The Edge of Honor (25 page)

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean that at all,” replied the captain. “It’s just that if both my principal evaluators jump out of bed every time something happens at night, I’ll have two zombies up here. Short of GQ, you let the other guy do it if you’re off watch. But now that you’re up, go back and take a look.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Brian left Combat. As he dropped down two ladders to the wardroom level, the 1MC came on again.

“AIRCRAFT TYPE IS AIR FORCE FOX FOUR; TWO SOULS ON BOARD; BEARING IS TWO NINER-TWO DEGREES MAGNETIC; RANGE, FIVE-SEVEN MILES, DESCENDING, INBOUND TO RED CROWN. EJECTION IS IMMINENT.

FLIGHT DECK IS PREPARING FOR EMERGENCY LAUNCH OF BIG MOTHER FIVE-THREE.

THE CLEMENTINE HELO WILL NOT, I REPEAT, NOT LAUNCH. LAUNCH WINDS WILL BE THREE TWO-ZERO RELATIVE AT THREE-ZERO KNOTS.

PITCH AND ROLL IS ZERO-ZERO. ALTIMETER IS TWO-NINER-DECIMAL-NINER-FIVE.”

Brian realized that the helo pilots were getting their launch brief via the 1MC rather than taking the time to come to Combat.

He let himself out onto the weather deck through the port breaks passageway hatch. He stopped immediately upon stepping out on deck as the hatch closed behind him with a bang in the stiff breeze. For a moment, he was totally blind. He could hear the rush of the sea along the ship’s sides and the whistle of the wind through the lifelines, but he could see nothing. He stood there, waiting for his eyes to develop some peripheral vision. Then he remembered his red flashlight, swore, pulled it out, and illuminated the deck walkway leading back to the after end of the ship. He had emerged on the same level as the flight deck but would have to climb two levels up to reach the gallery on top of the helo hangar overlooking the flight deck. He headed aft along the port side, walking through the midship replenishment station and the boat decks. As he made his way farther aft, he began to see the red glow of the flight-deck lights looming in the darkness and hear the sounds of the big SH-3 helicopter’s jet engines turning up. When he reached the port-side three-inch gun, he turned and began climbing a long vertical ladder that led to the top of the helo hangar. The wind rose in velocity as if trying to strip him off the flimsy aluminum ladder, which rattled with vibrations coming from the propellers.

Letting himself through the safety chains hung across the top of the ladder, he walked aft across the roof of the hangar and found himself with a bird’s-eye view of the flight deck below. With a start, he realized that he was also almost face-to-face with the whirling disk of the SH3’s rotor blades below and in front of him. Standing in the port-quarter corner of the lifelines surrounding the top of the hangar was Jack Folsom, his arms outstretched like a Christos, with red-colored light wands in each hand. Next to Folsom was a huge dark figure who had to be the chief boatswain. Folsom looked like a spaceman in the glow of the flight-deck lights. He had on a cranial helmet and full-face shield similar to the ones being worn by the helo crew, which protected his face and ears from the clattering roar of the helicopter below. The helmet headset also contained the LSO communications, a sound-powered phone circuit in one ear and the land launch radio circuit in the other.

Brian found himself holding his own fingers in his ears as he watched, his face buffeted by the wind coming over the bow and the occasional hot vortex of jet exhaust whipping up off the flight deck. Folsom and the chief were not aware of his presence in the darkness behind them as they concentrated on the launch.

On the flight deck below, firefighting crews crouched behind their hoses and foam nozzles on either side of the hangar, prepared for the worst. They were dressed out in steel helmets, heavy asbestos gauntlets, and goggles.

Right at the front of the port-side crew was the hot-suit man, dressed in an asbestos suit coated with highly reflective aluminum and carrying an access ax. If the helo caught fire on deck, it was his job to rush into the fireball and hack his way into the cockpit to rescue the pilots.

Brian waited while the helicopter turned up at full rpm, chained down to the deck with tie-downs and chocks in place, as the pilots completed an abbreviated prelaunch checklist. The aircraft’s navigation lights glowed along its fuselage and the bank of red lights shining down on the flight deck from the top of the hangar were reflected in the helo’s windshield like the multiple red facets on the eyes of some giant insect. An aircrewman crouched under each wheel mount; each wore a cranial set and held on to the chains that secured the wheels, his dungarees whipping in the down blast from the rotors.

Brian felt the ship steady up on the flight course, which was designed to put a thirty-knot wind diagonally over the flight deck from port to starboard, into which the helicopter could lift without forward motion.

Fplsom suddenly dropped his arms and the red wands in his hands went out. He squatted down and reached into a bag at his feet, pulled out two new wands, turned them on, revealing dim green lights, stood up, and again extended his arms. On the flight deck, the helicopter’s fuselage rotating red beacon came on and the pitch of the blades began to change.

Folsom, looking down over the railing, pointed the wands at the aircrewmen and made a sweeping motion by swinging his arms back and forth across each other. The aircrewmen, watching for the signal, unsnapped the chains and kicked the chocks away from the wheels. They scampered out from under the blades, keeping low, their arms full of tie-down chains, paused for an instant to show the chains to the pilots, ‘and then ducked under the partially closed hangar door in front of the helo. Folsom confirmed that they were clear, straightened his arms out again, and slowly lifted them up to a V. In response, the big white helicopter lifted off the deck and hovered momentarily about ten feet over the deck, close enough that through the windshield Brian could see the pilot’s legs working the controls.

Then the helo dipped to port and swooped across the port-side lifelines and buzzed away into the darkness, leaving behind a sudden silence and the stink of burned kerosene.

Brian took his fingers out of his ears. Folsom and the chief saw him at about the same moment and Folsom pulled the cranial off his head. Brian realized he could see perfectly well now that his eyes were night-adapted, aided by the red flight-deck spotlights. A small crowd of dark figures had appeared on the flight deck below. The fire crews remained onstation, relaxing into dark lumps amidst their firefighting gear.

“Sight-seein’, boss?” asked the chief.

“Yeah, Boats. One ME woke me up, so I thought I’d come watch. What happens next?”

Folsom answered, “Well, the controller in Combat will run Big Mother down the bearing of the guy in trouble and try to position the helo in the area where they punch out.”

“I heard the guy was on fire when I stopped through Combat,” Brian said.

Folsom was about to reply when there was a chorus of shouts from the flight deck below. Brian looked down and saw several arms pointing into the black sky to the west. Brian lifted his head in time to see a flickering glow up in the overcast that progressed in color from dark red through orange, its deadly significance emphasized by the absence of any sound other than that of the wind created by the ship’s own motion across the sea. The glowing cloud dimmed for an instant and then changed from orange to bright yellow before being extinguished in a flash of light that looked like heat lightning, followed moments later by a muffled thump.

“He ain’t flyin’ no more,” observed the chief.

“I just hope they had time to punch out,” said Folsom. He shook his head as if to acknowledge the low probability of the aircrew having had time to eject.

“Shit,” Brian said.

Folsom was staring down at the deck. He shook his head again. “Well,” he said, “we’ll be up here a while.

They’ll keep that helo out looking until they’re bingo fuel. Sometimes one of ‘em gets out. I’ve heard some real survival stories up here in the Gulf.”

“Bingo—meaning?”

“Bingo state means you have enough fuel to get back to the bird farm and land. When a guy’s bingo, he’s gotta beat feet for home plate.”

“I guess I’d better go get some coffee,” said Brian, glancing at his wristwatch.

“It’s almost time for my next watch.”

“Catch you on the phones, Mr. Holcomb.”

Brian made his way down to the wardroom to get a cup of soup and half a cheese sandwich, standard fare for midnight rations, or midrats, as it was called. The midnight-to-four watch was supposed to be relieved by 2345, which meant that the oncoming watch stander usually got up at 2300, held reveille on his face, stumbled down to the mess decks or the wardroom for something to eat and a cup of coffee, and then went to his watch station.

Enlisted turnovers took about a minute; for the evaluator in Combat, the process could take as long as an hour, depending upon what was going on.

Brian returned to Combat by 2330, and Austin spent the next twenty minutes handing over the watch as he reviewed what tracks were up over the Gulf, what enemy indications were active, what the carrier-flight cycles for the night entailed, the plan of the day for the next day, and the captain’s night orders. Since there were no strikes planned for the next twenty-four hours, the turnover was routine. Garuda Barry conducted the same turnover with Fox Hudson. The final part of the brief concerned the helo search for survivors from the Air Force reconnaissance F-4.

“Big Mother Five-three is out there in the area of the probable splash point,” said Austin, pointing down to the SWIC’s screen. “Although they reported seeing nothing of any size come down. There’s been no beeper, and nothing on the Guard frequency to indicate a survivor.

But they’ll conduct a directed search for another two hours or so, then they’ll have to come in.”

“I saw the fireball, or rather, its reflection.”

“Yes, well. Sometimes they get lucky. But usually what we find is some burned insulation, an oil slick, and a helmet filled with brains the next day. The helmets float, you see.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yes. You’ve heard the old saying, The aviators don’t earn any more money than the rest of the Navy with all that flight pay; they just earn it sooner. Any questions?”

“Who’s directing the search?”

“We’ve got one of the AICs directing; he’s using the surface console over there.”

“Will we launch the Clementine helo?”

“No. We would if we had had indications of an ejection or survivors—a beeper, flares, a call on Guard— something besides a fireball. For a long search, the SH Three is the bird of choice—they can set it down in the water if they have to, and they carry a bigger crew. And if they picked someone up while we had the Clem bird rolled out on deck, we’d have a clobbered deck until we could launch Clem. Sometimes getting a guy back to the ship quickly makes a big difference. So, no—Clem stays in the barn.”

“Got it.”

“This is Mr. Austin. Mr. Holcomb is the evaluator in Combat,” Austin announced.

“This is Mr. Holcomb, I have the evaluator watch,” announced Brian.

There was a chorus of

“Aye, aye, sir,” and, at a few minutes before midnight, Austin and Fox Hudson left Combat. They would be back at 0630 to resume the watch. Garuda fired up his first cigarette of the midwatch and reached for the large brown jar of aspirin tablets kept in a rack above the SWIC console.

“Headache already?” Brian asked, lowering himself into the evaluator’s chair.

“Yes, sir, midwatches always give me a pain.” Garuda popped two pills in his mouth and chewed them audibly.

“Jesus. You chew that shit?”

“Yes, sir. Then I wash it down with coffee and a -Csw smoke. Mouth tastes so bad after that, it keeps me awake for the first half of the mid; after that, it’s downhill.”

“I’m gonna stay awake just thinking about that.

Where’s that helo now?”

“Recommend you go over to surface and let them brief you on the search plan and everything. They’re operating on the twenty-mile scale, and I have to keep the two hundredand-fifty-mile scale here at SWIC. I collapse my picture, it takes me a while to get it back. The ole air side-surface side problem, remember?”

“Right. I forgot.” Brian walked over to surface, where Radarman First Class Rockheart had assumed the surface supervisor’s watch. Rocky walked him through the mechanics of the search pattern, an expanding square search around the most likely point of entry for the aircraft wreckage.

Brian was impressed by Rocky’s calm professionalism; Rockheart had a good reputation in the eyes of the wardroom officers.

“It doesn’t help that this guy went in at midnight,” Rockheart was saying. “If it was daylight, there’d be more aircraft out here looking, but at night, and with no indications they got out before it went bang, well …”

“Yeah. So they’ll do this square search until their fuel gets low, and that’ll be it?”

“They’ll come in for fuel and crew rest, then they’ll probably go back out at first light. We’ll hang around the area for the next few days—we’re still on the edge of our PIRAZ box, so it doesn’t cost us anything to hang around and keep an eye out.”

“And there were no last-minute transmissions before the guy blew up?”

“No, sir,” said the AIC. “Monty had him on Guard, steering him to Red Crown. Last thing the guy said was, “Descending out of angels threefive.’ He was already on fire then. The BARCAP came down on the deck for forty minutes after the guy went in, but they didn’t see anything and then they were bingo.”

Brian watched the little blob of video drive around the computer-generated lines on the scope for a few minutes and then returned to D and D. The captain called up for a status, but there was little to report.

Combat quieted down. Most of the surveillance and special-flight aircraft had gone home for the night, back to their bases in Vietnam, the Philippines, Guam, or Thailand. The status board said that one of the two carriers at Yankee Station was in stand-down mode for twenty-four hours to let the crew rest. The other was flying minimum sorties for missions such as the BARCAP station to the west of Hood’s station. The weather messages told the tale: There had been heavy fog for the past week over the North, especially in the target-rich Red River Valley. The carrier strikes were suspended until the next front swept out of China and blew away the fog.