He was still feeling the aftereffects of adrenaline shock, but he knew it, so he forced himself to look at everything carefully. Wings locked, flaps and slats out, stabilator shifted, roger the weight board, ease forward into the shuttle, throttles up and off brakes, cat grip up, wipe out the controls, check fuel flow, RPM, EGT…Lights on and bam! they were hurling down the catapult into the blackness.
Off the pointy end, nose up, gear up, climbing…
It went well until he got onto the ball, then he couldn’t get stabilized. Too nervous. Every correction was too big, every countercorrection overdone. The plane wobbled up and down on the glide slope and went from fast to slow to fast again. He was waggling the wings trying to get properly lined up as he went across the ramp and that, coupled with not quite enough power, got him a settle into the two-wire.
The last one was more of the same. At this point Jake realized he was totally exhausted.
“Settle down,” Flap told him in the groove.
“I’m trying. Let’s just get this fun over with, okay?” Crossing the ramp he lowered the nose and eased the power a smidgen to ensure he wouldn’t bolter. He didn’t. One wire.
He had to pry himself from the cockpit. He was so tired he had trouble plodding across the deck.
“Another day, another dollar,” Flap said cheerfully.
“Something like that,” Jake mumbled, but so quietly Flap didn’t hear it. No matter.
“It was a late wave-off, and I’m sorry,” Hugh Skidmore told Jake in the ready room. The LSOs were waiting for Jake when he came in. The television monitor mounted high in the corner of the room was running the PLAT tape of the in-flight engagement, over and over and over. Colonel Haldane was there, but he stood silently without saying anything. Jake and the LSOs watched the PLAT tape twice.
“You owe me, Skidmore.”
“Other than that little debacle, your first one — the touch-and-go — was okay, the first trap okay, the second fair, the third okay. The fifth trap was a fair and the last one a no-grade. I almost waved you off. I don’t want to see any more of that deck spotting—” After a glance at the skipper Skidmore ran out of words. He contented himself with adding, “I think you were a little wrung out on the last one.”
Jake nodded. He had sinned there at the end and wasn’t too proud to admit it. “I spotted the deck on the last one. Sorry!” He tried to shrug but didn’t have the energy. “What about the in-flight?”
“Gave you a fair.”
“Fair? Now wait just a minute—” Jake knew the futility of arguing with the umpire, but that pass had cost him too much. “I had a good pass going until everything went to hell.”
“Not all that good. You were carrying a little too much power in the middle and went fast. You made the correction but you overdid it. Approaching the ramp you were slow and settling into a two-wire when I waved you off.”
“How do you figure that?”
The Real McCoy spoke up. “Jake, if you had been right on a centered ball when the wave-off came, you would have missed all the wires on the wave-off. Smacking on a big wad of power should have just carried you across the wires into a bolter. Hugh’s right. You were a half ball low going lower when you gunned it. That pass would have been a fair two-wire. Look at that PLAT tape again. Carefully.”
Jake surrendered. “I bow to the opinion of the experts.”
“Next time keep the ball centered, huh?”
Flap Le Beau spoke up. “There had better not be a next time. If there is, you two asshole mechanics better swim for it before I get out of the plane.” He was apparently oblivious of the presence of Richard Haldane.
Jake glanced at the colonel to see how he was taking all this. Apparently without a flicker of emotion.
“No, I’m serious,” Skidmore said. “If you ever get a wave-off in close like that, Jake, slam the throttles up and run the boards in, but don’t rotate. Just ride her into a bolter.”
“But don’t go into the water waiting for the wheels to hit,” the Real added.
Now Richard Haldane spoke. “May I have a word with you gentlemen?”
Skidmore and McCoy went over to where the colonel was standing. Flap asked Jake, “How are you supposed to know that it’s an in-close wave-off if the LSOs can’t figure it out?”
“The guy with the stick in his hand is always responsible,” Jake told the bombardier. “He’s the dummy who signed for the plane.”
After Jake and Flap debriefed both the planes they had flown that evening, Jake asked Flap if he wanted a drink.
“Yeah. You got any?”
“A little. In my stateroom. One drink and I’m into my rack. See you in a bit.”
Ten minutes later Flap asked, “So Skidmore should not have waved us off, even though the cable might have parted on number three if we had caught it?”
“Yeah. That’s right. The in-close position is defined as the point where a wave-off cannot be safely made. From that point on, in to touchdown, you are committed, like the pig. The LSO has to take you aboard no matter what. It’s a practical application of the lesser of two evils theory.”
“Like the pig?”
“Yeah. A chicken lays eggs, she’s dedicated. A pig gives his life, he’s committed.”
“Where you from, anyway?”
“Virginia. Rural Virginia, down in the southwest corner. And you?”
“Brooklyn.”
“All that crap you gave me this morning about Louisiana and you’re from Brooklyn?”
“Yep. Born in the ghetto to a woman who didn’t know who my daddy was and raised on the streets. That’s me.”
“So how did you get into the Corps?”
Flap Le Beau finished off his straight whiskey and grinned. He held up the glass. “Got any more?”
“Help yourself.”
When he finished pouring, Flap said, “Did you ever hear of a guy named Horowitz who funded scholarships for ghetto children?”
“No. Don’t think so.”
“Well, it’s sorta the in-thing for a millionaire to do these days. Publicly commit yourself to funding a college education for ten ghetto kids, or fifty, a hundred if you have the bucks. Sol Horowitz was the first. He promised to pay for the college education of a hundred first-graders in a public school in Brooklyn if they graduated from high school. I was one of the hundred. It’s sort of amazing, but I actually got through high school. Then I got caught stealing some cars and the probation officer told the judge I had this college scholarship waiting, if I would only go. So the judge sentenced me to college. I kid you not.”
Flap sipped, remembering. Finally he continued. “I screwed around at the university. Drank and came real close to flunking out, or getting thrown out. Miracle number two, I graduated. So somebody arranged for me to meet Horowitz. I don’t know exactly what I expected. Some wizened old Jew with money sticking out of every pocket sitting in a mansion — I don’t know. Well, Solomon Horowitz was none of that. He lived in a walkup flat off Flatbush, a real dump. He looked me up and down and told me I was nothing.
“‘You have learned nothing,’ he said. ‘You barely passed your courses — I hear you continued to steal cars. Oh yes, I have my sources. They tell me. I know.’ What could I say?
“Horowitz asked, ‘Who do you think gave you a chance to make something of yourself? Some oil baron? Some rich Jew asshole whose daddy left him ten million? I will tell you who.’
“He rolled up his sleeve. He had a number tattooed on the inside of his wrist. He had been in Dachau. And you know something else? When he made the promise to send those kids to college, he didn’t have any money. He made the promise because then he would have to work like hell to earn the money.”