The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  In the Aviation Intermediate Maintenance avionics shop the night shift was hard at repairing aircraft radars and computers. This space was heavily air-conditioned and the lights burned around the clock. The technicians who worked here never saw the sun, or the world of wind and sea and sky where this equipment performed.

  Finally, on a whim, Jake opened the door to the Air Department office. Warrant Officer Muldowski was the only person there. He saw Jake and boomed, “Hey, shipmate. Come in and drop anchor.”

  Jake helped himself to a cup of coffee and planted his elbows on the table across from the bosun, who had a pile of paper spread before him.

  “You did good up there on that cat.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Kept waiting for you to punch. Thought you had waited too long.”

  “For a second there I did too.”

  They chewed the fat for a while, then when the conversation lagged Jake asked, “Why did you stay in the Navy, Bosun?”

  The bosun leaned back in his chair and reached for his tobacco pouch. When he had his pipe fired off and drawing well, he said, “Civilians’ worlds are too small.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They get a job, live in a neighborhood, shop in the same stores all their lives. They live in a little world of friends, work, family. Those worlds looked too small to me.”

  “That’s something to think about.” Jake finished his coffee and tossed the Styrofoam cup in a wastebasket.

  “Don’t you go riding one of those pigs into the water, Mr. Grafton. When you gotta go, you go.”

  “Sure, Bosun.”

  18

  A Soviet task group came over the horizon one Sunday in late November. Columbia had no flying scheduled that day, so gawkers packed the flight deck when Jake Grafton came up for a first-hand look. A strong wind from the southwest was ripping the tops off the twelve- to fifteen-foot swells. Spindrift covered the sea, all under a clear blue sky. Columbia was pitching noticeably. The nearest destroyer was occasionally taking white water over the bow.

  Up on deck Jake ran into the Real McCoy. “Where are they?”

  McCoy pointed. Jake saw six gray warships in close formation, closing the American formation at an angle from the port side, still four or five miles away. The U.S. ships were only making ten knots or so due to the sea state, but the Soviets were doing at least twice that. Even from this distance the rearing and plunging of the Soviet ships was quite obvious. Their bows were rising clear of the water, then plunging deeply as white water cascaded across the main decks and smashed against the gun mounts.

  On they came, seemingly aiming straight for Columbia, which, as usual, was in the middle of the American formation.

  Gidrograf, the Soviet Pamir-class AGI that had been shadowing the Americans’ for the last month, was trailing along behind the Americans, at least two miles astern. Her speed matched the Americans’ and she made no move to join the oncoming Soviet ships.

  “What do you think?” McCoy asked.

  “Unless Ivan changes course, he’s going to run his ships smack through the middle of our formation.”

  “I think that is exactly what he intends to do,” McCoy said after a bit, when the Russians were at least a mile closer.

  “Sure looks like it,” Jake agreed. The angle-of-bearing hadn’t changed noticeably, which was the clue that the ships were on collision courses. He glanced up at Columbia’s bridge. Reflections on the glass prevented him from seeing anyone, but he imagined that the captain and the admiral were conferring just now.

  “Under the rules of the road, we have the right of way,” McCoy said.

  “Yeah.” Somehow Jake suspected that paper rules didn’t count for much with the Russian admiral, who was probably on the bridge of his flagship with one eye on the compass and the other on the Americans.

  The Soviet ships were gorgeous, with sleek, raked hulls and superstructures bristling with weapons and topped with radar dishes of various types. The biggest one was apparently a cruiser. A couple were frigates, and the other three looked like destroyers. All were armed to the teeth.

  The American destroyer on the edge of the formation gave way to the Russians. On they came. Now you could see the red flags at their mastheads as dots of color and tiny figures on the upper decks, like ants.

  “Big storm coming,” McCoy said, never taking his eyes off the Russians. “Up from the southwest. Be here this evening.”

  Jake looked aft, at the carrier’s wake. It was partially obscured by parked aircraft, but he saw enough. The wake was straight as a string. He turned his attention back to the Soviet ships. About that time the collision alarm sounded on Columbia’s loudspeaker system. Then came the announcement: “This is not a drill. Rig for collision portside.”

  The Soviet destroyers veered to pass ahead and behind Columbia but the cruiser stayed on a collision course. Now you could plainly see the sailors on the upper decks, see the red flag stiff in the wind, see the cruiser’s bow rise out of the water as white and green seawater surged aft along her decks, see that she was also rolling maybe fifteen degrees with every swell.

  But she was a lot smaller than the carrier. The American sailors on the flight deck were well above the Russians’ bridge. In fact, they could see the faces of the Russian sailors at the base of the mast quite plainly. The Russians were hanging on for dear life.

  The Russian captain was going to veer off. He had to. Jake jumped into the catwalk so he could see better as the cruiser crossed the last fifty yards and the carrier’s loudspeaker boomed, “Stand by for collision portside. All hands brace for collision.”

  The Soviet captain misjudged it. He swung his helm too late and the sea carried his ship in under the carrier’s flight deck overhang. The closest the two hulls came was maybe fifteen feet, but as the cruiser heeled her motion in the sea pushed her mast and several of the radar antennae into the underside of the flight deck overhang. The Russian sailors clustered around the base of the mast saw that the collision was inevitable only seconds in advance and tried to flee. Two didn’t make it. One fell to the cruiser’s main deck, but the other man fell into that narrow river of white water between the two ships and instantly disappeared from view.

  The top of the mast hit the catwalk forward of the Fresnel lens and ripped open three of the sixty-man life raft containers. The rafts dropped away. One ended up on the cruiser and the others went into the sea. The Russians’ mast and several radar antennae were wiped off the superstructure and her stack was partially smashed.

  Then the cruiser was past, surging ahead of Columbia with her mast trailing in the water on her portside.

  Jake bent down and stuck his head through the railing under the life raft containers so that he could keep the cruiser in sight. If the Russian captain cut across Columbia’s bow he was going to get his ship cut in half.

  He did cut across, but only when he was at least six or seven hundred yards ahead, still making twenty knots.

  The Soviet ships rejoined their tight formation and continued on course, pulling steadily away.

  An American destroyer dropped aft to look for the lost Soviet sailor as the air boss ordered the flight deck cleared so he could launch the alert helo.

  The helo searched for half an hour. The destroyer stayed on the scene for several hours, yet the Russian sailor wasn’t found.

  By evening a line of thunderstorms formed a solid wall to the southwest, a wall that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. As the dusk deepened lightning flashed in the storms continually. Jake was on deck watching the approaching storms and savoring the sea wind when the carrier and her escorts slowly came about and pointed their bows at the lightning.

  The ships rode better on the new course. Apparently the heavies had decided to sail through the storm line, thereby minimizing their time in it. Unfortunately the weather on the back side of the front was supposed to be bad; heavy seas, low ceilings and lots of rain. Oh well, no flying tomorrow either.

  When
the darkness was complete and the storms were within a few miles, Jake went below. This was going to be a good night to sleep.

  * * *

  The ringing telephone woke Jake. The Real McCoy usually answered it since all he had to do was roll over in his bunk and reach, and he did this time. The motion of the ship was less pronounced than it had been when Jake and Real went to bed about 10 p.m., during the height of the storm.

  “McCoy, sir.”

  Jake looked at his watch. A little after 2 A.M.

  After a bit, he heard his roommate growl, “This had better not be your idea of a joke, Harrison, or your ass is a grape…Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell him…In a minute, okay?”

  Then McCoy slammed the receiver back on the hook.

  “You awake up there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They want us both in the ready room in five minutes, ready to fly.”

  “Get serious.”

  “That’s what the man said. Must be World War III.”

  “Awww…”

  “If Harrison is jerking our chains he’ll never have another OK pass as long as he lives. I promise.”

  But Harrison wasn’t kidding, as Jake and the Real found out when they went through the ready room door. The skipper and Allen Bartow were standing near the duty desk talking to CAG Kall. Flap Le Beau was listening and sipping a cup of coffee. All of them were in flight suits.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” CAG said. He looked like he had had a great eight hours sleep and a fine breakfast. He couldn’t have had, Jake knew. Things didn’t work like that in this Navy.

  “ ’Morning, CAG,” McCoy responded. “So it’s war, huh?”

  “Not quite. Pull up a chair and we’ll sort this out.”

  Apparently the admiral and CINCPACFLT had been burning the airways with flash messages. The Soviet ambassador in Washington had delivered a stiff note to the State Department protesting the previous day’s naval incident in the Indian Ocean, which he called “a provocation.” The powers that be had concluded that the U.S. Navy had to serve notice on the Russians that it couldn’t be bullied.

  “The upshot is,” CAG said, “that we have been ordered to make an aerial demonstration over the Soviet task group, tonight if possible.”

  “What kind of demonstration, sir?”

  “At least two airplanes, high-speed passes, masthead height if possible.”

  Eyebrows went up. McCoy got out of his chair and went to the television, which he turned to the continuous weather display. Current weather was three to four hundred feet broken to overcast, three-quarters of a mile visibility in rain. Wind out of the northwest at twenty-five knots.

  CAG was still talking. “… it occurred to me that this would be a good time to try our foul weather attack scheme on the Russians. I thought we could send two A-6s and three EA-6Bs. We’d put a Hummer up to keep it safe. The admiral concurred. The Prowler crews and Hummer crews will be here in a few minutes for the brief. What do you think?”

  “Sir, where are the Russians?”

  “Two hundred miles to the east. Apparently the line of thunderstorms went over them several hours ago and they are also under this system.”

  As he finished speaking the ship’s loudspeaker, the 1-MC, came to life: “Flight quarters, flight quarters, all hands man your flight quarters stations.”

  In minutes the Prowler and Hawkeye crews came in and found a seat and the brief began. CAG did the briefing, even though he wouldn’t be flying. Forget the masthead rhetoric from Washington — the lowest any of the crews could go was five hundred feet.

  The three senior pilots of the Prowler squadron would fly their planes, and the C.O. of the E-2 squadron would be in the left seat of the Hawkeye. Lieutenant Colonel Haldane and the Real McCoy would fly the go A-6s and Jake Grafton would man the spare.

  “Uh, skipper,” Flap said, “if I may ask, why McCoy?”

  “He’s got the best landing grades in the squadron. Grafton is second. As it happens, they have more traps than anyone else in the outfit and getting back aboard is going to be the trick. As for me, this is my squadron.”

  “Yessir, but I was wondering about McCoy. Let’s face facts, sir. When the landing signal officer has the best landing scores — well, it’s like an umpire having the top batting average. There’s just a wee bit of an odor, sir.”

  Laughter swept the room as McCoy grinned broadly. He winked at Jake.

  “What say you and I flip for the go bird,” Jake suggested to McCoy.

  “Forget it, shipmate. If my plane’s up, I’m flying it. Tonight or any other night.”

  “Come on! Be a sport.”

  The Real was having none of it. And Jake understood. Naval aviation was their profession. Given the weather and sea state, this would be a very tough mission. When you began ducking the tough ones, you were finished in this business. Maybe no one else would know, but you would.

  * * *

  In flight deck control Jake looked at the airplane planform cutouts on the model ship to see where his plane was spotted. Watching the handler check the weight chits as rain splattered against the one round, bomb-proof window and the wind moaned, Jake Grafton admitted to himself that he was glad he had the spare. He wasn’t ducking anything — this was the bird the system gave him and he wasn’t squawking.

  All he had to do was preflight, strap in and start the engines, then sit and watch Haldane and McCoy ride the catapult into the black goo. After that he could shut down and go below for coffee. If he went to the forward mess deck galley he could probably snag a couple doughnuts hot from the oven.

  The handler was a lieutenant commander pilot who had left the Navy for two years, then changed his mind. The only billet available when he came back was this one — two years as the aircraft handler on Columbia. He took it, resigning himself to two years of shuffling airplane cutouts around this model, two years of listening to squadron maintenance people complain that their airplanes weren’t where they could properly maintain them, two years listening to the air boss grouse that the go birds were spotted wrong, two years checking tie-down chains and weight chits, two years listening to the hopes, dreams and fears of young, homesick sailors while trying to train them to do dangerous, difficult jobs, two years in purgatory with no flying…yet the handler seemed to be weathering it okay. True, his fuse was getting almighty short and he wasn’t getting enough sleep, but his job performance was first-rate, from everything Jake had seen and heard. And behind the tired face with the bleary eyes was a gentle human being who liked to laugh at a good joke in the dirty-shirt wardroom. Here in Flight Deck Control, however, he was all business.

  “Forty-six thousand five hundred pounds? That right, Grafton?” The handler was reading from Jake’s weight chit. This would be his weight if he launched.

  “Yessir.”

  Savoring the hubbub in Flight Deck Control while surreptitiously watching the handler, Jake Grafton felt doubt creep over him. Was getting out a mistake? It had been for the handler. An eight-to-five job somewhere, the same routine day after day…

  He turned for the hatch that led to the flight deck. The first blast of cool air laden with rain wiped the future from his mind and left only the present, this moment, this wild, windy night, this airplane that awaited him under the dim red island floodlights.

  His bird was sitting on Elevator Four. The tail was sticking out over the water, so he checked every step with his flashlight before he moved his feet. If you tripped over the three-inch-high combing, you would go straight into the ocean to join that Russian sailor who went in yesterday. Poor devil — his shipmates didn’t even stop to look for him. How would you like to go to sea in that man’s navy?

  Going around the nose he and Flap passed each other. “What a night,” Flap muttered.

  Both men were wearing their helmets. They had the clear visors down to keep the rain and salt spray out of their eyes. The wind made the raindrops hurt as they splattered against exposed flesh.

  Jake took his t
ime preflighting the ejection seat. He was tempted to hurry at this point so he could sit down and the plane captain could close the canopy, but he was too old a dog. He checked everything carefully, methodically while he used his left hand to hang tightly to the airplane. The motion of the ship seemed magnified out here on this elevator. The fact he was eight or nine feet above the deck perched on this boarding ladder and buffeted by the wind and rain didn’t help. He pulled the safety pins, inspected, counted and stowed them, then he sat.

  The plane captain climbed the ladder to help him hook up the mask, don the leg restraints, and snap the four Koch fittings into place. Then the plane captain went around to help Flap. When both men were completely strapped in, he closed the canopy.

  Now Jake checked the gear handle, armament switches, circuit breakers, and arranged the switches for engine start. He had done all these things so many times that he had to concentrate to make sure he was seeing what was there and not just what he expected to see.

  When he had the engines started, Flap fired up the computer while Jake checked the radio and TACAN frequencies.

  “Good alignment,” Flap reported and signaled to the plane captain to pull the cable that connected the plane to the ship’s inertial navigation system.

  They were ready. Now to sit here warm and reasonably dry and watch the launch.

  The E-2 taxied toward Cat Three on the waist. A cloud of water lifted from the deck by the wash of the two turboprops blasted everything. The plane went onto the cat, the JBD rose, then the engines began to moan. Finally the wing-tip lights came on. The Hawkeye accelerated down the catapult and rose steadily into the night. The lights faded quickly, then the goo swallowed them.

  “Uh-oh,” Flap said. “Look over there at Real’s plane.”

  A crowd of maintenance people had the left engine access door open. Someone was up on the ladder talking to McCoy. In less than a minute a figure left the group and headed for Jake’s plane.

  The man on the deck lowered the pilot’s boarding ladder while Jake ran the canopy open. Then he climbed up. The squadron’s senior troubleshooter. “Mr. McCoy can’t get his left generator to come on the line,” he shouted. Jake had to hold his helmet away from his left ear to hear. “You’re going in his place.”