right, then the left. He nodded in satisfaction at their sound and adjusted the throttle by his left hand to idle. Tradition maintained that as squadron Exec he should fly Tomcat 202, but it had been one of the victims the day the A-6E had crashed on the flight deck. Number 204, this bird, didn’t have his name or Malibu’s stenciled below the canopy, but aviators traded off aircraft assignments often enough. This Tomcat seemed to be in top shape.
Outside deck crewmen were unhooking parking chains and clearing away the chocks around the wheels. A deck crewman whose yellow flashlights identified him as a plane handler signaled Batman with quick gestures of the wands, and Wayne followed his instructions and taxied the aircraft toward catapult number one. A constellation of other colored lights closed in around the Tomcat. Blue wands were crewmen checking the control surfaces of the Tomcat, while ordnance specialists with red wands prepped the air-to-air missiles, radar-guided Sparrows and heat-seeking Sidewinders hanging suspended from their launch rails. Four times a low hum sounded in Batman’s headphones as the ordies passed their flashlights close to the noses of each Sidewinder. The heat-sensing guidance systems were sensitive enough to detect even a flashlight as a heat source and alert the pilot that they were locked on a potential target.
A deck crewman appeared to the left of the Tomcat holding up a lighted board showing the number 65,000, the takeoff weight of Tomcat 204. It was vital that the steam catapult be properly set for the weight of the plane to ensure a safe launch. Behind Batman, Malibu waved a flashlight in a circular motion to acknowledge the 65,000- pound figure.
Underneath the plane a hookup man connected the launching bar on the F-14’s nose gear to the cat shuttle. Once it was hooked up, Batman knew, another crewman would check the holdback bar that would keep the Tomcat from breaking free until the moment of the launch, and the jet-blast deflector would rise into position behind the plane. The dance on the deck was a complex ritual, graceful and intricate, with every move designed to send the plane on its way safely and quickly.
The catapult officer, identified by his green and red flashlights, waved the green light horizontally. Batman obeyed the signal and moved the twin throttles to full military power. He could feel the fighter straining against the holdback bolt, like a wild animal eager to return to its own native element. Batman went through the time-honored ritual to test the control stick between his knees, left, right, forward, back. Then he checked the rudder pedals. All working. All ready.
The catapult officer waved the green light up and down, and Batman shoved the throttle to full afterburner. Light bathed the flight deck from the plumes of flame that twisted and writhed from the two jet engines. “Give ‘em the light show, Malibu,” Batman ordered. Blake acknowledged the instruction and flicked on the Tomcat’s navigation lights, the signal to the deck crew and the Air Boss watching from Pri-Fly that Tomcat 204 was ready to launch. Batman bent his head forward and tensed, anticipating the thrust of the cat shot.
Dropping to his knee, the catapult officer touched the deck with the green wand, the “go” signal to the crewman who controlled the catapult. Acceleration shoved Batman back into his seat as the plane surged forward and rose from the flight deck, leaping skyward.
“Hound Two-oh-four,” he said, opening a radio channel to the carrier. “Good shot. Good shot.”
“Two-oh-four, good shot,” the radio confirmed.
A few moments later the second Tomcat pulled alongside. “Two-one-oh,” the pilot announced. “Good shot.”
“Hound Two-oh-four, this is Tango Two-fiver,” another voice said, cutting in. “Vector left to zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, and go to buster.” That was one of the Jefferson’s E-2C Hawkeyes, using its sophisticated suite of detection equipment to track the incoming Russian bomber and direct Hound Flight to intercept it. Batman set his throttles to full military power—”buster” in aviator’s lingo — and banked his Tomcat to the left to take up the new heading. “Roger, Tango Two-fiver,” Batman replied. “Coming to zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, buster. You copy, Tyrone?”
“I copy, Two-oh-four,” Powers replied crisply. He sounded professional enough now, but Batman glanced across at the other plane through narrowed eyes. He found himself wishing it was Tombstone back in that old, familiar position off his wing.
But it wasn’t. This time out, it was Batman Wayne who was the veteran, flying with an eager young hotshot who might not understand just how deadly serious this Bear hunt could be.
He wasn’t sure he was fit for his new role.
Welcome home, Tombstone.
The tanker pilot’s words kept coming back as Tombstone guided the Tomcat through the darkness. A layer of low, thick clouds blocked his view of the ocean, but he knew that Jefferson and the other ships of CBG-14 awaited him somewhere below. Soon he would see the carrier again, feel the deck beneath his feet once more.
For two long years he had thought of little else. Now Tombstone Magruder was coming home.
What would it be like, he wondered, to be back aboard the Jeff again? He’d served in plenty of duty stations over the years, but none of them had been like that last tour aboard the carrier in those exciting days of the confrontation with North Korea and the intervention in the war between India and Pakistan. As squadron leader of VF-95, the Vipers, Tombstone Magruder had flown his Tomcat into action time and time again, earning an unprecedented string of air-to-air kills in the process. His promotion and reassignment to a Pentagon staff post had been inevitable, the accepted next steps in a professional naval career. But that hadn’t made the transition any easier.
A glint of pale moonlight on the wing of one of Mercury Flight’s two A-6E Intruders caught Tombstone’s eye. It was what naval aviators called a “Commander’s moon,” bright enough to help older pilots — the ones who held ranks of commander and higher — compensate for less acute vision in difficult night carrier landings. Commander Matthew Magruder hadn’t really thought of himself in that category until tonight, but the difficulty with the tanker had made him all too conscious of the fact that he wasn’t the hotshot Top Gun pilot who’d joined the Jefferson three years back. Three years could be a lifetime to a fighter pilot.
It also made him realize that this could be his last chance to recapture that old life. And the long ferry mission had made him aware all over again of just how much open skies and thundering jets really meant to him. Coming back to the Jefferson again was only part of what was driving him tonight. The carrier was special, of course, but Magruder would probably have jumped at the chance for an assignment anywhere beyond the confines of Washington, Anywhere he could recapture the feeling of freedom this long flight out of sight of land had brought back.
Two years chained to land hadn’t dimmed the sheer joy of strapping on an F-14 and reaching for the limitless skies.
Of course he’d flown often enough those last two years, but it hadn’t been the same. Getting in enough hours to qualify each week wasn’t like the day-to-day cycle of carrier ops. He had always felt tied to the land, bound to that hated Pentagon office that would reclaim him when each flight was done. It had been two years of Hell but it was over now.
Now he was going home to the Jefferson. It should have been the happiest day of Tombstone’s life … would have been, if not for the circumstances that surrounded the new assignment. Seemingly overnight a minor boundary dispute between Norway and the Soviet Union had blossomed into armed conflict. With NATO virtually a dead letter and the United States hesitating over unilateral intervention, the crisis was still a local one confined to Scandinavia. But everything pointed toward a change in the wind, and it looked as if Jefferson would once again be sailing into harm’s way. Why else would Mercury Flight be ferrying planes out to replace aircraft destroyed in the flight deck accident the carrier had suffered almost a week ago? It wasn’t normal practice … except when it looked like those planes would be needed.
He supposed the same could be said for himself. That same accident had cost CVW-20 her Deputy CAG. Someone back in Washington must have thought the carrier’s air wing would be needing a new second-in-command soon, or they wouldn’t have tapped Tombstone for the job. It had been a hurry-up job all around, with no time at all for Magruder to be properly briefed on his new job. It was nice to know that someone thought he could handle the position all the same.
Of course, there was always the chance that this was just another public-relations ploy. The hero of Wonsan and the Indian Ocean crisis was a useful card to play when public support was the goal. And America’s new
