The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  If the mechanical fuse was defective, the electric tail fuse would set the bomb off. That fuse was armed by a jolt of electricity in the first two feet of travel as the bomb fell away from the parent rack, then its arming wire, an insulated electrical cable, pulled loose.

  The BN’s job on preflight was to check to ensure the ordnancemen had rigged bombs, fuses and arming wires correctly. Since any error here could ruin the mission, Jake Grafton always checked too. Today he and Flap stood side by side as they examined each weapon. Everything was fine.

  The bomb with the laser-seeker in the nose was the technology of the future, the technology that had already made unguided free-fall bombs obsolete and would itself be made obsolete by guided missiles. One had to aim a laser-light generator at the target and hold the light on it as the bomb fell. If the bomb was dropped into the proper cone above the target, the seeker would guide it to the reflected spot of laser light by manipulating small canards on the body of the device.

  In two or three years the A-6 would have its own laser-light generator in the nose of the aircraft. Now the generators, or “designators,” were hand-held. Today a radar-intercept officer in the backseat of an F-4 orbiting high above the target would aim the designator while Intruders, Corsairs and other Phantoms dropped the bombs. This system worked. Navy and Air Force crews used it with devastating effect on North Vietnamese bridges in the last year of the war.

  Due to the cost of the seekers, each plane had only one for today’s training mission. Dropping three unguided weapons in addition to the guided one had an additional benefit—the pilot had to try for a perfect dive to put all four on the target. If one bomb was a bull’s-eye and the other three went awry, he screwed up.

  The plane looked good. Strapped in waiting for the engine start, Jake Grafton arranged his charts in the cockpit, then paused for a few seconds to savor the warmth of the sun and the wind playing with his hair. The moment was over too soon. Helmet on, canopy closed, crank engines.

  The cat shot was a hoot, an exhilarating ride into a perfect morning. His airplane flew well, all the gear worked as advertised, none of the other A-6s had maintenance problems and all launched normally.

  The A-6s rendezvoused at 9,000 feet. When Jake had his gaggle together, he led them upward to 13,000 feet and slowly eased into position on the right of the lead division, today four Corsairs. When all the other divisions were aboard, the strike leader, the C.O. of one of the A-7 squadrons, rolled out on course to the target and initiated a climb to 23,000 feet.

  The climb took longer than usual. The bombers were heavily loaded. At ninety-eight percent RPM all Jake could coax out of his plane was 280 knots indicated. He concentrated on flying smoothly so his wingmen would not have to sweat bullets to stay with him.

  The six-plane division was broken up into two flights of three. Jake had one wingman on each side. Out farther to the right flew another three-plane flight, but its leader was also flying formation on Grafton. Just before the time came to dive, the man on each leader’s left would cross over, then the two flights would join so that there were six airplanes in right echelon. The plan was for Jake to roll in and the others to follow two seconds apart, so that all six were diving with just enough separation between the planes that each pilot could aim his own bombs. If they did it right, all six would be in the enemy’s threat envelope together and divide the enemy’s antiaircraft fire. And all would leave together. That was the plan, anyway.

  Flap had the radar and computer fired up, so Jake was getting steering to the target. He was merely comparing it to the course the strike leader was flying, however.

  The radio frequency was crowded. The strike leader was talking to the E-2 Hawkeye, the RA-5C was chattering about a fishing boat that he had chased away from the target and the cloud cover, someone had a hydraulic problem, the tankers wanted to change the poststrike rendezvous position because the carrier wasn’t where it was supposed to be when this evolution was put together, and one of the EA-6s was late getting launched and was going to be late getting to its assigned position. Situation normal, Jake thought.

  He checked the position of his wingmen regularly, yet he spent most of his time scanning the sky and staying in proper position in relation to the strike leader. When he had a spare second he brought his eyes back into the cockpit to check his engine instruments and fuel.

  The cumulus clouds below thickened as the strike group approached the coast of Luzon. The bases were at 4,000 feet, but the tops were building. From 23,000 feet the clouds seemed to cover about fifty percent of the sea below.

  Would there be holes over the target big enough to bomb through?

  The twenty-six bombers and their two EA-6 escorts began their descent toward their roll-in altitude of 15,000 feet. The leader left his throttle alone, so the airspeed began to increase. The faster the strike could close a Soviet task group, the fewer missiles and less flak it would encounter. In aerial warfare, speed is life.

  Now CAG was on the radio. He was at 30,000 feet over the target in an F-4. “Where are the Flashlights?”

  Flashlight was the F-4 that would illuminate the target with the laser designator. Actually there were two F-4s, both carrying hand-held laser designators. The pilots would have to find a hole in the clouds so the RIOs—radar intercept officers— could aim the designators, then they would have to maneuver to keep the target in sight and avoid colliding with one another. In a real attack on Soviet ships, the pilots would also be dodging missiles and flak.

  “Uh, Flashlight is trying to find the target.”

  The F-4’s electronic system was designed to find and track other airborne targets, not find the remnants of a wrecked ship resting on a reef. The A-6s’ systems, however, were working fine. Flap had the target and Jake was getting steering and distance. In the planning sessions he had argued that A-6s should carry the designators but had been overruled.

  “Ten miles to roll-in,” Flap told Jake. The strike was passing 20,000 feet. Now the strike leader dropped his nose farther, giving the group about 4,000 feet a minute down. Three hundred twenty knots indicated and increasing.

  Passing 18,000 feet Jake pumped his arm at the A-6 on his left side. Flap did the same to the man on his right. The Intruder formation shifted to echelon.

  The tops of the clouds were closer. Still some holes, but the target wasn’t visible through them.

  The situation was deteriorating fast. Without holes in the clouds, the F-4s carrying bombs could not find the target. The A-7s might be able to, but not in formation since the pilots could not fly formation and work their radars and computers too. The A-6s could break off at any point and make a system attack on the target, individually or in pairs. This was the edge an all-weather, two-man airplane gave you.

  The strike leader, Gold One, knew all this. He had only seconds to decide.

  “This is Gold One. Let’s go to Plan Bravo. Plan Bravo.”

  Jake Grafton lowered his nose still farther. Now he wanted to descend below the formation. The A-7s were shallowing their dive, which helped.

  Flap was on the ICS: “Target’s twenty degrees left. Master Arm on.”

  “Kiss off,” Jake told him, and Flap took a few seconds to splay his fingers at the wingman on his right as Jake turned left to center steering and dropped his nose still more. Fifteen degrees down now, going faster than a raped ape, the plane pushing against the sonic shock wave and vibrating slightly, nothing but clouds visible in the windscreen dead ahead. The other A-6s would continue on course for four seconds each, then turn toward the target. All six would run the target individually.

  “We’re in attack,” Flap announced, and sure enough, the attack symbology appeared on the VDI in front of Jake.

  “War Ace One’s in hot,” he announced on the radio.

  He took one more quick look around to ensure the other airplanes in this gaggle were clear.

  Something on his left wing caught his eye. His eyes focused.

  The bomb on Station O
ne, the station nearest the left wing tip—the propeller on the mechanical fuse was spinning! The fuse was arming.

  He gaped for half a second, unwilling to believe his eyes.

  The propeller was spinning.

  One bomb in a thousand, they say, will detonate at the end of arming time. The propeller will spin for 8.5 seconds to line up the firing circuit.

  He could drop it now!

  His thumb moved toward the pickle. The master armament switch was already on. All he had to do was squeeze the commit trigger and push the pickle. The bomb would fall away and be clear of the plane when the fuse finished arming. If it blew then…

  He would still be within the blast envelope.

  All these thoughts shot through his mind in less than a second. Even while he was considering he scanned the instruments to ensure he was tracking steering with his wings level.

  He looked outside again. The propeller was stopped.

  The bomb was armed! And it hadn’t exploded. Okay, we’ve dodged the first bullet.

  He pushed the radio transmit button as he retarded the throttles and raised the nose. “War Ace One has an armed bomb on the rack. Breaking off the attack and turning north at…” He looked at the altimeter. He was descending through 12,000 feet. “… At twelve thousand.”

  He grabbed the stick with his left hand and used his right to move the Master Arm switch to the safe position.

  Everyone was talking on the radio—A-6s calling in hot, the A-7s breaking up for dives, F-4s looking for holes—probably no one heard Jake’s transmission.

  “Station One,” he told Flap on the ICS when he had his left hand back on the throttles, talking over the gabble on the radio. “The bomb is armed.”

  He concentrated on flying the plane, on getting the nose up and turning to the north. He was in the clouds now, bouncing around in turbulence. A northerly heading should take him out from under the strike gaggle, which was circling the target to the south.

  “The arming wire pulled out of the fuse somehow,” he told Flap. “I saw the propeller spinning. The fucking thing is armed.”

  He looked again at the offending weapon. Now he saw that the thermal protective coating was peeled back somewhat. The Navy sprayed all its weapons with a plastic thermal coating after experiencing several major flight-deck fires in which bombs cooked off. The coating must have had a flaw in it, something for the slipstream to work on. The slipstream peeled the coating, which pulled the arming wire.

  A two-thousand-pound bomb…if it detonated under the wing, the airplane would be instantly obliterated. The fuel in the plane would probably explode. So would the other three weapons hanging on the plane. Not that he or Flap would care. They would already be dead, their bodies crushed by the initial blast and torn into a thousand pieces.

  And this turbulence…it could set off that fuse.

  He retarded the throttles. Almost to idle. Cracked the speed brakes to help slow down.

  “Let’s climb out of this crap,” Flap suggested.

  Jake slipped the speed brakes back in and raised the nose. He added power.

  Finally he stabilized at an indicated 250 knots.

  “Cubi?” Flap asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Flap hit a switch and the computer steering went right. Jake looked at the repeater between his legs. The steering bug was at One Six Zero degrees, eighty miles. Flap dialed in the Cubi TACAN station.

  “It could go at any time,” Jake said.

  “I know.”

  “Let’s get off this freq and talk to Black Eagle.”

  Flap got on the radio as they climbed free of the clouds.

  The turbulence ceased.

  Left turn. Fly around the target and the strike group to seaward.

  No. Right turn. Go around on the land side. The other planes would be leaving the target to seaward. Maybe at this altitude. No sense taking any more chances than—

  An F-4 shot across the windscreen going from right to left. Before Jake could react the A-6 flew into his wash. Wham! The plane shook fiercely, then it was through.

  “If that didn’t set the damned thing off, nothing will,” Flap said.

  Like hell. The jolts and bumps might well be cumulative.

  Jake concentrated on flying the plane. He was sweating profusely. Sweat stung his eyes. He stuck the fingers of his left hand under his visor and swabbed it away.

  Black Eagle suggested a frequency switch to Cubi Point Approach. Flap rogered and dialed the radio.

  They were at 18,000 feet now and well above the cloud tops.

  Jake glanced at the armed bomb from time to time. If he pickled it the shock of the ejector foot smacking into the weapon to push it away from the rack might set it off.

  If the bomb detonated he and Flap would never even know it.

  One second they would be alive and the next they would be standing in line to see St. Peter.

  What a way to make a living!

  Just fly the airplane, fake. Do what you can and let God worry about the other stuff.

  “Cubi Approach, War Ace Five Oh Seven. We have an armed Mark Eighty-Four hanging on Station One. We’re carrying three more Mark Eighty-Fours, but they are unarmed. After we land we want to park as far away from everything as possible. And could you have EOD meet us?” EOD stood for explosive ordnance disposal.

  “Roger live weapon. We’ll roll the equipment and call EOD.”

  Cubi Point was the U.S. naval air station on the shore of Subic Bay, the finest deep-water port in the western Pacific. It had one concrete runway 9,000 feet long. Today Jake Grafton flew a straight-in approach over the water, landing to the northeast.

  He flared the Intruder like he was flying an Air Force jet. He retarded the engines to idle, pulled the nose up and greased the main mounts on. He held the nose wheel off the runway until the airspeed read 80 knots, then he lowered it as gently as possible. Only then did he realize that he had been holding his breath.

  The tower directed him to taxi back to the south end of the runway and park on the taxiway. As he taxied he raised his flaps and slats and shut down his left engine. Then he opened the canopy and removed his oxygen mask. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his flight suit.

  A fire truck was waiting when Jake turned off the runway. He made sure he was across the hold-short line, then eased the plane to a stop. One of the sailors on the truck came over to the plane with a fire bottle, a fire extinguisher on wheels. Jake chopped the right engine. On shutdown the fuel control unit dumped the fuel it contained overboard, and this fuel fell down beside the right main wheel. If the brake was hot the fuel could ignite, hence the fire bottle. The danger was nonexistent if you shut down an engine while taxiing because you were moving away from the jettisoned fuel. But there was no fire today.

  One of the firemen lowered the pilot’s boarding ladder. Jake safetied his ejection seat and unstrapped. He left the helmet and mask in the plane when he climbed down.

  The thermal casing on the armed bomb had indeed been peeled back by the blast of the slipstream, pulling the arming wire and freeing the fuse propeller.

  Jake Grafton was standing there looking at it when he realized that a chief petty officer in khakis was standing beside him.

  “I’m Chief Mendoza, EOD.”

  Jake nodded at the weapon. “We were running an attack. I just happened to look outside for other planes just before we went into a cloud and saw the propeller spinning.”

  Flap came over while Jake was speaking. He put his hands on his hips and stood silently examining the bomb.

  “If you’d dropped it like that, sir, it might have gone off when the ejector foot hit it,” the chief said.

  Neither airman had anything to say.

  “Guess you guys were lucky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I gotta screw that fuse out. We’ll snap a few photos first because we’ll have to do a bunch of paperwork and the powers that be will want photos. I suggest you two fellows ride on the fire
truck. You don’t want to be anywhere around when I start screwing that fuse out.”

  “I’ll walk,” Jake said.

  Flap Le Beau headed for the fire truck.

  The chief turned his back on the weapon while the firemen took photos. He was facing out to sea, looking at the sky and the clouds and the shadows playing on the water when Jake Grafton turned away and began walking.

  The pilot loosened his flight gear. He was suddenly very thirsty, so he got out his water bottle and took a drink. The water was warm, but he drank all of it. His hands were shaking, trembling like an old man’s.

  The heat radiated from the concrete in waves.

  He wiped his face again with his sleeve, then half turned and looked back at the plane. The chief was still standing with his arms folded, facing out to sea.

  As he walked Jake got a cigarette from the pack in his left sleeve pocket and lit it. The smoke tasted foul.

  14

  A week after Jake and Flap visited Cubi point for three whole hours, Columbia maneuvered herself against the carrier pier.

  Subic Bay, Olongapo City across the Shit River, the BOQ pool, the Cubi O Club with its banks of telephone booths and the Ready Room Bar out back—Jake Grafton had seen it all too recently and it brought back too many memories.

  He got a roll of quarters and sat in a vacant telephone booth with a gin and tonic, but he didn’t make a call. Callie wasn’t in Hong Kong—she was in Chicago. Mail was arriving regularly but there were no letters from her; in fact, she hadn’t written since he called her from Hawaii.