"Steering's good." The pilot's eyes went to the visual display indicator. Steering was pegged right so he rolled hard right, away from the skipper, and dropped the nose.
"Attack when you can," Jake shouted above the radio and ECM noise. He needed computer steering to the weapons-release point, the attack phase, not to the target. Obediently, Cole pushed the button and the attack light came on under the VDI. Grafton checked outside for other planes and glimpsed a string of bombs disappearing into the cloud deck. Someone had dumped his load so he could maneuver better, and five would get you ten that the weapons went armed. God only knew where they'd hit.
When the VDI steering symbol was centered Jake leveled his wings. The Intruder was in a twenty-degree dive. The clouds enveloped them as they rocketed down.
The steering symbol swung hard left and Grafton slammed the stick over to follow.
Cole reported, "Ignore steering. Cursors are running. We're out of attack."
Shit! A computer or inertial problem. Over 500 knots. Get out of the goo and try again. He leveled the wings and pulled the nose up.
"And New Guy's lost us."
They exploded out of the clouds at 13,000 feet, climbing steeply. The pilot continued upward until the bomber threatened to run out of airspeed, then he flattened the angle but continued to climb. Below airplanes flashed by and every now and then a SAM popped out of the clouds. Two hundred fifty knots and
.limbing.
"What the hell are you doing up here this slow?" Cole demanded. "We're gonna be assholed by a SAM!"
"I'm looking for a hole. We came to bomb. Now get the goddamn system running again or we'll be up here all fucking day."
The higher he went, the better his view of the cloud deck below. Then he saw it: a hole in the clouds, a narrow jagged tear. He swung toward it, trying to see how far down it reached.
"The guys on the ground'll be shooting up that hole hoping some damn fool'll fly down it," Cole said
At the bottom of the hole was dark green earth And a river. And a railroad track. And a power plant.
The bomber shuddered on the edge of a stall. Jake inverted the plane, and the earth and the power plant beside the river were above his head. The nose came down and the power plant was dead ahead, straight down.
The Intruder leapt forward under the combined pull of gravity and two engines at full power. The controls regained their sensitivity as the volume of air over the wings increased. The target was in his bombsight and growing as they hurtled down. Flak puffs mingled with the gray cloud that lined the tunnel. Cole called the altitude. Something on the ground twinkled like diamonds-muzzle flashes.
At 9000, Jake kicked the bombs loose and pulled out of the tunnel and into the clouds. Four Gs. He didn't feel the effect of the Gs.
Five thousand feet in the clouds. They were coming out of the dive, 540 knots. He felt the buffet through the seat as they pushed at the sonic shock wave that prevented any increase in airspeed. He relaxed the Gs and let the plane continue down as his instinct and the howling missile warning urged him to get free of the clouds so that he could see again.
Jake leveled at 2000 feet in rain and foggy gray tendrils that reached down toward the water-covered paddies. The missile warnings had ceased and the excited voices of other pilots filled his ears. He started a shallow turn to the southeast and looked around for other airplanes. He was alone.
Below he saw muzzle flashes and people running along the paddy dikes, but the sea was ahead and they were going home.
"Goddamn," he shouted at Virgil Cole. "We made it." He pounded Cole on the arm with his right hand and pumped the stick back and forth with his left. Heavy-caliber guns flashed, probably out of the Haiphong area, but he rolled and jinked the airplane with the ease of a horse switching its tail. They were invulnerable.
Safely out to sea, Jake and Cole released one side of their oxygen masks and let them dangle from their helmets. Grafton grinned at Cole and the bombardier did his miserable best to grin back. "Call Red Crown," Jake suggested, "and tell them to expect a low pass." The bombardier dialed the radio and made the call.
The pilot retarded the throttles and deployed the speed brakes when the radar picket destroyer appeared on the sea ahead. As they slowed through 250 knots, he dropped the gear and flaps. He stabilized at 150 and let the machine drop toward the water. The destroyer was rolling and heaving in the heavy sea, taking spray over the bow. He went down the starboard side at 50 feet as Cole waved to the T-shirted sailors looking out of the open hatches.
He cleaned up the plane-raised the gear and flapsand climbed. Above the clouds they found the sun.
Jake Grafton took a long last drag on his cigarette and used the stub to light a new one from a crumpled pack in his G-suit pocket. He leaned back in his chair, adjusted his torso harness straps so they did not impinge upon his testicles, and listened to the men gathered in the Intelligence Debriefing room.
"What a zoo." The CAG was lighting a cigar. "That strike just went ape shit when those S/ Ms came squirting out."
An A-7 pilot looked up from the debriefing sheet he was filling out. "The weather was so lousy we wouldn't have had any way to bomb accurately even if the gooks hadn't fired a round."
The CAG shook his head. He looked tired. He would have to talk to the admiral in a few minutes. "We're gonna have to get our shit in one sock or we'll never make the target, good weather or not. All those bombs ... all that gas and s 'eat. Wasted. And one plane stuck on the hangar deck for three or four weeks with battle damage." He looked over at the intelligence officers in their pressed khaki uniforms. "Did anyone hit the goddamn target?"
Abe Steiger answered. "Yessir. Grafton, over there, dropped visually and one of the other A-6s made a system drop."
The CAG swiveled around to Jake. "Hit anything?"
"Don't know, sir. I didn't have a chance to look back. I was hauling it out of there." The cloud on the pullout had made sightseeing impossible.
The CAG turned to the senior intelligence officer, a lieutenant commander. "I want to see those Vigilante pictures as soon as they're developed. I'll be on the flag bridge. Call me." The RA-5C Vigilante photoreconnaissance plane had flown over the target at low altitude minutes after the scheduled drop time.
The head spy nodded and the CAG walked out puffing on his cigar, not caring a damn who saw him smoking in the passageways.
Grafton and Cole picked up their helmet bags. In the passageway they met New Guy on his way to debrief. New Guy said he had lost Grafton in the pullout from the aborted system run and had attempted a system delivery himself, only to be thwarted by radar failure. Jake murmured sympathetically. New Guy didn't seem much the worse for wear after his first combat mission. "In the future, really try and stay with the leader," Jake advised. "A wingman has to stick like stink on shit." Jake knew that New Guy's self-image as a professional, as a member of the club, required that he win the ungrudging esteem of the more experienced men. He patted New on the back. "Ya' did good," Jake said, A smile of thanks creased the cherubic face.
In the locker room, as they stowed their flight gear, Cole said, "I guess you're stuck with me."
:'What d'ya mean?"
'If you'd turned out to be a candy-ass, I was gonna ask for a new pilot. But you'll do."
"They want you up in the CAG office, Grafton. Some reporter wants to interview you." Boxman was the duty officer, and he delivered the message with a sneer. "Your hometown paper sent the guy. You're going to be on the front page of the county bugle, right between the 4-H news and a picture of a lady who's a hundred and two."
"Box, you're an asshole. Didn't your mother ever tell you?"
"Seriously, some reporter wants to interview you. Now, Jake!"
Grafton walked toward the Air Wing office with mixed emotions, a tiny pitter-patter of elation that he might get his name in newspapers and a large dose of caution as he contemplated the ease with which he could make a fool of himself.
When he entered the office,
the CAG ops officer, Lieutenant Commander Seymore Jaye, waved him over to the table where Jaye sat with a bearded, khaki-clad figure without nametag or rank insignia. A civilian. "Grafton, this is Les Rucic, a reporter, and he wants to interview you."
The pilot leaned over and shook Rucic's outstretched hand. "Why me?" he asked Jaye.
The corners of Jaye's mouth turned down slightly. He had that habit. "I picked you, Cool Hand," he said. as if that were a sufficient answer and Grafton would be wise to leave the subject alone.
"You don't mind talking to me, do you?" Rucic asked with a smile.
"No problem." He gave his full name and hometown as Rucic carefully wrote it down in block letters.
"I asked the commander here if I could interview you. You were one of the pilots on this afternoon's strike? How'd it go?"
Jake was confused. What could he reveal that would be unclassified? Well, the gomers knew all about the mission, so why not tell the Americans? "No real problems," he said, and added, "Why'd you ask for me?"
Rucic gave him a frank and honest look. "I was recently talking to one of the fighter pilots, Fighting Joe Brett. He tells me you're one of the best pilots on this ship. I believe his phrase was more scatological. He said you were shit hot. 'Grafton is one shit-hot driver."'
Jake colored slightly and shrugged. Joe Brett undoubtedly thought he was doing Jake a favor by giving his name to the reporter.
Rucic looked down at his notes. "Jacob Lee Grafton. From Virginia. Any relation to the Lee family?"
"No, I'm named after a grandfather who was named for Robert E. Lee. No relation. Personally, I always thought the original dude was a traitor but he had a big rep back in Virginia."
"Your father a military man?"
What did this have to do with dropping bombs on North Vietnam? "No, he's a farmer. He drove a tank for Patton in World War II, but he's been a farmer ever since."
"Is that the way you see yourself? Flying a plane for the admiral, or Richard Nixon?"
Jake glanced at Jaye, who was staring at the coffee pot in the corner as if it were the most interesting object he'd seen all day.
"I think of myself as flying a plane for Uncle Sam."
Rucic grinned, and Jake noticed three or four black hairs that protruded from each nostril. "How's it feel to be risking your life in combat when the war's about over?"
"Is it?"
"Kissinger says so."
"I wouldn't know Diplomacy's a long way from my department.”
"Tell me about your flight today."
"Well, there's not a whole lot to tell. We went, the weather was lousy, they shot a good bit, some of us managed to bomb in spite of the clouds, and we all came back to the ship in one piece."
The smallest trace of disappointment crossed Rucic's face. "But you hit the power plant?" So Jaye had briefed him.
"We dropped on it."
"But did you hit it?"
"I never looked back. Who knows?"
"But you must have some idea, lieutenant " the reporter persisted.
"Well, Les, it was like this. There was a lot of flak and missiles and I was pretty busy. After I pickled, I puckered my asshole and got the hell out of Dodge as fast as two engines and a prayer would take me."
Rucic paused, then scribbled in his notebook. "You know, Grafton, I flew F-86s in Korea. Air Force."
"Well, then, you have the background for your job."
"I know what it was like then. What's it like now over North Vietnam?"
"They shoot a lot."
"At night, too?"
"At night it's like the Fourth of July. Lots of tracers, and every now and then a SAM. Spectacular."
Rucic was writing on his pad. "Fourth of July..:."
Oh, Lord. Now he had done it. Rucic would write that Jake Grafton said flying over North Vietnam was just like the Fourth of July. "Uh, maybe you better not use that."
Rucic's pencil stopped, and he looked at the pilot.
"People might misunderstand. Know what I mean?"
Rucic smiled. "You still don't know if you got the power plant?"
Jake remained mute.
"What if the bombs hit a nonmilitary target?"
Jake knew the phrase "nonmilitary target" was loaded. It could mean anything from trees or dikes to schools or hospitals. "War is hell."
"They might've, from what you have told me."
"There's no such thing as a 'nonmilitary target,' " ,lake replied. "Ask the V.C. what was off limits when they went into Hue. Anyway, my bombs hit the power plant or in the vicinity."
"How do you define 'vicinity'?"
"The 'vicinity' is anywhere the bombs hit when I'm aiming at the target."
"That could be a large area."
"How large depends on one's skill as a pilot. I'm
good enough. `Shit hot,' I believe you said." "What-" But Grafton was up and leaving.
"Enjoy your cruise, Les." With a wave to Seymore,
he went out the door. Rucic would probably crucify him in the press, paint him as an insensitive cliff ape who didn't care who he killed.
Well, I do care. I care about McPherson and the forty-seven shattered bodies and all the others, all those I don't know about and don't want to know about.
Fatigue pressed on him from all sides. He slapped the bulkhead with his hand. "Damn!"
FIFTEEN
After dinner that evening Jake went to the ship's library. Approaching the sailor at the desk, he said, "I'm interested in seeing what you have on North Vietnam."
"Oh, we get that request all the time."
"Well," the pilot said, "do you have any maps of the North?"
"As a matter of fact, National Geographic ran an article with a map a few years ago." The sailor opened a drawer and produced a well-thumbed copy of this waiting-room staple. "The map's in the back."
Jake signed for the magazine and tried not to look enthusiastic. "Any books or anything like that?"
"Well, you might try Inside Asia, by John Gunther. It's pretty old but a lot of people check it out." The librarian reached for the volume on a shelf beside him. "We get so many requests that we can only let you have it for a couple days."
Back in his stateroom, Jake examined the map first. It was colorful and showed the relief well, but it lacked the latitude and longitude grids necessary for measurement. The scale was also far too small. The map contained no city insets, not even of Saigon. Disappointed, he refolded it and laid it aside.
Inside Asia, published in 1939, divided Asia into four regions: Japan, China, India, and the Middle East. When the table of contents revealed no listing for Indochina, he flipped to the index. There it was, with two page numbers indicated. The author had devoted a page and a half to all of Indochina. Jake closed the book in disgust and read the Vietnam article in the National Geographic. Written in 1967, it quoted several military sources as stating that we were winning the war. Well, maybe they thought differently after Tet. Then again, maybe not.
He would need better data than this to plan a raid. He would need access to the charts and photos of Hanoi that Steiger had not brought forth last night. He had no doubt that Steiger had access to better stuff, and he would have to have the air intelligence officer's cooperation, as well as Cole's. But would Cole agree to help? He gathered up the library materials and returned them.
The pilot met Cole in the ready room to brief a night tanker hop. There the duty officer told them that the only available A-6B-qualified crew had been scrubbed from the night schedule because they had not had a day trap. Like most of the rules governing the aircrews' lives, the requirement that a pilot make a day landing before landing on the carrier at night after each in-port period was written in the blood of experience. "So," the duty officer said, "you two jaybirds get to fly the B.”
"Hey," Jake protested, "I'm not B-qualified. I've never even sat in one of the damn things."
"Well, Cole has, and you two are all we have, so you fly. Cowboy says."
Cole rea
ssured him with a slight movement at the corners of his mouth. "I used to be an instructor on the B. I'll tell you what to do."
The A-6B was an Intruder that had been converted to a launch platform for antiradiation missiles, or ARMs. In place of the navigation/attack computer, the A-6B had sensitive electronic equipment that identified an enemy radar so that the guidance system in the ARM could be slaved to the radar's frequency before the missile was launched. The squadron had two of these specialized machines.
The A-611 was capable of carrying two kinds of missiles, the Shrike and the Standard ARM, or STARK The Shrike homed in on the target radar and could be defeated by the radar operator simply turning off the target radar while the missile was in flight. The North Vietnamese had quickly realized that. But the Shrike was useful anyway because it caused the enemy to shut down its radars. The STARM contained a computer and inertial navigation system that enabled the missile to memorize the location of the target radar antennae and to fly to that place even if the radar stopped operating. The Standard ARM was deadly effective and very expensive.
While Jake and Cole were knocking around in the A-6B, Sammy Lundeen and Harvey Wilson would be roaming the Red River Delta on bombing missions. Virgil Cole drew Jake over to the corner of the room and briefed him on the specialized equipment in the missile-shooter. As for tactics, the bombardier advised, "We'll just cruise along at altitude where everyone can see us and let it happen. Might be interesting."
Indeed it might, Jake thought. As he left the ready room, Sammy joined him for the short jaunt to the flight-gear lockers. "Notice of Rabbit Wilson has a night trap scheduled?"
"Yep. Must be a scorcher of a moon out there." "Or a Silver Star."
They crossed the North Vietnamese coast at 18,000 feet with search radars beeping in their ear. The prevailing wind had pushed the low rain clouds of the afternoon westward against the mountains, and only the high cirrus layer was left to block off all starlight. The two bombers were not due to cross the coast for five more minutes. "Let's mosey in and get the gomers' attention before the other guys sneak in," Cole said, and Jake acquiesced because he knew so little of A-6B tactics.
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