Flight of the Intruder jg-1

by Stephen Coonts

  “Thanks for taking me to Hong Kong. That was one hell of a good time.”

  “No sweat.”

  “Damn, I sure feel good. It’s been one fine in-port period. No lie, Sam, I really feel great.”

  “You’re drunk, Jake. You always feel great when you’re drunk.”

  Grafton acknowledged to himself the truth of the statement. He was getting loaded again, and that always felt good.

  “Well,” said a voice behind them, “this one certainly seems quiet enough.” A navy captain in short-sleeve whites observed the nude on the bar.

  Above his left shirt-pocket, the captain wore four rows of ribbons topped with gold pilot’s wings. The uppermost left ribbon was the Silver Star. His close-cropped black hair was shot through with gray, and his cap, with scrambled eggs on the visor, perched precariously on the back of his head. “Is he alive?” the captain asked Sammy in a conversational tone.

  “Yessir. Last time we checked, he was.”

  The captain turned to the small civilian who stood behind him. “I thought you said this man was completely naked?”

  “I did and he is. He stood on a table upstairs and stripped down and greatly embarrassed our female staff.”

  “He has socks on now. He’s partially dressed,” the captain observed.

  “Sir, we can’t keep our employees if this kind of behavior goes on.

  And who’s going to pay for all the breakage upstairs? And this mirror?” The club manager gestured toward the glass fragments behind the bar.

  “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting or keeping help. I have over a hundred applications on file for every civilian job on this base, including yours.

  And I’m sure these officers are willing to stand good for the breakage. Just send me a tally for everything you want replaced and I’ll see that it’s paid.”

  “But-“

  “Go on upstairs and manage this place. Send me the list tomorrow.” The captain smiled at Grafton and Lundeen. “And how is the evening going?”

  “Just fine, sir. But if I may make a suggestion? You better remove your cap before someone demands that you buy a round.”

  The captain put a hand to his cap, then withdrew it. “That is the custom, isn’t it? Barkeep!” The Captain raised his voice. “There is a man in the house with his cover on. Drinks for everyone!” More than sixty men surged toward the bar.

  Armed with a drink, the captain scanned the crowd and spotted Bosun Muldowski. “Ski! I thought you retired off my ship four, five years ago?”

  “Aye, Captain Harrington, I shore did. But I got tired of sitting’ on my ass and listening to the ol’ lady, and with the war on and all…. Well, here I am!”

  The captain surveyed the bosun’s wet clothes. “I see you also undertook to give these young gentlemen some lessons.”

  The bosun looked down at his wet T-shirt in disgust.

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  The atmosphere in the bar had mellowed. Muldowski fell into a talkative mood, so the men plied him with beer and listened to his stories. He solved all the navy’s problems, told Congress where to go, cussed out everyone on earth not wearing navy blue, and gave the men a well-received assessment of most civilians: “Lower than whale shit at the bottom of the sea. At about two in the morning, four or five guys from one of the A-7 outfits came in and collected their naked shipmate. He was snoring happily before they cranked him up, but once aroused demanded another drink. They gave him ice water, and he gurgled back to life.

  Jake walked outside and sat down in the grass some fifty feet away from the building. He could see the Shilo, illuminated with floodlights, lying at the carrier pier. Even from a mile and a half away, she looked gigantic.

  Beyond her the black water of the bay extended to the high hills on the western shore, while off to the south lay the entrance to the bay. The breeze blowing in off the sea, laden with the wild smell of salt, felt good. He stretched out on the grass and looked up at the stars.

  In two days he would be flying again. More worthless targets with lots of flak and no results. He remembered the suspected truck park he and Morgan had bombed back was it? A week, ten days ago? All that flak. Although it seemed long ago, he would never forget how the cockpit looked after they opened the canopy. All that blood.

  He ran his hands through the grass and felt the damp earth. Then he sat up. Wondering about Callie and the future, he looked at the enormous bulk of the carrier and at the dark sea just beyond the entrance to the bay.

  THIRTEEN

  The Shilo was under way at 0800 the next morning the sun crept over the scalloped rim of the mountain bordering the bay. The tugs helped her from the peer and then, under her own power, she turned and made for the channel to the sea. Two destroyers steam ahead and four astern. Once into the open ocean the escorts fanned out, taking up their stations around the giant flattop. The task group soon turned to a western heading and stood away from the land. Within three hours the highest peaks in the Luzon shore range had sunk into the ocean. Once again the horizon was empty. Small puffy clouds drifted along on the trade wind.

  At noon the ship swung into the southwesterly trades and slowed until the relative wind down the angled deck was thirty knots. Then she began to recover aircraft that had been flying from Cubi Point while she had been in port. F-4s, A-7s, an E-2, and an EAProwler came aboard in order.

  Only one of the the Intruders that had been ashore appeared over the ship. When word reached the ready room, a hurried conference was held and it was decided that a repair crew would be transported back to Cubi on the daily cargo plane.

  “Looks like Corey Ford and the Boxman will enjoy an extra night on the beach,” Parker remarked.

  “Hope it doesn’t kill the boy,” said the Old Man, thinking of Box.

  Jake Grafton watched the Devils’ pilot, New Guy, from the air boss’s vantage point in Pried-Fly. This enclosed space, high in the island, protruded out over the flight deck and offered an unimpeded view of the flight deck and of the aircraft in the air near the ship.

  After six landings aboard the carrier in daylight, each pilot new to the ship would make three night traps that evening. After this final exam there would be no graduation or diploma. The air wing LSO would debrief each man individually, and unless a negative comment was made to the operations officer of the squadron to which the man belonged, the new pilot’s name would appear on the flight schedule. Without fanfare or celebration, the young aviator was now a carrier pilot. He would stand his watches and fly the scheduled missions and, if he were skillful enough and lucky enough, he would live through his tour of duty.

  Jake enjoyed his Pried-Fly stints. Throughout a cruise, each of a squadron’s junior officers had to take his turn in Pried-Fly, observing not only the new pilots but the experienced ones as well. In the profession of flying, a man was good enough or he wasn’t any good at all, and that fact was written in blood. In the crowd of young officers who gathered behind the chairs of the boss and assistant boss, the action was fast and the comments swift. It reminded Grafton of the grandstand crowd at a horserace. What was needed, Jake thought, was some enterprising soul to offer bets on which wire the next plane would snag. The air boss kept up a running commentary on the performance of the fledglings for the benefit of the squadron observers, and Jake wrote copious notes in his squadron’s log book.

  Jake watched the new Intruder driver, who caught the target third wire three out of six times with no bolters. He flew the pattern at the proper distance an kept the right interval between himself and other aircraft, although twice the air boss complained that he was late turning from the downwind leg crosswind toward the ship’s wake. Grafton scribbled down that remark.

  When all the aircraft were back aboard, the Pried-Flight observers and the recently landed crews made the way to their ready rooms for a debriefing and a written examination. The textbook was NATOPS-Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures-which came in a separate volume for each typ
e of aircraft. Jake and Sammy regularly drilled each other on the Intruder’s hydraulics, electronics, engines, crew safety and comfort systems, and performance under any possible flight condition. They also practiced using the computer graphs from which fuel consumption, airspeed, maximum G loads, and similar information could be traded. NATOPS quizzes were heavy on emergency procedures, although any fact from the book was fair game. A classified exam, based on the secret supplement to the NATOPS manual, was given less frequently than the emergency and operating procedure quizzes.

  “What if I don’t pass?” Little asked loudly.

  “If you don’t pass, you don’t fly,” Big Augie answered from across the room.

  “But what if I don’t want to fly?” Little quavered.

  “Then we’ll think of something else,” four voices sang in unison.

  Later that night, Jake looked up Chief Styert to discuss Hardesty and his marriage certificate. “So where is our newlywed?”

  Jake asked. Chief Styert sent for Hardesty.

  While they waited, Jake filled the chief in on some of the administrative items that were discussed at the all-officers meeting. “The Skipper says we’re going to be doing a lot of high-priority night work, as well as daytime Alpha strikes. We’ll be pushing it this time out, but on our next in-port period we may go to Singapore.”

  “The men would rather go back to Subic Bay,” the chief said. The liquor and women were cheaper and the raunchy night life more to their tastes. Jake sighed. Join the navy and see Po City.

  “Yeah, I know that and so does the Captain, but there’ll be another carrier in port then, so we’ll have to suck it up and go to Singapore.” The chief looked glum. Maybe he had a girlfriend in Po City, too.

  Hardesty arrived, looking pale. “How did your leave go?” Jake asked.

  “Okay.” The boy had not shaved in several days and a dozen or so scraggly whiskers had sprouted like weeds amid the pimples on his chin.

  “Did you make it down to Manila?”

  “Hmm,” replied the boy, averting his eyes toward the deck.

  “The Chief tells me you went down to Personnel this morning and filled out the paperwork on your wife.”

  Hardesty merely nodded. This was like pulling teeth, Jake thought. “Got a copy of the marriage certificate with you?”

  Hardesty drew some papers from his shirt. He shuffled through them, selected a large parchment document, and handed it to Jake without looking at him.

  The officer unfolded it. It was the original and in Spanish. Hardesty’s name was there. John Thomas Hardesty and Consuelo Maria Garcia Lopez de Hernandez. Lots of official signatures, a couple of wax seals, and a date. Jake glanced at the calendar over the chief’s desk, then back to the document.

  “This date is just two days ago,” he said. “Yessir.”

  “You were married only two days ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “After I told you less than a week ago that you needed official permission from the navy to marry a Philippine national, you went out and did it anyway?” Anger crept into Jake’s voice. “You stood there a we ago and lied to me, one lie after another. You lied to me and you lied to the Chief.” The boy glanced up, ready to reply, but Jake cut him off. “You violated a general regulation. You signed a false official document when you requested leave.” The volume went up.

  “Goddamn, Hardesty! You think this is a Boy Scout camp? What the hell else are you going to lie about? Are you going to come in here and tell the Chief you fixed a plane when you haven’t? How in the name of God can we trust you?” Jake lapsed into silence and sank back into the chair. The chief cleared his throat. “If you want to toss your oar in, Chief, go right ahead.” As Styert tongue-lashed the boy, Jake pondered the problem. The kid had wanted to marry, decided not to wait for Uncle Sam’s official blessing, and lied to get the time off. Is it really any of the navy’s business when or whom a sailor marries? So he had said “fuck the navy So what?

  “You’re a real fucking dummy,” the chief told the boy. “You could’ve gotten leave if you’d just said you wanted some time off. Didn’t you know that?” Hardesty shook his head. “If your goddamn brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow your nose. Why in hell didn’t you come to me and talk it over? What do you think your chief is for, anyway? Do you think I’m some kind of freak that just hatched out as a chief? I was a sailor before you were born. I was getting laid in Olongapo when you were in diapers. Son, you really piss me off.”

  “Go on up to the berthing compartment, Hardesty,” said Jake.

  When Hardesty had disappeared, the officer and the chief talked about what he had done. “Looks like one for mast, Chief.” Styert agreed. “And you sit that boy down and make damn sure he and the rest of the men know enough to come to you with problems.”

  “Yessir,” said the chief, who seemed to realize that he had just been reprimanded.

  Jake found the maintenance officer, Lieutenant Commander Joe Wagner, in his stateroom immersed in the paperwork necessary to keep sixteen state-of-the art aircraft repaired. After Grafton explained the problem, Wagner rummaged through a drawer and gave Jake a blank report chit. “I think you should talk this over with the Skipper before you fill out the report. It’s a little unusual, I know, but this sounds like one of those tar babies that could stir the interest of some congressman. Might as well let Camparelli have his say before we make it official.”

  Commander Camparelli, clad only in his underwear, sat at his stateroom desk. “Hello, Grafton. Pull up a chair.” The skipper slipped his glasses down his nose and peered over the rims. “What’s on your mind?”

  Jake told him about Hardesty and showed him the parchment. “I ought to write him up for lying to me and the Chief,” he concluded. “But Joe Wagner suggested checking with you first before this becomes official.”

  “Lot of merit in that,” the commander said as he studied the marriage license. “There’re a lot of things I’d just as soon not know about officially. Like that little fracas in front of Pauline’s that I heard about unofficially.

  Seems one sailor from the deck department somehow took a plunge in the alligator pond and some other fellows were injured-just scratched really-in the scuffle that followed.” His eyes locked with Grafton’s.

  “One man lost a couple teeth.”

  “Too bad,” Jake said.

  “You know anything about that incident unofficially, of course?”

  “A little.” The skipper waited. “Well, I sort of helped toss the guy into the pond. We were just trying to dip his hair in the water, but he was a little too heavy for us.” He paused. The skipper remained silent. Jake felt ashamed of himself for minimnizing his part. “Actually the whole thing was my idea. We wanted to give the kid a good scare, but I didn’t intend for him to go swimming. And I took a swing at another fellow after he swung at me. I had a good crack at his mouth and may have knocked out some teeth.”

  “Who helped you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “That’s what the Boxman said, too.”

  Camparelli took off his glasses and chewed on one of the plastic earpieces.

  “Captain Boma’s a bit peeved about this incident. He mentioned that the shore patrol officer complained. It’s the opinion of Captain Boma and the shore patrol officer that fights off base are liable to be handled with more force than necessary by the local authorities, who, as you know, are now Philippino Army.

  Those macho muchachos would like nothi better than an excuse to use their grease guns. Then we’d have a few corpses on our hands and maybe an international incident.”

  Camparelli replaced his glasses on the lower part of his nose.

  “So Captain Boma asked me to investigate unofficially. I’m glad you decided to come in for a chat.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think you’d better stay aboard the ship next time in port. That’s unofficial. No messy paperwork. The term is ‘in hack.”‘ He could do it officially, too, Jake
knew, with a discipline report that would torpedo any chance the pilot might ever have of being promoted.

  “Yessir.”

  “Back to the original subject, which is our lovestarved sailor. Your gripe is that he lied to you in order to get leave, rather than that he married in violation of a general reg.” The skipper leaned back in his chair and crossed his bare legs. To Jake he looked much like a chairman of the board solving a million-dollar problem, except that he wore only skivvies. “How many leave chits have you seen with the reason for the request stated?”

  Jake thought. There was not even such a section on the form. He pointed out to Camparelli that Hardesty had inked in his reason in the margin.

  “Precisely. And if you ask a sailor where he’s going or why, you can bet he probably lies about half the time. A sailor figures that it’s none of the officer’s business. I’m pleased to hear you aren’t too enthused about the violation of this general regulation. The navy’s requirement for permission before you commit holy matrimony with a foreign national is a chicken reg, in my opinion, and probably unconstitutional. God only knows what the Supreme Court would do with that one. In any event, I tolerate a lot of high jinks around here. You’re a case in point. So long as the bombs keep falling on target and the planes keep coming back, I’ll stay off people’s backs.

  Hardesty’s bitten off a big chunk and about all we can do is watch. If he fails to support her, or abandons her, or any of that stuff, then we’ll do what we can under the regulations. Nothing else.”

  “I want to put in a special evaluation on Hardesty.”

  “That’s fair. He doesn’t seem smart enough to become a petty officer anytime soon. And don’t think Hardesty’s off the hook. Chief Styert will make his life miserable for a while. He’ll probably do a better job of it than you or I could.”

  Jake felt worn out. “Anything else, Skipper?”

  “No.” Frank Camparelli sipped a glass of Coke with ice in it.

  Jake stood and reached for the door. “Don’t feel too bad about being restricted to the ship,” the commander said. “Any junior officer who isn’t in hack at least once a cruise is nothing on any water.”