Stunned by the disclosure, he looked into the dark cabin, then caught her eye. “Can you plug the leaks?”
“No,” she said under her breath. “They’re inside the perimeter of the frame that’s bolted to the floor.”
Scott’s expression turned grim. “We’re trapped in a flying bomb,” he said with understated calm in his voice. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Yes, it does,” she said lightly, staring at him with close curiosity. “We’re also leaking fuel from both wings.”
“Great.” Scott quickly calculated the approximate time to fuel exhaustion, then turned to her with a sober look in his eye. “Folks, before we land, I’d like to explain our out-of-court settlements.”
Jackie reached into a pocket of her wet flight suit and extracted a compact tape recorder. “If this thing is still working, I’m going to debrief Maritza.”
“You can get on the sat-phone…” Scott trailed off when he saw her slowly shake her head.
“That’s the other bad news,” Jackie said as she showed Scott the Caravan’s shattered satellite-phone that had been blown into three pieces. “I lost mine during the crash.”
“Well,” Scott said with a shrug, “we’ll just have to try to reach the Permak Express—stretch the fuel as far as we can.”
22
The Persian Gulf lay as flat as a millpond while the carrier and her battle group turned into the gentle breeze. Far to the south of the flotilla, a nearly transparent flame from a huge Iranian oil platform cast an eerie afterglow across the black waters.
Once the warships of the U.S. 5th Fleet were repositioned, Washington went to flight quarters. The deck came alive with a choreography of flight crews, airplanes, tow tractors, and deckhands hauling volatile fuel lines, hoisting missiles, loading bombs, prepping the catapults and arresting gear, and chocking and chaining aircraft to their assigned sections of the deck.
An environment particularly susceptible to catastrophic accidents, the mayhem on the flight deck is even more precarious during the black of night. Between the screaming jet engines, and the foul-smelling scent of steam mixed with salt water and jet fuel, duty on the flight deck is not for individuals who are easily distracted.
With the supercarrier steady on course and speed, the pilot of an HS-11 “Dragon Slayers” rescue helicopter lifted his craft into the horizonless, moonless night and flew toward a known Iranian eavesdropping trawler. After flying a wide circle around the surveillance vessel, the SH-60 Seahawk took up station on the starboard side of the carrier. The deadly serious business of flight operations was commencing, where seconds and inches often spell the difference between life and death.
Flight-deck crewmen in sweat-stained green pullovers hooked the duty E-2C Hawkeye to the port bow catapult, then waited for the launch signal from the air boss in Primary Flight Control. Located high on the port side of the island, Pri Fly served as the ship’s control tower during flight operations. The “boss” is the supreme ruler of the flight deck and everything that flies in the vicinity of the boat.
On the slippery flight deck, F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets were standing by to protect one of the most formidable fighting machines in the world. Inside the cockpits of the powerful jets, the pilots of the Hornets and the pilots and radar intercept officers in the Tomcats were growing anxious. The growing speculation as to what they were doing in the Gulf had abruptly ended two hours before they manned their planes. Their CO had briefed them; the U.S. was going to send Tehran a wake-up call. If any Iranian fighter planes or surface ships wanted to contest the issue, they were to be dispatched as quickly as possible.
While they waited to taxi to the catapults, many of the pilots and naval flight officers silently went through their checklists a second time. In this unforgiving world, minor details could mean the difference between success and failure — living or dying.
Precisely at the scheduled launch time, Captain Nancy Jensen watched the shooter’s night wands signal the Hawkeye pilots to increase power. The aviator’s pulse rates rapidly went up as the airframe began to vibrate and shake from the power of the straining turboprops. The copilot keyed his intercom. “It’s darker than three foot up a bull’s ass.”
“Yeah, I love it,” the pilot grumbled as he surveyed the engine instruments, checking for any irregularity, anything that might kill them during a night catapult launch. Everything looked in order. “Let’s do it.”
A second later the E-2C’s external lights were switched on. At that second the fate of the flight crew was in the hands of God and a steam-powered catapult. Kaabooom! The pilots’ eyes literally flattened in their sockets as the aircraft accelerated down the track and disappeared into the gloomy night.
The flight crew of the Grumman surveillance platform, which could detect airborne targets anywhere in a three-million-cubic-mile envelope, checked in with the carrier and the Hawkeye crew they were scheduled to relieve. In addition to the normal flow of commercial air traffic in the Gulf area, the duty “Miniwacs” was monitoring two separate formations of suspected Iranian military aircraft. They were also watching several flights of U.S. warplanes and rescue helicopters that were taking up station over the Gulf.
Below deck in Washington’s darkened Combat Direction Center, the ship’s brain, tactical action officers monitored computerized wall screens showing the location of every ship, aircraft, and oil smuggler in the area. The air crackled with radio chatter as the men tracked an array of Iranian vessels as they navigated the Gulfs dark waters. Many of the contacts were flagged red on the giant computer screens, including the warships Peter the Great, Russia’s largest ballistic-missile cruiser, Pyotr Veliky, and Admiral Kuznetsov. The senior officer in CDC found it curious that the Russian flagship and her escorts had suddenly changed course and were distancing themselves from the U.S. battle group.
Concerned about the unusual concentration of Iranian aircraft, Admiral Coleman and his staff weighed their options. Coleman decided to leave well enough alone unless the airplanes appeared to be a direct threat to the task force. He didn’t want to provoke the Iranians into a premature confrontation.
Washington’s flight deck became extremely busy while various planes waited to be catapulted into the night sky. In short order, two all-weather electronic surveillance EA-6B Prowlers were airborne and climbing for altitude. The Marine Prowlers could quickly distinguish between friendly and enemy signals, then jam them.
Following the VMAQ-3 “Moondogs,” two high-endurance S-3B Vikings from VS-32 were launched and began snooping for submarines. With three of Iran’s Kilo subs thought to be at sea, CAG, the commander of the air group, was very nervous about their potential threat to the carrier battle group.
Losing a carrier, or other major surface combatants, could rapidly change the balance of power in the Gulf region.
Leading the division of F-14 BARCAP fighters — Barrier Combat Air Patrol — Lieutenant Commander Denby Kaywood and his backseater, Lieutenant Chet Hoffman, were anxious to get airborne. It was show time and the initial four Tomcats and four Marine F/A-18s would be backed by two Alert Five Hornets.
Sandwiched between the BARCAP birds and the Alert Hornets, Lieutenant Ridder Cromwell would be the deck launch interceptor. Cromwell, a former top gun instructor, would be parked on the starboard bow catapult with his Tomcat’s engines idling. With his F-14 connected to the fuel pits, Cromwell and his RIO, Lieutenant Fred Singleton, would be ready to launch in a matter of seconds. If the situation became touchy, the Alert Five fighters would immediately go to deck-launch-interceptor status.