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and with shaking hands started scribbling figures. Just as quickly he stuffed the pen and paper back in his pocket and keyed the radio.

"Eisenhower, this is ScotAir."

"Go ahead, ScotAir. Are you coming back around?"

"Ah, what are the winds out there now, not over the deck but ambient?"

There was a pause from below before the voice returned.

"We're showing a steady-state wind of seventy-one knots from one-seven-zero degrees, ScotAir."

"Okay, is the captain on the channel?"

Another pause, and then another voice, but not that of the captain.

"What do you need, ScotAir? This is Airboss."

"Okay, please listen. I know how long it takes at flank speed to turn the ship one hundred and eighty degrees. Please do that now. Please bring yourself around to a heading of one-seven-zero degrees."

The response took several seconds.

"Are you nuts out there? The only way we've prepared these rescue helos for you is by running with the wind. At this speed, if we turn the ship around, we'll be pumping a hundred and five knots of wind over the deck, for Chrissakes!"

Doc watched, astounded, as Scott smiled, nodded, and raised the microphone to his lips. He keyed the transmitter in almost leisurely fashion and waited a few seconds. When he spoke, it was a carefully pronounced four-word phrase that left Doc stunned.

"That's precisely the point."

There was no response from the ship.

"Scott, what in hell are you thinking?" Doc asked.

Scott waved him off as he keyed the transmitter again.

"Eisenhower, the approach speed for our aircraft at our current weight is one hundred and eight knots. If you turn into the wind and run at flank speed, you'll be giving me a wind over the deck of over one hundred and five knots. I'm aware that you've already cleared the new flight deck. If you'll just rig the forward net, I can put this mother down on the deck like a helicopter."

"Holy Mother of God, Scott! You want to land on the carrier?" Doc almost shouted.

Scott glanced at him with a vaguely maniacal smile. "You'd prefer to get wet?"

"No! No, but I mean, you said… you said we couldn't land on the carrier because we're far too big. We'd take out the island and flip off the deck in flames, remember?"

"I remember, and that's true, Doc, at normal speed. Doc, don't you see? I wasn't thinking combined winds! I was figuring normal landing speeds and maybe thirty knots to forty knots of wind over the deck. That is too fast. But with a hundred knots of wind, good grief, we're a vertical landing craft!"

"In theory, maybe."

"No, in fact. Think about it."

Another voice cut through the cockpit from below.

"Scott McKay? This is the captain. We're wasting time. I can't turn this ship until I park my helos, and if I do that, your rescue is gone. There's no way I can approve the idea of a civilian airliner approaching this flight deck under any conditions. You know that. The 727 is not approved for carrier operations, and I've got a billion-dollar warship to protect."

Scott closed his eyes and sighed before replying, focusing all his concentration on the argument and his memories of the skipper.

"Captain, we're not going to make it out of this aircraft if we ditch. That's the reality. The waves out there… they're unbelievable. We've got five lives aboard and some very valuable government scientific research equipment which we'll lose if we ditch."

"Scott, I cannot imperil this ship."

"Come on, Captain, a hundred-thousand-pound aluminum bird has a chance of sinking an eleven-hundred-foot steel ship? I lived there, remember?"

"Then you know the rules and the perils, Scott. One mistake and we've got burning wreckage all over this ship, a fire to fight, deck lives that may be lost, and a critical warship out of service for months."

"Captain, please listen to me! You're the guy who once lectured me that there were times we had to make it up as we went along. So that's what I'm doing."

"Bottom line? No way in hell, McKay, are you bringing that civilian bucket of bolts on my ship."

"Captain, please. Open your mind to this. My speed over the edge relative to the ship will be less than ten knots. TEN KNOTS! You and I can run that fast, for crying out loud. I don't need the wires or a tailhook. The net can catch a fully loaded Tomcat at a hundred knots. We weigh right now about a hundred thousand pounds, and my brakes are working fine. I'll bet you a year's pay we won't even get close to the net. I guarantee the wings will never get close to the island. It's a piece of cake."

"It's suicidal, McKay," the captain responded, but Scott heard the transmitter click off, which meant he was thinking about it.

Scott knew the layout of the bridge. He could imagine several senior officers all frozen in place, and a couple of them beginning to converge on the captain to tell him every possible reason why it couldn't and shouldn't be done.

Scott pressed the button again. "Sir, before you listen to those other guys who're right this second beginning to babble that this idea is nuts, do you realize that a few years back Boeing ran tests designed to land the 737 on our carriers, and the tests were successful and showed it could be done?"

Another long pause before the captain replied.

"I didn't realize there was a successful conclusion to those tests, Scott," the captain responded.

"Yes! Yes, there was. Trust me. It can be done, and that was with a 737 at one hundred thirty knots, the ship at forty, and a fifteen-knot breeze. In other words, a hundred-thirty-thousand-pound craft at a closing rate of seventy-five knots. I'll be going less than ten. Ten damn knots! I know we're a 727, but for all practical purposes it's the same."

Scott shook his head in frustration as he glanced at Doc. "The XO, OOD, airboss, all of them will be frantically throwing his own words back in his ear about now. " 'This is a United States warship,' they'll say. 'You can't do it, sir.' "

Scott pressed the transmit button again.

"Sir, we're running out of time. Please! We… we dumped that bomb in time with no help whatsoever from the U.S. military. It's time I got some help."

"That's a cheap shot at me, McKay, considering the helos and everything else we're trying to do for you."

"But it will all be for naught if we hit the water. This way we've got a chance."

"Tell him," Doc interjected urgently, "tell him there's little chance of fire, since our tanks are almost dry."

Scott relayed Doc's words.

Another interminable period of silence passed as Doc continued to circle the ship and turn back to a northerly heading.

"I'll need authority to do this, Scott," the captain said suddenly.

Scott hit the transmit button instantly.

"You've already got the authority, Captain. We both know that. But by the time you dump this on the Pentagon and they figure it out, we'll already be out of gas and in the water."

Doc was shaking his head. "I'm not believing any of this."

"Doc, quick. Check the fuel."

Doc began to unstrap to comply, but Linda reached out a hand and stopped him.

"I've been watching, Doc. The number one tank has zero. Number two has seven hundred pounds, and the number three tank has about a thousand pounds. There's nothing in the other tanks labeled 'Aux.' "

"Thanks, Linda." Doc turned to the left seat. "Scott, that's seventeen hundred pounds. That's vapor!"

Scott nodded as he realized what he was seeing through Doc's window. The wake behind the Eisenhower was changing, angling off suddenly to the right, which meant the captain had ordered a turn.

For nearly thirty seconds more there was radio silence. Then the Eisenhower's transmitter was keyed, and Scott could hear other voices murmuring in the background before a long sigh came over the speakers.

"Okay, Scott. Okay. This is probably going to cost me my command, but for some stupid reason, you're making sense." There was a pause while the captain's hand moved against the surface of the microphone, the scratching sounds coming through clearly. "Now here's the deal, as that jug-eared billionaire from Dallas says. I'm going to launch my helos while we reverse course and rig the forward net. We'll get you a landing signal officer in position, but get this clearly. You make a mess of my flight deck, McKay, and I'll personally drown you. Understood?"

Scott nodded, a broad smile covering his face. Linda could see his clenched right hand past the edge of the seat as he lightly pounded the side of the yoke, then triggered the transmitter again.

"Yes, sir! There will be no mess, Skipper. Thank you, sir!"

"I'm turning you over to a thoroughly stunned airboss now, son. You two work out the details of the approach and be fast about it. The helos can stay up for thirty minutes and it's going to take us five minutes to reverse course. That means we've got only a twenty-minute window to bring you aboard."

"Not a problem, sir. At best, we've only got about ten minutes of fuel left."