The radar, computer and inertial were seriously messed up. All the component boxes of those systems had been replaced, as had the radar dish and drive unit in the nose. The vertical display indicator — the VDI — and the radio were also new.
When Smith and his BN — Hank Davis — were strapped in, they turned on each piece of gear and checked it carefully. The inertial was slow getting an alignment, but it did align. Make a note for the debrief.
They were the last A-6 to taxi toward a cat, number two on the bow. The others were airborne and in a few minutes, Smith would join them at nine thousand feet. That altitude should be well above the tops of this cumulus, he thought, taking three seconds to scan the sky.
Roger the weight board, check the wing locks, flaps and slats down, stabilizer shifted, into the shuttle, off the brakes and power up. Check the controls.
“You ready?”
“Yep,” Hank Davis told him cheerfully.
Rory Smith saluted and placed his head back into the headrest. He watched the bow cat officer give his fencer’s lunge into the wind as his arm came down to the deck. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the catapult deck edge operator lower both hands as he reached for the fire button.
In the space of a second the launching valves dropped open, 450 pounds of steam hit the back of the pistons, and the hold-back bolt broke. The G’s slammed Smith back into his seat as War Ace Five One One leaped forward. And the VDI came sliding out of the center of the instrument panel.
Rory Smith reached for the black box with both hands, but too late. The front of it tilted down and came to rest in his lap. Jammed the stick back. All this in the first second and a half of the shot.
Desperately Smith heaved at the box against the G. He had to free the stick!
And then they were off the bow, the nose coming up. And up and up as he struggled to lift the fucking box!
With his right hand he reached under and tried to shove the stick forward. Like pushing against a building.
He felt the stall, felt the right wing go down. He was trying to lift the box with his left hand and push the stick forward with his right when Hank Davis ejected. The horizon was tilting and the nose was slewing right.
Oh, damn!
On the bridge of Columbia the captain saw the whole thing. The nose of the Intruder off of Cat Two rose and rose to almost thirty degrees nose up, then her right wing dropped precipitously. Passing thirty or forty degrees angle-of-bank he saw a man in an ejection seat come blasting out. The wing kept dropping past the vertical and the nose came right and the A-6 dove into the ocean. A mighty splash marked the spot.
Galvanized, the captain roared, “Right full rudder, stop all engines.”
The officer of the deck immediately repeated the order and the helmsman echoed it.
The captain’s eyes were on the ejection seat. The drogue streamed as the seat arched toward the sea. The seat was past the apogee when the captain saw a flash of white as the parachute began to deploy. It blossomed, but before the man on the end of the shrouds could complete a swing he hit the water. Splat.
This 95,000-ton ship was making twenty-five knots. The A-6 went in a little to the right of her course, and the survivor splashed a little right of that. All he could hope to do was swing the stem away. The stern with its thrashing screws.
There, the bow was starting to respond to the helm.
The rescue helicopter, the angel, was already coming into a hover over the survivor. His head was just visible bobbing in the water as the carrier swept by, still making at least twenty knots.
Missed him.
“War Ace Five Oh Five, Departure.”
“Go ahead, Departure.”
“Five Oh Five, your last playmate will not be joining you. Switch to Strike and proceed with your mission, over.”
“Roger that.” Major Sam Cooley gave the radio frequency change signal by hand to Jake on his left wing and the Real McCoy on his right. He waited until the formation came around to the on-course heading, then leveled his wings and added power for the climb. They were on top of the cumulus layer. Above them was sunny, deep blue open sky.
So Rory Smith didn’t get that plane airborne, Jake thought. He should have accepted that offer to switch planes. It’s a good day to fly.
“Rory Smith’s dead.”
They heard the news in the ready room, after they landed.
“He never got out. When Hank Davis punched Rory was sitting there wrestling the VDI. Hank’s okay. He said the VDI came out on the cat shot. Came clean out of the panel right into Rory’s lap. Jammed the stick aft. They stalled and went in.”
“Aww…,” Flap said.
When Jake found his voice he muttered, “He must not have checked to see that it was screwed in there.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah,” he told Flap. “You gotta tug on the thing to make sure the screws that hold it are properly screwed in. Doesn’t matter except on a catapult shot. If the VDI isn’t secured right on a cat shot, it can come back into your lap. The damn thing weighs seventy pounds.”
“I never knew that.”
“I thought everybody knew that.”
“I never knew that. I wonder if Smith did.”
Jake Grafton merely stared in horror at the BN. He was the one tasked to cover everything these Marines needed to know about shipboard operations. He had forgotten to mention checking the VDI before the shot. Flap didn’t know. Maybe Rory didn’t either. And now Rory Smith was dead!
He sagged into a nearby chair. He had forgotten to tell them about the VDI on the cat! What else had he forgotten to tell them? What else?
The television camera on the ship’s island superstructure had caught the whole accident on videotape. The tape was playing now on the ready room television. Jake stared at the screen, mesmerized.
The shot looked normal, but the horizontal stabilizer — the stabilator — was really nose up. Too much? Hard to tell. There he went, off the bow, nose up rapidly, way too high, the stall and departure from controlled flight, a spin developing as the plane went in. One ejection. The whole thing happened very quickly. The A-6 was in the water twelve seconds after the catapult fired.
Just twelve seconds.
The show continued. The angel hovered, a swimmer leaped from about four feet into the water…lots of spray from the rotor wash…
Jake rose and walked out. In sick bay he asked the first corpsman he saw, “Captain Hank Davis?”
“Second door on the left, sir.”
The skipper came out of Hank’s room before Jake got to the door. He told Jake, “He doesn’t need any visitors just now. He swallowed a lot of seawater and he’s pretty shook. ”
“I need to ask him a question, sir.”
“What is it?”
Jake explained about the VDI, how the screws might not engage when the box was installed, how the pilot must check it. “I need to know, Colonel, if Rory tugged on the VDI to check it before he got to the cat.”
The colonel said nothing. He listened to Jake, watched his eyes, and said nothing.
“I’ll ask him,” Haldane said finally, then opened the door and passed through.
Minutes passed. Almost five. When Haldane reappeared, he closed the door firmly behind him and faced the pilot, who was leaning against the bulkhead on the other side of the passageway.
“He doesn’t remember.”