The Intruders

17

At dawn one morning the task group weighed anchor and entered the Strait of Malacca. With Sumatra on the left and the Malay peninsula on the right, the ships steamed at 20 knots for the Indian Ocean, or the IO as the sailors called it, pronouncing each letter.

In the narrows the strait was a broad watery highway with land on each horizon. The channel was dotted with fishing boats and heavily traversed by tankers and freighters. As many as a half dozen of the large ocean-going ships were visible at any one time.

As usual in narrow waterways, the carrier’s flight deck and island superstructure were crowded with sightseeing sailors. Typically, Jake Grafton was among them, standing on the bow facing forward. With all of the great ship behind him the sensation was unique, almost as if one were a seabird soaring along at sixty feet above the water into the teeth of a 20-knot wind.

This morning Jake watched the steady stream of civilian ships and marveled. He had flown enough surface surveillance missions over the open ocean to “appreciate how empty the oceans of the earth truly were. Often he and Flap flew a two-hour flight and saw not a single ship, just endless vistas of empty sea and sky. Yet here the ships plowed the brown water like trucks thundering along an interstate highway.

A hundred years ago these waters hosted sailing ships. As he stood on the bow watching the ships and boats this morning he thought about those sailing ships, for Jake Grafton had a streak of romance in him about a foot wide. Clipper ships bound for China for a load of tea left England and the eastern ports of the United States and sailed south to round the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa. The sailors would have gotten close enough to land for a glimpse of Africa only in good weather. Then they crossed the vast Indian Ocean and entered this strait, where they saw land for the first time since leaving England or America. Months at sea working the ship, making sail, reefing in storms, watching the officers shoot the sun at noon and the stars at night when the weather allowed, then to hit this strait after circumnavigating half the globe — it was a great thing, a thing to be proud of, a thing to remember for the rest of their lives. Exotic China still lay ahead, but here the sailors probably saw junks for the first time, those flat-bottomed Chinese sailing ships that carried the commerce of the Orient. Here two worlds touched.

Jake looked at the freighters and tankers with new interest. Perhaps he should look into getting a mate’s license, consider the merchant marine after the Navy. It was a thing to think on.

Standing on the bow with the moist wind in his hair and the smell of the land filling his nostrils as the task group transited this narrow passage between two great oceans, he was struck by how large the earth really was, how diverse the human life, how many truths there must be. The U.S. Navy was a tiny part of it, surely, but only a tiny part. He had been confined long enough. He needed to reach out and embrace the whole.

The Indian Ocean lay ahead, beyond that watery horizon. The flying there would be blue water ops, without the safety net of a divert field ashore. The ship would be hundreds of miles from land, so when the planes burned enough fuel to get down to landing weight there would be no dry spot on earth they could reach with the fuel remaining in their tanks. They had to get aboard. Airborne tankers could provide fuel for another handful of attempts, but their presence would not change the scenario — every pilot would have to successfully trap or eject into the ocean.

Carrier aviation never gets easier. The challenge is to develop and maintain skills that are just good enough. In this war without bullets the stakes were human lives. Each pilot would have only his skill and knowledge to keep him alive in the struggle against the weather, chance, the vagaries of fate. Some would lose. Jake Grafton knew that as well as he knew his name. He might be one of them.

Thinking about that possibility as he stood here on the bow, he took a deep breath of the moist sea air and savored it.

A man never knows.

Well, he would do his best. That was all he could do. God had the dice, He would make the casts.

Jake was standing the squadron duty officer watch in the ready room one night when first Lieutenant Doug Harrison came in from a flight. He gave Jake his flight time figure and handed him the batteries from his emergency radio — the batteries were recharged in a unit above the duty officer’s desk — then dropped into the skipper’s empty chair as Jake annotated the flight schedule. Only then did Grafton turn and take a good look at the first-cruise pilot. His face was pasty and covered with a sheen of perspiration.

“Tough flight, huh?”

Harrison dropped his eyes and massaged his forehead with a hand. “No…Got a cigarette?”

“Sure.” Jake passed him one, then held out a light.

After Harrison had taken three or four puffs, he took the cigarette from his mouth and said softly, “After we landed, I almost taxied over the edge.”

“It’s dark out there.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. No light at all, the deck greasy, rain on top of the grease…it was like drying to taxi on snot.”

“What happened?”

“Taxi director took me up to the bow on Cat One, then turned me. Wanted me to taxi aft on Cat Two. It was that turn on the bow. Sticking out over the fucking black ocean. I was sure I was going right off the bow, Jake. I about shit myself. I kid you not. Pure, unadulterated terror, two-hundred proof. I have never had a feeling like that in an airplane before.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was turning tight, I could feel the nose wheel sliding, the yellow-shirt was giving me the come-ahead signal with the wands, and the edge was right there! And there isn’t even a protective lip. You know how the bow just turns down, same as the stern?”

“So what did you do?”

“Locked the left wheel and goosed the right engine. The plane moved about a foot. I could feel the left wheel sliding. To make things perfect I could also feel the deck going up and down, up and down. Every time it started down the vomit came up my throat. Then the yellow-shirt crossed his wands and had the blue-shirts chock it right where it sat. When I climbed down from the cockpit I couldn’t believe it — the nose wheel was like six inches from the edge! It was so dark up there that I had to use my flashlight to make sure. There was no way the nose wheel was going around that corner. Even if it had, the right main wouldn’t have made the turn — it would have dropped off the edge.”

Harrison took a greedy drag on his cigarette, then continued: “My BN couldn’t even get out of the cockpit. The plane captain didn’t have room to drop his ladder. He had to stay in the cockpit until they towed the plane to a decent parking place.”

“Why’d you keep taxiing when you knew you were that close to the edge?”

Harrison closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head. “I dunno.”

“I know,” Jake Grafton told him positively. “You jarheads are spring-loaded to the yessir position. Doug, if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. You have only one ass to lose.”

Harrison nodded and sucked on the cigarette. The color was slowly coming back to his face. After a bit he said, “Did you ever watch those RA-5 pilots taxi at night? The nose wheel is way aft of the cockpit. They are sitting out over the ocean when they taxi that Vigilante to the deck edge and turn it. I couldn’t do that. Not in a million years. Just watching them gives me the shivers.”

“Don’t obey a yellow-shirt if it doesn’t look right,” Jake said, emphasizing the point. “It isn’t the fall that kills you, Doug, or the stop at the bottom — it’s the sudden realization that, indeed, you are this fucking stupid.”

When Doug wandered off Jake went back to the notes of his talks on carrier operations. He was expanding and refining them so he could have them typed. He thought he would send them back to the senior LSO at the West Coast A-6 training squadron, VA-128 at Whidbey Island. Maybe there was something in there that the LSOs could use for their lectures.

Boy, if he wasn’t getting out, it would sure be nice to go back to VA-128 when this cruise was over. Rent a little place on a beach or a bluff overlooking the sound, fly, teach some classes, kick back and let life flow along. If he wasn’t getting out…If Tiny Dick Donovan was willing to take him back. Forgive and forget.

But he was getting out! No more long lonely months at sea, no more night cat shots, no more floating around the IO quietly rotting, no more of this—

Allen Bartow came up to the desk. “When you get off here tonight, we’re having a little game down in my room. We need some squid money in the pot.”

“I’ve still got a lot of jarhead quarters from the last game. I’ll bring those.”

“The last of the high rollers…”

He wasn’t going to miss it, he assured himself, for the hundredth time. Not a bit.

One of the most difficult tasks in military aviation is a night rendezvous. On a dark night under an overcast the plane you are joining is merely a tiny blob of lights, flashing weakly in the empty black universe. Without a horizon or other visual reference, the only way the trick can be done is to keep your instrument scan going inside your cockpit while you sneak peeks at the target aircraft. The temptation is to look too long at the target, to get too engrossed in the angles and closure rate, and if that happens, you are in big trouble.

On this particular night Jake Grafton thought he had it wired. He was rendezvousing on the off-going tanker at low station, 5,000 feet over the ship on the five-mile arc. There it was, its lights winking weakly.

“Ten o’clock,” Flap said.

“Roge, I got it.”

“He’ll be doing two-fifty.”

Jake glanced at his airspeed. Three hundred knots indicated. He would have to work that off as he closed. But not quite yet.

The tanker would be in a left-hand turn. Jake cranked his plane around until he had his nose in front of it and was looking at it through the right quarter panel, across the top of the radar scope-hood. He eased in a little left rudder and right flaperon to help keep his plane in a position where he could see the tanker.

With the target plane on the right side the A-6 was difficult to rendezvous because the cockpit was too wide — the BN sat on the pilot’s right. This meant that the right glareshield and canopy rail were too high and, as the planes closed, would block the pilot’s vision of the target aircraft if he allowed himself to get just a little behind the bearing line or get a tad high. Jake knew all this. He had accomplished several hundred night rendezvous and knew the problems involved and the proper techniques to use without even thinking about it. Tonight he was busy applying that knowledge.

Yet something was wrong. Jake checked his instruments. All okay. Why was the tanker moving to the right? Instinctively he rolled more wings level, rechecked his attitude gyro, the altimeter, the airspeed…All okay. And still the sucker is moving right!

“Texaco, say your heading.”

“Zero Two Zero.”

Hell! Now Jake understood. He was still on the outside of the tanker’s turning radius, not on the inside as he had assumed. He leveled his wings and flew straight ahead to cross behind the tanker, feeling slightly ridiculous. He had assumed that he was on the inside…

Now, indeed, he was on the inside of the tanker’s turn. He turned to put the nose in the proper position and started inbound. Checking the gauges, watching the bearing, slowing gently…280 knots would be perfect, would give him 30 knots of closure…

And the tanker was…Jesus! Coming in awful fast—way too fast! Power back, boards out, and…

“Look at your attitude.” Flap.

Jake looked. He was at ninety-degrees angle-of-bank, passing 4,500 feet, descending.

He leveled the wings and got the nose up. The tanker shot off to the left.

“I’m really screwed up tonight,” he told the BN.

“Turn hard and get inside of him, then close.”

Jake did. He felt embarrassed, like a neophyte on his first night formation hop. Yet only when he got to within two hundred yards and could make out the tanker’s position lights clearly was he sure of the tanker’s direction of flight. Only then was he comfortable.

He wasn’t concentrating hard enough. Attempting to rendezvous on a single, flashing light, in a dark universe devoid of any other feature…it was difficult at best and impossible if you weren’t completely focused.

Flap extended the drogue as Jake crossed behind the tanker and surfaced on his right side. “You got the lead,” said the tanker pilot, Chance Malzahn. Jake clicked his mike twice in reply as Chance slid aft. He dropped slightly and disappeared from sight behind. Jake concentrated on flying his own plane, staying in this steady, twenty-degree angle-of-bank turn, keeping on the five-mile arc, holding altitude perfectly.

In seconds the green ready light on the refueling panel went out and the counter began to click off the pounds delivered. The refueling package worked.

“Five Twenty-Three is sweet,” Flap told the ship,

The green ready light appeared again. Malzahn had backed out of the drogue. Now he came up on Jake’s left side.

“You got the lead,” Jake told him as Malzahn’s drogue streamed aft.

The drogue looked like a three-foot-wide badminton birdie. It dangled on the end of a fìfty-foot-long hose aft and slightly below the wash of the tanker. To get fuel, Jake would have to insert his fuel probe, which was permanently mounted on the nose in front of his windscreen, into the drogue and push it in about five feet. When the take-up reel on the tanker had turned the proper amount, electrical switches would mate and begin pumping fuel down the hose into the receiver aircraft.

The trick was getting the probe into the drogue, the basket. If the basket was new, with all the feathers in good shape, it was usually almost stationary and fairly easy to plug. If it was slightly damaged, however, it tended to weave back and forth in the windstream and present a moving target. Turbulence that bounced the tanker and receiver aircraft added to the level of difficulty. And, of course, there was the “pucker factor”—extensive experience has proven that the tension of a pilot’s sphincter is directly proportional to the level of his anxiety, i.e., higher makes tighter, etc.

Tonight, needing only to hit the tanker to “sponge” the excess fuel, Jake’s anxiety level was normal, or even slightly below. He was fat, had plenty of fuel. And the air was fairly smooth. The only fly in the ointment was the condition of that Marine Corps drogue. Tonight it weaved in a small, erratic figure-eight pattern.

Jake stabilized his plane about ten feet behind the drogue and watched it bob and weave for a moment. Flap Le Beau kept his flashlight pointed at it.

“Little Marine bastard is bent.”

“Yeah.” Flap was full of sympathy.

Flopping drogues had cracked bullet-proof windscreens, shattered Plexiglas and fodded engines. Tonight Jake Grafton eyed this one warily, waited for his moment, then smartly added power and drove his probe in. Drove it at that spot where the drogue would be when he got there. He hoped.

Miraculously he timed it right. The probe captured the drogue and locked in. He kept pushing until the green light above the hose chute in the tanker came on. Now he was riding about fifteen feet below the tanker’s tail and ten feet aft. As long as he stayed right here, held that picture, he would get fuel.

“You get twelve hundred pounds,” Chance Malzahn told him.

Two clicks in acknowledgment.

“Nice,” Flap said, referring to the plug, the flashlight never wavering.

When the last of the gas was aboard Jake backed out. He came up on Malzahn’s left side and took the lead as Malzahn reeled in his hose. After a word with Tanker Control, Malzahn cut his power and turned away, headed down on a vector for an approach.

Jake and Flap were now Texaco. Soon two F-4s came to take a ton of fuel each, then they turned away and disappeared in the vast darkness.

Jake took the tanker on up to high station, 20,000 feet, and settled it on autopilot at 220 knots. Around and around the ship, orbiting. Flap got out a paperback book and adjusted his kneeboard light. Jake loosened one side of his oxygen mask and let it dangle.

“Do you ever see the faces of the men you killed?” Jake asked. They had been orbiting the ship at high station for almost half an hour.

“What do you mean?”

Jake Grafton took his time before he answered. “I got shot down last December. We ended up in Laos. Had to shoot three guys before they got us out. They were trying to kill us — me and my BN — and one of them shot me. That’s how I ended up with this scar on my temple.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Had to do it, of course, or they would have killed us. Still, I see them sometimes in dreams. Wake up feeling rotten.”

Flap Le Beau didn’t say anything.

“Dropping bombs, now, I did that for a couple cruises. Bound to have killed a lot of people. Oh, most of the time we bombed suspected truck parks and crap like that — probably killed some ants and lizards and turned a lot of trees into toothpicks. That’s what we called them, toothpick missions — but occasionally we went after better targets. Stuff where there would be people. Not just trees in the jungle and mud roads crossing a creek.”

“Yeah.”

“Toward the end there we were really pounding the north, hitting all the shit that Johnson and McNamara didn’t have the brains or balls to hit six years before.”

“It was fucked up, all right.”

“One mission, close air support of some ARVN, they told me I killed forty-seven of ’em. Forty-seven. That bothered me for a while, but I don’t see them at night. Forty-seven men with one load of bombs…it’s like reading about it in a newspaper or history book…doesn’t seem real now. I still see those three NVA though.”

“I still see faces too.”

Below them an unbroken cloud deck stretched away in all directions. The sliver of moon was fuzzy and there weren’t many stars — they were trying to shine through a gauzy layer of high cirrus.

“Wonder if it’ll ever stop? If they’ll just fade out or something.”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t seem right somehow, to lose fifty-eight thousand Americans, to kill all those Vietnamese, all for nothing.”

Flap didn’t reply.

“I don’t like seeing those faces and waking up in a cold sweat. I had to do it. But damn…”

He wanted to forget the past, forget all of it. The present was okay, the flying and the ship and the men he shared it with. Yet the future was waiting out there, somewhere, hidden in the mists and haze. He was reaching out for something, something that lay ahead along that road into the unknown. Just what it would be he didn’t know. He was ready to make the journey though.

Under the overcast it was raining. At five thousand feet visibility was down to two or three miles and the oncoming tanker had trouble finding them, even with vectors from tanker control. It was that kind of night, with nothing going right. Once he was there Jake slipped in behind, eyed the basket, and went for it. He got it with only a little rudder kick in close and pushed it in.

Nothing. The green light over the hose hole did not illuminate.

“Are we getting any?” Flap asked the other crew.

“No. Back out and let us recycle.”

Jake retarded the power levers a smidgen and let his plane drift aft. The basket came off the probe. He moved out to the right and Flap told the other crew to recycle. They pulled the hose all the way in, then ran it out again.

This time Jake missed the basket on the first try. He stabilized and slipped in on his second attempt.

“Still no gas.”

“Tanker Control, this is Five Two Two, we’re sour.”

“Roger, Two Two. Your signal is dump. Steer Two Two Zero and descend to One Point Two, over.”

“Five Two Two, Two Two Zero and down to One Point Two.”

“Texaco, Tanker Control, you steer Two Zero Zero and descend to One Point Two, over.”

Jake slid left and the other tanker went right. It was already streaming fuel from the main and wing-tip dumps. Nine tons of fuel would have to be dumped into the atmosphere. Too bad, but there it was.

Jake settled onto his desired course and popped his speed brakes. The nose went over. When he stabilized he looked to the right for the other A-6, which was already fading into the rain and darkness. He came back into the cockpit and concentrated on his instruments.

This little world of needles and dials illuminated by red lights had always fascinated him. Making the needles behave didn’t seem all that difficult, until you tried it. And on nights like this, when he felt about half in the bag, when he was having trouble concentrating, then it was exquisite torture. Everything he did was either too little or too much. It was maddening.

The perverse needles taunted him. You are too high, they whispered, too fast, off course, now you are low…He had to work extremely hard to make them behave, had to pay strict attention to their message. The slightest inattention, the most minute easing of his concentration would allow the needles to escape his grasp.

The controller worked him into a hole in the bolter pattern, which was rapidly filling up. The voices on the radio told him the story as he struggled to make the needles behave. The weather was worse than forecast. Rain was ruining the visibility, the sea was freshening, and one of the F-4s had already boltered twice. Nearest land was 542 miles to the northwest. There were no sweet tankers in the air.

“Ain’t peace wonderful?” Flap muttered.

“Landing checklist,” Jake said, and they went through it. They were too heavy so they dumped fifteen hundred pounds of fuel to get to landing weight. Crazy, that the only good tanker was dumping to land instead of hawking the deck to help that Phantom crew, but ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or…

At a mile and a half he saw the ship, a tiny smear of red light enlivening the dead universe.

Flap called the ball at Six Point Oh.

“Roger Ball.”

Jake recognized the Real McCoy’s voice, but just in case he didn’t the Real continued, “Deck’s dancing, Jake. Watch your lineup.”

He had the ball centered, nailed there, and with just a little dip of the wings he chased the landing centerline to the right, working the throttles individually so as not to overcontrol. The rain flowed around the canopy in a continuous sheet, but the engine bleed air kept the pilot’s windscreen clear.

There was an art to throttle-work on the ball, moving each individual lever ever so slightly, yet knowing when to move them both. Tonight Jake got it just right. The deck got closer and closer, the ball stayed centered, the lineup was good, the angle-of-attack needle behaved…and they caught a three-wire.

“Luck,” Jake told Flap as they rolled out of the landing area.

They taxied him to a stop abeam the island where a half-dozen purple-shirts — grapes — waited with a fuel hose. Jake opened the canopy as the squadron’s senior troubleshooter climbed the ladder. The wind felt raw and the rain cold against his skin.

“We’re going to hot pump you and shoot you again,” the sergeant shouted over the whine of the engines. “This is the only up tanker.”

Jake stuck his thumb up to signify his understanding.

The sergeant went back down the ladder and raised it as Jake closed the canopy. Might as well keep the rain out. The sergeant flashed a thumbs-up and went around to the BN’s side of the plane to watch the refueling operation. Jake moved the switch to depressurize the tanks.

Refueling took awhile. They needed twenty thousand pounds for a full load and the ship’s pumps could only deliver it at about a ton a minute.

He was tired and his butt felt like dead meat, yet it was very pleasant sitting here in the warm, comfortable cockpit. From their vantage point here beside the foul line they had a grandstand seat. The planes came out of the rain and darkness and slammed into the deck. The first two trapped, then a Phantom boltered, his hook ripping a shower of sparks the length of the landing area. This was the guy who had already boltered twice before.

Ah yes, this comfortable cockpit, with everything working just the way it was supposed to, the rain pattering on the Plexiglas and collecting into rivulets that smeared the light.

He was tired, but not too much so. Just pleasantly tired.

Jake unhooked his oxygen mask and laid it in his lap. He took off his helmet and massaged his face and head. He used his sleeves and gloves to swab away the perspiration, then pulled the helmet back on.

The minutes ticked by as the fuel gauges faithfully reported the fuel coming aboard.

They were still fueling when the errant F-4 came out of the gloom and snagged a two-wire. The pilot stroked the afterburners on the roll out. The white-hot focused flames poured from the tailpipes for about a second, then went out, leaving everyone on deck half-blinded.

Two minutes later an A-7 carrying a buddy store, a tanking package hung on a weapon’s station under one wing, was taxied from the pack up to Cat Two and launched. Apparently the brain trust in Air Ops wanted more gas aloft.

At last Jake and Flap were ready. Pressurize the tanks. Boarding ladders up, refueling panel closed, seats armed, and they were taxiing toward Cat Two, the left bow catapult.

Spread the wings, flaps to takeoff, slats out, wipe out the cockpit, ease into the shuttle. There, the jolt as the hold-back reached full extension, then another jolt as the shuttle went forward into tension. Off the brakes, throttles up.

He watched the engines come up to full power as he pulled up the catapult grip and arranged the heel of his hand behind the throttles, felt the airplane tremble as the engines sucked in vast quantities of that rainy air and slammed it out the tailpipes into the jet blast deflector — the JBD. Fuel flow normal, temperatures coming up nicely, RPM at 100 percent on the left engine, a fraction over on the right. Hydraulics normal, everything okay.

Jake wiped out the cockpit, glanced at the panel, ensured Flap had his flashlight on the standby gyro…“You ready?”

“Let it rip.”

He flipped on the exterior light master switch on the end of the cat grip with his left thumb.

The hold-back bolt broke. He felt it break. Then came the shot, a stiff jolt of terrific acceleration, which lasted about a quarter of a second. Then it ceased. Sweet Jesus fucking Christ the airplane was still accelerating but way too goddamn slow!

He was doing maybe 30 knots when he released the cat grip and closed the throttles. Automatically he extended the wing-tip speed brakes. He jammed his feet down on the top of the rudder pedals, locking both brakes.

They were still going forward, sliding on the wet, greasy deck. Thundering toward the bow, the round-down, the edge of the cliff…

Jake pulled the left throttle around the horn to idle cutoff, stopping the flow of fuel to that engine.

He released the left brake and engaged nose-wheel steering. Slammed the rudders to neutral, then hard right. That should capture the nose wheel and turn it right, if the shuttle wasn’t holding it. But the nose wheel refused to respond.

Still going forward, but slower. The edge was there, coming toward them…only seconds left.

He released both brakes, and engaged nose-wheel steering and slammed the rudder full left. He felt something give. The nose started to swing left.

On the brakes hard. Is there enough deck left, enough—?

An explosion beside him. Flap had ejected. The air was filled with shards of flying Plexiglas.

Sliding, turning left and still sliding forward…he felt the left wheel slam into the deck-edge combing, then the nose, now the tail spun toward the bow, the whole plane still sliding…

And he stopped.

Out the right he could see nothing, just blackness. The right wheel must be almost at the very edge of the flight deck.

He took a deep breath and exhaled explosively.

His left hand was holding the alternate ejection handle between his legs. He couldn’t remember reaching for it, but obviously he had. He gingerly released his grip.

The Plexiglas was gone on the right side of the canopy. Flap had ejected through it. Where his seat had been there was just an empty place.

Was Flap alive?

Jake closed the speed brakes and raised the flaps and slats, watched the indicator to make sure they were coming in properly, exterior lights off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw people, a mob, running toward him. He ignored them.

When he had the flaps and slats up, he unlocked the wings, then folded them. The wind was puffing through the top of the broken canopy…rain coming in. He could feel the drops on the few inches of exposed skin on his neck.

Was the plane moving? He didn’t think so. Yet if he opened the canopy he couldn’t eject. The seat was designed to go through the glass — if the canopy was open, the steel bow would be right above the seat and would kill him if he tried to eject. And if this plane slid off the deck he would have to eject or ride it into that black sea.

Now the reaction hit him. He began to shake.

A yellow-shirt was trying to get his attention. He kept giving Jake the cut sign, the slash across the throat.

But should he open the canopy?

Unable to decide, he chopped the right throttle and sat listening as that engine died.

Someone opened the canopy from outside. Now a sergeant was leaning in. “You can get out now, sir. Safe your seat.”

“Have they got it tied down?”

“Yes.”

He had to force himself to move. He safetied the top and bottom ejection handles on the seat and fumbled with the Koch fittings that held him to the seat. Reached down and fumbled in the darkness with the fittings that attached to his leg restraints. There. He was loose.

He started to get out, then remembered his oxygen mask and helmet leads. He disconnected all that, then tried to stand.

He was still shaking too badly. He grabbed a handhold and eased a leg out onto the ladder, all the while trying to ignore the blackness yawning on the right side, and ahead. Here he was, ten feet above the deck, right against the edge. He felt like he was going to vomit.

Hands reached up and steadied him as he descended the boarding ladder.

With his feet on deck, he looked at the right main wheel. Maybe a foot from the edge. The nose-wheel was jammed against the deck-edge combing and the nose-tow bar was twisted.

Jake asked the yellow-shirt, “Where’s my BN?”

The sailor pointed down the deck, toward the fantail. Jake looked. He saw a flash of white, the parachute, draped over the tail of an A-7. So Flap had landed on deck. Didn’t go into the ocean.

Now the relief hit him like a hammer. His legs wobbled. Two people grabbed him.

His mask was dangling from the side of his helmet, and he swept it out of the way just in time to avoid the hot raw vomit coming up his throat.

He started walking aft, toward the island and the parachute draped over that Corsair a hundred fifty yards aft. He shook off two sailors who tried to assist him. “I’m all right, all right, okay.”

An A-7 came out of the rain and trapped.

There was Flap, walking this way. Now he saw Grafton, spread his arms, kept walking.

The two men met and hugged fiercely.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Haldane watched the PLAT tape of the cat shot gone awry five or six times as he listened to Jake Grafton and Flap Le Beau recount their experience in the ready room.

They were euphoric — they had spit in the devil’s eye and escaped to tell the tale. In the ready room they went through every facet of their adventure for their listeners, who shared their infectious glee.

Isn’t life grand? Isn’t it great to still be walking and talking and laughing after a trip to the naked edge of life itself?

After a half hour or so, Haldane slipped away to find the maintenance experts. He listened carefully to their explanations, asked some questions, then went to the hangar deck for a personal examination of 523’s nose-tow bar.

Apparently the hold-back bolt had failed prematurely, a fraction of a second before the launch valves fully opened, perhaps just as they began to open. The KA-6D at full power had begun to move forward, creating a space — perhaps an inch or two— between the T-fitting of the nose-tow bar and the catapult shuttle. Then the shuttle shot forward as steam slammed into the back of the catapult pistons. At this impact of shuttle and nose-tow bar, the nose-tow bar probably cracked. It held together for perhaps thirty feet of travel down the catapult, then failed completely.

Now free of the twenty-seven-ton weight of the aircraft, the pistons accelerated through the twin catapult barrels like two guided missiles chained together. Superheated steam drove them through the chronograph brushes five feet short of the water brakes at 207 knots.

With a stupendous crash that was felt the length of the ship, the pistons’ spears entered the water brakes, squeezed out all the water and welded themselves into the brakes. Brakes, spears, and pistons were instantly transformed into one large lump of smoking, twisted, deformed steel. Cat Two was out of action for the rest of the cruise.

Colonel Haldane was less interested in what happened to the catapult than the sequence of events that took place inside 523 after the catapult fired. Careful analysis of the PLAT tape showed that the plane came to a halt just 6.1 seconds later. Total length of the catapult was 260 feet, and it ended twenty feet short of the bow. The plane had used all 280 feet to get stopped. The bombardier ejected 3.8 seconds into that ride.

That Jake Grafton had managed to get the plane halted before it went into the ocean was, Colonel Haldane decided, nothing less than a miracle.

Seated at his desk in his stateroom, he thought about Jake Grafton, about what it must have felt like trying to get that airplane stopped as it stampeded toward the bow and the black void beyond. Oh, he had heard Grafton recount the experience, but already, while it was still fresh and immediate, Grafton had automatically donned the de rigueur cloak of humility: “In spite of everything I did wrong, miraculously I survived. I was shot with luck. All you sinners take note that when the chips are down clean living and prayer pays off.”

Most pilots would have ejected. Haldane thought it through very carefully and came to the conclusion that he would have been one of them. He would have grabbed that alternate ejection handle between his legs and pulled hard.

Yet Grafton hadn’t done that, and he had saved the plane. Luck, Haldane well knew in spite of Grafton’s ready room bullshit, had played a very small part.

Should he have ejected? After all, the Navy Department could just order another A-6 from Grumman for $8 million, but it couldn’t buy another highly trained, experienced pilot. It took millions of dollars and years of training to produce one of those; if you wanted one combat experienced, you had to have a war, which was impractical to do on a regular basis since a high percentage of the liberal upper crust frowned upon wars for training purposes.

Yep, Grafton should have punched. Just like Le Beau.

Sitting here in the warmth, safety, and comfort of a well-lit stateroom nursing a cup of coffee, any sane person would reach that obvious conclusion. Hindsight is so wonderful.

And the sane person would be wrong.

Great pilots always find a way to survive. Almost by instinct they manage to choose a course of action — sometimes in blatant violation of the rules — that results in their survival.

The most obvious fact here was probably the most important: Jake Grafton was still alive and uninjured.

Had he ejected…well, who can say how that would have turned out? The seat might have malfunctioned, he might have gone into the ocean and drowned, he might have broken his neck being slammed down upon the flight deck or into the side of an airplane. Le Beau had been very lucky, and he freely admitted it, proclaimed it even, in the ready room afterward: “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

Grafton was good. He had saved himself and the plane. Yet there was more. In the ready room afterward he hadn’t been the least bit defensive, had stated why he did what he did clearly and cogently, then listened carefully to torrents of free advice — the what-you-should-have-done variety. He wasn’t embarrassed that Flap ejected. He blamed no one and expressed no regrets.

Haldane liked that, had enjoyed watching and listening to a man whose rock solid self-confidence could not be shaken. Grafton believed in himself, and the feeling was contagious. One wondered if there were anything this man couldn’t handle.

Now the colonel dug into the bottom drawer of his desk. In a moment he found what he was looking for. It was a personal letter from the commanding officer of VA-128, Commander Dick Donovan. Haldane removed the letter from its envelope and read it, carefully, for the fourth or fifth time.

Colonel Haldane folded the letter and put it back into its envelope. Then he pulled a pad of paper around and got out his pen. He hadn’t answered this letter yet, and now seemed like a good time.

Donovan wasn’t going to be happy to hear that Grafton was resigning, but there wasn’t anything he or Donovan could do about it. That decision was up to Grafton. Still, it was a shame. Donovan was right — Grafton was a rare talent of unusual promise.

When the adrenaline rush had faded and the ready room crowd had calmed down, Jake and Flap went up to the forward—“dirty shirt”—wardroom between the bow cats. Flap had already been to sick bay and had several minor Plexiglas cuts dressed. “Iodine and Band-Aids,” he told Jake with a grin. “I’ve been hurt worse shaving. Man, talk about luck!”

In the serving line each man ordered a slider, a large cheeseburger so greasy that it would slide right down your throat. With a glass of milk and a handful of potato chips, they sat on opposite sides of a long table with a food-stained tablecloth.

“I didn’t think you could get it stopped,” Flap said between bites.

“You did the right thing,” Jake told him, referring to Flap’s decision to eject. “If I hadn’t managed to get it sliding sideways I would have had to punch too.”

“Well, we’re still alive, in one piece. We did all right.”

Jake just nodded and drank more milk. The adrenaline had left his stomach feeling queasy, but the milk and slider settled it. He leaned back in his chair and belched. Yep, there’s a lot to be said for staying alive.

Down in his stateroom he stood looking around at the ordinary things, the things he saw every day yet didn’t pay much attention to. After a glimpse into the abyss, the ordinary looks fresh and new. He sat in his chair and savored the fit, looked at how the light from his desk lamp cast stark shadows into the corners of the room, listened to the creaks and groans of the ship, examined with new eyes the photos of his folks and Callie that sat on his desk.

He twiddled the dial of the desk safe, then pulled it open. The ring was there, the engagement ring he had purchased for her last December aboard Shiloh. He took it from the safe and held it so the light shown on the small diamond. Finally he put it back. Without conscious thought, he removed his revolver from a pocket of his flight suit and put that in the safe too, then locked it.

He was going to have to do something about that woman.

But what?

It wasn’t like he had her hooked and all he had to do was reel her in. The truth of the matter was that she had him hooked, and she hadn’t decided whether or not he was a keeper.

So what is a guy to do? Write and pledge undying love? Promise to make her happy? Worm your way into her heart with intimate letters revealing your innermost thoughts?

No. What he had to do was speak to her softly, tell her of his dreams…if only he had any dreams to tell.

He felt hollow. Everyone else had a destination in mind: they were going at different speeds to get there, but they were on their way.

It was infuriating. Was there something wrong with him, some defect in him as a person? Was that what Callie saw?

Why couldn’t she understand?

He thought about Callie for a while as he listened to the sounds of the ship working in a seaway, then finally reached for a pad and pen. He dated the letter and began:

“Dear Mom and Dad…”

When he finished the letter he didn’t feel sleepy, so he took a hot shower and dressed in fresh, highly starched khakis and locked the door behind him. There weren’t many people about. The last recovery was complete. The enlisted troops were headed for their bunks and the die-hard aviators were watching movies. He peered into various ready rooms to see who was still up that he knew. No one he wanted to talk to. He stopped in the arresting gear rooms and watched a first-class and two greenies pulling maintenance on an engine. He stopped by the PLAT office and watched his aborted takeoff several more times, wandered through the catapult spaces, where greenies supervised by petty officers were also working on equipment. In CATCC the graveyard shift had a radar consol torn apart.

In the Aviation Intermediate Maintenance avionics shop the night shift was hard at repairing aircraft radars and computers. This space was heavily air-conditioned and the lights burned around the clock. The technicians who worked here never saw the sun, or the world of wind and sea and sky where this equipment performed.

Finally, on a whim, Jake opened the door to the Air Department office. Warrant Officer Muldowski was the only person there. He saw Jake and boomed, “Hey, shipmate. Come in and drop anchor.”

Jake helped himself to a cup of coffee and planted his elbows on the table across from the bosun, who had a pile of paper spread before him.

“You did good up there on that cat.”

“Thanks.”

“Kept waiting for you to punch. Thought you had waited too long.”

“For a second there I did too.”

They chewed the fat for a while, then when the conversation lagged Jake asked, “Why did you stay in the Navy, Bosun?”

The bosun leaned back in his chair and reached for his tobacco pouch. When he had his pipe fired off and drawing well, he said, “Civilians’ worlds are too small.”

“What do you mean?”

“They get a job, live in a neighborhood, shop in the same stores all their lives. They live in a little world of friends, work, family. Those worlds looked too small to me.”

“That’s something to think about.” Jake finished his coffee and tossed the Styrofoam cup in a wastebasket.

“Don’t you go riding one of those pigs into the water, Mr. Grafton. When you gotta go, you go.”

“Sure, Bosun.”