The Intruders (19 page)

,what’s it about?” -you don’t know Malcolm X?”

“Uh-uh.” -Hated honkeys. Believed the races should have their own
enclaves, no mixing, that kind of stuff.”

“Do you believe that?” Jake asked tentatively. Flap was only the second
or third black naval aviator Jake had ever met, and he had never
discussed race with one 6tHe had some good ideas,” Flap said, glancing
at Jake.

“But no, I think the races should be integrated. America is for
Americans—black, white, brown, yellow, green or purple. But what
about you? You’re from rural Virginia, niggerhating redneck heaven,
one-party bigot Politics, pot-gutted klagel sherM-what d’ya think?” -Oil
X should’ve had you writing his speeches-”

Jake Grafton wasn’t stupid enough to proclaim himself a true believer in
racial equality and brotherly love, certainly not to a black man
probably capable of forcing him into the bigot cesspool with just a
little effort.

“If this Marine Corps gig goes sour, I might go into politics,,, Flap
allowed, then resumed reading his book.

His father had two black employees on his farm during the years Jake was
growing up. They were both huge men, with hands like pie plates and
upper arms larger than Jake’s thighs. They were barely able to sign
their names but they could work any four white men into the dirt- In
their younger days they had worked on railroad track-rePair gangs
swinging sledgehammers. “Georgia niggers,” his father, Sam, had called
them. How they came to end up on the Grafton farm Jake never quite
understood, but Isaiah and Frank allowed from time to tune that they had
ab1s0lutely no intention of crossing the Virginia line south-bound.

Then they would shake their heads and laugh at some private joke,
creating the vision in the boy’s mind of bloodthirsty southern sheriffs
eager to avenge spectacular, unmentionable crimes.

Ms father treated the two blacks like the whites he hired occasionally,
worked alongside them, shared food and smokes and jokes. Young Jake
liked the men inunensely.

Yet, like most of the boys of his generation in southwestern rural
Virginia, he accepted racial segregation as natural, as unremarkable and
logical as the deference men showed women and the respect accorded the
elderly. That is, he did until 1963, the year he turned eighteen. One
evening while watching the network news show footage of Negro children
in Birmingham being blasted with streams from high pressure fire hoses,
his father had let out an oath.

“I guess it’s a damn good thing that I’m not colored,” Sam Grafton
declared. “If I were, I’d get me a gun and go to Birmingham and start
shooting some of those sons of bitches. And I’d start with that bastard
right there!” His finger shot out and Jake found himself staring at the
porky visage of Bull Connor.

“Sam!” exclaimed his mother disgustedly.

“Martha, what the hell do they have to do to get treated decent by
whites? The colored people have put up with a hell of a lot more crap
than any Christian should ever have to deal with. Those sons of bitches
laying the wood to them aren’t Christians. They’re Nazis. It’s a
miracle the colored people haven’t started shooting the damned swine.”

“Do you have to cuss like that?”

high time some white people got mad at those bigots,” Sam Grafton
thundered. “I wish Jack Kennedy would get his ass out of his rocking
chair and kick some butt. The President of the United States, saying
there’s nothing he can do when those rednecks attack children! By God,
if Bull Connor was black and those kids were white he’d be s’ ‘ 9mg a
different tune. He’s just another gutless politician scared of losing
the bigot vote. Pfft!” - That evening had been an eye-opener for Jake.
He started paying attention to the civil rights protests, listening to
the arguments. His father had always been a bit different than his
neighbors, marching to a different drummer. And he was usually right.
He was that time, too, his son concluded.

Remembering that evening, he sighed, then glanced around the flight deck
People were lying on the deck beside their equipment, napping.

He was in the middle of a yawn when he heard the hiss of the flight deck
loudspeaker system coming to life.

“Launch the allert-five. Launch the alert-five. We have bogies
inbound.”

The lounging men on the flight deck sprang into action.

Jake Grafton twirled his fingers at the plane captain, received a twirl
in response. He turned on the left engine-fuel master switch and pushed
the start button. With a low moan the engine began to turn. When the
RPM was high enough he came around the horn with the throttle, then sat
watching the temperatures and RPMs rise while he pulled his hell met on.

By the time he got the second engine started and the canopy closed, the
chopper on the Cat tracks was engaging its rotors. The ship was
turning–Jake could see the list on the flight deck-coming about forty
degrees left into the wind. Now the deck leveled out. The Columbia’s
rudder was centered. Thirty seconds later the angel lifted off. it
left the deck straight ahead. When it was safely past the bow the
chopper pilot laid it into a right turn. out of the Now the catapult
shuttles were dragged back ected water brakes into battery while the
final checkers insp the two fighters and gave their thumbs-up.
Red-shirted ordnance-men pulled the safety pins from the missile racks
and taxi director showed them to the pilots. The yellOw-shirted gave
the pilot of the plane in front of Jake a come-ahead signal and let him
inch the last two feet forward Onto Cat Three while the green-shirted
catapult hook-up men crawled underneath with the bridle and two more
greenies installed the hold-back bar, on the Phantom a ten -foot-long
hinged strap with the hold-back shear-bolt attaching to the airplane’s
belly and the other end going into a slot in the deck.

The weight-board man flashed his board at the Pilot and got a thumbs-up,
then showed it to the Cat Officer, who also rogered. The whole
performance was a ballet of multicOlored shirts darting around, near and
under the moving fighter, each man intent on doing his job perfectly.

As the taxiing fighter reached the maximum extent of the hold-back bar,
the JBI)s 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 engine& 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 JBI)s 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 F4 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 T Iff E I N T
R U D E R S

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 hold-back
bolt broke, then the acceleration smashed him backward like the hand of
God.

The strike controller told Jake to 90 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.” die

“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or

“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 rogered 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 stayinghe 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 Sun days a month, high school
football games on Friday mg 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-ofdescent 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.

Low station was 5,000 feet, but it could be lowered if the visibility
was better below this crud. Maybe he should ask.

“Ah, Strike, Texaco. How’s the visibility and ceiling underneath?”

“A little worse than when you took off. Maybe a mile viz under an
indefinite obscuration.”

“Who’s our customer?”

“Snake-eye Two Oh Seven. He’s got an emergency.

Switch to button sixteen and rendezvous on him.”

Jake was passing ten thousand feet, still turning steeply with G on.
Bracing himself against the G, Flap changed the radio channel and
called.

“Snake-eye Two Oh Seven, this is Texaco. Say your posit, angels, and
heading, over.”

“Texaco, I’m on the Three One Zero radial at nine miles, headed inbound
at four grand. Better hurry.”

Jake keyed the radio transmitter. “Just keep going in and we’ll join on
you.”

The fighter pilot gave him two clicks in reply.

Jake eyed the TACAN needle on the HSI, the horizontal situation
indicator, a glorified gyroscopic compass. He had a problem here in
three-dimensional space and the face of the instrument was an aid in
helping him visualize it.

He rolled the wings level and stuffed the nose down more.

Ms airspeed was at 400 knots and increasing.

:’Snake-eye, Texaco, what’s your problemr

“We’re venting fuel overboard and the pull-forward is 90mg to take more
time than we’ve got.”

‘,Posit again?”

“Three One Zero at five, angels four, speed three hundred, heading One
Three Zero.”

:’Are you in the clear?”

“Negative.”

“Let’s go on down to three grand.”

Jake was passing six thousand feet, on the Three Three Zero radial at
nine miles. He was indicating 420 knots and he was raising the nose to
shallow his dive. He thumbed the speed brakes in and added some power.
“We’re going to join fast,” he muttered at Flap, who didn’t reply.

The problem was that he didn’t know how much visibility he would have.
If it was about a mile, like the controller on the ship said, and he
missed the F4 by more than that margin, he would never see him. Unlike
the Phantom, the tanker had no radar to assist in the interception.

He was paying strict attention to the TACAN needle now.

The seconds ticked by and the distance to the ship closed rapidly.

“There, at one o’clock.” Flap called it.

Now Jake saw the fighter. He was several hundred feet below Jake, which
was good, at about a mile, trailing a plume of fuel. Grafton reduced
power and deployed the speed brakes.

Uh-oh, he had a ton of closure. He stuffed the nose down to underrun
the Phantom.

“Look out!”

The wingman! Ms tailpipes were right there, coming in the windscreen!
Sweet Jesus!

He jammed the stick forward and the negative G lifted him and Flap away
from their seats. In two heartbeats he was well under and jerked the
stick back. He had forgotten about the wingman.

Still indicating 350, he ran under the Phantom in trouble and pulled the
power to idle. “At your one o’clock, Snakeeye. We’ll tank at two
seventy. Join on me.”

At 280 knots he got the power up and the speed brakes in. He quickly
stabilized at 270 indicated. After checking to ensure that he was level
headed directly for the ship, Jake turned in his seat to examine the
Phantom closing in as Flap deployed the refueling drogue.

The three-thousand-pound belly tank the F-4 usually carried was gone.
Fuel was pouring from the belly of the aircraft.

“Green light, you’re cleared in,” Flap announced on the radio.

Jake turned back to his instruments. He wanted to provide a stable
drogue for the fighter to plug. “What’s your problem, Snake-eye?”

“Belly tank wouldn’t transfer. We jettisoned it and now we are pumping
fuel out the belly. The check valve must be damaged. We’re down to one
point seven.”

“Strike, Texaco, how much does Two Oh Seven get?”

“All he needs, Texaco. We should have a ready deck in six or seven
minutes. Putting forward now.” This meant all the planes parked in the
landing area were being pulled forward to the bow.

The green light on the refueling panel went out and the fuel counter
began to click over. “You’re getting fuel,” Flap told the fighter.

They were crossing over the ship now. Jake Grafton eased the tanker
into a descent. If he could get underneath this haze he could drop the
Phantom at the 180-degree position, only thirty seconds or so from the
deck.

When the fuel-delivered counter registered two thousand pounds, Jake
told the fighter pilot.

“Keep it coming. We’re up a grand in the main bag. At least we’re
getting it faster than it’s going over the side.”

At two thousand feet Jake saw the ocean. He kept descending. At
fifteen hundred feet he spotted the carrier, on his left, turning hard.
The ship was coming into the wind.

From this distance Jake could only see a couple airplanes still to go
forward. Very soon.

He leveled at twelve hundred feet and circled the ship in a left turn at
about a mile.

Five thousand pounds transferred … six . . . seven … the ship
was into the wind now and the wake was streaming straight behind her,
white as snow against the gray sea as the four huge screws bit hard to
drive her faster through the water.

“Snake-eye Two Oh Seven, this is Paddles. We’re going to be ready in
about two minutes. I want you to drop off the tanker on the downwind,
dirty up and turn into the groove. Swells still running about fifteen
feet, so the deck is pitching. Average out the ball and fly a nice
smooth pass.”

“Two Oh Seven.”

Jake was crossing the bow now, the fuel counter still clicking. Eight
thousand five hundred pounds transferred so far.

“Texaco, hawk the deck.”

“Roger.” Hawk the deck meant to fly alongside so that the plane on the
bolter could rendezvous and tank.

This was going to work out, Jake told himself. This guy is going to get
aboard.

The fuel-delivered counter stopped clicking over at 9,700 pounds. The
fighter had backed out of the basket. Jake took a cut to the right,
then turned back left and looked over his shoulder. The crippled
fighter was descending and slowing, his hook down and gear coming out.
And the fuel was still pouring from his belly in a steady, fire-hose
stream. The wingman was well behind, still clean.

When the fighter pilot jettisoned the belly tank, Jake thought, the
quick-disconnect fitting must have frozen and the plumbing tore loose
inside the aircraft. There was a oneway check valve just upstream of
the quick-disconnect; obviously it wasn’t working. So the pressure in
the main fuel cell was forcing fuel overboard through the broken pipe.

Jake slowed to 250 knots and cycled the refueling hose in and back out
to reset the reel response. Now to scoot down by the ship, Jake
thought, so that if he bolters, I’ll be just ahead where he can quickly
rendezvous.

He dropped to a thousand feet and turned hard at a mile to parallel the
wake on the ship’s port side.

The landing fighter was crossing the wake, turning into the groove, when
Jake saw the fire.

The plume of fuel streaming behind the plane ignited.

The tongue of flame was twice as long as the airplane and clearly
visible.

“You’re on fire!” someone shouted on the radio.

“In the groove, eject, eject, eject!”

Bang, bang, two seats came out. Before the first chute opened the
flaming fighter went nose-first into the ship’s wake. A splash, then it
was gone.

“Two good chutes.” Another voice on the radio.

In seconds both the chutes went into the water. As Jake went over he
spotted the angel coming up the wake.

“Boy, talk about luck! It’s a wonder he didn’t blow up,” Jake told
Flap.

He was turning across the bow when the air boss came on the frequency.
You always knew the boss’s voice, a Godlike booming from on high.
“Texaco, your signal, charley.

We’re going to hot spin you.”

Jake checked his fuel quantity. Nine thousand pounds left.

He opened the main dump and dropped the hook, gear and flaps.

As advertised, the ball was moving up and down on the optical landing
system, which was gyroscopically stabilized in roll and pitch, but not
in heave, the up and down motion of the ship.

He managed to get aboard without difficulty and was taxied in against
the island to refuel. He kept the engines running.

In moments the helicopter settled onto the deck abeam g the island.
Corpsmen with stretchers rushed out. The stretchers weren’t needed. The
two Phantom crewmen walked across the deck under their own power, wet as
drenched rats, grinning broadly and flashing everyone in sight a
thumbs-up.

Jake and Flap were still fueling five minutes later when two Soviet Bear
bombers, huge, silver, four-engine turboprops, came up the wake at five
hundred feet. The bombers were about a thousand feet apart, and each
had an F-4 tucked in alongside like a pilot fish.

The flight deck crew froze and watched the parade go by.

“We could have done a better job up there today,” Jake told Flap. “We
should have had the second radio tuned into Strike. Then we would have
known what Two Oh Seven’s problem was without asking. And we should
have asked about that wingman. Phantoms always go around in pairs, like
snakes.”

“Those tailpipes in our windscreen,” Flap said, sighmig.

“Man, that was a leemer.”

Jake knew what a leemer was-a shot of cold urine to the heart. “We
gotta get with the program,” he told the BN.

“I guess so,” Flap said as he tucked Malcolm X into his G-suit pocket
and zipped it shut.

The air wing commander was Commander Charles “Chuck” Kall, a fighter
pilot. He was known universally as CAG, an acronym that rhymed with rag
and stood for Commander Air Group. This acronym had been in use in the
U.S. Navy since it acquired its first carrier.

CAG Kai] made careful notes this evening as he listened to the air
intelligence officer brief the threat envelopes that could be expected
around a Soviet task force. Lieutenant Colonel Haldane, his operations
officer Major Bartow, and Jake Grafton were the A-6 representatives at
this planning session. Jake sat listening and looking at the projected
graphics with a sense of relief-the Al’s presentation sounded remarkably
like his homemade presentation for Colonel Haldane several weeks ago. An
attacking force could expect to see a lot of missiles and stupendous
quantities of flak, according to the Al.