Olive heard Mullet’s frantic calls and wondered if she would see a fireball someplace below. She waited and listened, breaking free of the cloud she was in as she entered a small hole in the weather that allowed her to relax and search for anything man-made.
On the bridge, Hancock’s brain trust heard the E-2 fly close and saw it for a few seconds before it was once again enveloped by the fog. Wilson turned to The Big Unit.
“Sir, let’s break EMCON now and talk to these guys. That was too close, and he’s probably low on gas as it is.” Then the radio crackled.
“We’re bingo,” the voice said in terse finality.
It was a voice none of them had heard before, and they guessed it was the E-2 pilot. Blower waited for the admiral to make a decision as did Wilson.
Johnson nodded. It was a risk, but his pilots needed help. Olive was out there, too, and even the airborne helicopters would need help finding their way back aboard the ship. He needed that extra E-2, but if he were flying it, he, too, would say screw this and fly to a sure-thing field before making more stabs at an invisible carrier with night approaching. Night, low fuel. He had been there himself many, many times, but now he was in charge of a strike group that depended on avoiding detection. Sacrifice a handful of aircraft to keep quiet? Risk thousands aboard Hancock to save a handful of aircraft?
It was the same kind of decision Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher had made aboard the carrier Lexington on a mid-June 1944 night off Saipan. With his pilots low on fuel after a long-range strike that all knew would require a return into unfamiliar darkness, Mitscher heard his carrier pilots break radio discipline with their anxious pleas for help.
He faced a decision only he could make. With possible enemy submarines in the waters around them, he gave a quiet command.
Turn on the lights.
Rear Admiral Randy Johnson now faced a similar decision, and minutes counted. Cactus Clark or Beetle Van Wert were not on Hancock’s bridge to consult, but would second-guess him from across the long green table if the decision proved wrong. If correct, he’d be a hero. To save six souls in two airplanes, he had to place 5,000 aboard Hancock at risk of early detection. Mitscher had done the same, turning on the lights to save hundreds while placing thousands in the task force at risk of submarine attack. Wilson and Blower waited in silence.
“Talk to Olive, and get the approach radars up. Navaids, too. Vector her to catch him and, if he can take fuel, maybe we can bring him back. If not, he bingoes to Adak, and we recover Olive.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Blower said and turned to contact Air Ops.
“Thanks, sir,” Wilson smiled.
Johnson nodded his head and said nothing. Like Mitscher, and thousands of other seafaring commanders through the millennia, he could not escape responsibility to make this call, and second-guessed himself in silence.
CHAPTER 22
Olive’s radio came to life with a welcome call from Hancock’s Departure control. “Gun Fighter one-zero-one, Departure, your vector zero-three-zero for fifteen. Join on the E-2 climbing through angels five and heading three-five-five. You are cleared to give four thousand pounds. You are authorized to use your search radar.”
Olive whipped the jet over to the right and popped the throttles into afterburner as she energized her radar. Once she steadied on a northeast heading, she saw a contact 30 degrees right of her nose at five thousand. That’s the Hummer, she thought, and bumped the castle switch to lock it. Assessing the geometry, she sweetened her course to intercept and hoped the air would be clear when she got there.
She heard the ship try to contact the E-2 to no avail. Those guys are up the wrong freq, she thought, and wondered if the ship would risk further detection by transmitting on the GUARD emergency freq. When the E-2 pilots didn’t respond, she knew she would have to get them to come up the proper frequency when she rendezvoused on their turboprop, which was now running toward safety.
As her airframe was buffeted in the storm cloud, she held her lock and at one mile had 100 knots of closure on the E-2. She took a cut to the left, retarded her throttles to manage the closure, and then decremented her radar to the five-mile scale. At one-half mile, she broke free of the cloud and got a glimpse of the Hawkeye before it went into another cloud. Someone said something on the radio, but she ignored it, her mind now focused on closing the E-2 without running into it in the darkening weather.
Olive noted the Hummer level off at 20,000 feet on a course for Adak, holding 225 knots. She stopped her climb 2,000 feet above, still in the goo. Not knowing what was in front of her made her break-lock and select air-to-ground. She increased the scale, and, as she feared, she saw a line of heavy return thirty miles ahead. She checked to assess storm cells at different elevations, and the return was solid above and below. Crap.
She mashed down for air-to-air and castled right, once again locking the E-2. Still in instrument conditions, she nosed down and crept up on it. At this speed, she had roughly five minutes to catch the Hawkeye, get it to turn away from the storm line, and plug.
She was almost on top of it, and fearful of flying in front of the E-2, Olive made an aggressive left turn, while taking care not to run the contact off the right side of her scope. Vertigo attacked her as she reversed her turn and descended, welded to her HUD instruments and monitoring her radar display. She rolled hard again, now behind the E-2, put the target designator box in her HUD field of view, and checked the closure as she leveled off below it. One thousand feet…. Eight hundred feet…. Nothing yet.
C’mon.
At five hundred feet, she slowed her closure to 20 knots and nosed up a bit. All around her was gray, and small water droplets raced back on the windscreen and canopy. The ship called.
“One-zero-one, Departure. What luck?”
“Stand by,” Olive answered, conscious of the death grip she had on the control stick.
She raised her head to look above the canopy bow as the dark gray shadow of an E-2 planform appeared. That glimpse was worth a thousand instrument scans, and, by instinct, she pushed and pulled on the throttles and stick to rendezvous. The shadow disappeared, and then reappeared, as both aircraft blasted through the ragged clouds. Olive sensed a muffled flash ahead—Hurry up! — and felt herself relax when she had a steady visual on the E-2. She joined on its left bearing line and crossed under to come up on the right. Inside the Hummer, Payton Wylie sang out. “Holy crap, we’ve got company. There’s a Rhino right next to us!”
Olive wasted no time. She was twenty knots fast—Screw it! — and extended the buddy store basket into the airstream, receiving a vigorous thumbs up from Smith. She could see, however, that the pilot was shaking his head.
Jerry Zavitz could make Adak on fumes, but at least the runway didn’t move and they weren’t operating EMCON. If he took a chance on tanking from this Rhino, only for another chance to cheat death with a pitching and rolling — and last time almost invisible—USS Hancock, he would give up his one sure thing. Olive sensed this, and in her cockpit had to convey the violent thunderstorm ahead of them using a high-stakes game of charades. She selected air-to-ground and was alarmed when the wall of embedded radar return showed less than ten miles away. The E-2 was a radar with wings, but she figured they were still EMCON and not radiating.