Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  “We’ll make it. I’m sure.”

  Wink didn’t answer. He knew it was useless. Their speed climbed through five hundred fifty knots. They flashed over the coast highway and the beach, and were quickly over the water, where they were most comfortable.

  As soon as he thought it appropriate, Wink called the carrier on the radio, about fifty miles out. “Gulf November, this is Bright Sword 211, flight of two, 020 for 20 inbound.”

  “Roger, 211, don’t have you, continue inbound, report see me.”

  “Wilco,” he replied.

  “Why don’t you climb to two thousand feet. It’ll put us at our orbit altitude and we can pick up the TACAN sooner.”

  Woods pulled back on the stick and the Tomcat climbed quickly to two thousand feet as their airspeed passed through six hundred knots. They flew west, minute after minute, the TACAN needle spinning, heading generally in the direction of the ship. Wink turned his radar on and scanned the sea for the big target and the airplanes above it. But there were a lot of big targets: tankers, cargo ships, and other military ships.

  As if on cue, the needle of the TACAN settled and fixed on the carrier, and pointed steadily five degrees to the left. The DME—Distance Measuring Equipment—which showed how far they were from the ship, began to spin, then settled on thirty-three miles. Woods turned left to put the needle directly on the nose, and checked his clock—0850. The launch was probably half over. The Air Boss had to be wondering where they were by now. If they were much later than now, questions would be asked. The officer from VF-103 who had the Pri-Fly watch, standing right behind the Boss in case there were any F-14 emergencies or questions, would be asked some very hard questions about the performance of his squadron mates, which the Boss would order him to pass on to the Commanding Officer of the Jolly Rogers. All very awkward.

  “211, see you,” Wink transmitted.

  “Roger, 211, still don’t have you, switch frequencies.”

  “You see the ship?” Woods asked, amazed.

  “No, I just didn’t want Strike to be looking for us too hard.”

  “I think I see it,” Woods said. “I’m showing fifteen miles, that should be just a couple more minutes,” he said, looking down at his clock. He glanced over at Big, who was flying tight formation on him.

  Wink turned on his IFF so the ship would see them. The tower frequency was silent, as it usually was on day recoveries. He looked for other airplanes, but didn’t see any yet.

  “I’ve got the ship,” Wink said. “Just to the right. Looks to be heading 300 or so.”

  Woods came right, and headed for the carrier, five miles ahead.

  “211, see you,” Wink transmitted.

  “What are you doing?” Woods yelled at Wink.

  “Calling Boss, say again?”

  Wink knew he had screwed up. “Sorry, Trey. I blew it.” He realized he had called the ship on the Air Boss’s frequency, something you didn’t do. He had lost track. He sat silently hoping the Air Boss would let it pass.

  The radio was silent as Woods and Big screamed toward the USS George Washington in tight formation. Woods reduced throttle to slow down from six hundred knots to three hundred fifty. They came up the side of the ship and looked at the deck. The last plane for the second event, an S-3 Viking antisubmarine plane taxied onto the bow catapult. The landing area was clear.

  Woods glanced at Big, brought his right hand to his mouth like an Italian chef, and kissed him off. He threw the stick hard left and broke in front of the carrier. He pulled hard, five Gs, and took the Tomcat downwind. As they leveled their wings Woods lowered the landing gear and flaps, and went through the landing checklist with Wink.

  Wink looked left and saw the S-3 shoot off the bow of the ship, and men scrambling to clear the flight deck for their approach. The white-shirted LSOs were in place, ready to wave them off if their approach was dangerous, or “advise” them if their approach needed correction.

  As they flew past the LSO platform a mile away heading the opposite direction from the ship, Woods began a left turn that he would hold until directly behind the ship in the groove. He had done it so many times it was a habit.

  Big was right behind them with a perfect interval. Woods rolled his wings level three quarters of a mile behind the ship, lined up with the centerline of the angled deck. The ball, the lens that showed where they were on the glide path, was centered. Woods checked his airspeed, lineup, and angle of attack, and descended steadily toward the flight deck. He made small corrections to stay on the glide path—big corrections would lead to bigger ones later. They landed just behind the three-wire. The hook grabbed the wire, pulled it up off the deck, and held the Tomcat as Woods went to military power. The plane tried its hardest to get airborne again, but the steel cable held it back and finally stopped it fifty feet short of the end of the angled deck.

  A yellow-shirted sailor ran out and signaled Woods to take his feet off the brakes and go to idle on the engines. He did, and the retracting three-wire pulled the Tomcat gently backward. They rolled toward the stern for thirty feet until the cable cleared the hook. Woods raised the hook on the signal and quickly taxied forward to get out of the landing area for Big to land. They crossed the red and white line on the edge of the landing area ten seconds before Big slammed into the deck, snagged the number-two wire, and came to a stop just to their left.

  They taxied toward to the bow of the ship. The yellow shirts maneuvered them just forward of the island as the ordies ran underneath the wings to safe the missiles. Gunner Bailey stood in his red turtleneck and red flotation vest supervising the entire operation. Woods and Wink put their hands up while the ordies put the pins with long red flags on them into the missiles to ensure no accidental firings. Routine. Ordinary. Happens every flight. Except the ordies weren’t usually safing Israeli missiles. Woods closed his eyes, hoping they didn’t notice anything different about them.

  The ordies ran out from under the wings with their thumbs up. Woods looked at Bailey, who gave him a knowing thumbs-up, and the yellow shirt motioned for them to taxi forward to the bow.

  Woods, Wink, Big, and Sedge walked into the ready room together, helmets and flight bags in hand. Woods surveyed the room carefully, trying to look casual, and saw the usual activity: briefing and watching the PLAT as the recovery continued above their heads. The first day out from a port was always more exciting as the aircrew were anxious to get back into the air, back into their routine of flying.

  “How was the hop?” Meat asked, sitting at the SDO desk in his khakis. Second only to Big in size, Lieutenant Mark Mora, Meat, was another first tour pilot.

  “Defied death once again,” answered Woods.

  Meat looked at Woods more closely as he sat in a ready room chair to fill out the yellow sheet. He frowned. “You guys look like you’ve been swimming,” he said, noticing the sweat-drenched hair and flight suits. “You didn’t do any unauthorized ACM, did you?” Air Combat Maneuvering, Dogfighting.

  Woods tried to look disinterested. He put his finger to his lips. Meat smiled.

  Chief Lucas walked into the ready room looking for them. “Any gripes?” he asked.

  “None,” Woods replied, looking at Wink, who shook his head.

  “Nope,” Big answered.

  A young sailor with a green maintenance turtleneck on stuck his head into the ready room. “Hey, Chief, can you come here for a sec?”

  Chief Lucas rolled his eyes, “Never a moment’s peace,” he said, turning. “What!” he yelled, walking next door to Maintenance Control.

  He came back in five seconds later and crossed to Woods. He stood in front of him glaring angrily. “Petty Officer Wynn said the accelerometer reads eight Gs. You pull eight Gs on that hop, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  Woods felt a rush of blood; he wanted to kick himself for failing to reset the needle on the accelerometer. “Guess we got carried away. Did a little tail chasing.”

  “Sir, that’s a down jet. You know we’ve got to pull the pa
nels if someone pulls eight Gs. You told the mechs on the roof the plane was up, sir!”

  “Sorry, Chief,” he said, chagrined. “I guess I forgot.”

  “Sir, begging your pardon, but how do you forget pulling eight Gs? We told the aircrew for the third go that they could have your jets. Now the spare’ll have to go instead of the lead,” the Chief said, putting his hands on his hips. “They’re gonna be pissed.”

  “Sorry, Chief,” Woods repeated.

  Bark walked into the ready room in his flight suit ready to brief event four. “Hello, boys. How’d it feel to get in the air again after five days off?”

  “Great, Skipper,” Big said, watching Chief Lucas to see if he was going to take the opportunity to let the Skipper in on his unhappiness.

  Chief Lucas scowled, and left the ready room without another word.

  “What’s with him?” Bark asked.

  “What’s for lunch, Meat?” Big asked.

  “Spaghetti, and Israeli milk.”

  “Weird containers again?” Woods moaned, writing on the yellow sheet.

  “You’re still fixated on the German milk,” Big said. “The Israeli milk is actually much worse. It tastes like Brie cheese that has been sitting out for three days with flies crawling on it. It’s cold just to cover the flavor.”

  “Lumps?”

  “What the hell is Brie cheese?” Wink asked, annoyed.

  Big shook his head. “You are so cosmopolitan, Wink. You probably think eating a cheeseburger on a whole wheat bun is on the cutting edge of culinary adventurism.”

  “You really crack yourself up, don’t you, Big?” Wink replied.

  “I have to laugh. Nobody else gets my sophisticated humor. Living with you guys is like putting on a Shakespeare play in front of a bunch of prisoners. They just stare at you, no idea what’s being said, missing the subtlety, the nuance, the turn of the phrase, the double entendres . . .”

  “What the hell is a dooble ontonder?” Wink said.

  “Do you actually know who Shakesp—”

  “Blow it out your ass, Big. Don’t give me your drama major crap,” Wink said, not looking at him, writing on the yellow sheet. “You don’t even know what a cosine is.”

  “Sure I do,” said Big quickly. “It’s someone who guarantees a debt for another, someone . . .”

  Wink laughed out loud, joined by others, the engineers.

  Big smiled, his eyes twinkling. “You guys are so easy. You think you’ve got a secret world that we truly educated don’t know about? Cosine is so sophisticated it’s from about, oh, eighth grade or so, maybe ninth if you’re slow.”

  “So what is it then?” Wink pressed, hoping Big was bluffing.

  Big glanced at Wink, sitting three chairs away from him. “You don’t think I know, do you,” he said, looking down at the green sheet on which he was writing a minor gripe about the throttle friction sticking. “Maybe I won’t tell you.”

  Wink smiled knowingly. “Like I figured.”

  Big spoke tiredly, as if to a poor student who had heard the explanation before. “It’s a trigonometric function of an acute angle. It’s the ratio of the leg of a triangle by the angle, if it’s a right triangle, and the hypot—”

  The ready room door opened suddenly and a group of officers in white turtlenecks and flotation vests walked in. “Event one?” the leader asked.

  Woods looked up and recognized the CAG LSO, the Air Wing Landing Signal Officer, the one on the platform for the recovery of the first event. He was debriefing every pilot who had landed and had worked his way aft to Ready Room Eight. “Hey, Bolt, right here,” Woods said, lifting his hand.

  Woods and Big stood up and the group of LSOs—and LSOs in training crossed to meet them.

  “211?” Bolt asked.

  “Me,” Woods said.

  Bolt opened his book and looked for the entry on 211’s pass. Finding it, he read the comments. “Okay three-wire, little high at the start, settled over the ramp. That’s it,” Bolt said, looking at Woods. He didn’t expect much response, having given him nearly the highest grade possible, only an underlined okay being better, but very rare.

  “Thanks,” Woods said.

  “207?”

  “Me,” Big said.

  “Okay two wire, little left in the groove, little nose down at the ramp.”

  “Thanks,” Big said.

  Bolt closed his book. His fine straight blond hair was a mess from the wind and jet exhaust. He looked at Woods and Big with a gleam in his eye. “How fast were you guys going coming into the break? We didn’t see you in the overhead pattern, then suddenly we see you coming like your hair was on fire, enter the break, and land.”

  Woods glanced at Big and shrugged. “What do you think, Big, two-fifty? Two seventy-five?”

  “Kilometers, maybe,” Big said. Then to Bolt. “It’s hard for you, Bolt.” Bolt was an S-3 pilot. “You’re not used to seeing that kind of speed, you know, like a Cessna or a Piper might throw at you.”

  “You’re hilarious,” Bolt said, smiling.

  Pritch came in as Bolt left. Woods fixed her with a sharp glance, but Pritch avoided his eyes. “The aircrews from the first event haven’t debriefed in CVIC,” Pritch announced to Sedge.

  Sedge turned away from the schedule board where he was looking for their next hop. “Like it matters. What are we going to say? Did four million intercepts, saw my wingman each time, returned home, and took a leak? Why do we go through this charade?”

  “Not up to me, Sedge,” Pritch said. “Who’s it going to be?” she asked, studying all four of them.

  “Come on, Sedge,” Wink said. “Let’s go tell the nice Intelligence Officer about our hop.”

  They followed Pritch out the door and down the passageway to the intelligence center. “How’d it go?” Pritch asked Wink as they walked down the passageway.

  “No problem. Routine hop,” he answered.

  “Everybody get back okay?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t we? It was just a silly AIC hop, you know, you go outbound, then inbound, then you land. Nothing to it.”

  Pritch turned and examined their faces as they walked behind her.

  “You expect any trouble?” she asked in a low tone of voice.

  They both shook their heads, as they entered CVIC.

  23

  The task force members had gathered in the fusion room, where they waited for Joe Kinkaid. The computers in the room hummed from the satellite photos and data being manipulated by eager agents; a live CNN broadcast played in the back of the room, showing footage of an Israeli air strike into Lebanon. Sami watched it abstractedly. It looked so much like other strike footage he had seen he couldn’t help wondering if they ever just pulled out footage of a similar Israeli air strike and showed it with a new date on it.

  Now his attention focused on Joe Kinkaid, who’d just come into the room, looking more rumpled than usual. Sami could tell that Kinkaid wasn’t interested in the latest news reports or anything else. He was very unhappy, and very angry. “I didn’t tell you what Ricketts was doing,” he began, forgoing any preliminaries.

  Sami stared, wondering what was coming.

  Kinkaid continued, “He was involved in an operation to kidnap the Sheikh.”

  Sami looked around to see how many of the task force members were in control of their expressions. Kinkaid wasn’t looking for any reaction as he went on. “He had excellent intelligence of the Sheikh’s whereabouts and set up one of the most creative covert ops I have ever heard of. The Sheikh was about to walk into the trap this morning, while you were all sleeping soundly in your beds.” Kinkaid reached for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, forgetting that it hadn’t been there for ten years. “Apparently the Israelis had the same intelligence we did. The air strike they conducted this morning was against many targets all over southern Lebanon, but one of the targets was the place where the Sheikh was supposed to be this morning. Ricketts was standing right in the middle of it. There was some t
hought that the explosives Ricketts was . . . using, might have gone off at the wrong time. But we don’t think so. The Israelis hit the building with two one-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs and blew it to hell.”

  Sami winced. He had enjoyed his evening conversation with Ricketts. It had ranged from the general untrustworthiness of the Israelis to the stupidity of Syria and various terrorist groups. They had discussed Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the future of the United States in the Middle East, and the Agency’s role in the area. Sami had asked Ricketts what guided him through all the confusion. Loyalty to the United States had been his response. Not the answer Sami had expected. Ricketts had actually said loyalty to the U.S. Sometimes it was tricky, but that was his guide. And look where it got him, Sami thought.

  One of the members of the task force from the Directorate of Intelligence, the same directorate Sami was part of, asked angrily, “When are the piss-ant Israelis going to start telling us when they have an operation this big going down so we can stay out of the way?”

  Kinkaid agreed. “That was the first question that occurred to me too. I think their answer would be ‘when are the piss-ant Americans going to tell us they’re conducting a covert op we might want to know about?’ I don’t think we can blame the Israelis for this one.” His frustration boiled over. “I mean what are the chances two countries are going to act on the same piece of intelligence at exactly the same time? Minuscule. Can’t happen. But it did.”

  “Now what?” Sami asked.

  “Now it’s going to be harder than ever to get to him, and what’s worse, we’ve probably stirred up the hornet’s nest. Let’s just hope the Sheikh doesn’t know about Ricketts’s operation or he’ll blame everything on the U.S. He’ll probably think the Israeli attack was our idea. Oh, and by the way, the Sheikh hadn’t arrived yet when the bombs hit. They missed him, and now he knows they were trying for him, which means he knows he has an intelligence leak. It’s about the worst possible result.”

  “Think he’ll be on to Ricketts?”