Final Flight (18 page)

“Did you see the freighter after you were in the water?
They said they looked for survivors.”

“I saw it. But I was so wrapped in shroud
lines I couldn’t get my flares out for a while. And
when I finally did, they left anyway. At least
I think they did; after the first flare burned out I
spent at least a half hour trying to get into the
raft, puking my guts out all the while. There were
shroud lines everywhere and the raft kept getting hung
up. I kept thinking the parachute might pull me
under. I was flailing away with that shroud cutter and
swallowing water and heaving my guts.”

“CAG,” Doctor Hartman said, “I can’t
finish this examination with you two talking. Could
you…”

“Come back after a bit, Doc,” Jake said.
The doctor opened his mouth, thought better of whatever
he was going to say, and left the room, closing the
door behind him.

Jake sat on the other bed, facing Bull. “I
don’t believe you,” he said.

Majeska set his jaw. “Just what the hell do you
mean by that?”

“I mean I don’t believe you. I think you know
a lot more than you’re telling and I want to hear it.
Now.”

“You’re calling me a liar.”

“Don’t you puff up on me, you sonuvabitch.
There’s one man dead and a thirty-six
million-dollar airplane at the bottom of the
ocean. Now I want the whole fucking truth.”

Majeska lowered his gaze. “There’s nothing we can
do to bring Reed back,” he said softly.

“I want it all, Bull. Now.”

“I’ve said everything I’m gonna say to you,
Jake. I’ve told you how it happened. Now
I’ll tell it again to the accident board, but I’m not
saying anything more to you. Sir.”

“I’m your boss, Bull. I write your fitness report.
That accident report will come to me for my comment
before it goes off this ship.”
Jake took a deep breath. “You idiot, I’m
responsible for all these airplanes and every swinging
dick that gets in them. I don’t want any more people
dead.” Majeska’s face was covered with a fine sheen
of perspiration and he was biting his lip. “I’m not here
to just chew on your ass. If you fucked up, you
fucked up. But I need the truth!”

“You already have the truth, sir.” Bull Majeska
said at last. Jake rose and walked out of the room.

Will Cohen was waiting for him in the CAG office,
along with Harry March.

“We checked out all the liquid-oxygen servicing
equipment and the lox system in the A-6’s,
CAG. Couldn’t find anything wrong, except one
A-6 had a leaky seal. We downed it for that.
Take a couple hours to fix.”

“One leaky seal. Could a seal leak have
contaminated the system?”

“No way.” Cohen shook his head.

“Do every other airplane on this ship. And have the
senior parachute rigger check every oxygen mask on
this boat.”

“Gee whiz, CAG. If some fighter puke
has a mask that wasn’t inspected when it
should have been, that doesn’t have anything to do with why
Majeska crashed.”

Jake just looked at Cohen.

“You want it, you got it, Toyota,” Cohen
said and made for the door.

Jake headed for his office. “What do you have,
Harry?”

“Photos of that Greek freighter, the Aegean
Argos. It seems she probably came from a
North African port and is on her way
to Beirut now.

She’s headed in that direction at twelve
knots. Making plenty of smoke.” When Jake was
behind his desk, March tossed the photos in front of
him.

Jake examined them. There were no visible
weapons, but the deck cargo was covered with a
tarpaulin. “What do the Air Intelligence guys
say about this?”

“They say there are no visible weapons.

“Send off a message. Somebody should check that
ship out when it docks.”

“Beirut isn’t New York. The port
authorities aren’t going to be falling over each
other trying to help us.

“I know that. And I know that half the people in
Lebanon are probably on the CIA payroll
or would like to be. Send the message.”

“You think maybe the Argos shot Majeska
down?”

“I don’t know what to think. Maybe they nailed
him with a hand-held missile or a machine gun
mounted on a rail. Maybe a wing fell off,
catastrophic failure. It’s happened before.
Maybe the plane just blew up. I don’t have the
foggiest. Bull says he blacked out and came
to in the water. One thing is sure, the captain of that
freighter didn’t want to give us a real close
look in the daytime. It’s almost as if he started
to look for survivors, then realized if he found
any we’d come aboard to get them, so he sailed
away.

“A real nice guy.”

“There’s a lot of them here in the Med. Majeska
says he had a flare going and the freighter left
anyway. They should have seen him. There wasn’t that much
of a sea running and visibility was good. Go talk
to the strike ops guys. And see what the admiral
thinks of all this.”

“I’m on my way.

As the officer departed, Farnsworth came to the
door. “Admiral Parker wants to see you, at
your convenience.”

“What about?” Farnsworth had probably been
talking to the yeoman in the admiral’s office. The
yeomen usually knew more about what was going on than the
officers did.

“That little shindig you have planned tonight in the
wardroom.”

Jake had forgotten. After every at-sea period he
liked to get all the aviators together in the
wardroom. The LSO’S gave out cates to the crew
with the best boarding average and the catapult officers
put on a little skit about the worst mistake they had
witnessed on the flight deck.

Tonight Admiral Parker was supposed to present
centurion patches to the crews that had logged a
hundred landings aboard this ship. And he had asked
Cowboy to participate in a skit. He had also
forgotten about the skit.

“That will have to wait. Since the skipper of the A-
squadron had the crash, I think I’ll
probably have to convene the accident board.”

Normally the commanding officer of the squadron that had
the crash convened the board.

Farnsworth held up his hand. He stepped out the
door and returned with a large, black binder, which he
laid on Jake’s desk. Farnsworth opened the
binder to the accident instruction. Between the pages was a
draft of the appointing order for Jake’s
approval.

Jake looked it over. It was complete, except
for the names of the officers who would do the investigation.
Jake gave Farnsworth the names. “Type them
in. You know, someday you and I are going to have to trade
jobs for a day or two. I want to see if I know
as much about running an air wing as you do.”

“Thanks anyway, sir. But I just type.”

“Any ideas on the A-6 crash?” Cowboy
Parker asked. He was seated in his raised easy
chair on the left side of the flag bridge. From this
vantage point, he could see the activity on the
flight deck without rising from the chair. A stack of
paperwork lay on the window ledge in front of him.

Jake told him what Majeska had said. “I
think he’s probably lying,” Jake concluded.
“We’ve checked these lox systems from here to Sunday
and they’re perfect. Jelly Dolan may have had the
oxygen system in his Tomcat go out on him, but I
don’t think Bull did. The
probability of that happening twice without
defective shipboard oxygen equipment is
astronomical.”

“And you’re damn sure the shipboard equipment
is okay?”

“Positive.”

“Did you tell Majeska you think he’s lying?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“And he stuck to his story.” Cowboy Parker
cocked his head and scratched it. “So if he lets
it lay like this, he’ll get hammered in the accident
report. And he knows you’ll rip him on his fitness
report.

He might even be relieved of his command. He’s
finished in the navy.

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Yet for him that’s preferable to telling the truth.”
Jake held both hands out. “If he’s lying.”

“What the hell could he have done in that cockpit?”

“It’s probably something he didn’t do.”

“But what?”

Jake shrugged helplessly.

“If you know he’s lying, why don’t you relieve
him now?”

“I don’t know anything. I have a hunch
he probably is. He even hinted he was. But
you don’t can a guy on hints or hunches.”

“We have a missing bombardier. What’s his name?
Reed? He’s undoubtedly dead. I expect some
answers. We aren’t going to flush this down the john
and go on our merry way.” Cowboy Parker’s face
was devoid of emotion. “If you can’t get the truth
out of Majeska, you send him up here to me.

“Give me some time, Admiral.”

Cowboy turned his face toward the deck below.
Sailors in blue and yellow jerseys were busy
moving aircraft. The snorting of the flight deck
tractors was inaudible this high in the island.

“Has the Wedel recovered any of the
wreckage?”

“Some skin panels. A piece of the radome.
Half a flap.”

“What do you want me to do in this skit of yours
tonight?”

“Let’s cancel the skit. I’m fresh out of
chuckles. Just plan on presenting those centurion
patches. Maybe make a few remarks.”

Cowboy picked up a document from the stack on the
ledge. “See you there.”

“Yes sir.” Jake saluted.

Jake stopped in a berthing compartment on the 0-3
level, aft of the arresting gear machinery spaces.
The passageway went right through the compartment, which berthed over eighty men. In one small area where two
passageways met, the sailors in their underwear
sat on folding chairs around a metal cruise
box, playing cards. Jake leaned against a bunk
support and watched the game. Several of the men
acknowledged his presence with a nod, then ignored him.
This was their territory and he was a senior officer,
an outsider.

The air was musty, laden with the tang of sweaty
bodies and dirty clothes. Air circulation in here
was impeded by the curtains that isolated the various
bunks. The place resembled an old rail-
road Pullman car. In the last few years the
upper echelons of the navy had devoted much thought
to improving habitability in sailors’ berthing
compartments and getting rid of these curtains, yet the
curtains remained. A curtain on his bunk was
all the privacy a sailor had. Only in his
bunk could a man write a letter or read a
magazine without someone looking over his shoulder.

Soft music came from one of the top bunks. A
male voice sang slowly, clearly, It
was way past midnight, And she still couldn’t fall
asleep, This night her dream was leaving, She’d
tried so hard to keep, And with the new day’s dawning,
She felt it drifting away, Not only for a
cruise Not only for a day.

“Turn that damn thing Off’ Willis, you jerk.”
The speaker was one Of the cardplayers, about twenty, with
intense eyes and sandy hair that needed trimming.

“I live here too, Ski,” came the voice from
the bunk. The piano was light and haunting.

Too long ago, too long apart, She couldn’t
wait another day for The captain of her heart.

“Don’t you have earphones for that blaster?” called
the black man seated beside the sandy-haired guy.

“Yeah.”

“Then either use them or turn the damn thing off’
man. We don’t want to listen to that crap.” The
saxophone wailed plaintively.

As the day came up she made a start, She
stopped waiting another day for The captain of her
heart.

“I ain’t gonna ask you again, Willis,” the
black man said ominously.

The music died abruptly. “Who’s dealing the
fucking cards?”

An endless army of small clouds drifted across
the face of the sea.

Jake stood on the forward edge of the flight deck
with his hands in his pockets and braced himself against the
motion of the ship’s bow as she met the swells. The
clouds were puffy and white and cast crisp shadows that
turned the water a darker, deep in- tense blue
that was almost black. The clouds and shadows moved from
starboard to port, spanking along in a stiff
breeze.

The Mediterranean under an infinite sky with the
clouds and shadows cast by a brilliant sun-this had
been the inspiration for poets and singers ever since the
days of Homer, and probably even before.
Odysseus had sailed these waters on his way
home from Troy, as had Phoenician galleys,
Roman traders. This ocean was the living heart of
Western civilization. And now another man lay beneath
the waters in a sailor’s grave. Twenty-three
years in the navy, nine cruises, one war-he had
seen it and lived it so many times. Flight deck
accidents, crashes, lives twisted and smashed and
snuffed out — . — bloody threads woven into this
tapestry of young men far from home, young men
trying to grow up in a man’s world.

And what of you, Jake Grafton? Have you made
a contribution? Has the price you paid made a
difference? To whom? What have you done that another
couldn’t have done in your place? Tired and
depressed, he walked over to the port side and
went down the short ladder into the catwalk. At the
forwardmost portion of the catwalk was a mount for a set
of binoculars which a lookout could use when the ship
entered or left port, or in foul weather. He
leaned against the binocular mount and watched the loud
shadows move across the whitecaps. Being a navy
wife had not been easy for Callie. She had
grown up in a family where the father had come home every
night, where the rituals of dinner and socializing with
neighbors and colleagues and going to church on
Sunday had all been complied with. Married
to Jake, the only rituals scrupulously
observed were good-byes and homecomings. Not that he and
Callie had ever really had a home, of course,
what with two years here and two years there.

Maybe he would have left the navy if there had
been children. They had wanted children, and it never happened.
It was in the third year of their marriage that they
decided to have a child. After six months of
contraceptives, they had consulted a doctor.
Jake recalled the experience vividly, since he
had been required to take a bottle to the restroom
and masturbate into it. Never In his life had he
felt less interested in sex than he had at that
moment, with his wife on the other side of the door and
fully aware of what was going on in here.