“It’s rough, but it’s operational.”
“Hell, even if it isn’t. We could ferry a lot of Hercules across from southern Japan under Seventh Fleet umbrella in twenty-four hours — use pallet if they can’t land. Around the clock. Christ, that’s what we’re best at. But—” He held his finger up. “The coup de grace, gentlemen. Clear an air corridor for me up here—” his hand shot north of the Seventh Fleet’s battle group, beyond the brown spine of the Taebaek range “—and I’ll turn this thing around. Christ — I’ll take prisoners!” He was pointing deep into North Korea. At Pyongyang.
General Gray sat still for several seconds, leaning forward in his chair. “You have any idea of the casualties, Douglas? I mean — what would you expect?”
“Seventy — eighty percent.”
Gray glanced quickly across at Wexler, then back at Freeman. “Douglas, I think the Seventh Fleet could give you that corridor — for five or six hours anyway — enough time for your air jumps. But to lose men at that rate is simply unacceptable—”
“General,” said Freeman, his voice even, unhurried, “we’ll lose
Freeman was stunned. “I assumed I’d be in command, General.”
Freeman’s audacity left General Gray speechless. “You’re a colonel, Douglas. This would be brigade.”
“Sir,” said Freeman. “I think we can solve that problem right here and now.”
“How?”
“Promote me.”
Gray looked across at Wexler, who was biting his lip.
“The president,” said Wexler, “would have to authorize it.”
Freeman wasn’t sure whether Gray meant the promotion or the plan but quickly cut in, “I’m sure he will, General.”
Gray shook his head and looked down at his watch. “Douglas, you wouldn’t by any chance know the Korean phrase for ‘You have three minutes to surrender,’ would you?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
In the rough ballet of the
The Seventh Fleet’s battle group’s heart was the carrier itself, and the heart would need protection from aerial and sub attack. To provide early warning, prop-driven Hawkeye AWACS, their rotodomes giving 360-degree, sixty-target-at-once capability, were already in the air together with the relatively slow but long-range and effective Grumman A-6 Intruders, each of these armed with twenty-eight five-hundred-pound bombs and sophisticated antisubmarine detection and attack systems. The Intruders’ periscopic booms for in-flight refueling glinted in the late afternoon sun as they passed over the advance screen of destroyers and frigates that surrounded the Seventh Fleet on its mission to “secure the integrity of the sea lanes” from Japan to Korea’s east coast — in other words, to tell the Soviet Eastern Fleet it came south at its peril.
Aboard the carrier, as one Hawkeye AWAC was pushed off the elevator amid the scream of jets and hundreds of other pieces of equipment, crewmen in padded brown vests were already unfolding the plane’s wings, its pilot engaging the hydraulic line that lifted the two-thousand-pound “pancake” dome from flat storage to raised position. In the cramped rear of the plane, its three “moles,” electronic warfare operators, were already going through their preflight checks amid banks of consoles.
It all seemed chaotic to any new men on the ship, but out of the six thousand sailors aboard the carrier, those who worked the flight deck had of necessity to develop the ability to work calmly yet quickly in the sustained roar of sound, yet stay attuned to alarms of their own equipment in conditions where one missed step or the slightest reduction in concentration could cost a man his life. It was a world of screaming engines, of planes taking off and coming in, flashing lights, rising steam from catapults, hot, stinking engine exhausts, and a maze of hand signals from different colored jackets, a world of hookup chains and “mule” tractors.
Inside the carrier’s island, to starboard, it was less noisy but every bit as stressful as anticollision teams in primary flight control, or “prifly,” had to know where any plane on their computer screen was at any moment while staying in contact with the pilots as they were guided in by flight deck control.
As the pilot of one of the returning Hawkeyes brought his aircraft down in the controlled crash the navy calls a landing, its hook seeking the two wire, or arrester cable, the Hawkeye’s twin Allison turboprops were roaring at full power, the plane’s flaps down, ready to lift off if his alignment, or any one of a hundred other things, was not right. The pilot’s concentration was on centering his plane in the “meatball,” the big orange-lit mirror on the carrier. If it came in sight, he was halfway there; if he saw the meatball arrangement of lights was too low, he would have to ease the nose up to center and maybe go for the three wire. He saw the meatball was askew. A green jersey, “A” on its back, turned and waved a “no go.” In a split second the LSO — landing signal officer — pushed the button for vertical red, cutting through the meatball, sending the Hawkeye screaming past the island as the pilot kicked in maximum power, pulling the plane off the deck with only inches to spare. The three wire was showing a stress split visible to only one of the catapult and arresting crew, whose thick ear protectors and jersey disappeared momentarily in the cloud of kerosene exhaust and salt particles that flew up from the deck, stinging his face, the Hawk-eye climbing, a blast deflector now going up on the starboard catapult in preparation to launch a jet fighter to begin its patrol even as the Hawkeye was turning for the rerun.
As the Hawkeye banked, its rotodome a golden disc in the fading sunlight, another AWAC, its green-jerseyed catapult crew sliding under and attaching the restraining and launch bridle forward and aft of the fuselage before scrambling away, readied for takeoff as more AWACS bunched up behind it, the control tower unforgiving in its insistence that at least three launches’ lead time had to be maintained. The unlettered green jerseys of the specialist technicians or “troubleshooters” could be seen nearby through the quivering heat curtain in the event that any of the plane’s electronic components suddenly needed replacing by slide-in, slide-out “black box” units.
The carrier’s commander, seeing the fighter was ready and receiving confirmation of no obstacles on deck, signaled, “Clear deck.”
“Landing light is red, sir,” repeated the executive officer in the tower.
“Very well. Turning takeoff to green,” said the captain, pushing the button for the harsh, metallic “tweedle” sound warning.
“Takeoff is green, Captain.”
“Very well.” Now the captain pushed the backup “horn,” whose sound was so powerful, it blasted its way through the line of roaring, waiting AWACs, above the whining elevator bringing up more planes, and could even be heard by the five-man crew of the orange-silver rescue helo.
The rotodome of the Hawkeye about to be launched was a platinum disc under a partially cloudy sky. Its pilot showed two fingers, signaling he was approaching full power; the propellers made of fiberglass to protect the plane’s radar from metallic-induced Doppler effect were now two black blurs. The pilot, his cockpit already splattered with sea spray, saw the yellow-clad catapult officer’s knee drop, left hand tucked close in behind and against his back, right leg low, right arm thrust forward and seaward. The catapult shooter pressed the button, and one deck below, the controller let her go, the force of the release throwing the plane aloft and leaving a long trail of steam rolling back over the carrier’s deck. The Hawkeye’s pilot was already flying his zigzag pattern at low level to prevent any enemy AWACs detecting his takeoff and thereby pinpointing the carrier’s position.
Down in the pilot’s ready room, the TV monitors were giving the pilots of the Tomcats up-to-the-minute weather information for the first of the patrols that would begin to clear the corridor for General Freeman’s three- pronged attack to be launched from the
“Why the hell don’t they just bomb the shit out of the supply lines?” asked one of the pilots. “Get some of those B-52s up from Guam. That’ll cut their supply line fast.”
Frank Shirer, one of the F-14 Tomcat leaders, was idly flipping over old magazines, glancing now and then at
