Flight of the Intruder jg-1

by Stephen Coonts

  The flak thinned out and the intermittent flickers reflected on the rice paddies. They stole away, the throttles at the stops.

  Jake’s red anticollision light reflected on the helmet of the bombardier in the tanker. Big Augie looked across the empty space at the bomber.

  “You look okay to us, Jake. You have a smear of hydraulic fluid coming out from between the exhaust pipes, but other than that you look okay. Maybe there’re some little holes we can’t see….

  Jake blew the gear down and lowered the flaps electrically before they left the 20,000-foot tanker station. The tanker was dirty, it too had lowered it gear and flaps and so stayed on his wing.

  Jake’s flying was erratic; he had lost all his smoothness.

  “This landing’s gonna be a piece of cake,” Cole said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a little burbled from the ships island. That’s all. The sea’s calm. That meant the ball will be as steady aSARock.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Cole sat in silence as Jake jerked the plane to each new heading.

  Finally Cole unzipped his survival vest and opened a plastic baby bottle. “Take a swig of this. It’ll help.”

  Jake reached for the bottle and put it to his lips. The liquid was fiery and he almost didn’t get it down. “What the hell is that?”

  “Brandy.”

  “Fuck! I didn’t need that!”

  “Well, you sure as hell need something. Now settle down or you’re going to kill us both on the ramp -” Jake recognized he was 200 feet above the 5000-foot altitude assigned and corrected. “You motherfucker!”

  “You can do this, Jake.” Cole’s voice was soft and soothing. “You can grease this plane onto a postage stamp if you have to. Be slow and smooth and keep your scan going. Watch your heading. Nothing to it. Nice. You’ve done this hundreds of times.”

  Cole pulled the handle to lower the tailhook. “Let’s get on speed. We’ve plenty of gas and the tanker’s right here.”

  “Okay, grandma. I’m okay now.”

  “Well, I feel like talking. We really smacked those little fuckers tonight. Now all we have to do is get aboard and we’ll be done. You’re going to fly the best goddamn pass those LSO weenies ever saw and catch the three wire. If you couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t be bombing Uncle Ho with you.”

  His voice was calm, so matter-of-fact that Jake’s nervousness dissipated. Cole chattered on, “I think I’m going to buy me a stereo the next time we hit Cubi.

  “One of those reel-to-reel Jap jobs that has fifty-two buttons

  and six or eight of those little Vu needles though. Never had one of those. Maybe I’ll pick up one like Cowboy’s.”

  The controller interrupted with instructions.

  He was still soliloquizing about stereos when the ship appeared at a mile on the glide path. His commentary switched to the business at hand. “Your wings are level … six hundred foot sink rate… little more power … you have er nailed… looking good….

  The wheels hit the steel and the hook caught.

  “Did you hit it?” Steiger asked Jake Grafton and Tiger Cole in the passageway after they had finished the mission debriefing. The airmen still wore their fire gear and reeked of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. Jake had his flight suit unzipped to mid-chest, revealing a sodden T-shirt.

  Jake shrugged and stared at the bloodstains on his stinging thighs. The quack would have to pull out those metal slivers, which had penetrated the bladders in his G-suit. I guess I finally get a new G-suit, he thought.

  Cole put his hand on Abe’s shoulder. “You heard us tell you in there”-he nodded toward the debriefing room-“that the computer had crapped out.” He shifted his helmet bag to his left hand and rubbed his head, obviously uncomfortable.

  “The cursor on the radar screen is a thin line, yet it covers two hundred feet of the ground. We were trying to hit a target that was maybe a hundred fifty feet across. But a plane flying at five hundred knots covers that distance in less than a fifth of a second. We dropped the bombs in train to maximize our chances. The minimum interval between bombs is six-hundredths of a second, so at five hundred knots the bombs land fifty feet apart. Our string was only three hundred fifty feet long.” He shook his head.

  “The odds just aren’t that good,” Jake added. “If we were real lucky we didn’t hit a hospital or apartment house a half-mile away.”

  Steiger bit his lip and examined each drawn face. It had all seemed so neat and easy in the Mission Planning spaces, with charts and lines and photographs. “You did the best you could. I understand,” he said.

  The pilot and bombardier trudged off down the passageway, their shoulders drooping.

  Jake Grafton sat on the operating table in Sick Bay in his underwear with his legs dangling as Mad Jack worked on his thighs with tweezers, a needle, and disinfectant. Camparelli was astride a chair, his arms crossed on the backrest.

  “tell me about the missiles. Steiger says some of them came down at you.”

  “Yessir. A couple of them did. But I don’t think they had heat-seekers. I think they were launching from one place and guiding from a radar that was a lot closer to us. We were just too close to the site that was guiding. And they put a missile in the air and waited for the first stage to drop off before they turned on the radar.

  They’re getting smarter, or somebody who speaks Russian is helping them.”

  “Maybe.” The Old Man ran his fingers through his short hair. “I didn’t think that power plant would be so heavily defended. They hate to lose them, but they really don’t need the juice. Damned rice farmers.” He shook his head.

  “That airplane has a lot of holes in it. Nothing major, no structural damage and the wings weren’t hit, thank God, but it’s going to be a couple days before we can use it.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “I better go tell Steiger to update the intelligence charts.” He stood and addressed Mad Jack’s round back. “Is he going to be able to fly?”

  “Yes. Just some pinhole punctures that a Band Aid will cover.”

  The skipper left the room.

  They don’t need the power plants, Jake thought, Why the hell even bomb them?

  In his mind’s eye he saw the rising flak and the SAMs and once again felt the fear, and he imagined the stone capitol building gutted by explosion and fire.

  “Relax a little,” Mad Jack said without looking up “or this is going to take all night.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Three days after their Hanoi raid, Abe Steiger drew Jake aside in mission Planning to show him an intelligence report. The North VietNamese had complain to the international communist press that a bomb had fallen within ten feet of the National Assembly and had severely damaged the facade and had broken all the windows. Because the other seven bombs were not mentioned, Jake and Steiger assumed they had struck in the street in front of the building. The VietNamese complained of a deliberate attempt by “Yankee pirates” to destroy their seat of government and added almost as an afterthought, that three bystanders had died in the blast. The intelligence summary discounted the complaint as pure propaganda or, if there had been any damage, suggested it had been caused by a SAM antiaircraft artillery shell returning to earth.

  “Do you think the gomers really believe the attack was intentional?” Steiger asked.

  “Does God shave his upper lip? Was Adolf Hitler a fairy? Is there any sex in heaven? How the hell would I know, Abe?”

  “Well, it’s something to think about.”

  “I hope they’re doing just that. I hope those mothers are racking their brains trying to figure it all out.” Jake told Tiger Cole about the report. “No cigar,” was his comment.

  One evening Grafton and Lundeen had a visit from New Guy.

  “Want a warm Coke?” Sammy asked him.

  “Sure,” New said. “How come you guys never bought a refrigerator?”

  “What brings you down to this den of sin and iniquity, anyway?” said Sammy.
He tossed a can at New, knowing it would foam over when the flip top was pulled. It did. New wiped his sticky hand on his trousers.

  “I’m turning in my wings,” New announced. “I’ve been talking to the Skipper about it and he said I should talk it over with some of the guys, then come back and see him. He wanted me to be sure before I put in the paperwork.”

  Sammy and Jake exchanged glances. Most men do not willingly throw away almost two and a half years of extraordinarily hard work, which was the time it took for a pilot to get his first assignment to a fleet A-6 squadron: a year and a half in pilot training; a month in the instrument squadron earning a fleet instrument card; and eight months in an A-6 replacement squadron. Only then did the fledgling report to a fleet squadron. The attrition rate along the way was high; men dropped out or were washed out. Some were killed.

  “You have an awful lot invested in that piece of metal.” Jake gestured to the gold wings above the left pocket of New Guy’s khaki shirt.

  “Yeah, but I really think I could make a better contribution doing something else.”

  “You married?” Lundeen interjected.

  New Guy nodded.

  “What does your wife think?”

  He became absorbed with his shoes. “She thinks the war is wrong and we ought to get out of Vietnam.”

  “She’s got plenty of company. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you keep flying, will that end your marriage?” Jake asked.

  “It might,” New Guy admitted.

  “She threatened a divorce?” continued Sammy.

  New Guy shrugged.

  “Well,” said Grafton. “This is your career, not hers.”

  “It’s my decision,” New Guy insisted.

  Jake gazed thoughtfully at that smooth, ingenuous face. “If you’re scared of bullets and SAMs, you’re in pretty goddamn good company. Everybody’s scared over the beach. That’s no reason to be ashamed or to quit.”

  The new pilot shook his head. “It’s not that.”

  “Then what the hell is it?” Lundeen demanded.

  “I just feel that, everything considered, I would have more to offer the navy as a maintenance or surface officer.”

  “Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we?” said Lundeen. “Go ahead and turn those wings in and leave the fighting to others. If somebody gets killed on a mission you should’ve flown, that’ll be just fine with you. Let the other guys do the bleeding and the dying.” New Guy shriveled under Lundeen’s wrath. “You yellow little coward. The States are full of assholes like you, fucking draft-dodgers who don’t want to hang their precious asses on the line. No, they want other people to do the bleeding and dying while they sit at home and enjoy their freedom and salve their consciences by assuring each other the war is immoral.”

  “That’s enough, Sammy,” Jake said, aware that he had said much the same thing to Callie not many days ago. If Lundeen kept on he might shame New Guy into staying in the cockpit. Then what bombardier would you sentence to fly with him? Without self-confidence a pilot would never get aboard at night, never wait long enough before he outmaneuvered the SAMs, never try hard enough to get the bombs on target. Without faith in his own ability to conquer whatever might come, a pilot would be overwhelmed by the terror. No, if New didn’t have it, he didn’t have it. “You can tell the Skipper you talked to us. It’s your decision and your life. Maybe you’ve made the right choice.”

  New Guy stood up slowly. He tried to smile but Jake’s cold eyes stopped him. Jake said, “This flying game takes a lot out of a man. You have to crawl up that boarding ladder into that ejection seat again and again. There’s nobody around to tell you you’re doing the right thing.” Jake lowered his gaze to his outstretched, palsied hands. He raised his head and stared at New Guy.

  “I don’t know what you believe in, but I don’t think you believe in yourself.”

  “You had better leave,” Lundeen told New Guy.

  The skipper sent New Guy’s request for a change of designator to the Bureau of Naval Personnel, recommending approval. New became the permanent squadron duty officer in the ready room every day from noon to midnight. As lieutenants and below rotated this twelve-hour watch, New Guy’s assignment, which gave him half these watches, meant that the others would have to stand the duty only half as often. This they liked. Those who resented New’s decision made it known by not speaking to him except when they had to. Those who did this were few. Most did not shun New but treated him as if he were a somewhat impaired younger brother.

  Jake Grafton and Tiger Cole trotted up to the dirty-shirt wardroom for a late dinner. They had been on a strike at noon and were ravenous. When each man had an aluminum tray full of creamed chipped beef toast, also known as Shit on a shingle-they looked for two seats in the wardroom. Cowboy Parker waved them over to his table. He was seated next to an officer wearing a green two-piece air force flight suit “This is Major Frank Allen. Frank and I went to school together at UT.”

  “In Knoxville?” Cole inquired.

  Jake grinned as Parker rose to the occasion and haughtily informed the bombardier that his alma matre was in Austin. Frank Allen smiled.

  Cowboy told them his former classmate was visiting the Shilo under an unofficial ‘liaison” program that brought together navy airmen and the air force stationed at Nakhon Phantom in Thailand, a place referred to by the military “naked fanntail”. Two months earlier a captain stationed there who flew F-105 Wild Weasels, the air force’s equivalent of the A-6B, had visited the ship - Big Augie had then wangled a trip to Thailand to visit these brothers-in-arms when he returned had regaled his squadron-mates with such stories of bars and whorehouses that they almost believed he had spent his entire three days there in a sexual and alcoholic orgy of epic intensity. Big’s story had the effect he had hoped for on the Boxman, who had written three official requests to go to Nakh Phantom and had been turned down each time.

  “Do you fly F-105s?” Jake asked Frank Allen.

  “Nope. A-1s. Skyraiders- You navy boys call them Spads. I do a bit of search and rescue work when we not bombing with a F A C.”

  “We’re taking him on a tanker hop tomorrow,” said Parker. “Gonna get him a cat shot and a trip so he c join the Tailhook Association and go to the next convention in Las Vegas.” Almost all the navy airmen belonged, and they considered the Las Vegas weekend one whale of a blowout.

  After dinner the four of them retreated to Cowboy’s stateroom. In the course of a game of penny-ante poker, Jake mentioned the trip Big had taken to Thailand and his stories of goodtime houses and their effect on Box. After some discussion the Boxman was invited down. When he had won fifty cents or so in the game, the conversation turned to the city near the air force base where Allen was stationed.

  Frank Allen shook his head. “They have the biggest whorehouse east of Port Said,” he confided. “It’s really something. Over a hundred women, just girls really, little brown fucking machines, and for five bucks American you can spend the night. You can have as many girls as you want, no extra charge.” Box tossed his hand on the table and stared at Allen.

  “The thing I like the best,” Allen continued, leaning forward, “is when you strip stark naked and lay down on this table. These girls lick you all over until you have a hard on, then they lower a girl in a stirrup device right onto your crank. You are in her but the only contact is the sexual one.”

  Allen shuddered as he appeared to recall the ecstasy. Grafton casually picked up Box’s discarded hand; Box had thrown away a pair of kings.

  “Are these girls clean?” Box wanted to know, gulping down the last of his drink and holding his glass out for a refill. Jake couldn’t imagine why he asked, since he was now being treated for his third dose on this cruise.

  “Oh, yeah,” Allen assured him. “They all wear white socks. That’s how you can tell.” The other men laughed. Box grinned ruefully.

  Early the next morning Box wrote out yet another reques
t to visit the sin capital of the Orient. The skipper denied the request by burning it in the ready room with Box looking on.

  Frank Allen flew his tanker flight, got his trip, then gave a presentation on search-and-rescue technique and equipment at a specially called all-officers meeting He was invited by the CAG to repeat it for the other ready rooms. When Allen was ready to leave the ship, Cowboy and the others arranged for Boxman to escape in to the cargo plane and wished him bon voyage.

  At three o’clock one morning Jake Grafton was in his flight suit alone in the dirty-shirt wardroom. He held the coffee cup with both hands to prevent the liquid from slopping onto the tablecloth. He was staring at the crumbs and stains on the cloth.

  “Ah, Mister Grafton- May I join you?” Les Rucic said down on the other side of the table. He sipped coffee and lit a cigarette. “Been flying?”

  “Hmmm. “A strike?” “Uh-huh.”

  “Too bad a man can’t get a drink around here.” Rucic commented.

  Jake kept his eyes on his coffee cup. Does he know about the Hanoi raid? Is that why he’s here? The pilot felt his muscles tense.

  “Looks like I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  Jake let his gaze wander over the reporter’s features. The man hadn’t trimmed his nose hairs since the pilot had last seen him.

  “I’ll probably spend a week or so in Saigon, get to feel of the place if you know what I mean, then go back to the States. Is there anybody back home I can call for you?”

  Yes, Mrs. Grafton, I met your son on the Shilo He’s doing just fine and asked me to call to wish you Merry Christmas. How do you feel about what he’s doing in Vietnam? Do you think America should be over there? Grafton wondered if his disgust for Rucic showed on his face.

  “Are we winning or losing?” Rucic pressed.

  “What?”

  “Winning or losing the war?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Come on. Give a little. I’ve interviewed some of the other pilots and naval flight officers, and they’ve given me some pretty good stuff.” He waved his notebook.