“Overcast and raining throughout the Gulf of Tonkin, Hainan Island, and most of North Vietnam. This layer extends inland to the backbone range of mountains that divides Vietnam from Laos and Cambodia. Tops should be about eighteen thousand feet winds out of the northeast at twelve to fifteen knots on the surface. Currently seas are running six to eight feet out of the southeast. We’ll have the Winds Aloft Chart in a moment. Forecast is for freshening winds and seas and continued rain and clouds for at least the next twelve hours. To the south, however, from a point about fifty miles south of Da Nang, the clouds begin to break up. Later today when the sun rises, the folks down there should have a reasonably nice day with scattered clouds and scattered showers.” Charts of the winds and temperatures aloft appeared on the screen and Clouds went over them.
Jake closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the movement of the ship in the seaway. Back on the fantail, five hundred fifty feet behind the ship’s center of gravity, the movement would be pronounced.
It was going to be a bad night to get aboard.
“And now back to Mister Steiger, who has an entry in the ‘Name the Dirty Baby’ contest.” Steiger reappeared on the screen, all ears and glasses and teeth.
He held up a six-inch doll, an obscenely voluptuous female. The camera panned to the figure that Steiger held with a fingertip on each side of the waist.
“This entry Comes from Ready Three,” Steiger said as the camera lingered on the Dirty Baby. “Looks like Sonny Bob Battles sent this in. ‘Pussless Peggy, the Olongapo Pussycat.”‘ Somewhere in the studio one person clapped, then the screen went blank.
“That Steiger has the filthiest mind on this whole ship,” Razor announced to no one in particular. It was common knowledge that Steiger rarely received entries to his contest but made up most of them himself.
“No, he doesn’t,” Jake replied. “He’s just trying to stay sane.” He knew time hung heavy for Steiger a day he didn’t receive a letter from his wife, which was most days. That was one college romance the war was going to break up sooner or later.
“He’s not having much luck at it,” Razor said. “BY the way, you look terrible. Are you feeling okay?” he asked as he stroked his lip hair and regarded Grafton obliquely, perhaps checking, Jake thought, for telltale traces of impending nervous collapse “Fit as a goddamn fiddle,” the pilot replied disgustedly and left his seat to check his mailbox, a small shelf with his name on it among the many similar shelves in a converted bookcase under the television. There was a letter from his parents and one from Linda, his girl.
He tried to remember when she had last written; in the past three months her literary output had dropped dramatically. He tucked her letter into the cigarette pocket on the left sleeve of his flight suit, having decided to save the letter and read it in the air. On a tanker flight, staying awake was sometimes the challenge of the evening.
One of the chiefs from Maintenance Control brought in the maintenance logs on the assigned planes and left them on the desk in the rear of the ready room. Jake picked out his book. He read each discrepancy, or “gripe,” that had been written for the last ten flights. Serious problems that affected the safety of the plane were “down gripes” and had to be repaired before the machine could be flown again. Less serious problems, or “up gripes,” would be repaired as the opportunity presented itself. A plane with many more problems could be a real headache. Since the squadron had only six tankers and each of the serviceable ones flew at least three times a day, there was always a thick stack of up gripes. He looked them over carefully, signed for the plane, and placed the metal-bound volume back in the stack. After replenishing his coffee cup, Jake settled into a chair in a quiet corner and read his parents letter.
In the front of the room the two strike crews carefully went over their planned missions and emergency procedures.
One by one the airmen drifted out, stopping at the head, then going on to the locker room where each man stored his flight gear: G-suit, torso harness, survival vest with attached inflatable life preserver, and flying bag for helmet, oxygen mask, kneeboard, and South east Asia aeronautical pubs. Many pilots and BNs wore pistol holsters also.
When Jake reached the locker room most of the other crewmen were there.
He opened his locker an took out the G-suit. It was covered with dried blood, so was the survival vest. He had forgotten about the blood.
He stared. The stains were dark brown, rusty, not at all like the rich, red, coppery-smelling fluid that flowed from Morgan McPherson’s neck. He dropped the gear and walked to the head where he vomited the roll and beef he had just eaten.
When his stomach was under control, he returned to the locker room. Sammy Lundeen was scraping the G-suit with his survival knife. “You can turn this stuff in after this hop and get some new gear from the parachute rigger,” he said.
Razor saw Jake’s ashen face. “Are you ready to fly?” he asked, his tone indicating his doubts.
“Yeah,” said the pilot, taking the G-suit from Lundeen and zipping it around his legs.
“You may think you are, but it’ll be my ass in that plane, too, you know.”
“Listen, shithead,” Lundeen snarled. “If you don have the guts to fly tonight, why don’t you just say so?
At this, Cowboy came around the end of the aisle and watched Jake pull on his torso harness, a body suit without arms or legs to which the parachute fittings an lap fittings attached. He caught Jake’s eye.
“Are you ready to fly?” Jake nodded. “Then you fly,” Cowboy pronounced with an edge of finality and turned away.
“Just like that?” Razor Durfee asked Cowboy’s back as he jerked at one end of his mustache. “Just like that you want me to risk my life with Cool Hand?” He switched to the other tip of his lip muff. “Maybe he ought to go see Mad Jack.”
Cowboy paused and regarded the bombardier coldly. “He flies and so do you, Durfee. Now shut up and get dressed.”
“You aren’t the skipper. This is my ass we’re talking about! What gives you the right to tell me I have to fly with him?” Cowboy ignored him and walked back to his locker.
Big Augie chuckled. “Because you’re a junior grade lieutenant and he’s a lieutenant commander, Razor. And he’s the Ops officer. Or didn’t they cover these fine points of military etiquette at Canoe U?”
“If you’re referring to the Naval Academy, you ROTC puke-” Razor was pointing with his finger.
“Look, guys,” Little interjected, “Razor’s showing us how many flowers to send to his folks if he buys the farm tonight.”
Big chimed in. “If your dick were as sharp as your tongue, Razor, you’d have to get a serial number tattooed on it and keep it in your safe.”
Cowboy’s Texas drawl silenced them. “Cut the crap, gentlemen, and get yourselves up to the flight deck. Now!”
Razor slammed his locker and spun the combination lock. He paused at the door. “If I have to go for a swim tonight, Parker, I’m gonna personally jam one of these size-twelve boots up your ass clear to my knee. And I don’t give a flying fuck if you make admiral in the meantime.” He gave the Augies the finger, then slammed the door behind him.
“That would cure your hemorrhoids, Cowboy,” Big Augie snickered.
“Then Cowboy will be a perfect asshole,” Little told his BN.
“Ah, the camaraderie of fighting men. Warms the spirit.
The Augies closed their lockers and followed Razor toward the flight deck, still exchanging quips. On his way out Parker winked at Jake and gave him a thumbs up. Jake weaved his pistol belt through the holes in his torso harness to prevent it from coming off in a ejection, then he donned his survival vest.
This bulky garment contained fifteen pounds of survival gear an an inflatable life vest. He carefully checked the lanyards on the CO2 cartridges.
Lundeen took his time dressing, and when he an Jake were the only ones still in the room he pause beside the pilot, his helmet bag in his hand. “You be careful out th
ere tonight, okay? Don’t let the bastards wear you down.
Sammy grind He slugged Jake on the arm and smiled. “Just be careful and keep the faith.”
“Sure, Sammy. Sure.”
Jake Grafton stepped out of the island onto the flight deck. Red light illuminated the planes and the swarm of men working in the rain. The wind drove the rain an angle and whipped the red safety flags hanging from the bomb racks.
He found his airplane, 522, sitting just two feet short of the port bow catapult shuttle. He would only have to ease the plane forward the short distance and the shuttle would engage the tow bar on the aircraft’ nose-wheel assembly. Razor was already in the cockpit. Jake did a walk-around preflight check with his flash light set for white light because in red light any red hydraulic fluid leaking from the plane would be almost invisible. He paid careful attention to the refueling package on the underside of the fuselage, about fifteen feet forward of the tail. This feature distinguished the KA-6D tanker from the bomber version of the A-6. The tanker was a fuselage designed to carry fuel aloft and lacked the two radars, computer, and inertial navigation system of the bomber. In place of bombs tied to 20 racks, the external store stations each carry 500-pound drop tank, five of them in all, which gave the plane, with its internal tanks, a total fuel capacity of 26,000 pounds, or 13 tons. It was a load.
Satisfied, Jake mounted the ladder on the left side of the cockpit and checked the ejection seat. When he had all five safety pins removed and stored, he sat down. The plane captain, a nineteen-year-old from Oklahoma known as Maggot, stood at the top of the ladder and leaned in to help Jake strap himself to the seat.
If anyone asked, Maggot would tell him he owned this aircraft. He was responsible for its pre- and postflight servicing, its routine inspections, and its movement from place to place aboard the ship. Devil 522 was his baby, and as a morale booster the squadron had painted his rank-airman-and name in black letters on the fuselage: Andy E. Shutts, PC.
“Great night to be out aviating, Mister Grafton.”
“If I were a flying fish, Maggot, I’d probably agree with you.”
“Looking forward to getting into port?”
“Sure, how about you?”
“Yep. Can’t stand working outside in all this rain. I’ve beat off so many times in the shower, every time it rains I get a hard on.”
The pilot grinned. “Just don’t fall down and break something. By the way, heard anything about your dad?”?
Maggot’s father had suffered a heart attack recently and no word had come through from the family asking for the son to return home on emergency leave. “Not yet, sir. I’m going to call ‘em when we get to Cubi if I ain’t heard nothing by then.”
“Talk to Mister Lundeen in Personnel and he’ll get it fixed up so you can use a government line. Won’t cost you any money.”
“Okay, Mister Grafton. I’ll do that.” Maggot was not finished now, yet he lingered on the ladder. “Us plane captains were real sorry about what happened to mister McPherson. He was an all right guy and a good officer.”
Jake looked at the sailor. Wet with rain, the earnest Young face glistened in the red light. He had never ridden the catapult or seen the flak and the missiles, but he respected the men who had. Did they deserve that respect? Well, at least McPherson had. “We’re all going to miss him,” the pilot replied.
“You gents have a good flight and catch a three wire.” Maggot descended to the deck and pressed the external canopy-close button to keep the rain off the crew. Razor sat with his head back against the headrest and his eyes closed, apparently working on recovering his temper.
Jake held his helmet in his lap and looked past the edge of the flight deck into the black nothingness beyond. He hated night catapult shots. So much could happen on the way down the cat, all of it bad. Any problem would demand the pilot’s instant attention even as he was recovering from the acceleration of the shot and trying to coax the plane to fly in the night air, sixty feet above the sea. He went over some of the more likely emergencies and what he would do if one occurred. He moved his left hand from the throttles to the gear handle. If an engine quits or a fire light flashes, gear UP. His fingers climbed to the emergency jettison button. Push that and hold for one second.
All five drop tanks will then be jettisoned. Ten thousand pounds lighter, maybe the plane will still fly on one engine. His eyes flicked to the standby gyro. Keep eight degrees nose-up no matter what. Much less and we go into the water; much more and we’ll stall and go into the drink anyway. He checked the gauges: airspeed, pressure altimeter, angle-of-attack, radar altimeter, the gyro. These instruments had the information that would keep them alive. And if one of the instruments failed, he had to immediately notice that its information did not jibe with the other gauges and disregard the culprit.
He felt his stomach knot up, and automatically he reached between his legs and checked the position of the alternate firing handle for the ejection seat. There might not be time to reach the primary handle over his head.
Every moment that passed was only preparation for the coming instant when he would be catapulted out over the dark ocean just fifteen knots above stall speed in a machine near maximum gross weight-in a machine that was merely a cunning collection of complex equipment that failed too often. His life depended on the correctness of his every thought, on his touch with the stick, on the quickness of his reflexes, on the knowledge and skill he possessed. The penalty for failure would be swift and sure. And the man beside him would also pay.
What if we lose the generators? He reached back to his left to check the position of the ram-air turbine handle. A tug on this handle would cause the winddriven emergency generator to pop out of the wing and power the flight instruments and critical cockpit lights. Closing his eyes, he began touching and identifying every switch, knob, and handle around him. He knew this cockpit better than he knew his car: he knew it better than he knew anything else in the world.
He looked down the catapult, as he had countless times before. Beyond the deck was the end of the world. He was marooned on an island of red light adrift in a black universe. Only the here and now, this place and this time, existed.
The rain drummed on the canopy. The men on the flight deck stood motionless, waiting for the “start engines” signal. They waited like horses in the rain resigned to their misery. The ship began its turn into the wind and the sailors leaned into the quickening breeze. The height of the plane above the deck and the buoyancy of the high pressure tires magnified the effect of the shift of the deck. The pilot could feel the motion as the ship shouldered the swells aside.
He glanced again at Razor. The BN had not change his position, but his face appeared relaxed. Had he recovered from his locker room doubts, or was he just working overtime on his prelaunch cool?
He wouldn’t be so damn complacent if he knew how my stomach felt, the pilot reflected. How do these BNs do it? How did Morgan do it? The BNs sit there and ride these pigs to hell and back with almost no control over their fate. Day in and day out they climb into that right-hand seat.
The men who rode the right-side seats, who mastered the complex equipment and conquered the natural reactions of their stomachs, were professionals with great pride in their abilities. Like most of the pilots who respected the naval flight officers with whom they flew, Jake paid them tribute by bowing to the unexplainable. He never once thought to ask a BN why he continued to do his job.
To do so would mean asking the same question of himself. So he regarded the bombardiers’ motivations as mysterious, as inexplicable as love, faith, or loyalty.
The deck loudspeakers blared. The time had come Grafton and Durfee put on their helmets. The plane captain twirled his fingers for the starting sequence.
When both engines were at idle and all the aircraft’s systems were functioning properly, Jake and Razor turned on their red, L-shaped flashlights. Jake clipped his to the front of his survival vest.
He tapped the standby gyro
and Razor nodded. The bombardier would hold his flashlight in his hand and keep it focused on the standby gyro for the critical seconds after launch. This way, if both generators failed, the pilot could still see the attitude reference. The gyro, only three inches in diameter, would provide vital information without electrical power for at least thirty seconds. That would be more than enough. They would be either safe or dead long before it spun down. Jake spread and locked the wings and lowered the flaps.
Now the taxi director gave Jake the signal to come forward. He released the parking brake and eased the laden plane to the waiting shuttle. He felt a jolt as the metal pieces mated. The pilot jammed the throttles forward to the stops and cycled the controls as he watched the stabilator and the horizontal flaperons move in his mirrors. He put the heel of his left hand behind the throttles and curled his fingers around the catapult grip. This would prevent an inadvertent throttle retardation during the catapult stroke. One more look at the gauges and another wiggle for the stick. Engine temperatures normal, controls free and easy: all was as it should be.
At full power the machine quivered like a hound on a leash. His heart pounded, and he could feel his temples throb.
“You ready?” he asked Razor.
“I was born ready. Leter rip.”
Jake placed his head back in the headrest and used his left thumb to flip the exterior-light master switch on the catapult grip. He saw in his rear-view mirror that the light on top of the tail had come on.
The catapult officer saluted and swung his yellow wand in a long arc until it touched the deck, then brought it up to the horizontal where it froze, pointing down the catapult track.
Soon … any second … it’s coming … The catapult fired.
FIVE
The altimeter recorded their upward progress. 10, 11,000, 12,000 …
They were still in clouds.
“Looks like the weather guys were wrong about the tops of this stuff,” Razor remarked. He fished a pack of chewing gum from his left sleeve pocket and held it out. “Want one?” Apparently the scene in the locker room was history.
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