The Art of War

ELEVEN

“Two minutes,” Rat announced. “Then descend to two thousand feet and come left to course 340.”

“Got it,” Fastball said. He let the aircraft slide back slightly until he was behind Bird Dog rather than on his wing, and then descended. He stayed slightly to Bird Dog’s right, avoiding the turbulence directly behind the Tomcat in front of him.

Below him the land was clearly visible now, flat, hard baked desert sand, filthy blue water lapping at the shore. The compound itself was no great shakes either. The three sets of fences strung around it looked ominous but tattered. Guard towers and searchlight emplacements were set in each corner. Inside were three concrete buildings, none of them with any windows. They were crammed together in the middle of the compound, with wide open spaces between the buildings and fences. For increased security? he wondered.

Men were running around a compound, obviously alerted to the incoming aircraft. Rat peered around over Fastball’s shoulder, then blinked. It looked as if… as if…

“Fastball,” she said urgently. “The sand — it’s moving. I think I’m seeing—”

A blast of smoke blew up from the shifting sand, and then, impossibly, an antiair missile was barreling straight for them.

Immediately in front of them, Bird Dog broke hard to the right. Fastball broke to the left, and started climbing, kicking into full afterburner as he did so. Rat was jammed back against the seat, and she tensed her muscles and grunted, forcing oxygen into her brain. It wouldn’t do to gray out now — not when everything depended on what she did in the next few moments.

Then Bird Dog completed his circle, descended to one thousand feet, and continued on in. “Hammer flight, on me,” he said. “It should be a piece of cake — these guys are bad shots.”

Fire flared briefly under Bird Dog’s wing, then a HARM missile shot out. In seconds, it nailed the entire radar, thus effectively eliminating the SAM threat.

“On me,” Bird Dog repeated. “We’re on our own for about forty-five seconds, people. Then its back up to altitude with our fighters. And there’ll be one less dirty little SAM sight in the world. Fused glass — that’s what the admiral asked for and that’s what he’s going to get.”

Rat shut her eyes for a moment, and offered up a prayer. Please let Fastball be good enough. Please let Fastball do what I know he can do. Thank you.

Fastball was gyrating the Tomcat through the atmosphere like a rock and roll dance partner. The tail end of the Tomcat slew around violently, throwing her first against one side of her ejection harness, then the other. She fought the blackness that nibbled at the edge of her vision, forcing her breath out in hard grunts as she tried to remain conscious.

“Stay with me, Rat,” Fastball grunted, his own voice tight. “Fifteen seconds — get ready.”

They continued to descend, the compound and the men so close she thought she could make out their individual features. She watched the target marker inch along their flight path, and then, at precisely the moment indicated, she toggled off the payload.

The Tomcat jolted upward violently, suddenly two thousand pounds lighter. At the same instant, Fastball broke hard to the left again, kicking in the afterburners and pitching the Tomcat into an almost vertical climb.

This time, Rat lost the battle. She saw the gray creeping in, saw the color leach out of her vision. She tried to fight it, but the blackness eventually met in middle of her field of vision as she passed out.

“Rat! You okay?”

No answer.

“Dammit, Rat, stay with me!” Fastball tried to lean forward, as though that would somehow magically increased the speed of the Tomcat and get them safely out of antiair range. While the SAMS might be destroyed with their radar, they could not ignore the possibility that there was another site somewhere nearby.

Finally, at altitude, he cut back on the afterburners and converted into level flight. “Rat?”

“Oh. I’m here,” she said, her voice groggy yet determined as she fought her way back to consciousness.

“I got it,” she said, as she regained her tactical awareness. She had only been out for about five seconds, but it was the longest five seconds Fastball could remember in a long time.

As he formed up on Bird Dog, staying within the circle of their accompanying fighters, it occurred to him that that was the essential difference between a Tomcat fighting team and single-seat fighters. In a Tomcat, you were part of a team. You depended on your RIO to feed you information, became accustomed to the steady patter of instructions, advice, and second opinions echoing in your ears. During combat, it was as though you were one person, one person with two brains. In a good team, your thinking eventually synchronized almost completely with your RIO, and sentences became shorthand, clipped phrases that were incomprehensible to anyone else.

Not so in an aircraft like the Hornet. There, you were completely alone, with no one to second-guess your judgment or give you a sanity check. There would be a certain freedom about that, he supposed, somewhat like the trainers he learned in. But in combat, two brains and two sets of eyes were always better than one. And in those few moments when he thought — even rationally knowing exactly what happened — that he has lost her, he had known real panic.

“Tomcat flight, good job,” a new voice said on tactical. “It looks like a direct hit for everyone.”

“Yes!” Fastball said. “Good going, Rat. Good going.”

“Thanks.”

For a few minutes, Fastball concentrated on maintaining his position in formation as he vectored toward the tanker waiting for them. Then he said hesitantly, “Rat? About what I said… I really am sorry. I was wrong.” And he was — this time he meant it. It wasn’t just words to keep her from punching out — and really he had no doubt she would have done it — but an honest admission of his error.

“Some good flying back there, Fastball. Not everybody could’ve gotten us out of that alive.”

“So… we still a team?” he asked.

There was a long pause, and he felt a flash of dread at what her answer would be. But finally she said, “Yeah, sure. Just as long as you remember I’ve got an ejection handle back here, too.”

“Put it in command eject. From now on, if you go, I go.”

“Touching,” Rat said dryly. “I’m very moved. But you know, I think right now I would be even more touched if you just concentrated on getting this bitch tanked and back on deck.”

“Yeah, sure.” Fastball let it drop, but inwardly he was fuming. Hey, he made this big reconciliation thing, and what did she do? Take the cheap shot, remind him of the last time he lost his nerve on a tanker approach. Well, she might be a good RIO, but she was still a bitch as far as he was concerned.

In terms of pucker factor, tanking was right up there with landing on the carrier. At least they were fortunate that the weather was good. And from looking at the flight schedule, Fastball had seen that Rabies Grill was in the cockpit of the tanker. Now that was good news, as much as Rabies bitched about tanker duty. No one flew a steadier pattern than Rabies.

“How about it, 103? You ready for a drink?” Fastball recognized the voice of Rabies’s copilot.

“I sure could use a tall cold one about now,” he answered. “How about you just funnel one on back here? I hear the S-3 has a cooler full of beer onboard just to keep you guys occupied.”

“Yeah, right,” Rabies broke in. “Listen, junior, you just take care of business, okay?”

Now what was that all about? What had he done to incur Rabies’s wrath?

Fastball concentrated on lining up on Rabies, approaching from below and slightly behind. He eased the Tomcat into position, concentrating on the basket, trying not to overcontrol. On his first pass, the probe slid smoothly home. The green light lit up on his console, indicating a solid plug. “I have a green board,” he announced.

“Green board,” the copilot agreed. “Three thousand pounds, Fastball. Don’t say I never gave you nothing.”

Fastball watched as the fuel indicator showed aviation fuel flowing into his tanks. He probably wouldn’t need that much, although his two runs on afterburner had eaten at fair amount of fuel. Still, he could feel this was a good day for the deck. Three wire, first pass. There was no doubt in his military mind that this was going to be one hell of a landing. No doubt.

Within just a few minutes, the refueling was completed. “Disengaging,” Fastball said, watching the indicator. As soon as the light turned red, he slowed ever so slightly, and dropped down below the tanker. Once he was well clear, he broke right, descending in a clean, sweeping turn as he headed back to the carrier.

“That went well, I thought,” he said cautiously, trying to find some noncontroversial subject to approach with Rat.

“Not bad,” she replied offhandedly. “I’ve seen better.”

Damn the bitch! Couldn’t she find anything nice to say? Fastball concentrated on putting it out of his mind, compartmentalizing and maintaining his focus. He slid smoothly into the starboard pattern, taking his place in the queue of aircraft waiting to get back on deck. He watched the aircraft ahead of him, descending and spiraling down as one by one, the lowest Tomcat in the stack broke off to make an approach. Finally, it was his turn.

“Tomcat 103, inbound,” he announced.

“Roger, 103, maintain course and speed and call the ball,” the operation specialist said.

The ball was a Fresnel landing light located on the port side of the carrier. The combination of green and red lights told a pilot whether he was too high or to low on approach. The last two miles behind the carrier were a critical time during which Fastball lined up with the carrier, shot his approach, and eased 60,000 pounds of Tomcat down gently onto the deck in a controlled crash.

In addition to the Fresnel lens, he would rely on the judgment of the landing signals officer, or LSO. The LSO was an experienced Tomcat aviator who would make visual observations on Fastball’s approach, verifying the correctness of his needles, or his glide path indicator, and pitch into a perfect landing attitude.

When he spotted the ball, Fastball said, “Ball, 103,”

“103, ball,” the LSO agreed. “Say needles.”

“Needles high and right,” Fastball said.

“103, disregard needles. I have you on path, at altitude. Continue on.”

Damn. A slight annoyance, but no major problem. For a wide variety of reasons, the needles were often off.

The carrier deck which looked so small at altitude now loomed before him. It looked like a cliff rising out of the water, a dangerous cliff at that, as though the ship was an iceberg just waiting to smash his Tomcat to bits. He concentrated on looking at the lens rather than the shape of the ship. As long as the light was white, he was on the correct glide path and would not smash into the ass end of the ship, called a ramp strike.

“Looking good, 103. Keep coming,” the LSO said. His voice was calm, confident, pitched so as to reassure any pilot strung out on adrenaline or shaky on his approach. It was like having a RIO, Fastball thought. A RIO standing on the stern of the ship.

Three wire, three wire… it would be a perfect landing, he decided. People would talk about it in the ready room later, as they always did. Each squadron LSO maintained a list of each pilot’s landings, rating them according to whether there were any problems or whether they were satisfactory. The ratings were posted daily on the bulletin board for everyone to see.

Still, there were good landings, and there were good landings. The really good landings and traps were those that might draw a quiet comment from the captain, maybe a slap on the back in the dirty shirt mess. Yes, this was going to be a good one.

Suddenly, the Tomcat coughed, an abrupt sound that made his balls draw up close against his body. Microseconds later, the Tomcat rolled hard to the left, trying to do a barrel roll on its own. Red lights lit up all around the cockpit.

“Fire in the port engine,” the LSO shouted, his voice more agitated now. “One zero three, you’ve lost your left engine — punch out. Eject, eject.”

But it was already too late. Fastball looked up to the canopy and saw black, hungry water. If he ejected now, the rocket engines mounted beneath their seats would simply drive both he and Rat far below the surface of the ocean. But they had to get out — the Tomcat was clearly out of control and there was no way to survive hitting the water in her. Incandescent jet engines plus cold seawater equal explosion. Even if the impact didn’t kill them, fragments of metal and turbine blades from the jet engines would shred the cockpit, destroying everything in the path. No, they had to eject, but—.

“No!” he shouted, knowing that Rat was already reaching for the ejection handle. “No, hold on two seconds while I…” the Tomcat completed its wing-over and rolled back into level flight for just a few moments. Just at the right instant, Fastball yanked down hard on the ejection handle.

The explosive bolts on the canopy fired, blowing the canopy away from the fuselage. Microseconds later, the ejection seats themselves fired, the RIO’s four-tenths of a second ahead of the pilot’s. They arced out at different angles, so as not to collide, both clearing the fuselage.

The next few seconds were a dizzying kaleidoscope of flashes of sky, water, and gut-wrenching, all-encompassing nausea. He spun violently through the air, the seat falling away and his parachute deploying. His hand went instinctively to the handle of the secondary chute, even as he knew that there would be no time. They had one shot, maybe not even that. So close to the water, too close — no ejection should take place at this altitude. It simply wasn’t survivalable. He felt a hard jerk upwards on his groin and shoulders, and saw the canopy billowing overhead. It tried to fill with air, but there simply wasn’t time. It was enough to break his fall, but no more.

Too fast, black water closed over his head. He lost consciousness on impact, for only a split second, then the warm water lapping over his face, filling his nose and stinging his eyes shocked him back into consciousness. He tried to scream, and was rewarded with water trying to flood his lungs.

Actions practiced so often in flight school came back to him as though they were instinct. It was reflex, ingrained so deeply on purpose into every pilot that they might have a chance of doing the right thing even under the most grueling circumstances. He slapped the release latch, freeing himself from the now-deadly parachute cords. He was still descending into the water, the pressure on his ears growing more painful. It was dark, as though the sun had been doused as well. Something snaked around his right arm, and he jerked, disoriented, trying to figure out which way was up. A sea snake, small, yet deadly? But it was only a line from his parachute trying to trap him.

Training again took over. He watched the bubbles, blocking out all other thoughts, and saw which way they were moving. Up — follow the bubbles. With his lungs screaming for air, he kicked hard and felt a flash of deep, deadly pain in his right leg. Broken? No time for that now — if he didn’t make it to the surface soon, he was certain his lungs would explode.

It seemed to go on forever as he struggled to reach the surface. Minutes, maybe hours, passed. The water around him grew lighter and lighter, and then, just when he thought he could bear no more, that he must suck down a lungful of anything, even seawater, to douse the pain building there, he broke free at the surface.

His life jacket had deployed automatically, but the buoyancy alone but not have been enough to get into the surface in time, he thought.

He sucked down great lungfuls of air, coughing up seawater as he did, desperate to get oxygen into his brain.

As the pain in his lungs eased, the agony in his right leg took over. Noise flooded in — the slap of waves, slapping him in the face, the loud noise of a helicopter overhead beating the water down around him. He concentrated on staying afloat.

Seconds later, there was a splash in the water near him. A rescue diver swam over, approached him from behind and put him in a carry position.

“It’s okay, I got you. I got you,” the swimmer said, his voice almost as calm as the LSO’s had been. “Are you hurt?”

“Leg,” he gasped, still unable to spare the oxygen to say more.

“It’s all right — don’t talk, just breathe. I’m going to slide you into a stretcher, sir. Just take it easy. You’re okay.”

“Rat?” he gasped, aware that the question would make no sense to the rescue swimmer. “RIO?”

“They’re going after her,” the swimmer said. “Let’s just get you onboard, sir, and you can see for yourself.” There was a splash as the stretcher was lowered from the helo overhead. The rescue swimmer slid him into it, manhandling him but trying to be gentle with his injured leg. Once he was strapped in, the helo ascended, then ferried him over to the carrier and lowered him gently to the deck. Corpsmen surrounded him, efficiently stripping off his ejection harness. Four sets of experienced hands ran over his body, checking for injuries.

Fastball tried again. “My RIO?”

The corpsmen ignored him. After a few seconds, satisfied that he was conscious and not bleeding, they picked up the stretcher and hustled for the island.

Yeah, clear the area for Rat’s helo, if she didn’t already beat me here. She’d like that, wouldn’t she? Get picked up first from helo. She’d say it was because RIO’s were smarter or something.

He tried to think of where he had been in relation to the carrier, tried to calculate whether the angle at which her ejection seat shot out would put her safely in the water or—no, don’t even think about it. She didn’t come down on the deck. She didn’t slam into the side of the ship. She couldn’t have — it didn’t work like that. No, she had to be all right.

Everyone in TFCC wanted desperately to give an order. Any order, it didn’t matter what. The compulsion to take action even when there was nothing they could do was almost overwhelming. And Batman, more than all the others, wanted desperately to do something.

He’d watched the Tomcats approach, quietly confident that each one would get back onboard safe and sound. They had lost no aircraft to antiair missiles, and there were no enemy fighters. Absent the operation of Murphy’s Law, there was no reason to suppose that all the aircraft wouldn’t be recovered safely.

But then, as always, the unexpected happened. Batman had watched in horror as Tomcat 103 departed from a perfectly normal approach into uncontrolled flight. He had watched the Tomcat wing over, out of control, driven only by one engine. It was possible to recover from such a casualty, but it took experience, more experience than he thought Fastball possessed. He had been certain they were both dead.

And in those moments of horror, he saw the pilot demonstrate true nerves of steel. How many of them would have had the presence of mind to hold off of the ejection, to coldly calculate the moment when the aircraft would be oriented properly to the sea, that split second in which the flight crew could safely eject into empty air instead of being rocketed down into the sea? It had been such a chance, almost unbelievable, because it was every chance that the Tomcat would not have returned to the proper orientation at all.

Yet Fastball had pulled it off. Batman vowed silently that if he pulled through, he would be wearing an air medal before the day was over.

“What about the RIO?” Batman asked for the tenth time. “Any word?”

“No, Admiral,” the TAO said for the tenth time. As though he could add anything more, since he and Batman were both listening to exactly the same communications from the SAR helo.

Damnit, it couldn’t end like this. That boy had pulled off too amazing a stunt to have the story end with a dead RIO. No, she had to be out there — she had to be. “Keep them out there. Keep them out there until they find her.” Or her body, he added silently.

Suddenly, the SAR helo broke into an excited yell. “We got her! We got her!”

A cheer broke out in TFCC. “About time,” Batman said coolly, hoping that none of them could tell how truly touched he was. “Typical RIO — off on their own.”

The seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness as he watched the recovery unfold on the monitor mounted high in one corner of the compartment. Why was the helo approaching so slowly? Couldn’t they do it any faster than that? Batman raged inwardly, resolved to have a stern conversation with the SAR helo pilot when he landed, knowing all the time that if anyone was more worried about the recovery than he was, it was the helo crew. They took it even more personally than the admiral did.

“Swimmer in the water,” the speaker announced. “He’s on her, he’s on her — yes! We have a thumbs up!” Again the cheer, and this time Batman joined in.

So she was alive, but how badly was she hurt? She was unconscious, but she was breathing. The carrier housed an advanced medical suite capable of performing almost any medical miracle in the world. If anyone could pull her through, short of a major trauma facility, it would be the doctors and medical staff onboard the Jefferson.

The same procedure that they’d followed with Fastball was repeated, a stretcher lowered into the water, and transported to the flight deck. Batman watched the corpsmen crowd around her, then hustle her into the ship before they’d even completed their initial assessment. It was bad, it had to be.

Keep her alive, boys. Just keep her alive, Batman prayed silently. I’m counting on you.

Just as the helo touched down, the TAO let out a yelp of surprise. “Admiral — look!” At the same moment, Lab Rat dashed into the compartment, a look of consternation on his face.

“What the hell?” Batman asked as he turned to stare at the screen. It showed four missiles in flight from Northern Iran headed for the coast. “Get those fighters back up,” Batman shouted. There were still ten Tomcats in the pattern, but most of them were at the low-fuel state — sufficient to get onboard, but not nearly enough for aerial combat.

But even as he watched, the situation became even more puzzling. Because the missiles were not aimed at the Jefferson or the battle group at all. Instead, they were arcing out from a facility further to the east and headed directly for the station the Tomcats had just destroyed.

Batman turned to Lab Rat. “What the hell?”

Lab Rat shook his head. “No data. But, if I had to guess, I’d say Iran’s in the process of putting together their version of the truth.” As they both watched, the missiles disappeared from the screen just as they reached the bombed-out facility.