Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 6 - Intruders

by Intruders (lit)

  "It wouldn't surprise me to find out that half those missile launchers are out of service for lack of maintenance. Be that as it may, these numbers should dispel any notions anybody might have that smacking the Russians is going be easy.

  These people aren't rice farmem-they are a first-class bluewater Navy. Putting them under with conventional, free-fall bombs is going to be really tough.

  We're going to lose a lot of people and airplanes getting it done." "We'll probably never have to," someone said, and three or four heads bobbed in agreement.

  "That's right," Kall said, almost whispering. "But if the order comes, we're going to be ready.

  We're going to have a plan and we're going to have practiced our plan. We're not going to try to invent the wheel after war is declared." There were no more comments about the probability of war with the Soviet Union.

  "We'll plan Alpha strikes," CAG said.

  "When we get to the Sea of Japan we'll schedule some and see how much training we need to make that option viable. At night and in bad weather, however, the A-6's are going to have to go it alone.

  I'd like to have the A-6 crews run night attacks against our own destroyers to develop a profile that gives them the best chance of hitting the target and surviving.

  Colonel Haldane and his people can work out a place to start and we'll go from there." "Aye aye, sir," Haldane said.

  ONE MORNING WHEN JAKE CAME INTO THE READY ROOM THE duty officer, First Lieutenant Doug Harrison, motioned to him.

  "Sir, the skipper wants to see you in his stateroom." "Sir! What is this, the Marines?" "Well, we try." Jake sighed. "You know what it's about?" "No, sir." "For heaven's sake, my name is Jake." "Yes, sir." "You try too hard. Let your hair grow out to an inch.

  Take a day off from polishing your shoes. Do twenty-nine pushups instead of thirty. You can overdo this military stuff, Doug." The skipper's stateroom was on the third deck, the one below the ready room deck. Entry to the skipper's subdivision was gained by lowering yourself through a watertight hatch, then going down a ladder.

  Jake knocked. The old man opened the door. "Come in and find a seat." The pilot did so. Colonel Haldane picked up a sheaf of paper and waggled it, then tossed it back on his desk. "Your letter of resignation. I have to put an endorsement on it.

  What do you want me to say?" Jake was perplexed. "Whatever you usually say, sir." "Technically your letter is a request to transfer from the regular Navy to the Naval Reserve and a request to be ordered to inactive status. So I have to comment about whether Or not you would be a good candidate for a reserve commission. Why are you getting out?" "colonel, in my letter I said-was "I read it. 'To pursue a civilian career." Terrific. Why do you want out?" "The war's over, sir. I went to AOCS because it was that or get drafted. I got a regular Navy commission in 1971 because it was- offered and my skipper recommended me, but I've never had the desire to be a professional career officer. To be frank, I don't think I'd be a very good one. I like the flying, but I don't think I'm cut out for the rest of it. IT be the first guy to volunteer to come back to fight if we have another war. I just don't want to be a peacetime sailor." "You want to fly for the airlines?" "I don't know, sir. Haven't applied to any. I might, though." "Pretty boring, if you ask me. Take off from point A and fly to point B. Land. Taxi to the gate. Spend the night in a motel. The next day fly back to A. You have to be a good pilot, I know, but after a while, I think a man with your training and experience would go quietly nuts doing something like that. You'd be a glorified bus driver." "You're probably right, sir." "So what are you going to do?" "I don't know, Skipper." "Hells bells, man, why resign if you don't have something to go to? Now if you had your heart set on going to grad school or into your dad's business or starting a whorehouse in Mexicali, I'd say bon voyage-you've done your bit. That doesn't appear to be the case, though, I'll send this in, but you can change your mind at any time up to your release date. Think it over." "Yessir." "Oh, by the way, the skipper of the Snake-eyes had some nice words for the way you tanked Two Oh Seven and dropped him off on the downwind. A quick, expeditious rendezvous, he said, a professional job." "Too bad Two Oh Seven caught fire." "As soon as he slowed to landing speed the gas seeped into the engine bays around the edges of the engine-bay doors. The engines ignited the fuel.

  From the time the fire first appeared visually, it was a grand total of two and a half seconds before the hydraulic lines burned through. The pilot punched when the nose started down. He pulled back stick and there was nothing there." Jake Grafton just nodded. I I "This is a man's game," Haldane said. He shrugged.

  "There's no glamour, no glory, the pay's mediocre, the hours are terrible and the stakes are human fives. You bet your LIFE and your BN'S every time you strap on an airplane." The carrier and her escorts sailed west day after day. Columbia's airplanes remained on deck in alert status as her five thousand men maintained their machinery, coped with endless paperwork, and drilled.

  They drilled morning, afternoon, and evening: fire drills, general quarters, nuclear, biological and chemical attack, collision, flooding, engine casualty, and flight deck disasters. The damage control teams were drilled to the point of exhaustion and the fire fighting teams did their thing so many times they lost count.

  The only breaks in the routine came in the wee hours of the night when underway replenishmentand-LTNREPS'-WERE conducted. The smaller escorts came alongside the carrier every third day to top their tanks with NSFO-NAVY standard fuel oil-from the carrier's bunkers.

  Nowhere was seamanship more on display than during the hours that two or three vastly dissimilar ships steamed side by side through the heavy northern Pacific night seas joined by hoses and cables.

  The destroyers and frigates were the most fun to watch, and Jake Grafton was often on the starboard catwalk to look and marvel. The smaller warship would overtake the carrier from astern and slow to equal speed alongside. The huge carrier would be almost rock-steady in the sea, but the small ship would be pitching, rolling, and plunging up and down as she rode the sea's back. Occasionally the bow would bite so deep into the sea that spray and foam would cascade aft, hiding the forward gun mount from view and dousing everyone topside.

  As the captain of the destroyer held his ship in formation, a line would be shot across the seventy-five-foot gap between the ships to be snagged by waiting sailors wearing hard hats and life jackets. This rope would go into sheaves and soon a cable would be pulled across the river of rushing water.

  When the cable was secured, a hose would go across and soon fuel oil would be pumping. Three hoses were the common rig to minimize the time required to transfer hundreds of tons of fuel. Through it all the captain of the small boy stood on the wing of the bridge where he could see everything and issue the necessary orders to the steersman and engine telegraph operator to hold his ship in formation.

  One night a supply ship came alongside.

  While Jake watched, a frigate joined on the starboard side of the supply ship, which began transferring fuel through hoses and supplies by high-line to both ships at once. Now both the frigate and carrier had to hold formation on the supply ship. To speed the process a CHILD-46 helicopter belonging to the supply ship lifted pallets of supplies from the stem of the supply ship and deposited them on the carrier's flight deck, a VERTREP, or vertical replenishment.

  Here in the darkness on the western edge of the world's greatest ocean American power was being nakedly exercised. The extraordinary produce of the world's most advanced economy was being passed to warships in stupendous quantity: fuel, oil, grease, bombs, bullets, missiles, toilet paper, movies, spare parts, test equipment, paper, medical supplies, canned soft drinks, candy, meat, vegetables, milk, flour, ketchup, sugar, coffee,-the list went on and on. The supply ship had a trainload to deliver.

  The social organization and hardware necessary to produce, acquire and transport this stupendous quantity of wealth to these powerful warships in the middle of nowhere could be matched by no other nation on ea
rth. The ability to keep fleets supplied anywhere on the earth's oceans was the key ingredient in American sea power, power that could be projected to anyplace on the planet within a thousand miles of saltwater. For good or ill, these ships made Washington the most important city in the world; these ships made the U.s. Congress the most important forum on earth and the President of the United States the most powerful, influential person alive; these ships enforced a global Pax Americana.

  The whole thing was quite extraordinary when one thought about it, and Jake Grafton, attack pilot, history major and farmer's son, did think about it.

  He stood under an A-6's tail on the flight deck catwalk wearing his leather jacket with the collar turned up against the wind and chill, and marveled.

  "I hear you're going to get out," the Real McCoy said one evening in the stateroom.

  "Yeah. At the end of the cruise." Jake was in the top bunk reading his NATOPS manual.

  McCoy had the stock listing pages of the Wall Street Journal spread across the floor, his cruise box, bunk and desk.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his notebook full of charts on his lap. He had fallen into the habit of annotating his charts each evening after the ship received a mail delivery. He leaned back against his locker, stretched out his legs, and sighed.

  "I've thought about it," he said, "Getting exiled to the Marines got the wheels spinning. Being ten days behind the markets makes them spin faster. But no." He shrugged.

  "Maybe one of these days, but not now." Jake put down his book. "What's keeping you in? I thought you really liked that investment stuff?" "Yeah, makes a terrific hobby. I think my problem is I'm a compulsive gambler. Stocks are the best game aroundthe house percentage is next to nothing-just a brokerage fee when you trade. Yet it's just money. On the other hand, you take flying-that's the ultimate gamble: your LIFE is the comq Pon wager. And waving-every pass is a new game, a new challenge. all you have is your wits and skill and the stakes are human fives. There's nothing like that in civilian life-except maybe trauma medicine. If I got out I'd miss the flying and the waving too much." Jake was slightly stunned. He had never before heard flying described as a gamble, a game, like Russian roulette.

  Oh, he knew the risks, and he did everything in his power to minimize them, yet here was a man for whom the risks were what made it worth doing.

  "If I were you," Jake told the Real, "I wouldn't make that crack about waving down in the ready rooms." "Oh, I don't. A lot of these guys are too uptight." "Yeah." "They think the LSO is always gonna save them.

  And that's what we want them to think, so they'll always do what we tell them, when we tell them. If they get the notion in their hard little heads that we might be wrong, they'll start second-guessing the calls.

  Can't have that now, can we?" "Unimm." "But LSO'S are human too. Knowing that you can make a mistake, that's what keeps you giving it everything you've got, a11 the time, every time." "What if you screw up, like the CAG LSO did with me?

  Only somebody dies. How are you going to handle that?" "I don't know. That's the bad thing about it. You do it for the challenge and you know that sooner or later the ax will fall and you're going to have to live with it. That's why flying is easier. If you screw up in the cockpit, you're just dead. There's a lot to be said for betting your own ass and not someone else's." "Aren't many things left anymore that don't affect someone else," Jake muttered.

  "I suppose," said the Real McCoy, and went back to annotating his stock charts.

  Columbia and her retinue of escorts entered the Sea of Japan one morning in late July through the Tsugaru Strait between the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu. Transiting the Strait, the five-minute alert fighters were parked just short of the catapults with their crews strapped into the cockpits, but a mob of sailors stood and sat around the edge of the flight deck wherever there was room between the planes. Some were off-duty, others had received their supervisors" permission to go topside for a squint, many worked on the flight deck.

  Land was visible to the north and south, blue, misty, exotic and mysterious to these young men from the cities, suburbs, small towns and farms of America. That was Japan out there-geisha girls, kimonos, rice and raw fish, strange temples and odd music and soft, lilting voices saying utterly incomprehensible things. And they were here looking at it!

  Several large ferries passed within waving distance, and the Japanese aboard received the full treatment-hats and arms and a few shirts. Fishing vessels and small coasters rolling in the swells were similarly saluted as the gray warships passed at fifteen knots.

  This was the first cruise beyond America's offshore waters for many of these young men. More than a few sniffed the wet sea wind and thought they could detect a spicy, foreign flavor that they had never whiffed before in the nitrogenoxygen mixture they had spent their lives inhaling back in the good ol' U.s. of A.

  Even the homesick and lovelorn admitted this was one hell of a fine adventure. If the folks at home could only see this.

  So steaming one behind the other, the gray ships transited the strait while the young men on deck soaked up impressions that would remain with them for as long as they lived.

  Those men standing on the carrier's fantail saw something else: two thousand yards astern the thin sail of a nuclearpowered attack submarine made a modest bow wave. How long she had been there, running on the surface, no one on the flight deck was sure, but there she was. Those with binoculars could just make out a small American flag fluttering from the periscope.

  Once through the strait, the ship went to flight quarters and the tourists cleared the flight deck.

  Except for the few pilots who had launched in the interception of the Russian Bears, most of the aviators had not flown for nine days. This meant that they needed a day catapult shot and trap they could legally fly at night. With this requirement in the staff had laid on a series of surface surveillance missions in the Sea of Japan. These missions would also show the flag, would once again put carrier-borne warplanes over the merchantmen and warships that plied these waters just in case anyone had become bored listening to American ambassador By the time the carrier hurled her first planes down the catapults, the submarine had quietly slipped back into the depths.

  Jake was not scheduled to fly today. He was, however, on the flight schedule-two watches in Pried-Fly and one after dark in the carrier air traffic control center, CATCC, pronounced cat-see. During these watches he was the squadron representative, to be called upon by the powers that be to offer expert advice on the A-6 should such advice become necessary. There was an A-6 NATOPS manual in each compartment for him to refer to, and before each watch he found it and checked it to make sure it was all there. Then he stood with observers from the other squadrons with the book in his hand, watching and listening.

  In addition to ensuring the air boss and Air Ops officer had instant access to knowledgeable people, these watches were a learning experience for the observers. Here they could observe how the aircraft were controlled, why problems arose, and watch those problems being solved.

  In CATCC they could also watch the air wing commander, known as CAG, and their own skippers as they sat beside the Air Ops officer on his throne and answered queries and offered advice. Air Ops often conferred with the skipper of the ship via squawk box.

  Every facet of night carrier operations was closely scrutinized and heavily supervised. While the junior officer aloft in the night sweated in his cockpit, he was certainly not alone. Not as long as his radio worked.

  During the day the seas became rougher and the velocity of the wind increased. By sunset the overcast was low and getting lower. Below the clouds visibility was decreasing. A warm front was coming into the area.

  Jake watched the first night recovery on the ready room PLAT monitor as he did paperwork. The deck was moving and there were three bolters. The second night recovery Jake spent in CATCC with the NATOPS book in his hand. It was raining outside. Two pilots were waved off and four boltered, one
of them twice. One of the tankers was sour and a flailex developed when the spare tanker slid on the wet catapult track during hook-up and had to be pushed back with a flight deck tractor. While this mess kept the deck foul, the LsOs waved Off three planes into the already-full bolter pattern.

  When the last plane was abOard-the recovery took thirty-eight minutes-Jake headed for his stateroom to work on a training report.

  He was still at it half an hour later when the Real McCoy came in, threw his flight deck helmet and LSO logbook onto his desk and flopped into his bunk. "Aye yei yei! What a night! They're using those sticks to kill rats in the cockpits and the weather is getting worse." "You were on the platform?" Jake meant the LSO'S platform on the edge of the flight deck.

  "YeP. I'm wavin' "cm. Another great Navy night, I can tell you. A real Chinese fire drill. Three miles visibility under a thousand-foot overcast, solid clag up to twenty-one grand, ten-foot swells-why didn't I have the sense to join the Air Farce? The boys in blue would have closed up shop and gone to the club three hours ago."...The next war," Jake muttered.

  "Next war, Air Force," McCoy agreed.

  "So, wanna stand on the platform with me for the next act?" Jake regarded his half-finished report with disgust, got out of his chair and stretched. "Why not?