Flight of the Intruder jg-1

by Stephen Coonts

  Jake knew that New Guy’s self-image as a professional, as a member of the club, required that he win the ungrudging esteem of the more experienced men.

  He patted New on the back. “Ya’ did good,” Jake said. A smile of thanks creased the cherubic face.

  In the locker room, as they stowed their flight gear, Cole said, “I guess you’re stuck with me.”

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “If you’d turned out to be a candy-ass, I was gonna ask for a new pilot. But you’ll do.”

  “They want you up in the CAG office, Grafton. Some reporter wants to interview you.” Boxman was the duty officer, and he delivered the message with a sneer. “Your hometown paper sent the guy. You’re going to be on the front page of the county bugle, right between the 4-H news and a picture of a lady who’s a hundred and two.”

  “Box, you’re an asshole. Didn’t your mother ever teach you?”

  “Seriously, some reporter wants to interview you, Jake!”

  Grafton walked toward the Air Wing office with mixed emotions, a tiny pitter-patter of elation that might get his name in newspapers and a large dose of caution as he contemplated the ease with which he could make a fool of himself.

  When he entered the office, the CAG ops officer, Lieutenant Commander Seymore Jaye, waved him over to the table where Jaye sat with a bearded, khaki-clad figure without nametag or rank insignia. A civilian. “Grafton, this is Les Rucic, a reporter, and he wants to interview you.”

  The pilot leaned over and shook Rucic’s outstretch hand. “Why me?” he asked Jaye.

  The corners of Jaye’s mouth turned down slight He had that habit. “I picked you, Cool Hand,” he said as if that were a sufficient answer and Grafton would be wise to leave the subject alone.

  “You don’t mind talking to me, do you?” Rucic asked with a smile.

  “No problem.” He gave his full name and home town as Rucic carefully wrote it down in block letters.

  “I asked the commander here if I could interview you. You were one of the pilots on this afternoon’s strike? How’d it go? ” Jake was confused. What could he reveal that would be unclassified? Well, the gomers knew all about the mission, so why not tell the Americans? “No real problems,” he said, and added, “Why’d you ask for me?”

  Rucic gave him a frank and honest look. “I was recently talking to one of the fighter pilots, Fighting Joe Brett. He tells me you’re one of the best pilots on this ship. I believe his phrase was more scatological. He said you were shit hot. ‘Grafton is one shit-hot driver.”‘ Jake colored slightly and shrugged. Joe Brett undoubtedly thought he was doing Jake a favor by giving his name to the reporter.

  Rucic looked down at his notes. “Jacob Lee Grafton. From Virginia. Any relation to the Lee family? ‘ ‘No, I’m named after a grandfather who was named for Robert E. Lee. No relation. Personally, I always thought the original dude was a traitor but he had a big rep back in Virginia.”

  “Your father a military man?”

  What did this have to do with dropping bombs on North Vietnam? “No, he’s a farmer. He drove a tank for Patton in World War II, but he’s been a farmer ever since.”

  “Is that the way you see yourself. Flying a plane for the admiral, or Richard Nixon?”

  Jake glanced at Jaye, who was staring at the coffee pot in the corner as if it were the most interesting object he’d seen all day.

  “I think of myself as flying a plane for Uncle Sam.”

  Rucic grinned, and Jake noticed three or four black hairs that protruded from each nostril. “How’s it feel to be risking your life in combat when the war’s about over?”

  “Is it?”

  “Kissinger says so.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Diplomacy’s a long way from my department.”

  “Tell me about your flight today.”

  “Well, there’s not a whole lot to tell. We went, weather was lousy, they shot a good bit, some of us managed to bomb in spite of the clouds, and we came back to the ship in one piece.”

  The smallest trace of disappointment crossed Rucic’s face. “But you hit the power plant?” So Jaye briefed him.

  “We dropped on it.”

  “But did you hit it?”

  “I never looked back. Who knows?”!

  “But YOU must have some idea, lieutenant,” the reporter persisted.

  “Well, Les, it was like this. There was a lot of flak and missiles and I was pretty busy. After I pickled I puckered my asshole and got the hell out of Dodge as fast as two engines and a prayer would take me.”

  Rucic paused, then scribbled in his notebook.

  “You know, Grafton, I flew F-86s in Korea. Air Force.”

  “Well, then, you have the background for your job.”

  “I know what it was like then. What’s it like now over North Vietnam?”

  “They shoot a lot.”

  “At night, too?”

  “At night it’s like the Fourth of July. Lots of low tracer and every now and then a SAM.”

  Spectacular Rucic was writing on his pad. “Fourth of July.”

  Oh, Lord. Now he had done it. Rucic would that Jake Grafton said flying over North Vietnam was just like the Fourth of July. “Uh, maybe you better not use that.”

  Rucic’s pencil stopped, and he looked at the pilot “People might misunderstand. Know what I mean Rucic smiled. “You still don’t know if you got the Power plant?”

  Jake remained mute.

  “What if the bombs hit a nonmilitary target?”

  Jake knew the phrase “nonmilitary target” it was loaded. It could mean anything from trees or dikes to schools or hospitals.

  “War is hell.”

  “You might’ve, from what you have told me.”

  “There’s no such thing as a ‘nonmilitary target,”‘ Jake replied. “Ask the V.C. what was off limits when they went into Hue. Anyway, my bombs hit the power plant or in the vicinity.”

  “How do you define ‘vicinity’?”

  “The ‘vicinity’ is anywhere the bombs hit when I’m going at the target.”

  “That could be a large area.”

  “How large depends on one’s skill as a pilot. I’m good enough. ‘Shit hot,” I believe you said.”

  “What-” But Grafton was up and leaving.

  “Enjoy your cruise, Les.” With a wave to Seymore, he went out the door.

  Rucic would probably crucify him in the press, paint him as an insensitive cliff ape who didn’t care who he killed.

  Well, I do care. I care about McPherson and the forty-seven shattered bodies and all the others, all those I don’t know about and don’t want to know about.

  Fatigue pressed on him from all sides. He slapped the bulkhead with his hand. “Damn!”

  FIFTEEN

  After dinner that evening Jake went to the ship’s library.

  Approaching the sailor at the desk he said I’m interested in seeing what you have on North Vietnam.”

  “Oh, we get that request all the time,”

  “Well,” the pilot said, “do you have any maps of the North?”

  “As a matter of fact, National Geographic ran a article with a map a few years ago.” The sailor opened a drawer and produced a well-thumbed copy of this waiting-room staple. “The map’s in the back.”

  Jake signed for the magazine and tried not to look enthusiastic. “Any books or anything like that?”

  “Well, you might try Inside Asia, by John Gunther It’s pretty old but a lot of people check it out.” The librarian reached for the volume on a shelf beside him “We get SO many requests that we can only let you have it for a couple days.”

  Back in his stateroom, Jake examined the map first It was colorful and showed the relief well, but it lacked the latitude and longitude grids necessary for measurement. The waste was also far too small. The map contained no city insets, not even of Saigon. Disappointed, he refolded it and laid it aside.

  Inside Asia, published in 1939, divided Asia into four reg
ions: Japan, China, India, and the middle East. When the table of contents revealed no listing for Indochina, he flipped to the index. There it was, with two page numbers indicated. The author had devoted a page and a half to all of Indochina. Jake closed the book in disgust and read the Vietnam article in the National Geographic. Written in 1967, it quoted several military sources as stating that we were winning the war. Well, maybe they thought differently after Tet. Then again, maybe not.

  He would need better data than this to plan a raid. He would need access to the charts and photos of Hanoi that Steiger had not brought forth last night. He had no doubt that Steiger had access to better stuff, and he would have to have the air intelligence officer’s cooperation, as well as Cole’s.

  But would Cole agree to help? He gathered up the library materials and returned them.

  The pilot met Cole in the ready room to brief a night tanker hop. There the duty officer told them that the only available A-6B-qualified crew had been scrubbed from the night schedule because they had not had a day trip.

  Like most of the rules governing the aircrews’ lives, the requirement that a pilot make a day landing before landing on the carrier at night after each in-port period was written in the blood of experience. “So,” the duty officer said, “you two jaybirds get to fly the B.”

  “Hey,” Jake protested, “I’m not B-qualified. I’ve never even sat in one of the damn things.”

  “Well, Cole has, and you two are all we have, so you fly. Cowboy says.”

  Cole reassured him with a slight movement at the corners of his mouth. “I used to be an instructor on the B. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  The A-6B was an Intruder that had been converted to a launch platform for antiradiation missiles, or ARMS. In place of the navigation/attack computer, the A-6B had sensitive electronic equipment that identified an enemy radar so that the guidance system in the ARM could be slaved to the radar’s frequency before the missile was launched. The squadron had two of these specialized machines.

  The A-6B was capable of carrying two kinds of missiles, the Shrike and the Standard ARM, or STARM. The Shrike horned in on the target radar an could be defeated by the radar operator simply turning off the target radar while the missile was in flight. The North VietNamese had quickly realized that. But the Shrike was useful anyway because it caused the Enemy to shut down its radars.

  The STARM contained the computer and inertial navigation system that enable the missile to memorize the location of the target radar antennae and to fly to that place even if the radar stopped operating. The Standard ARM was deadly effective and very expensive.

  While Jake and Cole were knocking around in the A-6B, Sammy Lundeen and Harvey Wilson would be roaming the Red River Delta on bombing missions. Virgil Cole drew Jake over to the corner of the room and briefed him on the specialized equipment in the missile-shooter. As for tactics, the bombardier advised “We’ll just cruise along at altitude where everyone can see us and let it happen. Might be interesting.”

  Indeed it might, Jake thought. As he left the ready room, Sammy joined him for the short jaunt to the flight-gear lockers. “Notice ol’ Rabbit Wilson has a night trip scheduled?”

  “Yep. Must be a scorcher of a moon out there.”

  “Or a Silver Star.”

  They crossed the North VietNamese coast at 18,000 feet with search radars beeping in their ears. The prevailing wind had pushed the low rain clouds of the afternoon westward against the mountains, and only the high cirrus layer was left to block off all starlight. The two bombers were not due to cross the coast for five more minutes. “Let’s mosey in and get the gomers’ attention before the other guys sneak in,” Cole said, and Jake acquiesced because he knew so little of A-6B tactics.

  Both the bombers were targeted against suspected truck parks on the eastern edges of Hanoi. Cole suggested an orbit about twenty miles to the east of the North VietNamese capital so they could lob their missiles at the heavy concentration of enemy missile sites that guarded the approaches to the city.

  They carried two Standard missiles on the inboard wing stations and two Shrikes on the outboard. On the flight deck Grafton had examined the white missiles carefully. The Standard missiles were huge, fourteen inches in diameter and about fifteen feet long, packed with solid propellant and carrying a warhead designed to destroy with shrapnel rather than by blast. The Shrikes were smaller, about eight inches in diameter and nine feet long, and were steered by canards-tiny wings-mounted in the middle of the tubular fuselage.

  “You’ve fired rockets before?” Cole asked.

  “Not at night.”

  “When these missiles light off at night, they’ll blind you if you look outside. All the gomers will see the ignition, too, if the air is clear. Spectacular.”

  They were now set up to launch the Shrike on station five, which was outboard on the right wing. The pilot glanced back at the left wing stations, but the missiles were invisible in the gloom. They were there, though and ready.

  All the crew had to do was find a target. The final nibble came from a gun-control radar behind them, the type that NATO code-named “Firecan.” It acquire them and stayed locked up. Jake began weaving random to make it harder for the large-caliber artillery which the Firecan usually directed, to find the “Swing around and take a look,” said Cole. Jake held the left turn and searched the darkness where the enemy radar had to be. He picked up flashes from the muzzles of the big guns. He also saw small-caliber weapons immediately beneath the plane shooting tracers in streams.

  “All the backyard stuff just shoots at noise,” said Cole. “Only the big stuff-the eighty-five and one hundred millimeter-is hooked into the radar net and can reach us up here.” Varying the altitude by up to 500 feet, Jake swung back toward the planned orbit. Off to his left he saw white flashes. Those would be shells from the big guns exploding at preset altitudes.

  They heard the bombers give their coast-in calls, Jake checked the clock and saw that Sammy and Rabbit were running a few minutes late.

  Ahead a glimmer caught his eye. “I think a SAM just lifted off,” he told Cole and turned on the master armament switch. He knew the Soviet-built surface-to-air missile that the North VietNamese usually used was a two-stage missile that had to be guided from the ground because it lacked an active seeker-head.

  For its first seven seconds of flight, the missile was unguided as the first stage burned. When the second stage ignited, the first stage fell away and exposed a receiver on the rear of the second stage that could pick out the guidance commands embedded in the emissions from the Fansong missile-control radar. When the A-6’s E C 2S equipment heard the Fansong radar, as NATO called this type of missile-control radar, it presented a steady missile-warning light and a continuous tone in Jake’s ears. When the equipment detected guidance signals, the missile-warning light would flash and the tone in his ears would warble.

  Jake turned right to increase the crossing angle as he watched the continuous light far below in the darkness, small but brilliant. The missile was flying but the Fansong was not yet guiding it. Then the missile light on his glare shield began to flash, and he heard the warble warning. The signal-detection indicator now told him there was a Fansong at eleven o’clock, which he already knew. He looked back at the SAM and saw a second missile ignite and lift off.

  “Want to shoot?” he asked Cole.

  “Naw, let them shoot up some of their expensive stuff before we show our cards.”

  Jake popped some chaff to confuse the Fansong. He watched the telltale fire from the missile exhausts and knew the missile was traveling at about two thousand miles per hour. He would have to let the missiles get close, but not too close, then maneuver to avoid them.

  The missiles were traveling too fast to turn with the Intruder. The wait was anything but easy.

  When he could stand it no longer, he pumped the chaff button three times, then rolled the plane almost upside down.

  “Not yet,” Cole told him.

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bsp; Jake pushed the stick forward and held the nose up. The fireballs were bigger and obviously closing. “Now!” Cole told him.

  The pilot pulled until four Gees registered on the G meter. The nose came down and they were turning into and under the oncoming missiles. The missiles were now turning down toward them, but the lead missile would overshoot and fail to intercept the plane. Jake watched the missiles, The first streaked overhead at least a half mile away and exploded, probably detonated by the ground crew when they realized it would miss. The second one was correcting to intercept, so the pilot changed direction and dropped the nose further to increase the change in course required of the missile The missile was just beginning to turn when it swept overhead. The missile light went out. Jake rolled the aircraft upright and used the excess airspeed to zoom back up to 18,000. The Firecan still had them.

  “Hokey dokey,” Cole said.

  “You make it sound like this is more fun than watching your alma mater score at homecoming.”

  “More interesting, anyhow. Now if the gomers get about four missiles or so in the air at once, we’ll give them the Shrike we’ve set up. If they shut down they’l lose all the missiles, and if they don’t-” Jake Grafton drew a ragged breath. One avoided SAMs by trading altitude and airspeed for angle-off, as they had just done, thereby placing the missile in position where it could not make the turn required to intercept. If enough missiles were in the air, an aircraft could run out of altitude and airspeed before it had outmaneuvered all the missiles. Cole knew the facts of aerial life as well as he, probably better.

  “Where’d you get all this confidence in my ability?” Jake asked.

  “I had an uncle with a nose like yours.”

  The Firecan went off the air now, leaving only the pulse of search radars to break the silence. A Fanson painted them for several seconds, then it too fell silent. Waiting is the toughest part, he thought. You wait for the brief, you wait for the cat shot, you wait to get shot at. It’s an old complaint, as old as the first warrior, but knowing that doesn’t make the waiting any easier.