“Five Oh Two, fifty miles.”
Rain poured over the plane, so much that a film of water developed on the windscreen even though they were doing five hundred knots.
“Five Oh Two, forty miles.”
A lightning flash ahead distracted him for several seconds from the instruments. When he came back to them he had lost fifty feet. He struggled to get it back as he wondered if Haldane had seen the lightning flash. Should they go under a thunderstorm? It was Haldane’s call. Jake wasn’t breaking off the run unless the skipper did.
“Five Oh Two, thirty miles.”
Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
“They’ve turned,” Flap said. “They’re heading southeast. Follow steering.”
Even as Jake eased right to center the bug, the EW panel lit up and the tones assailed him. X-band, Y-band — the Russians had every radar they had turned on and probing, looking for a target.
Now the tones of the radars became a buzz. The bomber was so close to the EA-6B, which was jamming the Russian radar, that the bomber’s EW gear was overwhelmed.
“Five Oh Two, twenty miles.”
“Master Arm on, we’re in attack,” Flap reported.
The attack symbology came alive on the VDI.
Another lightning flash. Closer. Lots of rain.
“Five Oh Five, ten miles.” That was Haldane.
Fifteen miles…fourteen…thirteen…
“They’re jamming me. Keep on this heading.”
Now Flap flipped on frequency agility, trying to change his radar’s frequency to an unjammed wavelength long enough to get a look.
“Five Oh Two, ten miles.”
Three lightning flashes in a couple seconds. They were flying right under a boomer. The turbulence was so bad Jake had trouble concentrating on the instruments. Pee Wee was still hanging on, though.
Five miles.
Four.
Three.
Symbols marching down toward weapons release.
Lights. The Russian ships should be lit up. He should pass
over them just after weapons’ release. But don’t look! No distractions. Concentrate!
Two.
One.
Release marker coming down. Steering centered. Commit trigger pulled.
Click. Flag drop on the ordnance panel and the attack light on the VDI went out.
If there had been a bomb, it would now be falling.
A searchlight split the night. Three or four, weaving.
Instantly he had vertigo. He stared at the VDI, forced himself to keep his wings level as he tugged the stick slightly aft to begin a climb.
And then the lights were behind. That quick.
More lightning ahead. Jake eased into a left turn, toward the north. The skipper went out to the southeast, so this direction should be clear.
He would climb away from this ocean, turn west to head for the carrier, get out of this rain and turbulence and lightning, and to hell with the Ivans!
Message delivered: fuck you very much, stiff letter to follow.
He had the power back to ninety percent and was up to two thousand feet, in a ten-degree angle-of-bank left turn passing north on the HSI when the lightning bolt struck. There was a stupendous flash of light and a sound like a hammer striking, then nothing.
He was blind. Everything was white. Flash blindness. He knew it.
He keyed the ICS and told Flap, “Flashlight—” but there was no feedback in his headset. A total electrical failure. And he was blind as a bat, two thousand feet over the water, in a turn.
He had to see.
He blinked furiously, trying by sheer force of will to see the instrument panel.
But there was no light, no electricity.
He reached behind him with his left hand, found the handle for the ram-air turbine — the RAT — and pulled hard. Real hard.
The handle came out.
Perhaps four seconds had passed, not more.
The white was fading. He reached for his oxygen mask with both hands and unfastened the right side.
What the plane was doing he had no way of knowing, although he knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good. But he couldn’t fly blind. His seat-of-the-pants instincts were worthless. Oh, he knew that, had had it drummed into him and had experienced it on so many night carrier landings that he wasn’t even tempted to try to level the wings.
The white was fading into darkness. He blinked furiously, then remembered his L-shaped flashlight, hanging by a hook on the front of his survival vest. He found it and pushed the switch on.
In the growing darkness he saw the spot the beam made on the instrument panel. Another few seconds…
But there was already a spot of light on the needle-ball turn indicator! Flap! He must have had his head in the scope when the lightning hit.
He could see. The VDI was blank. The standby gyro showed a thirty-degree left turn. Ten degrees nose-down.
Cross-check with the turn indicator!
Turn needle pegged left. He rolled right to center it, overdid it and came back left some. The standby gyro responded.
The altimeter! Going down.
Back stick. Stop the needle. Gently now. Coming down on eleven hundred feet. Stop it there, center that turn needle. Standby gyro disagrees by five degrees. Ignore it!
Flap was shouting and he caught the muffled words: “Reese is still with us. He has his lights on. I think he wants to take the lead.”
Jake could see now. His vision was back to normal. How many seconds had it been?
He risked a glance in the rearview mirror. There was Reese, with his exterior lights on, bobbing like a cork on Jake’s right wing. Reese must be the world’s finest formation pilot, to hang on through that gyration.
Should he chance it? Should he pull the power and try to ease back onto Reese’s wing without a radio call or signal?
Even as the thought shot through his mind, he was retarding the throttles. Reese’s plane began to move forward.
Okay! Flap was flipping his flashlight at Reese in the EA-6B’s cockpit.
Pee Wee knows. He wants me to fly on him. It’s our only chance if the TACAN and radar are screwed up. We’ll never find the ship on our own.
Now Reese was abeam him, the two planes flying wing tip to wing tip and bouncing out of sync in the turbulence.
Be smooth, Jake. Don’t lose him. Don’t let him slip away into this black shit or you’ll be swimming for it.
He stabilized in parade position on Reese’s left side, so that he was looking straight up the leading edge of the swept wing into the cockpit. Reese was just a dark shape limned by red light, the glow from his instrument panel.
No comforting red glow in this cockpit. This place was dark as a tomb.
The bouncing was getting worse. He had to cross under, get on Reese’s right side so he wouldn’t be looking across the cockpit at the other plane.
He tucked the nose down gently and pulled a smidgen of power. Now power back on and a little right bank while he wrestled the stick in the chop.
Right under the tail, crossing, surfacing on Pee Wee’s right wing. Okay. Now hang here.
Another flash of lightning. He flinched.
Flap was shouting something. He concentrated, trying to make sense of the words. “… must’ve zapped us with a zillion volts. Every circuit breaker we got is popped. I’m going to try to reset some, so if you smell smoke, let me know.”
“Okay,” he shouted, and found reassurance in the sound of his own voice.
All he had to do was hang on to Reese. Hang on and hang on and hang on, and someday, sometime, Reese would drop him onto the ball. The ball would be out there in the rain and black goo, and the drop lights, and the centerline lights, and the wires, strung across that pitching, heaving deck.