The Intruders (13 page)

After checking the cockpit altitude-stable at 10,000 feet-Jake took his
mask off and hung it on the left side mirror on the canopy rail. He
swabbed the sweat off his face.

The planes were in parade formation, only about fifteen feet from the
cockpit to the wing tip of the next man. Flying this close to another
plane was work, but Jake Grafton enjoyed it. The restless air always
affected the planes differently as they sliced through it, so constant
adjustments were required from the wingman. The lead just flew his own
machine.

If you were the wingman, you kept the wing tip of the lead plane just
below and behind the canopy. This look must be maintained with
continuous small adjustments of stick and throttles, occasionally
rudder. If you did it right, you could hang here no matter what the
lead plane was doing flying straight and level, banking, climbing,
diving, executing wingovers, loops; whatever.

Jake settled in and concentrated. Doing this on a sunny morning in
clear, fairly calm air was merely drill. Doing it on a stormy, filthy
night with the planes bouncing in turbulence over an angry ocean
demanded a high level of skill and confidence. With an emergency and a
low reading on the fuel gauge, your ability to hang on someone’s wing be
came your lifeline.

Bartow was motioning him out. A pushing motion.

“We’re opening it up,” he told Flap, who glanced at Bar tow, then gave
the identical signal to Harrison, on Jake’s right wing.

When he had opened the gap to about sixty or seventy feet, Jake
stabilized and checked Harrison, He looked at the skipper’s wingman, on
the skipper’s left wing. Everybody about right. Okay.

Flap had written down all the scores and now he was tallying them,
figuring each crew’s CEP–circular error prob able. He did this by
finding the sixth best hit. Half the bombs would hit within a circle
with this radius.

In the skipper’s cockpit Bartow was looking at his radar.

Jake glanced at the mileage readout on the radar repeater between his
legs: 126. Then his eyes flicked across the instrument panel. Airspeed
295 indicated, altitude 20,040 feet, warning lights out, hydraulic
pressures okay. Fuel-about 7,600 pounds remaining.

He looked straight ahead, saw nothing, then glanced again across that
gap toward Bartow.

He had his eyes focused on Bartow when an F-4 Phanton, crossed his line
of vision. Between him and the skipper.

Flashed by going in the opposite direction, and at the same time another
Phantom went by the skipper’s left side, between him and his wingman.

They were there only long enough to register on Jake’s brain, then they
were gone. The A-6 jolted as it flew into the edges of the wash of the
Phantom’s wings. -What was that?” Flap asking, raising his head and
looking around. ,You Jake grabbed his oxygen mask and snapped it
someone’t believe this,” he said on the ICS, “but a Phantom just went
between us and the skipper. And another went down the skipper’s left
side, between him and Digman.”

“What?”

“Yeah, a flight of Phantoms just went through our flight.

I shit you not. The skipper went between the lead and his wingman and
one of them went between us and the skipper.

We missed by inches.”

Jake stared across the gap that separated him from Bartow. Bartow was
looking back at him. Had he seen the F-4s?

“If we had been still in parade formation,” Jake told Flap, “you and me
would be tapping on the pearly gates right now-,, Say the fighters were
also going 300 indicated-that’s a closing speed of 600 knots indicated,
over 8W knots true, Almost a thousand miles per hour!

He had looked straight ahead just a second or two before they got
here-and seen nothing But they were there, coming head-on, like guided
missiles.

And he didn’t see them. Of course the distance was over a half mile two
seconds before they arrived, but still … He should have seen
something He broke into a sweat. His mouth and lips were dry. He tried
to swallow.

At those speeds, if his plane had collided with that phantom …

He wouldn’t have felt a thing. Not a single thing. He would have been
just instantly dead, a spot of grease trapped in the exploding fireball.

“Well, Ace,” Flap said, “you will be delighted to hear we have a
fifty-foot CEp.”

Jake tried to reply but couldn’t.

“If World War III Comes, You and I will be among the very first to die,”
Flap informed him. “How about them apples? We’ve earned it.”

Those Phantoms–he wondered if the Pilots of the fighters had even seen
the A-6s.

“Gives you goose bumps, hub? Ain’t life something else?”

“Did anybody see those Phantoms?” Jake asked Silence. Blank looks- They
were debriefing the’flight in the ready room. Seven blank faces.

“YOU mean I was the only one to see them?”

Later, in the solitude of his stateroom’, he thought about miracles.
About how close to the abyss he had come, how many times. What was that
quote–.Something about if you stared into tile abyss long enough, the
abyss stared back.

That was true. He could feel it staring back just now.

No one doubted his word when he told them about the fighters. But 110
one else had seen them.

TO be told later that you had a close call was like learning that Your
mother had difficulty when you were born. It Meant nothing- YOU
shrugged and went on.

The Phantoms must have been from this ship. That was easy enough to
check. He examined the air Plan and found the fighter squadron that had
the target time immediately after the A-6 outfit, then paid a visit to
their ready room.

“Hey, did any Of YOU guys have a near midair today?

Anybody almost trade paint with four A-6s? On your way into the
target?”

They stared at him like he was a grotesque apparition, a leering
reminder of their own mortality. No one had seen anything. All must
have been looking elsewhere, thinking of something else, because unless
they were looking in exactly the right place, they would have missed it.
Just as the other seven Intruder crewmen had.

Here in his stateroom he worked out the math. An F-4 was about fifty
feet long. At a combined speed of 800 knots it would pass the eye in
thirty-seven thousandths of a second. Less than an eye blink.

When death comes, she will come quick.

But you’ve always known that, Jake Grafton.

He got out of his chair and examined his face in the mirror over the
sink. The face in the glass stared back blankly.

“A ship under way is a very difficult target,” Jake said.

Lieutenant Colonel Haldane didn’t reply. He knew as well as Jake did
that once free-falling bombs were released, a well-conned ship would
turn sharply. Probably into the wind, although the attacker certainly
couldn’t count on that.

“Ideally we should drop as close to the ship as possible to minimize the
time he has to turn,” Jake said. Such a choice would also minimize the
effect of any errors in the computer, errors in velocity, drift angle,
altitude, etc.

“That would be the ideal,” Haldane agreed, “but it wouldn’t be sman to
get all our airplanes shot down trying for the perfect attack. We’re
going to have to pick an attack that maximizes our chances of hitting
yet gives us a halfdecent chance of getting to the drop point. Let’s
look again at the weapons envelopes we’ll have to penetrate.”

Jake was briefing the skipper on the progress of the planning efforts
under way in the air wing offices. He had been attending these meetings
for several days. Now he spread out several graphs he had constructed
and explained them to his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Haldane.

As the attackers approached a Soviet task force, the first weapons that
they would face would be SA-N-3 Goblet missiles , which could engage
them up to twenty miles away at altitudes between 150 and 80,000 feet.
These Mach 2.5 missiles would probably be fired in pairs, the second one
following the first by a few seconds. Then the launcher would be
reloaded and another pair fired-each launcher had the capacity to shoot
thirty-six missiles, The, number of launchers present would depend on
the makeup of the task group, but for Planning Purposes figure there
were ten. That’s a possible 360 missiles in the air.

The next threat would be encountered at a range of nine or ten miles,
when the attackers Penetrated the envelop of the Mach 3.5 SA-N-1 Goa
missiles. The weak point in the Goa system was the fire control
director, which could engage only one target at a time. Yet since the
missiles were carried I twin launchers, Presumably two would be fired at
the target, the” a second target could be acquired while the launcher
was reloaded. The magazine capacity for each launcher was sixteen
missiles. Unfortunately the Soviets Placed these weapons on destroyers
as well as Kynda and Kresta cruisers, so one could expect a lot of
launchers. plan for twenty and we have another possible 320 missiles to
evade.

If our harried attack crews were still alive seven miles from the
target, they would enter the envelope of the Mach 2+ SA-N-4, This weaDon
was alSoftred from twin launchers, each with a magazin capacity of
twenty missiles. Figure a task group with twenty launchers and we have
a possible 400 Missiles of this tv . Pe Finally, after a weapons
release, the attacker could expect surviving ships to fire a cloud of
SA-N-5 Grail heat-seeking Missiles, the naval version of the Soviet
Armys Strela.

carried a one-kilogram warhead over a slant range of only 4.4 kilometers
and needed a good hot tailpipe signature to guide, but just one up your
tailpipe would ruin your day.

Within the Grail envelope the attacker could expect to see dozens in the
air.

Yet missiles were only half the story. There would also be flak, an
extraordinary amount of it. Soviet ships bristled with guns, The larger
guns would fire first, as soon as the attacking force came in range. As
the distance between the attackers and the defenders closed, the smaller
calibers would open fire.

The smaller the gun, the faster the rate of fire, so as the range
closed, the sheer volume of high explosive in the air would increase
exponentially. In close, that is within a mile and a quarter, the
attacker would fly into range of sixbarreled 30-mm Gatling guns, each
capable of firing at a sustained rate of a thousand rounds per minute or
squirting bursts of up to three times that volume.

“Since I started putting this data together,” Jake told the colonel,
“I’ve become a big fan of attack submarines.”

“Why don’t you say what you really think?”

“Yes, sir. Attacking a Soviet task group with free-fall bombs will be a
spectacular way to commit suicide.”

“If the balloon goes up, we’ll go when we’re told to go, suicide or
not.”

“Yessir.”

“So we had better have a realistic plan, just in case.”

“The air wing is planning Alpha strikes. Two strikes, Blue and Gold,
half the planes on each one.” An Alpha strike was a maximum effort, with
fighters escorting the attackers and the entire gaggle diving the target
in close order. The ideal was to get all the bombs on target and
everyone exiting the area within sixty seconds.

“Okay,” Colonel Haldane said.

“that will only work on a daytime, good weather launch,” Jake continued.
“In my opinion, skipper, we can figure on losing half our planes on each
strike.”

Haldane didn’t say anything.

“At night or in bad weather, they’ll just send the A-6s.

We’re the only planes with the capability.”

STEAM CAT”ULTS MAKE MODERN AIRCRAFT CARRIERS pOSS1_ able. Invented by
the British during World War II, catapults freed designers from the
necessity of building naval aircraft that could rise from the deck under
their own power after a run Of Only three hundred feet. So wings could
shrink and be swept as the physics Of high speed aerodynamics required,
jet engines that were most efficient at high speeds could be installed,
and airfiames could be designed that would 90 supersonic or lift
tremendous quantities of fuel ‘Ind weapons. A luxury for most of the
carrier planes of World War II, the catapult now was an absolute
requirement.

The only part of the catapult that can be seen on the flight deck is the
shuttle to which aircraft are attached. This shuttle sticks up from a
slot in the deck that runs the length of the catapult. The catapult
itself lies under the slot and consists Of two tubes eighteen inches in
diameter arranged side by side like the barrels of a double-barreled
shotgun.

Inside each tube–or barrel–is a Piston. There is a gap at the lop of
each barrel through which a steel lattice mates the two Pistons
together, and to which the shuttle on deck attaches.

The Pistons are hauled aft mechanically into battery by a little cart
called a “grab.” Once the pistons are in battery, the aircraft is
attached to the shuttle, either by a linkage on the nose gear of the
aircraft in the cm of the A-6 and A-7, or by a bridle made of steel
cable in the case of the F-4 and RA-5. Then the slack in the bridle or
nose-tow linkage is taken out by pushing the pistons forward
hydraulically-this movement is called “taking tension.”

Once the catapult is tensioned and the aircraft is at full power with
its wheel brakes off, the firing circuit is enabled when the operator
pushes the “final ready” button.

Firing the catapult is then accomplished by opening the launch valves,
one behind each tube, simultaneously, which allows superheated steam to
enter the barrels behind the pistons.

The amount of acceleration given to each aircraft must be varied
depending on the type of aircraft being launched, its weight, the amount
of wind over the deck, and the outside air temperature. This is
accomplished by one of two methods. Either the steam pressure is kept
constant and the speed of opening of the launch valves is varied, or the
launch valves are always opened at the same rate and the pressure of the
steam in the accumulators is varied. Aboard Columbia, the steam
pressure was varied and the launch valves were opened at a constant
rate.

Although the launch valves open quickly, they don’t open
instantaneously. Consequently steam pressure rising on the back of the
pistons must be resisted until it has built up sufficient pressure to
move the pistons forward faster than the aircraft could accelerate on
its own. This resistance is provided by a shear bolt installed in the
nose gear of the aircraft to be launched, to which a steel hold-back bar
is attached. One end of the bar fits into a slot in the deck.

The bolt used in the A-6 was designed to break cleanly in half under a
load of 48,000 pounds, only then allowing the pistons in the catapult,
and the aircraft, to begin forward motion.

The superheated steam expanding behind the pistons drove them the length
of the 258-foot catapults of the Columbia in about 2.5 seconds. Now up
to flying speed, the aircraft left the deck behind and ran out into the
air sixty f0et above the ocean, where it then had to be rotated to the
Proper angle of attack to fly-in the A-6, about eight degrees nose-up.

Meanwhile, the pistons, at terminal velocity and quickly running out of
barrels, had to be stopped. This was accomplished by means of water
brakes, tubes welded onto the end Of each of the catapult barrels and
filled with water.

The pistons each carried a tapered spear in front of them, and as the
Pistons reached the water brakes the spears penetrated the open ends,
forcing water out around the spears.

Water is incompressible, yet as the spears were inserted the escape
openings for the water got smaller and smaller. Consequently the deeper
the spears penetrated the higher the resistance to further entry- The
brakes were SO efficient that the pistons were brought to a Complete
stop after a fullPower Shot in Only nine feet of travel.

The sexual symbolism (f the tapered spears and the wate”Ifled brakes
always impressed aviators-Ithey were Young, lonely and hOMY-but the
sound a cat made slamMing into the brakes was visceral. The stupendous
thud rat_ tied compartments within a hundred feet of the brakes and
could be felt throughout the ship.

Tonight as he sat in the cockpit of an A-6 tanker waiting for the cat
crew to retract the shuttle, Jake Grafton ran through all the things
that could go wrong with the cat.

The launching officer, Jumping Jack Bean, was wandering around near the
hole in the deck that contained the valves and gauges that allowed him
to drag steam from the ship’s boilers to the catapult accumulators. The
enlisted man who always sat on the edge Of the hole wearing a
sound-powered telephone headset that enabled him to talk to the men in
the catapult machinery spaces was already in his place, ‘Staring aft at
the two Planes on the cats. The luminescent patches on his helmet and
flight deck jersey were readily visible in the dim red glow of the
lights from the ship’s island superstructure, almost a hundred yards
aft.

If anything goes wrong with the machinery below-decks, Jake Grafton
knew, the probable result would be less end T RE I N T RUDE R S

speed for the plane being launched. A perfect shot gave the launching
aircraft a mere fifteen knots above stall speed. A couple knots less
and the pilot would never notice. Five off, the plane would be
sluggish. Ten off, a ham-handed pilot could stall it inadvertently.
Fifteen or more off, the plane was doomed.

Bad, or “cold,” cat shots were rare, thank God. The catapult was very
reliable, more so than the aircraft that rode it. They could have an
engine flame out under the intense acceleration, dump a gyro, lose a
generator, spring a hydraulic or fuel leak … or the pilot could just
become disoriented during the sudden, intense transition from sitting
stationary on deck to instrument flight fifteen knots above a stall, at
night. The blackness out there beyond the bow was total, a void so vast
and bleak that one wanted to avert his eyes.

Look at something else. Think about something else.

The hell of it was that there was nothing else to look atnothing else to
think about. Tonight Jake was flying a tanker, which was going to be
flung off the pointy end of the boat in just a few minutes right into
that black void, climb to 5,000 feet and tank a couple Phantoms, climb
up to 20,000 and circle the ship for an hour and a half, then come back
and trap. That was it, the whole damn mission.

Go around and around the ship. Orbit. At max conserve airspeed. On
autopilot. The challenge would be staying awake.

No, the challenge was this goddamn night cat shot. The worst part of
the whole flight was right at the start–the blindfolded ride on the
rabid pig …

The cat crewmen were now taking the rubber seal out of the catapult
slot. Steam wisped skyward from the open slot, steam leaking from some
fitting somewhere in the cat. They kept the slot seal in between
launches, Jake knew, to help maintain the temperature of those
eighteen-inch tubes.

The handler had parked the tanker here on the cat, probably so that the
miserable peckerhead pilot would have to sit in the cockpit watching the
steam wisp up from the cat against the backdrop of the black void while
he thought about dying young.

And his life wasn’t going so good just now. First Callie’s jerk father,
then Tin - y Dick Donovan, the in-flight engagement, that near-midair…

Maybe God was trying to tell him something.

Or maybe those Phantoms this morning hadn’t been there at all.

What if he had just imagined them? Of course the planes passed each
other quickly, but there were at least two Phan tonis and four A-6s, two
guys in each plane. A total of twelve men, and he was the only one who
had seen the varmint.

Really doesn’t make sense.

Does it?

“What are you staring at through that windshield?” Flap Le Beau asked.

“‘I”here’s a naked woman out there. If YOU look real careful you can
see her nipples.”

“‘You look like you’re mentally composing your will. That isn’t good
leadership. You are supposed to be impressing we with Your
self-confidence, calming my fears. The stick’s on your side, remember?”

“What if those F-4s weren’t really there this morning?

What if I just imagined it?”

“Are you still on that? You saw

‘em. They were there.”

“How come no one else is in a sweat? IN my drawers? Slit my

“What do you want me to do, f wrists? Fate fired a bullet and it
missed.”

“You could have the Common courtesy sweat it a little.”

“You’re making me nervous. “‘I’bat’ll be the day,” Jake Grafton replied
disgustedly.

“Okay, I’m sweating. It’s dripping out of my armpits.

Every jerk pilot I ever met has tried to kill me. I’m waiting for YOU
to give it a whirm, “How come You got into aviation, anywayr

“Jungle rot. Pretty bad case. They tell me I’m now a para graph and
Photo in a medical textbook- Little did I know when I signed up for this
glamorous flying life how much jungle I still had to visit.

to look nervous, The brown-shirt plane captain standing beside the
aircraft waved his wands to get Jake’s attention, then signaled for a
start.

Time to do it.

“It could have been worse,” Flap told Jake as he started the left
engine. “I could have made medical history with a spectacular social
disease. Wouldn’t that have been a trip?

For a hundred years every guy going overseas would have had to watch a
movie featuring my diseased, ulcerated pecker.”

Six minutes later Jake rogered the weight board and eased the plane
forward into the shuttle. He felt the nose-tow bar drop into the
shuttle slot and came off the brakes and added power at the
yellow-shirt’s signal.

The engines began winding up. Another small jolt as the hydraulic arm
shoved the cat pistons into tension, taking all the slack out of the
hold-back bar, Now just the shear-bolt was holding them back.

Full power, wipe out the controls, check the gauges, cat grip up …
“You ready?” he asked Flap.

“I’m really really ready.”

He could feel the vibration as the engines sucked air and blasted it out
the exhausts against the jet blast deflector, feel rather than hear the
ear-splitting roar. He swept his eyes exterior light master switch was
on the end of the cat grip, across the annunciator panel–all warning
lights out. The right beside his left thumb. He flicked it on.

The cat officer took a last look at the island, looked up the cat at the
void, then swept his yellow wand down in a fencer’s lunge until he
touched the deck, then he came up to a point.

The catapult fired. The G’s slammed him back … and both fire warning
lights illuminated.

They were big red lights, one on each side of the bombsight on the top
of the instrument panel. Labeled L FME and R FiRE, both lights shone
into his eyes like spotlights as the acceleration pressed him deeper
into the seat back.