shoulder showed green. They were ready for launch. Leaning her helmet
as far back into her headrest as it would go, she braced herself,
fighting the tension building in her gut. Suddenly, it was as though
perspective had changed for her. The length of track from the Tomcat to
the bow, just visible past the console and the back of Coyote’s seat in
front of her, seemed now impossibly short, a few feet at most. The deck
officer was making revving motions with his wands, and she felt the
F-14’s engines coming to full power, a volcanic blast of power shrieking
scant feet behind the small of her back. The Tomcat trembled now at the
head of the catapult, like a great, gray eagle poised for flight.
How Many times had she been hurled from the bow of an aircraft carrier?
She’d long ago lost count … but the excitement and the fear and the
adrenaline rush were always the same for her.
Coyote saluted the deck officer, indicating he was ready. The deck
officer swung his arm up in that graceful point, dropped, touched the
deck …
WHAM!
The Tomcat accelerated from zero to 170 mph in two seconds, thundering
off Jefferson’s bow in a dizzying rush of raw power. Had something gone
wrong, had the catapult failed to provide the necessary thrust, they
would have plunged off the carrier’s bow toward the sea … with a
scant second or two to grab their ejection rings and blast themselves
clear.
“Wheeooo!” Coyote shrilled from the forward seat. “Good shot!”
And then they were climbing, her seat tipping back as the nose came up
… up … up … and the Tomcat rocketed into the dawn. Golden
light exploded over the eastern horizon as they passed five thousand
feet, a mile up and still climbing. The sky above was pure glory.
And this was why Kathy Garrity had become a naval flight officer,
despite the protests of her parents, despite the grueling training and
study she’d put herself through for the past four years.
“oh, God, this is beautiful!” she cried over the ICS, unable and
unwilling to suppress the joy.
“Amen to that,” Coyote replied. “Let’s tuck ’em in and see what this
crate’ll really do.”
The Tomcat’s wings, extended straight out to achieve maximum lift for
takeoff, were folding back now, turning the Tomcat into a sleek
spearhead designed for speed.
Accelerating now, they kept climbing into blue-gold glory.
0630 hours
Hawkeye 761
Twenty-five miles North Of North CaPe
The E-7C Hawkeye had roared off Jefferson’s number-two catapult hours
earlier, taking up station in advance of the carrier group as it made
its way northeast along the Norwegian coast. One of four E-2Cs in
VAW-130, the Catseyes, the Hawkeye was a carrier-based AEW, or early
warning aircraft, thought by many to be the most capable radar-warning
and aircraft-control plane in service anywhere in the world. In an age
of high-performance jets, it was driven by two Allison turboprops, which
gave the plane fuel efficiency enough to manage a two-hundred-mile
patrol radius with six hours of loiter time on station. By far its most
distinctive feature was the saucer-shaped radome, twenty-four feet in
diameter, circling at a leisurely six revolutions per minute on its
mounting above the aircraft’s fuselage. The saucer provided lift enough
to offset its own weight, and housed the powerful APS-125 radar that
allowed the E-2C to track targets out to a range of 240 nautical miles.
On board was a crew of five: two pilots, a combat information center
officer, an air controller, and a radar operator. Though it was now
past sunrise, the aft part of the aircraft was shielded from outside
light, and the only illumination came from the green-glowing screens
that were the Hawkeye’s entire reason for being. On the radar
operator’s main console, the sweep line painted smears of liquid light,
stage-lighting the man as he noted the appearance of unidentified blips
just entering the E-2C’s range.
The CIC officer and the air controller stood behind him, peering over
his shoulders at the screen. “My Lord in heaven,” the air controller
said. “They must be standing on each other’s shoulders.”
“Let’s flash it,” the CIC officer said. He picked up a microphone,