Final Flight (17 page)

The air ops officer sat on the vinyl couch where
he could see it all and dictate orders to his
assistant, who sat in front of him at a desk
surrounded by a battery of intercom boxes and
telephones. The room was dark except for a
minuscule light over the desk and red lights that
illuminated the yellow words and numbers on the
status boards. Behind the couch where the heavies sat,
junior officers from each of the squadrons with
planes aloft stood shoulder to shoulder. They were there
to give advice and answer questions, if asked.

The status boards tonight listed twelve
airplanes to launch and thirteen to recover.

“How’s tricks?” Jake asked Walker when
he finally got off the telephone.

“Terrible. There’s about fifteen knots of wind and
it’s shifted sixty degrees in the last hour.
We’ve meandered all over compass trying to get it
down the deck.” On the bridge the
officer-of-the-deck would be ordering course changes as
he chased the wind. This would cause havoc
with the air controllers’ efforts to stack, or marshal,
the planes to be recovered aft of the ship, somewhere
near the final recovery bearing.

No one knew what the final bearing would be.

“And Five Oh Six hasn’t checked in
to Marshal yet.” Jake glanced at the status
board again. 506, Majeska. No fuel state was
given. Majeska was the commanding officer of the A-6
Intruder squadron.

Jake stood. “I’m going next door.” As
he walked away he heard the assistant air ops
officer on the phone to Captain James.

The adjoining compartment housed the radar displays,
communications equipment, and status boards to control
airborne aircraft. The scopes cast an eerie
green light on the faces of the specialists who
sat before them. Dim red lights shone down from the
ceilings. A senior chief petty officer wearing a
headset that allowed him to listen to all the radio
transmissions walked back and forth behind the scopes,
listening and looking and Occasionally issuing an order.
The senior chief was a chain-smoker who carried his
own ashtray. Consequently the area near the door was
a haven for refugees from the clear air of the air
ops compartment next door. Here in the inner
sanctum amid the comcopes the smoke wafted about
visibly, alternately green and red, swirled
constantly by the ineffectual air-conditioning.

The conversations between the airborne pilots and the
controllers came over a loudspeaker and provided the
background noise. The same conversations could also be
heard next door, in air ops.

The chief saw Jake standing near the door and
came over, his headset cord trailing after him.
“Where’s Five Oh Six?”

The chief led Jake to one of the radar consoles,
where together they stared at the large scope, searching for the
coded blip of Majeska’s aircraft. Jake
fumbled in his shirt pocket for his glasses. Even
with the display expanded to show the airspace within a
fifty-mile radius of the ship, the correct blip
wasn’t there. “We’ve been calling him for ten
minutes,” the chief said to Jake. “Ask Strike
if they hold him,” the chief told the controller.

The sailor did as ordered. The chief listened
to the conversation. The strike controller hadn’t talked
to the A-6Every for almost fifteen minutes.

He broadcast the Intruder’s call sign over
the air several times, but received no reply.

“Could he be just outside the range of your
radar?” Jake asked. “No, sir. And Combat
doesn’t hold him either.” The operators in CDC
would be querying the NTDS computer. “Skin paint?”
If the aircraft’s IFF gear had
malfunctioned, it was no longer coding the radar energy
it received and broadcasting it back to the ship. The
shipboard radars could also look at raw blips-that
is, uncoded energy bouncing off the skin of the
aircraft.

“No, sir. We tried. We can’t find him up
there.” Jake felt the swoosh and thud of a
catapult firing. He glanced at the monitor.
The launch had started.

An officer stepped up to Jake’s elbow.
“Sir, Commander Walker wants you.” Jake
thanked the chief and followed the lieutenant through the
smoke.

Walker had a telephone to his ear when Jake
sat down. “A Greek freighter called on the
commercial net. Says he thinks a plane crashed
near his ship about twenty minutes ago. You want
to go over to Combat and see what they know?”

“Yeah.” Jake heaved himself up. Every eye in the
place was on him. He walked out, feeling very
tired. The door to Combat was only forty
feet or so forward, on the same starboard 0-3
level passageway as CATCC. As Jake
walked he could feel catapult pistons thudding
into the water brakes. More airplanes aloft.

The NTDS computer consoles and their operators were
scattered all over the compartment. The watch officer,
a lieutenant, was also sucking on a cigarette.
Jake wanted one so badly he could taste it.

“Any sign of survivors?”

“The freighter hasn’t found any.”

“What was that plane doing out there?”

“Surface surveillance. Their last
transmission was that they were going to check out that
freighter that’s in the vicinity. The freighter says
it is looking for survivors, but it can’t find any.
We’re sending the fighters that just launched to that
position to orbit overhead. Maybe they’ll hear a
survival radio or see a flare.”

The two men discussed the situation; the location of the
destroyer steaming toward the crash site, how long the
fighters could hold overhead, the estimated time men
route of the helicopter which would be launched from the
carrier in a few minutes, when the current
recovery was complete. Jake called his deputy
air wing commander, Harry March.

When he arrived the recovery was in full swing and the
compartment vibrated as the planes smashed down on the
flight deck, which was the ceiling of all the 0-3
level compartments. Jake and March went out in the
passageway and walked the fifty feet to the strike
ops office, whose denizens wrote the daily air
plan, the document that created missions for the ship’s
aircraft. A plan for a wreckage and personnel
search at first light by air-wing aircraft was quickly
put together as the strike operations officer conferred on
the telephone with the admiral’s operations officer.
Everyone, Jake reflected, had a finger in the
pie.

“This would have to happen just before going into port,” one
of the strike ops officers said glumly. “Is that
chopper still on deck?”

“Yes sir.” Everyone looked at the monitor.
The chopper was spreading its rotors. “Harry,
tell Walker to hold that chopper on deck until
I get there,” Jake said. “I’m going with them. In
the meantime, I want you to get all the people you need,
right now, and check out the liquid-oxygen system of every
A-6 on this boat. And check all the lox
servicing gear. If any of those systems are
contaminated, seal them.”

March nodded. “I’m going to get on that chopper.”

Jake borrowed a filthy flight suit in
flight deck control and dashed across the flight deck
toward the waiting helicopter, an SH-3 Sea
Knight. The men around it began breaking down the
tie-down chains when they saw him coming. The breeze
down the flight deck was brisk and the sky clear. The
first pale hint of the coming dawn was just visible in the
east.

Inside the chopper, one of the two rescue
crewmen passed him a helmet which trailed a long
black electrical lead. He pulled it on and the
crewman plugged the end of the lead into a socket on
the forward bulkhead. Now he could hear the pilot and
copilot running through the pretakeoff checklist.
Jake sat on the floor and wiggled into the flight
suit, pulling it on over his uniform. Then he
donned an inflatable life vest which the second
crewman passed to him.

Even with the helmet, the noise level was
extremely high as the helicopter lifted off and
transitioned to forward flight. Out the open door,
Jake saw the lights on the bow of the ship pass from
view. Then there was nothing to see in the
featureless darkness of night sea and sky. He
motioned to the crewman who had given him the helmet
and, when he was close enough, shouted in his ear. “How
long until we reach the crash site?”

The crewman spoke into his lip mike and
Jake heard the answer from the cockpit. An hour
and twenty minutes. As the crewmen closed the
sliding side door to improve cruising
aerodynamics Jake found a kapok life vest
to lay his head on and tried to relax. He gnawed a
fingernail already into the quick from too much chewing and half
listened to the cockpit crew chanting the litany of the
post takeoff checklist on the ICS. Why in the
name of God had Bull Majeska crashed, a man
with three thousand hours in jets, over twenty-five
hundred in A-6’s? What could have gone wrong?
Was the wreckage afloat or had it gone down?
Could it be recovered?

Disgusted at himself for his impatience, he finally
spit out the fragments of fingernail and forced himself
to close his eyes and breathe regularly.

After ten minutes he gave up trying to sleep and
stood behind the pilot and copilot where he could see the
flight instruments. He exchanged pleasantries
with the crew as the dawn chased the stars away
and gradually revealed the restless gray sea and
blueing sky.

The new day had completely arrived when the radio
gave them the news.

One of the orbiting jets had located a
survivor. He was talking on the radio. It was
Bull Majeska.

“Ask them to ask Majeska if the bombardier
ejected.” The chopper pilot spoke into his
mike. In a moment he turned back to Jake.
“The pilot doesn’t know, sir.”

“Tell the guys in the jets to search for the second
man. And tell them to be careful. I don’t want
anyone to fly into the water on a search-and-rescue.”

“I see you,” the tinny voice on the radio
shouted. “I’m gonna pop a smoke.” Orbiting
jets overhead had guided the helicopter toward
Bull Majeska in his life raft.

“There he is!” The copilot pointed toward
eleven o’clock. A trace of orange smoke was just
visible rising from the surface of the water. The
swells were running three to four feet, and there was enough
wind to break a whitecap occasionally. From a thousand
feet up you could just see the tops of the low mountains of
Cyprus peeping above the northern
horizon and the superstructure of the freighter, hull
down to the east.

The helicopter pilot approached the little raft
from downwind, flying about forty feet above the water,
coming up the trail of orange smoke toward the tiny
bobbing figure. Jake moved back into the cargo
compartment and watched the hoist operator run the
orange horse-collar down toward the sea. The
rescue swimmer in full wetsuit adjusted his
goggles and leaned out the open door. He would only
go into the sea if the survivor could not get into the
horse-collar.

Majeska had trouble getting out of his raft, so the
helicopter sagged toward the water and the swimmer
slipped out of the door. In less than two minutes
the crewman pulled Majeska onto the floor of the
cargo area and Jake helped get the collar off
him. He was so exhausted he just lay there streaming
water.

“Did Reed get out?” Jake shouted. “I
don’t know.”

Jake helped Majeska out of his survival
gear and wrapped him in a dry blanket. When the
swimmer was back aboard, he gave him a
blanket too.

“CAG,” the helicopter pilot called on the
ICS. Jake leaned into the cockpit.

“There’s no sign of the other guy and we’re
running low on fuel, CAG.

We’re going to have to break off and get back.
There’s another chopper on its way here.” He
jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That guy may need
medical attention.”

“Has anyone spotted the wreckage?”

“An A-6 has spotted a few pieces.
The destroyer will be here in about three hours and they will
pick up everything they can find.”

“How come that freighter didn’t wait around
until dawn and help look for survivors?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell one of the guys upstairs to make a low
pass over it and get some pictures. Then let’s
get back to the carrier.” Jake went back to check
on Majeska. “Are you hurt?” Jake shouted at
Majeska over the noise.

“Don’t think so.

“What happened?” He was referring to the crash.
Bull Majeska shook his head. “Don’t know.
I blacked out.”

“Did Reed eject before you did?”
Since the A-6 lacked command ejection, each
crewman must eject himself.

“Don’t know. I didn’t hear him on the
radio when I was in the water. I called and
called.”

Jake wrapped another blanket around the shivering
A-6 pilot. He stood in the door and looked
at the gray ocean, thinking about the bombardier and
watery death. Later the crewman derigged the hoist
and shut the side door.

Doctor Hartman hovered over the patient,
listening to his lungs and heart. They were in a
two-man room in sickbay, but the second bed was
empty. Majeska had already been X-rayed and had
urinated into a bottle.

Now he was sitting on the side of the bed.

“So just exactly what happened?” Jake asked.
“Like I said, CAG, I don’t really know. We
were making a low pass by that freighter and the next thing
I knew, I was in the water. I don’t know if the
ejection seat fired when the plane hit the water or
whether the plane broke up on impact and tossed
me out. I just don’t know! And I don’t know if
Reed got out.”

“Were you in the seat when you came to?”

“No. My life vest was inflated and there were
parachute shroud lines everywhere. I had to cut my
way out of them and get my raft deployed.

Jeez, I haven’t worked that hard in years, and
I swallowed a couple gallons of salt water.
I must have cut every shroud line three times.”

The life vest, Jake knew, had two carbon
dioxide cartridges that automatically activated
when immersed in salt water and inflated the vest. But
the parachute should have deployed only if the ejection
seat had fired.