“Listen, I don’t care about anything else right now. The past is the past, we need to move forward. We had to put up with a shitload of drama with that NKR class. But we don’t have to put up with it anymore. You heard Clam, JT. He’ll take all the heat off us. All we’ve got to do is let him know how it really is.”
JT frowned. “Slammer, we’ve got a couple weeks to get them up to speed. I know Dusty had some rough spots, and I know I can patch them up.”
“This isn’t the time for patching, buddy. This is the real deal. And it’s the opportunity to right some wrongs.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He fought to control himself. “You heard the skipper, where we’re going, we can’t have any distractions. He’ll take all the heat and you can get right with yourself. If it makes you feel any better, we’re not ending their careers. They’re just going away.”
JT shook his head. “Slammer, I don’t feel the same way about this as you do. And don’t use this cruise as an excuse. We both know nothing’s going to happen out there. It’ll be fun for a while, something different from dropping bombs in the desert. But it’s going to get boring real fast. All that crap Clam was talking about,” JT made mocking air quotes, ‘whole world watching us.’ That’s all strategic, man. Way above our pay grade. Governments and admirals stressing out about how to play their chess pieces. We’re down here at the tactical level, in the trenches. No fucking country in their right mind is going to shoot down an American warplane. We’re just playing a game.
“Play this out in your head. We do maybe a couple intercepts a day,” JT continued. “Then escort the bad guys as they fly by the ship for a picture. But most of the time we’ll spinning in circles on CAP in the middle of the sea never seeing anyone. You want to get stressed out by that? If there was ever an opportunity to teach, this is it. Best classroom ever.”
Slammer knew that, at some level, JT was spot on, but still. “Buddy, we don’t get paid to make predictions. We get paid to be ready for the worst. What are you going to do if you’re in Dusty’s back seat and the shooting starts? You willing to bet your life, and the lives of everyone else in that flight? You can clean the slate right here.”
JT looked at his hands contemplatively. “You know how it is when you’re getting ready to launch off the boat at night? You pilots sit up there and take your flying hand off the stick, hold onto the handrail for the launch right?”
Slammer nodded, wondering where this was going.
“You have faith the steam’s going to work, that the Rhino’s computer isn’t going to shit itself and pitch you straight into the water. For a whole minute you just go on that faith, hand off the controls, hoping it all comes together. In the back seat we do that every day, all the time, start-up to shut-down. The only thing I got back there is the ejection handle and my gut. Every fucking flight is a leap of faith. You’re used to having control all the time, but sometimes you don’t know until you know. You, my friend, need to loosen your grip a little. Let things work themselves out. One thing I’ve learned sitting in the back is that occasionally people surprise you. Mostly they’re just trying to kill you, sure, but sometimes, Sammy, sometimes it can be a good thing.
“You don’t know till you know,” JT repeated. “And then when you do know, you just hope you do the right thing. We’ve got a couple weeks to let it play out and then….” He shrugged. “We’ll see. Fair enough?”
Slammer nodded. As much as he disliked it, he couldn’t really disagree with JT’s logic. “Fair enough.”
Chapter 3
30 July
USS Bush (CVN-77)
In all of Slammer’s previous experience, the deployments had spun up in a well-worn pattern. Ordinarily there was a structure and a process that took place over months, a predictable evolution that honed the aircrew and the ship’s personnel to lethal precision. But the situation in the South China Sea caught the Bush Strike Group wrong-footed. News had filtered down to Slammer through Clam that the President and the Joint Chiefs were adamant there be a carrier task force in the region as soon as possible, and the Bush was the only ship available. It was just under 12,000 nautical miles from Norfolk to the Paracel Islands via the Panama Canal. Going the other way, though Gibraltar, the Suez and shooting the Strait of Malacca, it was 11, 595. Essentially an equidistant dash to the other side of the planet.
At the last moment, as the Bush passed the mouth of Hudson Bay and Slammer wrestled into his flight gear in Oceana to fly to the ship, they’d heard the State Department had secured priority passage through the Suez Canal for the entire strike group. He’d done the math in his head, at an average speed of 30 knots, the Bush and her escorts would be on the flip side of the planet in just over two weeks. No liberty port calls were on the schedule.
He spent what little free time he had during the Atlantic transit walking and running the flight deck, relishing the opportunity to escape the air conditioning and breathe the sea air. He knew once they were on station they would be much too busy to do more than shuffle to and from their planes. With fair weather and smooth seas the Bush and her escorts passed under the shadow of Gibraltar midway through the fifth day. He and all the wing’s pilots flew twice each in those five days, one day hop and once at night. The flights were conducted to maintain their landing proficiency, not train for tactics. Far from ideal for this group.
From Gibraltar to Port Said, Egypt was another 2,000 miles and the Bush charged through the Mediterranean eating up 700 nautical miles a day. On the morning of the eighth he went topside with JT as the carrier, two destroyers, two frigates and their supply ship slowed to a crawl to navigate the 120 miles of the canal. Creeping along at 10 knots the ship lost the constant low-level vibration he, and all who lived aboard, had become numb to. Only when the ride smoothed out did they notice its absence. Hundreds joined them, taking breaks from fluorescent lighting and cramped work spaces to ascend to the flight deck and peer at the sandy shore just a stone’s throw from either side. Children chased the ship and groups of men leaned against battered pickups and small fishing skiffs, shading their eyes as they watched the hulking Bush glide by.
The interlude lasted but twelve hours. Once clear of Suez Port, the Bush gathered her escorts into a phalanx and pulled the rods in the reactors, charging though the Red Sea and out the Mandab Strait separating Djibouti from Yemen. Once they burst into the Gulf of Aden and turned the Horn of Africa, he calculated they had sailed over 7,000 miles in ten days.
The next leg would take them more than 3,000 miles across the vast stretch of the Indian Ocean, south of India and Sri Lanka. They would pass through the Strait of Malacca, sail close enough to wave at Singapore, and finally turn the corner into the South China Sea where the Strike Group would transition to high alert as they sailed the last 1,000 miles to the Paracels.
Slammer was on deck the evening the ships passed the Horn. He had just finished a run and the brisk hot wind dried the sweat from him like a convection oven, leaving behind large patches of salt. The flight deck was probably one of the strangest places in the world to go for a trot but he liked it just fine. You needed to stay alert to dodge the mess of planes and missile fins and tie-down chains. On the upwind leg, the run to the bow, there was a constant 30 to 40 knot wind in his face making it feel like an 1,100 foot uphill sprint. Then the downwind reach was a bit like running on the moon, with every step taking him an exaggerated distance as the wind shoved and lifted from behind.
They were cutting the corner close enough that he could just make out the northern tip of Somalia. The one thing he wasn’t worried about right now was pirates. He imagined they were tucked safely away, far from sight of the bristling convoy brazenly traversing what were usually fertile hunting grounds. What he was worried about was his squadron. And less directly, the entire air wing. They had been at sea ten days yet been extended only one fly-day, two short flights, and that just for landing currency. Tonight they would all fly again, resetting the seven day
clock for maximum time between night landings.
There was always a tension between the ship and the aviators during transits. The ship wanted to get where it was going as quickly and efficiently as possible. And the aviators cared about nothing but flying. The planes needed a headwind down the flight deck to conduct flight ops, but the natural wind didn’t always cooperate, oft times blowing from their stern. So to conduct flight ops, the entire strike group would need to turn into the natural wind and this would distract from the most direct path, adding hours, even days, to the journey. Right now, he knew, the stakes were elevated and Washington was monitoring the strike group’s progress by the minute. Oblivious to the granular details, the Pentagon and White House wanted ships and planes on station as soon as possible to play their role in the political drama. The fact that a raw group of nugget pilots needed to train before it arrived in the hot zone did not bubble to the level of concern in the Situation Room. Which complicated his job, and JT’s, immeasurably. He ducked through the hatch into the air-conditioned comfort of the ship’s interior imagining an arm in a shadowy Pentagon office nudging an aircraft carrier game piece across a map toward a big red X.
A couple of days later, Quick zipped up her flight suit and walked from her stateroom into the passageway. She climbed the ladder one level and made her way back to the Ready Room, dodging the steady foot traffic in both directions like a seasoned pro. She moved on autopilot, distracted by the long and varied list of concerns competing for priority on her stress meter. There were daily tactics briefs by Slammer, JT and a few other senior Blacklions. And detailed classified intelligence presentations via the closed circuit TV system only available in the eight Ready Rooms. An atmosphere of tension enveloped the Bush, a gravity, that she had never been exposed to before. She was reminded hourly of how much she didn’t know in this new world.
Then there was the initial awkwardness of seeing Slammer walk into the Ready Room the first day in Norfolk. Most of the younger guys had once been his students and they were happy to see him. He’d strolled through all big smiles and fist bumps sporting his brand new Blacklion patch. Guess that explained why he hadn’t called her after she won the bet. She got a secret thrill when his knuckles bumped hers. Their eyes met for the briefest moment and she felt the charge. It was going to be a long three years.
She was surprisingly lonely despite being crammed into this crowded ship with 5,500 bodies. Her roommates were two helicopter pilots who were friendly and welcoming though seemed to have schedules completely opposite from hers. For the most part, the time she spent in her stateroom she was by herself. The Lions were nice enough to her, but she was new and they were busy. And Dusty was hopeless. So she mostly passed her days studying. She badly missed Pig and Moto, and she wondered constantly how Moto was doing bouncing up for his last shot at the boat. Sometimes, at her lowest, she wished she could trade places with him.
But mostly she worried about the job. Slammer stuffed every last detail about the formidable Vietnamese Su-30 and the Chinese J-11 fighter planes and pilots into their heads. JT taught them everything there was to know about the missiles and tactics. Data was leaking from her ears, but she hadn’t pulled any Gs in over two weeks, which had her a little worried. And she’d never flown with real missiles on her own plane. She walked into the Ready Room with a nice mix of eagerness and apprehension for her first carrier based training mission.
Slammer stood at the front of the Ready Room preparing to brief a flight of two Lion Rhino’s for the next wave. There were thirty aviators in a two-seat Rhino squadron, split evenly between pilots and WSOs. The Blacklions, as did all the squadrons, would distribute their training sorties throughout the day’s six launch events. Slammer surveyed the three faces in the first row of seats that would be flying with him in this wave: Quick, now officially his new wingman, seated between HOB and her new WSO, Tumor.
“Morning,” Slammer began. “Today we start our condensed crawl-run-sprint training program. I know it’s tight but we’ve got about a week before we’re on station, meaning we should all get seven to ten flights each. I think we’ll be pretty squared away by the time we hit the South China Sea but we don’t have a lot of padding.
“Today’s flight is the first step in preparing for what we expect our missions to be on station,” he continued, noting the trepidation stitching Quick’s forehead. “There’re going to be foreign fighters all over our Op Area. We’ll be tasked with intercept and escort duties. We’ve got to protect ourselves and the Bush, first and foremost. Our secondary mission is to try and protect the foreign fighters from each other.”
“How the hell’re we going to do that?” Tumor interrupted. He was a heavyset guy, gruff, with an imposing mustache and hair buzzed close to his lumpy scalp. The senior WSO adjusted the government-issue prescription glasses on his nose and pressed the point. “I mean, shit, it’s hard enough to keep your own ass from getting shot. How do we keep other countries from shooting at each other? You ever do anything like that?”
Slammer shook his head. “No. But you know how this drill works, Tumor. They give us tasking and we figure out how to do it without getting smoked. No use bitching, unless you just want to hear yourself talk.” Tumor barked a quick laugh.
“Let’s get good at the stuff we’re supposed to know,” Slammer went on. “We need to get tactical before we get there and start freestyling. With that in mind, today’s mission is a basic visual ID to an engagement.”
As he turned to the briefing board he heard Quick whisper to Tumor, “We’ve got to VID a Flanker before we can shoot? Isn’t that suicide?”
Tumor only had one volume, booming, and he answered for all to hear, “It’s not a prescription for long-term health. But Slammer’ll show us how to do it right.”
He turned back to face them, pointing to the line diagrams he had drawn on the whiteboard. “The principles are basic, it’s the execution that counts.” His drawings illustrated the point. There were two groups of arrows approaching each other from opposite directions. The red arrows—symbolizing unidentified aircraft, or bogeys—progressed from the top of the board to the bottom in a straight line. The blue arrows, symbolizing the good guys, traversed far to the left of the board and then curled back around to intercept the red at a nearly perpendicular angle.
“There are three keys to making this work. One, staying outside the periphery of their radar coverage. Two, fast and accurate visual identification at the merge and three, if they are VID’d as hostile bandits, a quick kill. All three steps are equally crucial but they have to be executed in order. Got it?” HOB and Quick nodded back at him while Tumor scribbled on his kneeboard card.
“Okay, excellent. Playing the role of bogeys today are the Shrikes,” he said, referring to their sister Hornet squadron in the air wing. “Their job is to break through the protection and simulate missile launch at the Bush. Our job is to VID and destroy. We’ll have an E-2 airborne, call sign Banger, providing the tactical picture and control…”
Thirty minutes later, the briefing was complete, and thirty minutes after that Slammer was shuffling through the watertight hatch leading to the gangway outside. It was the next step in the metamorphosis from normal human to fighter pilot, a process that had commenced in the paraloft. There was the ritual of strapping on the G-suit and donning the heavy bulky harness, of wiping the visor and tucking the weapon into your shoulder holster. He always felt transformed by the process, like he was turning into a better version of himself. The bright midday light stung his eyes and the oppressive humidity of the Indian Ocean hit him like a brick in the chest. He held the heavy door open for HOB, who followed close behind. Within three steps they were both dripping with sweat. He looked down through the open grate catwalk bolted to the hull fifty feet above the water, the wide holes in the grate making it seem he was walking on air. He was always drawn to the sight of the intersection of metal and ocean, one slicing relentlessly through the other. HOB followed him up the short ladder leading t
o the flight deck and they strolled to their jet, parked on the port side of the landing area, close to the LSO platform. Hundreds of crew and flight deck personnel scurried about in organized chaos and a jolt of excitement ran up his spine. He’d missed this even more than he thought.
They were the first launch of the day so the deck was crowded with planes. They passed Quick and Tumor, their preflight complete and already mounting up. He waved and she returned a nervous salute as she raised her arms, making room for the plane captain to reach across to snap her harness fittings into the ejection seat.
The Bush’s bow crashed through the waves sending sea spray over the flight deck, and the Air Boss’ voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “On the flight deck, aircrews are manning up for the Event-One go. This will be a Case-One launch; shooting cats three and four. Temperature is one-hundred five degrees, altimeter is three zero one three. Time for all unnecessary personnel to leave the flight deck and catwalk areas. All remaining personnel should be in the complete and proper flight deck uniform. That’s helmets on and buckled, goggles down, sleeves rolled down, with life vests on and securely fastened. Stand clear of all intakes, exhausts, and prop arcs. Ensure hot exhaust is not blowing on any aircraft, fuel, or ordnance.” And then the command that never failed to send a shiver of excitement though his body: “Start ’em up! Start up the go aircraft!” It always brought to mind the famous “gentlemen start your engines” announcement at the Indy 500. All that was missing was the hundred thousand cheering spectators.
On cue, a dozen jet engines whined to life, two Lions and a mixed bag from the other squadrons. Thirty seconds later each of the twelve planes started their second engines and the noise on the deck settled into a high-pitched howl. “Alignment’s complete, sir,” HOB reported from the back seat. Their Rhino was ready for launch.
“Don’t call me sir again, HOB, or I’ll make you buy my beer for six months.” He lowered the canopy and flashed a thumbs-up to the Yellow Shirt standing next to his plane captain.
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