As the taxiing fighter reached the maximum extent of the hold-back bar, the JBDs came up, three panels that would deflect the exhaust of the launching aircraft from the plane behind.
Now Jake saw the Phantom lower its tail — actually the nose-gear strut was extended eighteen inches to improve the angle-of-attack. He saw the cat officer twirl his fingers above his head for full power and heard the thunderous response from the Phantom, saw the river of black smoke blasted upward by the JBD, felt his plane tremble from the fury of those two engines. The fighter pilot checked his controls, and the stabilator and rudder waggled obediently. Thumbs-up flashed from the squadron final checkers.
The cat officer signaled for afterburners, an opening hand on an extended arm. The river of smoke pouring skyward off the JBDs cleared, leaving hot, clear shimmering gases. Incredibly, even here in the cockpit of the tanker the noise level rose. Jake got a good whiff of the acrid stench of jet exhaust.
My oxygen mask must not be on tight enough. Fix it when I’m airborne.
The last of the catapult crewmen came scurrying out from under the fighter. This was the man who swung on the bridle to ensure it was on firmly. He flashed a thumbs-up at the cat officer, the shooter.
The shooter saluted the F-4 pilot, glanced down the deck, and lunged. One potato, two potato, and wham, the fighter shot forward trailing plumes of fire from its twin exhausts. It hadn’t gone a hundred feet down the track when the JBD started down and a taxi director gave Jake Grafton the come-ahead signal.
After he watched the Phantom clear the deck, the shooter turned his attention to the fighter on Cat Four, which was already at full power. He gave the burner sign. Fifteen seconds later this one ripped down the cat after the first one, which was out of burner now and trailing a plume of black smoke that showed quite distinctly against the gray haze wall.
Jake taxied forward and ran through his ritual as the wind over the deck swirled steam leaking from the catapult slot around the men on deck. Their clothes flapped in the wind.
Power up, control check, cat grip, engine instruments, warning lights, salute.
One potato, two pota — he felt just the tiniest jolt as the holdback bolt broke, then the acceleration smashed him backward like the hand of God.
The strike controller told Jake to go on up to 20,000 feet. “Texaco take high station.”
Flap rogered, then Jake said on the ICS, “They must not be going to launch the alert-fifteen.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Surely they’ll want us to tank the second section of fighters immediately after launch, if they launch them.”
“Maybe not.”
“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.”
“Noble sentiment. But let’s do today, not die.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Don’t get cute.”
Jake Grafton gave a couple of pig grunts.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to insult the Corps?” Flap sounded shocked.
“I lied.”
The sea disappeared as they climbed through 3,000 feet. Jake was on the gauges. There was no horizon, no sky, no sea. Inside this formless, featureless void the plane handled as usual, but the only measure of its progress through space was movement of the altimeter, the TACAN needle, and the rotating numbers of the distance measuring equipment — DME.
Jake kept expecting to reach an altitude where the goo thinned perceptibly, but it was not to be. When he leveled at 20,000 feet he could see a blob of light above him that had to be the sun, yet the haze seemed as thick as ever. Just what the visibility might be was impossible to say without another object to focus upon.
Flap reported their arrival at high station. The controller rog-ered without apparent enthusiasm.
Jake set the power at max conserve and when the airspeed had stabilized, engaged the autopilot. He checked the cockpit altitude and loosened one side of his oxygen mask from his helmet. Flap sat silently for a moment or two, looking here and there, then he extracted his book from a pocket of his G-suit and opened it to a dog-eared page.
Jake busied himself with punching buttons to check that the fuel transfer was proceeding normally. The tanker carried five 2,000-pound drop tanks. The transfer of fuel from these drops was automatic. If transfer didn’t occur, however, he wanted to know it as soon as possible because he would have that much less fuel available to give to other aircraft or burn himself. Today the transfer seemed to be progressing as advertised, so he had 26,000 pounds of fuel to burn or give away.
They were almost eight hundred miles northwest of Midway Island alone in an opaque sky. Other than flicking his eyes across the instruments and adjusting the angle-of-bank occasionally, he had nothing to do except scan the blank whiteness outside for other airplanes that never came.
The fighters were being vectored out to intercept the incoming Russians, the E-2 was proceeding away from the ship to a holding station — those were the only other airplanes aloft. There was nothing in this sky to see. Yet if an aircraft did appear out of the haze, it would be close, very close, on a collision course or nearly so, a rerun of the Phantom incident a week ago. He sure as hell didn’t want to go through that again.
In spite of his resolution to keep a good lookout, boredom crept over him. His mind wandered.
He had signed the letter of resignation from the Navy yesterday and submitted it to Lieutenant Colonel Haldane. The skipper had taken the document without comment. Well, what was there to say?
Haldane wasn’t about to try to argue him into staying — he barely knew Jake. If Jake wanted out, he wanted out. What he could expect was a form letter of appreciation, a handshake and a hearty, “Have a nice life.”
That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Why not go back to Virginia and help Dad with the farm? Fishing in the spring and summer, hunting in the fall…He would end up joining the Lions Club, like his father. Lions meeting every Thursday evening, church two or three Sundays a month, high school football games on Friday nights in September and October…
It would be a chance to settle down, get a house of his own, some furniture, put down roots. He contemplated that future now, trying to visualize how it would be.
Dull. It would be damn dull.
Well, he had been complaining that the Navy was too challenging, the responsibility for the lives and welfare of other people too heavy to carry.
One life offered too much challenge, the other too little. Was there something, somewhere, more in the middle?
“Texaco, Strike.”
“Go ahead.”
“Take low station. Buster.” Buster meant hurry, bust your ass.
“We’re on our way.”
Jake Grafton disengaged the autopilot and rolled the Intruder to ninety degrees angle-of-bank. The nose came down. Speed brakes out, throttles back, shallow the bank to about seventy degrees, put a couple G’s on…the rate-of-descent needle pegged at 6,000 feet per minute down. That was all it would indicate. A spiral descent was his best maneuver because the tanker had a three-G limitation, mandated by higher authority to make the wings last longer. He was right at three G’s now, the altimeter unwinding at a dizzying rate.