“Parris Island. Get it? Le Beau? French name? Parris Island?”
“Ha ha.”
“Don’t let this fine chocolate complexion fool you, my man. It’s French chocolate.”
“French shit,” said one of Le Beau’s fellow Marines.
“Eat it, butt breath,” Flap shot back. “I’m black with a seasoning of Creole.”
“Sorta like coffee with cream,” Jake Grafton remarked as he zipped up his torso harness.
“Yeah man. That’s exactly right. There was a planter in Louisiana, Le Beau, with a slobbering craving for black poontang. After the Civil War he took personal offense when his former slaves adopted his last name. They did it ’cause most of them was his sons and daughters. But Le Beau didn’t like the thought of being recognized in history as a patriarch, didn’t want to admit his generous genetic contributions to improving a downtrodden race. Hung a couple of his nigger kids, he did. So all the blacks in the parish adopted the name. More damn black Le Beaus in that section of Louisiana than you could shake a stiff dick at. Now that redneck Cajun planter bigot was one of my many great-great-grandpappys, of whom I am so very proud.”
“Terrific,” said Jake Grafton, who checked to see that the laces of his new G-suit were properly adjusted.
“We heard you were coming. The Nav just didn’t think us gyrenes could handle all this high tailhook tech. So we heard they were sending an ace Navy type to indoctrinate us ignorant jarheads, instruct us, lead the way into a better, brighter day.”
Grafton didn’t think that comment worth a reply.
“It’ll be a real pleasure,” said Flap Le Beau warmly as he grabbed his torso harness from his locker, “flying with a master hookster. Just think of me as a student at the fount of all wisdom, an apprentice seeking to acquire insights into the nuances of the arcane art, appreciate the—”
“Are you always this full of shit or are you making a special effort on my behalf?” Jake asked.
Le Beau prattled on unperturbed. “It’s tragic that so many Navy persons are dangerously thin-skinned in a world full of sharp objects! One can infer from your crude comment that you share that lamentable trait with your colleagues. It’s sad, very sad, but there are probably gonna be tensions between us. None of that male-bonding horse pucky for you and me, huh? Tensions. Stress. Misunderstandings. Heartburns. Hard feelings. Ass kickings.” He sighed plaintively. “Well, I try to get along by going along. That’s the Cajun in me coming out. I am so very lucky I got this white blood in me, ya know? Lets me see everything in a better perspective.”
The Marine bent slightly at the waist and addressed his next comment to the deck: “Thank you, thank you, Jules Le Beau, rotting down there in hell.”
Back to his locker and flight gear—“Lots of the bros ain’t as lucky as I am — they can’t tell trees from manure piles, and—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Flap,” someone in the next row said. “Turn off the tap, will ya?”
“Yeoww,” Flap howled, “I feel great! Gonna get out there and fly with a Navy ace and see how it’s done by the best of the best!”
“How did I wind up with this asshole?” Jake asked the major two lockers down.
“No other pilot wanted him,” was the reply.
“Hey, watch your mouth over there,” Flap called. “This is my rep you’re pissin’ on.”
“Pissin’ on, sir!”
“Sir,” Flap echoed dutifully.
The sun shone down softly through a high thin cirrus layer. The wind out of the northwest was heaping the sea into long windrows and ripping occasional whitecaps from the crests as gulls wheeled and turned around the great ship.
Two frigates and four destroyers were visible several miles away, scattered in a haphazard circle around the carrier. These were the carrier’s escorts, an antisubmarine screen, faithful retainers that would attend the queen wherever she led.
On the eastern horizon land was still visible. It would soon drop over the earth’s rim since the carrier would have to spend the next several hours running into the northwest wind, then the universe would consist of only the ships, the sea and the sky. The land would become a memory of the past and a vision of a hazy future, but the solid reality of the present would be just the ships and the men who rode them. Six small moons orbiting one wandering planet…
Jake’s vision lingered on that distant dark line of earth, then he turned away.
The ship rode easily this morning, with just the gentlest of rolls, which Jake noticed only because he didn’t have his sea legs yet. This roll would become a pitching motion when the ship turned into the wind.
Sensing these things and knowing them without really thinking about them, Jake Grafton walked slowly aft looking for his aircraft. There — by Elevator Four.
She was no beauty, this A-6E Intruder decked out in dull, low viz paint splotched here and there with puke green zinc dichromate primer. An external power cord was already plugged into the plane. Jake lowered the boarding ladder and opened the canopy, then climbed up and placed his helmet bag on the seat. He ensured the safety pins were properly installed in the ejection seat, let his eye rove over the cockpit switches, the gear handle, the wing position lever and the fuel dump switches, then checked the fuel quantity. Ten thousand pounds. As advertised. He toggled the seat position adjustment switches, noted the whine and felt the seat move, then released them. Jake climbed down the ladder to the deck and began his preflight inspection.
In Vietnam he had flown A-6As, the first version of the Intruder. This plane was an A-6E, the second-generation bomber, the state-of-the-art in American military technology. Most of the updates were not visible to the naked eye. The search and track radars of the A-6A had been replaced with one radar that combined both search and track functions. The A’s rotary-drum computer had been replaced with a solid-state, digital, state-of-the-art version. The third major component in the electronics system, the inertial navigation system, or INS, had not yet been updated, so it was now the weak point in the navigation/attack system. The new computer and radar were not only more accurate than the old gear, they were also proving to be extraordinarily reliable, which erased the major operational disadvantage of the A-6A.
The E had been in the fleet for several years now, yet it had not been used in Vietnam, by Pentagon fiat. Had the updated E been used there, the targets could have been hit with greater accuracy, with fewer missions, thereby saving lives and perhaps helping shorten the war, but inevitably some of these planes would have been lost and the technology compromised, i.e., seen by the Soviets.
So lives had been traded to keep the technology secret. How many lives? Who could say.
As Jake Grafton walked around this A-6E looking and touching this and that, the raw, twisted Vietnam emotions came flooding back. Once again he felt the fear, saw the blood, saw the night sky filled with streaks of tracer and the fiery plumes of SAMs. The faces of the dead men floated before him as he felt the smooth, cool skin of the airplane.
It seemed as if he had never left the ship. Any second Tiger Cole would come strolling across the deck with his helmet bag and charts, ready to fly into the mouth of hell.
Jake felt his stomach churn, as if he were going to vomit. He paused and leaned against a main-gear strut.
No!
Six months had passed. His knee had healed, he had visited his folks, done a little flight instruction at Whidbey Island, visited Callie in Chicago…thrown that asshole through the window at Sea-Tac…why was he sweating, nauseated?
This is car quals, for Christ’s sake! It’s a beautiful day, a cake hop, a walk in the park!