The Intruders

6

The ships sailed across a restless, empty ocean. Jake saw no ships other than those of the task group whenever he went on deck, which he managed to do three or four times a day. Many sailors never went topside; they spent every minute of their day in their working spaces, their berthing areas, or on the mess deck, and saw sunlight only when the ship pulled into port. Jake Grafton thought he would go stir-crazy if he couldn’t see the sea and sky and feel the wind on his face every few hours.

He would stroll around the deck, visit with Bosun Muldowski if he ran into him, chat with the catapult crews if they were on deck, and examine planes. His eyes seemed naturally drawn to airplanes. His destination on these excursions was usually the forward end of the flight deck, where he would stand between the catapults looking at the ocean. The wind was usually vigorous here. It played with his hair and tugged at his clothes and cleaned the below-decks smells from his nostrils.

The first morning he saw a school of whales to starboard. Knots of sailors gawked and pointed. The whales spouted occasionally and once one came soaring out of the water, then crashed down in a magnificent cloud of spray. Mostly the view was of black backs glistening amid the swells.

When he went below this first morning at sea, reentered the world of crowded passageways, tiny offices, and never-ending paperwork, the squadron maintenance officer cornered him. “That plane you flew last night — well, we haven’t found any airframe damage yet. Maybe we dodged the bullet.” If there was no damage there would be no official report assessing blame. “The avionics took a helluva lot bigger lick than they’re designed for, though. Radar and computer and VDI are screwed up.”

Jake threw himself into the problem assigned to him by Colonel Haldane. How would you attack a Soviet ship? Since the Soviets had all kinds of ships, he soon focused on the most capable, the guided missile cruisers that were the mainstay of their task forces, Kyndas and Krestas. After preliminary research of classified material in the Air Intelligence spaces, he paid a visit to the EA-6B Prowler squadron in their small ready room on the 0–3 level, near the number-four arresting gear room.

This squadron had only four aircraft, but they were Cadillacs. A stretched version of the A-6, the Prowler held a crew of four: one pilot and three electronic warfare specialists. The airplane’s sole mission was to foil enemy radars. The electronic devices it used for this task were mounted in pods slung on the weapons stations. Other than the pilot’s instruments, the panels of the cockpit were devoted to the displays and controls necessary to detect enemy radar transmissions and render the information they gave the enemy useless. Since it was a highly modified version of the A-6, the plane was popularly referred to as a Queer Six.

The Prowler crews in Ready Eight greeted Jake with open arms. They too were stationed on Whidbey Island when ashore, and two or three of the officers knew Jake. When he finally got around to explaining his errand, they were delighted to help. The capabilities of Soviet warships were their stock in trade.

Jake had already known that Soviet ships were heavily armed, but now he found out just how formidable they really were. Radar capabilities were evaluated, weapons envelopes examined. Finally Jake Grafton gave his conclusion: “A single plane doesn’t have much of a chance against one of these ships.” This comment drew sober nods from the two electronic warfare experts at his elbows.

Nor, he soon concluded, did a flight of planes have much of a chance if the weapons they had to use were free-falling bombs, technology left over from World War II. Oh, free-falling bombs had been adequate in Vietnam when attacking stationary targets ashore — barely adequate — but modern warships were another matter entirely. Ships would detect the aircraft on radar while they were still minutes away. Radar would allow antiaircraft missiles to be fired and guided long before the attacker reached the immediate vicinity of the ship. Then, in-close, radar-directed guns would pour forth a river of high explosives.

If our lucky attack pilot survived all that, he was ready to aim his free-fall weapons at a maneuvering, high-speed target. Even if he aimed his bombs perfectly, the bombs were un-guided during their eight to ten seconds of fall, so if the ship’s captain reversed the helm or tightened a turn, or if the pilot had miscalculated the wind, the bombs would miss.

And now our frustrated aerial warrior had to turn his fanny to the fire and successfully avoid on the way out all the hazards he had penetrated on the way in.

What the attack pilot desperately needed was a missile he could shoot at the ship, Jake concluded, the farther away the better. Alas, the U. S. Navy’s antiship missiles were still in the development stage, victims of Vietnam penny pinching, so the attack crews would have to make do with what they had. What they had were some short-range guided missiles like Bullpup, which unfortunately carried only a 250-pound warhead — enough to cripple a warship but not to sink it.

If the weather was good enough, the attacking planes could use laser-guided bombs, preferably two-thousand pounders. Although these weapons were unpowered, the laser seeker and guidance assembly on the nose of the weapon could steer it into the target if the attack pilot made a reasonably accurate delivery, and if the spot of laser light that the guidance system was seeking was indeed on the target. The weak point of the system was the beam of laser light, which was scattered by visible moisture in the air. Alas, over the ocean the sky was often cloudy.

With or without laser-guided bombs, the attackers were going to have to penetrate the enemy ship’s radar-directed defenses. Here was where the EA-6B came in. The electronic warfare (EW) plane could shield the attack force electronically if it were in the middle of it or placed at the proper angle to the attack axis.

What about overloading the enemy’s defenses with planes? Perhaps a coordinated attack with as many planes as we can launch, saturating the enemy’s defenses with targets, one prays too many targets. Some would inevitably get through.

And our coordinated attack should come in high and low at the same time. Say A-6s at a hundred feet and A-7s and F-4s diving in from thirty thousand.

Jake made notes. The EA-6 crews had a lot of ideas, most of which Jake thought excellent. When he said his good-bye two hours after he came, he shook hands all around.

Back in his stateroom staring at his notes, Jake wondered what a war with the Soviets would be like. An exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles would make for a loud, almighty short war, but Jake didn’t think there would be much reason for the surviving warships to try to sink one another. Without countries to go back to, the sailors and the ships were all doomed anyway. Could there be a war without nuclear weapons, in 1973?

Really, when one is contemplating the end of civilization the whole problem becomes fantastic, something out of a sweaty nightmare. Could sane men push the button, thereby destroying themselves, their nations, most of the human race? He got bogged down at this point. The politicians would have to figure it out.

One thing he knew for sure — if there was a war without a nuclear Armageddon, the American admirals would go for the Soviet ships like bulldogs after raw meat.

It wouldn’t be easy. He knew well that a strike on a single ship would be a fluke, an ambush of a straggler. Like every other navy, the Soviets would arrange their ships in groups for mutual support. Any attack would have to be against a task force.

Staring at his notes on detection ranges, missile and flak envelopes, Jake could envision how it would be. The ships would be rippling off missiles — the sky would be full of Mach 3 telephone poles. If that weren’t enough, Soviet warships were covered with antiaircraft guns. American ships these days didn’t have many, but then the Soviet Navy had no aircraft carriers to launch strikes against them. The flak from the Soviet ships would be fierce, would literally be a steel curtain the attacking planes would have to fly through.

An Alpha strike — everything the ship could launch, coming in high and low and in the middle, shielded by EA-6B Prowlers and coordinated as well as possible by an E-2 Hawkeye orbiting safely out of range a hundred miles away — that was the answer he would give Colonel Haldane.

Wouldn’t ever happen, of course. America and Russia weren’t about to fight a war. Planning an attack on a Soviet task force was just another peacetime military what-if exercise. Yet if it did happen, few of those planes would survive. And of those crews who successfully penetrated the cordon of missiles and flak, only the most fiercely determined would successfully drive the thrust home. For Jake Grafton knew that it was neither ships nor airplanes that won battles, but men.

Were there men like that aboard this ship? By reputation Flap Le Beau was one, but were there any more?

Disgusted with the whole problem, he began to think of home. He had visited his parents on their farm in southwestern Virginia this spring. In May, with the leaves on the trees coming out, the grass in the meadows growing green and tender, the cows nursing new-born calves.

His parents had been so glad to see him. Dad, well, his pride in his son had been visible, tangible. And Mother, smiling through her tears at her man-son come home.

He had helped his father with the cattle, once again felt the morning chill and smelled the aroma of warm bovine bodies, manure, sweet hay…Just the memory of it made him shiver here in his small stateroom aboard this giant steel ship. The dew in the grass that recorded every step, the sun slanting up over the low ridges and shining into the barn, his father’s voice as he talked to the cattle, reassuring, steady…all of it came flooding back.

Why are you here, aboard this steel ship on this wilderness of ocean, worried about Russian flak and missiles, contemplating the ultimate obscenity? Why aren’t you there, where you grew up, feeling the warmth of the sun on your back and helping your father in the timeless rituals that ensure life will go on, and on…as God intended? Why aren’t you there to help your mother in her old age? Answer me that, Jake Grafton. You never hated the farm as your elder brother did — you loved it. Loved everything about it. Your parents — you love them. You are of them and they are of you. Why are you here?

Why?

Life aboard ship quickly assumed its natural rhythm, which was the rhythm dictated by two hundred years of naval tradition and regulations. Everyone worked, meals were served, the ship’s laundry ran full blast, and every afternoon at precisely 13:30 the PA system came to life and announced a general quarters drill. “This is a drill, this is a drill. General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Go up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port side. General quarters.”

The aviators’ battle stations were their ready rooms. While the damage control parties fought mock fires and coped with flooding, nuclear, chemical and biological attack, the aviators took NATOPS exams, listened to lectures, and generally bored one another. It was during these drills that Jake gave his lectures on shipboard operations. In addition to the material in the CV NATOPS, he added every tip he could recall from his two previous combat cruises. The lectures went well, he thought. The Marines were attentive and asked good questions. To his amazement, he found he actually enjoyed standing in front of the room and talking about his passion, flying.

After secure from general quarters the officers scattered to squadron spaces throughout the ship to do paperwork, to which there was no end in this life. The evening of the second day at sea Jake found an opportunity to discuss his Soviet ship project with the skipper, Colonel Haldane, who knew as much about the subject as Jake did. After they had spent an hour going over the problem, the colonel took him to the air wing spaces to meet the air wing ops officer, a lieutenant commander. Here the subject was aired again. The upshot of it was that Jake was assigned to help Wing Ops put together realistic exercises for the ship’s air wing.

Officers could eat dinner in either of the two wardrooms aboard — the formal wardroom on the main deck, right beside Ready Four, where uniforms were required, or in the dirty-shirt wardroom up forward in the 0–3 level between the bow catapults where flight suits and flight deck jerseys were acceptable. In practice the formal wardroom was the turf of the ship’s company officers who were not aviators, invaded only occasionally by aviation personnel on their best behavior. Here in the evening after dinner a movie was shown, one watched with proper decorum by congressionally certified gentlemen.

The aviators congregated in their ready rooms for their evening movies, here to whistle, shout, offer ribald suggestions to the characters, moan lustily at the female lead, and throw popcorn at the screen and each other. If a flyer didn’t like the movie in his ready room, he could always wander off to another squadron’s, where he would be welcome if he could find a seat.

And in the late evening somewhere in the junior officers’ staterooms there was a card game under way, usually nickel-dime-quarter poker because no one had much money. Although alcohol was officially outlawed aboard ship, at a card game a thirsty fellow could usually find a drink. Or several. As long as one didn’t appear in any of the ship’s common spaces drunk or smelling of liquor, no one seemed to care very much.

Of course, a junior officer could skip the movie and card game and retire to his stateroom to listen to music or write letters. Since a lot of the junior officers were very much in love, a lot of them did this almost every night, Jake Grafton among them. Of course the lonely lovers had roommates, which sometimes presented problems.

“It’s so damned unfair,” the Real McCoy lamented. “I could get more information about the markets if I were sitting in a mud hut in some squalid village in the middle of India. Anywhere but here.” He turned his woeful gaze on his roommate. “There are telephones everywhere on this planet except here. Everywhere.”

Jake Grafton tried to look sympathetic. He did reasonably well, he thought.

“It’s the not knowing,” the LSO continued. “I bought solid companies, with solid prospects, nothing speculative. But I am just completely cut off. Condemned to the outer darkness.” He gestured futilely. “It’s maddening.”

“Maybe you should put your investments in a trust or something. Give someone a power of attorney.”

“Who? Anyone who can do as well as I have in the market is doing it, not fooling around with someone else’s portfolio for a fee.”

“We’ll be in Hawaii in a week. I’ll bet you’ll find that you’re doing great.”

The Real McCoy groaned and glanced at Jake Grafton with a look that told him he was hopeless. The LSO took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. He looked so forlorn that Jake decided to try to get him talking.

A question. He should ask a question. After thinking about it for a moment, Jake said, “Hey, what’s the difference between stocks and shares? In the newspapers they talk about stockholders and shareholders and—”

He stopped because the Real gave him a withering look and stomped for the door. He slammed it shut behind him.

Jake didn’t know he had an accent until Callie told him he did. She was a linguist, with a trained ear. Since she made that remark he was listening more carefully to how other people talked. Just now he said a few words to see if he could detect some flaw in his pronunciation. “My name is Jake Grafton. I work for the government and am here to save you.”

Nope.

She wouldn’t kid about a thing like that, would she?

He stopped and reread that last paragraph. That bit about the parents wasn’t strictly true, but what could he say? Your dad’s a royal jerk but I like them like that.

Diplomacy. This letter had some diplomacy in it.