Mother felt his chest tighten and his breathing increase. This is only an alert, dammit. And why are we standing alerts anyway? They were still far from the PI; if Hancock and her escorts came across a little fishing trawler out here, there were any number of ways to blow it out of the water that did not require launching fighters. Fighters were for big ships and real airplanes. Typical squid agonizing over a scenario that’s never going to happen, he thought. Total bullshit, and his people had to man these jets in the wee hours for nothing.
His maintenance desk Gunny told him 301 was parked on the starboard shelf. He nodded but ignored him. Starboard shelf! His guys were getting infected with the swab lingo. He’d find the damn jet himself! It was on the flight deck, for crying out loud!
Under red “darken ship” passageway lighting, Mother climbed the ladder to the island. He heard spinning rotor blades from a source up forward. In agitated disgust, he yanked up the dog handle on the watertight door leading to the flight deck.
He was met with blackness, and big shadows blacker than black. A helo was spinning on the bow as it awaited launch, and high winds whipped at his g-suit and the helmet bag he clutched in his left hand. Where are the lights? he thought, having never experienced this level of darkness, ever. He then saw a flashlight someplace on deck, and took tentative steps toward it with his hand extended. He felt aircraft skin and then a tube. He was next to a helo he could not see, the black shadow. He took a step and felt a tie-down chain by his ankle. He then illuminated his goose-neck flashlight to see a few steps ahead.
Taking small steps, with one hand ahead of him as if he were blind, he navigated down the length of the helo and around a parked tractor. He felt and heard the wind, felt the deck under his feet, smelled the engine exhaust and salt air. All his senses were on full alert and provided input to his brain. His eyes, wide with fear, strained to discern any light available. This intense blackness was a new sensation; due to threats all around, the ship had secured the overhead sodium-vapor lights that illuminated the unseen dangers of the flight deck. He took in lungful after lungful of air through his open mouth.
His eyes slowly adapted as he moved forward, shining his flashlight on the pointed noses of the parked fighters he came across. Rhinos, most of them. He shined his light on 307… not his jet.
When he got to the jet blast deflectors, the helo turning on the empty bow flicked on its lights and lifted above the deck, then forward and away to the right. His jet wasn’t here, but he saw shadows on the angle and headed across the deck to check for 301. Without warning, an E-2 prop began to turn behind him, and he fought an overwhelming urge to get off the flight deck now!
He stopped a sailor, anyone to help. “Where the hell is three-oh-one?” he shouted. Mother could see only the faint shrug of his shoulders. Stupid dumbfuck, Mother thought as he continued aft, nerves on edge and surrounded by shadows and invisible hazards. After several minutes, he found his wingman’s jet, his young captain already in the cockpit. A sergeant directed him to 301 across the deck — on the starboard shelf.
Mother was cranky and in no mood for a black-ass preflight with the tail of his jet stuck out over the deck edge. He simply motioned to Turnip to come down. Turnip complied, and Mother got in the cockpit without comment. Turnip climbed the ladder to tell his CO about the flight controls BIT check he had performed, but Mother, irritable and short-tempered, waved him off.
Mother sat in the cockpit of 301, fuming. This is totally fucked up! he thought. We are chewing up aircrew to stand unneeded alerts at all hours, when we could be planning or preparing. He had heard the frigid bitch Olive say they were at least two days steaming from the PI. The damn Pricks aren’t out here!
He didn’t even bother to strap in, knowing this whole evolution was a waste. If CAG had a spine…
After ten minutes he saw activity, and a tractor chugged to life. His plane captain popped out from under the jet, and some guy pointed a yellow wand at him. The flight deck’s loudspeaker sounded.
“On the flight deck, launch the alert SUCAP, now launch the alert SUCAP! Initial vector two-two-zero!”
What the fuck? Mother thought. Launch?
His plane captain motioned for APU start, and his troubleshooters gathered with the flight deck Gunny, looking at Mother — waiting on him, waiting for start-up, waiting for leadership. Mother couldn’t believe this was happening, and fear gripped his midsection as tension bore in like an ice pick at the base of his skull.
Mother struggled with the switches and launch sequence, his mind not on the checklist but on the catapult that would send him to the inky black death that awaited. A sailor holding a sign appeared, and his troubleshooter shined a light on it.
ID SURFACE CONTACT BRG 220/170NM
NRST LAND GUAM 137/525
EXPECT CHARLIE 0215 W/IN 50 NM
EXP BRC 285 ALT 29.98
You gotta be shittin’ me!
Agitated, Mother got his engines started and his cockpit energized. With his head down in the cockpit, he sensed yellow lights in his eyes. Sonofabitch! An impatient yellow shirt signaled him to remove the tie-down chains for the taxi to the bow. Mother wasn’t ready! His mindset wasn’t right. They were going to launch him into the gloom and have him fly 170 miles to ID a fishing boat! He’d be happy to sink the fucker, but then he had to come back here and find the damned carrier, lights out and no radio contact, over 500 miles from anywhere! Sonofabitch!
Mother was terrified. This was well beyond anything he had experienced off SoCal. He was in over his head flying a Hornet off this ship, and now no one could save him. Sweat poured down his brow and, hyperventilating, he kept his oxygen mask dangling in front of him. He was behind the jet, feeling rushed, even though it was stationary on deck. Mother was overwhelmed. He was scared, so scared he thought the unthinkable was a real option. You don’t have to do this.
Panther 305 taxied out, and Mother watched him make the quarter turn up the angle to the bow cats, the damaged bow cats! A cold cat shot was another distinct possibility, and he shuddered with fear at the thought of wallowing off the deck, ejecting in front of a knifing bow with 100,000 tons of inertia behind it, invisible but bearing down on him, cold steel tearing through cold water, everything black.
Mother had seconds to decide. You don’t have to do this! He released the parking brake as his finger pushed on the nose wheel steering button as hard as it could. He stomped on the brakes to test them as waves of fear swept over him, but this was more than fear. This was terror. He was terrified of taxiing to the bow, but more terrified of stopping and admitting his fears. He couldn’t breathe as he followed his director and felt the arresting wires as his tires rolled over them. His gut was tight, and he had the urge to urinate. The droning of the E-2 turboprops added to his sensory overload as he taxied past. Ahead on the bow, faint white deck edge lights marked the boundary of oblivion.