carrier’s Primary Flight Control, “Pried-Fly” in popular jargon. The
acknowledgment had just passed from the Air Boss to the Landing Signals
Officer, or LSO, standing at his station just below the Fresnel lens.
Bayerly was half a mile astern of the Jefferson now, seconds away from
the roundoff of her flight deck.
Damn Tombstone Magruder, anyway! Him and his Top Gun airs. He never
boasted about having been through the Navy Fighter Weapons School at
Miramar, but he managed to let you know without saying it. There was an
arrogance about the man, an assumed superiority.
“Power up!”
Damn! He’d let his speed fall too fast. His Tomcat was dropping too
quickly down the glide path. He pulled back on the stick and nudged the
throttles forward. The F-14 rose … too much, damn it!
“Wave off!” the LSO sang in his ear. “Wave off!”
His wheels touched the deck, but too far forward, missing all four of
the arrestor cables stretched across the aft end of the flight deck in
his path.
He was already jamming the throttles to full forward, building enough
thrust to get the F-14 back in the air.
“Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!” The LSO’s call was an embarrassing litany
as the Tomcat raced down the deck, the island a gray blur off his
starboard wingtip. Then he was airborne once more.
CHAPTER 3
1525 hours, 14 January
Flight deck, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Tombstone watched the Jefferson’s stern spread out before and below his
F-14 as he held the aircraft’s angle of attack steady. He spared one
final glance for the ball, noted that he was square on target, then let
the Tomcat slip over the roundoff and down to the deck. His wheels
touched with a jolt; at the same moment he rammed the throttles to full
military power, just in case his tailhook failed to engage one of the
arrestor cables.
He felt the reassuring forward surge of deceleration and dragged the
throttles back to idle as the hook snagged the number-three wire. After
checking his instruments for fire or warning lights, Tombstone let the
F-14 roll backwards slightly to “spit out the wire,” then followed the
hand signals of a yellow-shirted deck director.
In the sky, a Tomcat is the epitome of grace and maneuverability; on a
carrier deck it has all of the delicate grace of a beached walrus,
especially when the flight deck is wet or rolling in heavy seas.
Carefully, he folded the Tomcat’s wings, then nudged the throttles up
slightly, using his feet to control brakes and rudder pedals for the
turn into his designated parking space.
Chief Bob Smith, crew chief for Tomcat 201, was already unfolding the
ladder on the port side beneath the cockpit when Tombstone cracked the
canopy.
“Smooth mission, Commander?”
“Not bad, Chief.” He was still worried about Made It. He’d heard the
LSO call the bolter for 101 over the radio, knew that Bayerly would have
been directed out and around for another pass. He decided to make his
way across the deck to the LSO’s platform aft of the meatball.
Batman’s Tomcat 232 swept in across the stern for a graceful trap on the
number-three wire. Tombstone waited for an opening, then trotted across
the open flight deck, past the small army of deck crewmen and handlers
who were working on the recoveries.
Lieutenant Commander Ted “Bumer” Craig stood with a cluster of other
officers behind the collapsible windscreen mounted at his console on the
LSO platform. Bumer was VF-95’s LSO, a tall, blond man from
Indianapolis who was dividing his attention between the incoming planes
themselves and their TV images on the Pilot Landing Aid Television
screen on his console. In one hand he held the “pickle,” a handle with
a guarded switch which triggered the red wave-off lights bracketing the
meatball at his back like the rings around a target’s bull’s-eye. In
his other hand he gripped a telephone handset for communicating with the
Air Boss up in Pried-Fly, as well as with the incoming pilots.
“Ho, Stoney,” Bumer said as Tombstone jumped off the flight deck and
into the well behind the windscreen. “With you in a sec.”
Tombstone watched the next Tomcat, the number 203 prominent on the nose,