The Intruders

3

Jake Grafton was dressed in khakis and wearing his leather flight jacket when he stepped onto the catwalk around the flight deck. The sun was out, yet to the west a layer of fog obscured the higher buildings of San Francisco and all of the Golden Gate Bridge except the tops of the towers. The gentle breeze had that moist, foggy feeling. Jake shivered and tugged his ball cap more firmly onto his head.

The pier below was covered with people. The pilot rested his elbows on the railing of the catwalk and stood taking it all in, listening to the cacophony of voices.

Sailors, Marines, officers and chiefs stood surrounded by their families. Children were everywhere, some clinging to their mothers, others running through the crowd chasing one another, the smaller ones being passed from hand to hand by the adults.

A band was tuning up on Elevator Two, which was in the down position and stuck out over the pier like a porch roof. Even as Jake watched, the conductor got the attention of his charges and whipped them into a Sousa march.

On the pier near the stern another band was assembling. No doubt that was the Naval Air Station band, which tooted for every ship’s departure. Well and good, but Columbia had a band too and apparently the ship’s XO thought there couldn’t be too much music.

Above Jake’s head the tails of aircraft stuck out precariously over the edge of the flight deck and cast weird shadows on the crowded pier. Occasionally he could see people lift their gaze to take in the vast bulk of the ship and the dozens of aircraft. Then the people turned their attention back to their loved one.

Last night he had stood in line at one of the dozen phone booths on the head of the pier. The rain had subsided to occasional drips. When his turn for the booth came, he had called his folks in Virginia, then Callie. It was after midnight in Chicago when she answered.

“Callie, this is Jake.”

“Where are you?”

“On the pier at Alameda. Did you get my letters?”

“I received three.”

He had written the letters and mailed them from Oceana, where he had been sent to do field carrier qualifications with a group of students from VA-42. He had completed his field quals, of course, but didn’t go to the ship. There hadn’t been time. He would have to qual aboard Columbia after she sailed. He needed ten day and six night traps because it had been over six months since his last carrier landing.

“Another letter is on the way,” he told Callie, probably a superfluous comment. “You’ll get it in a day or two.”

“So how is the ship?”

“It’s a ship. What can I say?”

“When do you sail?”

“Seven-thirty in the morning.”

“So when I wake up you’ll be at sea.”

“Uh-huh.”

They talked desultorily for several minutes, the operator came on the line and Jake fed in more quarters, then he got down to it. “Callie, I love you.”

“I know you do. Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry your visit was such a disaster.”

“I am too. I guess these things just happen sometimes. I wish…” And he ran out of steam. A phone booth on a pier with dozens of sailors awaiting their turn didn’t seem the place to say what he wished.

“You be careful,” she said.

“You know me, Callie. I’m always careful.”

“Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

“I won’t.”

“I want you to come back to me.”

Now Jake stood watching the crowd and thinking about that. She wanted him to come back to her.

He took a deep breath and sighed. Ah me, life is so strange. Just when everything looks bleakest a ray of sunshine comes through the clouds. Hope. He had hope. She wouldn’t have said something like that unless she meant it, not Callie, not to a guy going on an eight-month cruise.

He was standing there listening to the two bands playing different tunes at the same time, watching the crowd, watching sailors and women engage in passionate kisses, when he saw the Cadillac. A pink Cadillac convertible with the top down was slowly making its way down the pier. People flowed out of its way, then closed in behind it, like water parting for a boat.

Cars were not allowed on the pier. Yet there it was. A man in a white uniform was driving, yet all of his passengers were women, young women, and not wearing a lot of clothing either. Lots of brown thighs and bare shoulders were on display, several truly awesome bosoms.

In complete disregard of the regulations, the car made its way to the foot of the officers’ gangway and stopped. The driver got out and stretched lazily as he surveyed the giant gray ship looming beside the pier. The women bounded out and surrounded him.

It’s Bosun Muldowski! Who else could it be? No sailor could get a car past the guards at the head of the pier and few officers under flag rank. But a warrant officer four? Yep.

Muldowski.

He had been the flight deck bosun on Shiloh, Jake’s last ship. Apparently he was coming to Columbia. Now Jake remembered — Muldowski never did shore duty tours. He had been going from ship to ship for over twenty-five years.

Look at those women in hot pants and short short skirts!

Sailors to the right and left of Jake in the catwalk shouted and shrieked wolf whistles. Muldowski took no notice but the women waved prettily, which drew lusty cheers from the on-looking white hats.

With the bosun’s bags out of the trunk of the car, he took his time hugging each of the women, all five of them, as the bands blared mightily and spectator sailors watched in awe.

“The bosun must own a whorehouse,” one sailor down the catwalk told his friends loud enough for Jake to hear.

“He sure knows how to live,” his buddy said approvingly.

“Style. He’s got style.”

Jake Grafton grinned. Muldowski’s spectacular arrival had just catapulted him to superstardom with the white hats, which was precisely the effect, Jake suspected, that the bosun intended. The deck apes would work like slaves for him until they dropped in their tracks.

All too soon the ship’s whistle sounded, bullhorns blared and sailors rushed to single up the lines holding the great ship to the land. The men on the pier gave their women one last passionate hug, then dashed for the gangways. As seven bells sounded over the ship’s PA system, cranes lifted the gangways clear and deposited them on the pier.

The last of the lines were released and the ship began to move, very slowly at first, almost imperceptibly. Slowly the gap between the pier and the men crowding the rails widened.

Sailors tossed their Dixie cups at the pier and children scurried like rats to retrieve them. The strains of “Anchors Aweigh” filled the air.

When the pier was several hundred feet away and aft of the beam, Jake felt a rumble reach him through the steel on which he stood. The screws were biting. The effect was noticeable. The pier slid astern slowly at first, then with increasing speed.

Now the pilot climbed to the flight deck and threaded his way past tie-down chains toward the bow, where he joined a loose knot of men leaning into the increasing wind. Ahead was the Bay Bridge, then the Golden Gate. And the fog beyond the Golden Gate was dissipating.

The ship had cleared the Bay Bridge and was steaming at eight or ten knots past Alcatraz when the loudspeaker sounded. “Flight Quarters, flight quarters. All hands man your flight quarters station.”

The cruise had begun.

Jake was in the locker room donning his flight gear when a black Marine in a flight suit came in. He had railroad tracks pinned to the shoulders of his flight suit, so he was a captain, the Marine equivalent of Jake’s Navy rank of lieutenant. He looked Jake over, nodded to a couple Marines who were also suiting up to get some traps, then strolled over to Jake.

“They call me Flap. I guess we’re flying together.”

The BN had his hair cut in the Marine Corps’ version of an Afro — that is, it stuck out from his head about half an inch and was meticulously tapered on the sides and back. He was slightly above medium height, with the well-developed chest and bulging muscles that can only be acquired by thousands of hours of pumping iron. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe thirty at the most.

“Jake Grafton. You’re Le Beau?”

“Yep.”

“How come you weren’t at the brief?”

“Hey, man. This is CQ!” CQ meant carrier qualification. “All we’re gonna do is fly around this bird farm with the wheels down, dangling our little hook thingy. This is your bag. You can hack it, can’t ya?”

Jake decided to change the subject. “Where you from?”

“Parris Island. Get it? Le Beau? French name? Parris Island?”

“Ha ha.”

“Don’t let this fine chocolate complexion fool you, my man. It’s French chocolate.”

“French shit,” said one of Le Beau’s fellow Marines.

“Eat it, butt breath,” Flap shot back. “I’m black with a seasoning of Creole.”

“Sorta like coffee with cream,” Jake Grafton remarked as he zipped up his torso harness.

“Yeah man. That’s exactly right. There was a planter in Louisiana, Le Beau, with a slobbering craving for black poontang. After the Civil War he took personal offense when his former slaves adopted his last name. They did it ’cause most of them was his sons and daughters. But Le Beau didn’t like the thought of being recognized in history as a patriarch, didn’t want to admit his generous genetic contributions to improving a downtrodden race. Hung a couple of his nigger kids, he did. So all the blacks in the parish adopted the name. More damn black Le Beaus in that section of Louisiana than you could shake a stiff dick at. Now that redneck Cajun planter bigot was one of my many great-great-grandpappys, of whom I am so very proud.”

“Terrific,” said Jake Grafton, who checked to see that the laces of his new G-suit were properly adjusted.

“We heard you were coming. The Nav just didn’t think us gyrenes could handle all this high tailhook tech. So we heard they were sending an ace Navy type to indoctrinate us ignorant jarheads, instruct us, lead the way into a better, brighter day.”

Grafton didn’t think that comment worth a reply.

“It’ll be a real pleasure,” said Flap Le Beau warmly as he grabbed his torso harness from his locker, “flying with a master hookster. Just think of me as a student at the fount of all wisdom, an apprentice seeking to acquire insights into the nuances of the arcane art, appreciate the—”

“Are you always this full of shit or are you making a special effort on my behalf?” Jake asked.

Le Beau prattled on unperturbed. “It’s tragic that so many Navy persons are dangerously thin-skinned in a world full of sharp objects! One can infer from your crude comment that you share that lamentable trait with your colleagues. It’s sad, very sad, but there are probably gonna be tensions between us. None of that male-bonding horse pucky for you and me, huh? Tensions. Stress. Misunderstandings. Heartburns. Hard feelings. Ass kickings.” He sighed plaintively. “Well, I try to get along by going along. That’s the Cajun in me coming out. I am so very lucky I got this white blood in me, ya know? Lets me see everything in a better perspective.”

The Marine bent slightly at the waist and addressed his next comment to the deck: “Thank you, thank you, Jules Le Beau, rotting down there in hell.”

Back to his locker and flight gear—“Lots of the bros ain’t as lucky as I am — they can’t tell trees from manure piles, and—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Flap,” someone in the next row said. “Turn off the tap, will ya?”

“Yeoww,” Flap howled, “I feel great! Gonna get out there and fly with a Navy ace and see how it’s done by the best of the best!”

“How did I wind up with this asshole?” Jake asked the major two lockers down.

“No other pilot wanted him,” was the reply.

“Hey, watch your mouth over there,” Flap called. “This is my rep you’re pissin’ on.”

“Pissin’ on, sir!”

“Sir,” Flap echoed dutifully.

The sun shone down softly through a high thin cirrus layer. The wind out of the northwest was heaping the sea into long windrows and ripping occasional whitecaps from the crests as gulls wheeled and turned around the great ship.

Two frigates and four destroyers were visible several miles away, scattered in a haphazard circle around the carrier. These were the carrier’s escorts, an antisubmarine screen, faithful retainers that would attend the queen wherever she led.

On the eastern horizon land was still visible. It would soon drop over the earth’s rim since the carrier would have to spend the next several hours running into the northwest wind, then the universe would consist of only the ships, the sea and the sky. The land would become a memory of the past and a vision of a hazy future, but the solid reality of the present would be just the ships and the men who rode them. Six small moons orbiting one wandering planet…

Jake’s vision lingered on that distant dark line of earth, then he turned away.

The ship rode easily this morning, with just the gentlest of rolls, which Jake noticed only because he didn’t have his sea legs yet. This roll would become a pitching motion when the ship turned into the wind.

Sensing these things and knowing them without really thinking about them, Jake Grafton walked slowly aft looking for his aircraft. There — by Elevator Four.

She was no beauty, this A-6E Intruder decked out in dull, low viz paint splotched here and there with puke green zinc dichromate primer. An external power cord was already plugged into the plane. Jake lowered the boarding ladder and opened the canopy, then climbed up and placed his helmet bag on the seat. He ensured the safety pins were properly installed in the ejection seat, let his eye rove over the cockpit switches, the gear handle, the wing position lever and the fuel dump switches, then checked the fuel quantity. Ten thousand pounds. As advertised. He toggled the seat position adjustment switches, noted the whine and felt the seat move, then released them. Jake climbed down the ladder to the deck and began his preflight inspection.

In Vietnam he had flown A-6As, the first version of the Intruder. This plane was an A-6E, the second-generation bomber, the state-of-the-art in American military technology. Most of the updates were not visible to the naked eye. The search and track radars of the A-6A had been replaced with one radar that combined both search and track functions. The A’s rotary-drum computer had been replaced with a solid-state, digital, state-of-the-art version. The third major component in the electronics system, the inertial navigation system, or INS, had not yet been updated, so it was now the weak point in the navigation/attack system. The new computer and radar were not only more accurate than the old gear, they were also proving to be extraordinarily reliable, which erased the major operational disadvantage of the A-6A.

The E had been in the fleet for several years now, yet it had not been used in Vietnam, by Pentagon fiat. Had the updated E been used there, the targets could have been hit with greater accuracy, with fewer missions, thereby saving lives and perhaps helping shorten the war, but inevitably some of these planes would have been lost and the technology compromised, i.e., seen by the Soviets.

So lives had been traded to keep the technology secret. How many lives? Who could say.

As Jake Grafton walked around this A-6E looking and touching this and that, the raw, twisted Vietnam emotions came flooding back. Once again he felt the fear, saw the blood, saw the night sky filled with streaks of tracer and the fiery plumes of SAMs. The faces of the dead men floated before him as he felt the smooth, cool skin of the airplane.

It seemed as if he had never left the ship. Any second Tiger Cole would come strolling across the deck with his helmet bag and charts, ready to fly into the mouth of hell.

Jake felt his stomach churn, as if he were going to vomit. He paused and leaned against a main-gear strut.

No!

Six months had passed. His knee had healed, he had visited his folks, done a little flight instruction at Whidbey Island, visited Callie in Chicago…thrown that asshole through the window at Sea-Tac…why was he sweating, nauseated?

This is car quals, for Christ’s sake! It’s a beautiful day, a cake hop, a walk in the park!

He stood straight and, looking out to sea, took several deep breaths. He should have popped the question to Callie — should have asked her to marry him. And he should have resigned from the Navy.

He shouldn’t even be here! On the boat again! He had done his share, dropped his share of bombs, killed his share of gomers.

For God’s sake — another cruise — with a bunch of jack-off jarheads!

He took his hand off the strut and stood staring at the plane, his face twisted into a frown. Primer splotches everywhere, dirt, stains from hydraulic leaks…And it was a fairly new plane, less than a year old!

Camparelli would have come screaming unglued if they had sent a plane like this to his squadron. Screaming-meemy fucking unglued!

Somehow the thought of Commander Camparelli, Jake’s last skipper in Vietnam, storming and ranting amused Jake Grafton.

“Looks like a piece of shit, don’t it?”

Bosun Muldowski was standing there staring at the plane with his arms crossed.

“Yeah, Bosun, but I ain’t looking to buy it. I’m just flying it this morning.”

“Sure didn’t expect to find you aviatin’ for the jugheads, Mr. Grafton.”

“Life’s pretty weird sometimes.”

The bosun nodded sagely. “Heard about that shithead that went through the window at Sea-Tac.”

Jake nodded and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Well, I guess I lost it for a little bit. I’m not the smartest guy you ever met.”

“Smart enough. Thanks.”

With that, the bosun walked forward, up the deck, leaving the pilot staring at his back.

“Hey, my man! Is this mean green killing machine safe to fly?” Flap. He came around the nose of the plane and lowered the BN’s boarding ladder.

“We’ll find out, won’t we?”

“It’s an embarrassing question to have to ask, I know, yet the dynamics of the moment and the precarious state of my existence here in space and time impel me to ponder my karma and your competence. No offense, but I am growing attached to my ass and don’t want to part with it. What I’m getting at, Ace, is are you man enough to handle the program?”

The pilot slapped the fuselage. “This relic from the Mongolian Air Force is going off the pointy end of this boat in about fifteen minutes with your manly physique in it. That’s the only fact I have access to. Will your ass stay attached? Will sweet, innocent Suzy Kiss-me succumb to the blandishments of the evil pervert, Mortimer Fuck-butt? Stay tuned to this channel and find out right after these words from our sponsors.” He turned his back on Flap Le Beau.

“I have no doubt this thing will go off this scow, but can you get it back aboard all in one piece?”

Jake Grafton shouted back over his shoulder: “We’ll fly together or die together, Le Beau. None of that macho male bonding crap for hairy studs like us.”

The bosun — he didn’t have to say that. And it was a beautiful day, the sun glinting on the swells, the high, open sky, the gentle motion of the ship…

The plane would feel good in his hands, would do just as he willed it. She would respond so sweetly to the throttles and stick, would come down the groove into the wires so slick and honest…

As the sea wind played with his hair the pilot found himself feeling better.