The Intruders

4

Wings spread and locked, flaps and slats to takeoff, Roger the weight-board — it all came back without conscious thought as Jake followed the taxi director’s hand signals and moved the warplane toward the port bow catapult, Cat Two. Flap didn’t help — he didn’t say or do anything after getting the inertial aligned and flipping the radar switch to standby. He merely sat and watched Jake.

“Takeoff checklist,” Jake prompted.

“I thought you said you could fly this thing, Ace.”

Jake ran through the items on his own as he eased the plane the last few feet into the catapult shuttle and the hold-back bar dropped into place.

The yellow-shirt taxi director gave him the “release brakes” signal with one hand and with the other made a sweeping motion below his waist. This was the signal to the catapult operator to ease the shuttle forward with a hydraulic piston, taking all the slack out of the nose-wheel tow-launching mechanism. Jake felt the thunk as he released the brakes and pushed both throttles forward to the stops.

The engines came up nicely. RPM, exhaust gas temperatures, fuel flow — the tapes ran up the dials as the engines wound up.

The Intruder vibrated like a living thing as the engines sucked in rivers of air and slammed it out the exhausts.

“You ready?” Jake asked the bombardier as he wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the catapult grip while he braced the heel of the hand against the throttles.

“Onward and upward, Ace.”

The taxi director was pointing to the catapult officer, who was ten feet farther up the deck. The shooter was twirling his fingers and looking at Jake, waiting.

Oil pressure both engines — fine. Hydraulics — okay. Jake waggled the stick and checked the movement of the stabilator in his left-side rearview mirror on the canopy rail. Then he saluted the cat officer with his right hand. The shooter returned it and glanced up the cat track toward the bow as Jake put his head back into the headrest and placed his right hand behind the stick.

Now the cat officer lunged forward and touched the deck with his right hand.

One heartbeat, two, then the catapult fired. The acceleration was vicious.

Yeeeaaaah! and it was over, in about two and a half seconds. The edge of the bow swept under the nose and the plane was over the glittering sea.

Jake let the trim rotate the nose to eight degrees nose up as he reached for the gear handle. He slapped it up and swept his eyes across the instrument panel, taking in the attitude reference on the vertical display indicator — the VDI, the altimeter— eighty feet and going up, the rate of climb — positive, the airspeed—150 knots and accelerating, all warning lights out. He took in all these bits of information without conscious thought, just noted them somewhere in his subconscious, and put it all together as the airplane accelerated and climbed away from the ship.

With the gear up and locked, he raised the flaps and slats. Here they came. Still accelerating, he stopped the climb at five hundred feet and ran the nose trim down. Two hundred and fifty knots, 300, 350…still accelerating…

To his amusement he saw that Flap Le Beau was sitting upright in his ejection seat with his hands folded on his lap, just inches from the alternate ejection handle between his legs.

At 400 knots Jake eased the throttles back. Five miles coming up on the DME…and the pilot pulled the nose up steeply and dropped the left wing as he eased the throttles forward again. The plane leaped away from the ocean in a climbing turn. Jake scanned the sky looking for the plane that had preceded him on the cat by two minutes.

He had four thousand pounds of fuel — no, only three thousand now — to burn off before they called him down for his first landing, in about fifteen minutes.

Better make it last, Jake. Don’t squander it. He pulled the throttles back and coasted up to five thousand feet, where he leveled indicating 250 knots in a gentle turn that would allow him to orbit the ship on the five-mile circle.

Flap sighed audibly over the intercom, the ICS, then said, “Acceptable launch, Grafton. Acceptable. You obviously have done this once or twice and haven’t forgotten how. This pleases me. I get a warm fuzzy.”

There the major was, almost on the other side of the ship, level at this altitude and turning on the five-mile arc. Jake steepened his turn to cut across above the ship and rendezvous.

“I almost joined the Navy,” Flap confided, “but I came to my senses just in time and joined the Corps. It’s a real fighting outfit, the best in the world. The Navy…well, the best that can be said is that you guys try. Most of the time, anyway.”

He talked on as Jake got on the major’s bearing line and eased in some left rudder to lower the nose so he could see the major out the right-side quarter panel. Rendezvousing an A-6 with its side-by-side seating took some finesse when coming in on the lead’s left because the pilot of the joining aircraft could easily lose sight of the lead plane. If he let himself go just a little high, or if he let his plane fall a little behind the bearing line— going sucked, they called it — and attempted to pull back to the bearing, the lead would disappear under the wingman’s nose and he would be closing blindly. This was not good, a situation fraught with hazard for all concerned.

This morning Jake stayed glued to the bearing. If Flap noticed he gave no indication. He was saying, “… the closest I ever came to being in the Navy was the wife of some surface warrior I met at MCRD”—Marine Corps Recruit Depot—“O Club on a Friday night. She rubbed her tits all over my back and I told her she was going to give me zipper rash. She was all hot and randy so I thought, Why not. We went over to her place…”

When he was fifty feet away from the major’s plane Jake lowered the nose and crossed behind and under. He surfaced into parade position on the right side, the outside of the turn. The BN gave him a thumbs-up.

Jake’s BN talked on. “… I just put the ol’ cock to her…”

After a frequency shift that the major’s BN signaled and Jake had to dial in because Flap wasn’t helping at all, they made two more turns in the circle, then started down.

“She had those nipples that are like strawberries, you know what I mean? All puffed up so nice and sweet and red and they’re just made for sucking on? I like them the very best. Can’t understand why God didn’t equip more women with ’em. Only about one broad in ten has ’em. It’s a mystery.”

They were descending through patches of sunlight interspersed with shadow. The occasional golden shafts played on the planes and made the sea below glisten, when Jake could steal a second from holding position on the lead plane and glance down.

His plane handled well. Slick and tight and responsive. He contented himself with moving his plane a few inches forward on the lead, then a few inches back, staying in absolute control. When he felt comfortable he moved in on the bearing line so that the wing tips overlapped. He stopped when he could feel the downdraft off the lead’s wing and the tip was just two feet from his canopy. He held it there for a moment or two to prove to himself that he could still do it, then eased back out to where he belonged.

Flying is the best that life offers, Jake Grafton thought. And carrier flying is the best of the flying. These day traps and cat shots are going to be terrific. He fought back the sense of euphoria that suffused him.

“… as close as I ever came to being in the Navy, I’ll tell you that.”

If Flap would just shut up!

But he won’t. So no sense making a scene.

The two warplanes came up the ship’s wake at eight hundred feet glued together. There were already two other planes in the pattern with their gear and hooks down, two A-7 Corsairs, so the major delayed his break. Then the BN kissed him off and the major dumped his left wing and pulled. Jake watched the lead plane turn away as he counted to himself. At the count of seven he slammed the stick sideways and pulled as he reached for the gear handle with his left hand and slapped it down. Then the flaps.

Turning level, three G’s…gear coming, flaps and slats coming…seven thousand pounds of fuel.

Stable on the downwind he toggled the main dump and let seven hundred pounds squirt out into the atmosphere. He wanted to cross the ramp of the ship with precisely six grand.

Precision. That’s what carrier flying is all about. That’s the challenge. And the thrill.

“… just don’t see why anybody would want to float around in the middle of the ocean on these bird farms. Eight months of this fun. The Navy is full of happy masturbators…”

Hook up for the first pass, a touch-and-go. Let the LSO get his look and learn that I’m not suicidal.

Coming through the ninety, on speed, exactly 118 knots with a three-o’clock angle-of-attack…there’s the meatball on the Fresnel lens. Cross the wake, roll out, coming in to the angled deck, watch the lineup! There’s the burble from the island…power on then off fast. Keep that ball in the center…

The wheels smacked into the deck and the nose came down hard as Jack Grafton shoved the throttles to the stop and closed the wing-tip speed brakes with the throttle-mounted switch. The Intruder shot up the angled deck and ran off into the air. He brought the stick back and got her climbing.

“The amazing thing is that the Navy finds so many of you masturbators to ride these floating aviaries. You wouldn’t think there were this many jack-off artists in the whole world. Not if you just looked at the world casually. I mean, most people like their sex with somebody else, y’know? No doubt a lot of you guys are queer. Gotta be.”

On the downwind Jake lowered the hook and checked that his harness was locked. Normally he flew with it unlocked so that he could lean forward if he wished or wiggle in the ejection seat.

He toggled the seat up a smidgen and adjusted the rheostat that brightened the angle-of-attack indicator.

The interval between Jake and the major was good, and the major trapped on his first pass as Jake was reducing power at the 180-degree position. Down and turning, on speed, looking for the ball crossing the wake, wings level and reducing power, now power on for the burble, watching the lineup and flying that ball…

The Intruder swept across the ramp and slammed into the deck. As the throttles went forward the tailhook caught a wire and dragged the plane to a dead stop.

Then the plane began to roll backward. Jake jabbed the hookup button and added power to taxi out of the gear. The director was giving him the come ahead as Flap said, “The whole concept of having five thousand guys crammed together without women is unnatural. Everybody horny, jacking off in the shower, into their sheets — this boat is a floating semen factory! In nineteen seventy-three! My God, haven’t we humans made any progress in understanding man’s sexual needs in all these years of…”

Queued up waiting for Cat Two, checking the gear and flap settings, the fuel, then following the yellow shirt’s signals as he brought the plane into the shuttle — Jake was doing the things he knew how to do, the things that made the hassles worthwhile.

Throttles up…the salute — and wham, they were off to do it again. This time Jake left the gear and flaps down. He flew straight ahead upwind until the major passed him on the left going downwind.

Jake banked for the crosswind turn. The plane entered a shaft of sunlight and the warmth played on his arms and legs. Inside his oxygen mask Jake grinned broadly.

After four traps Jake was directed to fold his wings and stop near the carrier’s island with the engines running while the plane was refueled, a “hot” turnaround. He opened the canopy and took off his oxygen mask. His face was wet with sweat. He swabbed away the moisture and watched the planes making their approaches.

Flap Le Beau also sat watching, silent at last.

Heavenly silence. Except for the howl of jet engines at full power and the slam of the catapult and an occasional terse radio message. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier was the loudest place on earth, yet oh so pleasant without Flap’s drivel.

In a few minutes Jake had 6,500 pounds of fuel and gave the purple-shirted fuel crew the cut sign, a slice of the hand across his throat. Mask on, canopy closed, parking brake off, engage nose-wheel steering and goose the throttles a smidgen to follow the director’s signals. Now into the queue waiting for the cat…

All too soon it was over. Jake had the ten day traps the law required and was once more day qualified as a carrier pilot. He shut the plane down on the porch near Elevator Four and climbed down to the deck still wearing his helmet. After a few words with the plane captain, he descended a ladder to the catwalk, then went down into the first passageway leading into the 0–3 level, the deck under the flight deck.

Flap Le Beau was behind him.

“You did okay out there this morning, Ace,” Flap commented.

“You didn’t.” Jake stopped and faced the bombardier-navigator.

“Say again?”

“I got an eighty-year-old grandmother who could have done a better job in the right seat than you did today.”

“Kiss my chocolate ass, Ace. I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“You’re going to get it. You flew with me. I expect a BN to help me fly the plane, to act as a safety observer at all times, to read the checklists.”

“I just wanted to see if you could—”

“I can! While you were sitting there with your thumb up your butt and boring me to tears with the story of your miserable life, you could have been checking out the computer and radar for the debrief. You never even brought the radar out of standby! Don’t ever pull that stunt again.”

Flap put his face just inches from Grafton’s. “I ain’t taking any shit from the Navy, swabbie. We’d better get that straightened out here and now.”

“Le Beau, I don’t know if you’re senior to me or I’m senior to you and I really don’t give a rat’s ass which way it is. But in that cockpit I’m the aircraft commander. You’re going to do a solid, professional job — there ain’t no two ways about it. If you don’t, your career in the grunts is gonna go down the crap-per real damn quick. You won’t be able to catch it with a swan dive.”

Flap opened his mouth to reply, but Jake Grafton snarled, “Don’t push it.” With that he turned and stalked away, leaving Flap Le Beau staring at his back.

When Jake was out of sight Flap grinned. He nodded several times and rubbed his hand through his hair, fluffing his Afro.

“Flap, my man, this one’s gonna do,” he said. “He’s gonna do fine.” And he laughed softly to himself.

Jake was seated in the back of the ready room filling out the maintenance forms on the airplane when the air wing landing signal officer, the LSO, and the A-6 squadron LSO came in. The A-6 guy Jake knew. He was an East Coast Navy pilot who had been shanghaied like Jake to provide the Marines with “experience.” His name was McCoy and by some miracle, he was Jake’s new roommate. If he had a first name Jake didn’t learn it last night, when the LSO came in drunk, proclaimed himself to be the Real McCoy, and collapsed into his bunk facedown.

“Grafton,” the senior air wing LSO said, consulting his notes, “you did okay.” His name was Hugh Skidmore. “Touch-and-go was an OK, then nine OKs and one fair. All three wires. You’re gonna wear out that third wire, fella.”

Jake was astonished. OKs were perfect passes, and he thought he had five or six good ones, but nine? To cover his astonishment and pleasure, he said gruffly, “A fair? You gave me a fair? What pass was that?”

Skidmore examined his book again, then snapped it shut. “Seventh one. While you were turning through the ninety the captain put the helm over chasing the wind and you went low. You were a little lined up left, too.” He shrugged, then grinned. “Try a bit harder next time, huh?”

Skidmore went off to debrief the major but McCoy lingered. “Geez, Real, you guys sure are tough graders.”

“Better get your act together, Roomie.”

“What did you do to rate a tour with the Marines? Piss in a punch bowl?”

“Something like that,” the Real McCoy said distractedly, then wandered off.

After lunch Jake went to his stateroom to unpack. He had gotten the bulk of his gear on hangars or folded when McCoy came in, tossed his Mickey Mouse ears on his desk, and collapsed onto his bunk.

“I threw a civilian through a plate glass window,” Jake told the LSO. “Just what did you do?”

McCoy sighed and opened his eyes. He focused on Grafton. “I suppose you’ll tell this all over the boat.”

“Try me.”

“Well, I made too much money. I got to talking about it with the guys. Then I had the Admin guys draft up a letter of resignation. Before I could get it submitted the skipper called me in. He said a rich bastard like me could just count his money out on the big gray boat.”

“Too much money? I never heard of such a thing. Did you loot the coffee mess?”

“Naw. Nothing like that.” McCoy sat up. He rubbed his face. “Naw. I just got to playing the market.”

“What market?”

“The market.” When he saw the expression on Jake’s face, he exclaimed, “Jesus H. Christ! The stock market.”

“I never knew anybody who owned stock.”

“Oh, for the love of…” McCoy stretched out and sighed.

“Well, how much money did you make, anyway?”

“You’re going to tell every greasy asshole on this ship, Grafton. It’s written all over your simple face.”

“No, I won’t. Honest. How much?”

McCoy regarded his new roommate dolefully. Finally he said, “Well, I managed to save about sixteen thousand in the last five years, and I’ve parlayed that into a hundred twenty-two thousand three hundred and thirty-nine dollars. As of the close of business in New York yesterday, anyway. No way of knowing what the market did today, of course.”

“Of course,” Jake agreed, suitably impressed. He whistled as he thought about $122,000, then said, “Say, I got a couple grand saved up. Maybe you could help me invest it.”

“That’s what got me shipped out here with these jarheads! All the guys in the ready room wanted investment advice. Everybody was reading the Wall Street Journal and talking about interest rates and P/E ratios and how many cars Chrysler was gonna sell. The skipper blew a gasket.”

McCoy shook his head sadly. “Ah well, it’s all water under the keel. Can’t do nothing about it now, I guess.” He looked again at Jake. “Tell me about this guy you threw through the window.”

When they had exhausted that subject, Jake wanted to know about the officers in the squadron.

“Typical Marines” was the Real’s verdict, spoken with an air of resigned authority since he had been with this crowd for three whole weeks. “Seems like three months. This is going to be the longest tour of my life.”

“So how many are combat vets?”

“Everyone in the squadron, except for the three or four nuggets, did at least one tour in ‘Nam. Maybe half of them did two or more. And six or eight of them did tours as platoon leaders in Vietnam before they went to flight school. Your BN, Le Beau? He was in Marine Recon.”

Grafton was stunned. Le Beau? The San Diego cocksman? “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I shit you not. Recon. Running around behind enemy lines eating snake meat, doing ambushes and assassinations. Yeah. That’s Le Beau, all right. He’s a legend in the Corps. Got more chest cabbage than Audie Murphy. He ain’t playing with a full deck.”

Jake Grafton’s face grew dark as he recalled Flap’s rambling cockpit monologue. And that aura of bumbling incompetence that he exuded all morning!

Seeing the look, McCoy continued, “God only knows why the Marines made him a BN. He went back to Vietnam in A-6s. Punched out twice, the first time on final to DaNang. Walked through the main gate carrying his parachute and seat pan. The second time, though, was something else. His pilot got his head blown off and Le Beau ejected somewhere near the Laotian border. Maybe in Laos or Cambodia — I don’t know. Anyway, nobody heard anything. Just nothing, although they looked and looked hard. Then seventeen days or so later a patrol stumbled onto him out in the jungle in the middle of nowhere. He was running around buck naked, covered with mud and leaves, carrying nothing but a knife. Was busy ambushing the gomers and gutting them. They brought him back with a whole collection of gomer weapons that he had stashed.”

From the look on Grafton’s face, McCoy could see that he was not a happy man.

“That ain’t the amazing part, Jake,” the Real McCoy continued. “The amazing part is that Le Beau didn’t want to get rescued. Two guys have told me this, so I’m assuming that there’s something to it. He didn’t want to come back because he was having too much fun. The grunts on that patrol almost had to tie him up.”

“Why me, Lord?”

“His last pilot didn’t cut the mustard,” McCoy continued, “not to Le Beau’s way of thinking. Was having his troubles getting aboard. Oh, he wasn’t dangerous, but he was rough, couldn’t seem to get a feel for the plane in the groove at night. He might have come around, then again he might not have. He didn’t get the chance. Le Beau went to the skipper and the skipper went to CAG and before you could whisper ‘Semper Fi’ the guy was transferred.”

“Le Beau did that?”

“Whatever it takes to make it in the Corps, that dick-head has it. He just got selected for promotion to major. Everyone treats him with deference and respect. Makes my stomach turn. Wait till you see these tough old gunnies — they talk to him like they were disciples talking to Jesus. If he lives he’s going to be the commandant someday, mark my words.”

“Strangers in a strange land,” Jake murmured, referring to himself and McCoy.

“Something like that,” the Real agreed. He pulled off his steel-toed flight boots and tossed them carelessly on the floor. “This tour is going to be an adventure,” he added sourly.

“Uh-huh.”

“We’ve got an all-officers meeting in the ready room in about an hour. I’m going to get fourteen winks. Wake me up, huh?”

“Okay.”

McCoy turned over in his bunk and was soon breathing deeply.

Jake snapped off the overhead light, leaving only his desk lamp lit, the little ten-watt glow worm. He tilted his chair back against McCoy’s steel foot locker and put his feet up on his desk.

Thinking about Le Beau, he snorted once, but his thoughts soon drifted on to Callie. The gentle motion of the ship had a tranquilizing effect. After a few moments his head tilted forward and sleep overcame him.

The skipper of the squadron was Lieutenant Colonel Richard Haldane. He was a short, barrel-chested, ramrod-straight man with close-cropped black hair that showed flecks of gray. In this closed community of military professionals his bearing and his demeanor marked him as an officer entitled to respect. He took Jake aside after the all-officers meeting — boring administrative details in a crowded, stuffy room filled with strangers— and asked him to sit in the chair beside him.

Haldane had Jake’s service record on his lap. “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night, Mr. Grafton, but welcome aboard. We’re glad to have someone with your carrier experience.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“We’re going to assign you to the Operations Department. I think your experience will be the most help to us there.”

“Yessir.”

“During this transit to Hawaii, I want you to put together a series of lectures from CV NATOPS.” CV NATOPS was the bible on carrier operations. The acronym stood for fixed-wing carrier naval air training and operation procedures. “We’ve been through it several times while working up for this deployment,” Colonel Haldane continued, “but I’d like for you to lead us through the book again in detail. I want you to share with us everything you know about A-6 carrier operations. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Richard Haldane nodded his head a millimeter. Even sitting down he exuded a command presence. Jake sat a little straighter in his chair.

“I see from your record that you have plenty of combat experience, but it’s experience of the same type that most of the officers in this room have had — bombing targets ashore.”

“Single-plane day and night raids, some section stuff, and Alpha strikes, sir, plus a whole hell of a lot of tanker flights.”

“Unfortunately our combat experience won’t do us much good if we go to war with the Soviets, who are our most likely opponent.”

This remark caught Jake by surprise. He tried to keep his face deadpan as Haldane continued: “Our part in a war with the Russians will probably involve a fleet action, our ships against their ships. Mr. Grafton, how would you attack a Soviet guided-missile frigate?”

Jake opened his mouth, then closed it again. He scratched his head. “I don’t know, sir,” he said at last. The truth was he had never once even thought about it. The Vietnam War was in full swing when he was going through flight training, when he transitioned into A-6s, and during his three years in a fleet squadron. The targets were all onshore.

“Any ideas?”

Jake bit his lip. He was the naval officer and he was being asked a question about naval air warfare that in truth he should know something about. But he didn’t. He decided to admit it. “Sir, I think the answer to that question would depend on a careful analysis of a Soviet frigate’s missile and flak envelope, and to be frank, I have never done that or seen the results of anybody else’s look. I suspect the Air Intelligence guys have that stuff under lock and key.”

“So what weapons does a Soviet frigate carry?”

Jake squirmed. “Colonel, I don’t know.”

Haldane nodded once, slowly, and looked away. “I would like for you to study this matter, Mr. Grafton. When you think you have an answer to the question, come see me.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“That’s all. Good luck tonight.”

“Thank you, sir.” Jake rose and walked away, mortified. Well, hell, the stuff he had spent his career attacking was all mud-based. Of course he should know about ships, but…

What Haldane must think — a naval officer who doesn’t know diddly-squat about naval warfare!

Congratulations, Jake. You just got your tour with the Marines off to a great start.