She fought against it, but the wood continued driving her down until her battered face pressed against her knees. Then, she heard the latches fall into place as her captors locked her inside the cramped box.
Lisa waited until the room outside was silent before probing her surroundings. She tried moving her hands to her sides, but they were pinned above her lower back. Her ankles screamed in pain, but no matter how she tried shifting her weight, she couldn’t relieve the pressure. With every attempt to gain an ounce of succor thwarted by the wooden boundaries, Lisa’s heart raced, and she struggled to avoid panicking.
At last, she gulped a painful and ragged breath.
And she screamed.
15
Colt felt his jet lurch as the last of his Mk-83 general-purpose one-thousand-pound bombs fell away. He snatched back on the stick, straining under the G-forces to raise his nose above the horizon, then banked left and looked over his shoulder at the smoke marker bobbing in the water. A second later, his bomb detonated on top of the smoke with a disappointingly small splash.
“Two one zero, off safe,” Colt said, before glancing at his fuel and turning his focus ahead of him to spot the other air wing jets circling the target. “I’m Winchester and on ladder.”
“Nice hit,” Cutty said.
“Thanks, sir.” He climbed to twenty thousand feet to orbit overhead and wait for the others to finish dropping their bombs. Without bombs or extra gas, Colt had little else to do but watch the sun set over the horizon and find the ship. Unlike Air Force pilots, who could count on the airport being in the same place as when they left, Navy pilots could only fly to where they thought the ship would be and hope it was there.
When deployed in international waters, the aircraft carrier steamed in a self-declared operating area to give pilots a general idea where she could be found following their missions. Where exactly she was within that area changed based on the weather and winds. But for each launch and recovery, pilots were given a PIM, or Position of Intended Movement, that was a best guess.
“One zero five, in hot.”
Colt watched Cutty roll in on the smoke marker and release his final bomb. From his position overhead, he could just make out the dark speck racing toward the water and impact just shy of the bright red smoke.
“One zero five, off safe,” Cutty said with an obvious tone of disappointment, then quickly added, “Don’t say a word, Colt.”
“I would never, sir.” He grinned behind his oxygen mask and rolled out to point his nose at the PIM.
“Uh-huh.”
Colt reached up to select the “air-to-ground” master mode and put his radar in surface search. If they weren’t operating under an emissions control restriction, the carrier’s TACAN would be on, and he could pinpoint its location with ease. But he knew better than to rely on somebody else to get him back home.
Colt looked down at the color moving map between his legs and saw nothing but blue with a few specks of green uninhabited islands dotting the vast ocean around him. The spot in the upper left corner of the display that normally showed his bearing and range from the carrier was still blank. He groaned.
“Anybody picking up the TACAN?”
“Nope,” one of the others replied.
Colt tuned his radio to the frequency monitored by the air wing E-2D Hawkeye. “Tiger, two one zero.”
“Go ahead.”
“Any idea where the aircraft carrier is?”
“Say status of timber.”
“Green,” Colt replied, letting the controller know his datalink was functioning normally.
“Stand by.”
He brought up his Situational Awareness display and watched as the Hawkeye populated it with air and surface contacts, including the aircraft carrier ten miles from the PIM he had scribbled on his kneeboard. He selected the track file and calculated his bearing and range from the ship.
“Gracias,” Colt said.
“De nada.”
He rotated the knob on his radio to turn it to the strike group’s air defense controller. “Red Crown, two one zero, mother’s two eight zero for seventy-four, angels twenty.”
“Two one zero, sweet, sweet, contact Strike.”
After repeating his check-in with Strike — who cleared Colt into the Carrier Control Area — he was instructed to contact Marshal for his Case III instructions. During the day and with good weather, aircraft proceeded directly overhead to hold in a stack above the carrier for a Case I recovery. But at night or in inclement weather, aircraft held on a radial away from the ship and flew an instrument approach.
“Marshal, two one zero, two zero eight for fifty, angels twenty, state eight point oh.” Colt reached up and slapped down on the handle near his right knee to extend his tailhook.
“Two one zero, mother is VFR, altimeter two niner niner four. Case three recovery, CV-1 approach. Marshal on the two four five radial at twenty-five, angels ten. Expected final bearing three four five, expected approach time three one. Approach button seventeen.”
Colt read back the instructions, then turned his jet to the piece of sky twenty-five miles southwest of the ship where he would hold at ten thousand feet. He still had close to twenty minutes before commencing the approach, and he compared the fuel he had left with the ladder he had built to make sure he had enough. It was a rough estimate, but he figured he’d have to dump no more than five hundred pounds.
Nearing his holding point, he descended from twenty thousand feet and leveled off at ten. The first aircraft to commence its approach held twenty-one miles from the carrier at six thousand feet — the lowest altitude Marshal assigned. The next held at twenty-two miles and seven thousand feet, and each subsequent aircraft held one thousand feet higher and one mile further away. That meant Colt was fifth in line to begin his approach.
Reaching the holding point, Colt slowed to two hundred and fifty knots and engaged the auto throttles, letting the jet maintain the correct speed while he adjusted his angle of bank to enter the holding pattern. “Two one zero, established angels ten, state seven point five.”
After announcing his presence in holding — as much for the Marshal controller as for the surrounding aircraft — Colt dropped his mask and reached into his helmet bag for a bottle of water. There was nothing left to do but watch the fading orange glow on the western horizon and wait another twelve minutes until it was time to commence his approach. Because he had taken off during the day and flown his mission in daylight, he hadn’t brought night vision goggles he could use to find the other aircraft in holding. But the weather was perfect, and he spotted their blinking strobe lights and fading silhouettes with ease.
“Ninety-nine, altimeter two niner niner four, final bearing three five zero.”
With four minutes to go, Colt recognized he was slightly out of position and needed to turn a little earlier on the downwind leg to reach the holding fix at the appointed time. He adjusted his angle of bank and continued making mental calculations every fifteen seconds until his Super Hornet crossed the twenty-five-mile fix exactly on time.
“Two one zero, commencing, state seven point oh.”
He pulled his throttles to idle, extended the speed brakes, and nosed the Super Hornet over to establish a four-thousand-feet-per-minute rate of descent at two hundred and fifty knots.
“Two one zero, switch approach, button seventeen.”
Colt rotated the knob on his primary radio to the approach frequency. “Two one zero, checking in, state six point eight.”
“Two one zero, final bearing three five zero.”
Colt banked his Super Hornet to the right as he crossed inside twenty miles and adjusted his heading by thirty degrees to correct to the landing area’s extended centerline. Just over a minute later, his radar altimeter warning let him know he had descended below five thousand feet.