The Intruders (23 page)

That was the plan, anyway.

Flap had the radar and computer fired up, so Jake was getting steering
to the target. He was merely comparing it to the course the strike
leader was flying, however.

The radio frequency was crowded. The strike leader was talking to the
E-2 Hawkeye, the RA-5C was chattering about a fishing boat that he had
chased away from the target and the cloud cover, someone had a hydraulic
problem, the tankers wanted to change the poststrike rendezvous position
because the carrier wasn’t where it was supposed to be when this
evolution was put together, and one of the EA-6s was late getting
launched and was going to be late getting to its assigned position.
Situation normal, Jake thought He checked the position of his wingmen
regularly, yet he spent most of his time scanning the sky and staying in
proper position in relation to the strike leader. When he had a spare
second he brought his eyes back into the cockpit to check his engine
instruments and fuel.

The cumulus clouds below thickened as the strike group approached the
coast of Luzon. The bases were at 4,000 feet, but the tops were
building. From 23,000 feet the clouds seemed to cover about fifty
percent of the sea below.

Would there be holes over the target big enough to bomb through?

The twenty-six bombers and their two EA-6 escorts began their descent
toward their roll-in altitude of 15,000 feet. The leader left his
throttle alone, so the airspeed began to increase. The faster the
strike could close a Soviet task group, the fewer missiles and less flak
it would encounter. In aerial warfare, speed is life.

Now CAG was on the radio. He was at 30,000 feet over the target in an
F4. “Where are the Flashlights?”

Flashlight was the F4 that would illuminate the target with the laser
designators Actually there were two F-4s, both carrying hand-held laser
designators. The pilots would have to find a hole in the clouds so the
RIOs-radar intercept officers–could aim the designators, then they
would have to maneuver to keep the target in sight and avoid colliding
with one another. In a real attack on Soviet ships, the pilots would
also be dodging missiles and flak.

“Uh, Flashlight is trying to find the target. The F-4’s electronic
system was designed to find and track other airborne targets, not find
the remnants of a wrecked ship resting on a reef. The A-6s’ systems,
however, were working fine. Flap had the target and Jake was getting
steering and distance. In the planning sessions he had argued that A-6s
should carry the designators but had been overruled.

“Ten miles to roll-in,” Flap told Jake. The strike was passing 20,000
feet. Now the strike leader dropped his nose farther, giving the group
about 4,000 feet a minute down. Three hundred twenty knots indicated
and increasing.

Passing 18,000 feet Jake pumped his arm at the A-6 on his left side.
Flap did the same to the man on his right. The Intruder formation
shifted to echelon.

The tops of the clouds were closer. Still some holes, but the target
wasn’t visible through them.

The situation was deteriorating fast. Without holes in the clouds, the
F-4s carrying bombs could not find the target.

The A-7s might be able to, but not in formation since the pilots could
not fly formation and work their radars and computers too. The A-6s
could break off at any point and make a system attack on the target,
individually or in pairs.

This was the edge an all-weather, two-man airplane gave you.

The strike leader, Gold One, knew all this. He had only seconds to
decide.

“This is Gold One. Let’s go to Plan Bravo. Plan Bravo.”

Jake Grafton lowered his nose still farther. Now he wanted to descend
below the formation. The A-7s were shallowing their dive, which helped.

Flap was on the ICS: “Target’s twenty degrees left. Master Arm on.”

“Kiss off,” Jake told him, and Flap took a few seconds to splay his
fingers at the wingman on his right as Jake turned left to center
steering and dropped his nose still more. Fifteen degrees down now,
going faster than a raped ape, the plane pushing against the sonic shock
wave and vibrating slightly, nothing but clouds visible in the
windscreen dead ahead. The other A-6s would continue on course for four
seconds each, then turn toward the target.

All six would run the target individually.

“We’re in attack,” Flap announced, and sure enough, the attack symbology
appeared on the VDI in front of Jake.

“War Ace One’s in hot,” he announced on the radio.

He took one more quick look around to ensure the other airplanes in this
gaggle were clear.

Something on his left wing caught his eye. Ms eyes focused.

The bomb on Station One, the station nearest the left wing tip-the
propeller on the mechanical fuse was spinning The fuse was arming.

He gaped for half a second, unwilling to believe his eyes.

The propeller was spinning.

One bomb in a thousand, they say, will detonate at the end of arming
time. The propeller will spin for 8.5 seconds to line up the firing
circuit.

He could drop it now!

His thumb moved toward the pickle. The master armament switch was
already on. All he had to do was squeeze the commit trigger and push
the pickle. The bomb would fall away and be clear of the plane when the
fuse finished arming. If it blew then …

He would still be within the blast envelope.

all these thoughts shot through his mind in less than a second. Even
while he was considering he scanned the instruments to ensure he was
tracking steering with his wings level.

He looked outside again. The propeller was stopped.

The bomb was armed! And it hadn’t exploded. Okay, we’ve dodged the
first bullet.

He pushed the radio transmit button as he retarded the throttles and
raised the nose. “War Ace One has an armed bomb on the rack. Breaking
off the attack and turning north at . . .” He looked at the altimeter.
He was descending through 12,000 feet. “. .. At twelve thousand.”

He grabbed the stick with his left hand and used his right to move the
Master Arm switch to the safe position.

Everyone was talking on the radio-A-6s calling in hot, the A-7s breaking
up for dives, F-4s looking for holesprobably no one heard Jake’s
transmission.

“Station One,” he told Flap on the ICS when he had his left hand back on
the throttles, talking over the gabble on the radio. “The bomb is
armed.”

He concentrated on flying the plane, on getting the nose up and turning
to the north. He was in the clouds now, bouncing around in turbulence.
A northerly heading should take him out from under the strike gaggle,
which was circling the target to the south.

“The arming wire pulled out of the fuse somehow,” he told Flap. “I saw
the propeller spinning. The fucking thing is armed.”

He looked again at the offending weapon. Now he saw that the thermal
protective coating was peeled back somewhat. The Navy sprayed all its
weapons with a plastic thermal coating after experiencing several major
flight-deck fires in which bombs cooked off. The coating must have had
a flaw in it, something for the slipstream to work on. The slipstream
peeled the coating, which pulled the arming wire.

A two-thousand-pound bomb … if it detonated under the THE IN TRUD ER
S

wing, the airplane would be instantly obliterated. The fuel in the
plane would probably explode. So would the other three weapons hanging
on the plane. Not that he or Flap would care. They would already be
dead, their bodies crushed by the initial blast and torn into a thousand
pieces.

And this turbulence … it could set off that fuse.

He retarded the throttles. Almost to idle. Cracked the speed brakes to
help slow down.

“Let’s climb out of this crap,” Flap suggested.

Jake slipped the speed brakes back in and raised the nose.

He added power.

Finally he stabilized at an indicated 250 knots.

“Cubi?” Flap asked.

“Yeah.”

Flap hit a switch and the computer steering went right.

Jake looked at the repeater between his legs. The steering bug was at
One Six Zero degrees, eighty miles. Flap dialed in the Cubi TACAN
station.

“It could go at any time,” Jake said.

“I know.”

“Let’s get off this freq and talk to Black Eagle.”

Flap got on the radio as they climbed free of the clouds.

The turbulence ceased.

Left turn. Fly around the target and the strike group to seaward.

No. Right turn. Go around on the land side. The other planes would be
leaving the target to seaward. Maybe at this altitude. No sense taking
any more chances than-An F4 shot across the windscreen going from right
to left. Before Jake could react the A-6 flew into his wash.

Wham! The plane shook fiercely, then it was through.

“If that didn’t set the damned thing off, nothing will,”

Flap said.

Like bell. The jolts and bumps might well be cumulative.

Jake concentrated on flying the plane. He was sweating profusely. Sweat
stung his eyes. He stuck the fingers of his left hand under his visor
and swabbed it away.

Black Eagle suggested a frequency switch to Cubi Point Approach. Hap
rogered and dialed the radio.

They were at 18,000 feet now and well above the cloud tops.

Jake glanced at the armed bomb from time to time. If he pickled it the
shock of the ejector foot smacking into the weapon to push it away from
the rack might set it off.

If the bomb detonated he and Flap would never even know it.

One second they would be alive and the next they would be standing in
line to see St. Peter.

What a way to make a living!

Just fly the airplane, Jake. Do what you can and let God worry about
the other stuff.

“Cubi Approach, War Ace Five Oh Seven. We have an armed Mark
Eighty-Four hanging on Station One. We’re carrying three more Mark
Eighty-Fours, but they are unarmed. After we land we want to park as
far away from everything as possible. And could you have EOD meet us?”

EOD stood for explosive ordnance disposal.

“Roger five weapon. We’ll roll the equipment and call EOD.”

Cubi Point was the U.S. naval air station on the shore of Subic Bay,
the finest deep-water port in the western Pacific.

It had one concrete runway 9,000 feet long. Today Jake Grafton flew a
straight-in approach over the water, landing to the northeast.

He flared the Intruder like he was flying an Air Force jet.

He retarded the engines to idle, pulled the nose up and greased the main
mounts on. He held the nose wheel off the runway until the airspeed
read 80 knots, then he lowered it as gently as possible. Only then did
he realize that he had been holding his breath.

The tower directed him to taxi back to the south end of the runway and
park on the taxiway. As he taxied he raised his flaps and slats and
shut down his left engine. Then he opened the canopy and removed his
oxygen mask. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his flight suit.

A fire truck was waiting when Jake turned off the runway.

He made sure he was across the hold-short line, then eased the plane to
a stop. One of the sailors on the truck came over to the plane with a
fire bottle, a fire extinguisher on wheels. Jake chopped the right
engine. On shutdown the fuel control unit dumped the fuel it contained
overboard, and this fuel fell down beside the right main wheel. If the
brake was hot the fuel could ignite, hence the fire bottle.

The danger was nonexistent if you shut down an engine while taxiing
because you were moving away from the jettisoned fuel. But there was no
fire today.

One of the firemen lowered the pilot’s boarding ladder.

Jake safetied his ejection seat and unstrapped. He left the helmet and
mask in the plane when he climbed down.

The thermal casing on the armed bomb had indeed been peeled back by the
blast of the slipstream, pulling the arming wire and freeing the fuse
propeller.

Jake Grafton was standing there looking at it when he realized that a
chief petty officer in khakis was standing beside him.

“I’m Chief Mendoza, EOD.”

Jake nodded at the weapon. “We were running an attack.

I just happened to look outside for other planes just before we went
into a cloud and saw the propeller spinning.”

Flap came over while Jake was speaking. He put his hands on his hips
and stood silently examining the bomb.

“If you’d dropped it like that, sir, it might have gone off when the
ejector foot hit it,” the chief said.

Neither airman had anything to say.

:’Guess you guys were lucky.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I gotta screw that fuse out. We’ll snap a few photos first
because we’ll have to do a bunch of paperwork and the powers that be
will want photos. I suggest you two fellows ride on the fire truck. You
don’t want to be anywhere around when I start screwing that fuse out.”

“I’ll walk,” Jake said.

Flap Le Beau headed for the fire truck.

The chief turned his back on the weapon while the firemen took photos.
He was facing out to sea, looking at the sky and the clouds and the
shadows playing on the water when Jake Grafton turned away and began
walking.

The pilot loosened his flight gear. He was suddenly very thirsty, so he
got out his water bottle and took a drink. The water was warm, but he
drank all of it. His hands were shaking, trembling like an old man’s.

The heat radiated from the concrete in waves.

He wiped his face again with his sleeve, then half turned and looked
back at the plane. The chief was still standing with his arms folded,
facing out to sea.

As he walked Jake got a cigarette from the pack in his left sleeve
pocket and lit it. The smoke tasted foul.