1425 local (Zulu -7)
Flight Deck
USS Jefferson
“About time!” Bird Dog muttered. He might be the last bird off the cat,
but at least he wasn’t sitting alert five. He eased forward on the throttle,
feeling the vibration from the jets transmitted to his seat. The Tomcat, as
clumsy on land as it was agile in the air, rolled forward. Bird Dog let it
pick up a little speed, steering it toward the Yellow Shirt, and then eased
back on the throttle. He tapped the brakes gently, chafing at the slowness of
the flight deck ballet, as it became apparent from the Yellow Shirt’s frantic
waving that the Tomcat was bearing down on him just a little too fast.
Airman Alvarez scanned the flight deck, got his bearings, and then
started across the hot tarmac. Although the sun was already dipping below the
horizon, the rough nonskid still held the heat of the day. He could feel it
through the soles of his boots, the prickle of the heat making his feet sweat
and aggravating the athlete’s foot he’d picked up last week. It had to be
from the showers, he thought, desperately wishing he could rip his boots off
and scratch.
The tie-down chains slung across his right shoulder bit into his flesh,
the weight making him list slightly. He shrugged, trying to hitch the chains
up closer to his neck as he felt one trying to slide off his shoulder.
Carrying them on one shoulder had been a mistake, since he was now unevenly
balanced, but putting one over each shoulder increased the probability that
he’d step on the trailing ends and stumble.
He squinted at the sun, which was merging with the horizon off the
carrier’s port side. The flight deck throbbed faintly under his soles as the
carrier accelerated. He saw the sun shift relative positions slowly as the
carrier turned into the wind. He’d better get moving, or the Air Boss would
have his ass for fouling the flight deck.
Alvarez started across the flight deck. The yellow-shirted handler,
forty feet away and slightly to his right, was lost in the setting sun. If he
hurried he could get the tie-down chains over to Groucho before the Air Boss
caught sight of him.
Only two more years of this shit, he reminded himself, Then his
enlistment would be up and he’d be back to cruising the beaches of sunny San
Diego, feeling the heat beating down on his back from the sun instead of
radiating up through his flight deck boots from the baking nonskid and steel
decks. The way he felt right now, he’d have to spend the first month of his
new civilian freedom sleeping, just to catch up. But he wouldn’t have to
sleep alone, he mused, and certainly not with eighty other men, the way he did
now, in the packed berthing compartment six levels below the flight deck. His
thoughts drifted away from the flight deck and into a series of explicit
daydreams that lacked just faces on the girls to make them come true.
Bird Dog felt the brakes slip and stamped down harder on the pedal. He
swore, feeling the mush beneath his feet. Hydraulics, it had to be!
Suddenly, the problem was not how fast he could get to the catapult, but how
much deck space he had in which to stop. The time-distance calculations
flashed through his mind intuitively. Not enough distance heading toward the
catapult, he was sure. He stamped down, slewed the taxiing Tomcat into a hard
left-hand turn, and dropped the tailhook. If he could get it headed back down
the flight deck toward the stern, the drag produced by the tailhook and the
extra time might let the marginal brakes act. As a last resort, he could snag
one of the arresting wires with his tailhook and get the jet stopped before it
rolled off the stern into the ocean.
Ten knots had never felt so damned dangerous before.
1426 local (Zulu -7)
Spook One
“Nothing here,” Mouse said.
“Still showing contacts on the scope. Hell, according to this, we ought
to be right in the middle of them!” Bouncer muttered, disgusted.