The Intruders

5

There was still a little splotch of light in the western sky and a clearly discernible horizon when Jake Grafton taxied toward the catapult that evening. This first shot would be a “pinky,” without severe sweat. He needed six landings to attain his night qualification, which meant after this twilight shot there would be five more…in stygian darkness. A pinky first one was just dandy with him.

He carefully scanned the evening sky. The cloud cover was almost total, with the only holes toward the west, and low, maybe seven or eight thousand feet. Wind still out of the northwest, but stiffer than this morning. That was good. Tonight the ship could steam slower into the wind and yet still have the optimum thirty knots of wind over the deck. Since every mile upwind took her farther from the coast and the airfields ashore, the fewer of those miles the better.

Car quals are always goat-ropes, Jake thought, something going wrong sooner or later, so there is at least a fifty-fifty chance I’ll have to divert ashore once tonight. And if my luck is in, maybe spend the night in the Alameda BOQ, call Callie…

No matter how long you’ve been ashore, after a half hour back aboard one of these gray tubs you’re tired, hungry and horny. No way to cure the horniness, but a night ashore in a real bed would work wonders on the other syndromes, with real food and a long, hot shower and Callie’s voice on the phone—

His reverie was interrupted by Flap Le Beau’s voice on the intercom system, the ICS. “Don’t do nothin’ cute tonight, huh? My internal table ain’t so stable when we’re out here flyin’ through black goo.”

“You and Muhammed Ali. How about laying off the monologue. When I want comedy I watch TV.”

“Golden silence to practice your pilot gig. You got it. Just fly like an angel flitting toward paradise.”

“You do the radio frequency changes and I’ll do the transmissions, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Takeoff checklist,” Jake said, and Flap began reading off the items. Jake checked each item and gave the appropriate response.

And soon they were taxiing toward the cat. Automatically Jake leaned forward and tugged hard on the VDI, the televisionlike display in the center of the instrument panel that functioned as the primary attitude reference. It was tight, just as it should be.

“Flashlight on the backup gyro, please,” Jake said to Flap, who already had it in his hand. If both generators dropped off the line, the little gyro would continue to provide good attitude information for about thirty seconds, long enough for Jake to deploy the ram-air turbine, called the RAT, an emergency wind-driven generator.

Of course a double generator failure was rare, and if it happened on a launch with a discernible horizon there wouldn’t be a problem. Yet on a coal black night…and all nights at sea were coal black. Jake Grafton well knew that emergencies were quirky — they only happened at the worst possible time, the time when you least expected one and could least afford it. Then you would have to entertain two or three.

The A-7 on the cat in front of Jake was having a problem with the nose-tow apparatus. A small conference was convening around the nose wheel, but nothing obvious seemed to be happening.

Jake looked again at the sky. Darkening fast.

Automatically he reviewed what he would do if he got a cold cat shot — if the catapult failed to give him sufficient end speed to fly. From there he moved into engine failure. He fingered the emergency jettison button, caressed the throttles and felt behind him for the RAT handle. Every motion would have to be quick and sure — no fumbling, no trying to remember exactly what he had to do — he must just do it instinctively and correctly.

They were still screwing with the A-7. Come on, guys!

He felt frustrated, entitled to a pinky. These guys had better get with the program or this shot will be like being blasted blindfolded into a coal bin at midnight.

“Gettin’ pretty dark,” Flap commented, to Jake’s disgust. The pilot squirmed in his seat as he eyed the meeting of the board under the Corsair’s nose.

“Why did you stay in the Navy anyway?”

What a cracker this Le Beau is! “I eat this shit with a spoon,” Grafton replied testily.

“Yeah, I can see you’re loving this. Me, I’m too stupid to make it on the outside. It’s the Marines or starve. But you seem smarter than me, so I wondered.”

“Put a cork in it, will ya?”

Jake smacked the instrument panel with his fist and addressed the dozen men milling around the Corsair: “For Christ’s sake, let’s shoot it or get it off the cat. We gonna dick around till the dawn’s early light?”

And here came Bosun Muldowski, striding down the deck, gesturing angrily. “Off the cat. Get it off.”

And it happened. The Corsair came off the cat and Jake eased the Intruder on. Into the hold-back, the thump as the shuttle was moved forward hydraulically, off the brakes and full power, cat grip up, cycle the controls, check the flaps and slats, now the engine gauges…

Time to go.

Jake flipped on the external lights, the nighttime equivalent of the salute to the cat officer. He placed his head back into the rest, just in time to catch Flap giving Muldowski the bird.

Wham!

As the G’s slammed them back into their seats Jake roared into the ICS: “Yeeeeoooow,” and then they were airborne. A pinky! All right! Not very pink, but pink enough.

Engines pulling, all warning lights out, eight degrees nose up — his eyes took it all in automatically as he reached for the gear handle and slapped it up.

With the gear coming, the bird accelerating nicely, the pilot keyed the radio transmitter: “War Ace Five One One airborne.”

“Roger, Five One One,” the departure controller said from his seat in front of a large radar screen in Air Ops, deep in the bowels of the ship. “Climb straight ahead to six thousand, then hold on the One Three Five radial at sixteen miles. Your push at One Seven after the hour.”

“Five Eleven, straight up to Six, then hold on the One Three Five at Sixteen.” Jake moved his left thumb from the radio transmit button to the ICS key and opened his mouth. He wanted to say something snotty to Flap about the gesture to the bosun, but the bombardier beat him to the switch.

“Hey, I damn near ejected on the cat stroke. What in hell was that squall you gave back there?”

“You damn fool! I came within a gnat’s eyelash of punching out. I coulda drowned! If I got run over by the boat you wouldn’t be so damn happy. Yelling on the ICS like a wildcat with a hot poker up your ass — that’s the stupidest thing I ever…”

Jake Grafton waited until the flaps and slats were safely in, then he reached over and jerked the plug on Flap’s mask.

Silence. Blessed silence.

Damn you, Tiny Dick Donovan. Damn you all to hell.

The night quickly enveloped them. The world ended at the canopy glass. Oh, the wing-tip lights gave a faint illumination, but Jake would have had to turn his head to see them on the tips of the swept wings, and he wasn’t doing much head turning just now. Now he was flying instruments, making the TACAN needle go where it was supposed to, holding the rate-of-climb needle motionless, making the compass behave, keeping his wings level. All this required intense concentration. After five minutes of it he decided enough was enough and reached for the autopilot switch. It refused to engage.

Maybe the circuit breaker’s popped. He felt the panel between him and the bombardier. Nope. All breakers in.

He punched the altitude-hold button three more times and swore softly to himself.

Okay, so I hand fly this monument to Marine maintenance, this miraculous Marine Corps flying pig.

He hit the holding fix, sixteen miles on the One Three Five radial, and did a teardrop entry. Established inbound he pulled the throttles back until he was showing only two thousand pounds of fuel flow per hour on each engine. This fuel flow would soon give him 220 knots indicated, he knew from experience, the plane’s maximum conserve airspeed. Would as soon as the speed bled off.

Hit the fix, start the clock, turn left. Go around and around with the tailhook up, because this first one is a touch-and-go, a practice bolter.

The second time he approached the fix the symbology on the VDI came alive and gave him heading commands from the plane’s onboard computer. Flap. He glanced over. The BN had his head against the black hood that shielded the radar scope and was twiddling knobs. Sure enough, the mileage readout corresponded with the TACAN DME, or distance measuring equipment.

“You plugged in?” Jake asked.

“Yep.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“No sweat.”

“Autopilot’s packed it in.”

“I noticed.”

Just like an old married couple, here in the intimacy of a night cockpit. There are worse places, Jake thought, than this world of dials and gauges and glowing little red lights. Worse places…

At exactly seventeen minutes after the hour he hit the fix for the third time, popped the speed brakes and lowered the nose. This was the pushover. The A-7 that had been holding at five thousand feet was inbound in front of them a minute earlier.

Jake keyed the mike: “Five One One is inbound at One Seven, state Seven Point Six.”

“Roger, War Ace Five One One. Continue.”

At five thousand feet Jake shallowed his descent as Flap called on the radio: “Five One One, Platform.”

“Roger, Five One One. Switch button One Seven.”

Flap changed the radio frequency. Jake watched the TACAN needle carefully and made heading corrections as necessary to stay on the final bearing inbound. Soon he was level at 1,200 feet, inbound. At ten miles he dropped the gear and flaps. This slowed the plane still more. He checked the gear and flap indications and soon was stabilized at 120 knots. Flap read the landing checklist and Jake rogered each item.

Seventy-five hundred pounds of fuel. He toggled the main dump and let a thousand pounds bleed overboard into the atmosphere. If this worked out, he should cross the ramp with exactly six thousand pounds remaining, the maximum fuel load for an arrested landing.

Jake adjusted the rheostat on the angle-of-attack indexer, a small arrangement of lights on the left canopy bow in front of him. These lights indicated his airspeed, now a smidgen fast. One hundred eighteen knots was the speed he wanted, so he eased off a touch of throttle, then eased it back on. The indexer came to an on-speed indication. He checked his airspeed indicator. Exactly 118. Okay.

There — way out there — the ship! It appeared in the dark universe as a small collection of white and red lights, not yet distinguishable as to shape. Oh, now he could see the outline of the landing area, and the red drop lights down the stern that gave him his lineup cues. The ball on the left side of the landing area that would give him his glide slope was not yet visible.

The final approach controller was talking: “Five One One, approaching the glide slope, call your needles.”

The needles the controller was referring to were crosshairs in a cockpit instrument that was driven by a computer aboard the ship. The computer contrasted the radar-derived position of the aircraft with the known location of the glide slope and centerline. It then sent a radio signal to a box in the aircraft, which positioned the needles to depict the glideslope and centerline. The system was called ACLS, automatic carrier landing system, and someday it would indeed be automatic. Right now it was just the needles. Jake had to fly the plane.

“Down and right.”

“Disregard. You’re low and slightly left…Five One One, slightly below glide slope, lined up slightly left. Come a little right for lineup, on glide path…on glide path…”

At the on-glide path call Jake squeezed out the speed brakes and concentrated intently on his instruments. He had to set and hold a six-hundred-foot rate of descent, hold heading, hold airspeed, keep the wings level and this plane coming down just so delicately so.

“I’ve got a ball,” Flap told him at two miles.

The controller: “Left of course. Come right.”

The pilot made the correction, then glanced ahead. Yes, he could tell from the drop lights he was left. When he was properly lined up again he took out most of the correction. Still his nose was pointed slightly right of the landing area. This correction was necessary since the wind was not precisely down the angled deck, which was pointed ten degrees left of the ship’s keel. Except for an occasional glance ahead, he stayed on the gauges.

“Five One One, three-quarter mile, call the ball.”

Now Jake glanced out the windshield. There’s the meatball, centered between the green datum lights. Lineup looks good too. Jake keyed the mike and said, “Five One One, Intruder ball, Six Point Oh.”

“Roger, ball. Looking good.” That was the LSO on the fan-tail, Skidmore.

The ball moved in relation to the green reference or datum lights that were arranged in a horizontal line. When the yellow “meatball” in the center moved up, you were above glide path. When it appeared below the reference line, you were low. If you were too low, the ball turned red, blood red, a stark prophecy of your impending doom if you didn’t immediately climb higher on the glide slope. The back end of the ship, the ramp, lurked in red ball country, waiting to smash a plane to bits.

Yet as critical as proper glide slope control was, lineup was even more so. The landing area was 115 feet wide, the wing span of the A-6, 52. The edges of the landing area were defined by foul lines, and aircraft were parked with their noses abutting the foul lines on both sides of the deck. Landing aircraft were literally sinking into a canyon between parked airplanes.

And Jake had to monitor his airspeed carefully. The angle-of-attack indexer helped enormously here, arranged as it was where he could see it as he flew the lineup and glide slope cues. Any deviation from an on-speed indication required his immediate attention because it would quickly affect his descent rate, thereby screwing up his control of the ball. Running out of airspeed at the ramp was a sin that had killed many a naval aviator.

Meatball, lineup, angle-of-attack — as he closed the ship Jake’s eyes were in constant motion checking these three items. Nearing the ship he dropped the angle-of-attack from his scan and concentrated on keeping properly lined up, with a centered ball. As he crossed the ramp he zeroed in on the meatball, flying it to touchdown.

The wheels hit and the nose slammed down. Jake Grafton thumbed the speed brakes in as he smoothly and quickly shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The LSO was on the radio shouting “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” just in case he forgot to advance the throttles or to positively rotate to a flying attitude as he shot off the edge of the angled deck.

Jake didn’t forget. The engines were at full song as the Intruder left the deck behind and leaped back into the blackness of the night. Jake eased the stick back until he had ten degrees nose up and checked for a positive rate of climb. Going up. Gear up. Accelerating through 185 knots, flaps and slats up.

Now to get those six traps.

The radar controller leveled him at 1,200 feet and turned him to the downwind heading, the reciprocal of the ship’s course. He was stable at 220 knots. Jake reached for the hook handle and pulled it. Hook down.

The controller turned him so that he had an eight-mile groove, which was nice. As soon as the wings were level he dropped the gear and flaps. Once again he concentrated intently on airspeed and altitude control, nailing the final bearing on the TACAN, retrimming until the plane flew itself with only the tiniest of inputs to the stick to counter the natural swirls and currents of the air. This was precision flying, where any sloppiness could prove instantly fatal.

“Five One One, approaching glide slope…Five One One, up and on glide slope…three-quarters of a mile, call the ball.”

“Five One One, Intruder ball, Five Point Six.”

Deep in the heart of the ship in Air Ops, a sailor wearing headphones wrote “5.6” in yellow grease pencil on the Plexi-glas board in front of him and the time beside the notation that said “Grafton, 511.” He wrote backward, so the letters and numbers read properly to the air officer, the air wing commander, and the other observers who were sitting silently on the other side of the board watching the television monitors and occasionally glancing at the board.

Just now the picture on the monitors was from a camera buried on the landing centerline of the flight deck, which pointed aft up the glide slope. As they watched the officers saw the lights of Jake’s A-6 appear on the center of the screen, in the center of the crosshairs that indicated the proper glide slope and lineup. As the plane closed the ship the lights assumed more definition.

Up in the top of the carrier’s island superstructure was Pri-Fly, the domain of the air boss. His little empire was pretty quiet just now since all the air traffic was being controlled via radar and radio from Air Ops, but two enlisted men behind the boss’s chair were busy. One held a pair of binoculars focused up the glide slope. He saw the approaching Intruder, identified it, and chanted, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.” Regardless of a plane’s fuel state, the arresting gear was always set at the maximum trap weight, in the case of the A-6, 36,000 pounds.

To his left, the other sailor made a note in his log and repeated into a sound-powered phone that hung from his chest, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.”

The air boss, a senior commander, sat in a raised easy chair surrounded by large bullet-proof glass windows. He could hear the radio transmissions and the litany of the sailors behind him, and noted subconsciously that they agreed with what his eyes, and the approach controller, were telling him, that there was an A-6 on the ball, an A-6 with a maximum trap weight of 36,000 pounds.

Under the after end of the flight deck in the arresting gear engine rooms, all four of them, sat sailors on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit. Each individually spun a wheel to mechanically set the metering orifice of his arresting gear engine to 36,000 pounds, then they sang out in turn, “One set Three Six Zero A-6.” “Two set Three Six Zero A-6,” and so on.

When the fourth and last engine operator had reported his engine set, the talker in Pri-Fly sang out, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6,” and the air boss rogered.

On the fantail of the ship directly aft of the island, on the starboard side of the landing area in a catwalk on the edge of the deck, stood the sailor who retracted the arresting gear engines once they had been engaged. He too was on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit, and when the fourth engine reported set, he shouted to the arresting gear officer who stood above him on the deck, right on the starboard foul line, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6.”

The gear officer looked up the glide slope. Yep, it was an A-6. He glanced forward up the deck. The landing area was clear. No aircraft protruded over the foul lines, there were no people in the landing area, so he squeezed a trigger switch on the pistol grip he held in his right hand.

This switch operated a stop-light affair arranged twenty feet or so aft of the landing signal officer’s platform on the port side of the landing area. The LSO waving tonight, Hugh Skidmore, saw the red light go out and a green light appear.

“Clear deck,” he called, and the other LSOs on the platform echoed the call.

“Clear deck!”

This entire evolution had taken about fifteen seconds. The ship was ready to recover the inbound A-6. Now if Jake Grafton could just fly his plane into that little sliver of sky that would give him a three wire…

He was trying. He was working the stick and throttles, playing them delicately, when he slammed into the burble of air disturbed by the ship’s island. The plane jolted and he jammed on some power, then as quickly pulled it off as he cut through the turbulence into the calm air over the ramp. On he came, aiming for that eighteen-inches-thick window where the third wire waited, coming in at 118 knots in an eighteen-ton plane, the hook dangling down behind the main gear, coming in…

Hugh Skidmore strode about five feet into the landing area, inboard of the LSO’s platform. Against his ear he held a telephonelike radio headset connected with the ship’s radios by a long cord. Forward of the LSO’s platform was a television monitor, the PLAT — pilot landing assistance television — which he checked occasionally to ensure the plane in the groove was properly lined up. He could hear the approach controller and he could hear and talk to Jake Grafton. Yet there was nothing to say. The A-6 was coming in like it was riding rails.

Then it was there, crossing the ramp.

Jake still had a steady centered yellow ball as the wheels smashed home. The ball shot off the top of the lens as he slammed the throttles to the stops and the hook caught, seemingly all at the same time. The deceleration threw the pilot and bombardier forward into their harnesses.

The A-6 Intruder was jerked to a halt in a mere two hundred and sixty feet.

It hung quivering on the end of the arresting gear wire, then Jake got the engines back to idle and the rebound of the wire pulled the plane backward.

The gear runner was already twenty feet out into the landing area signaling the pilot with his wands: hook up. When he saw the aircraft’s tailhook being retracted, the runner waved one of his wands in a huge circle, the signal to the arresting gear operator in the fantail catwalk to retract the engine.

Obediently the operator selected the lever for number-three engine and pulled it down. Since the lever was connected by a wire over three hundred feet long to a hydraulic actuating valve on the engine, this pull took some muscle. When he had the yard-long lever well away from the bulkhead, the sailor leaped on it with his feet and used the entire weight of his body to force the lever down to a ninety-degree angle.

By now the A-6 that had just landed was folding its wings as it taxied out of the landing area. By the time the tail crossed the foul line, the third engine operator said “battery,” and the retract man got off the lever and let it come back to its rest position. As he did he heard the Pri-Fly talker sing out, “Set Two Seven Zero A-7.”

On the LSO platform Hugh Skidmore leaned over to his writer, tonight the Real McCoy. “Give him an OK three. Little lined up left at the start.”

McCoy scribbled the notation in his pocket logbook like this: 511 OK3 (LLATS).

Then both men turned their full attention to the A-7 in the groove as they waited for the clear-deck light to illuminate.

The second cat shot, into a sky as black as the ace of spades, went well. Jake leveled at 1,200 feet and turned downwind, as directed by the controller. He held 250 knots until the controller told him to dirty up, which he did at the same time he told Jake to turn base. So Grafton was turning as he changed configuration — slowing, retrimming and trying to maintain a precise altitude, all at the same time. He lost a hundred feet, a fact that Flap instantly commented upon.

Jake said. nothing, merely kept flying his plane. This is the big leagues. Gotta do it all here and do it well. Flap has a right to comment.

A short, tight pattern left him still searching for a good steady start when he hit the glide slope. The secret to a good pass is a good start, and Jake didn’t have it. He wasn’t carrying enough power and that caused a settle. By the time he was back up to a centered ball he was fast, which he was working off when he hit the burble. He added power. Not quite enough. The ball was a tad low when the wheels hit the deck.

“A fair two-wire,” he told Flap as they rolled out.

Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) Third Class Johnny Arbogast enjoyed his work. He operated the number-three arresting gear engine, the one that got the most traps and therefore required the most maintenance. Still, Johnny Arbogast loved that engine.

During a slow, rainy day in port this past spring, the gear chief had worked out how much energy an engine absorbed while trapping an F-4 Phantom. The figure was nine million foot-pounds, as Johnny recalled. Nine million of anything is a lot, but man! Those planes make this engine sing.

Any way you cut it, an arresting gear engine was one hell of a fine piece of machinery. And Johnny Arbogast was the guy who ran Columbia’s number three, which was pretty darn good, he thought, for a plumber’s kid from Cotulla, Texas, who had had to struggle for everything he ever got.

The engine consisted of a giant hydraulic piston inside a steel cylinder about thirty inches in diameter that was arranged parallel with the ship’s beam. Almost fifty feet in length, the cylinder containing the piston sat inside a large steel frame. Around the piston were reeved two twelve-hundred-foot strands of arresting gear cable, one-and-five-eighths-inch-thick wire rope made of woven steel threads. These two cables ran repeatedly around sheaves at the head and foot of the main piston and squeezed it as the aircraft pulled out the flight deck pennant above Johnny’s head. It was the metering of the fluid squeezed by the piston from the cylinder — pure ethylene glycol, or antifreeze — through an adjustable orifice that controlled the rate at which the aircraft was arrested. Johnny set the size of this orifice for each arrestment as ordered by the talker in Pri-Fly.

To maintain proper tension on the engine cable as the aircraft on the flight deck was pulling it out, two anchor dampners that held the bitter ends of each cable stroked simultaneously. These fifty-foot-long pistons inside cylinders about twelve inches in diameter pulled slack cable off the back, or idle, side of the engine, thereby keeping the wire taut throughout the system.

When he first reported aboard Columbia, the arresting gear chief had impressed Johnny with a story about an anchor dampner that sheared its restraining nut during an arrestment. The suddenly free dampner, as big as a telephone pole, was forcibly whipped through the aluminum bulkhead of the engine room into the 0-3-level passageway where it cut a sailor on his way to chow sloppily in half. The running cable whipped the dampner like a scythe. It sliced through a dozen officers’ stateroom bulkheads as if they were so much tissue paper. When the dampner had accomplished a 180-degree turn, it reentered the engine room and skewered the engine like a mighty spear, exploding sheaves and showering the room, and the operator, with sharp, molten-hot metal fragments. All this took place in about a second and a half. Fortunately the plane on the flight deck was successfully arrested before the now-unanchored cable could run completely off the engine, but the engine room was a shambles and the operator went to the hospital with critical injuries.

As a result of this little story, Johnny Arbogast developed a habit of running his eyes over the anchor dampners after each arrestment. Tonight, after setting the engine to receive an A-6, he saw something that he had never before seen. As the anchor dampners stroked back into battery after the last engagement, the steel cable on one of them had kinked about six inches out from the connecting socket that held the bitter end of the cable to the dampner piston.

A kink, like a kink in a garden hose.

Johnny Arbogast stared, not quite sure his eyes could be believed.

Yep, a kink.

If this engine takes a hit, that cable could break, right there at the kink!

Johnny fumbled with the mouthpiece of the sound-powered phone unit hanging on his chest. He pushed the talk button and blurted, “Three’s foul. Three’s not ready.’

“What?” This from the deck-edge operator, who had already told the arresting gear officer that all the engines were set. And he had delivered this message over a half minute ago, maybe even a minute.

“Three’s not ready,” Johnny Arbogast howled into his mouthpiece. “Foul deck!”

And then Johnny did what any sensible man would have done: he tore off the sound-powered headset and ran for his life.

Up on the fantail catwalk the deck-edge operator shouted at the arresting gear officer, “Three’s not ready.”

The gear officer was still standing on the starboard foul line on the flight deck and he didn’t hear what the operator said. He eyed the A-6 in the groove and bent toward the sailor, who was also looking over his shoulder at the approaching plane, now almost at the ramp.

“Foul deck,” the sailor roared above the swelling whine of the engines of the approaching plane.

The gear officer’s reaction was automatic. He released the trigger on the pistol grip he held in his hand and shouted, “What the hell is wrong?”

Across the landing area on the LSO’s platform the green “ready deck” light went out and the red “foul deck” light came on.

Hugh Skidmore was looking intently at the A-6 Intruder almost at the ramp when he saw the red light on the edge of his peripheral vision. He was faced with an instant decision. He had no way of knowing why the deck was foul — he only knew that it was. A plane may have rolled into the landing area, a man may have wandered into the unsafe zone…any one of a hundred things could have gone wrong and all one hundred were bad.

So Hugh Skidmore squeezed the red button on the pistol grip he held in his hand, triggering a bank of flashing red lights mounted above the meatball. At the same time he roared into his radio-telephone, “Wave-off, wave-off.”

The flashing wave-off lights and the radio message imprinted themselves on Jake Grafton’s brain at the same time. His reaction was automatic. The throttles went full forward as he thumbed in the speed brakes and the control stick came aft.

Unfortunately jet engines do not provide instantaneous power as piston engines do: the revs can build only as fast as the burners can handle the increasing fuel flow, which is me-tered through a fuel control unit to prevent flooding the engine and flaming it out. And power builds with revs. Tonight the back stick and the gradually increasing engine power flattened the A-6’s descent, then stopped it… four feet above the deck.

The howling warplane crossed the third wire with its nose well up, boards in, engines winding to full screech, but with its tailhook dangling.

From his vantage point near the fantail the arresting gear officer watched in horror as the tailhook kissed the top of the third wire, then snagged the fourth. The plane continued forward for a heartbeat, then seemed to stop in midair.

It was a lopsided contest. An 18-ton airplane was trying to pull a 95,000-ton ship. The ship won. The airplane fell straight down.

As he took the wave-off, Jake Grafton instinctively knew that it had come too late. The ship was right there, filling the windscreen. He kept the angle-of-attack on the optimum indication — a centered doughnut — by feeding in back stick while he tried to bend the throttles over the stops.

Somehow he found the ICS switch with his left thumb and shouted to Flap, “Hook up!” but the aircraft was already decelerating. The angle-of-attack indexer showed slow and his eye flicked to the AOA gauge on the panel, just in time to see the needle sweep counterclockwise to the peg as the G threw him forward into his harness straps.

Then they fell the four feet to the deck.

The impact snapped his head forward viciously and slammed him downward into the seat, stunning him.

He got his head up and tried to focus his eyes as cold fear enveloped him. Are we stopped? Or going off the angled deck? Dazed, scared clear through and unable to see his instruments, he instinctively placed the stick in the eight-degree-nose-up position and kept the engines at full power.

The air boss exploded over the radio: “Jesus Christ, Paddles, why’d you wave him off in close?”

On the LSO platform Hugh Skidmore was having trouble finding the transmit button on his radio. He fumbled for it as he stared forward at the A-6 straining futilely against the fourth wire with its engines still at full power. Miraculously the airplane seemed to be all in one piece. Here a hundred yards behind those two jet exhausts without the protection of a sound-suppression helmet the noise was awesome, a thunder that numbed the ears and vibrated the soul.

Unwilling to wait for Skidmore’s response, the air boss now roared over the radio at Jake Grafton: “We got you, son. Kill those engines! You aren’t going anywhere now.”

Long seconds ticked by before the pilot complied. When he did, finally, the air boss remembered Skidmore:

“El Ss Oh, if you ever, ever, wave off another airplane in close on this fucking boat I will personally come down there and throw your silly ass into the goddamn wake. Do you read me, you mindless bastard?”

Skidmore found his voice. “The deck went foul, Boss.”

“We’ll cut up the corpse later. Wave off the guy in the groove so we can get this squashed A-6 out of the gear and clean the shit out of the cockpit.”

The plane in the groove was still a half mile out, but Skidmore obediently triggered the wave-off lights. As he did so he heard the engines of the A-6 in the gear die as the pilot secured the fuel flow.

Already the arresting gear officer had his troops on deck stripping the pennant from number-three engine. The rest of the recovery would be accomplished with only three engines on line.

Skidmore turned to the Real McCoy. “I guess I screwed the pooch on that one.”

McCoy was still looking at the A-6 up forward. The yellow shirts were hooking a tow tractor to the nose wheel. He turned his gaze on Skidmore, who was looking into his face.

He had to say something. “Looks like the boss is safety-wired to the pissed-off position.”

Skidmore nodded toward the stern. “I thought he could make it. I didn’t think he was that close.”

“Well…”

“Oh, hell.”

Jake Grafton stood rubbing his neck in Flight Deck Control, the room in the base of the carrier’s island superstructure where the aircraft handler directs the movement of every plane on the ship. Flap Le Beau stood beside him. Someone was talking to the handler on the squawk box, apparently someone in Air Ops. The handler listened awhile, then leaned toward Jake and said, “You need two more traps. The in-flight engagement was your fourth.”

“Yeah.”

“If you’re feeling up to it, we’ll give you another plane and send you out for your last two. Or you can wait until we get to Hawaii and we’ll do the whole night bit again. It’s up to you. How do you feel?”

Jake used a sleeve to swab the sweat from his forehead and eyes. “What about tomorrow night?” he asked.

“The captain won’t hold the ship in here against this coast just to qual one pilot. We have to transit to Hawaii.”

Jake nodded. That made sense. He flexed his shoulders and pivoted his head slowly.

The fear was gone. Okay, panic. But it was gone. He was still feeling the adrenaline aftershock, which was normal.

“I’m okay,” he told the handler, who turned to relay the message into the squawk box.

Flap pulled at Jake’s sleeve. “You don’t have to do this tonight. There’s no war on. It doesn’t matter a whit whether you get quailed tonight or a week from now in Hawaii.”

Jake stared. The flippant, kiss-my-ass cool dude he had flown with all day was gone. The man there now was serious and in total control, with sharp, intelligent eyes. This must be the Flap Le Beau that was the legend.

“I can hack it. Are you okay?”

“I am if you are.”

“I am.”

“I gave you a load of shit today just to see if you could handle a little pressure. You can. You don’t have anything to prove to anybody.”

Jake shook his head from side to side. “I have to go now so the next time I’ll know I can.”

A trace of a smile crossed Le Beau’s face. He nodded, just the tiniest dip of the head, and turned toward the handler.

“What plane do they want us to aviate, Handler-man? Ask the grunts in Ready Four and have them send up the book.”

“Please, sir!”

“Of course, sir. Did I leave the please out? What’s come over me? I must still be all shook up. You know, we came within two inches of being chocolate and vanilla pudding out there. If we’d fell another two inches you’d be cleaning us up with spoons. I’m gonna write a thank-you letter to Jesus. Praise God, that was a religious experience, Amen! I feel born again, Amen! The narrowness of our escape and my ecstasy must have made me the eensiest bit careless in my military manners. I apologize. You understand, don’t you, sir?”

“Ecstasy! What crap! Go sit over there in that corner with your Amens and keep your mouth shut until your fellow jar-heads get the maintenance book up here for your pilot to read. He can read, can’t he?”

“Oh yes, sir. He’s Navy, not Marine. He’s got a good, solid, second-grade education. His mamma told me he did just fine in school until…”

Jake Grafton decided he was thirsty and needed to take a leak. He wandered away to attend to both problems.

He was slurping water from a fountain in the passageway outside the hatch to Flight Deck Control when he realized that Lieutenant Colonel Haldane was standing beside him. Haldane was wearing his uniform tonight, not his flight suit. His I-been-there decorations under his gold aviator wings made an impressive splotch of color on his left breast.

“What happened?” he asked Jake.

“They gave me a late wave-off, sir. I was almost at the ramp, or at it. Somebody said something about the deck going foul. Whatever, at the time all I knew was that the red lights were flashing and the LSO was shouting. So I did my thing. I was just too close.”

Haldane was watching his eyes as he spoke. When he finished speaking the colonel gave him another five seconds of intense scrutiny before he asked, “Did you do everything right?”

Jake Grafton swallowed hard. This just wasn’t his day. “No, sir. I didn’t. I knew we had passed the wave-off point, so I was concentrating on the ball and lineup. When the wave-off lights came on, I guess I was sorta stunned there for a tenth of a second. Then I reacted automatically — nose up, boards in, full power. I should have given her the gun and got the boards in, but I should have just held the nose attitude. Should have rode it into a bolter.”

Haldane’s head bobbed a millimeter. “Are you up to two more?” he asked.

“I think so, sir.”

“If you don’t want to go I’ll back you up. No questions asked.”

“I’d like to go now, sir, if we can get a bird.”

“How many carrier landings do you have?”

“Before today, sir, three hundred twenty-four.”

“How many at night?”

“One hundred twenty-seven, I believe.”

Haldane nodded. “Whenever I have a close call,” he said, “the first thing to go afterward is my instrument scan. I get way behind the plane, fixate on just one instrument. Really have to work to keep the eyeballs moving.”

“Yessir,” Jake said, and grinned. He liked the way Haldane used himself as an example. That was class. “I’ll keep it safe, Skipper,” Jake added.

“Fine,” said the colonel, and went into Flight Deck Control to see the handler.

“A thank-you letter to Jesus, huh?”

“That was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Don’t hold it against me.”

“Amen to that.” Jake sighed and tried to relax. They were sitting behind the jet-blast deflector for Cat One, waiting for the A-7 ahead to do his thing. Jake tugged at the VDI reflexively and wriggled to get his butt set in the seat.

He was still feeling the aftereffects of adrenaline shock, but he knew it, so he forced himself to look at everything carefully. Wings locked, flaps and slats out, stabilator shifted, roger the weight board, ease forward into the shuttle, throttles up and off brakes, cat grip up, wipe out the controls, check fuel flow, RPM, EGT…Lights on and bam! they were hurling down the catapult into the blackness.

Off the pointy end, nose up, gear up, climbing…

It went well until he got onto the ball, then he couldn’t get stabilized. Too nervous. Every correction was too big, every countercorrection overdone. The plane wobbled up and down on the glide slope and went from fast to slow to fast again. He was waggling the wings trying to get properly lined up as he went across the ramp and that, coupled with not quite enough power, got him a settle into the two-wire.

The last one was more of the same. At this point Jake realized he was totally exhausted.

“Settle down,” Flap told him in the groove.

“I’m trying. Let’s just get this fun over with, okay?” Crossing the ramp he lowered the nose and eased the power a smidgen to ensure he wouldn’t bolter. He didn’t. One wire.

He had to pry himself from the cockpit. He was so tired he had trouble plodding across the deck.

“Another day, another dollar,” Flap said cheerfully.

“Something like that,” Jake mumbled, but so quietly Flap didn’t hear it. No matter.

“It was a late wave-off, and I’m sorry,” Hugh Skidmore told Jake in the ready room. The LSOs were waiting for Jake when he came in. The television monitor mounted high in the corner of the room was running the PLAT tape of the in-flight engagement, over and over and over. Colonel Haldane was there, but he stood silently without saying anything. Jake and the LSOs watched the PLAT tape twice.

“You owe me, Skidmore.”

“Other than that little debacle, your first one — the touch-and-go — was okay, the first trap okay, the second fair, the third okay. The fifth trap was a fair and the last one a no-grade. I almost waved you off. I don’t want to see any more of that deck spotting—” After a glance at the skipper Skidmore ran out of words. He contented himself with adding, “I think you were a little wrung out on the last one.”

Jake nodded. He had sinned there at the end and wasn’t too proud to admit it. “I spotted the deck on the last one. Sorry!” He tried to shrug but didn’t have the energy. “What about the in-flight?”

“Gave you a fair.”

“Fair? Now wait just a minute—” Jake knew the futility of arguing with the umpire, but that pass had cost him too much. “I had a good pass going until everything went to hell.”

“Not all that good. You were carrying a little too much power in the middle and went fast. You made the correction but you overdid it. Approaching the ramp you were slow and settling into a two-wire when I waved you off.”

“How do you figure that?”

The Real McCoy spoke up. “Jake, if you had been right on a centered ball when the wave-off came, you would have missed all the wires on the wave-off. Smacking on a big wad of power should have just carried you across the wires into a bolter. Hugh’s right. You were a half ball low going lower when you gunned it. That pass would have been a fair two-wire. Look at that PLAT tape again. Carefully.”

Jake surrendered. “I bow to the opinion of the experts.”

“Next time keep the ball centered, huh?”

Flap Le Beau spoke up. “There had better not be a next time. If there is, you two asshole mechanics better swim for it before I get out of the plane.” He was apparently oblivious of the presence of Richard Haldane.

Jake glanced at the colonel to see how he was taking all this. Apparently without a flicker of emotion.

“No, I’m serious,” Skidmore said. “If you ever get a wave-off in close like that, Jake, slam the throttles up and run the boards in, but don’t rotate. Just ride her into a bolter.”

“But don’t go into the water waiting for the wheels to hit,” the Real added.

Now Richard Haldane spoke. “May I have a word with you gentlemen?”

Skidmore and McCoy went over to where the colonel was standing. Flap asked Jake, “How are you supposed to know that it’s an in-close wave-off if the LSOs can’t figure it out?”

“The guy with the stick in his hand is always responsible,” Jake told the bombardier. “He’s the dummy who signed for the plane.”

After Jake and Flap debriefed both the planes they had flown that evening, Jake asked Flap if he wanted a drink.

“Yeah. You got any?”

“A little. In my stateroom. One drink and I’m into my rack. See you in a bit.”

Ten minutes later Flap asked, “So Skidmore should not have waved us off, even though the cable might have parted on number three if we had caught it?”

“Yeah. That’s right. The in-close position is defined as the point where a wave-off cannot be safely made. From that point on, in to touchdown, you are committed, like the pig. The LSO has to take you aboard no matter what. It’s a practical application of the lesser of two evils theory.”

“Like the pig?”

“Yeah. A chicken lays eggs, she’s dedicated. A pig gives his life, he’s committed.”

“Where you from, anyway?”

“Virginia. Rural Virginia, down in the southwest corner. And you?”

“Brooklyn.”

“All that crap you gave me this morning about Louisiana and you’re from Brooklyn?”

“Yep. Born in the ghetto to a woman who didn’t know who my daddy was and raised on the streets. That’s me.”

“So how did you get into the Corps?”

Flap Le Beau finished off his straight whiskey and grinned. He held up the glass. “Got any more?”

“Help yourself.”

When he finished pouring, Flap said, “Did you ever hear of a guy named Horowitz who funded scholarships for ghetto children?”

“No. Don’t think so.”

“Well, it’s sorta the in-thing for a millionaire to do these days. Publicly commit yourself to funding a college education for ten ghetto kids, or fifty, a hundred if you have the bucks. Sol Horowitz was the first. He promised to pay for the college education of a hundred first-graders in a public school in Brooklyn if they graduated from high school. I was one of the hundred. It’s sort of amazing, but I actually got through high school. Then I got caught stealing some cars and the probation officer told the judge I had this college scholarship waiting, if I would only go. So the judge sentenced me to college. I kid you not.”

Flap sipped, remembering. Finally he continued. “I screwed around at the university. Drank and came real close to flunking out, or getting thrown out. Miracle number two, I graduated. So somebody arranged for me to meet Horowitz. I don’t know exactly what I expected. Some wizened old Jew with money sticking out of every pocket sitting in a mansion — I don’t know. Well, Solomon Horowitz was none of that. He lived in a walkup flat off Flatbush, a real dump. He looked me up and down and told me I was nothing.

“‘You have learned nothing,’ he said. ‘You barely passed your courses — I hear you continued to steal cars. Oh yes, I have my sources. They tell me. I know.’ What could I say?

“Horowitz asked, ‘Who do you think gave you a chance to make something of yourself? Some oil baron? Some rich Jew asshole whose daddy left him ten million? I will tell you who.’

“He rolled up his sleeve. He had a number tattooed on the inside of his wrist. He had been in Dachau. And you know something else? When he made the promise to send those kids to college, he didn’t have any money. He made the promise because then he would have to work like hell to earn the money.”

“Why?” Jake asked.

“That was my question. I’ll level with you, Jake. I was twenty-two years old and I’d never met anybody in my life who wasn’t in it for himself. So I asked.

“Horowitz thought about it for a little bit and finally said he guessed I was entitled to know. The Nazis castrated him. He could never have any children. When he got out of Dachau after the war weighing ninety-one pounds, he came to America. He wanted his life to make a difference to somebody, he said, so he promised to send a hundred kids to college, blacks and Puerto Ricans who would never have a chance otherwise. He worked three jobs, seven days a week, saved his money, invested every dime. And he did it. Actually sent thirty-two, who were all of the hundred that finished high school and could read and write well enough to get into a college. Thirty-two. He paid board, room, books and tuition and sent a little allowance every month. Twenty-three of us graduated.”

Flap tossed off the last of the liquor and set the glass in the small metal sink jutting out from the wall.

“I thought long and hard about the interview. I decided I wanted my life to make a difference, to make Horowitz’s life make a difference…you see what I mean. But I’m not Solomon Horowitz. All I knew how to do was drink, screw, do burglaries and fight. I wasn’t so good at stealing cars — I got caught a lot. So I picked the fìghtin’est outfit of them all and joined up.

“They wouldn’t send me to officer candidate school because of my record. I enlisted anyway. I was full of Horowitz’s fire. I went to boot camp and finished first in my class, went to mortar school and came out first, so they made me an instructor. Got to be a pretty fair hand with a mortar and a rifle and led PT classes in my spare time. Finally they decided I might make a Marine after all, so they sent me to OCS.”

“How did you do there?” Jake asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.

“Number one,” Le Beau said flatly, without inflection. “They gave me a presentation sword.”

“Going to stay in?”

“There’s nothing for me in Brooklyn. My mother died of a drug overdose years ago. I’ve been in ten years now and I’m staying until they kick me out. The Corps is my home.”

“Don’t you get tired of it sometimes?”

“Sometimes. Then I remember Horowitz and I’m not tired anymore. I’ve got his picture. Want to see it?” The Marine dug out his wallet.

Jake looked. Flap towered over Horowitz — a younger Flap togged out in the white dress uniform of a Marine officer. The old, old man had wispy white hair and stooped shoulders. His head was turned and he was looking up into the beaming face of the handsome black man. They were smiling at each other.

“Horowitz came to Parris Island for the graduation ceremony,” Flap explained. “They gave me the sword and I walked over to where he was sitting and gave it to him.”

“He still alive?”

“Oh no. He died six months after this picture was taken. This is the only one of him I have.”

After Flap left, Jake slowly unlaced his flight boots and pulled them off. It took the last of his energy.

If the whole cruise goes like this day has, I’m not going to make it. Russian frigates, in-flight engagements…Jesus!

He eyed his bunk, the top one, and worked himself up to an effort. He didn’t even pull off his flight suit. Sixty seconds after his head hit the pillow he was asleep.