The Intruders

13

The Soviet intelligence ship Reduktor joined the task group during the night and fell in line astern. At dawn she was two miles behind the carrier wallowing heavily. When the sun came up she held her position even though the task group raised its speed to twelve knots. When the sea state eased somewhat the Soviet ship rode steadier.

Jake came up on deck for the first launch of the day only to find that the AGI was dropping steadily astern. Her captain knew the drill. The carrier had been running steadily downwind, but to launch she would turn into the wind, toward the AGI. So now the Soviet ship was slowing to one or two knots, just enough to maintain steerageway.

At the brief the air intelligence officers showed the flight crews file photos of this Okean-class intelligence collector. She was a small converted trawler. Had she not been festooned with a dazzling array of radio antennas that rose from her superstructure and masts, one would assume her crew was still looking for fish.

So there they were. Russians. In Reduktor’s compartments they were busy with their reel-to-reel tape drives — probably all made in Japan — recording every word, peep or chirp on every radio frequency that the U.S. Navy had ever been known to use. Doubtlessly they monitored other frequencies occasionally as well, just in case. These tapes would be examined by experts who would construct from them detailed analyses of how the U.S. Navy operated and what its capabilities were. Encrypted transmissions would be turned over to specialists who would try to break the codes.

In short, the crew of Reduktor were spies. They were going about their business in a lawful manner, however, in plain sight upon the high seas, so there was nothing anyone in the U.S. Navy could do about it. In fact, the American captains and watch officers had to make sure that their ships didn’t accidentally collide with the Soviet ship.

There was one other possibility, not very probable, but possible. Reduktor might be a beacon ship marking the position of the American task group for Soviet forces. Just in case, American experts aboard the U.S. ships monitored, recorded and analyzed every transmission that Reduktor made.

Anticipating the coming of a Soviet AGI, the U.S. task group had already reduced its own radio transmissions as much as possible. During the day the aircrews from Columbia operated “zip-lip,” speaking on the radio only when required. Specialists from the Communications Security Group — COMSEGRU— had visited every ready room to brief the crews.

This morning Jake Grafton spent a moment watching the old trawler, then went on with his preflight. He would, he suspected, see a lot of that ship in the next few months.

After four days of operations in the Sea of Japan, Columbia and her escorts called at Sasebo and stayed for a week. Reduktor was waiting when they came out of port.

The first week of August was spent operating off the southern coast of Korea, then the task group steamed south and spent a week flying in the South China Sea. The Soviet AGI was never far away.

Here, for the first time, the air wing began flying the Alpha strikes that Jake had helped plan with CAG Ops. Jake didn’t get to go on the first one, when Skipper Haldane led the A-6s. Due to his bombing scores, however, he was scheduled to lead the A-6s the next day. He and Flap spent half the night in Strike Planning with the other element leaders making sure they had it right.

CAG Kall sat in a corner and sipped coffee during the entire session. He didn’t say much, yet when he did you listened carefully because he had something to say worth listening to. He also smiled a lot and picked up names easily. After an hour you thought you had known the man all your life. That night in his bunk the thought tripped through Jake Grafton’s mind that he would like to lead the way Chuck Kall did.

Well, tomorrow he would get his chance. Six Intruders were scheduled to fly and the maintenance gunny said he would have them. The target was an abandoned ship on a reef a few miles off the western coast of Luzon, the northernmost of the Philippine Islands. Today’s strike had pretty well pulverized the ship, but there were enough pieces sticking out of the water to make an aiming point. The water was pretty shallow there. To make sure there were no native fishing boats in the target area tomorrow before live bombs rained down, an RA-5C was scheduled to make a prestrike low pass.

Jake had so many things on his mind that he had trouble falling asleep. He took the hop minute by minute, the climb-out, the rendezvous, frequency changes, formation, airplane problems, no-radio procedures, the letdown to roll-in altitude…he drifted off to sleep and dreamed about it.

The morning was perfect, a few puffy low clouds but widely scattered. The brisk trade wind speckled the sea with whitecaps and washed away the haze.

After a quick cup of coffee and check of the weather, Jake met with the element leaders for two hours. Then he went to the ready room for the crew briefs, briefed the A-6’s portion of the mission, read the maintenance logbook on his assigned plane and donned his flight gear. By the time he walked out onto the flight deck with Flap Le Beau he had been working hard for four hours.

The escort ships looked crisp and clean upon a living blue sea. The wind — he inhaled deeply.

He and Flap took the time to inspect the weapons carefully. For today’s mock attack they had live bombs, four Mark-84 two-thousand-pounders. A hit with one of these bombs would break the back of any warship that was cruiser-size or smaller. The multiple ejector racks that normally carried smaller bombs had been downloaded so the one-ton general purpose bombs could be mated to the parent bomb racks. There were two of these on each wing. As usual, the centerline belly station carried a two-thousand-pound drop tank. One of the bombs, the last one to be dropped, had a laser-seeker in the nose. The other three were fused with a mechanical nose fuse and an electrical tail fuse.

The mechanical nose fuse was the most reliable fuse the Navy possessed, which made it the preferred way to fuse bombs. A bare copper wire ran from a solenoid in the parent rack forward across the weapon to the nose, where it went through a machined hole in the fuse housing and then through the little propeller at the very front of the fuse. The wire physically prevented the propeller from turning until the weapon was ejected from the rack. The wire then pulled out of the fuse and stayed on the rack, which freed the propeller. As the bomb fell the wind spun the propeller for a preset number of seconds and armed the fuse. When the nose of the bomb struck its target, the fuse was triggered. After a small delay — one hundredth of a second to allow the weapon to penetrate the target — the fuse detonated the high explosive in the bomb.

If the mechanical fuse was defective, the electric tail fuse would set the bomb off. That fuse was armed by a jolt of electricity in the first two feet of travel as the bomb fell away from the parent rack, then its arming wire, an insulated electrical cable, pulled loose.

The BN’s job on preflight was to check to ensure the ordnancemen had rigged bombs, fuses and arming wires correctly. Since any error here could ruin the mission, Jake Grafton always checked too. Today he and Flap stood side by side as they examined each weapon. Everything was fine.

The bomb with the laser-seeker in the nose was the technology of the future, the technology that had already made unguided free-fall bombs obsolete and would itself be made obsolete by guided missiles. One had to aim a laser-light generator at the target and hold the light on it as the bomb fell. If the bomb was dropped into the proper cone above the target, the seeker would guide it to the reflected spot of laser light by manipulating small canards on the body of the device.

In two or three years the A-6 would have its own laser-light generator in the nose of the aircraft. Now the generators, or “designators,” were hand-held. Today a radar-intercept officer in the backseat of an F-4 orbiting high above the target would aim the designator while Intruders, Corsairs and other Phantoms dropped the bombs. This system worked. Navy and Air Force crews used it with devastating effect on North Vietnamese bridges in the last year of the war.

Due to the cost of the seekers, each plane had only one for today’s training mission. Dropping three unguided weapons in addition to the guided one had an additional benefit — the pilot had to try for a perfect dive to put all four on the target. If one bomb was a bull’s-eye and the other three went awry, he screwed up.

The plane looked good. Strapped in waiting for the engine start, Jake Grafton arranged his charts in the cockpit, then paused for a few seconds to savor the warmth of the sun and the wind playing with his hair. The moment was over too soon. Helmet on, canopy closed, crank engines.

The cat shot was a hoot, an exhilarating ride into a perfect morning. His airplane flew well, all the gear worked as advertised, none of the other A-6s had maintenance problems and all launched normally.

The A-6s rendezvoused at 9,000 feet. When Jake had his gaggle together, he led them upward to 13,000 feet and slowly eased into position on the right of the lead division, today four Corsairs. When all the other divisions were aboard, the strike leader, the C.O. of one of the A-7 squadrons, rolled out on course to the target and initiated a climb to 23,000 feet.

The climb took longer than usual. The bombers were heavily loaded. At ninety-eight percent RPM all Jake could coax out of his plane was 280 knots indicated. He concentrated on flying smoothly so his wingmen would not have to sweat bullets to stay with him.

The six-plane division was broken up into two flights of three. Jake had one wingman on each side. Out farther to the right flew another three-plane flight, but its leader was also flying formation on Grafton. Just before the time came to dive, the man on each leader’s left would cross over, then the two flights would join so that there were six airplanes in right echelon. The plan was for Jake to roll in and the others to follow two seconds apart, so that all six were diving with just enough separation between the planes that each pilot could aim his own bombs. If they did it right, all six would be in the enemy’s threat envelope together and divide the enemy’s antiaircraft fire. And all would leave together. That was the plan, anyway.

Flap had the radar and computer fired up, so Jake was getting steering to the target. He was merely comparing it to the course the strike leader was flying, however.

The radio frequency was crowded. The strike leader was talking to the E-2 Hawkeye, the RA-5C was chattering about a fishing boat that he had chased away from the target and the cloud cover, someone had a hydraulic problem, the tankers wanted to change the poststrike rendezvous position because the carrier wasn’t where it was supposed to be when this evolution was put together, and one of the EA-6s was late getting launched and was going to be late getting to its assigned position. Situation normal, Jake thought.

He checked the position of his wingmen regularly, yet he spent most of his time scanning the sky and staying in proper position in relation to the strike leader. When he had a spare second he brought his eyes back into the cockpit to check his engine instruments and fuel.

The cumulus clouds below thickened as the strike group approached the coast of Luzon. The bases were at 4,000 feet, but the tops were building. From 23,000 feet the clouds seemed to cover about fifty percent of the sea below.

Would there be holes over the target big enough to bomb through?

The twenty-six bombers and their two EA-6 escorts began their descent toward their roll-in altitude of 15,000 feet. The leader left his throttle alone, so the airspeed began to increase. The faster the strike could close a Soviet task group, the fewer missiles and less flak it would encounter. In aerial warfare, speed is life.

Now CAG was on the radio. He was at 30,000 feet over the target in an F-4. “Where are the Flashlights?”

Flashlight was the F-4 that would illuminate the target with the laser designator. Actually there were two F-4s, both carrying hand-held laser designators. The pilots would have to find a hole in the clouds so the RIOs — radar intercept officers— could aim the designators, then they would have to maneuver to keep the target in sight and avoid colliding with one another. In a real attack on Soviet ships, the pilots would also be dodging missiles and flak.

“Uh, Flashlight is trying to find the target.”

The F-4’s electronic system was designed to find and track other airborne targets, not find the remnants of a wrecked ship resting on a reef. The A-6s’ systems, however, were working fine. Flap had the target and Jake was getting steering and distance. In the planning sessions he had argued that A-6s should carry the designators but had been overruled.

“Ten miles to roll-in,” Flap told Jake. The strike was passing 20,000 feet. Now the strike leader dropped his nose farther, giving the group about 4,000 feet a minute down. Three hundred twenty knots indicated and increasing.

Passing 18,000 feet Jake pumped his arm at the A-6 on his left side. Flap did the same to the man on his right. The Intruder formation shifted to echelon.

The tops of the clouds were closer. Still some holes, but the target wasn’t visible through them.

The situation was deteriorating fast. Without holes in the clouds, the F-4s carrying bombs could not find the target. The A-7s might be able to, but not in formation since the pilots could not fly formation and work their radars and computers too. The A-6s could break off at any point and make a system attack on the target, individually or in pairs. This was the edge an all-weather, two-man airplane gave you.

The strike leader, Gold One, knew all this. He had only seconds to decide.

“This is Gold One. Let’s go to Plan Bravo. Plan Bravo.”

Jake Grafton lowered his nose still farther. Now he wanted to descend below the formation. The A-7s were shallowing their dive, which helped.

Flap was on the ICS: “Target’s twenty degrees left. Master Arm on.”

“Kiss off,” Jake told him, and Flap took a few seconds to splay his fingers at the wingman on his right as Jake turned left to center steering and dropped his nose still more. Fifteen degrees down now, going faster than a raped ape, the plane pushing against the sonic shock wave and vibrating slightly, nothing but clouds visible in the windscreen dead ahead. The other A-6s would continue on course for four seconds each, then turn toward the target. All six would run the target individually.

“We’re in attack,” Flap announced, and sure enough, the attack symbology appeared on the VDI in front of Jake.

“War Ace One’s in hot,” he announced on the radio.

He took one more quick look around to ensure the other airplanes in this gaggle were clear.

Something on his left wing caught his eye. His eyes focused.

The bomb on Station One, the station nearest the left wing tip—the propeller on the mechanical fuse was spinning! The fuse was arming.

He gaped for half a second, unwilling to believe his eyes.

The propeller was spinning.

One bomb in a thousand, they say, will detonate at the end of arming time. The propeller will spin for 8.5 seconds to line up the firing circuit.

He could drop it now!

His thumb moved toward the pickle. The master armament switch was already on. All he had to do was squeeze the commit trigger and push the pickle. The bomb would fall away and be clear of the plane when the fuse finished arming. If it blew then…

He would still be within the blast envelope.

All these thoughts shot through his mind in less than a second. Even while he was considering he scanned the instruments to ensure he was tracking steering with his wings level.

He looked outside again. The propeller was stopped.

The bomb was armed! And it hadn’t exploded. Okay, we’ve dodged the first bullet.

He pushed the radio transmit button as he retarded the throttles and raised the nose. “War Ace One has an armed bomb on the rack. Breaking off the attack and turning north at…” He looked at the altimeter. He was descending through 12,000 feet. “… At twelve thousand.”

He grabbed the stick with his left hand and used his right to move the Master Arm switch to the safe position.

Everyone was talking on the radio — A-6s calling in hot, the A-7s breaking up for dives, F-4s looking for holes — probably no one heard Jake’s transmission.

“Station One,” he told Flap on the ICS when he had his left hand back on the throttles, talking over the gabble on the radio. “The bomb is armed.”

He concentrated on flying the plane, on getting the nose up and turning to the north. He was in the clouds now, bouncing around in turbulence. A northerly heading should take him out from under the strike gaggle, which was circling the target to the south.

“The arming wire pulled out of the fuse somehow,” he told Flap. “I saw the propeller spinning. The fucking thing is armed.”

He looked again at the offending weapon. Now he saw that the thermal protective coating was peeled back somewhat. The Navy sprayed all its weapons with a plastic thermal coating after experiencing several major flight-deck fires in which bombs cooked off. The coating must have had a flaw in it, something for the slipstream to work on. The slipstream peeled the coating, which pulled the arming wire.

A two-thousand-pound bomb…if it detonated under the wing, the airplane would be instantly obliterated. The fuel in the plane would probably explode. So would the other three weapons hanging on the plane. Not that he or Flap would care. They would already be dead, their bodies crushed by the initial blast and torn into a thousand pieces.

And this turbulence…it could set off that fuse.

He retarded the throttles. Almost to idle. Cracked the speed brakes to help slow down.

“Let’s climb out of this crap,” Flap suggested.

Jake slipped the speed brakes back in and raised the nose. He added power.

Finally he stabilized at an indicated 250 knots.

“Cubi?” Flap asked.

“Yeah.”

Flap hit a switch and the computer steering went right. Jake looked at the repeater between his legs. The steering bug was at One Six Zero degrees, eighty miles. Flap dialed in the Cubi TACAN station.

“It could go at any time,” Jake said.

“I know.”

“Let’s get off this freq and talk to Black Eagle.”

Flap got on the radio as they climbed free of the clouds.

The turbulence ceased.

Left turn. Fly around the target and the strike group to seaward.

No. Right turn. Go around on the land side. The other planes would be leaving the target to seaward. Maybe at this altitude. No sense taking any more chances than—

An F-4 shot across the windscreen going from right to left. Before Jake could react the A-6 flew into his wash. Wham! The plane shook fiercely, then it was through.

“If that didn’t set the damned thing off, nothing will,” Flap said.

Like hell. The jolts and bumps might well be cumulative.

Jake concentrated on flying the plane. He was sweating profusely. Sweat stung his eyes. He stuck the fingers of his left hand under his visor and swabbed it away.

Black Eagle suggested a frequency switch to Cubi Point Approach. Flap rogered and dialed the radio.

They were at 18,000 feet now and well above the cloud tops.

Jake glanced at the armed bomb from time to time. If he pickled it the shock of the ejector foot smacking into the weapon to push it away from the rack might set it off.

If the bomb detonated he and Flap would never even know it.

One second they would be alive and the next they would be standing in line to see St. Peter.

What a way to make a living!

Just fly the airplane, fake. Do what you can and let God worry about the other stuff.

“Cubi Approach, War Ace Five Oh Seven. We have an armed Mark Eighty-Four hanging on Station One. We’re carrying three more Mark Eighty-Fours, but they are unarmed. After we land we want to park as far away from everything as possible. And could you have EOD meet us?” EOD stood for explosive ordnance disposal.

“Roger live weapon. We’ll roll the equipment and call EOD.”

Cubi Point was the U.S. naval air station on the shore of Subic Bay, the finest deep-water port in the western Pacific. It had one concrete runway 9,000 feet long. Today Jake Grafton flew a straight-in approach over the water, landing to the northeast.

He flared the Intruder like he was flying an Air Force jet. He retarded the engines to idle, pulled the nose up and greased the main mounts on. He held the nose wheel off the runway until the airspeed read 80 knots, then he lowered it as gently as possible. Only then did he realize that he had been holding his breath.

The tower directed him to taxi back to the south end of the runway and park on the taxiway. As he taxied he raised his flaps and slats and shut down his left engine. Then he opened the canopy and removed his oxygen mask. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his flight suit.

A fire truck was waiting when Jake turned off the runway. He made sure he was across the hold-short line, then eased the plane to a stop. One of the sailors on the truck came over to the plane with a fire bottle, a fire extinguisher on wheels. Jake chopped the right engine. On shutdown the fuel control unit dumped the fuel it contained overboard, and this fuel fell down beside the right main wheel. If the brake was hot the fuel could ignite, hence the fire bottle. The danger was nonexistent if you shut down an engine while taxiing because you were moving away from the jettisoned fuel. But there was no fire today.

One of the firemen lowered the pilot’s boarding ladder. Jake safetied his ejection seat and unstrapped. He left the helmet and mask in the plane when he climbed down.

The thermal casing on the armed bomb had indeed been peeled back by the blast of the slipstream, pulling the arming wire and freeing the fuse propeller.

Jake Grafton was standing there looking at it when he realized that a chief petty officer in khakis was standing beside him.

“I’m Chief Mendoza, EOD.”

Jake nodded at the weapon. “We were running an attack. I just happened to look outside for other planes just before we went into a cloud and saw the propeller spinning.”

Flap came over while Jake was speaking. He put his hands on his hips and stood silently examining the bomb.

“If you’d dropped it like that, sir, it might have gone off when the ejector foot hit it,” the chief said.

Neither airman had anything to say.

“Guess you guys were lucky.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I gotta screw that fuse out. We’ll snap a few photos first because we’ll have to do a bunch of paperwork and the powers that be will want photos. I suggest you two fellows ride on the fire truck. You don’t want to be anywhere around when I start screwing that fuse out.”

“I’ll walk,” Jake said.

Flap Le Beau headed for the fire truck.

The chief turned his back on the weapon while the firemen took photos. He was facing out to sea, looking at the sky and the clouds and the shadows playing on the water when Jake Grafton turned away and began walking.

The pilot loosened his flight gear. He was suddenly very thirsty, so he got out his water bottle and took a drink. The water was warm, but he drank all of it. His hands were shaking, trembling like an old man’s.

The heat radiated from the concrete in waves.

He wiped his face again with his sleeve, then half turned and looked back at the plane. The chief was still standing with his arms folded, facing out to sea.

As he walked Jake got a cigarette from the pack in his left sleeve pocket and lit it. The smoke tasted foul.