Jake surveyed the cockpit as if it were the front seat of a familiar and treasured automobile. The A-6 had changed significantly in the years since he flew the A-version in Vietnam. The search and track radars of the A-6A had been replaced by one radar that combined both search and track functions. The rotary drum computer was gone, and in its place was a solid-state computer that rarely failed. The old Inertia! Navigation System (INS) had also been replaced by a new system that was more accurate and reliable.
Above the bombardier-navigator’s radar scope was a small screen much like a television screen. This instrument displayed a picture from a Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera mounted in a turret on the bottom of the fuselage, in front of the nose gear door. Also in the turret were a laser ranger designator and receiver, which the crew could use to obtain very precise range information on a target within ten nautical miles.
Jake used a rheostat to adjust the level of the cockpit lighting, then he looked around at the other airplanes and the men moving around the deck on random errands. He had difficulty distinguishing features of the other aircraft and the colors of the jerseys worn by the men on deck. He squinted. The island floodlights didn’t seem to help much.
This is just an alert, he told himself. Nothing will happen. We won’t launch. He breathed deeply and exhaled slowly, trying to relax.
“So why do you want to turn in your wings?” he asked Reed over the intercom system, the ICS, as he watched little droplets of rain adhere to the canopy plexiglas.
“I’m tired of night cat shots,” Reed said finally. “I’m tired of drilling holes in the sky and risking my butt for nothing. I’m going back to school for an MBA, and I don’t see why I should keep doing this until Uncle Sam kisses me good-bye.”
The fine rain droplets on the canopy occasionally reached a critical mass and coalesced into one large drop, which slid slowly down the glass.
“After you get your degree, what are you going to do?”
“I dunno. Go to work for some company, I suppose. Make some money.”
“Is that what you want? Nine to five? Same shit, different day — everyone in the office creeping toward retirement one day at a time.”
“The civilians can’t be as fucked up as the navy. They have to turn a profit.”
Jake listened awhile to the airborne Hawkeye talking to the ship on strike frequency. Only ten days to Naples. He wondered where he would be and what he would be doing if he had left the navy after Vietnam. Should he have resigned years ago? The thought of all the time he and his wife, Callie, had spent apart depressed him. And his parents were getting on without their eldest son around to check on them. Too bad he and Callie had had no children, though, Lord knows, they had wanted them.
Maybe it’s time for me to pull the plug, too, he thought. Forty-three years old, eyes crapping out, maybe it’s time to go home to Callie. He thought about her, the look and feel and sound and smell of her, and he missed her badly.
“Shotgun Five Zero Two, Strike, are you up?”
Jake started. He picked up his mask from his lap and held it to his face. “Battlestar Strike, Shotgun Five Zero Two’s up.”
“Go secure.”
“Roger.” Jake threw the switches on the radio scrambler. When the synchronization tone ceased, he checked in with Strike again.
“CAG, we have been tracking a group of six boats near the Lebanese coast since dusk this evening. Apparently fishing boats. Three minutes ago one of them turned toward the task group and increased speed significantly. If he doesn’t resume course in two minutes, we’re going to launch you. Stand by to copy his position, over.”
Jake turned toward Reed. He was still sitting there, slightly dazed. Jake keyed the ICS. “Copy the posit, Mister Reed, and put it into the computer.”
Reed grabbed a pen from the kneeboard strapped to his right thigh and asked Strike for the coordinates. Without realizing he was doing it, Jake tugged his torso harness straps tighter.
“Steering to the target is good, CAG,” Reed told him.
Jake read the readout on the panel. Only forty miles. The task group is too goddamn close to the coast! This guy is almost here and he just started. Wonder what kind of weapons he has? He looked at the heading indicator. The ship was steaming southwest, away from the coast. That was a help. But the ship would have to turn into the northerly wind to launch, which would stop relative motion away from the coast and the threat, which was to the east. He felt his stomach tighten.
The deck loudspeaker blared. “Launch the alert five! Launch the alert five!”
Jake heard the flight deck tractor come to life and the high-pressure air unit, the huffer, winding toward full RPM as the catapult crewmen came piling out of the catwalk and raced toward the Tomcats in the hookup areas. Kowalski was there, small and chunky, waving directions to his men. The blue-shirts broke down the tie-down chains on the chopper and the rotors engaged. He could feel the ship heel to port as it started a starboard turn into the wind.
The plane captain twirled his fingers at Jake, signaling for a start. Jake pushed the crank button and advanced the starboard throttle to idle when the engine reached 18 percent RPM. The engine lit with a low moan and the revolutions slowly climbed.
He had both engines at idle when the chopper lifted off and the two F-14s began to ease forward to the waiting catapult shuttles. The large jet-blast deflectors (JBDs), came out of the deck behind each aircraft and cocked at a sixty-degree angle.
The taxi director waved his yellow wands at Jake. He released the parking brake and goosed the throttles. The Intruder began to roll. He applied the brakes slightly to test them, felt the hesitation, then released the pedals. He pressed the nosewheel steering button on the stick and followed the taxi director’s signals toward Catapult Three.
Now the engines of the fighter on Cat Three were at full power. With its new, more-powerful engines, the D-version of the Tomcat no longer needed the extra thrust of afterburner to launch. The roar reached Jake inside his cockpit, through his soundproof helmet, as the Intruder trembled from the fury of the hot exhaust gas flowing like a river over the JBD. The Tomcat’s exterior lights came on. Two heartbeats later it was accelerating down the catapult as the JBD came down. In seconds the catapult officer had the fighter on Cat Four at full power, then he fired the second plane into the waiting void.
A red-shirted ordnanceman was holding up the red safety flags from the weapons for Jake to see as the yellow-shirt waved him forward toward the cat. As he taxiied, Jake used his flashlight to acknowledge the ordie, okayed the weight board being held aloft by a green-shirted cat crewman with another flashlight signal, and eased the airplane right, then left, to line it up precisely with the catapult shuttle. It looked like utter chaos, this little army of men in their different-colored jerseys surging to and fro around the moving planes, but the steps and gestures of every man were precisely choreographed, perfectly timed.
Wings spread and locked, flaps to takeoff, slats out, stabilizer shifted, trim set, parking brake off, Reed read off the items on the takeoff checklist and Jake checked each one and gave an oral response as he eased the plane toward the shuttle. He felt the jolt as the metal hold-back bar stopped the aircraft’s forward progress. Then he felt another tiny jolt as the shuttle was hydraulically moved forward several inches to take all the slack from the metal-to-metal contact—“taking tension,” the catapult crewmen called it.
He released the brakes and jammed both throttles full forward and wrapped his fingers around the catapult grip, a lever that would prevent an inadvertent throttle retardation on the catapult stroke.
The engines wound to full power with a rising moan. EGT, RPM, fuel flow, oil pressure, all looked good.