Earning a call sign as a play on one’s last name, as Trash White had done, seemed like a hell of a lot less trouble.
As a boy, Brandon had wanted to be a NASCAR driver, but by his mid-teens a ride-along in a friend’s father’s crop duster set his life’s course. That one morning he spent streaking low over soybean fields in a “two-holer,” a two-seat open biplane, showed him that the real excitement was not on the oval track but rather in the wide-open sky.
He could have gone into the Air Force or the Navy, but a friend’s big brother joined the Marines, and then sold Brandon on the Corps the night he came home from Paris Island and took his kid brother and his friend out to McDonald’s and regaled them with stories about what a badass he was.
Now White was twenty-eight, pilot of an F/A-18C Hornet tactical fighter, an aircraft about as far away from that first Air Tractor crop duster as one could get.
Trash loved flying, and he loved the Marine Corps. He’d been stationed in Japan for the past four months, and had enjoyed himself as much as anyone could. Japan wasn’t as much fun as San Diego or Key West or some other places he had been stationed, but still, he had no complaints.
Not until the day before yesterday, when he was told his squadron of twelve aircraft would be heading out to the Ronald Reagan to make haste toward Taiwan.
The day after the U.S. announced the Reagan was moving closer to the Republic of China, People’s Liberation Army — Air Force warplanes began harassing Taiwanese aircraft around the Strait of Taiwan in retaliation. Trash and his Marines were ordered to the carrier to bolster the Navy Super Hornets already on board. Together the Navy and Marine aviators would be flying combat air patrol missions on the ROC side of the centerline of the Strait of Taiwan.
He knew the Chinese would probably go ape shit when they saw American aircraft protecting the ROC, but Trash didn’t care. He welcomed the opportunity to mix things up with the Chinese. Hell, if there was going to be action and F/A-18Cs were going to be involved, Trash damn well wanted the Marine Corps there, and he damn well wanted his own aircraft in the thick of it.
But he hated boats. He’d qualified on carriers — every Marine has to qualify on carriers — but he had fewer than twenty traps under his belt, and all twenty of those were more than three years ago. Yes, for the past couple of weeks, he’d been on FCLP, field carrier landing practice, at a field in Okinawa, where he landed on a stretch of runway fixed with arresting wires just like on a carrier, but that flat stretch of concrete hadn’t been Dutch rolling in the dark in a rainstorm like the deck of the Reagan below him.
FCLP was a long way from what he was going through now.
Two minutes ago Trash’s flight lead, Major Scott “Cheese” Stilton, touched down on the deck and caught a four-wire for a long but acceptable landing. The other ten Marine F/A-18C pilots coming in this evening had all landed before Cheese. Trash was the last one in the sky tonight, with the exception of the refueler, and this sucked for Trash, because the weather was getting worse by the minute and Trash was down below six thousand pounds of fuel, meaning he would get only two passes at the deck before he’d have to refuel and try again, making everyone down there in flight ops on USS Ronald Reagan wait.
“Power. You’re low,” the landing signals officer coached Trash in over the radio.
Trash had backed off the throttle too much. He goosed it forward again, which pushed his jet too high.
Too high meant he’d either catch the four-wire, the last wire on the deck, or he’d bolter, meaning he’d miss all four wires and roll down the deck. In the case of a bolter he’d fly right off the end, climb back into the soupy black sky, and reenter the landing pattern.
Too high would not be good, but it was a hell of a lot better than too low.
Too low, not catching the one wire but really too low, meant a ramp strike, which was carrier-ops speech for slamming into the back of the boat, killing yourself and sending your burning wreckage rolling across the deck in a fireball that would turn into a video to be used in carrier training curriculums as a bright and shining example of what not to do.
Trash didn’t want to bolter, but it sure as shit beat the alternative.
Trash was focused on the meatball now, the illuminated amber bulb in the center of the OLS that helped pilots maintain the proper approach angle down to the deck. As much as every human instinct told him to eye the deck itself as he approached it at one hundred fifty miles per hour, he knew he had to ignore his impact point and trust the meatball to bring him down safely. He was on the ball now, it was nice and centered in the middle of the OLS, indicating a good glide path, three-point-five degrees of descent, and he was just seconds from touching the deck. It looked like he was on his way to a safe three-wire, a nice landing considering the weather.
But just a few moments before his wheels and his tail hook touched down, the amber ball rose above the center horizontal green datum lights on the OLS.
The LSO said, “Easy with it.”
Trash quickly pulled back on the throttle, but the ball rose higher and higher.
“Shit,” Trash said between two heavy breaths. He came off the power even more.
“Power back on,” admonished the LSO.
It took Trash a moment to realize it, but that was only because he wasn’t a Navy pilot used to carrier landings. He had been lined up perfectly, but now the pitching deck was dropping away as the Ronald Reagan sank between massive ocean swells.
Trash’s wheels touched down on the deck, but he knew he was long. He shoved his throttle forward to the full power detent, and his speed shot up. He raced down the deck toward the impenetrable darkness ahead.
“Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!” called the LSO, confirming something Trash already knew.
In seconds he was back in the black sky, climbing over the sea, reentering the bolter/wave-off pattern with his plane as the sole aircraft.
If he could not land on this next pass, the air boss on the carrier, the officer in charge of all flight operations, would send him to gas up behind the F/A-18E that was circling around ahead and to the left of the bow of the Reagan.
Trash had a strong suspicion the pilot of the refueler didn’t want to be up here in this black soup any more than Trash did, and was probably wishing that a-hole Marine pilot would put his jet on the deck already so he could call it a night.
Trash concentrated on his instruments as he leveled out and began a series of turns that would put him back on final.
Five minutes later he was lined up on the carrier once more.
The LSO came over the radio, “Four-oh-eight, this is Paddles. The deck is pitching a bit. Concentrate on a good start and avoid overcontrolling in the middle.”
“Four-oh-eight, Hornet-ball, Five-point-one.” He watched the ball, it was just about the only damn thing he could see at this point, and he could tell he was high.
The LSO said, “Roger ball. High again. Work it down.”
“Roger.” Trash pulled back slightly on the throttle.
“You are high and lined up left,” called the LSO now. “Easy with it. Right for line up.”
Trash’s left hand twitched the power back again and he pushed the stick to the right.
He centered nicely on the deck ahead and below, but he was still too high.
He was moments away from another bolter.
But just then, as he crossed the threshold of the rear of the massive carrier, he saw the lights of the deck rising underneath him, he watched the deck push up into the black sky toward the bottom of his aircraft like it was on a hydraulic lift.