with cold certainty it marked a burning ship.
“Coyote, our fuel state’s getting critical.”
“Affirmative, Cat. I see it. Give me the latest vector on our Texaco.”
“Come right three-five degrees. Another twenty miles.”
“Sounds good.”
Throughout the battle, Jefferson had kept at least one KA-6D tanker
orbiting north and astern of the carrier, available for returning
aircraft that might need some extra fuel for the inevitable loiter time
in the Marshall Stack before recovering on the flight deck. Popularly
called a “Texaco” by naval fliers, the aircraft was a modified A-6
Intruder, fitted with five-hundred-gallon drop tanks and with some of
its avionics pulled from the after fuselage to accommodate the refueling
reel.
Minutes later, Coyote was slipping the F-14 in behind the tanker,
holding back for a moment while a Hornet already hooked up to the
refueling basket drank its fill. Then the Hornet detached from the
KA-6D and dropped out of the way, and Coyote eased in closer. Flicking
a switch on his console extended the Tomcat’s refueling probe from a
compartment just below and to the right of the cockpit. Ahead, his
target dangled in midair, a metal-woven basket suspended on the end of a
fifty-foot hose extruded from a protrusion beneath the tanker’s tail.
“Gold Eagle Two-oh-one, Tango-Romeo One-two” sounded over his headset, a
man’s voice. “What can we fix you up with today?”
“Tango-Romeo One-two, Eagle Two-oh-one,” Coyote replied. “Set us up,
barkeep. We’re running on fumes.”
“Approach looking good, Two-oh-one. Come and take us, guys. Our legs
are spread in a proper military fashion, and we’re ready for some good
ol’ I&I.”
The almost blatantly phallic imagery of an aircraft’s fuel probe
attempting to penetrate and lock into the tanker’s basket had inevitably
given rise to numerous lines of standard dialogue traded between pilots
and tanker crewmen, ranging from the mildly ribald to the sexually
explicit. I&I was a graphic replacement for the military’s R&R,
standing for “Intercourse and Intoxication.”
“Ah, roger that, Tango-Romeo,” Coyote said. “Here we come.”
He felt mildly embarrassed. Until that moment, he’d actually forgotten
that the officer in his back seat was a woman. The KA-6D operator’s
coarse banter had managed to remind him. He didn’t know Cat that well
yet, and he wondered what she thought of this.
Both aircraft, now separated by scant yards, were traveling at better
than 370 knots. Creeping in now, with a closing rate of a foot per
second, Coyote was attempting to slip the thread of his Tomcat’s fuel
probe into the eye of the tanker’s basket. Since he needed to
concentrate on his instrumentation, the looming presence of the tanker’s
tail just above and ahead of his cockpit, and his flying, he could not
keep watching the relative positions of fuel probe and drogue basket
only a few feet beyond the plastic of his canopy. That was his RIO’s
job, and Cat called second-to-second course adjustments to him over the
ICS with clarity and precision.
“Come right one foot,” she said. “That’s good. You’re four feet from
contact, and a little low. Come up … more … more that’s it. Hold
that.
Forward now, easy … three feet two …” Coyote was battling the
tanker’s slipstream now, with no room for error. The drogue basket
jittered ominously in the airflow just beyond the tip of the probe. He
eased forward a bit more … “Contact,” the tanker crewman called, and
Coyote felt the thump of a solid connection, followed by a small jolt as
locking catches snapped home.
“Ready to receive,” Coyote said.
“Ohh … that feels soooo good, Two-oh-one.”
“Tango-Romeo, be advised there’s a lady aboard.”
“Ah, copy that, Two-oh-one. Capture confirmed. Whatcha want?”
“Make it a thousand pounds of high-test,” Coyote replied, trying to keep
his voice light. “Check the oil, clean the windshield, and put it on my
Visa.”
“Here it comes.”
For several moments there was silence, as the tanker transferred a
thousand pounds of fuel to Coyote’s tanks. Then: “That’s a thousand,
Two-oh-one.”
“Roger, Tango-Romeo. Ready to disengage to starboard.” He snapped the
switches that closed off the probe.
“Clear to starboard.”
“That was so very, very good for us,” Cat said suddenly, breaking in on
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