Bird Dog concentrated, focusing on the moments immediately after he’d dropped the weapons. It had been a clear, cool feeling, one buoyed up with exhilaration and joy far beyond anything he’d experienced in the air before. Even shooting down his first MiG hadn’t come close to knowing he’d just done a hell of a job under impossible circumstances. He focused, letting the feeling come back, letting the raw sensation of power replace the tentativeness in his hands and legs.
After a few moments, he took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, his voice now calm and strong. “I’ve got it.”
After what he’d been through, plugging this little basket would be a piece of cake. He grinned, relishing the challenge, and slid the Tomcat smoothly forward. The refueling probe rammed home, jarring the aircraft slightly.
“Good job,” Gator said softly. Not for the first time, he marveled at his pilot’s ability to focus, to compartmentalize and stay right in the moment. Whether Bird Dog knew it or not, Gator decided, he was one hell of a pilot.
Not that Gator was going to tell him that. The RIO glanced down at his gauges and saw a solid lock and fuel flowing into the aircraft. “How much you going to take on?” he asked Bird Dog.
“Six thousand pounds,” the pilot said, his hands and feet moving quickly to make the minor adjustments in airspeed and altitude to keep the aircraft firmly mated. “That gives us enough fuel for a couple of passes. If we need them.”
And they would not, Gator decided, relaxing. The mood that Bird Dog was in, he might not even need the arresting wire to get on board.
“How about a lift?” the helicopter pilot shouted over the noise. Rogov smiled, held out his hand, and tried to look as friendly and undangerous as he could.
“Thank you,” he said, hoping the slight accent in his voice would be interpreted as native islander. Evidently it was, since the pilot returned his smile and gestured to one of the canvas-strapped seats lining the interior of the helicopter. “We’ve got a corpsman and doctor on board,” the pilot added.
“One is badly hurt,” Huerta said, pointing at Morning Eagle, pale and motionless on the stretcher. “The rest are just banged up and bruised.”
“Eskimos, huh?” The pilot studied his new passengers, then shrugged and turned back to the controls. “We’ll be there in five mikes.”
Huerta sat poised in the hatch to the aircraft, watching the others file aboard. Oddly enough, Morning Eagle was among the last in line, still carried by the same two Inuit. He saw Morning Eagle start to move, then one of the stretcher-bearers shifted, blocking his line of sight. When he next got a good look at him, Morning Eagle was no longer moving.
“Come on, come on,” Huerta shouted, gesturing at the men. “We’ve got most of them, but who knows how many else there are?”
The men started to move more rapidly and quickly took seats along the sides. Moving fast, Huerta noted, for men that had looked so stunned half an hour earlier. He shrugged. The human body was more resilient than anyone gave it credit for, particularly when the mind knew what the body didn’t. He’d seen the men drive themselves long past the point of exhaustion, held upright and moving only by the sheer force of will. Any man could do it — SEAL training taught them how.
“That’s the last of them,” Huerta shouted to the pilot. He moved toward the last seat in the aircraft. As he was midway down the fuselage, the waiting men suddenly moved. Three men stood up, grabbed him, and threw him to the deck, pinning him down. He started to struggle, then something hard hit him on the right side of his head. He lay motionless, unconscious, on the deck.
Two more of the supposed native forces moved forward, gently easing their pistols up against the necks of the pilot and copilot. Rogov approached them and stood midway between the two seats. “Now, the carrier,” he ordered, in a voice that left no doubt as to what the consequence of disobedience would be. “Do not touch that,” he said sharply as the copilot’s hand reached out for the IFF transponder. “I know you have special codes that will tell the ship that you are under force. Do not attempt to use them. If necessary, my men can fly this craft themselves.”
The pilot and copilot exchanged an angry, helpless look, then the pilot nodded. “Do what the man says, Brian,” he said levelly. The copilot nodded and returned to reading the preflight checklist in a slightly shaky voice.
Too bad there’s no checklist for hijacking, the pilot thought grimly, as he made the routine responses to the checklist items. And there was no way to let Jefferson know what was happening, not without risking the lives of the remaining friendlies on board. If there were any others, he added to himself, wondering if he and the copilot were the only Americans still left on board the helicopter.
“Helo inbound,” the TFCC TAO reported.
Tombstone acknowledged the report with a curt nod. He studied the friendly aircraft symbol that had just popped up on the display. “Ask them how many souls on board,” he said. “And ask CDC if they’re going to get that Tomcat on board before the helo makes its approach. I don’t want a cluster fuck over this, people.”
“Tomcat Two-oh-one on final now,” the TAO responded instantly. “The tanker is going to wait until after the helo is on board, then we’ll clear the decks for her. I think there’re some casualties on the helo, so we’ll want to get them in as soon as we can, but there’s a good window of time for Bird Dog to take one pass.”
“That’s all it usually takes him,” Tombstone said.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one.”
“Roger, ball, Tomcat Two-oh-one, five point four, two souls,” Bird Dog radioed to the landing signals officer, or LSO. Tomcat 201 was one mile behind the carrier, coming up fast on the broad, blunt stern. His call indicated he’d seen the meatball, the giant Fresnel lens mounted on the port side. The intricate combination of lens and lights gave the pilot a quick visual reference as to whether or not he was on glide path. When he was making a proper approach, at a safe altitude, the light would glow green. Too high or too low, and the pilot could see only the red lights. With the LSO having the final word, and acting as a final safety check and flight coach, all under the watchful eyes of the air boss, final approach on a carrier was one of the most carefully monitored flight patterns in the world.
Not that accidents didn’t happen, Bird Dog thought grimly. Calm down now, boy, don’t get too excited. Just hit the three-wire, nice and sweet, like you’ve done a hundred times before.
Of course, experience was no guarantee that nothing would go wrong. Just two weeks ago, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the air mass that always churned and bubbled in the wake of the aircraft carrier. He’d lost concentration, and a sudden downdraft had caught him unprepared. Still at 140 knots airspeed, he’d smacked his Hornet straight into the stern of the carrier, crumpling airframe and man into a twisted mass now resting somewhere on the ocean floor.
Bird Dog shuddered, forcing the picture out of his mind. It happened to other people, not to him. He felt his concentration quiver, then steady and become absolute. His world narrowed down to the Fresnel lens, the aft end of the carrier, and the quiet, soothing voice of the LSO in his ear.
“A little more altitude, altitude, coming on in, you’ve got it,” the LSO said, chanting his familiar refrain of orders and encouragement.
Even without the LSO’s comments, Bird Dog knew he had it nailed. He felt the Tomcat grab for the deck, heard the squeal of rubber meeting nonskid, and had just a moment to wonder at how gentle first contact had been when the tailhook caught the arresting wire.