42
“Call the ball, Kittyhawke,” squawked the irritated voice of the air boss in his headphones.
Calling the ball.
That’s what the U.S. Navy carrier pilots called it.
If the ball showed green, you were coming in too high. Red, too low. A line of white lights was what you wanted to see.
He watched the lights at the after deck flash green, then red, then green as his little plane bucked the thirty-mile-an-hour headwind. On final approach, what you were mostly worried about was a stall, and Alex was definitely worried. His jumpsuit was wet with the sweat of his adrenaline boost.
He’d already had two unsuccessful attempted landings.
A stall now would be catastrophic.
His headphones squawked again.
“You’ve got to land here, son,” the air boss said. “This is where the hot chow is.”
The carrier had turned into the prevailing wind. It was traveling at flank speed to give maximum wind over the deck, helping pilots to reduce their landing speeds. From experience, Alex knew that wind, wave, air, and skill must be in total sync for him to get home.
Alex had lined up once more, approaching the fantail of the heaving 1,000-foot steel runway of the U.S. aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy from astern. The 82,000-ton Kennedy, or “Big John” as she was called in the service, had a four-and-a-half-acre deck. Because of the heavy rolling swells, the huge flight deck was lazily rolling ten degrees side to side, but it was rising and falling with the wave action, causing twenty-to thirty-foot surges of the deck.
A carrier landing like this in his old Royal Navy Tomcat was one thing. All those thousands of pounds of thrust gave you a lot of control. A lot of options. Too low? Pull up. Too high, nose her down. Miss the wire? Power out at full throttle. His little seaplane was a different matter entirely. He’d already been waved off twice. The landing signal officer he’d been arguing with on the radio had finally told him to please just go home.
He’d considered just landing alongside the carrier and letting them send a launch to pick him up. The giant swells took that idea out of his consideration set fairly quickly. There was no going home, either. The cold front had moved in solidly and the conditions had worsened to the point where flying back to the Exumas was not an option. He told the LSO he was coming back around. His earphones crackled again.
“Kittyhawke, you’re three-quarters of a mile out. Call the ball.”
“Roger. Got the ball,” Hawke said.
He felt the little plane shudder as he lined up on his target. Wheels down, full flaps, tailhook down, prop pitch into full low, adjusting his trim tabs to get Kittyhawke into proper trim. His fuel was at total rich mix for maximum power recovery. He knew he’d have to dump the plane down hard to have any chance of his tailhook catching the wire. There were four arrester wires on the deck. Catching one of them would be his only chance of stopping short of the water at the other end of the carrier.
“Kittyhawke, you’re way below glide path. Pull up!”
“Roger,” Hawke said. “No problem.”
In fact, it was a problem. He didn’t think there was any power left in the old Packard-Merlin engine. He was pitching and yawing and the headwind was killing him. Somehow, he had to get his nose up. This was his last shot. He hauled back on the stick. What the hell. He was going in one way or the other.
He’d gotten his nose up a little but the deck was still rising, lifted by the enormous swells. Christ. Fall, damn it, fall! Sweat stung his eyes. It was going to be very, very close.
At the last second, he saw the deck pause majestically and finally begin its long slow fall. He’d timed the swell perfectly. That’s the only thing that saved him. The deck began to drop at precisely the right instant. He cleared by maybe a couple of feet and he banged the little plane down hard. It bounced and jarred him and he said a little prayer, instantly realizing he had another problem. He might just bounce right over all of the four arrester wires.
In his old Tomcat jet fighter, he’d had sufficient power for a bolter. Go to full throttle in a touch-and-go and power out if you miss the last wire.
He didn’t have that option in Kittyhawke.
Then he felt the wheels hit the deck again. In a second, he was thrown forward against the restraints of the seat harness as Kittyhawke wrenched to a violent and welcome stop. Second-best feeling in the world, he thought, smiling at the old carrier pilot’s expression. He’d hooked the fourth and last of the arrester wires.
“Throttle back, son, you’re not going to make this boat go any faster,” the air boss said in his headphones. Embarrassed, Alex realized he was still at maximum power. He eased his throttle down to idle.
“Bingo,” the air boss said, from his control station just above the navigation bridge up on deck 010. “Welcome to the Kennedy, Kittyhawke. We were beginning to wonder.”
“Third time’s the charm,” Hawke said, a lot more coolly than he felt. He taxied over to the nesting place that a green-jacketed crew-man was now waving him into.
“Yeah,” the air boss said. “Just a walk in the park, Kittyhawke.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Hawke reached over and shut down his engine. There were a couple of wheezing gulps from the old Merlin and then it died quietly.
Climbing out of the plane, he saw the red-jacketed “crash salvage” personnel sitting on their white fire- control tractors. They were all staring at him, shaking their heads and smiling, a few actually applauding. The purple-coated “deckies” and green-coated “maintainers” were all smiling and looking his way, too.
He could hardly blame them. Clearly, the entire landing ops crew were happy to have this particular landing experience behind them. So was he.
He kissed the forehead of the little bathing beauty he’d had painted on his fuselage and jumped from the pontoon down to the deck. He looked up at the carrier’s massive superstructure. From the keel to the masthead at the top, it was as tall as a twenty-three-story building. He then cast his eyes along the row of F-14A Tomcats lining the deck. He saw the legendary logo on their tails. The Black Aces squadron seemed to be in final prep for a night exercise.
Downtown Havana, Hawke thought. And if not tonight, probably sooner rather than later.
Walking across the broad flight deck, he realized that it had been a long time since he’d been aboard a carrier. Since those balmy days in the Persian Gulf in fact. He sucked a draught of the sharp sea air down deep into his lungs. It felt good. Finally, after a remorseful day of endless crisscrossing miles of empty sea, something finally felt good.
Twenty minutes later, he’d tossed his duffel bag into a small cabin in the visiting officers’ quarters, changed from his flight suit to khakis, and was now in the wake of a bustling admiral’s aide escorting him down a long corridor through “officers’ country” to the commanding officer’s wardroom.
The first face he saw when he entered the room was Tate’s, the unpleasant CIA chap he’d encountered at the State Department. Tate’s thin, bloodless lips curled into something slightly resembling a smile and Hawke nodded in his general direction.
But he was relieved to see the face of Jeffrey Weinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, among the eager military and civilians ranged around the big square mahogany table. Alex imagined Cuba on a silver platter in the center of the table. Ranged round the platter, the long knives of the Pentagon. The bomb baby-sitter certainly had his work cut out for him.
Hawke had never seen so many ribbons, decorations, or so much brass on so many puffed-up navy blue and khaki chests in his life. And he was a man who’d seen a lot of both.
There were two empty chairs. One had a small blue flag in front of it. Hawke took the other one and collapsed into it.
“Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,” he mumbled, opening the big black three-ring binder in front of him. As he did, the door to the wardroom opened and an aide stood back as the commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, ramrod straight, marched into the room.
He was a tall man, at least six-five, with keen gray eyes set wide in a deeply lined face, and snow white hair cut very short in the classic Navy “whitewalls” fashion. He was leathery, tough, and weathered from a lifetime at
