some tangential interest of her CO. They’d expended more “giant tomatoes,”
the inflatable targets used for surface gunnery practice, and more five-inch
shells than all the other ships put together. To top it off, after the last
onboard conference with Killington and his operations officer, the flag mess
chief had reported that two gallons of ice cream and a silver
sugar-and-creamer set were missing.
Back in TFCC, Tombstone stared at the symbols crawling across the
big-screen display. Wonder if those pilots know how lucky they are? My list
of things to worry about was a lot shorter when I was just a pilot. Sure,
it’d been dangerous, but it was just me, my RIO, and my wingman.
The more senior Tombstone got, the more people depended on him to make
the right decisions to keep them from getting killed. On top of that, he
barely got a chance to fly enough to stay qualified. Flying actual combat
missions was out of the question. The whole battle group, over ten thousand
men and a billion dollars worth of equipment, was his responsibility now, not
just a couple of aircraft or even one squadron’s worth.
Add to that worrying about new Chinese weapons systems, ones the
intelligence communities might have missed … Tombstone stared at the
screen. “If they do have something equivalent to the Tomahawk then we’ve got
a serious problem. If the Vincennes is half as capable as she thinks she is,
it might be enough–just barely. “Get me a secure line to Commander, Seventh
Fleet. I have a feeling he’s not going to be too happy about this.”
1015 local (Zulu -7)
Tomcat 205
It couldn’t have been more than a minute after I saw them. The guy
standing outside the tank, one just getting out. One second they were there,
then BOOM! It seems like they ought to have known they were going to die.
That’d be only fair–some sort of premonition, or something. Bird Dog tried
to concentrate on the deck of the carrier, repressing the train of thought
that was making him distinctly uneasy.
After taking on more fuel from the KA-6 tanker, Bird Dog and Gator had
circled overhead for two hours while slow-flying S-3B conducted a detailed
search of the area where Island 203 had been located. Neither the Lockheed
Viking nor the SH-60F helicopter had found anything of interest, although both
reported an oil slick and small amounts of floating debris in the area. There
was no trace of the two men Bird Dog had seen earlier on the rock.
The flight of Tomcats headed back to the carrier. Spider trapped first,
catching the three-wire neatly. Finally, it was Bird Dog’s turn to descend
from the Marshall stack and make his approach.
The controlled crash that passed for a successful landing on an aircraft
carrier stimulated the highest readings of blood pressure and muscle tension
of any profession ever measured. For Bird Dog, moving his hands, feet, and
eyes in the intricate patterns necessary to land, coupled with the expected
stress, always acted like a strong dose of caffeine. Time slowed down–except
when the approach went wrong–and he found his mind racing over myriad details
unrelated to the landing.
“Wave off, wave off!” the LSO yelled over the circuit. “Go around, Viper
205. Let’s give it another shot. And this time, when I say you’re high and
fast, I damn well better see you bleeding off some frigging airspeed and
altitude! You got that, Bird Dog?”
“Roger,” Bird Dog acknowledged, suppressing the impulse to swear at the
landing signals officer. He hadn’t been high on final approach to the
carrier; he hadn’t! What the hell did the LSO know? He wasn’t flying this
Tomcat!
The LSO was stationed on the port side of the aircraft carrier, slightly
below the level of the flight deck and in front of the meatball. It was his
job to guide the landing aircraft into the perfect approach profile,
supplementing the visual clues that the Fresnel lens, or meatball, provided to
the approaching pilot. Too high or too low, and the pilot’s lineup with
respect to the meatball would make the lighted signal appear red. In the
groove, at the right altitude and range from the deck, and the meatball glowed