The Intruders (17 page)

“Yeah.”

“Hank! What could you do? The damned thing weighs seventy pounds. Even
with your help, Smith couldn’t have got it back into its tray. No way.
If you’d crawled across to help, you’d both be dead now. It’s not like
you guys had a half hour to dick with this problem.”

Davis didn’t reply. He looked at a wall, swallowed hard.

Jake Grafton racked his brains for a way to reach out. I should have
told you guys about checking the VDIs security.

Although he felt that, he didn’t say it.

Hank related the facts of his ejection in matter-of-fact tones. The
chute had not completely opened when he hit the water. So he hit the
water way too hard and had trouble getting out of his chute. The
swimmer from the helicopter had been there in seconds and saved his
bacon. Still, he swallowed a lot of seawater and almost drowned.

“I dunno, Jake. Sometimes life’s pretty hard to figure.

When you look at it close, the only thing that makes a difference is
luck. Who lives or who dies is just luck. The dead guy screwed up,’
everybody says. Of course he screwed up.

Lady Luck crapped all over him. And if that’s true, then everything
else is a lie-religion, professionalism, everything.

We are all just minnows swimming in the sea and luck decides when it’s
your turn. Then the shark eats you and that’s the fucking end of that.”

“If it’s all luck, then these guilt trips don’t make much sense, do
they?” Jake observed.

“Right now the accident investigators are down in the avionics shop,”
Hank Davis told him. “They are looking for the simple bastard who
didn’t get the VDI screwed in right.

All this shit is gonna- get dumped right on that poor dumb son of a
bitch! ‘Rory Smith is dead and it’s your fault.”

Makes me want to puke some more.”

Squadron life revolves around the ready room, ashore or afloat. Since
the A-6 squadrons always had the most flight crewmen, they always got
the biggest ready room, in most ships Ready Five, but in Columbia, Ready
Four. The ready room was never big enough. It was filled with
comfortable, padded chairs that you could sink into and really relax in,
even sleep in, but there weren’t enough of them for all the officers.

In some squadrons when all the officers assembled for a meeting–an
AOM–chairs were assigned by strict seniority.

In other outfits the rule was fast come, first served. How it was done
depended on the skipper, who always got a chair up front by the duty
desk, the best seat in the house. Lieutenant Colonel Haldane believed
that rank had its privileges-at least when not airborne–so seniority
reigned here.

Jake Grafton ended up with a seat four rows back. The nuggets, first
lieutenants on their first cruise, stood around the back of the room or
sat on metal folding chairs.

AOMs were social and business events. Squadron business was thrashed
out in these meetings, administrative matters dealing with the ship and
the demands of the amorphous bureaucracies of the Navy and the Marine
Corps were considered, lectures delivered on NATOPs and flying
procedures, the “word” passed, all manner of things.

At these soirees all the officers in the squadron got to know each other
well. Here one got a close look at the department heads-the
“heavies”-watched junior officers in action, here the commanding officer
exerted his leadership and molded the flight crews into a military unit.

In addition to the legal authority with which he was cloaked, the
commanding officer was always the most experienced flyer there and the
most senior. How he used these assets was the measure of the man, for
truly, his responsibility was very great. In addition to the aircraft
entrusted to him, he was responsible for about 350 enlisted men and
three dozen officers. He was legally and morally responsible for every
facet of their lives, from the adequacy of their living quarters to
their health, professional development and performance. And he was
responsible for the squadron as a military unit in combat, which meant
the lives of his men were in his hands.

The responsibility crushed some men, but most commanding officers
flourished under it. This was the professional zenith that they had
spent their careers working to attain.

By the time they reached it they had served under many commanding
officers. The wise ones adopted the best of the leadership styles of
their own former skippers and adapted it as necessary to suit their
personalities. Leadership could not be learned from a book: it was the
most intangible and the most human of the military skills.

In American naval aviation the best skippers led primarily by example
and the force of their personalities-they intentionally kept the mood
light as they gave orders, praised, cajoled, hinted, encouraged,
scolded, ridiculed, laughed at and commented upon whatever and whomever
they wished.

The ideal that they seemed to instinctively strive for was a position as
first among equals. Consequently AOMs were normally spirited affairs,
occasionally raucous, full of good humor and camaraderie, with every
speaker working hard to gain his audience’s attention and cope with
catcalls and advice-good, bad, indifferent and obscene. In this
environment intelligence and good sense could flourish, here experience
could be shared and everyone could learn from everyone else, here the
bonds necessary to sustain fighting men could be forged.

This evening Rory Smith’s death hung like a gloomy pall in the air.

Colonel Haldane spoke first. He told them what he knew of the accident,
what Hank Davis had said. Then he got down to it:

“The war is over and still we have planes crashing and people dying.
Hard to figure, isn’t it? This time it wasn’t the bad guys. The gomers
didn’t get Rory Smith in three hundred and twenty combat missions,
although they tried and they tried damned hard. He had planes shot up
so badly on three occasions that he was decorated for getting the planes
back. What got him was a VDI that slid out of its tray in the
instrument panel and jammed the stick.

“Did he think about ejecting? I don’t know. I wish he had ejected. I
wish to God we still had Rory Smith with us.

Maybe he was worried about getting his legs cut off if he pulled the
handle. Maybe he didn’t have time to punch.

Maybe he thought he could save it. Maybe he didn’t realize how quickly
the plane was getting into extremism Lots of maybes. We’ll never know.”

He picked up the blue NATOPs manual lying on the podium and held it up.
“This book is the Bible. The engineers that built this plane and the
test pilots that wrung it out put their hearts and souls into this
book-for you. Telling you everything they knew. And the process didn’t
stop thereas new things are learned about the plane the book is
continitally updated. It’s a living document. You should know every
word in it. That is the best insurance you can get on this side of
hell.

“But the book doesn’t cover everything. Sooner or later you are going
to run into something that isn’t covered in the book. Whether you
survive the experience win be determined by your skill, your experience,
and your luck.

“There’s been a lot of mumbling around here the last twenty-four hours
about luck. Well, there is no such thing.

You can’t feel it, taste it, smell it, touch it, wear it, fuck it, or
eat it. It doesn’t exist!

“This thing we call luck is merely professionalism and attention to
detail, it’s your awareness of everything that is going on around you,
it’s how well you know and understand your airplane and your own
limitations. We make our own luck. Each of us. None of us is
Superman. Luck is the sum total of your abilities as an aviator. If
you think your luck is running low, you’d better get busy and make some
more.

Work harder. Pay more attention. Study your NATOPS more. Do better
preffights.

“A wise man once said, ‘Fortune favors the well prepared.” He was right.

“Rory Smith is not with us here tonight because he didn’t eject when he
should have. Hank Davis is alive because he did.

“We’re going to miss Rory. But every man here had better resolve to
learn something from his death. If we do, he didn’t die for nothing.
Think about it.”

The best way to see Hawaii is the way the ancient Polynesians first saw
it, the way it was revealed to whalers and missionaries, the way sailors
have always seen it.

The islands first appear on the horizon like clouds, exactly the same as
the other clouds. Only as the hours pass and your vessel gets closer
does it become apparent that there is something different about these
clouds. The first hints of green below the churning clouds imply mass,
earth, land, an island, where at first there appeared to be only sea and
sky.

Finally you see for sure-tawny green slopes, soon a surf line,
definition and a crest for that ridge, that draw, that promontory.

Hawaii.

Jake Grafton stood amid the throng of off-duty sailors on the bow
watching the island of Oahu draw closer and closer.

She looked emerald green this morning under her cloud wreath. The
hotels and office buildings of Honolulu were quite plain there on the
right. Farther right Diamond Head jutted from the sea haze, also wearing
a cumulus buildup.

The sailors pointed out’the landmarks to one another and talked
excitedly. They were jovial, happy. To see Hawaii for the first time
is one of LIFE’s great milestones, like your first kiss.

Jake had been here before–twice. On each of his first two cruises the
ship had stopped in Pearl on its way to Vietnam. As he watched the
carrier close the harbor channel , he thought again of those times, and
of the men now dead whom he had shared them with. Little fish. Sharks.

He went below. Down in the stateroom the Real McCoy was poring over a
copy of the Wall Street Journal. “Are you rich enough to retire yet?”

“I’m making an honest dollar, Grafton. Working hard at it and taking
big risks. We call the system capitalism.”

“Yeah. So how’s capitalism treating you?”

“Think I’m up another grand as of the date of this paper, four days ago.
I’ll get something current as soon as I can get off base.”

“Uh-huh.”

:,Arabs turned off the oil tap in the Mideast. That will send my
domestic oil stocks soaring and melt the profits off my airline stocks.
Some up, some down, You know, the crazy thing about investing-there’s
really no such thing as bad news. Whether an event is good or bad
depends on where you’ve got your money.”

Jake eyed his roommate without affection. This worm’seye view of life
irritated him. The worms had placed bets on the little fish. Somehow
that struck him as inevitable, though it didn’t say much for the worms.
Or the little fish.

“You going ashore?” McCoy asked.

“Like a shot out of a gun, the instant the gangway stops moving,” Jake
Grafton replied. “I have got to get off this tub for a while.”

“Liberty hounds don’t go very high in this man’s Navy,” McCoy reminded
him, in a tone that Jake thought sounded a wee bit prissy.

“I really don’t care if Haldane uses my fitness report for toilet paper”
was Jake Grafton’s edged retort. And he didn’t care. Not one iota.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Mrs. McKenzie? This is Jake Grafton. Is Callie there?”

“No, she isn’t, Jake. Where are you?”

“Hawaii.”

“She’s at school right now. She should be back around six this evening.
Is there a number where she can reach you?”

“No. I’ll call her. Please tell her I called.”

“I’ll do that, Jake.”

The pilot hung up the phone and put the rest of the quarters from his
roll back into his trouser pocket. When he stepped out of the telephone
booth, the next sailor in line took his place.

He trudged away looking neither right nor left, ignoring the sporadic
salutes tossed his way. The palm trees and frangipani in bloom didn’t
interest him. The tropical breeze caressing his face didn’t distract
him. When a jet climbing away from Hickam thundered over, however, the
pilot stopped and looked up. He watched the jet until the plane was out
of sight and the sound had faded, then walked on.

About a ship’s length from the carrier pier was a small square of grass
complete with picnic table adjacent to the water. After brushing away
pigeon droppings, Jake Grafton seated himself on the table and eased his
fore-and-aft cap farther back onto his head. The view was across the
harbor at the USS Arizona memorial, which he knew was constructed above
the sunken battleship’s superstructure. Arizona lay on the mud under
that calm sheet of water, her hull blasted, holed, burned and twisted by
Japanese bombs and torpedoes. Occasionally boats ferrying tourists to
and from the memorial made wakes that disturbed the surface of the
water. After the boats’ passage, the disturbance would quickly
dissipate. Just the faintest hint of a swell spoiled the mirror
smoothness of that placid sheet, protected as it was from the sea’s
turbulence by the length and narrowness of the channel. The perfect
water reflected sky and drifting cumulus clouds and, arranged around the
edge of the harbor, the long gray warships that lay at the piers.

Jake Grafton smoked cigarettes while he sat look’

Ing.

Time passed slowly and his mind wandered. Occasionally he glanced at
his watch. When almost two hours had passed, he walked back toward the
telephone booths at the head of the carrier pier and got back into line.

T HE IN TRUD ER S

“Hey, Callie, it’s me, Jake.”

“Well, hello, sailor! It’s great to hear your voice.”

“Pretty nice hearing yours too, lady. So you’re back in school?”

“Uh-huh. Graduate courses. I’m getting so educated I don’t know what
I’ll do.”