Squeezing the commit trigger told the computer where the target was and told the radar to track it. While Flap monitored the velocities the computer was getting from the inertial, the computer providing steering commands, wind-compensated of course, to guide Jake to the proper release point, which was that point in space where the bomb could be released to fall upon the target.
Jake concentrated upon the steering commands and followed them as precisely as he could. When the computer gave him a pull-up command he laid on the G while concentrating fiercely on keeping the wings level. The computer released the weapon and he kept the nose coming up.
“Seventy-five feet at six o’clock.”
He went around to do it again.
“You know,” he said to Flap, “it’s like they invented a machine to hit a baseball.”
“Just follow steering, Babe Ruth. This gizmo is smarter than you are.”
“Yeah, but I’m an artiste!”
“We ain’t dodging flak today, Jake.”
This was the eternal war — the pilot wanted to drop them all visually and the bombardier wanted to use the system every time. Both men knew the system was better and they both knew Jake would never admit it. Today at this practice target the pilot had ideal conditions: a stationary target with a known elevation, a plowed run-in line, visual cues on the ground, no flak, the luxury of repeated runs that allowed him to properly dope the wind. The system of this A-6E was a first-time, every-time sure thing.
But a machine is hard to love.
The four A-6s rendezvoused off target and Harrison, the number-four man, slid under the other three checking them for hung bombs. Then Jake checked Harrison. Harrison and number two each had one little blue bomb still hanging on the racks.
The skipper led them up to 20,000 feet and Flap dialed in the ship’s TACAN, a radio navigation aid. The mileage readout refused to lock — they were still too far out — but Flap soon had the ship on radar. One hundred thirty-two miles.
After checking the cockpit altitude — stable at 10,000 feet— Jake took his mask off and hung it on the left side mirror on the canopy rail. He swabbed the sweat off his face.
The planes were in parade formation, only about fifteen feet from the cockpit to the wing tip of the next man. Flying this close to another plane was work, but Jake Grafton enjoyed it. The restless air always affected the planes differently as they sliced through it, so constant adjustments were required from the wingman. The lead just flew his own machine.
If you were the wingman, you kept the wing tip of the lead plane just below and behind the canopy. This look must be maintained with continuous small adjustments of stick and throttles, occasionally rudder. If you did it right, you could hang here no matter what the lead plane was doing — flying straight and level, banking, climbing, diving, executing wing-overs, loops; whatever.
Jake settled in and concentrated. Doing this on a sunny morning in clear, fairly calm air was merely drill. Doing it on a stormy, filthy night with the planes bouncing in turbulence over an angry ocean demanded a high level of skill and confidence. With an emergency and a low reading on the fuel gauge, your ability to hang on someone’s wing became your lifeline.
Barrow was motioning him out. A pushing motion.
“We’re opening it up,” he told Flap, who glanced at Bartow, then gave the identical signal to Harrison, on Jake’s right wing.
When he had opened the gap to about sixty or seventy feet, Jake stabilized and checked Harrison. He looked at the skipper’s wingman, on the skipper’s left wing. Everybody about right. Okay.
Flap had written down all the scores and now he was tallying them, figuring each crew’s CEP — circular error probable. He did this by finding the sixth best hit. Half the bombs would hit within a circle with this radius.
In the skipper’s cockpit Bartow was looking at his radar. Jake glanced at the mileage readout on the radar repeater between his legs: 126. Then his eyes flicked across the instrument panel. Airspeed 295 indicated, altitude 20,040 feet, warning lights out, hydraulic pressures okay. Fuel — about 7,600 pounds remaining.
He looked straight ahead, saw nothing, then glanced again across that gap toward Bartow.
He had his eyes focused on Bartow when an F-4 Phantom crossed his line of vision. Between him and the skipper. Flashed by going in the opposite direction, and at the same time another Phantom went by the skipper’s left side, between him and his wingman.
They were there only long enough to register on Jake’s brain, then they were gone. The A-6 jolted as it flew into the edges of the wash of the Phantom’s wings.
“What was that?” Flap asking, raising his head and looking around.
Jake grabbed his oxygen mask and snapped it on. “You won’t believe this,” he said on the ICS, “but a Phantom just went between us and the skipper. And another went down the skipper’s left side, between him and Digman.”
“What?”
“Yeah, a flight of Phantoms just went through our flight. I shit you not. The skipper went between the lead and his wingman and one of them went between us and the skipper. We missed by inches.”
Jake stared across the gap that separated him from Bartow. Bartow was looking back at him. Had he seen the F-4s?
“If we had been still in parade formation,” Jake told Flap, “you and me would be tapping on the pearly gates right now.”
Say the fighters were also going 300 indicated — that’s a closing speed of 600 knots indicated, over 800 knots true. Almost a thousand miles per hour!
He had looked straight ahead just a second or two before they got here — and seen nothing.
But they were there, coming head-on, like guided missiles.
And he didn’t see them. Of course the distance was over a half mile two seconds before they arrived, but still…He should have seen something!
He broke into a sweat. His mouth and lips were dry. He tried to swallow.
At those speeds, if his plane had collided with that Phantom…
He wouldn’t have felt a thing. Not a single thing. He would have been just instantly dead, a spot of grease trapped in the exploding fireball.
“Well, Ace,” Flap said, “you will be delighted to hear we have a fifty-foot CEP.”
Jake tried to reply but couldn’t.
“If World War III comes, you and I will be among the very first to die,” Flap informed him. “How about them apples? We’ve earned it.”
Those Phantoms — he wondered if the pilots of the fighters had even seen the A-6s.
“Gives you goose bumps, huh? Ain’t life something else?”
“Did anybody see those Phantoms?” Jake asked.
Silence. Blank looks. They were debriefing the flight in the ready room. Seven blank faces.
“You mean I was the only one to see them?”
Later, in the solitude of his stateroom, he thought about miracles. About how close to the abyss he had come, how many times. What was that quote — something about if you stared into the abyss long enough, the abyss stared back.
That was true. He could feel it staring back just now.
No one doubted his word when he told them about the fighters. But no one else had seen them.
To be told later that you had a close call was like learning that your mother had difficulty when you were born. It meant nothing. You shrugged and went on.
The Phantoms must have been from this ship. That was easy enough to check. He examined the air plan and found the fighter squadron that had the target time immediately after the A-6 outfit, then paid a visit to their ready room.
“Hey, did any of you guys have a near midair today? Anybody almost trade paint with four A-6s? On your way into the target?”