The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  Rumors had been circulating for weeks. Yesterday they were confirmed. Australia, the Land Down Under, the Last Frontier, New California, where everyone spoke English — sort of — and everyone was your mate and they drank strong, cold beer and they liked Yanks…oooh boy! The crew was buzzing. This was what they joined the Navy for.

  Those few old salts who claimed they had been to Australia before were surrounded by rapt audiences ready for just about any tale.

  “The women,” the young sailors invariably demanded. “Tell us about the women. Are they really fantastic? Can we really get dates?”

  Tall, leggy, gorgeous, and they like American men, actually prefer them over the home-grown variety. And their morals, while not exactly loose, are very very modern. One story making the rounds had it that during a carrier’s visit to Sydney several years ago the captain had to set up a telephone desk ashore to handle all the calls from Australian women wanting a date with an American sailor! Any sailor! Send me a sailor! These extraordinary females gave the term “international relations” a whole new dimension.

  That was the scuttlebutt, solemnly confirmed and embellished by Those Who Had Been There, once upon a time Before The Earth Cooled. The kids listening were on their first cruise, their first extended stay away from home and Mom and the girl next door. They fervently prayed that the scuttlebutt prove true.

  The Marines in the A-6 outfit were as excited as the swab jockeys. They knew that, given a choice, every sane female on the planet would of course prefer a Marine to a Dixie cup. Australia would be liberty heaven. As someone said in the dirty-shirt wardroom last night, Columbia had a rendezvous with destiny.

  All this flitted through Jake Grafton’s mind as he flew eastward at forty thousand feet. He too wanted to be off the ship, to escape from the eat-sleep-fly cycle, to get a respite from the same old faces and the same old jokes. And Australia, big, exotic, peopled by a hardy race of warriors — Australia would be fun. He hummed a few bars of “Waltzing Matilda,” then glanced guiltily at Flap. He hadn’t heard.

  Jake’s mind returned to the business at hand. Hitting the tanker on the way back to the ship was the dicey part…Why did fate keep dealing him these crummy cards?

  The fiercely bright sun shown down from a deep, rich, dark blue sky. At this altitude the horizon made a perfect line, oh so far away. It seemed as if you could see forever. The sea far below was visible in little irregular patches through the low layer of scattered cumulus, which seemed to float upon the water like white cotton balls…hundreds of miles of cotton balls. To the northeast were the mountains of Sumatra, quite plain now. Clouds hung around the rocky spine of the huge island, but here and there a deep green jungle-covered ridge could be glimpsed, far away and fuzzy. The late afternoon sun was causing those clouds to cast dark shadows. Soon it would shoot their tops with fire.

  “There’s something screwy about this,” Flap said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ships don’t sink in fifteen seconds. Not unless they explode. How likely is that?”

  “Probably a mistake. Radio operator hit the wrong switch or something. I’ll bet he thought no one heard the SOS.”

  “Wonder if the ship tried to call him back.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, I say it’s screwy.”

  “You’d better hope we find that tanker on the way home. Worry about that if you want to worry about something. Extended immersion in saltwater is bad for your complexion.”

  “Think it might lighten me up?”

  “Never can tell.”

  “Life as a white man…I never even considered the possibility. Don’t think it would work, though. You white guys have to go without ass for horribly long periods. I need it a lot more regular.”

  “Might cure your jungle rot too.”

  “You’re always looking for the silver lining, Grafton. That’s a personality defect. You oughta work on that.”

  The minutes ticked by. The mountains seemed closer, but maybe he was just kidding himself. Perspective varies with altitude and speed. He had noticed this phenomenon years ago and never ceased to marvel at it. At just a few thousand feet you see every ravine, every hillock, every twist in the creeks. At the middle altitudes on a clear day you see half of a state. And from up here, well, from up here, at these speeds, you leap mountain ranges and vast deserts in minutes, see whole weather systems…In orbit the Earth would be a huge ball that occupied most of the sky. You would circle it in ninety minutes. Continents and oceans would cease to be extraordinarily large things and appear merely as features on the Earth. The concept of geographical location would cease to apply.

  At this altitude he and Flap were halfway to heaven. On his kneeboard Jake jotted the phrase.

  He was checking the fuel, again, when Flap said, “We’re a hundred twenty miles out. I can see the area.” The area where the ship in distress should be, he meant, if it were really there.

  Odd day for an emergency at sea. Most ships got into trouble in bad weather, when heavy seas or low temperatures stressed their systems. On a day like this…

  “I got something on the radar. A target.”

  “The ship?”

  “The INS says it’s about four or five miles from the position Black Eagle gave us. Of course, the inertial could have drifted that much.”

  “Big ship?”

  “Well, it ain’t a rowboat. Not at this distance. Can’t tell much more than that about the size. A blip is a blip.”

  “Course and speed?”

  “She’s DIW.” Dead in the water, drifting.

  He would pull the power at eighty miles, descend with the engines at eighty percent RPM initially to ensure the generators stayed on the line.

  “It’s about fifteen miles from the coast of Sumatra, which runs northwest to southeast. Islands to seaward, west and southeast. Big islands.”

  “Any other ships around?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “On a coast like that…”

  “Maybe we’ll see some fishing boats or something when we get closer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll tell Black Eagle.” Flap keyed the radio.

  * * *

  They arrived over the ship at seven thousand feet, the engines at idle. Peering down between cumulus clouds, Jake saw her clearly. She was a small freighter, with her superstructure amidships and cranes fore and aft. Rather like an old Liberty ship. No visible smoke, so she wasn’t obviously on fire. No smoke from the funnel either, which was amidships, and no wake. There was a smaller ship, or rather a large boat, alongside, right against the starboard side.

  Jake put the plane into a right circle so Flap could get pictures with the hand-held camera and picked a gap in the clouds to descend through. The engines were still at idle.

  They dropped under the clouds at 5,500 feet. “Shoot the whole roll of film,” Jake told Flap. “From every angle. We’ll circle and make one low pass down the rail so you can get a closeup shot of the ship and that boat alongside, then we’re out of here.”

  “Okay.” He focused and snapped.

  “Looks like the crew has been rescued.”

  “Swing wide at the stern so I can get a shot of her name.”

  Jake was passing three thousand feet now, swinging a wide lazy circle around the ship, which seemed to be floating on an even keel. Wonder what her problem was?

  “Can you read the name?”

  “You’re still too high. It’ll be in the photos though.”

  Fuel? Sixty-two hundred pounds, over six hundred miles to Columbia. He shivered as he surveyed the drifting freighter and the small ship alongside. That small one looked to be maybe eighty or ninety feet long, a small superstructure just forward of amidships, one stack, splotchy paint, a few people visible on deck.

  “There’s people on the freighter’s bridge.”

  “About finished?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here we go, down past them both.” Jake dumped the
nose. He dropped quickly to about two hundred feet above the water and leveled, pointing his plane so that they would pass the two stationary vessels from bow to stern. Jake adjusted the throttles. If he went by too fast Flap’s photos would end up blurred. He steadied at 250 knots.

  “They aren’t waving or anything.”

  Jake Grafton saw the flashes on the bow of the small ship and knew instinctively what they were. He jammed the throttles forward to the stops, rolled forty degrees or so and pulled hard. He felt the thumps, glimpsed the fiery tracers streaming past the canopy, felt more thumps, then they were out of it.

  “Flak!” Now Flap Le Beau found his voice.

  “Fucker’s got a twenty-millimeter!”

  They were tail on to the ships, twisting and rolling and climbing. The primary hydraulic pressure needles flickered. So did the secondary needles. The BACK-UP HYD light illuminated on the annunciator panel.

  “Oh sweet fucking Jesus!”

  Jake leveled the wings, trimmed carefully for a climb.

  The plane began to roll right. The stick was sloppy. Jake used a touch of left rudder to bring it back.

  Heading almost south. He jockeyed the rudder and stick, trying to swing the plane to a westerly heading. The plane threatened to fall off on the right wing.

  It was all he could do to keep the wings level using the stick and rudder. Nose still a degree or so above the horizon, so they were still climbing, slowly, passing two-thousand feet, doing 350 knots.

  “Get on the radio,” Jake told Flap. “Talk to Black Eagle. Those guys must be pirates.”

  He retarded the throttles experimentally, instinctively wanting to get down to about 250 knots so the emergency hydraulic pump would not have to work so hard to move the control surfaces. He trimmed a little more nose up. The nose rose a tad. Good.

  “Black Eagle, Black Eagle, this is War Ace, over.”

  They were in real trouble. The emergency hydraulic pump was designed to allow just enough control to exit a combat situation, just enough to allow the crew to get to a safe place to eject.

  “Black Eagle, this is War Ace Five Oh Eight with a red hot emergency, over.”

  And the emergency pump was carrying the full load. All four of the hydraulic pressure indicator needles pointed at the floor of the airplane, indicating no pressure at all in any of their systems.

  “Black Eagle, War Ace Five Oh Eight in the blind. We cannot hear your answers. We have been shot up by pirates on this SOS contact. May have to eject shortly. We are exiting the area to the south.”

  Just fucking terrific! Shot down by a bunch of fucking pirates! On the high fucking seas in 1973! On a low, slow pass in an unarmed airplane. Of all the shitty luck!

  “Squawk seventy-seven hundred,” Jake said.

  Flap’s hand descended to the IFF box on the consol between them and turned the mode switch to emergency. Just to be sure he dialed 7700 into the windows. Mayday.

  “There’s an island twenty miles ahead,” Flap said. “Go for it. We’ll jump there.”

  The only problem was controlling the plane. It kept wanting to drop one wing or the other. Jake was using full rudder to keep it upright, first right, then left. The stick was almost useless.

  He reached out and flipped the spin assist switch on. This would give him more rudder authority, if the loss of hydraulic pressure hadn’t already made that switch. It must have. The spin assist didn’t help.

  When the left wing didn’t want to come back with full right rudder, he added power on the left engine. Shoved the power lever forward to the stop. That brought it back, but the roll continued to the right. Full left rudder, left engine back, right engine up…and catch it wings level…

  “Seventeen miles.”

  “We aren’t gonna make it.”

  “Keep trying. I don’t want to swim.”

  “Those fuckers!”

  Three thousand feet now. Now if he could just maintain that altitude when the wings rolled…

  They were covering about four and a half nautical miles per minute. How many minutes until they got there? The math was too much and he gave up. And he could see the island ahead. There it was, green and covered with foliage, right there in the middle of the windscreen.

  “Fifteen miles.”

  The roll was left. Full right rudder, left engine up. The roll stopped but the nose came down. Full back stick didn’t help. He ran the trim nose-up as he pulled the right engine to idle.

  The nose was coming up. Yes, coming, so he started the trim nose-down. The wing was slowly rising, oh so slowly, rising…

  They bottomed out at fifteen hundred but the plane began a very slow roll to the right, the nose still climbing.

  He reversed the engines and rudder, played with the trim.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the wings responded to the pilot’s inputs. Now the nose fell to the horizon and kept going down.

  Full nose-up trim! He held the button and glanced at the trim indicator on the bottom of the stick. Still nose-down! Come on!

  They bottomed out this time at one thousand feet and the entire cycle began again.

  “We won’t make it the next time,” Jake told Flap.

  “Let’s jump at the top, when the wings and nose are level.”

  “You first and I’ll be right behind you.”

  Nose coming down, right wing coming down, soaring up, up, to…to twenty-three hundred feet.

  “Now,” Jake shouted.

  An explosion and Flap was gone. Jake automatically centered the rudder as he pulled the alternate firing handle. Instantly a tremendous force hit him in the ass. The cockpit disappeared. The acceleration lasted for only an instant, then he began to fall.

  20

  The parachute opened with a shock. As Jake Grafton turned slowly in the shrouds the airplane caught his eye, diving toward the ocean like a wounded gull. The nose rose and it skimmed the sea, then began to climb. It soared skyward in a climbing turn, its right wing hanging low, then the wing fell and the nose went through and it dove straight into the sea. There was a large splash. When the spray cleared only a swirl of foam marked the spot.

  The pirates! Where were they?

  He got his oxygen mask off and tossed it away, then craned his head. He saw the other parachute, lower and intact with Flap swinging from it, but he couldn’t see the pirate ship or its victim.

  Oh, what a fool he’d been. To fly right over a drifting ship with another craft tied to it — and to never once think about the possibility of pirates! These waters were infamous…and the possibility never even crossed his mind. Son of a bitch!

  The sea coming toward him brought him back to the business at hand. There was enough of a swell that the height was easy to judge — and he didn’t have much time. He reached down and pulled the handle on the right side of his seat pan. It opened. The raft fell away and inflated when it reached the end of its lanyard. He felt around for the toggles to the CO2 cartridges that would inflate his life vest. He found them and pulled. The vest puffed up reassuringly.

  Good! Now to ditch this chute when I hit the water.

  Amazingly, the thoughts shot through his mind without conscious effort. This was the result of training. Every time the ship left port the squadron held a safety training day, and part of that exercise involved each flight crewman hanging from a harness in the ready room while wearing full flight gear. Blindfolded, each man had to touch and identify every piece of gear he wore, then run through the proper procedure for ejections over land and sea. Consequently Jake didn’t have to devote much thought to what he needed to do: the actions were almost automatic.

  The wind seemed to be blowing from the west. He was unsure of directions. The way he wanted to go was toward that island — yes, that was south — and the wind was drifting him east. Somehow he also knew this without having to puzzle it out.

  The raft touched the water. He felt for the Koch fittings near his collar bones that attached his parachute harness to the shroud lines and waited. Ready,
here it comes, and…He went under. Closing his mouth and eyes automatically as the surge of cold seawater engulfed him, he toggled the fittings as he bobbed toward the surface. He broke water gasping for air.

  The parachute was drifting away downwind. Now, where was that line attached to the raft?

  He fumbled for it and finally realized it was wrapped around his legs or something. He began pulling toward the raft with his arms and finally grabbed the line. In seconds he had the raft in front of him.

  All he had to do was get in.

  The first time he slipped off the raft and went under on his back. Kicking and gasping, he managed to get upright and swing the raft so it was in front of him again.

  This time he tried to force the raft under him. And almost made it before it squirted out and his head went under again.

  The swells weren’t helping. Just when he had the raft figured out, a swell broke over him and he swallowed saltwater.

  Finally, after three or four tries, he got into the raft. He gingerly rolled so that he was on his back and lay there exhausted and gasping.

  A minute or two passed before he realized he was still wearing his helmet. He removed it and looked for a lanyard to tie it to. He might need it again and everything not tied to him was going to be lost overboard sooner or later. He used a piece of parachute shroud line that he had tucked into his survival vest months ago.

  Only then did he remember Flap and start sweeping the horizon for him.

  The radio! He got out his survival radio, checked it, then turned it on. “Flap, this is Jake.”

  No answer.

  Jake lay in his bobbing, corkscrewing raft looking at clouds and thinking about pirates and cursing himself. In a rather extraordinary display of sheer stupidity he had managed to get himself and Flap Le Beau shot out of the sky by a bunch of pirates. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. After the war was over! Not just any Tom, Dick or Harry can put an almost-new, squawk-free A-6E into the goddamn drink! Is that talent or what? The guys at the O Clubs were going to be shaking their heads over this one for a long long time.

  Colonel Haldane was going to shit nails when he heard the happy news.