Punk's War

by Ward Carroll

  Turtle’s reply of “whoops” told Spud his instincts had been dead on. After a few seconds, several million dollars worth of missiles came humbly tumbling off 114 without the designed fire and flash; they simply fell away from the Tomcat like lawn darts, only to splash in the dark sea below. Spud mentally added a Phoenix and two Sparrows to the ordnance tally for the Great Iranian War. What a conflict it had been, and it still wasn’t over. If the Iranians only knew how well they were doing now by doing nothing.

  On the flight deck, a hundred men crouched shoulder to shoulder, working the wires and nylon straps that formed the barricade. After just more than five minutes, the stanchions were raised and the effort proved to be inadequate. The top wire sagged too far to safely stop a jet’s slamming into it at a hundred fifty miles per hour.

  The air boss snapped at the sight of the pathetic webbing. “Take that damned thing down and tighten it up!” he screamed over the flight deck P.A. “This ain’t a drill, folks. We’ve got two shipmates in a Tomcat out there whose lives depend on you.”

  The deck crew rallied, and the second time the barricade was raised into place the top line was nearly straight. Then the deck hands stripped the four arresting wires so they wouldn’t get sliced in two by 114’s stubbed gear as the jet landed.

  “Okay, one-fourteen, we’re ready for you down here,” the LSO transmitted. “Let me briefly review the barricade procedures with you.” His voice was friendly and calming, like that of an airline pilot talking to passengers just after takeoff, or of a cop trying to talk a suicidal person off a ledge. “I’m going to be talking to you more than a normal pass, so don’t try to overcorrect. Once you get over the ramp, I’ll give you several ‘cut’ calls. At that point, I want you to shut the engines down completely. It’s going to feel unusual because you’re used to shoving the throttles forward to military power at touch down, but you need to force yourself to do it.”

  “Copy,” Fuzzy replied mechanically at the break in the LSO’s transmission.

  “You’ll lose the ball at the ramp because of the left barricade stanchion, so don’t let that surprise you,” the LSO continued. “Just keep listening to my calls.”

  “Punk, are you going to hang with me until I get aboard?” Fuzzy asked on squadron common, voice thin with the weight of the task just minutes ahead. He’d never really felt scared in the jet like this, not even the first time he landed on a carrier during flight school. Then ignorance had been bliss; now he knew just how hard he was going to have to work to land the jet safely. He thought about the possibility of ejecting, and then thought of how going for a swim might not be all bad in that it would clean the mess out of his flight suit. “Punk . . .”

  “I’ll be with you, buddy,” Punk replied, catching the trepidation in his wingman’s voice. “You’ll be fine. Regardless of what Biff says, I think you’re a great pilot.” Fuzzy managed a laugh and was calmed by the fact he could.

  “Approach,” Spud instructed, “make sure you give one-fourteen enough room to make a lazy turn to the final course.”

  “Approach copies. One-fourteen, are you ready to commence your approach?”

  “One-fourteen’s ready,” Turtle replied.

  “One-zero-three, are you going to remain with one-fourteen throughout the approach?”

  “That’s affirmative.” Spud answered.

  “Roger that,” the controller returned. “Should the calls be to one-fourteen or one-zero-three?”

  “Give them to one-fourteen,” Spud commanded.

  “Roger,” the controller replied as he studied the large circular display in front of him. “One-fourteen pick up a heading of two-seven-five, descend and maintain twelve hundred feet.”

  “One-fourteen’s coming to two-seven-five and descending down to twelve hundred feet,” Turtle confirmed.

  “Verify dirty,” the controller requested.

  “One-fourteen has had the gear and flaps down since we lost the wheel,” Fuzzy said while he kept one eye on the hydraulic gauges to ensure the second system was holding up. The pilot gingerly moved the stick to bring the jet to the proper course, knowing full well that each command he gave the fighter could be the last. In his mind’s eye he saw hydraulic fluid squirting out the brake lines with each deflection of the controls.

  The Approach controller vectored one-fourteen until the jet reached an eight-mile final behind the carrier. Punk flew to the left and above the crippled Tomcat, ready to stay with them and assist if they waved off this pass or to mark their position if they crashed.

  Fuzzy concentrated on keeping the jet on the proper glide slope and azimuth with feelings mixed between wanting it all to end and wishing he had more time to prepare for the task now just a couple of miles ahead. He felt a sudden jolt through the stick and reacted with an involuntary gasp over the intercom.

  “What’s wrong?” Turtle asked.

  Fuzzy looked down at the hydraulic gauges and noticed the needle for the second system was starting to twitch slightly. “Nothing . . .” Fuzzy replied.

  “One-one-four, three-quarters of a mile,” the controller said. “Call the ball.”

  “One-fourteen, Tomcat, ball, four-point-zero, no trim, no right wheel, no combined hydraulics,” Turtle replied.

  “Roger ball, Tomcat,” the LSO said as he assumed control of the jet from the Approach controller. “Copy, no trim, no right wheel, no combined hydraulics. Twenty-eight knots of wind, straight down the angle deck . . . good start . . . keep it coming . . .”

  Fuzzy keyed on each of the LSO’s words. He told himself to quit breathing so damned hard. His heartbeat filled his chest. He tried not to look at the barricade but couldn’t help but notice its nylon straps flapping wildly in the breeze, highlighted just barely by the dim yellow deck lighting.

  “You’re a little fast . . . don’t go high . . . that’s it . . . a little power now . . .”

  Just a normal pass, Fuzzy thought, except I only get one shot. He realized he was trying to squeeze black juice out of the stick and eased his grip. Smooth, you idiot.

  “Fly the ball . . . that’s it, now . . . cut, cut, cut, cut, cut!”

  After a split second of refusal, Fuzzy’s left arm yielded and pulled the throttles to the aft limit of the quadrant. The absence of engine noise was eerie as the Tomcat crossed the ramp and landed well short of the barricade. The stubbed right main mount caused the airplane to swerve to the right, and by the time the barricade engulfed it, the jet had yawed 90 degrees to the direction of travel down the angled deck.

  Both aviators instinctively ducked as if the canopy wouldn’t protect them. The tug of the straps caused the jet to slightly roll up on the left wing, but the forward motion stopped and the fighter fell back on both landing gear and came to a complete halt.

  The deck crew worked to clear the spaghetti of nylon from around the canopy so the aviators could open it and egress. Fuzzy slumped over the stick, totally drained and unable to focus on anything, while Turtle looked out at the flurry of arms about them like a child going through a car wash.

  After several minutes, the barricade had been cleared away enough that Turtle was able to open the canopy. One of the catapult officers ran up the boarding ladder, slapped Fuzzy on the left shoulder and said, “That was awesome. You’re a hero, buddy.”

  “You might not want to get too close to me,” Fuzzy replied as he undid his shoulder fittings. “I shit my pants.”

  “How far is it to Al Jabar?” Punk asked after he realized he’d lost track of their fuel state during all the excitement with Fuzzy. They were down to forty-one hundred pounds and, depending on the range to the divert, it may have been time to start the bingo profile for Kuwait.

  “I was just wondering the same thing, although it’s almost a moot point,” Spud said. “There’s no way the flight deck is going to be ready for us anytime soon.” Spud mashed a few keys on the computer panel under his left arm and crosschecked the information on the hand-held GPS strapped to his left thigh. “Al J
abar is a hundred twenty-five miles away.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Spud switched the radio back to Departure and stated their intentions. “One-oh-three’s bingo. Confirm pigeons.”

  “Stand by for pigeons,” the controller responded, referencing the data on one of the screens in front of him. “Primary divert, three-zero-zero for one hundred twenty miles. Check in with Strike once outside of ten miles from Mother.”

  “Roger.”

  Punk reviewed the bingo information in the back of his pocket checklist and started the jet on the proper profile. He accelerated to seven-tenths the speed of sound and programmed a climb to thirty-two thousand feet. Twenty-four miles from the field, he’d start an idle descent that was designed to get them on deck with two thousand pounds of gas. And since the wind was about twenty knots less than the one hundred knots he’d entered the bingo table with, they should have even more fuel to spare. All in all, it looked like the whole thing was going to amount to a night with the United States Air Force. Punk was actually looking forward to seeing how the other half lived, plus any time away from the Boat was good time.

  Spud checked in with Strike and was greeted by the battle watch captain, who asked, “One-zero-three, where do you think you’re going?”

  “One-zero-three’s bingo,” Spud answered in a cocksure tone, convinced he was dealing with a confused enlisted controller. “We’re headed for the divert.”

  “Negative, your signal is return to Mother.”

  “Strike,” Punk added as he fought off a wave of fatigue brought on by both a post-emergency letdown and the seemingly endless string of idiots trying to make his life more difficult. “Our state is three-point-nine. We are twenty-five miles west of you on a bingo profile.”

  “One-zero-three, this is Alpha Bravo. I repeat, get back here, immediately.” The battle watch captain, another in an apparent monopoly of surface warfare commanders on the staff, put down the radio handset and picked up the phone. “Admiral, I’m going to need a ruling. I’m losing assets faster than I can do anything about it.”

  After listening to the battle watch captain’s update, the admiral hung up and moved across the room toward Smoke. “What is one-zero-three’s divert going to do to our ability to put two Tomcats in the air next event, as you promised me?”

  “What divert, Admiral?”

  “One-zero-three is trying to divert. Fortunately my battle watch captain was heads-up enough to stop him and call him back until we can figure this out. So what are we going to do?”

  Smoke knew the admiral wasn’t going to be happy with the truth, but he stood ready to give it to him anyway. He had no choice. Executing an only course of action didn’t require exceptional courage, or intellect, for that matter. He’d just been informed by the maintenance master chief over the phone that 106 was hard down because of the fuel leak, and the jet was going to take at least one shift to fix. VF-104 was down to two jets, 105 and 112, and 112 was already airborne. “We could double-cycle the guy on the CAP station now. What’s the tanker situation?”

  “I’m asking the questions here, lad,” the admiral railed. “We proved last event that we can’t depend on tankers to solve the problem. So what are we going to do?”

  Smoke looked to the chief of staff for help again, but the captain stood silent, apparently unnerved by the normally composed admiral’s sudden loss of temper. CAG, the only other aviator in the room, sat in an overstuffed chair, rocking like an autistic child.

  “Admiral, I can only speak for VF-104,” Smoke said. “Blame the supply chain, blame the old jets, blame the run of bad luck, but our squadron is almost tapped out. You’ve got one Tomcat each event, and even that is subject to reduction, quite frankly.” He raised his hands emphatically before him, and with a touch of defiance added, “And as far as one-zero-three goes, you’d better let him go to Al Jabar immediately. Our pilots don’t cry ‘wolf.’ If he said he’s diverting, he’s at bingo state and he doesn’t have time to—”

  The door to the room slammed open against the bulkhead with the crash of metal on metal as Commander Campbell appeared, face freshly damaged from an attempt at shaving while still half-asleep, and hair forced down with generous amounts of water and gel. “I’m sorry I’m late, Admiral,” the skipper said, body English evincing his harried state, but verbal élan intact. “I was looking after another affair.”

  “Ah, Skipper Campbell,” the admiral said. “One of your lieutenant commanders was just telling me how your squadron is unable to support the defense of the battle group, how you’re . . . how did you put it . . . you’re ‘tapped out.’”

  The skipper shot Smoke a dirty look and obsequiously replied, “Admiral, VF-104 is always ready to support you.”

  Smoke was in the awkward position of not knowing what the skipper knew, and there didn’t seem to be any graceful way to clear up the confusion. “Skipper, are you fully aware of the situation?”

  The skipper suppressed his first instinct to dress down his maintenance officer, and said, “I think you’ve been enough help here, Smoke. Go back down to the squadron’s spaces and see about getting us untapped out.”

  Although the action betrayed his instincts, Smoke compliantly exited the room without another word. Instead of returning to maintenance control he walked back into the control center.

  “Well, if you give us five minutes, we could launch another tanker,” Smoke heard the air ops officer say into the phone.

  “What’s one-oh-three’s state?” Smoke asked in a panic as he rushed across the space toward the commander.

  The air ops officer didn’t answer and turned his torso around in his chair, trying his best to ignore the fighter pilot. Smoke looked at the status board and saw 3.9 next to 103.

  “You cannot be thinking about bringing one-zero-three back here,” Smoke said to the back of the air ops officer’s head. “He’s on a bingo profile.”

  The air ops officer hung up with a smash of the tactical phone against its box and angrily responded, “Would you please get the hell out of our way here? I was just on the phone with the battle watch captain—you know, the admiral’s direct representative?”

  Smoke trusted that Punk and Spud were doing the right thing, but he wanted to make sure. “Can I talk to one-oh-three?”

  “For what?”

  Smoke couldn’t grasp a legitimate reason, having lost the mental edge needed for rational thought after being run through the flag grinder during the last half hour. “I just want to talk to them!” he screamed.

  “No, you can’t,” the commander replied smugly as he turned his back to pick up the tactical phone once again.

  The sounds on Strike of the battle watch captain’s repeatedly demanding 103’s return filled the control center and caused Smoke to shake with rage. He was convinced now men willing to sacrifice assets and perhaps lives while fighting a pretend war surrounded him. He stood with clenched fists, implicitly begging for someone, anyone, of a higher rank to jump in and stop the madness, but as he scanned the bleachers for an ally with clout, he came up empty.

  The battle watch captain transmitted his order to 103 yet another time, and Smoke stormed through the side hatch into the adjacent Tactical Force Command Center. Without hesitation, he relieved the battle watch captain of the UHF handset, said, “Your signal is ‘bingo,’ Punk,” into the mouthpiece and then ripped the radio connection out of the wall, snapping it at the adaptor.

  “Sorry, sir. I won’t let anybody get killed for this,” Smoke declared defiantly. The commander stood completely unnerved by the cool violence with which Smoke executed his act, and did nothing but utter “hey . . .” as the lieutenant commander marched out of the space and back into the control center.

  Smoke’s reign of terror continued as he walked over to the air ops officer’s position, pushed one of the tabs on the phone cradle, disconnecting the commander, and demanded that somebody call Al Jabar and tell them that 103 was headed their way.

  “I was talki
ng to the air boss about launching a tanker, goddam it,” the air ops officer said.

  “Fuck the tanker,” Smoke replied. “We’re past that. Let’s get them into Kuwait.”

  “I’m getting sick of you, pal,” the air ops officer shot back as he rose to square off with Smoke.

  “Look, commander, I’m not looking for a fight,” Smoke explained, palms outward in a disarming gesture. “I’m just trying to cut through the bullshit and assist a jet that’s dealing with an emergency.” The fighter pilot picked up the pocket checklist from where he’d thrown it and said, “A bingo profile is an emergency, sir. That’s why it’s in this book.” He pointed toward the nearest phone. “Now please call Al Jabar and let them know one-zero-three is inbound.”

  The air ops officer slowly reached for the phone while keeping his eyes on Smoke. He raised the receiver and dialed a series of numbers, and as he waited for an answer at the other end of the line, shook a trembling finger at Smoke and said, “I’m going to do this for you this one time, but not because you told me to.”

  After the first call on Strike, Spud had simply turned the radio to a different frequency and decided to plead temporary equipment failure in the event it became an issue. The principles of naval aviation were semi-amorphous compared to some other undertakings, but one of the absolutes Spud had learned to cling to while swimming in a sea of gray was when a jet reached bingo state, it assumed a bingo profile without deviation for any reason other than a MiG on its tail.

  But now their problem shifted from too much communication to the inability to communicate. First Spud wrestled with the clipped English of a Kuwaiti controller on the country’s sole air control frequency. Then, once they were inside forty nautical miles from the field, he switched up Al Jabar’s tower frequency to clarify their intentions with an American, but after six attempts to talk to the tower and with no lighting visible to Punk from the direction of the field, it became obvious that there was nobody home at Al Jabar.