The Intruders (33 page)

“Rain. I got them though, course Zero Five Zero at fifteen.

Lots of sea return. Swells are big down there, my man.”

“Can we go down?”

“Yeah.”

Jake glanced over at the reflection of the Prowler in the nuffor. Pee
Wee was riding fairly steadily, cycling up and down as the planes
bounced, but never slipping too far out of position. Jake carefully
eased the throttle back and let the nose go down a half a degree. When
he was sure the EA-6B pilot was still with him, he lowered the nose some
more.

A pale green light caught his eye, and he glanced at the windscreen.
Dancing tendrils of green fire were playing across it.

“Look at this,” he told Flap. “Saint Elmo’s fire.”

“This makes my night,” the BN said. “All we need is for the Russians to
squirt a missile at us and this will be a complete entertainment
experience.”

“Will a lightning bolt do?”

“Don’t say stuff like that. God’s listening. You’re passing five
thousand.”

“Radar altimeter’s set.”

“Roger. Station one selected, master arm to go.”

They were up to four hundred knots indicated now. The EA-613 was right
there, hanging on. Eighty miles to go.

Wasn’t Saint Elmo’s fire an indicator that lightning might strike?
Wasn’t that what the old sailors said? Even as he wondered the
flickering green fire faded, then disappeared completely.

Black Eagle gave them a turn. Jake banked gently to the new heading.
The steering to the target was forty degrees left, but the controller in
the E-2 was trying to coordinate the attack, When he had one of the
formations four miles farther from the target than the other, he would
have them turn inbound and accelerate to five hundred knots. The pilots
would call their.distance to go on the radio every ten miles. The plan
was for the bombers and their EA-6B escorts to pass over the Soviet task
group thirty seconds apart.

Neither formation would see the other, so this separation was required
for safety reasons.

Jake eased his descent passing twenty-five hundred feet.

He shallowed it still more passing a thousand and drifted slowly down to
five hundred, keeping one eye on the radar altimeter. He adjusted the
barometric pressure on the pressure altimeter so it matched the radar
altimeter’s reading exactly.

The turbulence had not let up, nor had it increased. The rain was
heavier, though. The high airspeed kept the windscreen clear but the
water ran across the top and sides of the canopy in sheets.

“War Aces, turn inbound.”

Jake came left to center the steering and fed the throttles forward
until they were at ninety-eight percent RPM. Pee Wee stayed right with
him.

“Five Oh Two, seventy miles.

Fifteen seconds later he heard Haldane’s voice: “Five Oh Five, sixty
miles.”

Each plane was inbound on a bomb run at eight and a third nautical miles
per minute. They were a little over thirty seconds apart, but the extra
margin was an added safety cushion.

“I should get them at about thirty miles, I think,” Flap said.

And when we can see them, they can see us.

Jake reached down and flipped the IFF, the transponder, to standby. No
use giving the Reds an easy problem.

He glanced at the EW panel. Still quiet. When they rose T HE I N TRUD
ER S

above the Russians’ radar horizon it would light up like a Christmas
tree.

“Five Oh Two, sixty miles.”

The turbulence was getting vicious. The radar altimeter beeped once
when Jake inadvertently dropped to four hundred feet. He concentrated
on the instruments, on the attitude indicator on the VDI, on the needle
of the rate-of-climb indicator, cross-checking the radar and pressure
altimeters, all the while working to keep his wings level and steering
centered.

Every moment or two he glanced in the mirror to check on Pee Wee Reese,
who was sticking like glue. No question, the guy was good.

“Five Oh Two, fifty miles.”

Rain poured over the plane, so much that a film of water developed on
the windscreen even though they were doing five hundred knots.

“Five Oh Two, forty miles.”

A lightning flash ahead distracted him for several seconds from the
instruments. When he came back to them he had lost fifty feet. He
struggled to get it back as he wondered if Haldane had seen the
lightning flash. Should they go under a thunderstorm? It was Haldane’s
call. Jake wasn’t breaking off the run unless the skipper did.

“Five Oh Two, thirty miles.”

Twenty-nine, twenty-eight …

“They’ve turned,” Flap said. “They’re heading southeast.

Follow steering.”

Even as Jake eased right to center the bug, the EW panel lit up and the
tones assailed him. X-band, Y-band-the Russians had every radar they
had turned on and probing, looking for a target.

Now the tones of the radars became a buzz. The bomber was so close to
the EA-613, which was jamming the Russian radar, that the bomber’s EW
gear was overwhelmed.

“Five Oh Two, twenty miles.”

“Master Arm on, we’re in attack,” Flap reported.

The attack symbology came alive on the VDI.

Another lightning flash. Closer. Lots of rain.

“Five Oh Five, ten miles.” That was Haldane.

Fifteen miles … fourteen … thirteen …

“They’re jamming me. Keep on this heading.”

Now Flap flipped on frequency agility, trying to change his radar’s
frequency to an unjammed wavelength long enough to get a look.

“Five Oh Two, ten miles.”

Three lightning flashes in a couple seconds. They were flying right
under a boomer. The turbulence was so bad Jake had trouble
concentrating on the instruments. Pee Wee was still hanging on, though.

Five miles.

Four.

Three.

Symbols marching down toward weapons release.

Lights. The Russian ships should be lit up. He should pass over them
just after weapons’ release. But don’t look! No distractions.
Concentrate! TWO.

One.

Release marker coming down. Steering centered. Commit trigger pulled.

Click. Flag drop on the ordnance panel and the attack light on the VDI
went out.

If there had been a bomb, it would now be falling.

A searchlight split the night. Three or four, weaving.

Instantly he had vertigo. He stared at the VDI, forced himself to keep
his wings level as he tugged the stick slightly aft to begin a climb.

And then the lights were behind. That quick.

More lightning ahead. Jake eased into a left turn, toward the north.
The skipper went out to the southeast, so this direction should be
clear.

He would climb away from this ocean, turn west to head for the carrier,
get out of this rain and turbulence and lightning, and to hell with the
Ivans!

Message delivered: fuck you very much, stiff letter to follow.

He had the power back to ninety percent and was up to two thousand feet,
in a ten-degree angle-of-bank left turn passing north on the HSI when
the lightning bolt struck.

There was a stupendous flash of light and a sound like a ammer striking,
then nothing.

He was blind. Everything was white. Flash blindness. He knew it.

He keyed the ICS and told Flap, “Flashlight-” but there was no feedback
in his headset. A total electrical failure.

And he was blind as a bat, two thousand feet over the water, in a turn.

He had to see.

He blinked furiously, trying by sheer force of will to see the
instrument panel.

But there was no light, no electricity.

He reached behind him with his left hand, found the hanthe for the
ram-air turbine-the RAT-and pulled hard.

Real hard.

The handle came out.

Perhaps four seconds had passed, not more.

The white was fading. He reached for his oxygen mask with both hands
and unfastened the right side.

What the plane was doing he had no way of knowing, although he knew
whatever it was, it wasn’t good. But he couldn’t fly blind. Ms
seat-of-the-pants instincts were worthless. Oh, he knew that, had had
it drummed into him and had experienced it on so many night carrier
landings that he wasn’t even tempted to try to level the wings.

The white was fading into darkness. He blinked furiously, then
remembered his L-shaped flashlight, hanging by a hook on the front of
his survival vest. He found it and pushed the switch on.

in the growing darkness he saw the spot the beam made on the instrument
panel. Another few seconds …

But there was already a spot of light on the needle-ball turn indicator!
Flap! He must have had his head in the scope when the lightning He
could see. The VDI was blank. The standby gyro showed a thirty-degree
left turn. Ten degrees nose-down.

Gross-check with the turn indicator!

Turn needle pegged left. He rolled right to center it, over did it and
came back left some. The standby gyro responded.

The altimeter! Going down.

Back stick. Stop the needle. Gently now. Coming down on eleven
hundred feet. Stop it there, center that turn needle. Standby gyro
disagrees by five degrees. Ignore it!

Flap was shouting and he caught the muffled words: “Reese is still with
us. He has his lights on. I think he wants to take the lead.”

Jake could see now. His vision was back to normal.

How many seconds had it been?

He risked a glance in the rearview mirror. There was Reese, with his
exterior lights on, bobbing like a cork on Jake’s right wing. Reese
must be the world’s finest formation pilot, to hang on through that
gyration.

Should he chance it? Should he pull the power and try to ease back onto
Reese’s wing without a radio call or signal?

Even as the thought shot through his mind, he was retarding the
throttles. Reese’s plane began to move forward.

Okay! Flap was flipping his flashlight at Reese in the EA-613’s
cockpit.

Pee Wee knows. He wants me to fly on him. It’s our only chance if the
TACAN and radar are screwed up.

We’ll never find the ship on our own.

Now Reese was abeam him, the two planes flying wing tip to wing tip and
bouncing out of sync in the turbulence.

Be smooth, Jake. Don’t lose him. Don’t let him slip away into this
black shit or you’ll be swimming for it.

He stabilized in parade position on Reese’s left side, so that he was
looking straight up the leading edge of the swept wing into the cockpit.
Reese was just a dark shape limned by red light, the glow from his
instrument panel.

No comforting red glow in this cockpit. This place was dark as a tomb.

The bouncing was getting worse. He had to cross under, to get on
Reese’s right side so he wouldn’t be looking across the cockpit at the
other plane.

He tucked the nose down gently and pulled a smidgen of power. Now power
back on and a little right bank while he wrestled the stick in the chop.

Right under the tail, crossing, surfacing on Pee Wee’s right wing. Okay.
Now hang here.

Another flash of lightning, He flinched.

Flap was shouting something. He concentrated, trying to make sense of
the words. “. . . must’ve zapped us with a zillion volts. Every
circuit breaker we got is popped.

I’m going to try to reset some, so if you smell smoke, let me know.”

“Okay,” he shouted, and found reassurance in the sound of his own voice.

All he had to do was hang on to Reese. Hang on and hang on and hang on,
and someday, sometime, Reese would drop him onto the ball. The ball
would be out there in the rain and black goo, and the drop lights, and
the centerline lights, and the wires, strung across that pitching,
heaving deck.

All he had to do was hang on …

As Flap pushed in circuit breakers and the cockpit lights glowed, then
went out, then glowed again, the planes flew into and out of deluges.
The torrents of rain were worse than they had been coming in. Several
times the rain coursing over the canopy caused Reese’s plane to fade
until just the exterior lights could be seen.

Jake concentrated fiercely upon those lights. Each time the rain would
eventually slacken and the fuselage of the EA-BB would reappear, a
ghostly gray presence in the blacker gloom.

Finally the clouds dissipated and a blacker night spread out before
them. Far above tiny, cold stars shown steadily. They were on top,
above the clouds. Behind them lightning sbrobed almost continually.

Jake eased away from Reese and put his mask to his face. The oxygen was
flowing, cool and rubbery tasting.

He lowered it again, then swabbed the sweat from his eyes and face with
the fingers of his left hand.

When he had his mask fixed back in place he glanced at the instruments.
The instrument lights were on-well, some of them. It was still dark on
Flap’s side. The VDI was still blank, but the standby gyro was working.
The TACAN needle swung lazily, steadily, around and around the dial.

He pushed the button to check the warning lights on the annunciator
panel. The panel stayed dark. Both generators were probably fried.
Maybe the battery. He recycled each of the generator switches, but
nothing happened.

Finally he just turned them off.

Fuel-he checked the gauge. Nine thousand pounds.

He pushed the buttons on the fuel panel to check the quantity in each
tank. The needle and totalizer never moved. They were frozen.

Flap was still examining the circuit breaker panel with his flashlight.

“Hey, shipmate, you there?” Flap-on the ICS.

“Yeah.”

“A whole bunch of these CBs won’t stay in.”

“Forget it.”

“We’re gonna need-”

“We’ll worry about it later.”

Later. Let’s sit up here in the night above the storms and savor this
moment. Savor life. For we are alive. Still alive. Let’s sit
silently and look at the stars and Reese’s beautiful Prowler and breathe
deeply and listen to our hearts beating.