The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  Jake and Flap were standing the five-minute alert tanker duty, which meant that for two hours they had to sit in the cockpit of this bird strapped in, ready to fire up the engines and taxi onto the catapult as soon as the F-4 Phantom that was parked there—also on five-minute alert—launched. There was another fighter on five-minute status sitting just short of the hook-up area on Cat Four, and an airborne early warning aircraft, an E-2 Hawkeye, parked with its tail against the island. Sitting on the waist catapult tracks was a manned helicopter, the angel, which would have to launch before the catapults could be fired. A power unit with its engine running was plugged into each aircraft, instantly ready to deliver air to turn the engines. All five of the alert birds had been serviced and started, checked to make sure all their systems worked, then shut down.

  The crews were strapped into the airplanes. The pilot of the Phantom on Cat Four was reading a paperback novel, Jake could see, but he couldn’t make out the title.

  On the deck behind the waist catapults sat two more fighters and a tanker on alert-fifteen status, which meant that their crews were flaked out in their respective ready rooms wearing all their flight gear, ready to run for the flight deck if the alarm sounded.

  Alert duty kept flight crews busy any time that planes were not aloft. Except in waters just off the shore of the United States, it was rare for a carrier to be below alert-thirty status. Alert-fifteen was the usual status for the high seas, with alert-five reserved for the South China Sea during the war just ended or other locations where a possible threat existed. Today a possible threat existed. Intelligence expected the Soviets to try to overfly the carrier task group as it transited to Japan with land-based naval bombers from Vladivostok or one of the fields on Sakhalin Island or the Kamchatka peninsula.

  The Russkis were going to have their work cut out for them overflying the ship in this low visibility, Jake thought, if they came at all. He sat watching the frigate on the port beam labor into the swells, ride up and then bury her bow so deep that white spray was flung aft all the way to the bridge.

  Columbia’s ride was definitely more pleasant, but Jake could feel her pitching and see the leading edge of the angled deck rise and fall as she rode the restless sea.

  To Jake’s right, in the bombardier-navigator’s seat, Flap Le Beau was reading a book by Malcolm X. Every time he got to the bottom of a page, he lowered the paperback and glanced around, his eyes scanning several times while he turned the page.

  On one of Flap’s periscope sweeps, Jake asked, “That book any good?”

  “Guy sure is interesting,” Flap said and resumed his reading.

  “What’s it about?”

  “You don’t know Malcolm X?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Hated honkeys. Believed the races should have their own enclaves, no mixing, that kind of stuff.”

  “Do you believe that?” Jake asked tentatively. Flap was only the second or third black naval aviator Jake had ever met, and he had never discussed race with one.

  “He had some good ideas,” Flap said, glancing at Jake. “But no, I think the races should be integrated. America is for Americans—black, white, brown, yellow, green or purple. But what about you? You’re from rural Virginia, nigger-hating redneck heaven, one-party bigot politics, pot-gutted klagel sheriffs— what d’ya think?”

  “Ol’ X should’ve had you writing his speeches.”

  Jake Grafton wasn’t stupid enough to proclaim himself a true believer in racial equality and brotherly love, certainly not to a black man probably capable of forcing him into the bigot cesspool with just a little effort.

  “Who knows, if this Marine Corps gig goes sour, I might go into politics,” Flap allowed, then resumed reading his book.

  His father had two black employees on his farm during the years Jake was growing up. They were both huge men, with hands like pie plates and upper arms larger than Jake’s thighs. They were barely able to sign their names but they could work any four white men into the dirt. In their younger days they had worked on railroad track-repair gangs swinging sledgehammers. “Georgia niggers,” his father, Sam, had called them. How they came to end up on the Grafton farm Jake never quite understood, but Isaiah and Frank allowed from time to time that they had absolutely no intention of crossing the Virginia line south-bound. Then they would shake their heads and laugh at some private joke, creating the vision in the boy’s mind of bloodthirsty southern sheriffs eager to avenge spectacular, unmentionable crimes.

  His father treated the two blacks like the whites he hired occasionally, worked alongside them, shared food and smokes and jokes. Young Jake liked the men immensely.

  Yet, like most of the boys of his generation in southwestern rural Virginia, he accepted racial segregation as natural, as unremarkable and logical as the deference men showed women and the respect accorded the elderly. That is, he did until 1963, the year he turned eighteen. One evening while watching the network news show footage of Negro children in Birmingham being blasted with streams from high-pressure fire hoses, his father had let out an oath.

  “I guess it’s a damn good thing that I’m not colored,” Sam Grafton declared. “If I were, I’d get me a gun and go to Birmingham and start shooting some of those sons of bitches. And I’d start with that bastard right there!” His finger shot out and Jake found himself staring at the porky visage of Bull Connor.

  “Sam!” exclaimed his mother disgustedly.

  “Martha, what the hell do they have to do to get treated decent by whites? The colored people have put up with a hell of a lot more crap than any Christian should ever have to deal with. Those sons of bitches laying the wood to them aren’t Christians. They’re Nazis. It’s a miracle the colored people haven’t started shooting the damned swine.”

  “Do you have to cuss like that?”

  “It’s high time some white people got mad at those bigots,” Sam Grafton thundered. “I wish Jack Kennedy would get his ass out of his rocking chair and kick some butt. The President of the United States, saying there’s nothing he can do when those rednecks attack children! By God, if Bull Connor was black and those kids were white he’d be singing a different tune. He’s just another gutless politician scared of losing the bigot vote. Pfft!”

  That evening had been an eye-opener for Jake. He started paying attention to the civil rights protests, listening to the arguments. His father had always been a bit different than his neighbors, marching to a different drummer. And he was usually right. He was that time, too, his son concluded.

  Remembering that evening, he sighed, then glanced around the flight deck. People were lying on the deck beside their equipment, napping.

  He was in the middle of a yawn when he heard the hiss of the flight deck loudspeaker system coming to life. “Launch the alert-five. Launch the alert-five. We have bogies inbound.”

  The lounging men on the flight deck sprang into action. Jake Grafton twirled his fingers at the plane captain, received a twirl in response. He turned on the left engine-fuel master switch and pushed the start button. With a low moan the engine began to turn. When the RPM was high enough he came around the horn with the throttle, then sat watching the temperatures and RPMs rise while he pulled his helmet on.

  By the time he got the second engine started and the canopy closed, the chopper on the cat tracks was engaging its rotors. The ship was turning—Jake could see the list on the flight deck—coming about forty degrees left into the wind. Now the deck leveled out. The Columbia’s rudder was centered. Thirty seconds later the angel lifted off. It left the deck straight ahead. When it was safely past the bow the chopper pilot laid it into a right turn.

  Now the catapult shuttles were dragged back out of the water brakes into battery while the final checkers inspected the two fighters and gave their thumbs-up. Red-shirted ordnancemen pulled the safety pins from the missile racks and showed them to the pilots. The yellow-shirted taxi director gave the pilot of the plane in front of Jake a come-ahead signal and let him inch the
last two feet forward onto Cat Three while the green-shirted catapult hook-up men crawled underneath with the bridle and two more greenies installed the hold-back bar, on the Phantom a ten-foot-long hinged strap with the hold-back shear-bolt attaching to the airplane’s belly and the other end going into a slot in the deck. The weight-board man flashed his board at the pilot and got a thumbs-up, then showed it to the cat officer, who also rogered. The whole performance was a ballet of multicolored shirts darting around, near and under the moving fighter, each man intent on doing his job perfectly.

  As the taxiing fighter reached the maximum extent of the hold-back bar, the JBDs came up, three panels that would deflect the exhaust of the launching aircraft from the plane behind.

  Now Jake saw the Phantom lower its tail—actually the nose-gear strut was extended eighteen inches to improve the angle-of-attack. He saw the cat officer twirl his fingers above his head for full power and heard the thunderous response from the Phantom, saw the river of black smoke blasted upward by the JBD, felt his plane tremble from the fury of those two engines. The fighter pilot checked his controls, and the stabilator and rudder waggled obediently. Thumbs-up flashed from the squadron final checkers.

  The cat officer signaled for afterburners, an opening hand on an extended arm. The river of smoke pouring skyward off the JBDs cleared, leaving hot, clear shimmering gases. Incredibly, even here in the cockpit of the tanker the noise level rose. Jake got a good whiff of the acrid stench of jet exhaust.

  My oxygen mask must not be on tight enough. Fix it when I’m airborne.

  The last of the catapult crewmen came scurrying out from under the fighter. This was the man who swung on the bridle to ensure it was on firmly. He flashed a thumbs-up at the cat officer, the shooter.

  The shooter saluted the F-4 pilot, glanced down the deck, and lunged. One potato, two potato, and wham, the fighter shot forward trailing plumes of fire from its twin exhausts. It hadn’t gone a hundred feet down the track when the JBD started down and a taxi director gave Jake Grafton the come-ahead signal.

  After he watched the Phantom clear the deck, the shooter turned his attention to the fighter on Cat Four, which was already at full power. He gave the burner sign. Fifteen seconds later this one ripped down the cat after the first one, which was out of burner now and trailing a plume of black smoke that showed quite distinctly against the gray haze wall.

  Jake taxied forward and ran through his ritual as the wind over the deck swirled steam leaking from the catapult slot around the men on deck. Their clothes flapped in the wind.

  Power up, control check, cat grip, engine instruments, warning lights, salute.

  One potato, two pota—he felt just the tiniest jolt as the holdback bolt broke, then the acceleration smashed him backward like the hand of God.

  The strike controller told Jake to go on up to 20,000 feet. “Texaco take high station.”

  Flap rogered, then Jake said on the ICS, “They must not be going to launch the alert-fifteen.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Surely they’ll want us to tank the second section of fighters immediately after launch, if they launch them.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.”

  “Noble sentiment. But let’s do today, not die.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Don’t get cute.”

  Jake Grafton gave a couple of pig grunts.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to insult the Corps?” Flap sounded shocked.

  “I lied.”

  The sea disappeared as they climbed through 3,000 feet. Jake was on the gauges. There was no horizon, no sky, no sea. Inside this formless, featureless void the plane handled as usual, but the only measure of its progress through space was movement of the altimeter, the TACAN needle, and the rotating numbers of the distance measuring equipment—DME.

  Jake kept expecting to reach an altitude where the goo thinned perceptibly, but it was not to be. When he leveled at 20,000 feet he could see a blob of light above him that had to be the sun, yet the haze seemed as thick as ever. Just what the visibility might be was impossible to say without another object to focus upon.

  Flap reported their arrival at high station. The controller rog-ered without apparent enthusiasm.

  Jake set the power at max conserve and when the airspeed had stabilized, engaged the autopilot. He checked the cockpit altitude and loosened one side of his oxygen mask from his helmet. Flap sat silently for a moment or two, looking here and there, then he extracted his book from a pocket of his G-suit and opened it to a dog-eared page.

  Jake busied himself with punching buttons to check that the fuel transfer was proceeding normally. The tanker carried five 2,000-pound drop tanks. The transfer of fuel from these drops was automatic. If transfer didn’t occur, however, he wanted to know it as soon as possible because he would have that much less fuel available to give to other aircraft or burn himself. Today the transfer seemed to be progressing as advertised, so he had 26,000 pounds of fuel to burn or give away.

  They were almost eight hundred miles northwest of Midway Island alone in an opaque sky. Other than flicking his eyes across the instruments and adjusting the angle-of-bank occasionally, he had nothing to do except scan the blank whiteness outside for other airplanes that never came.

  The fighters were being vectored out to intercept the incoming Russians, the E-2 was proceeding away from the ship to a holding station—those were the only other airplanes aloft. There was nothing in this sky to see. Yet if an aircraft did appear out of the haze, it would be close, very close, on a collision course or nearly so, a rerun of the Phantom incident a week ago. He sure as hell didn’t want to go through that again.

  In spite of his resolution to keep a good lookout, boredom crept over him. His mind wandered.

  He had signed the letter of resignation from the Navy yesterday and submitted it to Lieutenant Colonel Haldane. The skipper had taken the document without comment. Well, what was there to say?

  Haldane wasn’t about to try to argue him into staying—he barely knew Jake. If Jake wanted out, he wanted out. What he could expect was a form letter of appreciation, a handshake and a hearty, “Have a nice life.”

  That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

  Why not go back to Virginia and help Dad with the farm? Fishing in the spring and summer, hunting in the fall…He would end up joining the Lions Club, like his father. Lions meeting every Thursday evening, church two or three Sundays a month, high school football games on Friday nights in September and October…

  It would be a chance to settle down, get a house of his own, some furniture, put down roots. He contemplated that future now, trying to visualize how it would be.

  Dull. It would be damn dull.

  Well, he had been complaining that the Navy was too challenging, the responsibility for the lives and welfare of other people too heavy to carry.

  One life offered too much challenge, the other too little. Was there something, somewhere, more in the middle?

  “Texaco, Strike.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Take low station. Buster.” Buster meant hurry, bust your ass.

  “We’re on our way.”

  Jake Grafton disengaged the autopilot and rolled the Intruder to ninety degrees angle-of-bank. The nose came down. Speed brakes out, throttles back, shallow the bank to about seventy degrees, put a couple G’s on…the rate-of-descent needle pegged at 6,000 feet per minute down. That was all it would indicate. A spiral descent was his best maneuver because the tanker had a three-G limitation, mandated by higher authority to make the wings last longer. He was right at three G’s now, the altimeter unwinding at a dizzying rate.

  Low station was 5,000 feet, but it could be lowered if the visibility was better below this crud. Maybe he should ask. “Ah, Strike, Texaco. How’s the visibility and ceiling underneath?”

  “A little worse than when you took off. Maybe a mile viz
under an indefinite obscuration.”

  “Who’s our customer?”

  “Snake-eye Two Oh Seven. He’s got an emergency. Switch to button sixteen and rendezvous on him.”

  Jake was passing ten thousand feet, still turning steeply with G on. Bracing himself against the G, Flap changed the radio channel and called.

  “Snake-eye Two Oh Seven, this is Texaco. Say your posit, angels, and heading, over.”

  “Texaco, I’m on the Three One Zero radial at nine miles, headed inbound at four grand. Better hurry.”

  Jake keyed the radio transmitter. “Just keep going in and we’ll join on you.”

  The fighter pilot gave him two clicks in reply.

  Jake eyed the TACAN needle on the HSI, the horizontal situation indicator, a glorified gyroscopic compass. He had a problem here in three-dimensional space and the face of the instrument was an aid in helping him visualize it.

  He rolled the wings level and stuffed the nose down more. His airspeed was at 400 knots and increasing.

  “Snake-eye, Texaco, what’s your problem?”

  “We’re venting fuel overboard and the pull-forward is going to take more time than we’ve got.”

  “Posit again?”

  “Three One Zero at five, angels four, speed three hundred, heading One Three Zero.”

  “Are you in the clear?”

  “Negative.”

  “Let’s go on down to three grand.”

  Jake was passing six thousand feet, on the Three Three Zero radial at nine miles. He was indicating 420 knots and he was raising the nose to shallow his dive. He thumbed the speed brakes in and added some power. “We’re going to join fast,” he muttered at Flap, who didn’t reply.

  The problem was that he didn’t know how much visibility he would have. If it was about a mile, like the controller on the ship said, and he missed the F-4 by more than that margin, he would never see him. Unlike the Phantom, the tanker had no radar to assist in the interception.

  He was paying strict attention to the TACAN needle now. The seconds ticked by and the distance to the ship closed rapidly.