Aussie was glad to see the general loosening up, and promised himself as soon as they got ashore at Port Angeles he’d try to contact Marte Price, set her straight about just what did happen, make sure Freeman got his full measure of recognition — well, the team too. He was encouraged to do it because, after his chat with the general, he realized that what the cook and no doubt others had interpreted as a sullen exhibition of petty ego was in fact a leader’s concern. The general, famous for attention to minutiae, was bothered by something like a detail in a persistent dream that takes flight the moment you wake, yet remains in the background of your mind all day.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Admiral Crowley had just had his second and last coffee of the day. Any more and he knew he’d feel on edge. Especially after the kamikaze attack, which, despite the absence of the kind of proof that would stand up in a court of law, everyone on the carrier believed was instigated by the Communist Chinese air force to cow, or at least slow, the carrier from advancing further into the Taiwan Strait and effectively refereeing the two-China “incident,” as Beijing was calling the two-China war.
Now, Crowley’s voice was at once serious and upbeat as he addressed McCain’s air wing.
“Gentlemen, we all know just how badly the Navy’s been hit at home. There isn’t a man or woman on the boat who hasn’t known or lost someone during the rampage of that sub’s attacks in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A lot of folks on the other vessels in our battle group have also lost loved ones. But I’m here to tell you that initial reports of the sub’s demise have been confirmed.”
There was whooping and clapping throughout the aviators’ ready rooms and the other departments in the boat.
“Admiral Jensen, COMSUBPAC Group 9, has verified that two of his hydrofoil fast patrol boats witnessed the kill.”
“Who were they?” Chipper Armstrong asked his squadron intel officer. “The terrorists?”
“No verification on that, Commander.”
“Now, gentlemen, I have a second announcement.” Everyone who’d done at least one tour with Crowley knew that the big news always came last. “As you know, one of our SSNs missiled Penghu. Satellite BDAs confirm wind deflection, courtesy of Typhoon Jane, extended the missiles’ CEP. Some PLA planes were destroyed, but not — I repeat, not—the runway, ’least not enough to prevent quick repair. The President has therefore asked if we can do the job before the PLA can land aircraft resupply.”
There was some braggadocio, but others were silent. There was that big hole in their roof.
“Any flier has the right to pass this one up without prejudice to his service record.”
The admiral waited for reports from all the ready rooms listening to him. All pilots and aircrew volunteered to go.
“Very well, gentlemen, it’s time. Kick the tires and light the fires!”
Resounding cheers were heard throughout the carrier, and in minutes, unseen even by some high in Primary Flight Control, scores of invisible colored jackets flooded the deck forward of the carrier’s island and the kamikaze’s bomb crater. The crater, having rendered catapults three and four on the carrier’s aft port side inoperable, was now roped off, with a six-man line stationed in front of it to yell at any of the deck personnel who might back up and impede maneuvering aircraft once launch operations got under way. Elevator 1, starboard midships, forward of the island, clunked and emitted its deep hum as it descended yet again to the hangar deck to reload. High up in Vulture’s Row, the salty sea wind chilling their faces, two off-duty sailors — a young barber from Ohio and a young woman, Angela, a purple-jacketed refueler from Arkansas — held hands in the darkness, saying nothing. Their rapt attention had been captured by the wondrously unique ballet of soft yellow flashlights far below them, strobing through the sea spray in a strangely hypnotic dance of war.
The scores of deck personnel holding the flashlights were all but invisible. The only thing that approached it in Angela’s memory was a performance by the Black Theater of Prague that she had seen as a schoolgirl, the players invisible, only things moving on the pitch-black stage, as if by magic. The soft yellow bulbs of the flashlights were conveying the same eerie yet comforting display of connectedness and separation, as if countless glowworms were “coming together, coming apart,” as the song goes, joining, separating, and rejoining as the “foreign object debris walkdown” continued, only personnel on the starboard end of the inspection line coming into full view as they passed through the apron of subdued orange light at the base of the island.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Angela asked her beau.
Despite the cranials they were wearing to protect them from the brain-dulling crescendo that would soon break loose below, the young barber heard her. He’d heard every word she’d said from the moment they’d first met on the boat. “Yes,” he replied. “It is. Like you.”
She elbowed him playfully, their hands still locked together, her grip tightening as the foreign object walkdown ended and the colored shirts went to work, kicking the tires and lighting the fires. Then fierce purple-white jet exhausts pierced the night, the engines’ feral screams shattering any remaining world of glowworms, the afterburners momentarily illuminating the colored jackets whose earlier, gentler ballet was now a rougher thing altogether. Yet within what at first seemed a chaos of disorganized crew running, kneeling, and signaling pilots with lighted wands, there was an organization so intricate and fast that it would make the busiest civil airport appear indolent, the carrier’s night launch all the more impressive given that only catapults one and two were operational.
Angela glimpsed a plane handler wanding the first striker, Chipper Armstrong’s Super Hornet, into position. For an instant the ambient light silhouetted Eagle Evans in the Hornet’s backseat as the catapult’s tow bar was lowered into the shuttle, in position to pull the fighter along the deck. With the nose wheel housing’s holdback rod acting like the reins on a caged stallion, the turbofans could now reach full power before release. The shuttle’s pull, in concert with the plane’s own thrust, would catapult the plane off the deck, providing all went well, the night launch and recovery the ultimate test of an aviator’s skill.
Hunkered down in the CAT control pod set almost flush into the deck, the yellow-shirted “shooter,” or catapult officer, initiated the flow of superwet nonradioactive steam, provided by a secondary loop off the carrier’s reactor plant. The shooter double- and then triple-checked the combined deck-and-ship speed in regulating the steam pressure flow. Too little pressure and the fighter-bomber, unable to attain takeoff, would be pushed into the sea. Too much, and the aircraft’s nose wheel would be torn asunder.
Chipper Armstrong, all preflight checks completed, red-ribbon-tagged ordnance pins out, raised his arms high, as if surrendering, but in fact showing the shooter that his hands were nowhere near the controls.
The shooter, seeing that the green shirts had completed the final checks, gave the okay to Armstrong, who selected “Afterburner” for the Hornet’s twin turbofans and snapped off a salute. The shooter pushed the button and the Hornet rushed forward, Armstrong’s and Evans’s bodies slammed back under the G force, the plane hurtling down the deck, speeding from zero to 150 miles per hour in two seconds. Evans experienced an involuntary erection, his eyes rammed back hard into their sockets, and then the plane was aloft, Chipper taking over the controls.
As they banked, RIO Evans glanced back at the rapidly shrinking deck, seeing an F-14 Tomcat, one of the four fighters assigned to ride shotgun for the Hawkeye, moving into position, its toy-sized launch crew swarming around their charge. If all went well, the F-14 would be off the deck in under three minutes, longer than usual because of the extra maneuvering required forward of the crater. Despite one sailor in the crater’s warning line being knocked down by the combination of crosswind and jet blast freakishly angling off the catapult’s blast shield, all went well. McCain’s squadrons assembled “upstairs” for a standoff attack on Penghu to finish what Johnny Rorke and Encino’s crew had begun.