Fitzgerald ran one hand through his thinning hair. “That’s hardly surprising, Admiral. They’ve been through a hell of a lot this cruise.”
“That’s no excuse, hey?”
“It’s not intended as one, sir.” Fitzgerald’s lips compressed into a hard, thin line. “This is a good ship, Admiral. And damned good men.”
Vaughn studied him for a long moment. “I want to know I can depend on them, Captain. And on you.”
“That goes without saying. Sir.” Fitzgerald knew his tone verged on the insubordinate, but he was angry now and working to keep the words formal and correct. It was Vaughn’s responsibility to direct the entire battle group; it was Fitzgerald’s responsibility to hand the admiral a ship he could work with, manned by a well-trained and highly motivated crew. When Vaughn criticized the men, he was criticizing him. That might be Vaughn’s right as CO, but Fitzgerald had the feeling that the admiral didn’t really care about Jefferson’s crew or how capable they really were.
And that worried him.
Vaughn did not seem to be aware of Fitzgerald’s anger. “Good. I’ll want you to bring the Jefferson to a new course at once to avoid that submarine.”
“Of course, Admiral.”
“And I want an ASW alert. Get some of your King Fishers up there in case they’re needed.” The King Fishers, VS-42, were Jefferson’s antisubmarine S-3A Viking squadron. “Intelligence briefing at 0800 tomorrow. I want to discuss our options.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“See to it.” Vaughn turned abruptly and strode toward the door. “Oh, and you might speak to your Exec about the mess here in CVIC. I like a taut ship, Captain. Can’t go into combat with gear adrift, hey?” Then he was gone.
Fitzgerald stared after him for a long moment before following. Vaughn, he decided, was still an unknown quantity. An untested quantity.
Well, odds were he would get his testing on this cruise.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one, charlie now.”
Tombstone heard the words and felt the tension ebb somewhat from his shoulders and back. “They’re calling us in, CAG,” he said. He nudged the stick to the left, putting the Tomcat into a shallow, sweeping curve that would roll it out of the holding pattern several miles astern of the carrier.
“Suits me,” Marusko replied. “My safe little office back on the old bird farm is looking better and better.”
“Viper Two, Viper Leader,” he called, opening the tactical channel.
“Batman! We’re charlied. Going in.”
“Roger that,” Batman’s voice replied a moment later. “Save us a cold one. We’re right behind you.” That was almost the literal truth. His wingman was now half a mile behind Tombstone’s aircraft and three thousand feet higher, locked into the aerial racecourse of the carrier’s traffic control holding pattern, called a Marshall stack. They’d been circling there twenty-one miles from the Jefferson while the Air Boss brought in some S-3A Vikings that had been out on a sub patrol.
Tombstone leveled off. He could just make out the Jefferson’s stern far ahead, a gray rectangle nearly lost on the ocean. The flight decks on Nimitz-class carriers covered four and a half acres, but they looked ridiculously tiny from the cockpit of a fighter plane positioning itself for a trap. As they got closer, his eyes shifted to the carrier’s port side where a yellow speck of light, the “meatball,” or Fresnel optical landing system, appeared centered like a bull’s-eye above the LSO platform.
“Two-zero-one,” the voice of the Landing Signals Officer said over Tombstone’s headphones. “Call the ball.”
“Two-zero-one,” Tombstone replied, identifying his aircraft by number.
“Tomcat ball, three point one.” By “calling the ball,” Tombstone was letting the LSO know he had the landing signal in sight, that the incoming plane was a Tomcat with 3, 1 00 pounds of fuel left on board so Jefferson’s recovery crews would know how to set the tension on the arrestor cables stretched across the deck, and that he was properly aligned for a trap.
“Roger ball,” the LSO confirmed. “Looking good.”
Tombstone felt his heart begin to race. It was always like this during a carrier landing, day or night, fair weather or foul. Naval aviators without exception rated recovery on the deck of a carrier as having a higher pucker factor than air-to-air combat or an enemy SAM launch.
He lowered his arrestor hook, cut back on the throttles, and let the Tomcat sink toward the Jefferson’s deck. The carrier’s stern appeared much larger now, swelling rapidly as he dropped from the sky.
Lieutenant Commander Christopher Goodman had the throttles all the way back on his ungainly S-3A Viking as he spit out the arrestor cable and retracted his tail hook. Gently, he eased the throttles forward again, using the rudder pedals to steer the aircraft off the part of the flight deck delineated by broad white stripes to make way for the next incoming plane. A yellow-shirted handler backed away just ahead of the aircraft, arms extended forward, jacking them up and down, up and down as he signaled Goodman to come ahead.
He taxied slowly toward the line of planes along Jefferson’s starboard side, aft of the island. His crew — Lieutenant Hyman Gold, the copilot; Lieutenant j.g. Roger Kelso, the tactical coordinator; and AW-1 Bill Rocco, the systems operator — all were already relaxing now that the trap was successfully completed, unstrapping their seat harnesses and preparing to shut down the bird and log out.
There was very little swell this afternoon, and the Jeff was riding the sea almost rock-steady. That was always a blessing on the rare occasions when it happened. An airplane, any airplane, might be sheer poetry in motion in the sky, but on an aircraft carrier’s deck it was transformed into a bulky, clumsy, and barely manageable beast. With a pitching deck made slippery by ice or rain, things were just that much worse.
The handler gave a two-handed pushing movement to the side, indicating a particular parking space with the aircraft lined up along the starboard side, aft of the island. Goodman swung the foot pedals farther, maneuvering toward the narrow slot. A long line of aircraft noses swept past the cockpit as he turned, all painted in dull pale grays: F-14D Tomcats, wings angled sharply back along their flanks; a pair of bulky E-2C Hawkeyes with their wings rotated sideways and back to avoid the flat, saucer shapes of their radomes mounted above their fuselages; A-6F Intruders with their wingtips nearly meeting above their backs. Space was always at a premium at sea, both on the flight deck and down below, on the carrier’s cavernous hangar deck. Planes were parked side by side with folded wings nearly touching.
Easing the fifteen-ton aircraft toward the target, he gently applied pressure to the tops of the rudder pedals, engaging the wheel brakes.
Nothing happened. Goodman felt a sinking, mushy sensation through his flight boots, then nothing at all. The Viking’s brakes were gone, and Goodman was rolling across the deck toward a narrow cul-de-sac lined with multi-million-dollar aircraft.
There was no time to speak, even to give warning. With one hand he cut the throttles all the way back, then flicked on the Viking’s external lights and dropped the arrestor hook to signal the deck crew that he was in trouble. His momentum was too great to allow the plane to roll to a stop, and if he kept going he was going to roll with irresistible momentum squarely into the side of a Hawkeye. Working the foot pedals, he swung the Viking hard to the left, turning away from the flight line and back onto the one patch of clear flight deck within reach.