On the LSO platform Hugh Skidmore was having trouble finding the transmit button on his radio. He fumbled for it as he stared forward at the A-6 straining futilely against the fourth wire with its engines still at full power. Miraculously the airplane seemed to be all in one piece. Here a hundred yards behind those two jet exhausts without the protection of a sound-suppression helmet the noise was awesome, a thunder that numbed the ears and vibrated the soul.
Unwilling to wait for Skidmore’s response, the air boss now roared over the radio at Jake Grafton: “We got you, son. Kill those engines! You aren’t going anywhere now.”
Long seconds ticked by before the pilot complied. When he did, finally, the air boss remembered Skidmore:
“El Ss Oh, if you ever, ever, wave off another airplane in close on this fucking boat I will personally come down there and throw your silly ass into the goddamn wake. Do you read me, you mindless bastard?”
Skidmore found his voice. “The deck went foul, Boss.”
“We’ll cut up the corpse later. Wave off the guy in the groove so we can get this squashed A-6 out of the gear and clean the shit out of the cockpit.”
The plane in the groove was still a half mile out, but Skidmore obediently triggered the wave-off lights. As he did so he heard the engines of the A-6 in the gear die as the pilot secured the fuel flow.
Already the arresting gear officer had his troops on deck stripping the pennant from number-three engine. The rest of the recovery would be accomplished with only three engines on line.
Skidmore turned to the Real McCoy. “I guess I screwed the pooch on that one.”
McCoy was still looking at the A-6 up forward. The yellow shirts were hooking a tow tractor to the nose wheel. He turned his gaze on Skidmore, who was looking into his face.
He had to say something. “Looks like the boss is safety-wired to the pissed-off position.”
Skidmore nodded toward the stern. “I thought he could make it. I didn’t think he was that close.”
“Well…”
“Oh, hell.”
Jake Grafton stood rubbing his neck in Flight Deck Control, the room in the base of the carrier’s island superstructure where the aircraft handler directs the movement of every plane on the ship. Flap Le Beau stood beside him. Someone was talking to the handler on the squawk box, apparently someone in Air Ops. The handler listened awhile, then leaned toward Jake and said, “You need two more traps. The in-flight engagement was your fourth.”
“Yeah.”
“If you’re feeling up to it, we’ll give you another plane and send you out for your last two. Or you can wait until we get to Hawaii and we’ll do the whole night bit again. It’s up to you. How do you feel?”
Jake used a sleeve to swab the sweat from his forehead and eyes. “What about tomorrow night?” he asked.
“The captain won’t hold the ship in here against this coast just to qual one pilot. We have to transit to Hawaii.”
Jake nodded. That made sense. He flexed his shoulders and pivoted his head slowly.
The fear was gone. Okay, panic. But it was gone. He was still feeling the adrenaline aftershock, which was normal.
“I’m okay,” he told the handler, who turned to relay the message into the squawk box.
Flap pulled at Jake’s sleeve. “You don’t have to do this tonight. There’s no war on. It doesn’t matter a whit whether you get quailed tonight or a week from now in Hawaii.”
Jake stared. The flippant, kiss-my-ass cool dude he had flown with all day was gone. The man there now was serious and in total control, with sharp, intelligent eyes. This must be the Flap Le Beau that was the legend.
“I can hack it. Are you okay?”
“I am if you are.”
“I am.”
“I gave you a load of shit today just to see if you could handle a little pressure. You can. You don’t have anything to prove to anybody.”
Jake shook his head from side to side. “I have to go now so the next time I’ll know I can.”
A trace of a smile crossed Le Beau’s face. He nodded, just the tiniest dip of the head, and turned toward the handler.
“What plane do they want us to aviate, Handler-man? Ask the grunts in Ready Four and have them send up the book.”
“Please, sir!”
“Of course, sir. Did I leave the please out? What’s come over me? I must still be all shook up. You know, we came within two inches of being chocolate and vanilla pudding out there. If we’d fell another two inches you’d be cleaning us up with spoons. I’m gonna write a thank-you letter to Jesus. Praise God, that was a religious experience, Amen! I feel born again, Amen! The narrowness of our escape and my ecstasy must have made me the eensiest bit careless in my military manners. I apologize. You understand, don’t you, sir?”
“Ecstasy! What crap! Go sit over there in that corner with your Amens and keep your mouth shut until your fellow jar-heads get the maintenance book up here for your pilot to read. He can read, can’t he?”
“Oh yes, sir. He’s Navy, not Marine. He’s got a good, solid, second-grade education. His mamma told me he did just fine in school until…”
Jake Grafton decided he was thirsty and needed to take a leak. He wandered away to attend to both problems.
He was slurping water from a fountain in the passageway outside the hatch to Flight Deck Control when he realized that Lieutenant Colonel Haldane was standing beside him. Haldane was wearing his uniform tonight, not his flight suit. His I-been-there decorations under his gold aviator wings made an impressive splotch of color on his left breast.
“What happened?” he asked Jake.
“They gave me a late wave-off, sir. I was almost at the ramp, or at it. Somebody said something about the deck going foul. Whatever, at the time all I knew was that the red lights were flashing and the LSO was shouting. So I did my thing. I was just too close.”
Haldane was watching his eyes as he spoke. When he finished speaking the colonel gave him another five seconds of intense scrutiny before he asked, “Did you do everything right?”
Jake Grafton swallowed hard. This just wasn’t his day. “No, sir. I didn’t. I knew we had passed the wave-off point, so I was concentrating on the ball and lineup. When the wave-off lights came on, I guess I was sorta stunned there for a tenth of a second. Then I reacted automatically — nose up, boards in, full power. I should have given her the gun and got the boards in, but I should have just held the nose attitude. Should have rode it into a bolter.”
Haldane’s head bobbed a millimeter. “Are you up to two more?” he asked.
“I think so, sir.”
“If you don’t want to go I’ll back you up. No questions asked.”
“I’d like to go now, sir, if we can get a bird.”
“How many carrier landings do you have?”
“Before today, sir, three hundred twenty-four.”
“How many at night?”
“One hundred twenty-seven, I believe.”
Haldane nodded. “Whenever I have a close call,” he said, “the first thing to go afterward is my instrument scan. I get way behind the plane, fixate on just one instrument. Really have to work to keep the eyeballs moving.”
“Yessir,” Jake said, and grinned. He liked the way Haldane used himself as an example. That was class. “I’ll keep it safe, Skipper,” Jake added.
“Fine,” said the colonel, and went into Flight Deck Control to see the handler.
“A thank-you letter to Jesus, huh?”
“That was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Don’t hold it against me.”
“Amen to that.” Jake sighed and tried to relax. They were sitting behind the jet-blast deflector for Cat One, waiting for the A-7 ahead to do his thing. Jake tugged at the VDI reflexively and wriggled to get his butt set in the seat.