The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  Refueling took awhile. They needed twenty thousand pounds for a full load and the ship’s pumps could only deliver it at about a ton a minute.

  He was tired and his butt felt like dead meat, yet it was very pleasant sitting here in the warm, comfortable cockpit. From their vantage point here beside the foul line they had a grandstand seat. The planes came out of the rain and darkness and slammed into the deck. The first two trapped, then a Phantom boltered, his hook ripping a shower of sparks the length of the landing area. This was the guy who had already boltered twice before.

  Ah yes, this comfortable cockpit, with everything working just the way it was supposed to, the rain pattering on the Plexiglas and collecting into rivulets that smeared the light.

  He was tired, but not too much so. Just pleasantly tired.

  Jake unhooked his oxygen mask and laid it in his lap. He took off his helmet and massaged his face and head. He used his sleeves and gloves to swab away the perspiration, then pulled the helmet back on.

  The minutes ticked by as the fuel gauges faithfully reported the fuel coming aboard.

  They were still fueling when the errant F-4 came out of the gloom and snagged a two-wire. The pilot stroked the afterburners on the roll out. The white-hot focused flames poured from the tailpipes for about a second, then went out, leaving everyone on deck half-blinded.

  Two minutes later an A-7 carrying a buddy store, a tanking package hung on a weapon’s station under one wing, was taxied from the pack up to Cat Two and launched. Apparently the brain trust in Air Ops wanted more gas aloft.

  At last Jake and Flap were ready. Pressurize the tanks. Boarding ladders up, refueling panel closed, seats armed, and they were taxiing toward Cat Two, the left bow catapult.

  Spread the wings, flaps to takeoff, slats out, wipe out the cockpit, ease into the shuttle. There, the jolt as the hold-back reached full extension, then another jolt as the shuttle went forward into tension. Off the brakes, throttles up.

  He watched the engines come up to full power as he pulled up the catapult grip and arranged the heel of his hand behind the throttles, felt the airplane tremble as the engines sucked in vast quantities of that rainy air and slammed it out the tailpipes into the jet blast deflector — the JBD. Fuel flow normal, temperatures coming up nicely, RPM at 100 percent on the left engine, a fraction over on the right. Hydraulics normal, everything okay.

  Jake wiped out the cockpit, glanced at the panel, ensured Flap had his flashlight on the standby gyro…“You ready?”

  “Let it rip.”

  He flipped on the exterior light master switch on the end of the cat grip with his left thumb.

  The hold-back bolt broke. He felt it break. Then came the shot, a stiff jolt of terrific acceleration, which lasted about a quarter of a second. Then it ceased. Sweet Jesus fucking Christ the airplane was still accelerating but way too goddamn slow!

  He was doing maybe 30 knots when he released the cat grip and closed the throttles. Automatically he extended the wing-tip speed brakes. He jammed his feet down on the top of the rudder pedals, locking both brakes.

  They were still going forward, sliding on the wet, greasy deck. Thundering toward the bow, the round-down, the edge of the cliff…

  Jake pulled the left throttle around the horn to idle cutoff, stopping the flow of fuel to that engine.

  He released the left brake and engaged nose-wheel steering. Slammed the rudders to neutral, then hard right. That should capture the nose wheel and turn it right, if the shuttle wasn’t holding it. But the nose wheel refused to respond.

  Still going forward, but slower. The edge was there, coming toward them…only seconds left.

  He released both brakes, and engaged nose-wheel steering and slammed the rudder full left. He felt something give. The nose started to swing left.

  On the brakes hard. Is there enough deck left, enough—?

  An explosion beside him. Flap had ejected. The air was filled with shards of flying Plexiglas.

  Sliding, turning left and still sliding forward…he felt the left wheel slam into the deck-edge combing, then the nose, now the tail spun toward the bow, the whole plane still sliding…

  And he stopped.

  Out the right he could see nothing, just blackness. The right wheel must be almost at the very edge of the flight deck.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled explosively.

  His left hand was holding the alternate ejection handle between his legs. He couldn’t remember reaching for it, but obviously he had. He gingerly released his grip.

  The Plexiglas was gone on the right side of the canopy. Flap had ejected through it. Where his seat had been there was just an empty place.

  Was Flap alive?

  Jake closed the speed brakes and raised the flaps and slats, watched the indicator to make sure they were coming in properly, exterior lights off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw people, a mob, running toward him. He ignored them.

  When he had the flaps and slats up, he unlocked the wings, then folded them. The wind was puffing through the top of the broken canopy…rain coming in. He could feel the drops on the few inches of exposed skin on his neck.

  Was the plane moving? He didn’t think so. Yet if he opened the canopy he couldn’t eject. The seat was designed to go through the glass — if the canopy was open, the steel bow would be right above the seat and would kill him if he tried to eject. And if this plane slid off the deck he would have to eject or ride it into that black sea.

  Now the reaction hit him. He began to shake.

  A yellow-shirt was trying to get his attention. He kept giving Jake the cut sign, the slash across the throat.

  But should he open the canopy?

  Unable to decide, he chopped the right throttle and sat listening as that engine died.

  Someone opened the canopy from outside. Now a sergeant was leaning in. “You can get out now, sir. Safe your seat.”

  “Have they got it tied down?”

  “Yes.”

  He had to force himself to move. He safetied the top and bottom ejection handles on the seat and fumbled with the Koch fittings that held him to the seat. Reached down and fumbled in the darkness with the fittings that attached to his leg restraints. There. He was loose.

  He started to get out, then remembered his oxygen mask and helmet leads. He disconnected all that, then tried to stand.

  He was still shaking too badly. He grabbed a handhold and eased a leg out onto the ladder, all the while trying to ignore the blackness yawning on the right side, and ahead. Here he was, ten feet above the deck, right against the edge. He felt like he was going to vomit.

  Hands reached up and steadied him as he descended the boarding ladder.

  With his feet on deck, he looked at the right main wheel. Maybe a foot from the edge. The nose-wheel was jammed against the deck-edge combing and the nose-tow bar was twisted.

  Jake asked the yellow-shirt, “Where’s my BN?”

  The sailor pointed down the deck, toward the fantail. Jake looked. He saw a flash of white, the parachute, draped over the tail of an A-7. So Flap had landed on deck. Didn’t go into the ocean.

  Now the relief hit him like a hammer. His legs wobbled. Two people grabbed him.

  His mask was dangling from the side of his helmet, and he swept it out of the way just in time to avoid the hot raw vomit coming up his throat.

  He started walking aft, toward the island and the parachute draped over that Corsair a hundred fifty yards aft. He shook off two sailors who tried to assist him. “I’m all right, all right, okay.”

  An A-7 came out of the rain and trapped.

  There was Flap, walking this way. Now he saw Grafton, spread his arms, kept walking.

  The two men met and hugged fiercely.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Colonel Richard Haldane watched the PLAT tape of the cat shot gone awry five or six times as he listened to Jake Grafton and Flap Le Beau recount their experience in the ready room.

  They were euphori
c — they had spit in the devil’s eye and escaped to tell the tale. In the ready room they went through every facet of their adventure for their listeners, who shared their infectious glee.

  Isn’t life grand? Isn’t it great to still be walking and talking and laughing after a trip to the naked edge of life itself?

  After a half hour or so, Haldane slipped away to find the maintenance experts. He listened carefully to their explanations, asked some questions, then went to the hangar deck for a personal examination of 523’s nose-tow bar.

  Apparently the hold-back bolt had failed prematurely, a fraction of a second before the launch valves fully opened, perhaps just as they began to open. The KA-6D at full power had begun to move forward, creating a space — perhaps an inch or two— between the T-fitting of the nose-tow bar and the catapult shuttle. Then the shuttle shot forward as steam slammed into the back of the catapult pistons. At this impact of shuttle and nose-tow bar, the nose-tow bar probably cracked. It held together for perhaps thirty feet of travel down the catapult, then failed completely.

  Now free of the twenty-seven-ton weight of the aircraft, the pistons accelerated through the twin catapult barrels like two guided missiles chained together. Superheated steam drove them through the chronograph brushes five feet short of the water brakes at 207 knots.

  With a stupendous crash that was felt the length of the ship, the pistons’ spears entered the water brakes, squeezed out all the water and welded themselves into the brakes. Brakes, spears, and pistons were instantly transformed into one large lump of smoking, twisted, deformed steel. Cat Two was out of action for the rest of the cruise.

  Colonel Haldane was less interested in what happened to the catapult than the sequence of events that took place inside 523 after the catapult fired. Careful analysis of the PLAT tape showed that the plane came to a halt just 6.1 seconds later. Total length of the catapult was 260 feet, and it ended twenty feet short of the bow. The plane had used all 280 feet to get stopped. The bombardier ejected 3.8 seconds into that ride.

  That Jake Grafton had managed to get the plane halted before it went into the ocean was, Colonel Haldane decided, nothing less than a miracle.

  Seated at his desk in his stateroom, he thought about Jake Grafton, about what it must have felt like trying to get that airplane stopped as it stampeded toward the bow and the black void beyond. Oh, he had heard Grafton recount the experience, but already, while it was still fresh and immediate, Grafton had automatically donned the de rigueur cloak of humility: “In spite of everything I did wrong, miraculously I survived. I was shot with luck. All you sinners take note that when the chips are down clean living and prayer pays off.”

  Most pilots would have ejected. Haldane thought it through very carefully and came to the conclusion that he would have been one of them. He would have grabbed that alternate ejection handle between his legs and pulled hard.

  Yet Grafton hadn’t done that, and he had saved the plane. Luck, Haldane well knew in spite of Grafton’s ready room bullshit, had played a very small part.

  Should he have ejected? After all, the Navy Department could just order another A-6 from Grumman for $8 million, but it couldn’t buy another highly trained, experienced pilot. It took millions of dollars and years of training to produce one of those; if you wanted one combat experienced, you had to have a war, which was impractical to do on a regular basis since a high percentage of the liberal upper crust frowned upon wars for training purposes.

  Yep, Grafton should have punched. Just like Le Beau.

  Sitting here in the warmth, safety, and comfort of a well-lit stateroom nursing a cup of coffee, any sane person would reach that obvious conclusion. Hindsight is so wonderful.

  And the sane person would be wrong.

  Great pilots always find a way to survive. Almost by instinct they manage to choose a course of action — sometimes in blatant violation of the rules — that results in their survival.

  The most obvious fact here was probably the most important: Jake Grafton was still alive and uninjured.

  Had he ejected…well, who can say how that would have turned out? The seat might have malfunctioned, he might have gone into the ocean and drowned, he might have broken his neck being slammed down upon the flight deck or into the side of an airplane. Le Beau had been very lucky, and he freely admitted it, proclaimed it even, in the ready room afterward: “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

  Grafton was good. He had saved himself and the plane. Yet there was more. In the ready room afterward he hadn’t been the least bit defensive, had stated why he did what he did clearly and cogently, then listened carefully to torrents of free advice — the what-you-should-have-done variety. He wasn’t embarrassed that Flap ejected. He blamed no one and expressed no regrets.

  Haldane liked that, had enjoyed watching and listening to a man whose rock solid self-confidence could not be shaken. Grafton believed in himself, and the feeling was contagious. One wondered if there were anything this man couldn’t handle.

  Now the colonel dug into the bottom drawer of his desk. In a moment he found what he was looking for. It was a personal letter from the commanding officer of VA-128, Commander Dick Donovan. Haldane removed the letter from its envelope and read it, carefully, for the fourth or fifth time.

  I am sending you the most promising junior officer in the squadron, Lieutenant Jake Grafton. He is one of the two or three best pilots I have met in the Navy. He seems to have an instinct for the proper thing to do in a cockpit, something beyond the level that we can teach.

  As an officer, he is typical for his age and rank. Keep your eye on him. He has a temper and isn’t afraid of anything on this earth. That is good and bad, as I am sure you will agree. I hope time and experience will season him. You may not agree with my assessment, but the more I see of him, the more I am convinced that he is capable of great things, that someday he will be able to handle great responsibilities.

  I want him back when your cruise is over.

  Colonel Haldane folded the letter and put it back into its envelope. Then he pulled a pad of paper around and got out his pen. He hadn’t answered this letter yet, and now seemed like a good time.

  Donovan wasn’t going to be happy to hear that Grafton was resigning, but there wasn’t anything he or Donovan could do about it. That decision was up to Grafton. Still, it was a shame. Donovan was right — Grafton was a rare talent of unusual promise.

  When the adrenaline rush had faded and the ready room crowd had calmed down, Jake and Flap went up to the forward—“dirty shirt”—wardroom between the bow cats. Flap had already been to sick bay and had several minor Plexiglas cuts dressed. “Iodine and Band-Aids,” he told Jake with a grin. “I’ve been hurt worse shaving. Man, talk about luck!”

  In the serving line each man ordered a slider, a large cheeseburger so greasy that it would slide right down your throat. With a glass of milk and a handful of potato chips, they sat on opposite sides of a long table with a food-stained tablecloth.

  “I didn’t think you could get it stopped,” Flap said between bites.

  “You did the right thing,” Jake told him, referring to Flap’s decision to eject. “If I hadn’t managed to get it sliding sideways I would have had to punch too.”

  “Well, we’re still alive, in one piece. We did all right.”

  Jake just nodded and drank more milk. The adrenaline had left his stomach feeling queasy, but the milk and slider settled it. He leaned back in his chair and belched. Yep, there’s a lot to be said for staying alive.

  Down in his stateroom he stood looking around at the ordinary things, the things he saw every day yet didn’t pay much attention to. After a glimpse into the abyss, the ordinary looks fresh and new. He sat in his chair and savored the fit, looked at how the light from his desk lamp cast stark shadows into the corners of the room, listened to the creaks and groans of the ship, examined with new eyes the photos of his folks and Callie that sat on his desk.

  He twiddled the dial of the d
esk safe, then pulled it open. The ring was there, the engagement ring he had purchased for her last December aboard Shiloh. He took it from the safe and held it so the light shown on the small diamond. Finally he put it back. Without conscious thought, he removed his revolver from a pocket of his flight suit and put that in the safe too, then locked it.

  He was going to have to do something about that woman.

  But what?

  It wasn’t like he had her hooked and all he had to do was reel her in. The truth of the matter was that she had him hooked, and she hadn’t decided whether or not he was a keeper.

  So what is a guy to do? Write and pledge undying love? Promise to make her happy? Worm your way into her heart with intimate letters revealing your innermost thoughts?

  No. What he had to do was speak to her softly, tell her of his dreams…if only he had any dreams to tell.

  He felt hollow. Everyone else had a destination in mind: they were going at different speeds to get there, but they were on their way.

  It was infuriating. Was there something wrong with him, some defect in him as a person? Was that what Callie saw?

  Why couldn’t she understand?

  He thought about Callie for a while as he listened to the sounds of the ship working in a seaway, then finally reached for a pad and pen. He dated the letter and began:

  “Dear Mom and Dad…”

  When he finished the letter he didn’t feel sleepy, so he took a hot shower and dressed in fresh, highly starched khakis and locked the door behind him. There weren’t many people about. The last recovery was complete. The enlisted troops were headed for their bunks and the die-hard aviators were watching movies. He peered into various ready rooms to see who was still up that he knew. No one he wanted to talk to. He stopped in the arresting gear rooms and watched a first-class and two greenies pulling maintenance on an engine. He stopped by the PLAT office and watched his aborted takeoff several more times, wandered through the catapult spaces, where greenies supervised by petty officers were also working on equipment. In CATCC the graveyard shift had a radar consol torn apart.