The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  “How ugly?”

  “Ugly enough to set your nose hair on fire.”

  “That’s not ugly.”

  “Maybe not,” Flap said agreeably. “Maybe not.”

  15

  The days at sea quickly became routine. The only variables were the weather and the flight schedule, but even so, the possible permutations of light and darkness, storms and clouds and clear sky and the places your name could appear on the flight schedule were finally exhausted. At some point you’d seen it all, done it all, and tomorrow would be a repetition of some past day. So, you suspected, would all the tomorrows to come.

  Not that the pilots of the air wing flew every day, because they didn’t. The postwar budget crunch did not permit that luxury. Every third day was an off day, sprinkled with boring paperwork, tedious lectures on safety or some aspect of the carrier aviator’s craft, or — snore! — another NATOPS quiz. Unfortunately, on flying days there were not enough sorties to allow every pilot to fly one, so Jake and the rest of them took what they could get and solaced themselves with an occasional ugly remark to the schedules officer, as if that harried individual could conjure up money and flight time by snapping his fingers.

  On those too-rare occasions when bombs were the main course — usually Mark 76 practice bombs, but every now and then the real thing — Jake Grafton managed to turn in respectable scores. Consequently he was a section leader now, which meant that when two A-6s were sent to some uninhabited island in the sea’s middle to fly by, avoid the birds, and take photographs, he got to lead. He led unless Colonel Haldane was flying on that launch, then he got to fly the colonel’s wing. Haldane was the skipper, even if his CEP was not as good as Jakes’s. Rank has its privileges.

  Of course Doug Harrison reminded the skipper of his earlier commitment to letting the best bomber lead. Haldane’s response was to point to the score chart on the bulkhead. “When you get a better CEP than mine, son, I’ll fly your wing. By then my eyes will be so bad I’ll need someone to lead me around. Until that day…”

  “Yessir,” Harrison said as his squadron mates hooted.

  Jake had been spending at least half his time in the squadron maintenance department, and now the skipper made it official. Jake was to assist the maintenance officer with supply problems.

  The squadron certainly had supply problems. Spare parts for the planes were almighty slow coming out of the Navy supply system. The first thing Jake did was to sit down with the book and check to see if the requisitions were correctly filled out. He found a few errors but concluded finally that the supply sergeant knew what he was doing. Then he sat down for a long talk with the sergeant.

  Armed with a list of all the parts that were on back order, he went to see the ship’s aviation supply officer, a lieutenant commander in the Supply Corps, a staff corps that ranked with law and medicine. Together they went over Jake’s list, a computer printout, then sorted through the reams of printouts that cluttered up the supply office. Finally they went to the storerooms, cubbyholes all over the ship crammed with parts, and compared numbers.

  When Jake went to see Colonel Haldane after three days of this, he had several answers. The erroneous requisitions were easily explained — there were actually fewer than one might expect. Yet the Marine sergeant was the odd man out with the Navy supply clerks, who were giving him no help. The system would not work if the people involved were not cooperating fully and trying to help each other.

  The most serious problem, Jake told the colonel, was the shortages on the load-out manifest when the ship put to sea. Parts that should be aboard the ship weren’t. Related to this problem was the fact that the supply department had stored some of its inventory in the wrong compartments, effectively losing a substantial portion of the inventory that was aboard. This, he explained, was one reason the clerks were less than helpful with the squadron supply sergeant — they didn’t want to admit that they couldn’t find spare parts that their own records showed they had.

  Lieutenant Colonel Haldane went to see CAG, the air wing commander, and together they visited the ship’s supply officer, then the executive officer. Jake didn’t attend these meetings but he read one of the messages the captain of the ship sent out about shortages in the load-out manifest. Sparks were flying somewhere. Two chief petty officers in the supply department were given orders back to the States. Soon parts began to flow more freely into the squadron’s maintenance department. One evening the supply sergeant stopped Jake in the passageway and thanked him.

  It was a pleasant moment.

  * * *

  One day the flight schedule held a surprise. From the distant top branches of the Pentagon aviary came tasking for flights to photograph estuaries along the coast of North Vietnam. Told to stay just outside the three-mile limit, the aircrews marveled at these orders. They knew, even if the senior admirals did not, that even if the North Viets were preparing a mighty fleet to invade Hawaii and they managed to get photographs of the ships, with soldiers marching aboard carrying signs saying WAIKIKI OR BUST, the politicians in Washington would not, could not renew hostilities with the Communists in Hanoi. Still, orders were orders. In Ready Four the A-6 crews loaded 35-mm cameras with film, hung them around the BNs’ necks, and went flying.

  There were no enemy warships lurking in the estuaries. Just a few fishing boats.

  It was weird seeing North Vietnam again, Jake told himself as he flew along at 3,000 feet, 420 knots, dividing his attention between the coast and his electronic countermeasures — ECM— alarms as Flap Le Beau busied himself with a hand-held 35-mm camera. The gomers were perfectly capable of squirting an SA-2 antiaircraft missile out this way, even if he was over international waters. Or two or three missiles. He kept an eye on the ECM and listened carefully for the telltale sounds of radar beams painting his aircraft.

  And heard nothing. Not even a search radar. The air was dead.

  The land over there on his right was partially obscured by haze, which was normal for this time of year. Yet there it was in all its pristine squalor — gomer country, low, flat and half-flooded. The browns and greens and blues were washed out by the haze. The place wasn’t worth a dollar an acre, and certainly not anybody’s life. That was the irony that made it what it was, a miserable land reeking of doom and pointless death.

  Looking at it from this angle four miles off the coast, from the questionable safety of a cockpit, he could feel the horror, could almost see it, as if it were as real and tangible as fog. All those shattered lives, all those terrible memories…

  They had fuel enough for thirty minutes of this fast cruising, then they planned to turn away from the coast and slow down drastically to save fuel. First Lieutenant Doug Harrison was somewhere up north just now, taking a peek into Haiphong Harbor. Grafton would meet him over the ship.

  They were fifteen minutes into their mission when Jake first heard it — three different notes in his ears, notes with a funny rhythm. Da-de-duh…da-de-duh…

  He reached for the volume knob on the ECM panel. Yes, but now there were four notes.

  “Hear that?” he asked Flap.

  “Yeah. What is it?”

  “Sounds like a raster scan.”

  “It’s a MiG or F-4, man. Look, the AI light is illumin—”

  He got no more out because Jake Grafton had rolled the plane ninety degrees left and slapped on five G’s as he punched out some chaff.

  When the heading change was about ninety degrees, Jake rolled out some of the bank and relaxed the G somewhat. The coast was behind him and he was headed out to sea. The Air Intercept light remained illuminated and the tone continued in their ears, although it was back to three notes, a pause, then the three notes again.

  “We’re on the edge of his scan, but he sees us all right,” Flap said.

  “Hang on.”

  Throttles forward to the stops, Jake lowered the left wing and pulled hard until he had turned another ninety degrees. Now he was heading north. He let the nose drop and the
y slanted down toward the ocean. Meanwhile Flap was craning his head to see behind. Jake was looking too, then coming back inside to scan the instruments. Outside again…too many puffy clouds. He saw nothing.

  The adrenaline was really pumping now.

  “See anything?” he demanded of Flap.

  “You’ll be the first to hear if I do. I promise.”

  Probably a Phantom, but it could be a MiG! Out over the ocean, in international waters. If it shot them down, who would know?

  Or care?

  Goddamn!

  This A-6 was unarmed. Sidewinders could be fitted but Jake had never carried one, not even in training. This was an attack plane, not a fighter. And there was no gun. For reasons known only to God and Pentagon cost efficiency experts, the Navy had bought the A-6 without any internal guns. Against an enemy fighter it was defenseless.

  The raster beat was tattooing their eardrums. Now they had a two-ring-strength strobe on the small Threat Direction Indicator — TDI. Almost directly aft.

  He did another square corner, turning east again, then retarded the throttles to idle to lower the engines’ heat signature and kept the plane in a gentle descent to maintain its speed. The enemy plane extended north, then turned, not as sharply. Now it was at five o’clock behind them.

  Jake looked aft. Clouds. Oh, sweet Jesus! Dit-da-de-duh, dit-da-de-duh, dit-da-de-duh…the sound was maddening.

  He was running out of sky. Passing eleven hundred feet. The ocean was down here.

  He slammed the throttles full forward. As the engines wound up he pushed the nose over to convert what altitude he had into airspeed. He bottomed out at four hundred feet on the altimeter with 500 knots on the airplane. He pulled, a nice steady four-G pull.

  He was climbing vertically, straight up, when he entered the clouds. Concentrating on the gauges, trying to ignore the insane beat of the enemy radar, he kept the stick back but eased out most of the G. Still in the clouds with the nose up ten degrees, he rolled upright and continued to climb.

  The sound of the enemy’s radar stopped. The MiG must have sliced off to one side or the other, be making a turn to reacquire him. But which way? He had been concentrating so hard on flying the plane that he hadn’t had time to watch the TDI.

  “Right or left?” he asked Flap.

  “I dunno.”

  The clouds were thinning. Lots more sunlight. Then the A-6 popped out on top.

  Jake looked left, Flap right.

  The pilot saw him first, three or four thousand feet above, turning toward them. An F-4.

  “It’s a fucking Phantom,” he roared over the ICS to Flap.

  Flap spun and craned over Jake’s shoulder. Then he flopped back in his seat and held up middle fingers to the world.

  Jake raised his visor and swabbed his face. Now the strobe reappeared on the TDI and the music sounded in his ears. He reached with his right hand and turned the ECM equipment off.

  The plane was climbing nicely. He engaged the autopilot, then turned to watch the F-4. It tracked inbound for several seconds, then turned away while it was still a half mile or so out.

  Jake took off his oxygen mask and helmet and used his sleeve to swab the perspiration from his face. He was wearing his flight gloves, so he used them to wipe his hair. The sweat made black stains on his gloves and sleeve. Then he took off one glove and used his fingers to clean the stinging, salty solution from his eyes.

  “Think he did that on purpose?” Flap demanded when he had his helmet back on and could again hear the ICS.

  “How would I know?”

  * * *

  One evening as Jake entered the stateroom, his roommate, the financier, glanced at him and groaned. “Not another haircut! For heaven’s sake, Jake, why don’t you just shave your head and be done with it?”

  Grafton surveyed his locks in the mirror over the sink. “What are you quacking about? Looks okay to me.”

  “Is this the third haircut this week?”

  “Well, I admit, watching these Marines parade off to the barbershop on an hourly basis has had a corrosive effect on my morals. I feel like a scuz bucket if I don’t go along. What are you caterwauling about? It’s my head and it’ll all grow out, sooner or later.”

  “You’re ruining my image, Grafton. Already they are giving me the evil eye. I feel like a spy in the house of love.”

  “You’ve been reading Anaïs Nin, haven’t you?”

  “Bartow loaned me an edition in English. Wow, you ought to read some of that stuff! Ooh la la. It’s broadening my horizons.”

  “What are you working on this evening?” The Real had paper strewn all over his desk, but there wasn’t a stock market listing in sight.

  McCoy frowned and flipped some of the pages upside down so that Jake couldn’t see them. Then he apparently thought better of his actions and sat back in his chair surveying Grafton. The frown faded. In a moment he grinned. “We’re going to cross the line in two days.”

  The line — the equator. The task group was heading southeast, intending to sail around the island of Java and reenter the China Sea through the Sunda Strait. Of necessity the ship would cross the equator twice.

  “So?”

  “I’m the only officer shellback in the squadron. Everyone else is a pollywog, including you.”

  A pollywog was a sailor who had never crossed the equator. A shellback was one who had previously crossed and been duly initiated into the Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of Shellbacks. It was easy enough to find out who was and who wasn’t. In accordance with naval regulations, all shellbacks had the particulars of their initiation recorded in their service records — ship, date and longitude.

  “Too bad you’ll miss out on all the fun,” Jake said carelessly.

  McCoy chuckled. “I ain’t gonna miss a thing, shipmate, believe you me. I’m coming to the festivities, as Davy Jones. But if you’re willing, I could use a little help.”

  Jake was aghast. “Help from a lowly pollywog?”

  “We’ll have to keep this under our hats. Can’t have scandalous things like this whispered around, can we? This would be help on the sly, for the greater glory of King Neptune.” He picked up the documents on his desk that he had turned over to keep Jake from seeing and passed them to his roommate.

  The next two days passed quickly and pleasantly. Then the great day arrived. There was, of course, no flying scheduled. All morning people — presumably shellbacks — bustled around the ship on mysterious errands, with lots of giggling.

  The pollywogs were given strict orders over the ship’s loudspeaker system. They were to go to their staterooms or berthing compartments after the noon meal and remain there until summoned into the august presence of Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main. Actually there were over two dozen Neptunes, selected strictly on senority, i.e., the number of times they had crossed the line. Initiation ceremonies would be held simultaneously in ready rooms, berthing areas and mess decks throughout the ship, and each ceremony would be presided over by Neptunus Rex.

  In his stateroom, Jake took off his uniform and pulled on a pair of civilian shorts. He donned a T-shirt and slid his feet into shower thongs. Then he settled back to wait for his summons.

  It wasn’t long in coming. The telephone rang. The duty officer. “Pollywog Grafton, come to the ready room.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Jake took off his watch and dog tags. After he checked to ensure that his stateroom key was in his pocket, he went out and locked the door behind him.

  The ready room was rapidly filling with his fellow wogs. Jake slipped into his regular seat. Colonel Haldane was lounging in his seat near the duty officer’s desk, chatting quietly with the executive officer. Alas, both officers were also wogs and were decked out for the festivities to come in jeans and Marine Corps green T-shirts. Standing everywhere around the bulkheads were officers from the air wing and other squadrons in uniform. Shellbacks. They immediately began to heckle the Marines, and Grafton.

  �
��You’re in for it now, wogs…Just you wait until King Neptune arrives…You slimy wogs are in deep and serious…”

  The public address system crackled to life. Ding ding, ding ding, ding ding, ding ding, ding ding. Ten bells. “Ruler of the Raging Main, arriving.”

  A howl of glee arose from the onlookers, who laughed and pointed at the assembled victims, many of whom were making faces at their tormentors. Now Flap Le Beau stood in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. He was wearing a pillowcase on top of his head, held on with a band. His face was streaked with paint. As the onlookers hooted, he explained that he was an African king, ruler of the ancient kingdom of Boogalala, and he demanded deferential treatment from this Rex guy.

  The shellbacks successfully shouted him down. Finally he sat, promising that he would renew his demands when the barnacled one arrived. One row behind him, Jake Grafton grinned broadly.

  They didn’t have long to wait. The door was flung open and the Real McCoy stalked in. “Attention on deck,” he roared. The Marines snapped to attention like they were on parade. When everyone was erect and rigid, McCoy continued, “All hail, Nep-tunus Rex, Ruler of the Ragin’ Main.”

  “Hail,” the assembled shellbacks shouted lustily.

  Here they came, the royal party, led by the air wing commander, the CAG, who was decked out in a bedsheet. Behind him came Neptunus Rex, wearing a gold crown that looked suspiciously like it had been crafted of cardboard and spray painted. He wore swimming trunks and tennis shoes, but no shirt. His upper arms each bore a tattoo of a well-endowed, totally naked woman and on his chest was a screaming eagle in flight. A bedsheet cape flowed behind him. In his hand he carried a cardboard trident. As he seated himself on his throne — a chair on a platform so that everyone had a good view — Jake recognized him, as did half the men in the room. Bosun Muldowski.

  The Real McCoy — Davy Jones — took his place at the podium and adjusted the microphone. He was wearing long underwear, which he and Jake had decorated with a bottle of iodine last night in a vain attempt to paint fish, octopi and other sea creatures. Alas, the outfit just looked like a bloody mess, Jake decided now. McCoy was enjoying himself immensely, and it showed on his face.