The pilot finally got the message. He pulled the engines back to idle.
The medics were running across the deck toward the fallen crewman. Within seconds, they had him in a gurney and were hauling him toward the dispensary, down on the second deck.
Up in the island, glowering down at the scene on the deck, the Air Boss was livid. How dare one of these peckerhead fighter pilots disobey a signal on his flight deck—and get one his people toasted like a marshmallow! “Get the Tomcat off the catapult,” he ordered on the bull horn.
“He’s supposed to launch for night quals, Boss,” said the flight deck officer on his walk-around radio.
“Not tonight, he’s not. Not on this ship. He’s outa the game. You tell him to park that goddamn airplane and get his ass up here on the double.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thus began the night’s flight operations on the U. S. S. Nimitz.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE BLACK VOID
Road Ammons could see the shooter out there on the deck rotating his lighted wand. It was the power-up signal.
Road brought both throttles forward to the full power detent. Sitting there on the catapult, engines rumbling away at full power, Road gave all his cockpit displays one more look over. No warning or caution or advisory messages. No caution lights. No Xs in the flight control display. Ejection seat armed. Radio altimeter set at forty feet.
All he had to do now was flip on the exterior lights switch with the little finger of his left hand. That was the night time signal—instead of the traditional day time salute—to the shooter that the jet was okay for launch.
That was all: Flip the switch. Then his ass would belong to the shooter. And to God.
Road glanced one more time out the front windscreen—and wished he hadn’t. It was worse than dark out there. The empty void out in front of the ship looked like one of those hypothetical black holes in space that could swallow you up and make you disappear.
He remembered asking a guy in the previous class what it had been like out there on the ship at night.
How dark was it out there?
Dark, man. Darker than a thousand assholes. . .
Road tore his eyes away from the black void. The shooter was still rotating his wand, urging Road to give the signal.
Road shoved his helmet back hard against the head rest. He put his right hand up on the catapult handle. He fixed his eyes on the head-up display, which would tell him everything he needed to know when the catapult flung him off the bow—attitude, angle of attack, airspeed, rate of climb.
He flipped his light switch on. The navigation lights on the Hornet’s wing tips and tail illuminated.
From the corner of his eye Road saw the shooter go through his little fencer’s dance, lunging forward, touching his wand to the deck. The visual circuit was now complete, from pilot to shooter to the crewman who actually pushed the launch button.
Road waited for the shot.
And waited.
It was taking too long! Why the hell wasn’t it—
Whaaarrrrrumph! There it was—jamming him back in the seat, flattening his eyeballs, squashing his guts. . .
Hurtling him down the catapult track. Toward the black void. At the end of the deck, the force of the catapult abruptly ceased.
He was flying. Don’t look out, Road told himself. Fly your instruments. Keep this sucker climbing. Don’t look out there at the black freaking void.
Road climbed straight ahead. With his left hand he slapped the gear handle up and brought up the flaps. Passing through three thousand feet, he called the ship’s radar controller.
“Roger, Roman Three-oh-six,” said the controller. “You’re cleared to marshal at angels two-one. Expected clearance time is two-zero-one-zero.”
“Marshal” was a stack of holding patterns about thirty miles behind the ship, starting at twenty thousand feet. The jets were “stacked” in patterns a thousand feet apart. Road was cleared to enter the holding pattern at “Angels two-one,” which meant twenty-one-thousand feet. He could expect to be cleared for an approach to the Nimitz at twenty-ten (ten minutes past eight P.M.). He had fifteen minutes to wait.
Road heard his classmates, Chip Van Doren, Russ McCormack, then Harpo Hillard, checking in with the controller. The others—Yappy, J. J., and Angie Morales—would “hot seat,” meaning that after the first pilots were finished and back on the deck of the Nimitz, they would climb out of their cockpits, with one engine still running, and the next group of pilots would strap in.
Up there in the marshal pattern, the night no longer seemed so black. The lights of San Diego were lighting up the eastern horizon. The coast of California stretched northward in a long ribbon of light. Down below Road could see lights twinkling on the islands of San Clemente and Catalina.
“Roman Three-oh-six, your signal is Charlie.”
“Roman Three-oh-six, roger.”
“Charlie” was the signal to land. Road was cleared for his approach to the ship. Show time.
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Pearly Gates was worried about the burble.
He walked out on the open flight deck, tilting his face to the wind like a hound sniffing the breeze. “The wind’s right down the axial,” he said. “The ship’s making its own wind. There’s gonna be a burble.”
The ocean wind had died out after sunset. Now it was calm, which meant that for landing airplanes the ship had to “make” its own wind. The Nimitz was driving through the water at thirty knots.
When the ship made its own wind, it caused two problems for the pilots: One was the crosswind, from right to left, complicating the problem of lining up the landing jet with the runway center line. Instead of the wind coming down the angled aircraft landing deck, which was displaced eleven degrees from the ship’s fore and aft axis, it was coming down the straight deck, from the bow to the stern.
The other problem, which was worse, was the “burble”— the eddying effect of the wind sweeping over the island, the carrier’s superstructure. The wind spilled around the island like water over a rock formation, causing turbulence and a “sink hole” behind the ship, where the jets flew their final approach. The landing jets had to fly through the eddy of turbulent air just before they crossed the ramp of the ship. It was like driving a sports car through the air wake of an eighteen-wheel truck. The burble was most pronounced when there was no wind over the ocean and the carrier had to make its own.
And so it would be tonight, Pearly knew. There was no damned wind. The giant ship was charging like a torpedo boat through the San Clemente channel in order to generate the thirty knots of wind they wanted over the deck.
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“Roman Three-oh-six, ball, seven-point-eight, Ammons.”
“Roger, ball,” answered Pearly Gates from the LSO platform.
Road’s jet looked like a tiny fire fly out there against the black backdrop. He was the second jet down the chute. Harpo Hillard had landed already, and gotten his usual number three wire. Now Harpo was up on the forward deck, getting back on the catapult for another trip around the pattern. After the first arrested landing, the jets would stay in the traffic pattern at twelve-hundred feet around the carrier instead of going back up to the marshal holding pattern.
Pearly didn’t like the oncoming jet’s position on the glide slope. “A liiii--ttle low,” he said in his sugar voice.
Road’s jet rose on the glide path. But only a little.
“You’re still a little low.”
A steady green light was showing on the Hornet’s nose gear. A green light told the LSO that the jet’s speed was too slow, too close to its stall speed. Red indicated that the jet was fast. An amber light told the LSO that the approaching jet was exactly on its optimum landing speed. Pearly wanted to see an amber.
The light flickered from green to amber. Then back to green. Slow again.
“Powww-werrr,” said Pearly.
The light went to amber. Then to red. The jet started to climb. Road was over-re
sponding to Pearly’s “power” call.
“Don’t climb.”
The jet steadied on the glide path. The Hornet was close now, only seconds from touch down. He was on glide path, with an amber “on-speed” light.
Approaching the ramp, the Hornet began to settle. Its wings wobbled.
The burble.
“Power! Power!” called Pearly.
The jet settled as it crossed the ramp. Kerrrplunk! The hook snagged a one wire.
“Damn it,” yelled Pearly, watching the jet roll past him on the deck. “He didn’t give me power going through the burble. He spotted the deck.”
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Road wasn’t the only one. They were all having trouble with the burble.
The problem was, the nuggets had been spoiled by the two sun-drenched California afternoons, making their daytime landings with a solid twenty knot breeze coming right down the angled deck. It had even become fun, easy almost, bagging daytime traps out there in the golden sunshine of the Pacific.
Now the golden sun was gone. So were the twenty knots of friendly wind down the angle. Now it was black as the inside of a heifer, and they had to fight the tendency of the jet, nudged by the crosswind, to keep sliding toward the left edge of the flight deck.
It was a different game. Even the old timers, Hillan, Morgan, Earl, were working harder than usual. Everyone was fighting the killer burble that grabbed them at the most critical moment in the approach.
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“Who the hell is Roman Three-oh-seven?” demanded the Air Boss. His exasperation level was peaking out. What he wanted to do now was wring some peckerhead fighter pilot’s scrawny neck.
The Air Boss was trying figure out what was going on with Roman 307. Some guy kept checking in on the radio, identifying himself as Roman 306. “Roman Three-oh-seven airborne. . . Roman Three-oh-seven leaving marshal. . . Roman Three-oh-seven commencing approach. . .”
The only problem was, they didn’t have any goddamn Roman 307, at least in the air. “Lemme get this straight, Roman Three-oh-seven,” said the Air Boss. “You say you’re a Hornet and you’re out there in the pattern tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, son, I’m looking down at the flight deck this very minute at a parked airplane with a pilot in the cockpit. Its number happens to be Three-oh-seven. And my board says that pilot is someone named McCormack. Could you be that gentleman?”
A moment of radio silence. “No, sir. I mean, Yes, I could be, but that’s not me.”
“Then just who might it be, pray tell?”
“Me, sir,” said another voice. “I’m McCormack, the one on deck. That guy out there just thinks he’s me.”
“I see. He thinks he’s you. Well, in that case, you out there, the one who thinks he’s Roman Three-oh-seven, would you kindly take a minute to look at your digital display and tell us what number your airplane thinks it is?”
“Yes, sir.” After half a minute, “Ah, sir, it looks like I’m. . . ah, not really Roman Three-oh-seven. It looks more like. . . ah, Roman Three-ten. Sorry about the confusion, sir.”
The Air Boss, of course, didn’t know about the Heckle and Jeckle phenomenon—that the twins had been screwing up events all their lives with their proclivity for transposing identities. In this instance, Russ had mentally transported himself into Rick’s jet, assuming his brother’s call sign. It was a classic McCormack brothers mind-warp.
Up in his glass-paned aerie in Pri-Fly, the Air Boss was glowering at the blackened sky, out there where some peckerhead in Hornet number 310 was flying around. He lowered his microphone and tilted back in the high, swivel chair. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “I’ve been doing this shit too long,” he muttered. “I think it’s making me crazy.”
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J. J. already knew about the burble. While he was descending from the marshal holding pattern, he could hear the radio transmissions from the pilots ahead of him as they took their turns approaching the carrier. He could hear Pearly sugar talking everyone through the burble: “. . .a liii-ttttle pow-werrrr. . .”
Now it was J. J.’s turn.
“Roman Three-oh-two, Hornet ball, six-point-six, Quinn.”
“Roger, ball.”
J. J. could see the carrier out there, through the head-up display in his windscreen. It looked like a faraway constellation—a cluster of little white lights—against the blackness of the sea and sky.
J. J. felt like he was flying jerkily. He was snatching and yanking at the controls like a spastic. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples.
Settle down, he told himself. Be smooth. Relax.
Relax. That was a joke. He felt about as relaxed as a dog passing peach pits.
He was halfway down the slope now. From here the ball was just a yellowish little pin prick of light. Was it in the middle? Maybe. You couldn’t tell from this far out.
But he was getting closer, descending toward the big iron slab that he knew was plowing through the ocean at thirty knots. The only thing was, it didn’t look like a big iron slab. It looked like a little trapezoid of lights at the end of a dark tunnel. It was hard to believe that he was going to land on the damned thing --
“A liii-ttle power.” Pearly’s sugar voice.
J. J. shoved the throttles up an inch. It was too much.
“Don’t climb.”
He jerked some power off. Too much. He put some back on.
He knew he was being rough on the throttle. Settle down, he told himself. Be smooth. Anticipate the burble.
Approaching the ramp, J. J. anticipated the burble. He anticipated it too much. He crammed on some power—a lot of power. He saw the ball move up the lens, toward the top.
The dark mass of the ship came swelling out of the gloom. J. J. was flying right into the trapezoid of lights. He saw the ball blurring off the top of the lens just as -- Whump!—he met the deck.
He waited for the hard, reassuring lurch of the hook snagging a wire.
No lurch. It didn’t come. He’d missed the wires.
“Bolterrrrr!” called the LSO.
J. J. jammed the throttles full up, past the full throttle position, into the afterburner detent. Off the end of the angled deck he went, afterburners roaring and torching like Haley’s comet, back into the black goo of the night. The mass of the ship disappeared in his peripheral vision.
There was nothing like a night bolter——to get the juices pumping. J. J.’s system was now so adrenaline-saturated, he felt ready to fly without an airplane.
He leveled the jet at a thousand feet and entered the traffic pattern for another pass. “Three-oh-two, this is Paddles. You’re over-doing the power. Settle down and fine tune it a little for me, okay?”
“Roger, Paddles,” said J. J. Settle down? Sure thing, he thought. No problem.
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That’s the way the night was going—bolters and one wires. Chip Van Doren got his first bolter of the carrier qual session, and it so surprised him he almost forgot to shove the throttles up again.
The McCormacks, still carbon-copying, did one of each: a scared-myself-shitless settling pass to a one wire, and then an ain’t-gonna-happen-to-me-again overcorrection to a bolter.
Not to be left out, Rambo Morales got two bolters, one after the other. Then a one wire, causing the LSO to growl at her on the radio. “Don’t do that again!” Thereafter she found the groove. Angie settled down and finished with four straight passes to the target wire.
By the third or fourth pass, most of the nuggets were finding the groove. Van Doren finished up with three straight okay passes to a two or three wire. The McCormacks both settled down and found the middle wires.
That left the Marines. Road Ammons and J. J. Quinn were still out there, going around the pattern.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
COOL HAND LUKE
Pearly Gates hated nights like this. It was smooth out there, with unlimited visibility. Black as sin, no wind. He almost wished for a little more adver
sity—some wind, turbulence, a few handicaps. At least when the weather was bad, you usually had wind, which meant the ship wouldn’t have to make its own. Then you wouldn’t have this damned crosswind, and there probably wouldn’t be a burble. And even if there was a burble, it wouldn’t matter because there would be turbulence everywhere, not just behind the ship. His nuggets wouldn’t get themselves all psyched up anticipating that little pocket of rough air each time they approached the ramp.
At least no one had badly scared him. Not yet. All he had to do was get his two Marines finished up.
Standing there on the platform, Pearly gazed off into the gloom behind the ship. He could see the faraway twinkling red beacon light of the next jet to come aboard.
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“Roman Three-oh-two, say your state.”
J. J. glanced down at his lower left panel, at the engine/fuel indicator. “Roman Three-oh-two has four-point-two.” J. J.’s fuel supply was down to four-thousand-two-hundred pounds.
Three-thousand-two-hundred pounds was “bingo” fuel. That meant that when his fuel state reached three-point-two, the game was over. He would have to “bingo,” meaning he would discontinue trying to land on the ship and divert to an airfield ashore. Tonight’s bingo field was Miramar Naval Air Station, on the outskirts of San Diego.
J. J. knew the numbers. And he knew at this very minute what they were talking about down there in Pri-Fly: This guy has one more shot at the deck. Then he’s outa there.
Back to the beach. And the beach was where he would stay, because the CQ session would be concluded. The Nimitz was scheduled to return to North Island tomorrow.
The LSOs would grade J. J.’s CQ phase “Unsatisfactory”—another SOD— which, following his three previous SODs and the evaluation board, could have only one logical consequence: Captain J. J. Quinn, USMC, would be history. His career would be deader than yesterday’s road kill.
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