Flight of the Intruder jg-1

by Stephen Coonts

  “You have four or five nice holes in the tail, Jake. Augie slid under and lingered there, then surfaced on the right side. “No holes around the right intake. Can see anything. Maybe something went down the intake?” Something sure as hell had, something launched from a gun barrel. “You have two small holes in the right flap, Jake. And some bad dings in the armor plate over the right engine. Other than that. .

  . .”

  Jake and Cole examined the other A-6 inch by inch and found only a small hole in the left horizontal stabilizer.

  When Jake had the lead again, he dropped his hook then raised it. He tested the gear and flaps. The plane tended to slew right or left as he added or subtracted power, but this was normal for single-engine flight and easily corrected with the rudder. “You look pretty good to me,” Little informed him. Jake raised the gear an dropped the nose to get enough airspeed to raise the flaps The extent of the damage was reported to the ship, and in a few moments the Strike controller Ordered Jake to land aboard rather than divert to Da Nang.

  The damaged Intruder was the last jet aboard the ship. Jake flew a straight-in approach without speed brakes. He knew that the most common error on single-engine approaches was a pilot’s reluctance to reduce power on the good engine for fear of entering a descent that the one engine could not break, so he concentrated on reducing power when necessary and on doubling his power additions. He caught the three wire, and Cole said, “Not bad for a single-engine approach.

  The wings folded slowly because only one hydraulic pump supplied the pressure. He was directed to the number-two elevator and was immediately lowered to the hangar deck. After taxiing off the elevator into the cavernous bay and waiting for the blue-shirted men of the tie-down crew to install chocks and chains, he opened the canopy and chopped the engine.

  A crowd of somber men waited at the foot of the boarding ladder. Grafton took refuge in the familiar tasks-lifting the safety latches on the ejection seat handles, securing the proper switches, and unfastening the lapbelt and parachute riser fittings. When he could put the moment off no longer, he climbed from the cockpit and lowered himself down the ladder.

  Cowboy met him. “I’m sorry, shipmate.”

  Jake Grafton began to weep. He had not cried since his grandmother had died when he was sixteen. Cowboy and Sammy Lundeen led him to a stairwell off the hangar deck where he sat on the ladder.

  Cowboy closed the hatch leading to the hangar bay and lit a cigarette that he passed to Jake. “Have his hands been like that very long?” Jake heard Cowboy ask Sammy.

  The raw smoke after two hours on oxygen scoured his lungs. The cigarette burned out when the fire reached the filter. Carefully he put the butt in his left sleeve pocket. “I’m all right now,” Jake said. He stood up and looked his roommate in the eye. “I made the wrong choice. I should’ve come in from the west.”

  “You couldn’t have known that.” Sammy put his hand on Jake’s shoulder.

  “Hang in there, Jake. Hang in.” Jake nodded. He would try. But it was becoming more and more difficult, and he was getting so damned tired.

  TWENTY

  He woke up and looked at his watch: eight o’clock, but A.M. or P.m.? He heard Sammy snoring in the bunk overhead, so he decided that it must be eight at night or Sammy would be on duty. He lay there awhile, trying to brush aside the shrouds hanging over his memory. He recalled a large red capsule held out to him in the white palm of Mad Jack. He had downed the sedative without waiting for water. Why had he been so willing? The sounds of the ship echoed in his ears, and the sight of the plane exploding in a fireball replayed in his mind. Corey Ford and the Boxman, that was why.

  The sedative had left him with a headache. He inched one leg out of bed and lowered his foot to the floor. The other leg followed. He rested. Finally slowly, he raised his body until he was sitting. He lurched over to the sink and wet a facecloth. collapsed back on the bunk, he put the cold cloth on his forehead. He had done this so many times before-for hangovers. Lying there in the darkness, he tried to draw the maximum benefit from the cool cloth over his eyes even while scenes from the previous morning’s flight kept flashing into his returning consciousness. After fifteen Minutes he was fully awake. He threw the washcloth toward the sink. He changed his underwear and dressed in a khaki uniform, grabbed his flight jacket and shut the door behind him.

  He found Devil 502, the plane he had flown the previous day, in a corner of the hangar where machines were stored that were badly damaged or awaiting spare parts. Devil 502 had become a hangar queen. Well, the goddamn computer had never worked properly, anyway. Still, the old girl had held together and had brought back Cole and him.

  He climbed up a work stand placed against the rear of the fuselage and stepped across to the horizontal stabilizer. The holes in the tail were about threequarters of an inch in diameter and went clear through.

  Five of them.

  Peering through one jagged hole, he saw that the internal structure had been damaged, one metal stringer being completely severed.

  Lieutenant Commander Joe Wagner, the squadron maintenance officer, stood near the nose of the plane and Jake climbed down to join him. “Really a mess, huh?” Wagner called.

  Jake nodded.

  “You’re a lucky man, Grafton, a lucky man. I just came up here to look at this wreck again and marvel at your luck and see if some’ll rub off on me.”

  Jake snorted. “You wouldn’t want my luck.”

  “Don’t be so sure. See those holes? My guess is fourteen point five millimeter. One, maybe two, of those shells had explosive heads. But they didn’t explode. That’s where you were extremely fortunate, because if they had you might have lost half the vertical fin. I don’t know if this thing will fly with half a tail. Those shells penetrated the only spot on this plane that has so little resistance that the contact fuses in the shells weren’t crushed.

  Come here, I’ll show you something else.” He led Jake over to the right intake and stood back so Jake could see.

  Most of the axial fairing inside the intake was gone, and the compressor blades were badly twisted and bent. “I suspect that shell was a thirty-seven millimeter, a big momma. It hit dead center on the fairing and smashed it, and the pieces of the fairing were sucked into the compressor. Luckily you shut the engine down right quick, or the compressor blades would’ve been flung off through the fuselage, cutting this aluminum skin like a knife through butter. On the inside, the blades probably would have cut into the main fuel cell, and fuel would have shot back onto the hot engine, and this plane would have blown up about one-thousandth of a second later. Even if the blades didn’t cut into the fuel cell, if you’d kept the engine turning at power, it would have torn itself off its mountings since the first two bearings were destroyed by the shell.”

  Jake Grafton nodded. “A thousandth of a second. That is just about how long Ford and Box had. They were there, then they were gone in a fire ball.”

  Joe Wagner looked away. “Maybe an explosive shell in the main fuel cell. Maybe a shell hit one of the bombs and detonated it. We’ll never know.” They talked awhile, then Jake left Joe and climbed to the flight deck. He picked his way aft until he reach the island, then he descended to the catwalk.

  An ammunition ship lay alongside the enormous Shilo. Jake could see down onto the bridge of the supply ship which rose and fell with the swells much more than the carrier. Deadly weapons flowed from the smaller vessel to the larger.

  Wires spanned the space between the ships, and the bombs swung across, occasionally dipping into the swells. Jake watched the operation forklifts darting here and there, the men struggle with the heavy crates of unfused bombs-and felt it had no connection with his deliveries of the same bombs. Then he turned up the collar of his flight jacket and walked away.

  The flight schedule told him he had two watches in Pried-Fly after the sun came up. It was now only midnight. Restless, unable to steep, he made his way down to the dirty-shirt wardroom where he ate a hamburger as
the space reverberated under the pile-driver strokes of the bow catapults launching the first flights of the new day. When the catapult shuttles smashed to a stop in the water brakes, making a stupendous crash, the room shook and the crockery rattled. Jake lingered over his coffee and smoked a cigarette as he thought about the men riding the catapults into the night sky. When the launch was over he doused his butt in the coffee cup and left for the ready room to check his mail, hoping for a letter from Callie. Tonight, though, his mailbox contained only official paperwork. Taking a seat, he began to plow through it.

  After a few moments he sensed that New Guy was surreptitiously watching him from his chair at the duty officer’s desk. Except for the two of them, the room was empty. Jake kept his eyes locked on the paperwork. What was New thinking? Was he angry at Grafton, or perhaps at Ford and Box for having the ill grace to get killed? Or was he angry at himself, comparing himself with the pilots who passed through the ready room?

  New Guy had once been one of them, had once sat in the padded chairs and had listened to the briefs. Like them, he had opened his locker and reached in for his survival vest, G-suit, and torso harness, and smelled the stale sweat and remembered the past terrors even as he prepared to go aloft again. Was he ashamed of himself for quitting? If so, he wouldn’t blame himself long. He’d blame others: the skipper, the system, the other pilots, or his wife.

  The phone on the duty officer’s desk rang, and New Guy seized it as if it were a rope thrown to a drowning man. When he hung up he kept his hand on the telephone and said, “Jake, the Skipper wants to see you in his stateroom.”

  Moving slowly, Jake returned his papers to to mailbox. He glanced back at New Guy on his way out and saw that he was slumped over the flight schedule rereading yet again the names of those men among whom he had once counted himself.

  Jake’s knock was answered with a grunt. He enter and found the Old Man at his desk and Cowboy Parker on the bunk, looking grim.

  Commander Camparelli looked Jake over from head to toe, then waved in the direction of the couch.

  Camparelli lit a cigarette and ran his fingertips through his crewcut. Jake waited while he scanned a document. The skipper edged around in his chair an eyed Grafton. “A dead bombardier, a plane blown out of the sky, and now this.”

  He shook the paper in his hand and scrutinized Grafton as if he were a scientific curiosity. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “This is a secret message from me to Seventh Fleet with copies to everyone in the chain of command. Your name’s smeared all over it. Care to guess what tidbits about you this little missive contains?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Yesterday I was up in Mission Planning looking at the order-of-battle SAM charts and for the life of me I couldn’t find all those SAM sites that fired at you when you were going after the Bac Giang power plant. So I looked up the daily intelligence reports and asked a couple questions here and there. Then I sat down an had a friendly chat with your pal Steiger. What do you think he might have said?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Jake’s breathing quickened.

  “Too bad. I would bet a thousand dollars you could’ve guessed,” His face was contorted and the veins in his neck stood out.

  “Mister Steiger had a confession to make. This happened after he tried to explain why all those missiles you dodged around Bac Giang were not in the intelligence report or on the maps, even though I’d given him a direct order to include them. Seems he knew the sites weren’t exactly where you said they were in your after-action report.”

  His voice rose to a parade’ground bellow. “In short, he said you and Cole weren’t around Bac Giang when those SAMs were trying to asshole you. He allowed as how you were down over Hanoi on a little private party.” Jake dropped his eyes.

  “So it’s true, huh? Do you have any idea just what the hell you’ve done?

  Before I get through with you, you’re going to wish to God it had been you instead of McPherson that stopped that fucking bullet. Stand at attention, Mister Grafton.” The “mister” curled off his lips contemptuously.

  Jake snapped to attention, eyes fastened on the bulkhead.

  Camparelli moved to within inches of him. “I’ve been in the navy for twenty years and worked my ass off to get this command. Now, behind my back, you’ve abused the trust, my trust, and the trust of every officer in this squadron. My God, don’t you understand that the military runs on trust? No one except your bombardier can ride in that plane with you. If you can’t, or won’t follow orders, you’re not worth a tinker’s damn. Even that chicken half-wit Newton is worth ten of you. I can trust him to be a yellow coward. But I can trust him. Do you understand me?”

  He shouted the last question.

  Jake’s gaze rested on the Old Man’s accusing eyes.

  “You took an oath, Grafton, when you got your commission. ‘I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and obey the orders of the officer appointed over me.” That’s the same oath every officer in the navy has sworn for damn-near two hundred years. And you violated that oath. You disobeyed.” The skipper sat down. “Keep your eyes on that bulkhead, mister.”

  When Camparelli spoke again, his voice was more controlled but still bitter. “People are spitting on soldiers and sailors in airports and bus stations all over America. ROTC cadets refuse to wear their uniforms because they’re cursed at and ridiculed. Can you believe that? Americans spitting on the men who had sworn to defend them, on the men who’ve sworn to obey the orders of the elected, civilian government. He pounded his fist on his desk. “For two hundred years the military has obeyed the civilians who were the elected government.

  Those civilians were not always wise, not always right, sometimes not even very smart In fact, many presidents of this country have been half-wit politicians with no qualification for the job other than that they fooled a majority of the people. But even the worst hacks are obeyed.

  Do you know why? Can you guess?”

  Jake stood silent.

  “Answer me, Mister Grafton!”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I’ll explain it so even you can understand. If the officers at the top ever get it into their heads that they have the right to follow their consciences, to do what they think is right instead of what they are told then the United States is in for a military dictatorship. We’ll be just another chaotic banana republic.”

  Jake heard the click of a cigarette lighter. The commander stood again and confronted Jake eyeball to eyeball- His voice was a dry whisper. “You have no right whatsoever to disobey orders. None. You will do as you are told even if it kills you. You will obey even if it costs you your life and your immortal sole, if you have one. I don’t give a flying fuck if your father is the Pope and you have a direct line to God Almighty.

  This is our country and our navy we’re talking about, you fool.” Camparelli paced the room. “There are enough weapons in the magazines of this ship to wipe Vietnam or China clean off the face of the earth. What if the captain decided he had the power and foresight to act on his own?”

  He paused in front of the still-rigid Grafton. “The backbone of the navy is obedience. America will always need the navy.” He turned and took two steps toward the desk. “And she will need the navy to obey. What you’ve done is wrong. Basic, rock-bottom wrong.”

  Frank Camparelli sat down heavily. “So you think this piss-ant war in this shit-hole country is worth compromising the U.S. Navy, huh? You think you can personally whip these commie bastards with an airplane and a few bombs and make good Democrats and Republicans out of them?” The Old Man took a drag on his cigarette. He sighed. “You’re a damned fool, a fool because you haven’t grasped that we have to obey whether or not we all lose our lives or even the goddamned war.

  “What’s your problem, Grafton? We’re not aggressive enough in your opinion? Shit! Too bad we can’t arrange it so you can
ask Ford and Box if we’re aggressive enough to suit them.”

  The silence hung in the air like the smell of a dead animal.

  Jake felt his eyes smarting. Cowboy cleared his throat to catch the skipper’s attention and glanced at Jake’s trembling hands. The skipper looked, then averted his gaze.

  “When you walk out that door you will go to Sick Bay and inform Mad Jack I want a complete physical done on you. If he approves, I’m sending you to the beach on the morning cargo plane, You’re to take all your flight gear with you. Two new planes are coming in from the States on a Trans-Pac, and I can’t spare any fighting crews to go get them. Take that psychopath Cole with you. An investigation will begin in your absence, and you’ll be questioned when you return. When the new planes reach Cubi, you’ll send a message notifying us of their arrival and we’ll send you an overhead time. Then you’ll fly one of those planes out to the ship and we’ll send a crew in for the other. I want you to report to the duty officer at Cubi when you arrive and each and every morning you are there. Are these orders explicit enough for you?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Answer me!” The roar was savage.

  “Yessir- The orders are explicit enough.”

  “Then see that you obey, Grafton. See that you obey.” Camparelli paused, then continued. “Steiger’s confined to quarters without visitors. He’s been ordered not to answer the phone. You will make no attempt to see or speak with him. Now get the hell out of my sight before I personally try to find out what you’ve been using for brains.”

  Jake left.

  The second class petty officer in Sick Bay told him that he should come back during the 0700 Sick Call. Grafton wasn’t in the mood. “I want to see the Jungle Quack right fucking now, sailor. Find him.” It turned out that the doctor was in his office after all. Apparently he had been on the phone with Camparelli.