The radio squawked to life. The words were partially garbled: the aircraft was a long way from the ship — over two hundred miles — and low.
“This is War Ace Five Oh Eight,” Flap said into his mask. “Say again.”
“Five Oh Eight, this is Black Eagle. We’ll relay. The ship wants you to investigate an SOS signal. Stand by for the coordinates.”
Flap glanced at Jake, shrugged, then got a ballpoint pen from the left-shoulder pocket of his flight suit and inspected the point. He scribbled on the corner of his top kneeboard card to make sure the pen worked, then said, “War Ace is ready to copy.”
When he had read back the coordinates to the controller in the E-2 Hawkeye to ensure he had copied them correctly, Flap tapped them into the computer and cycled it. “Uh-oh,” he muttered to Jake. “It’s over four hundred miles from here.”
“Better talk to the controller.”
Flap clicked his oxygen mask into place. “Black Eagle, Five Oh Eight. That ship looks to be four hundred twenty-nine miles from our present position, which is”—he pushed another button on the computer—“two hundred forty-two miles from the ship. We don’t have the gas and we can’t make the recovery.”
Grafton was punching the buttons, checking the wing fuel. They launched with a total of 18,000 pounds, and now had 11,200.
“Roger, War Ace. They know that. We’re talking to them on another frequency. They want you to go look anyway. They only got about fifteen seconds of an SOS broadcast, which had the lat-long position as a part of it. The ship thinks you can get there, give it a quick look-over, then rendezvous with a tanker on the inbound leg on this frequency.”
Already Jake had swung the plane fifteen degrees to the right to follow the computer’s steering command to the ship in distress. Now he added power and began to climb.
“Set up a no-rad rendezvous, just in case,” Jake told Flap.
He wanted to know where to find the tanker even if the radio failed. The only way to fix positions in this world of sea and sky was electronically, in bearings and distances away from ships that were radiating electronic signals that the plane’s nav aids could receive. Unfortunately the A-6’s radar could not detect other airplanes. And the tanker had no radar at all. Of course, Flap could find the carrier on radar if he were within 150 miles of it and the radar worked, and they could use the distance and bearing to locate themselves in relation to the tanker. If the radar kept working.
There were a lot of ifs.
The ifs made your stomach feel hollow.
Seventeen days had passed since their night adventure in the thunderstorm and here they were again, letting it all hang out.
Jake Grafton swore softly under his breath. It just isn’t fair! And the ship in distress might not even be there. A fifteen-second SOS with the position. Sounded like an electronic program, one that could have easily broadcast the wrong position information. The ship could be hundreds of miles from the position they were winging their way to, and they would never find it.
The emergency broadcast might have been an error — a radioman on some civilian freighter might have inadvertently flipped the wrong switch. There might not be any emergency at all.
No doubt the bigwigs on the carrier had considered all that. Then, safe and comfortable, they had sent Jake and Flap to take a look. And to take the risks.
Finding the tanker would be critical. Jake eyed the fuel gauge without optimism. He would go high, to forty thousand feet, stay there until he could make an idle descent to the ship in distress, make a quick pass while Flap snapped photographs, then climb back to forty thousand headed toward the carrier. The tanker would be at 150 miles, on the Zero Nine Five radial, at forty grand. If it were not sweet, or this plane couldn’t take fuel, they wouldn’t be able to make it to the ship. They would have to eject.
At least it was daytime. Good weather. No night sweats. No need to do that needle-ball shit by flashlight. That was something.
Now Jake turned in his seat to look behind him at the sun. He looked at his watch. There should be at least a half hour of daylight left when they reached the SOS ship, but the sun would be down by the time they got to the tanker. Still, there would probably be some light left in the sky. Perhaps it would be better if the sky were completely dark, then they could spot the tanker’s flashing anticollision light from a long distance away. But it would not be dark. A high twilight, that was the card the gods of fate had dealt.
One of these fine Navy days we’re gonna use up all our luck. Then we two fools are gonna be sucking the big one. That’s what everyone is trying to tell us.
“We won’t descend unless you have a target on the radar,” Jake told Flap.
“Uh-huh.”
That was a good decision. No use squandering all that fuel descending to sea level unless there was a ship down there to look at. And if there was a ship, it would show on radar.
What if the ship had gone under and the crew was in lifeboats? Lifeboats wouldn’t show on radar, not from a long distance.
“How far can you see a lifeboat on that thing?” he asked Flap, who had his head pressed against the scope hood.
“I dunno. Never looked for one.”
“Guess.”
“You were right the first time. We don’t go down unless we see something.”
He leveled at forty thousand feet and retarded the throttles. Twenty-two hundred pounds per hour of fuel to each engine would give him.72 Mach. Only they had used four thousand pounds climbing up here. Seven thousand eight hundred pounds of fuel remaining. It’s going to be tight. He retarded the throttles still farther, until he had only eighteen hundred pounds of fuel flowing to each engine. The airspeed indicator finally settled around 220 knots, which would work out to about 460 knots true.
Flap unfolded a chart and studied it. Finally he said, “That position is in the channel between the islands off the southern coast of Sumatra.”
“At least it isn’t on top of a mountain.”
“True.”
“Wonder if the brain trust aboard the boat plotted the position before they sent us on this goose chase.”
“I dunno. Those Navy guys…You never can tell.”
After much effort, Flap got the chart folded the way he wanted it. He wedged it between the panel and the Plexiglas so he could easily refer to it, then settled his head against the scope hood. After a bit he muttered, “I see some islands.”
Land. Jake hadn’t seen land in over a month, not since the ship exited the Malay Strait. Columbia was scheduled to spend three more weeks in the Indian Ocean, then head for Australia.
Rumors had been circulating for weeks. Yesterday they were confirmed. Australia, the Land Down Under, the Last Frontier, New California, where everyone spoke English — sort of — and everyone was your mate and they drank strong, cold beer and they liked Yanks…oooh boy! The crew was buzzing. This was what they joined the Navy for.
Those few old salts who claimed they had been to Australia before were surrounded by rapt audiences ready for just about any tale.
“The women,” the young sailors invariably demanded. “Tell us about the women. Are they really fantastic? Can we really get dates?”
Tall, leggy, gorgeous, and they like American men, actually prefer them over the home-grown variety. And their morals, while not exactly loose, are very very modern. One story making the rounds had it that during a carrier’s visit to Sydney several years ago the captain had to set up a telephone desk ashore to handle all the calls from Australian women wanting a date with an American sailor! Any sailor! Send me a sailor! These extraordinary females gave the term “international relations” a whole new dimension.