He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind as they reached their
planes and started on the serious business of checking the Tomcat over before
they entrusted their lives to it. Chief Bergstrom, the brown-shirted plane
captain responsible for maintaining and inspecting the aircraft, joined Batman
and Malibu as they circled the big interceptor. Bergstrom was a good man, and
Batman trusted him, but not to the point of going up without making sure there
wasn’t some careless mistake by one of the maintenance crewmen just waiting to
be overlooked.
Satisfied, they moved to the left side of the Tomcat. Bergstrom folded
down the cockpit ladder. “Good hunting, sir!” he shouted over the din of the
flight deck.
Batman gave him a quick thumbs-up and climbed into the front of the
cockpit. Malibu settled into the backseat a few moments later, while Wayne
was still settling his kneeboard into place on his leg.
He went carefully through the pre-flight checklist, suppressing a grin at
the thought of how conscientious he’d become in the last three years. It all
went back to the tour with Tombstone Magruder, who’d taught him that it didn’t
always take glitz and glitter to make a first-rate fighter pilot.
The checklist finished, Batman powered up the Tomcat’s two General
Electric F110-GE-400 engines, first the right, then the left. He nodded in
satisfaction at their sound and adjusted the throttle by his left hand to
idle. Tradition maintained that as squadron Exec he should fly Tomcat 202,
but it had been one of the victims the day the A-6E had crashed on the flight
deck. Number 204, this bird, didn’t have his name or Malibu’s stenciled below
the canopy, but aviators traded off aircraft assignments often enough. This
Tomcat seemed to be in top shape.
Outside deck crewmen were unhooking parking chains and clearing away the
chocks around the wheels. A deck crewman whose yellow flashlights identified
him as a plane handler signaled Batman with quick gestures of the wands, and
Wayne followed his instructions and taxied the aircraft toward catapult number
one. A constellation of other colored lights closed in around the Tomcat.
Blue wands were crewmen checking the control surfaces of the Tomcat, while
ordnance specialists with red wands prepped the air-to-air missiles,
radar-guided Sparrows and heat-seeking Sidewinders hanging suspended from
their launch rails. Four times a low hum sounded in Batman’s headphones as
the ordies passed their flashlights close to the noses of each Sidewinder.
The heat-sensing guidance systems were sensitive enough to detect even a
flashlight as a heat source and alert the pilot that they were locked on a
potential target.
A deck crewman appeared to the left of the Tomcat holding up a lighted
board showing the number 65,000, the takeoff weight of Tomcat 204. It was
vital that the steam catapult be properly set for the weight of the plane to
ensure a safe launch. Behind Batman, Malibu waved a flashlight in a circular
motion to acknowledge the 65,000-pound figure.
Underneath the plane a hookup man connected the launching bar on the
F-14’s nose gear to the cat shuttle. Once it was hooked up, Batman knew,
another crewman would check the holdback bar that would keep the Tomcat from
breaking free until the moment of the launch, and the jet-blast deflector
would rise into position behind the plane. The dance on the deck was a
complex ritual, graceful and intricate, with every move designed to send the
plane on its way safely and quickly.
The catapult officer, identified by his green and red flashlights, waved
the green light horizontally. Batman obeyed the signal and moved the twin
throttles to full military power. He could feel the fighter straining against
the holdback bolt, like a wild animal eager to return to its own native
element. Batman went through the time-honored ritual to test the control
stick between his knees, left, right, forward, back. Then he checked the
rudder pedals. All working. All ready.
The catapult officer waved the green light up and down, and Batman shoved
the throttle to full afterburner. Light bathed the flight deck from the
plumes of flame that twisted and writhed from the two jet engines. “Give ’em