The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  “We’re on our way.”

  Jake Grafton disengaged the autopilot and rolled the Intruder to ninety degrees angle-of-bank. The nose came down. Speed brakes out, throttles back, shallow the bank to about seventy degrees, put a couple G’s on…the rate-of-descent needle pegged at 6,000 feet per minute down. That was all it would indicate. A spiral descent was his best maneuver because the tanker had a three-G limitation, mandated by higher authority to make the wings last longer. He was right at three G’s now, the altimeter unwinding at a dizzying rate.

  Low station was 5,000 feet, but it could be lowered if the visibility was better below this crud. Maybe he should ask. “Ah, Strike, Texaco. How’s the visibility and ceiling underneath?”

  “A little worse than when you took off. Maybe a mile viz under an indefinite obscuration.”

  “Who’s our customer?”

  “Snake-eye Two Oh Seven. He’s got an emergency. Switch to button sixteen and rendezvous on him.”

  Jake was passing ten thousand feet, still turning steeply with G on. Bracing himself against the G, Flap changed the radio channel and called.

  “Snake-eye Two Oh Seven, this is Texaco. Say your posit, angels, and heading, over.”

  “Texaco, I’m on the Three One Zero radial at nine miles, headed inbound at four grand. Better hurry.”

  Jake keyed the radio transmitter. “Just keep going in and we’ll join on you.”

  The fighter pilot gave him two clicks in reply.

  Jake eyed the TACAN needle on the HSI, the horizontal situation indicator, a glorified gyroscopic compass. He had a problem here in three-dimensional space and the face of the instrument was an aid in helping him visualize it.

  He rolled the wings level and stuffed the nose down more. His airspeed was at 400 knots and increasing.

  “Snake-eye, Texaco, what’s your problem?”

  “We’re venting fuel overboard and the pull-forward is going to take more time than we’ve got.”

  “Posit again?”

  “Three One Zero at five, angels four, speed three hundred, heading One Three Zero.”

  “Are you in the clear?”

  “Negative.”

  “Let’s go on down to three grand.”

  Jake was passing six thousand feet, on the Three Three Zero radial at nine miles. He was indicating 420 knots and he was raising the nose to shallow his dive. He thumbed the speed brakes in and added some power. “We’re going to join fast,” he muttered at Flap, who didn’t reply.

  The problem was that he didn’t know how much visibility he would have. If it was about a mile, like the controller on the ship said, and he missed the F-4 by more than that margin, he would never see him. Unlike the Phantom, the tanker had no radar to assist in the interception.

  He was paying strict attention to the TACAN needle now. The seconds ticked by and the distance to the ship closed rapidly.

  “There, at one o’clock.” Flap called it.

  Now Jake saw the fighter. He was several hundred feet below Jake, which was good, at about a mile, trailing a plume of fuel. Grafton reduced power and deployed the speed brakes.

  Uh-oh, he had a ton of closure. He stuffed the nose down to underrun the Phantom.

  “Look out!”

  The wingman! His tailpipes were right there, coming in the windscreen! Sweet Jesus!

  He jammed the stick forward and the negative G lifted him and Flap away from their seats. In two heartbeats he was well under and jerked the stick back. He had forgotten about the wingman.

  Still indicating 350, he ran under the Phantom in trouble and pulled the power to idle. “At your one o’clock, Snake-eye. We’ll tank at two seventy. Join on me.”

  At 280 knots he got the power up and the speed brakes in. He quickly stabilized at 270 indicated. After checking to ensure that he was level headed directly for the ship, Jake turned in his seat to examine the Phantom closing in as Flap deployed the refueling drogue.

  The three-thousand-pound belly tank the F-4 usually carried was gone. Fuel was pouring from the belly of the aircraft.

  “Green light, you’re cleared in,” Flap announced on the radio.

  Jake turned back to his instruments. He wanted to provide a stable drogue for the fighter to plug. “What’s your problem, Snake-eye?”

  “Belly tank wouldn’t transfer. We jettisoned it and now we are pumping fuel out the belly. The check valve must be damaged. We’re down to one point seven.”

  “Strike, Texaco, how much does Two Oh Seven get?”

  “All he needs, Texaco. We should have a ready deck in six or seven minutes. Pulling forward now.” This meant all the planes parked in the landing area were being pulled forward to the bow.

  The green light on the refueling panel went out and the fuel counter began to click over. “You’re getting fuel,” Flap told the fighter.

  They were crossing over the ship now. Jake Grafton eased the tanker into a descent. If he could get underneath this haze he could drop the Phantom at the 180-degree position, only thirty seconds or so from the deck.

  When the fuel-delivered counter registered two thousand pounds, Jake told the fighter pilot.

  “Keep it coming. We’re up a grand in the main bag. At least we’re getting it faster than it’s going over the side.”

  At two thousand feet Jake saw the ocean. He kept descending. At fifteen hundred feet he spotted the carrier, on his left, turning hard. The ship was coming into the wind. From this distance Jake could only see a couple airplanes still to go forward. Very soon.

  He leveled at twelve hundred feet and circled the ship in a left turn at about a mile.

  Five thousand pounds transferred…six…seven…the ship was into the wind now and the wake was streaming straight behind her, white as snow against the gray sea as the four huge screws bit hard to drive her faster through the water.

  “Snake-eye Two Oh Seven, this is Paddles. We’re going to be ready in about two minutes. I want you to drop off the tanker on the downwind, dirty up and turn into the groove. Swells still running about fifteen feet, so the deck is pitching. Average out the ball and fly a nice smooth pass.”

  “Two Oh Seven.”

  Jake was crossing the bow now, the fuel counter still clicking. Eight thousand five hundred pounds transferred so far.

  “Texaco, hawk the deck.”

  “Roger.” Hawk the deck meant to fly alongside so that the plane on the bolter could rendezvous and tank.

  This was going to work out, Jake told himself. This guy is going to get aboard.

  The fuel-delivered counter stopped clicking over at 9,700 pounds. The fighter had backed out of the basket. Jake took a cut to the right, then turned back left and looked over his shoulder. The crippled fighter was descending and slowing, his hook down and gear coming out. And the fuel was still pouring from his belly in a steady, fire-hose stream. The wingman was well behind, still clean.

  When the fighter pilot jettisoned the belly tank, Jake thought, the quick-disconnect fitting must have frozen and the plumbing tore loose inside the aircraft. There was a one-way check valve just upstream of the quick-disconnect; obviously it wasn’t working. So the pressure in the main fuel cell was forcing fuel overboard through the broken pipe.

  Jake slowed to 250 knots and cycled the refueling hose in and back out to reset the reel response. Now to scoot down by the ship, Jake thought, so that if he bolters, I’ll be just ahead where he can quickly rendezvous.

  He dropped to a thousand feet and turned hard at a mile to parallel the wake on the ship’s port side.

  The landing fighter was crossing the wake, turning into the groove, when Jake saw the fire.

  The plume of fuel streaming behind the plane ignited. The tongue of flame was twice as long as the airplane and clearly visible.

  “You’re on fire!” someone shouted on the radio.

  “In the groove, eject, eject, eject!”

  Bang, bang, two seats came out. Before the first chute opened the flaming fighter went nose-
first into the ship’s wake. A splash, then it was gone.

  “Two good chutes.” Another voice on the radio.

  In seconds both the chutes went into the water. As Jake went over he spotted the angel coming up the wake.

  “Boy, talk about luck! It’s a wonder he didn’t blow up,” Jake told Flap.

  He was turning across the bow when the air boss came on the frequency. You always knew the boss’s voice, a God-like booming from on high. “Texaco, your signal, charley. We’re going to hot spin you.”

  Jake checked his fuel quantity. Nine thousand pounds left. He opened the main dump and dropped the hook, gear and flaps.

  As advertised, the ball was moving up and down on the optical landing system, which was gyroscopically stabilized in roll and pitch, but not in heave, the up and down motion of the ship.

  He managed to get aboard without difficulty and was taxied in against the island to refuel. He kept the engines running.

  In moments the helicopter settled onto the deck abeam the island. Corpsmen with stretchers rushed out. The stretchers weren’t needed. The two Phantom crewmen walked across the deck under their own power, wet as drenched rats, grinning broadly and flashing everyone in sight a thumbs-up.

  Jake and Flap were still fueling five minutes later when two Soviet Bear bombers, huge, silver, four-engine turboprops, came up the wake at five hundred feet. The bombers were about a thousand feet apart, and each had an F-4 tucked in alongside like a pilot fish.

  The flight deck crew froze and watched the parade go by.

  “We could have done a better job up there today,” Jake told Flap. “We should have had the second radio tuned into Strike. Then we would have known what Two Oh Seven’s problem was without asking. And we should have asked about that wingman. Phantoms always go around in pairs, like snakes.”

  “Those tailpipes in our windscreen,” Flap said, sighing. “Man, that was a leemer.”

  Jake knew what a leemer was — a shot of cold urine to the heart. “We gotta get with the program,” he told the BN.

  “I guess so,” Flap said as he tucked Malcolm X into his G-suit pocket and zipped it shut.

  * * *

  The air wing commander was Commander Charles “Chuck” Kail, a fighter pilot. He was known universally as CAG, an acronym that rhymed with rag and stood for Commander Air Group. This acronym had been in use in the U.S. Navy since it acquired its first carrier.

  CAG Kail made careful notes this evening as he listened to the air intelligence officer brief the threat envelopes that could be expected around a Soviet task force. Lieutenant Colonel Hal-dane, his operations officer Major Bartow, and Jake Grafton were the A-6 representatives at this planning session. Jake sat listening and looking at the projected graphics with a sense of relief — the AI’s presentation sounded remarkably like his homemade presentation for Colonel Haldane several weeks ago. An attacking force could expect to see a lot of missiles and stupendous quantities of flak, according to the AI.

  “They aren’t gonna shoot all those missiles at the first American planes they see,” CAG said softly. He always spoke softly so you had to listen hard to catch his words. “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 farmers — they are a first-class blue-water 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-6s 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.

  12

  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—”

  “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. I’ll 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 Mexi-cali, 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 visuall
y, 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.

  “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 lives. 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 replenishments — UNREPS — 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.