With a sudden forward lunge, the Shooter knelt and pointed at the bow. Wilson released the brakes and shoved the throttles as far forward as they could go. His jet shot forward.
Every instinct told him to throttle back and stand on the brakes. After one second, he was moving faster on deck than he ever had — when not connected to a catapult or arresting wire. He worked to stay on the yellow stripe as the island drifted past on his right. He again sensed the eyes of the crew and had to work hard to concentrate against the unnatural sensation. Once past the island, he showed only 60 knots. It was too late to stop, and Wilson wasn’t sure he was going to make it. The deck was pointed at the sea, and he was running downhill into it.
Approaching the flight deck “crotch,” he paid close attention to his deck alignment. He roared over the Cat 2 JBD at 80 knots and knew he had the length of a football field to go before he was airborne. He was committed now, had been since he passed the island, and still pointed at the water with his left arm locked forward.
The bow rose as Wilson rolled toward it. Far too late to stop, he fought the urge to eject. Following Olive’s brief to the air wing, he held forward-stick pressure to minimize drag. He saw a sailor at the end of the catwalk watch him in amazement as he approached the bow, which was lifting on a swell. Just as the deck edge fell from his view, he rotated the stick back.
With a dangerous nose-high attitude, he felt the jet squat and saw a green chevron indication that his angle of attack was above optimum. His airspeed showed 125, and he held his attitude as he slapped up the gear to reduce drag. In his gut, Wilson sensed he was settling, but with the excess power and reduced drag soon flew away in a slight climb. At 500 feet, he bunted the nose to accelerate on his emergency fuel profile and turned toward Iwo Jima.
Hancock erupted into cheers as Wilson’s jet climbed away. He had done it, and showed the rest of the air wing — waiting in line behind him — that it could be done. All knew that Panther One, Lt. Col. Tucker, was next.
As soon as Wilson was airborne, the director motioned Mother forward. Facing aft, he was unable to twist himself enough to see Wilson get airborne behind him. He observed the sailors on deck, transfixed as they watched Wilson roll down the deck and off the end. When they began moving again, he guessed Wilson had made it. His chest was heaving in near panic as he taxied ahead with nothing between his nose wheel and the churning sea, 60 feet below. With the rest of his squadron lined up behind him, followed by the E-2s, the yellow shirts were impatient to get him in position and off.
Mother hated taxiing next to the deck edge, hated everything about this damned ship. He hoped to never see it again — if he survived this harebrained stunt. He saw that Wilson’s jet was now a speck three to four miles distant. CAG Wilson, an experienced aviator, had made it. Now Mother’s inexperienced Marines had to accomplish the same in jets older than some of them.
He crept forward and some deckhand was going apeshit to his right. Okay! Okay! I’ll spread the damn wings! Relax, moron. You don’t have to do this. To his left, the cold sea waited, and wearing a dry suit that chafed his neck and underarms added to his stress.
Mother felt rushed—behind—as the Shooter had him run the engines up. Ahead the deck edge rose above the horizon — Mother was mesmerized by it. He then sensed motion to his right. The officer was giving him a shrug, questioning if he was ready. With his mouth dry, and knowing his boys were watching, Mother nodded and saluted. The Shooter returned his salute, assessed the deck, and pointed.
Mother pushed the throttles to afterburner and his jet jumped ahead to the right. He pulled them out of burner and corrected his lineup to get back on the yellow line — and shoved them again through the detent to maximum. His jet rolled ahead, too slow for Mother, and he shouted into his mask.
“C’mon, dammit!”
Peer pressure, as much as a need to show up his CAG, kept his arm locked. But, as the bow loomed ahead, he didn’t think he would have flying speed. To make matters worse, the bow was falling with gray whitecaps ahead. Now only 200 feet from the deck edge and rolling downhill into the waves, Mother pulled the stick into his lap.
Nothing happened.
Fuck! he thought as his jet lumbered ahead. Having missed Olive’s warning in the brief, Mother’s own back-stick input had deflected the stabilators full up and served to slow his acceleration. Terrified, Mother sensed he was dribbling off the end just as the bow reversed its downward travel.
As the Hornet’s weight transferred from the wheels to the wings, he got an angle-of-attack tone and felt the bottom fall out from under him. He lunged to raise the gear handle but still sensed he was mushing down toward the water with his nose parked high. With white knuckles, Mother popped the stick forward and reset it in an instinctive effort to gain a knot or two of airspeed. In his HUD, he saw 30 feet and 119 knots. Fuck me!
Time slowed, and Mother considered transferring his death grip on the stick to a death grip on the ejection ring only inches away. The waves were in his peripheral vision on his left and right at only 20 feet when his jet began to accelerate and claw into the sky.
Sailors — and aviators — on the flight deck watched in horror as Mother’s jet left the bow and disappeared below it, not reappearing until the bow pitched down again and showed a Hornet climbing away a mile ahead of the carrier. From the bridge, Blower’s heart skipped a beat, and both he and the admiral saw Mother kick up a rooster tail of spray as his blazing afterburners pointed at the water.
The Big Unit exhaled built-up tension. “Are we going to survive this? That’s a squadron CO we almost lost. The nuggets are next.”
Blower considered the odds. “Sir, if we lose two jets, then I’ll recommend we knock this off, and we’ll have to hope the Japanese let us crane them off pierside.”
The Big Unit nodded. They had little choice but to take this operational risk, and, when the next Hornet blazed down the yellow stripe to gain airspeed, both men agonized over the outcome. The young Marine rotated off the bow and flew away, turning easy right behind his CO and Wing Commander, all on emergency fuel profiles to an obscure, windswept rock in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean.
At his Camp Smith headquarters, Admiral Clark was on the phone with the Secretary when an ashen Richie Casher walked up to him. Sensing Casher had important news, Clark said his goodbyes and put the phone back on the desk jack. “What’s up, Richie?”
“Sir, I just received an email message on the classified net. It’s from Marshal Dong, and he asked me to pass it to you.”
Clark raised his eyebrows and reached for the printout. “Let me see that.”
My Dear Admiral Clark,
Season’s greetings to you and your family, and I hope this finds you well. It is with heavy heart that I’ve received reports of loss of life at your central Pacific outpost of Guam. While this avoidable loss is regrettable, we had little choice but to act as the entire world is witness to an American invasion force forming along our territorial seas. We sought only to destroy your airplanes without loss of life, as we did with the disabling attack on your aircraft carrier.
In our Southern Sea, your allies pose a grave threat to our blue territory that is a possession of China’s from centuries past. We are compelled to take preemptive actions, as you have in the Middle East, as you have against Cuba and Haiti in your own waters. The near seas of the People’s Republic belong to us, and we will defend them from foreign invasion and domination, as you would an invader in the Gulf of Mexico or along your eastern seaboard.