In a few minutes Jake had 6,500 pounds of fuel and gave the purple-shirted fuel crew the cut sign, a slice of the hand across his throat. Mask on, canopy closed, parking brake off, engage nose-wheel steering and goose the throttles a smidgen to follow the director’s signals. Now into the queue waiting for the cat…
All too soon it was over. Jake had the ten day traps the law required and was once more day qualified as a carrier pilot. He shut the plane down on the porch near Elevator Four and climbed down to the deck still wearing his helmet. After a few words with the plane captain, he descended a ladder to the catwalk, then went down into the first passageway leading into the 0–3 level, the deck under the flight deck.
Flap Le Beau was behind him.
“You did okay out there this morning, Ace,” Flap commented.
“You didn’t.” Jake stopped and faced the bombardier-navigator.
“Say again?”
“I got an eighty-year-old grandmother who could have done a better job in the right seat than you did today.”
“Kiss my chocolate ass, Ace. I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“You’re going to get it. You flew with me. I expect a BN to help me fly the plane, to act as a safety observer at all times, to read the checklists.”
“I just wanted to see if you could—”
“I can! While you were sitting there with your thumb up your butt and boring me to tears with the story of your miserable life, you could have been checking out the computer and radar for the debrief. You never even brought the radar out of standby! Don’t ever pull that stunt again.”
Flap put his face just inches from Grafton’s. “I ain’t taking any shit from the Navy, swabbie. We’d better get that straightened out here and now.”
“Le Beau, I don’t know if you’re senior to me or I’m senior to you and I really don’t give a rat’s ass which way it is. But in that cockpit I’m the aircraft commander. You’re going to do a solid, professional job — there ain’t no two ways about it. If you don’t, your career in the grunts is gonna go down the crap-per real damn quick. You won’t be able to catch it with a swan dive.”
Flap opened his mouth to reply, but Jake Grafton snarled, “Don’t push it.” With that he turned and stalked away, leaving Flap Le Beau staring at his back.
When Jake was out of sight Flap grinned. He nodded several times and rubbed his hand through his hair, fluffing his Afro.
“Flap, my man, this one’s gonna do,” he said. “He’s gonna do fine.” And he laughed softly to himself.
Jake was seated in the back of the ready room filling out the maintenance forms on the airplane when the air wing landing signal officer, the LSO, and the A-6 squadron LSO came in. The A-6 guy Jake knew. He was an East Coast Navy pilot who had been shanghaied like Jake to provide the Marines with “experience.” His name was McCoy and by some miracle, he was Jake’s new roommate. If he had a first name Jake didn’t learn it last night, when the LSO came in drunk, proclaimed himself to be the Real McCoy, and collapsed into his bunk facedown.
“Grafton,” the senior air wing LSO said, consulting his notes, “you did okay.” His name was Hugh Skidmore. “Touch-and-go was an OK, then nine OKs and one fair. All three wires. You’re gonna wear out that third wire, fella.”
Jake was astonished. OKs were perfect passes, and he thought he had five or six good ones, but nine? To cover his astonishment and pleasure, he said gruffly, “A fair? You gave me a fair? What pass was that?”
Skidmore examined his book again, then snapped it shut. “Seventh one. While you were turning through the ninety the captain put the helm over chasing the wind and you went low. You were a little lined up left, too.” He shrugged, then grinned. “Try a bit harder next time, huh?”
Skidmore went off to debrief the major but McCoy lingered. “Geez, Real, you guys sure are tough graders.”
“Better get your act together, Roomie.”
“What did you do to rate a tour with the Marines? Piss in a punch bowl?”
“Something like that,” the Real McCoy said distractedly, then wandered off.
After lunch Jake went to his stateroom to unpack. He had gotten the bulk of his gear on hangars or folded when McCoy came in, tossed his Mickey Mouse ears on his desk, and collapsed onto his bunk.
“I threw a civilian through a plate glass window,” Jake told the LSO. “Just what did you do?”
McCoy sighed and opened his eyes. He focused on Grafton. “I suppose you’ll tell this all over the boat.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I made too much money. I got to talking about it with the guys. Then I had the Admin guys draft up a letter of resignation. Before I could get it submitted the skipper called me in. He said a rich bastard like me could just count his money out on the big gray boat.”
“Too much money? I never heard of such a thing. Did you loot the coffee mess?”
“Naw. Nothing like that.” McCoy sat up. He rubbed his face. “Naw. I just got to playing the market.”
“What market?”
“The market.” When he saw the expression on Jake’s face, he exclaimed, “Jesus H. Christ! The stock market.”
“I never knew anybody who owned stock.”
“Oh, for the love of…” McCoy stretched out and sighed.
“Well, how much money did you make, anyway?”
“You’re going to tell every greasy asshole on this ship, Grafton. It’s written all over your simple face.”
“No, I won’t. Honest. How much?”
McCoy regarded his new roommate dolefully. Finally he said, “Well, I managed to save about sixteen thousand in the last five years, and I’ve parlayed that into a hundred twenty-two thousand three hundred and thirty-nine dollars. As of the close of business in New York yesterday, anyway. No way of knowing what the market did today, of course.”
“Of course,” Jake agreed, suitably impressed. He whistled as he thought about $122,000, then said, “Say, I got a couple grand saved up. Maybe you could help me invest it.”
“That’s what got me shipped out here with these jarheads! All the guys in the ready room wanted investment advice. Everybody was reading the Wall Street Journal and talking about interest rates and P/E ratios and how many cars Chrysler was gonna sell. The skipper blew a gasket.”
McCoy shook his head sadly. “Ah well, it’s all water under the keel. Can’t do nothing about it now, I guess.” He looked again at Jake. “Tell me about this guy you threw through the window.”
When they had exhausted that subject, Jake wanted to know about the officers in the squadron.
“Typical Marines” was the Real’s verdict, spoken with an air of resigned authority since he had been with this crowd for three whole weeks. “Seems like three months. This is going to be the longest tour of my life.”
“So how many are combat vets?”
“Everyone in the squadron, except for the three or four nuggets, did at least one tour in ‘Nam. Maybe half of them did two or more. And six or eight of them did tours as platoon leaders in Vietnam before they went to flight school. Your BN, Le Beau? He was in Marine Recon.”
Grafton was stunned. Le Beau? The San Diego cocksman? “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I shit you not. Recon. Running around behind enemy lines eating snake meat, doing ambushes and assassinations. Yeah. That’s Le Beau, all right. He’s a legend in the Corps. Got more chest cabbage than Audie Murphy. He ain’t playing with a full deck.”
Jake Grafton’s face grew dark as he recalled Flap’s rambling cockpit monologue. And that aura of bumbling incompetence that he exuded all morning!