Next came the hook. Jake merely pulled the handle and made sure the transition light disappeared.
The Intruder was slowing…170…160…150…“Here goes nothing,” he told Flap as he lowered the gear handle to the gear down position, then rotated the knob on the end ninety degrees and pulled it out. The up-up-up indications on the panel barber-poled.
He waited. He could feel the drag increasing on the plane, could see his airspeed decreasing, and added power. The fuel-flow tapes surged upward.
C’mon, baby. Give me three down indications. Please!
The nose gear locked down first. Two seconds later the mains locked down. Seventeen hundred pounds of fuel left in the main bag.
“They’re down,” he announced to Flap and God and whoever else was listening.
Approach controller was giving him a steer.
“Hell!” Flap exclaimed disgustedly between calls from the controller, “it wasn’t even close. We don’t even have a low fuel light.” The low fuel warning light would come on at about 1,360 pounds.
“We aren’t down yet,” Jake pointed out.
“Oh ye of little faith, take note. We’re almost down.”
Jake concentrated on flying the plane, staying on speed, smoothly intercepting the glide path. He was carrying less power than normal since the speed brakes were inoperative after the hydraulic failure, and while this saved a few gallons of gasoline, it caused its own problems. If he got high, retarding the throttles would be less effective than usual — the plane would tend to float.
He saw the ball two miles out. At a mile he called, “Five Two One, Intruder ball, One Point Four.”
“Roger ball. Paddles has you. Looking good…fly the ball!”
The meatball began to rise above the datums and he pulled power aggressively while watching that angle-of-attack needle.
Paddles was talking to him. “Power back on…too much, off a little…No, little more…lineup…”
Any second would come the burble, the swirl of air disturbed by the ship’s island. He anticipated it just a smidgen on the power and didn’t have to slam on too much, then he was quick to get it off.
Coming across the ramp the airspeed decayed a tad and the ball began to sink.
“Power!” shouted the LSO.
Slam! The wheels hit. Throttles to the stops…and the welcome, tremendous jerk as the hook snagged a wire.
“Two wire, I think,” Flap told him.
Jake didn’t care. A huge sigh of relief flooded through him.
Here came the yellow-shirts. He raised the flaps and slats electrically while they chocked the plane, then cut the engines.
They were back.
Walking across the flight deck with their helmet bags in their hands, with the warm sea wind on their wet hair, the firm steel deck beneath their flight boots, Flap repeated, “It wasn’t even close.”
No, Jake Grafton acknowledged to himself, it wasn’t. Not tonight. But a man can’t have luck all the time, and someday when he reached into that tiny little bag where he kept his luck, the bag would be empty. A hold-back bolt would break at the wrong time, a taxiing plane would skid into another, the airborne tanker would go sour, the weather would be bad…some combination of evil things would conspire against the man aloft and push him over the edge. Jake Grafton, veteran of more than 340 cat shots and arrested landings, knew that it could happen to him. He knew that as well as he knew his name.
The brass had taken the net from under the tightrope when they didn’t let him bingo, and he was infuriated and disgusted with himself for letting them do it.
I think, Jake wrote to Callie that night, that a man’s fate is not in his control. We are under the illusion that we can control our destinies, that the choices we make do make a difference, but they don’t. Chance rules our lives. Chance, fate, fortune— whatever you wish to call it — sets the hook and pulls the string and we quiver and flail, jerk and fight. Maybe pray.
I don’t think praying helps very much. I do it anyway, just in case. I ask Him to be with me when I fall.
9
There are few things in life more satisfying than to be accepted as an equal in a fraternity of fighting men. Jake Grafton was so accepted now, and this morning when he entered the ready room he was greeted by name by the men there, who asked him about his adventures of the previous evening and listened carefully to his comments. They laughed, consoled him, and joked about the predicament he had found himself in last night. Several refused to believe, they said, that the main dump valve had failed: he had forgotten to secure it and was now trying to cover his sin by appealing to their naivete. All this was in good fun and was cheerfully accepted as such by Jake Grafton. He belonged. He was a full member of this aristocracy of merit, with impeccable credentials. His mood improved with each passing minute and soon he was his usual self.
He and his Marine colleagues inspected the board that recorded the pilots’ landing grades. Jake’s grades for his qualification landings were not displayed there, so like most of them, he had only two landings so far this cruise, an OK 3-wire and a fair 2-wire.
The bombing poster was more complicated, displaying the CEP of each crew, and to settle ties, the number of bull’s-eyes. Jake ranked fourth in the squadron here. Today he was scheduled to go to the target with twelve five-hundred pounders, so perhaps he could better his standing.
He had a secret ambition to be the best pilot in the squadron in landings and bombing and everything else, but he shared that ambition with everyone so it wasn’t much of a secret. Still, it wasn’t a thing that you talked about. You tried your very best at everything you did, glanced at the rankings, fiercely resolved to do better, and went on about your business. The rankings told you who was more skilled—“more worthy” was the phrase used by the Real McCoy a day or two before — than you were.
The LSO regarded intrasquadron competition with good-natured contempt. “Games for children,” he grumped, But Jake noticed now that McCoy’s name was in the top half of the rankings on both boards.
This morning there was mail, the first in six days. A cargo plane brought it out from Hickam Field, trapped aboard, then left with full mail sacks from the ship’s post office. Two hours later the mail was distributed throughout the ship.
Jake got three letters from Callie, one from his folks, and something from the commanding officer of Attack Squadron 128 in an official, unstamped envelope. He shuffled Tiny Dick Donovan’s missive — probably some piece of official foolscap from a yeoman third in the Admin Office — to the bottom of the pile. Callie’s letters came first.
She was taking classes at the University of Chicago, working on her master’s degree. Her brother and her parents were fine. The weather was hot and muggy. She missed him.
I think that it is important for you to decide what you wish to do with your life. This is a decision that every man must make for himself, and every woman. To make this decision because you hope to please another is to make it for the wrong reason. We each owe duties to our families, when we acquire them, but we also owe a duty to ourselves to make our lives count for something. To love another person is not enough.
I have thought a great deal about this these last few weeks. Like every woman, I want to love. I feel as if I have this great gift to give — myself. I want to be a wife and mother. Oh, how I could love some man!