The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  On this particular night Jake Grafton thought he had it wired. He was rendezvousing on the off-going tanker at low station, 5,000 feet over the ship on the five-mile arc. There it was, its lights winking weakly.

  “Ten o’clock,” Flap said.

  “Roge, I got it.”

  “He’ll be doing two-fifty.”

  Jake glanced at his airspeed. Three hundred knots indicated. He would have to work that off as he closed. But not quite yet.

  The tanker would be in a left-hand turn. Jake cranked his plane around until he had his nose in front of it and was looking at it through the right quarter panel, across the top of the radar scope-hood. He eased in a little left rudder and right flaperon to help keep his plane in a position where he could see the tanker.

  With the target plane on the right side the A-6 was difficult to rendezvous because the cockpit was too wide—the BN sat on the pilot’s right. This meant that the right glareshield and canopy rail were too high and, as the planes closed, would block the pilot’s vision of the target aircraft if he allowed himself to get just a little behind the bearing line or get a tad high. Jake knew all this. He had accomplished several hundred night rendezvous and knew the problems involved and the proper techniques to use without even thinking about it. Tonight he was busy applying that knowledge.

  Yet something was wrong. Jake checked his instruments. All okay. Why was the tanker moving to the right? Instinctively he rolled more wings level, rechecked his attitude gyro, the altimeter, the airspeed…All okay. And still the sucker is moving right!

  “Texaco, say your heading.”

  “Zero Two Zero.”

  Hell! Now Jake understood. He was still on the outside of the tanker’s turning radius, not on the inside as he had assumed. He leveled his wings and flew straight ahead to cross behind the tanker, feeling slightly ridiculous. He had assumed that he was on the inside…

  Now, indeed, he was on the inside of the tanker’s turn. He turned to put the nose in the proper position and started inbound. Checking the gauges, watching the bearing, slowing gently…280 knots would be perfect, would give him 30 knots of closure…

  And the tanker was…Jesus! Coming in awful fast—way too fast! Power back, boards out, and…

  “Look at your attitude.” Flap.

  Jake looked. He was at ninety-degrees angle-of-bank, passing 4,500 feet, descending.

  He leveled the wings and got the nose up. The tanker shot off to the left.

  “I’m really screwed up tonight,” he told the BN.

  “Turn hard and get inside of him, then close.”

  Jake did. He felt embarrassed, like a neophyte on his first night formation hop. Yet only when he got to within two hundred yards and could make out the tanker’s position lights clearly was he sure of the tanker’s direction of flight. Only then was he comfortable.

  He wasn’t concentrating hard enough. Attempting to rendezvous on a single, flashing light, in a dark universe devoid of any other feature…it was difficult at best and impossible if you weren’t completely focused.

  Flap extended the drogue as Jake crossed behind the tanker and surfaced on his right side. “You got the lead,” said the tanker pilot, Chance Malzahn. Jake clicked his mike twice in reply as Chance slid aft. He dropped slightly and disappeared from sight behind. Jake concentrated on flying his own plane, staying in this steady, twenty-degree angle-of-bank turn, keeping on the five-mile arc, holding altitude perfectly.

  In seconds the green ready light on the refueling panel went out and the counter began to click off the pounds delivered. The refueling package worked.

  “Five Twenty-Three is sweet,” Flap told the ship,

  The green ready light appeared again. Malzahn had backed out of the drogue. Now he came up on Jake’s left side.

  “You got the lead,” Jake told him as Malzahn’s drogue streamed aft.

  The drogue looked like a three-foot-wide badminton birdie. It dangled on the end of a fìfty-foot-long hose aft and slightly below the wash of the tanker. To get fuel, Jake would have to insert his fuel probe, which was permanently mounted on the nose in front of his windscreen, into the drogue and push it in about five feet. When the take-up reel on the tanker had turned the proper amount, electrical switches would mate and begin pumping fuel down the hose into the receiver aircraft.

  The trick was getting the probe into the drogue, the basket. If the basket was new, with all the feathers in good shape, it was usually almost stationary and fairly easy to plug. If it was slightly damaged, however, it tended to weave back and forth in the windstream and present a moving target. Turbulence that bounced the tanker and receiver aircraft added to the level of difficulty. And, of course, there was the “pucker factor”—extensive experience has proven that the tension of a pilot’s sphincter is directly proportional to the level of his anxiety, i.e., higher makes tighter, etc.

  Tonight, needing only to hit the tanker to “sponge” the excess fuel, Jake’s anxiety level was normal, or even slightly below. He was fat, had plenty of fuel. And the air was fairly smooth. The only fly in the ointment was the condition of that Marine Corps drogue. Tonight it weaved in a small, erratic figure-eight pattern.

  Jake stabilized his plane about ten feet behind the drogue and watched it bob and weave for a moment. Flap Le Beau kept his flashlight pointed at it.

  “Little Marine bastard is bent.”

  “Yeah.” Flap was full of sympathy.

  Flopping drogues had cracked bullet-proof windscreens, shattered Plexiglas and fodded engines. Tonight Jake Grafton eyed this one warily, waited for his moment, then smartly added power and drove his probe in. Drove it at that spot where the drogue would be when he got there. He hoped.

  Miraculously he timed it right. The probe captured the drogue and locked in. He kept pushing until the green light above the hose chute in the tanker came on. Now he was riding about fifteen feet below the tanker’s tail and ten feet aft. As long as he stayed right here, held that picture, he would get fuel.

  “You get twelve hundred pounds,” Chance Malzahn told him.

  Two clicks in acknowledgment.

  “Nice,” Flap said, referring to the plug, the flashlight never wavering.

  When the last of the gas was aboard Jake backed out. He came up on Malzahn’s left side and took the lead as Malzahn reeled in his hose. After a word with Tanker Control, Malzahn cut his power and turned away, headed down on a vector for an approach.

  Jake and Flap were now Texaco. Soon two F-4s came to take a ton of fuel each, then they turned away and disappeared in the vast darkness.

  Jake took the tanker on up to high station, 20,000 feet, and settled it on autopilot at 220 knots. Around and around the ship, orbiting. Flap got out a paperback book and adjusted his kneeboard light. Jake loosened one side of his oxygen mask and let it dangle.

  “Do you ever see the faces of the men you killed?” Jake asked. They had been orbiting the ship at high station for almost half an hour.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jake Grafton took his time before he answered. “I got shot down last December. We ended up in Laos. Had to shoot three guys before they got us out. They were trying to kill us—me and my BN—and one of them shot me. That’s how I ended up with this scar on my temple.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Had to do it, of course, or they would have killed us. Still, I see them sometimes in dreams. Wake up feeling rotten.”

  Flap Le Beau didn’t say anything.

  “Dropping bombs, now, I did that for a couple cruises. Bound to have killed a lot of people. Oh, most of the time we bombed suspected truck parks and crap like that—probably killed some ants and lizards and turned a lot of trees into toothpicks. That’s what we called them, toothpick missions—but occasionally we went after better targets. Stuff where there would be people. Not just trees in the jungle and mud roads crossing a creek.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Toward the end there we were really pounding the north, hittin
g all the shit that Johnson and McNamara didn’t have the brains or balls to hit six years before.”

  “It was fucked up, all right.”

  “One mission, close air support of some ARVN, they told me I killed forty-seven of ’em. Forty-seven. That bothered me for a while, but I don’t see them at night. Forty-seven men with one load of bombs…it’s like reading about it in a newspaper or history book…doesn’t seem real now. I still see those three NVA though.”

  “I still see faces too.”

  Below them an unbroken cloud deck stretched away in all directions. The sliver of moon was fuzzy and there weren’t many stars—they were trying to shine through a gauzy layer of high cirrus.

  “Wonder if it’ll ever stop? If they’ll just fade out or something.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t seem right somehow, to lose fifty-eight thousand Americans, to kill all those Vietnamese, all for nothing.”

  Flap didn’t reply.

  “I don’t like seeing those faces and waking up in a cold sweat. I had to do it. But damn…”

  He wanted to forget the past, forget all of it. The present was okay, the flying and the ship and the men he shared it with. Yet the future was waiting out there, somewhere, hidden in the mists and haze. He was reaching out for something, something that lay ahead along that road into the unknown. Just what it would be he didn’t know. He was ready to make the journey though.

  Under the overcast it was raining. At five thousand feet visibility was down to two or three miles and the oncoming tanker had trouble finding them, even with vectors from tanker control. It was that kind of night, with nothing going right. Once he was there Jake slipped in behind, eyed the basket, and went for it. He got it with only a little rudder kick in close and pushed it in.

  Nothing. The green light over the hose hole did not illuminate.

  “Are we getting any?” Flap asked the other crew.

  “No. Back out and let us recycle.”

  Jake retarded the power levers a smidgen and let his plane drift aft. The basket came off the probe. He moved out to the right and Flap told the other crew to recycle. They pulled the hose all the way in, then ran it out again.

  This time Jake missed the basket on the first try. He stabilized and slipped in on his second attempt.

  “Still no gas.”

  “Tanker Control, this is Five Two Two, we’re sour.”

  “Roger, Two Two. Your signal is dump. Steer Two Two Zero and descend to One Point Two, over.”

  “Five Two Two, Two Two Zero and down to One Point Two.”

  “Texaco, Tanker Control, you steer Two Zero Zero and descend to One Point Two, over.”

  Jake slid left and the other tanker went right. It was already streaming fuel from the main and wing-tip dumps. Nine tons of fuel would have to be dumped into the atmosphere. Too bad, but there it was.

  Jake settled onto his desired course and popped his speed brakes. The nose went over. When he stabilized he looked to the right for the other A-6, which was already fading into the rain and darkness. He came back into the cockpit and concentrated on his instruments.

  This little world of needles and dials illuminated by red lights had always fascinated him. Making the needles behave didn’t seem all that difficult, until you tried it. And on nights like this, when he felt about half in the bag, when he was having trouble concentrating, then it was exquisite torture. Everything he did was either too little or too much. It was maddening.

  The perverse needles taunted him. You are too high, they whispered, too fast, off course, now you are low…He had to work extremely hard to make them behave, had to pay strict attention to their message. The slightest inattention, the most minute easing of his concentration would allow the needles to escape his grasp.

  The controller worked him into a hole in the bolter pattern, which was rapidly filling up. The voices on the radio told him the story as he struggled to make the needles behave. The weather was worse than forecast. Rain was ruining the visibility, the sea was freshening, and one of the F-4s had already boltered twice. Nearest land was 542 miles to the northwest. There were no sweet tankers in the air.

  “Ain’t peace wonderful?” Flap muttered.

  “Landing checklist,” Jake said, and they went through it. They were too heavy so they dumped fifteen hundred pounds of fuel to get to landing weight. Crazy, that the only good tanker was dumping to land instead of hawking the deck to help that Phantom crew, but ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or…

  At a mile and a half he saw the ship, a tiny smear of red light enlivening the dead universe.

  Flap called the ball at Six Point Oh.

  “Roger Ball.”

  Jake recognized the Real McCoy’s voice, but just in case he didn’t the Real continued, “Deck’s dancing, Jake. Watch your lineup.”

  He had the ball centered, nailed there, and with just a little dip of the wings he chased the landing centerline to the right, working the throttles individually so as not to overcontrol. The rain flowed around the canopy in a continuous sheet, but the engine bleed air kept the pilot’s windscreen clear.

  There was an art to throttle-work on the ball, moving each individual lever ever so slightly, yet knowing when to move them both. Tonight Jake got it just right. The deck got closer and closer, the ball stayed centered, the lineup was good, the angle-of-attack needle behaved…and they caught a three-wire.

  “Luck,” Jake told Flap as they rolled out of the landing area.

  They taxied him to a stop abeam the island where a half-dozen purple-shirts—grapes—waited with a fuel hose. Jake opened the canopy as the squadron’s senior troubleshooter climbed the ladder. The wind felt raw and the rain cold against his skin.

  “We’re going to hot pump you and shoot you again,” the sergeant shouted over the whine of the engines. “This is the only up tanker.”

  Jake stuck his thumb up to signify his understanding.

  The sergeant went back down the ladder and raised it as Jake closed the canopy. Might as well keep the rain out. The sergeant flashed a thumbs-up and went around to the BN’s side of the plane to watch the refueling operation. Jake moved the switch to depressurize the tanks.

  Refueling took awhile. They needed twenty thousand pounds for a full load and the ship’s pumps could only deliver it at about a ton a minute.

  He was tired and his butt felt like dead meat, yet it was very pleasant sitting here in the warm, comfortable cockpit. From their vantage point here beside the foul line they had a grandstand seat. The planes came out of the rain and darkness and slammed into the deck. The first two trapped, then a Phantom boltered, his hook ripping a shower of sparks the length of the landing area. This was the guy who had already boltered twice before.

  Ah yes, this comfortable cockpit, with everything working just the way it was supposed to, the rain pattering on the Plexiglas and collecting into rivulets that smeared the light.

  He was tired, but not too much so. Just pleasantly tired.

  Jake unhooked his oxygen mask and laid it in his lap. He took off his helmet and massaged his face and head. He used his sleeves and gloves to swab away the perspiration, then pulled the helmet back on.

  The minutes ticked by as the fuel gauges faithfully reported the fuel coming aboard.

  They were still fueling when the errant F-4 came out of the gloom and snagged a two-wire. The pilot stroked the afterburners on the roll out. The white-hot focused flames poured from the tailpipes for about a second, then went out, leaving everyone on deck half-blinded.

  Two minutes later an A-7 carrying a buddy store, a tanking package hung on a weapon’s station under one wing, was taxied from the pack up to Cat Two and launched. Apparently the brain trust in Air Ops wanted more gas aloft.

  At last Jake and Flap were ready. Pressurize the tanks. Boarding ladders up, refueling panel closed, seats armed, and they were taxiing toward Cat Two, the left bow catapult.

  Spread the wings, flaps to takeoff, sla
ts out, wipe out the cockpit, ease into the shuttle. There, the jolt as the hold-back reached full extension, then another jolt as the shuttle went forward into tension. Off the brakes, throttles up.

  He watched the engines come up to full power as he pulled up the catapult grip and arranged the heel of his hand behind the throttles, felt the airplane tremble as the engines sucked in vast quantities of that rainy air and slammed it out the tailpipes into the jet blast deflector—the JBD. Fuel flow normal, temperatures coming up nicely, RPM at 100 percent on the left engine, a fraction over on the right. Hydraulics normal, everything okay.

  Jake wiped out the cockpit, glanced at the panel, ensured Flap had his flashlight on the standby gyro…“You ready?”

  “Let it rip.”

  He flipped on the exterior light master switch on the end of the cat grip with his left thumb.

  The hold-back bolt broke. He felt it break. Then came the shot, a stiff jolt of terrific acceleration, which lasted about a quarter of a second. Then it ceased. Sweet Jesus fucking Christ the airplane was still accelerating but way too goddamn slow!

  He was doing maybe 30 knots when he released the cat grip and closed the throttles. Automatically he extended the wing-tip speed brakes. He jammed his feet down on the top of the rudder pedals, locking both brakes.

  They were still going forward, sliding on the wet, greasy deck. Thundering toward the bow, the round-down, the edge of the cliff…

  Jake pulled the left throttle around the horn to idle cutoff, stopping the flow of fuel to that engine.

  He released the left brake and engaged nose-wheel steering. Slammed the rudders to neutral, then hard right. That should capture the nose wheel and turn it right, if the shuttle wasn’t holding it. But the nose wheel refused to respond.

  Still going forward, but slower. The edge was there, coming toward them…only seconds left.

  He released both brakes, and engaged nose-wheel steering and slammed the rudder full left. He felt something give. The nose started to swing left.