Final Flight (11 page)

One mistake, Jake mused, by any of the dozens
of men involved in a launch, if not detected and
corrected, would be fatal to the men in the cockpit.
Every man had to do his job perfectly all the time, every
time. The launching ballet had come to symbolize, for
Jake, the essence of carrier aviation.

Satisfied at last, he mounted the ladder to the
cockpit, preflighted his ejection seat, removed
the safety pins and counted and stowed them, then
maneuvered himself into the seat. The plane captain
scurried up the ladder to help him strap in. Reed
was busy strapping into the bombardier-navigator’s
seat immediately to Jake’s right. Unlike most
military planes where the crew sat in tandem, in the
A-6 they sat side by side, although the BN’S
seat was several inches aft and slightly lower than the
pilot’s.

The pilot’s hands flew around the cockpit
arranging switches for the start. All the cockpit
lights and dials came alive as
electrical power was applied to the plane from the
deck-edge cable. As the plane captain twirled his
fingers and the huffer bellowed, Jake cranked the left
engine. When it was at idle, 60 percent RPM,
the plane captain disconnected the huffer, which
supplied high-pressure air to the plane, and
advanced the left engine to 75 percent. Now he
started the right engine using bleed air from the left one.
With both engines at idle, he turned on both of the
A-6Every’s radios and watched Reed complete his
set up Of the computer and inertial. Finally he gave
a thumbs-up to the flight deck bosun who stOod
in front of the aircraft. The bosun cupped his hand
around a lip mike on his headset and informed flight
deck control that the alert bomber was ready. Then the
engines were shut down and the plane captain closed the
canopy and snapped the pilot’s boarding ladder up
into the fuselage.

Now the crew relaxed. They would sit here like this for
two hours until they were relieved by another crew.
Unless the alert planes launched, it was all very
boring, a typical military exercise in hurry
up and wait. Jake surveyed the cockpit as if
it were the front seat of a familiar and treasured
automobile. The A-6 had changed
significantly in the years since he flew the
A-version in Vietnam. The search and track
radars of the A-6A had been replaced by one
radar that combined both search and track functions. The
rotary drum computer was gone, and it its place was a
solid-state computer that rarely failed. The old
Inertial Navigation System (Ins) had also been
replaced by a new system that was more accurate and
reliable.

Above the bombardier-navigator’s radar scope
was a small screen much like a television screen.
This instrument displayed a picture from a
Forward-Looking Infrared (Flir) camera mounted
in a turret on the bottom of the fuselage, in
front of the nose gear door. Also in the turret were
a laser ranger designator and receiver, which the crew
could use to obtain very precise range information on a
target within ten nautical miles.

Jake used a rheostat to adjust the level of the
cockpit lighting, then he looked around at the other
airplanes and the men moving around the deck on random
errands. He had difficulty distinguishing features
of the other aircraft and the colors of the jerseys worn
by the men on deck.

He squinted. The island floodlights
didn’t seem to help much.

This is just an alert, he told himself. Nothing will
happen. We won t launch. He breathed
deeply and exhaled slowly, trying to relax.

“So why do you want to turn in your wings?” he
asked Reed over the intercom system, the ICS, as
he watched little droplets of rain adhere to the
canopy plexiglas.

“I’m tired of night cat shots,” Reed said
finally. “I’m tired of drilling holes in the sky
and risking my butt for nothing. I’m going back
to school for an MBA, and I don’t see why I
should keep doing this until Uncle Sam kisses
me good-bye.”

The fine rain droplets on the canopy
occasionally reached a critical mass and coalesced
into one large drop, which slid slowly down the
glass.

“After you get your degree, what are you going
to do?”

“I dunno. Go to work for some company, I
suppose. Make some money.

“Is that what you want? Nine to five? Same
shit, different day everyone in the office creeping
toward retirement one day at za time.”

“The civilians can’t be as fucked up as the
navy. They have to turn a profit.”

Jake listened awhile to the airborne Hawkeye
talking to the ship on strike frequency. Only ten
days to Naples. He wondered where he would be and
what he would be doing if he had left the navy after
Vietnam.

Should he have resigned years ago? The thought of
all the time he and his wife, Callie, had spent
apart depressed him. And his parents were getting on
without their eldest son around to check on them. Too
bad he and Callie had had no children, though, Lord
knows, they had wanted them.

Maybe it’s time for me to pull the plug, too,
he thought. Forty-three years old, eyes crapping
out, maybe it’s time to go home to Callie. He
thought about her, the look and feel and sound and smell of
her, and he missed her badly.

“Shotgun Five Zero Two, Strike, are you
up?” Jake started. He picked up his mask from his
lap and held it to his face. “Battlestar
Strike, Shotgun Five Zero Two’s up.

“Go secure.”

“Roger. “Jake threw the switches on the
radio scrambler. When the synchronization
tone ceased, he checked in with Strike again.

“CAG, we have been tracking a group of six
boats near the Lebanese coast since dusk this
evening. Apparently fishing boats. Three minutes
ago one of them turned toward the task group and
increased speed significantly. If he
doesn’t resume course in two minutes, we’re
going to launch you. Stand by to copy his position, over.

Jake turned toward Reed. He was still sitting
there, slightly dazed.

Jake keyed the ICS. “Copy the posit,
Mister Reed, and put it into the computer.” Reed
grabbed a pen from the kneeboard strapped to his right
thigh and asked Strike for the coordinates. Without
realizing he was doing it, Jake tugged his torso
harness straps tighter.

“Steering to the target is good, CAG,” Reed
told him. Jake read the readout on the panel.
Only forty miles. The task group is too
goddamn close to the coast! This guy is almost here
and he just started.

Wonder what kind of weapons he has? He
looked at the heading indicator.

The ship was steaming southwest, away from the coast.
That was a help.

But the ship would have to turn into the northerly wind
to launch, which would stop relative motion away from the
coast and the threat, which was to the east. He felt his
stomach tighten.

The deck loudspeaker blared. “Launch the alert
five! Launch the alert five!”

Jake heard the flight deck tractor come
to life and the highpressure air unit, the huffer,
winding toward full RPM as the catapult crewmen
came piling out of the catwalk and raced toward the
Tomcats in the hookup areas. Kowalski was there,
small and chunky, waving directions to his men. The
blue-shirts broke down the tie-down chains on the
chopper and the rotors engaged. He could feel the ship
heel to port as it started a starboard turn into the
wind.

The plane captain twirled his fingers at
Jake, signaling for a start.

Jake pushed the crank button and advanced the
starboard throttle to idle when the engine reached 18
percent RPM. The engine lit with a low moan and the
revolutions slowly climbed.

He had both engines at idle when the chopper
lifted off and the two F-14’s began to ease
forward to the waiting catapult shuttles.
The large jet-blast deflectors UBD’S),
came out of the deck behind each aircraft and cocked
at a sixty-degree angle.

The taxi director waved his yellow wands at
Jake. He released the parking brake and goosed the
throttles. The Intruder began to roll. He
applied the brakes slightly to test them, felt the
hesitation, then released the pedals. He pressed the
nose-wheel steering button on the stick and followed
the taxi director’s signals toward Catapult
Three.

Now the engines of the fighter on Cat Three were
at full power. With its new, more-powerful engines, the
D-version of the Tomcat no longer needed the extra
thrust of afterburner to launch. The roar reached Jake
inside his cockpit, through his soundproof helmet, as
the Intruder trembled from the fury of the hot exhaust
gas flowing like a river over theJBD. The
Tomcat’s exterior lights came on. Two
heartbeats later it was accelerating down the
catapult as the JBD came down. In seconds
the catapult officer had the fighter on Cat Four
at full power, then he fired the second plane
into the waiting void.

A red-shirted ordnanceman was holding
up the red safety flags from the weapons for Jake
to see as the yellow-shirt waved him forward toward the
cat. As he taxiied, Jake used his flashlight
to acknowledge the order, okayed the weight board being
held aloft by a green-shirted cat crewman with
another flashlight signal, and eased the airplane
right, then left, to line it up precisely with the
catapult shuttle. It looked like utter chaos, this
little army of men in their different-colored jerseys
surging to and fro around the moving planes, but the steps
and gestures of every man were precisely
choreographed, perfectly timed.

Wings spread and locked, flaps to takeoff”
slats out, stabilizer shifted, trim set, parking
brake off’ Reed read off the items on the
takeoff checklist and Jake checked each one and
gave an oral response as he eased the plane
toward the shuttle. He felt the jolt as the metal
hold-back bar stopped the aircraft’s forward
progress. Then he felt another tiny jolt as the
shuttle was hydraulically moved forward several
inches to take all the slack from the met
alto-metal contact-“taking tension,” the catapult
crewmen called it.

He released the brakes and jammed both
throttles full forward and wrapped his fingers around the
catapult grip, a lever that would prevent an
inadvertent throttle retardation on the catapult
stroke.

The engines wound to full power with a rising moan.
EGT, RPM, fuel flow, oil pressure,
all looked good.

He flipped the external lights on and put his
head back in the headrest as the plane trembleHd
under the buffeting of the air disturbed by its engines. His
eyes were on the green light in front of the launching
officer’s control bubble in the port catwalk. Now
the light went out-the cat officer had pushed the fire
button.

Oh lordy, here we go again! The Gs pressed him
back into the seat and the forward edge of the angled deck
rushed toward him and swept under the nOse. As the
G subsided he slapped the gear handle up and
locked the nose at eight degrees nose up. The
rate of-climb needle rose and the altimeter began
to respond. No warning lights.

Log another one.

“SHOTGUN Five Zero Two’s airborne.”

“Radar contact. Your squawk One Three
Zero Two. When safely airborne,
your vector Zero Niner Five for surface
bogey and switch to Strike.”

“Squawking and switching.” Reed dialed the
radio channelization knob to Channel Nine, which was
preset to Strike frequency. Jake checked in.

“Shotgun Five Zero Two, Vector Zero
Niner Eight for surface bogey. Make an
ID pass at two thousand feet and report.
Avoid Lebanese three-mile limit, over.

“Wilco.”

Accelerating through 180 knots indicated he
raised the flaps and slats and concentrated on flying
the plane as the aerodynamics changed. He
leveled at 2,000 feet on course and
accelerated toward 400 knots. “Get the FLIR
fired up, Reed. We’re gonna need it real
soon.” Jake secured the aircraft’s exterior
lights. No sense in giving anyone with an itchy
trigger finger an illuminated target.

“I’ve got the target, CAG. Steering’s
good.” The infrared screen was mounted above the radar
screen on the BN’S side of the instrument panel,
and both were concealed inside a dark, collapsible
black hood that shielded the displays from extraneous
light. “This mist in the air is degrading
the IR, CAG. Maybe if we go lower.

“Strike, Shotgun is gonna make that pass
at a thousand feet.”

“Roger.”

Jake shoved the nose down. Only eighteen
miles to go. “Are you ready, Dog?”

“Uh … Yeah… . He’s a nice little
target, easy to see. System’s tight.” Reed
adjusted the presentations on the displays without
removing his head from the scope hood, while Jake
set the radar altimeter to give an aural warning
if he descended below 800 feet.

“Have you got the ECM on?” Jake could see that
the electronic countermeasures panel was still dark.

“Oh, shit. I forgot.”

Reed turned it on. It would take a while
to warm up. Better be safe than sorry,
Grafton decided, and dropped the left wing.
“Strike, Shotgun is doing a three-sixty
to get set up.”

“Jeeze, I’m sorry, CAG,” Reed said.
“I guess I got too busy.” He checked
all his switches again. Jake visually checked the
master armament switch to ensure that it was off and
examined the symbology on the Analog
Display Indicator (All), a televisionlike
screen mounted in the center of the panel in front of
him. This instrument had replaced the Vertical
Display Indicator of the A6-A and presented
all the information the pilot needed to fly the plane.
At the top of the presentation, compass headings moved
from left to right as the aircraft turned.

As Jake rolled out of the turn back on course
the ECM was on the line and gave them a visual and
audible warning of an X-band radar dead ahead.
Jake punched off two bundles of chaff and the
warnings flickered out. “What do they have that
transmits in X-band, Reed?”