Flight of the Intruder

by Stephen Coonts

  "Two Oh Three, wilco." As if they had a choice.

  "And don't either one of you fly into the water."

  Jake didn't even bother clicking his mike. Neither man wanted to commit suicide. Of course, if they weren't real goddamn careful, they'd be just as dead. More to the point, if the two men in the Phantom had to eject into this sea, they ran a good risk of getting tangled in their chutes and drowning before the helicopter moved in.

  Jake planned his approach. He had already screwed up twice tonight, not counting his dive for the deck. Please God, don't let me get zapped passing gas! He concentrated on the problem before . The Ph, itom would slow when it dropped its gear and flaps, and the tanker would close the distance. They would have to be beneath the clouds then, about 250 feet over the water Jake would not have time to constantly check the altimeter. "When we get below three hundred feet 1 want you to call the altitude every five seconds," he told Razor. The bombardier would have to watch the altimeter very carefully. Any unnoticed sink rate would lead to watery oblivion in a matter of seconds,

  "If you kill me Grafton," Razor told him, "I'll kick your ass in hell for the next ten thousand years." When the pilot did not respond, Razor added, "Why in the fuck didn't I have the good sense to join the goddamn army?"

  Jake Grafton extended his pattern downwind as the Phantom turned crosswind to intercept the final bearing inbound. When he was sure he had enough separation, Jake also turned crosswind and let the plane begin a gentle descent toward the water. He was at 500 feet when he turned to the final bearing and began to close on the ship. Two Oh Three was at two miles on the glide path.

  Come on, you son of a bitch, get aboard this time!

  But Jake knew it was a forlorn hope. The fighter pilot had lost confidence, much like a football team that is twenty points behind. He needed something to restore his faith in himself. Maybe a full bag of gas would calm him down. Jake descended through 300 feet, still in the clouds. At 250 feet he was in and out of clouds but he leveled there, afraid to go lower.

  The airspeed read 275 knots, the distance on the TACAN five miles. The F-4 was at a mile now, calling the ball. This should work out.

  He was listening to the LSO between Razor's altitude calls when a cluster of lights loomed ahead in the darkness.

  Holy-!

  "Pull up!" Razor screamed,

  Jake jerked the stick aft and slammed the throttles forward as confusion and adrenaline flooded him. His eyes darted to the distance indicator on the TACAN as the Gs slammed him down into the seat and the nose came up. It couldn't be the carrier!

  Oh, God! It was the plane guard destroyer.

  He pulled the throttles back and shoved the stick forward. The two men floated in their seats as the plane nosed over. They were at 1000 feet and two miles from the ship. They had to get down under fast. Jake let the nose go to ten degrees down, then put two Gs on to pull out at 250 feet.

  "Bolter, bolter, bolter!"

  After a last check to ensure he was level, Jake looked ahead through the rain. The adrenaline kept pumping. He could see nothing and terror welled up. He fought it bank.

  "Get ready to put the hose out," he told the bombardier between altitude calls.

  At last he saw the carrier, a mass of dim red light in the rain. He added power. The fighter was somewhere up ahead at 250 knots. Grafton squeezed on more power. The airspeed increased. They went by the ship at 350 knots, 250 feet. "Stagecoach Two Oh Three, call your posit."

  "Two miles straight ahead, four hundred pounds." The fighter's fuel was almost down to the accuracy margin of the fuel gauge; it could flame out at any second.

  "Speed?"

  "Two fifty." Jake saw him now. Elation replaced the fear that had gripped him seconds before. He levered back the throttles and cracked the speed brakes a trifle.

  "We'll tank at three hundred," he announced. In seconds they were together. Jake passed the fighter on its left wing, stabilizing at the chosen airspeed as the F-4 pilot increased power-perhaps for the last time if he didn't get fuel-trailed in behind the tanker, and guided the refueling probe home in one smooth, sexual motion. Grafton raised the nose when he saw the transfer light come on and began to climb. "You're getting fuel," he said over the air.

  Apparently the Phantom's crew didn't trust themselves to speak, because the reply was several mike clicks.

  "How much does Stagecoach Two Oh Three get?" Razor asked the ship.

  "Give him five grand and if he doesn't get aboard on the next pass, he can divert to Da Nang. The field is open now. You copy, Two Oh Three?"

  "Roger. Copy one more approach."

  As they reached 1200 feet Jake turned downwind and led the fighter back for another approach. The fighter pilot keyed his mike when the Phantom finished tanking: "Thanks for saving our assets, you guys." He dropped his gear and flaps and receded in the tanker's rear-view mirror. Good luck, thought Grafton as the lights of the fighter faded.

  Confidence is so slippery: one either has it at a given instant or one does not. Now the fighter pilot, whose name Jake did not know, had it-that will-o'-the-wisp that had eluded his grasp so many times-now he had it, for he successfully trapped aboard on his next approach.

  "Now let us get down again," Razor muttered almost in prayer after the Phantom had trapped.

  "Five Two Two, you are at seven miles on final approach. Slow to landing speed. Say your state."

  "Three thousand pounds." Jake slapped the gear and flap handles down and lowered the arresting hook.

  "Three down and locked, flaps in takeoff, slats out, boards out, hook down," Jake told Razor, who then read the rest of the landing checklist as the pilot slowed to the on-speed indication on the angle-of-attack indexer and stabilized there.

  "Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path." Jake retarded the power and clicked the nose trim forward.

  "Five On Two, you are below glide path." Damn! He had taken off too much power too soon. He added some and checked the vertical speed needle as he tried to flatten his descent and intercept the glide slope. The plane was bouncing in the turbulence and the needles flopped maddeningly.

  "Slightly below glide path. Call your needles." "Low and right."

  "Disregard. You are below glide path, on centerline."

  He was fighting the controls. He knew it, yet there was nothing he could do. Finesse seemed impossible. No adjustment of power or stick brought exactly the right response from the machine; it was either too much or too little.

  "You are below glide path, three-quarters of a mile, call the ball."

  Razor made the call. "Five Two Two, Intruder ball, two point eight."

  "You are low." That was the LSO.

  Jake clicked his mike and added power. Too much. "You are high and fast."

  Jake could see that. Frustrated, he pulled off a wad of power and clicked the nose up, trying to descend and slow down all at the same time. It was working. The ball was sinking. He added power to catch it. Not enough. The ball sank below the green datum lights that marked the glide path, and turned from yellow to red. Can't stay down here; the ramp's down here, and tearing metal, black sea, and watery death. He crammed on the power and tweaked back the nose.

  He crossed the ramp with the ball climbing and reduced the power. Too late! The ball squirted off the top of the mirror just as the wheels collided with the deck. He rammed the throttles to the stops and thumbed in the boards.

  "Bolter, bolter, bolter!"

  The deceleration didn't come. The engines were still winding up when the speeding aircraft ran off the deck into the night air sixty teet above the water. He rotateC to ten degrees nose up and eyed the altimeter as it began to register the climb.

  He caught himself lingering upon individual instruments, taking precious seconds to decipher the bits of information. His scan was breaking down.

  Come on, Jake, he told himself. Keep those eyes moving. One more time! One more good approach!

  Razor toggled the bleed air switch as they sank
beneath the clouds on their next approach, but nothing happened. Rain drops which were swept away at 300 knots ran up the windscreen in vertical streaks at 120, creating a prismatic miasma of double images.

  "Gimme air," Jake demanded of Razor.

  "It's not working. Your wings are level."

  The yellow ball and green datum lights were merely smears on the windscreen. Jake fought back panic and tried to respond to the half-heard comments from the LSO. The desire to trap was now an obsession. He was fast-the LSO and the angle-of-attack indexer agreed -but in this living nightmare he couldn't reduce the power. He fought the stick with a death grip. The red splotches that were the drop lights swept under the nose and he leaned sideways to view the ball through the plexiglas quarterpanel. The ball was a little high and sinking! He felt the wheels smash home and the nose drop down. He held his breath as he jammed the throttles forward and waited for the deceleration, then exhaled convulsively when it came. Oh, that welcome thrill as the arresting gear machinery below deck soaked up the millions of foot-pounds of kinetic energy! He felt the little wiggle the plane gave as it quivered on the arresting hook like a snagged bass. Then it came to a complete stop and began to roll backwards.

  Later Jake relived the entire sequence in the darkness of his stateroom. He examined his confidence and attempted to glue the missing pieces back together. He told himself no one would ever notice the damage.

  When Jake Grafton and Razor Durfee got off the escalator on the second deck, the pilot went into the head. He relieved himself, then sat on the toilet and lit a cigarette. The place reeked of stale urine and disinfectant, but the cigarette tasted good after hours without one. Jake rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his chin in his hands as fatigue permeated him.

  His flight boots were almost worn out. One sole had an inch-long split along the side. The leather was cracking. Not once in five years had he polished the boots.

  Most of the blood stains were gone from the G-suit and survival vest, rubbed off as he sat and walked and moved around. The fire-retardant nomex outer layer of the G-suit was oily and dirty and torn in places, but the worst of the brown stains had faded to mere discolorations, difficult to see. Grief is like that, he thought. It fades in the course of living.

  He closed his eyes and savored the darkness. At length he opened them and stared at his hands. They quivered, and he could not still the tremors.

  The door opened and Sammy Lundeen stepped inside. He slouched against the door.

  "That was a helluva chance you took to tank that guy, Cool Hand."

  "Yeah." Jake stared at the faded brown stains, all that was left of Morgan McPherson. "Is the skipper pissed off?"

  "No. He's smoking his cigar, as usual. That fighter crew's in the ready room telling everybody what a hero you are. They keep saying something about you saving their butts, but all fighter pukes are crazy and they'll say anything.

  Jake took a creep drag on his cigarette. "Boy, we're having fun now," he said, thinking of Morgan. "What happened on your hop, anyway?"

  "We flew right into a flak trap and almost got our asses shot off. Still haven't figured out why they didn't get us. Then we had to run the target without the computer."

  "Any luck?"

  "Who knows? No secondary explosions. We probably missed that truck park by a mile or two. Some commie's probably complaining right now to some half-wit reporter that the American warmongers just bombed another church."

  "A truck park?"

  "A suspected truck park."

  "Is that worth dying for?"

  "There isn't anything in Indochina worth dying for, man, and that's a fact. But tonight those gomers shot like we were trying to bomb Ho Chi Minh's tomb. I'll bet the Kremlin doesn't have that many guns around it. We were real goddamned lucky." He shook his head. "Real lucky. Got three secondaries when I dropped the Rocks on the flak trap, though." Lundeen showed his teeth. "That made it worth the trip."

  Jake shifted enough to drop the cigarette butt into the bowl. "How come the spare tanker didn't get airborne?"

  "Haven't you heard? A plane captain got sucked down an intake."

  "Good God! What a way to buy it."

  "He didn't buy it, amazingly enough. The chief saw him approach the intake, figured he was going to go and made a diving grab. He caught the guy's legs just as he went in. The plane captain went down the intake headlong to his knees. He's shook up plenty, though. Lost his helmet and goggles and flashlight into the engine. There's $150,000 of the taxpayers' money down the crapper."

  "Who was the poor sucker?"

  "Maggot. He's down in sick bay."

  "Maggot! Poor guy!" Jake stood up, helmet bag in hand. "Think I'll stop down and say hi."

  "When you finish there, you'd better take off that flight gear and go to the ready room. That fighter pilot is dying to kiss you and introduce you to his virgin sister."

  Jake found Maggot in one of the wards in the sick bay suite. Mad Jack was standing beside him.

  "He's still in shock," the doctor said. "He's a little deaf, too, but he'll get his hearing back in a few days. Don't stay too long." Glancing at the stains and ground-in dirt on the pilot's flight gear, he added, "And don't touch anything down here, either."

  Jake dropped his helmet bag beside the bed and sank into the only chair. Maggot's face was almost as white as the bedsheets. The pilot leaned forward and spoke loudly. "You'll do anything to get out of a little work, won't you?" The corners of the boy's mouth twitched. "I hear you about went to see The Man."

  Maggot nodded nervously and licked his lips. "It just sucked me up like I was a leaf or something, Mister Grafton. I was walking and then I was going down that intake headfirst. I thought I was a goner."

  "From what I hear you almost were."

  The boy's eyes were wet. "Damn, Mister Grafton, I was scared. It was dark and the noise was unbelievable and I couldn't see anything and I could feel myself being pulled toward that compressor. I knew those blades were there, turning, ready to chop me into hamburger, but I couldn't see them." He gazed at the wall a moment and blinked back the tears. "I think I peed my pants Don't tell anyone."

  "I won't tell. But I know what you mean about being scared. McPherson and I have been scared so many times I lost count." Jake put his lips near Maggot's ear and spoke in a stage whisper. "Any man who hasn't had the pee scared out of him just hasn't done anything yet." The trick was not to show the fear, to bury it deep. He rose to go. "Just don't swab out any more intakes, okay?" The reply was a wan smile.

  The ready room was crowded when Jake opened the door. Lundeen was right. The crew of Stagecoach 203 was more than grateful. The pilot pounded Jake on the back and pumped his hand repeatedly. He had a dark, well-groomed mustache against which his teeth looked porcelain white when he grinned. "Just shit hot, Grafton! Just shit hot! I owe you a fifth of your favorite and you'll collect it this time in port, believe you me."

  This was getting out of hand. "It was nothing you wouldn't have done if our positions had been reversed."

  The fighter pilot, whose name tag proclaimed he was Fighting Joe Brett, released his grip on Jake's hand. "I'd like to think that, Grafton. But I mean it about the bottle."

  A dozen loud conversations were going at once, while up in the front of the room the skipper and Cowboy were conferring in low voices. These laughand-scratch sessions were a necessary part of getting back to earth. Just then the LSO in his white pullover sit strode into the group. In his hand was the little green book where he recorded in cryptic shorthand the details of every pilot's approach to the ship.

  "Grafton, you set something of a record tonight, two no-grade passes and one cut pass. That last landing was the worst I've seen in many a moon."

  The men fell silent. Half of them were looking at the LSO and half were gazing at Jake, startlet. A cut grade lot meant the pass was dangerous, almost an accident. No-grade was just above a cut.

  The LSO continued. "Now you know as well as I do that with a pitching
deck you have to be extra careful. You did a little dive for the deck on your first trap, overcontrolled on your bolter pass, but then on that last approach you really went for it. You could've easily torn the wheels off that plane or smashed it on the ramp. Some fine navy night you're going to cram those main struts right up through the wings."

  Durfee wasn't taking this lying down. "Hey, asshole, you heard me tell you the bleed air wasn't working. Jake couldn't see shit out the windscreen."

  The LSO turned to him. "Did it ever occur to you two geniuses to take a waveoff and check the circuit breaker on the downwind leg? Did you check the circuit breaker?" he demanded of Razor.

  Razor's face turned red, and he leaned toward the LSO. "Did you hit the goddamn waveoff lights, buttface?"

  The LSO ignored the bombardier and focused on the pilot. "You ever come aboard like that again and I'll see to it you never land another plane on this boat." He turned and walked toward the front of the room.

  Jake felt like a nude in church. He shrugged and looked at the embarrassed men around him. "Hell, I was desperate."

  Joe Brett grasped Jake's hand again, and the skipper's voice boomed out, "Jake, you go get some sleep. We have a brief in four hours." Without another word the pilot turned and headed for his stateroom.

  But Commander Camparelli was not finished yet. He motioned with his finger at the LSO, who obediently came over and stood in front of the skipper's chair. "Listen, mister," said Camparelli. "You know your job and you call 'em like you see 'em. But if you ever again read out one of my pilots like you just did, I'll have your ass on a plate. Do you understand me?"

  "Yessir, but-"

  "I decide who flies and who doesn't in this squadron, not you. All I expect from you is your opinion."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now get out of here. I'm tired of looking at you." The LSO marched out the door. The skipper looked around the room at the hushed crowd. He settled on the mustachioed fighter pilot and smiled at him. "Have you got a sister?" he asked.