to his solitary lookout on Vulture’s Row.
From here, he could watch the activity from one end of the flight deck to
the other. Forward, Jefferson’s catapult crew went through their ongoing
ballet, readying a pair of VFA-161’s F/A-18 Hornets for launch. The jet-blast
deflectors rose from the deck like steel walls behind each aircraft as first
one, then the other began trembling with the raw power of howling turbofans.
Near Cat One, the yellow-jerseyed launch officer snapped a salute to the
aviator, made a final check left and right, then dropped to one knee, thumb to
the deck. Howl cascaded into thunder, and the Hornet rolled down the catapult
track, trailing a boiling cloud of steam as it accelerated from zero to 270
miles per hour in two seconds flat. A heartbeat later, the second Hornet
shrieked after it, and the two rose gracefully, wing-and-wing, skimming the
swirling sea mist.
They were still climbing as the JBDs folded themselves flat to the deck
and two more aircraft taxied up to take their place at Catapults One and Two.
One was a KA-6D, an Intruder modified with extra tanks to serve as a tanker
for in-flight refueling. The other was an EA-6B Prowler, one of VAQ-143’s
five electronic-warfare aircraft, on its way aloft to help screen the carrier
battle group from the prying radar eyes of the Soviets.
Aft, a similar dance of precise timing and thundering machine was
unfolding, as aircraft recovery was carried out at the same time that others
were being launched. An S-3A Viking of VS-42, the Kingfishers, dropped toward
Jefferson’s roundoff. Tombstone had a special love for the stubborn, superbly
maneuverable sub-hunters. He’d spent a good many hours aboard them as Deputy
CAG. It was Vikings armed with Harpoons that had turned the tide against the
Russian amphibious forces.
At first, the Viking scarcely appeared to be moving at all. Then the
perspective changed and it swelled larger, looming over the carrier’s stern
with alarming speed. Its wings wobbled slightly as its pilot adjusted the
throttles on the gaping engines mounted under each wing in response to
directions from the LSO on the deck. The tailhook dangling beneath the huge
tail swept just above the number-one wire, scraped the deck, and engaged the
two wire with a jolt that brought the Viking’s nose sharply down. Engines
howled briefly, then spooled down with a dwindling whine as the pilot cut back
the power. The aircraft backed slightly, spitting out the wire, then taxied
slowly after an arm-waving deck director, its wings already folding across its
back.
Tombstone took a moment to study the men moving about on the deck below.
All wore jackets, headsets, and other protective gear that reduced them to
anonymity, whether they wore the red jerseys of ordies, the white of safety
officers or corpsmen, the purple of fuel handlers, or any of the other colors
used to differentiate their tasks. To a man they looked tired, though their
movements were as precise, as carefully choreographed, as ever. Life aboard a
Navy carrier tended to be a never-ending routine of work with all too little
sleep between each stretch of duty. In an emergency, in combat, work
continued around the clock. There were men aboard, Tombstone knew, who had
had no sleep at all in forty-eight hours.
How much longer could they continue without letup? In modern warfare,
Man was the weak cog in the machinery, the piece that would fail first. The
flight deck of a carrier was the most dangerous workplace in the world. The
traps were numerous and wicked: the invisibly whirling blades of propellers
and rotors; the invisible, blasting exhausts of F-14s; the gaping maws of S-3A
jet intakes; the sudden-death deadliness of snapped arrestor cables or
aircraft brake failure on a pitching deck, or a simple misstep backward over
the side. The exhaustion of men driven too hard and too long would sooner or
later cross with the hazards of the environment and people were going to die.
He remembered the screw-up with Coyote’s ejection-seat arming pins. Nothing
had happened that time. But the next …
Tombstone wondered about the men on the Russian carrier, somewhere to the
north. The Soviets were new to carrier aviation. They could draw on none of