A familiar voice crackled over the radio. “Runner One-one, do you read Battle Axe?”
“Battle Axe” was CAG Boyce’s radio call sign. Maxwell, as skipper of the VFA-36 Roadrunners, was “Runner One-one.”
“Loud and clear, Battle Axe. Nice to hear your voice.”
“You too. Here’s the deal. Mother is rigging the barricade as we speak. You’ve got four minutes to a ready deck. What’s your fuel state?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe less.”
Several seconds passed. He knew that Boyce was conferring with the captain or the air boss. “That ain’t good,” said Boyce. “You only get one shot at the deck.”
“Okay. Who’s waving?”
Another voice broke onto the frequency. “The best damn LSO in the fleet, Skipper. It’s me, Pearly.”
Maxwell had to smile. Pearly Gates was one of his squadron pilots. In Maxwell’s opinion, Pearly was probably correct: He was the best damn Landing Signal Officer in the game.
He had his work cut out for him today. One shot at the deck. It was a joke. How did you land on a carrier in a jet that you’ve never landed before? In a jet that wasn’t designed to land aboard a carrier?
The answer was… Very carefully.
He could visualize the flurry of activity on the Reagan’s deck. Crewmen were working like ants to erect the wall of nylon webbing across the landing deck.
The barricade was, by definition, a dangerous and undesirable way to land jets aboard ship. The landing signal officer would monitor the jet’s approach to the deck, just as he did with every normal pass. But as the jet neared the ramp — the blunt, unforgiving back end of the ship — he would order the pilot to cut the throttle. What happened after that was irrevocable. No turn back, no go around. The jet would plop onto the deck and plunge into the barricade.
The nylon straps of the barricade, as Maxwell knew, were intended to grab the protruding surfaces of a conventional fighter — external fuel tanks, probes, racks, empennage — wrapping around the jet like a spider web.
The Black Star didn’t have protruding surfaces. The fighter’s airframe was as slick as a razor blade.
“Runner One-one, this is CATCC, we’ve got you fifteen miles, three thousand feet.” CATTC was the Reagan’s carrier air traffic control center. “Take heading one-nine-five degrees, descend to twelve hundred feet. Acknowledge.”
“Runner is turning to one-nine-five, down to twelve hundred.”
“Runner One-one, we show you doing one hundred eighty knots. Is that your best approach speed?”
“I’ll give you one-seventy-five. That’s as slow as it gets.”
Several seconds of silence. Maxwell knew that another worried conference was going on between the senior officers on the Reagan. How are we going to trap something going that goddamn fast?
“Roger, Runner One-one. Here are your instructions. If you wave off, climb straight ahead to at least three miles past mother. Five thousand if you can, then you eject. Copy that?”
“Runner copies.”
Not much doubt about that one. One pass, that’s all. They didn’t want him taking it around and then flaming out on short final to the boat.
“Runner One-one, turn one-zero-five degrees. You’re on a ten mile final.”
Maxwell turned to the new heading. As he rolled out, he saw the dark shape ahead — the craggy, irregular shape of the carrier. Behind it glistened a wake, trailing the ship like a white trace marker.
“Two hundred kilos remaining,” said Mai-ling. “Are we going to make it?”
“I don’t know. If we flame out, don’t wait for instructions. Grab the handle and eject.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.” Maxwell didn’t know how good the Chinese ejection seats were. He didn’t know if the canopy departed first, or they punched through it.
He forced his thoughts back to the approach. Compartmentalize. It was what naval aviators were taught to do. Think about the problem at hand.
“Runner One-one, this is Paddles,” Pearly radioed from the LSO platform. “Call the ball.”
Maxwell acknowledged. The ship was swelling in his windscreen. At 1,200 feet altitude, he was supposed to pick up the “ball”—the optical glide path indicator mounted at the left deck edge — about half a mile from the ship.
The deck of the Reagan was coming into view. He adjusted the Black Star’s heading to line up with the landing deck center line. He saw the glimmering yellow pinpoint of light at the left deck edge.
The ball.
“Runner One-one, ball.”
“Roger ball,” answered the LSO. “I’ve got you, Runner.”
He nudged the throttles back, starting the Black Star down the glide path to the deck. The trick was to keep the ball in the center of the Fresnel Lens — the optical signboard mounted on the deck. On either side of the lens was a row of green datum lights, marking the center, or optimum glide path. The idea was to fly the jet so as to keep the ball between the two rows of green lights.
The ball was going above the datums.
“Do-on’t go high,” said Pearly, using his best LSO sugar talk.
Maxwell squeezed off a touch of power. The ball settled back between the datums.
His hand felt moist, and he made himself relax the death grip he had on the stick. At approach speed, the Black Star’s controls felt sloppy, not crisp and responsive like the Super Hornet. It felt as if he was wallowing around on a high sea.
The ball was going low.
“Pow-werrrr,” called Pearly in a soothing voice.
Maxwell nudged the throttles forward. He could feel his pulse racing. Settle down. Be smooth.
The ball wouldn’t stay in the center. As the ship swelled in the windscreen, Maxwell wrestled with the Black Star, willing it onto the glide path. Sweat trickled from beneath his helmet. Easy with it. If he went low, he risked crashing into the ramp. High and he’d catch the top of the barricade with his landing gear.
Fly the ball. The ramp of the carrier was rushing toward him, sweeping beneath the Black Star’s long pointed nose. The ball was still moving, up, down, Maxwell’s hands stroking the throttle, nudging the stick, adjusting the jet’s flight path. More sweat streamed from his helmet, stinging his eyes.
He blinked, focusing on the moving ball.
He was fast. Too fast. The great gray mass of the ship was swelling in his windscreen at a faster rate than he’d ever seen.
“Cut, Cut, Cut!” called Pearly Gates. It was the command to chop the throttles. Pearly’s job was finished.
Maxwell snatched both throttles back to idle. He felt the Black Star drop toward the steel deck of the USS Ronald Reagan.
Holy shit.
Boyce was astonished. How the hell could a shape as weird as that fly? Even with its cloaking sheath deactivated, the Black Star looked like something out of Star Wars.
Stickney, standing beside him on the bridge, must have had the same impression. Boyce heard him suck in a lungful of air, then hold it.
The deck was nearly empty of personnel. Every non-essential crewman on the flight deck and in the tiers of the carrier’s superstructure had been ordered below decks. The few who would see the mysterious jet descending toward the Reagan—the LSO, a handful of watch personnel on the bridge, even Sticks Stickney, the ship’s captain — would be sworn to secrecy.
They watched the Black Star sweep over the ramp.
Stretched across the landing deck, the barricade was fluttering like a ribbon in the thirty-knot wind. Boyce was suddenly filled with doubt. The Black Star was moving at an impossibly fast speed.