Tomcat 201, flight deck U.S.S. Thomas JeffersOn
Viking Station, the Norwegian Sea
Coyote regained consciousness aware of a dozen anxious faces pressed
around his canopy. The Tomcat was at rest and it wasn’t burning, thank God.
He fumbled with his oxygen mask and pulled it from his face, gulping down huge
gasps of welcome air.
The barricade was made of interwoven canvas straps. Those straps now
pressed over his canopy, keeping it from opening. Coyote’s initial relief was
engulfed by a new fear. If the aircraft caught fire now, he was trapped
inside, unable to escape.
That thought led to another. Damn it, he had yanked the ejection seat
handle, but nothing had happened. His surprise at that fact was almost the
last thought he’d had as his aircraft had slammed into the deck. The powerful
rockets in the bases of his and John-Boy’s seats should have triggered, firing
them both clear of the aircraft, allowing them to come down on parachutes into
the sea.
There’d been a malfunction, obviously. But suppose the seats were to
fire now, with the canopy firmly clamped in place by the barricade straps?
One of the enlisted men outside brought the blade of a power saw close to
the plexiglass. There was a shriek, deafening and high-pitched, as the saw
sliced through the canopy. In seconds, large sections had been broken away,
and the barricade was being peeled back over the Tomcat’s nose. Coyote was
assaulted by the babble of voices of the men around him.
“Easy, sir! We’ll have you out in no time!”
“Quick! Safe those seats. Damn it, I don’t want those cooking off in
our faces …”
“Shit, Chief! They’re already safed. Both of ’em! The pins were never
pulled!”
“Christ. No wonder they didn’t fire. Hey, get a doc up here. Let ’em
through.”
“Make a hole there. Make a hole!”
“Hey, Doc! How’s the RIO? Jeez, look at the blood! …”
“He’s a goner. Lemme see the other one.”
“C’mon, get them out of there. Gently! Gently, damn you!”
Hands reaching into the cockpit unfastened Coyote’s safety harness,
removed his helmet, hauled him out, and strapped him into a Stokes stretcher.
John-Boy was dead? It had all been for nothing, then. Only slowly, as
men hustled him in the stretcher across the deck and down toward sick bay, did
Coyote’s initial surge of raw emotion return. He was alive. Alive!
1915 hours Zulu (2015 hours Zone)
CAG’s office, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Viking Station, the Norwegian Sea
Tombstone leaned back in his swivel chair behind his gray steel desk, a
coffee mug with the striking-snake logo of VF-95 in his hands. He could feel
the gentle roll of the boat–aviators always referred to an aircraft carrier
as a boat rather than a ship, in defiance of the traditions of “the real
Navy.” The seas were picking up.
The CAG office was a small one, as most personal work spaces were within
the small city that was the U.S.S. Jefferson. There was barely room for a
couple of chairs and a desk with built-in typing stand, a battered IBM
Selectric, a filing cabinet, and a small set of bookshelves hung from brackets
on the bulkhead. His desk was buried in the usual clutter of work. CAG
paperwork, he’d learned, was by definition never done.
Rising above the pile of forms and reports next to the desk lamp was a
portrait, a photograph of a lovely blond woman. “To my favorite tomcat,” the
inscription read. “I love you–Pam.”
Pamela Drake. Damn, why did he keep her picture around? She’d sent it
to him during his last cruise aboard the Jefferson, two years back. Just
before he’d returned Stateside from that rather eventful deployment.
Just before he’d told her that he wasn’t about to give up his career for
her.
He’d met her during the Thailand affair. She’d been a hotshot TV news
personality for ACN; he’d been skipper of VF-95, and the unwilling subject of
a human-interest story she’d been filming for her weekly news show. They’d
fallen in love … or he’d thought they had. Perhaps their brush with
hostage-takers in the Communist-inspired coup had made their feelings seem
more intense than they really were.