A damaged hydraulic line blew and French's starboard landing gear collapsed. He felt the Hornet lurch to the right, then go nose down and tail high in a savage pancake, still burning at full power as the starboard wing crumpled with the impact, scattering fragments and fuel. Dimly, he heard the LSO's voice over the radio screaming "Eject! Eject! Eject!" His hand was grabbing for the ejector handle when the universe exploded in searing flame, erupting for a split second into indescribable brilliance before darkness engulfed him.
CHAPTER 16
Tombstone was loitering in the marshall at six thousand feet when Snowball interrupted his thoughts. "Oh, God! Tombstone, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" He'd not been paying attention to the radio chatter.
"They just called a fire on the deck."
Tombstone's blood went cold. Frenchie had been first in line for his trap. Had the damage been that bad?
"Ninety-nine aircraft!" The voice was that of the Air Boss back in Jefferson's Pried-Fly, and the call code meant the message was directed at all airborne planes. "Recovery operations are suspended until further notice. We have a fire on the deck."
"What are we gonna do, Stoney?"
"Hold in the marshall until they tell us, I guess. Just stay cool, Snowball."
Fuel's down to thirty-two hundred."
"There's a Texaco up. We'll get a drink when we need it."
Inwardly, Tombstone suppressed a shudder. It was one thing to tell Snowball to stay cool, another thing entirely to accept that advice himself.
This is it, he told himself. I don't need this. If I get back on that flight deck today, I'm turning in my wings.
Within ten seconds, the burning wreck had been surrounded by Jefferson's crash crew, men armed with fire hoses and foam dispensers. They hit the F-14 with water first to hold back the fire, then attacked the flames with foam, attempting to smother them.
"Get that wreckage cleared away, and I goddamn mean now!" Commander Dick Wheeler, Jefferson's Air Boss, held the microphone to his mouth, his face a dark mask of anger and urgency. It is an oft-stated maxim that any fire on board an aircraft carrier which lasts more than forty seconds means serious trouble. Commander French's Hornet had hit hard enough to smash the right wing and breach the fuel tank. He'd been running nearly empty when he hit, but enough JP-5 remained to ignite the fireball as the F/A-18 went tail-over.
"We're bringin' Tilly across now!" Chief Kuchinski's voice was unnaturally shrill and harsh over the Pried-Fly speaker. The damage control party chief was using one of the radio helmets called a Mickey Mouse for obvious reasons. The device transmitted words but filtered out the surrounding noise, which made it sound as though the person speaking was shouting himself hoarse against complete silence. "Fire's out. Afraid the pilot's dead, though."
Wheeler raised a set of Zeiss binoculars to his eyes, watching as the Tilly ― a combination crane and forklift ― hooked onto the wreckage and began dragging it toward the side. With Commander French dead, all that remained now was to get the flight deck back in operation. There was damage to the arrestor gear, and they would need to wash down the deck and check it for loose debris that could damage incoming planes. It would be an hour… maybe an hour and a half before they could start bringing them in again.
Urged on by the Tilly, French's Hornet teetered on the edge of the flight deck, then vanished over the side. Wheeler lowered the binoculars and looked up toward the sky. Under a rapidly thickening ceiling of clouds, the sun was casting a gold-orange smear of sunset glory across the western horizon. It would be dark in an hour, and those boys would be jittery, having endured an aborted bombing mission and a dogfight. Now they would be circling in the marshall for another hour while the damage to the flight deck was repaired, with nothing to do but think about one of their own, dead. It was going to be a long evening.
It grew dark quickly once the sun slipped below the horizon. Tombstone watched the golden light fade as he continued to loiter at six thousand feet twenty miles behind the carrier. The marshall stack was a complex aerial racecourse, with each plane a thousand feet below the plane behind, and a mile ahead. There was nothing much to do but feed Air Ops with updates on fuel and time… and think.
"Hey, Tombstone?" Snowball asked over the intercom. "Whatcha thinking?"
Tombstone didn't answer immediately. It wouldn't do to admit he'd already decided to turn in his wings. "Just going over the checklist again, Snowy. I-"
"Oops, hold it, Skipper. Message coming through."
Tombstone listened in. Jefferson's Air Ops was ordering them to begin circling out of the marshall and come on in. "Sounds like the deck is clear," he said.
"Yeah, I wonder-"
"I don't really want to think about it, Snowy. We'll find out soon enough."
One by one, the aircraft began to leave the marshall and head for the carrier, Intruders first, then the Hornets as the carrier began recovering aircraft at forty-five-second intervals. It was pitch black by the time Tombstone got the signal to begin his approach, with only a few stars showing through patchy, high-level clouds.
At five miles out, Air Ops handed him over to Jefferson's Air Boss. Commander Wheeler sounded tired as he announced the take-over. Tired and… and shaken? Tombstone shook the thought from his mind. Of course Wheeler would be shaken, along with everyone else in the recovery team, but they were professionals.
And so are you, old son, he told himself. At least until you walk in to see CAG tonight. Right now, think about this being your last night trap.
Tombstone had never liked night landings. Once during the Vietnam War, he'd heard, some doctor types had carried out a series of tests on aviators flying combat missions off carriers. They wired them up with devices to monitor breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, and perspiration, then recorded the biological reactions as those pilots were catapulted into the sky, refueled in midair, carried out bombing runs, engaged in dogfights, and engaged in routine carrier operations. Time after time, one thing pegged out every needle, showing a level of stress which even one-on-one air combat could not match: night carrier landings.
The Jefferson was lit for the occasion, with lights outlining her flight deck, and a vertical line strung down her stern over the fantail. This was designed to create a three-dimensional effect, almost like a wire-box image on the display of a computer video game. Without it, a pilot could suffer a particularly terrifying optical illusion… the sensation that the carrier's deck was rising up vertically in front of him, an invisible wall in the sky.
At that moment, Jefferson was tiny against the sea, an impossibly small target adrift in blackness, with no other visual clues to the position of sea or sky at all.
"Roger ball," Tombstone heard over his headset. That was Lieutenant Commander Ted Craig, the Vipers' LSO, telling him that he had Tombstone's aircraft in sight, that he was controlling the approach, that it was time to call the ball.
Tombstone found the meatball, an orange light in a row of green on Jefferson's port side. "Tomcat Two-zero-five," he said. "Ball. Three-point-one."
"Looking good, Tombstone."
Normally, the LSO would say nothing unless he saw something to correct. The pilot was busy during the last ten seconds of an approach, and chatter wasted time. Those words were a measure of the stress on the flight deck… and among the pilots.