He could see nothing and terror welled up.
He fought it back.
“Get ready to put the hose out,” he told the bombardier between altitude calls.
At last he saw the carrier, a mass of dim red light in the rain. He added power. The fighter was somewhere up ahead at 250 knots. Grafton squeezed on more power. The airspeed increased. They went by the ship at 350 knots, 250 feet. “Stagecoach Two Oh Three, call your posit.”
“Two miles straight ahead, four hundred pounds.”
The fighter’s fuel was almost down to the accuracy margin of the fuel gauge; it could flame out at any second.
“Speed?”
“Two fifty.” Jake saw him now. Elation replaced the fear that had gripped him seconds before. He levered back the throttles and cracked the speed brakes a trifle.
“We’ll tank at three hundred,” he announced. In seconds they were together. Jake passed the fighter on its left wing, stabilizing at the chosen airspeed as the F-4 pilot increased power-perhaps for the last time if he didn’t get fuel-trailed in behind the tanker, and guided the refueling probe home in one smooth, sexual motion. Grafton raised the nose when he saw the transfer light come on and began to climb. “You’re getting fuel,” he said over the air.
Apparently the Phantom’s crew didn’t trust themselves to speak, because the reply was several mike clicks.
“How much does Stagecoach Two Oh Three get?”
Razor asked the ship.
“Give him five grand and if he doesn’t get aboard on the next pass, he can divert to Da Nang. The field is open now. You copy, Two Oh Three?”
“Roger. Copy one more approach.”
As they reached 1200 feet Jake turned downwind and led the fighter back for another approach. The fighter pilot keyed his mike when the Phantom finished tanking: “Thanks for saving our assets, you guys.”
He dropped his gear and flaps and receded in the tanker’ rear-view mirror.
Good luck, thought Grafton as the lights of the fighter faded.
Confidence is so slippery: one either has it at a give instant or one does not. Now the fighter pilot, whose name Jake did not know, had it-that willow-the-wisp that had eluded his grasp so many times-now he had it, for he successfully trapped aboard on his next approach.
“Now let us get down again,” Razor muttered almost in prayer after the Phantom had trapped.
“Five Two Two, you are at seven miles on final approach. Slow to landing speed. Say your state.”
“Three thousand pounds.” Jake slapped the gear and flap handles down and lowered the arresting hook.
“Three down and locked, flaps in takeoff, slats out, boards out, hook down,” Jake told Razor, who then read the rest of the landing checklist as the pilot slowed to the on-speed indication on the angle-of-attack indexer and stabilized there.
“Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path.”
Jake retarded the power and clicked the nose trim forward.
“Five Two TWO, you are below glide path.” Damn!
He had taken off too much power too soon. He added some and checked the vertical speed needle as he tried to flatten his descent and intercept the glide slope. The plane was bouncing in the turbulence and the needles flopped maddeningly.
“Slightly below glide path. Call your needles.”
“Low and right.”
“Disregard. You are below glide path, on centerline.” He was fighting the controls. He knew it, yet there was nothing he could do. Finesse seemed impossible. No adjustment of power or stick brought exactly the right response from the machine; it was either too much or too little.
“You are below glide path, three-quarters of a mile, call the ball.”
Razor made the call. “Five Two Two, Intruder ball, two point eight.”
“You are low.” That was the LSO.
Jake clicked his mike and added power. Too much.
“You are high and fast.”
Jake could see that. Frustrated, he pulled off a wad of power and clicked the nose up, trying to descend and slow down all at the same time. It was working. The ball was sinking. He added power to catch it. Not enough. The ball sank below the green datum lights that marked the glide path, and turned from yellow to red. Can’t stay down here; the ramp’s down here, and tearing metal, black sea, and watery death. He crammed on the power and tweaked back the nose.
He crossed the ramp with the ball climbing and reduced the power. Too late! The ball squirted off the top of the mirror just as the wheels collided with the deck. He rammed the throttles to the stops and thumbed in the boards.
“Bolter, bolter, bolter The deceleration didn’t come. The engines were still winding up when the speeding aircraft ran off the deck into the night air sixty feet above the water.
He rotated to ten degrees nose up and eyed the altimeter as he began to register the climb.
He caught himself lingering upon individual instruments, taking precious seconds to decipher the bits information. His scan was breaking down.
Come on, Jake, he drove himself. Keep those eye moving. One more time! One more good approach!
Razor toggled the bleed air switch as they sank beneath the clouds on their next approach, but nothing happened. Rain drops which were swept away at knots ran up the windscreen in vertical streaks creating a prismatic miasma of double images.
“Gimme air,” Jake demanded of Razor.
“It’s not working. Your wings are level.”
The yellow ball and green datum lights were merely smears on the windscreen. Jake fought back panic and tried to respond to the half-heard comments from the LSO. The desire to trap was now an obsession. He was fast- the LSO and the angle-of-attack indexer agreed -but in this living nightmare he couldn’t reduce the power. He fought the stick with a death grip, The splotches that were the drop lights swept under the nose and he leaned sideways to view the ball through the plexiglass quarterpanel. The ball was a little high and sinking! He felt the wheels smash home and the nose drop down.
He held his breath as he jammed the throttles forward and waited for the deceleration, then exhaled convulsively when it came. Oh, that welcome sound as the arresting gear machinery below decks soaked up the millions of foot-pounds of kinetic energy. He felt the little wiggle the plane gave as it quivers on the arresting hook like a snagged bass.
Then it came to a complete stop and began to roll backwards.
Later Jake relived the entire sequence in the darkness of his stateroom. He examined his confidence and attempted to glue the missing pieces back together. He told himself no one would ever notice the damage.
When Jake Grafton and Razor Durfee got off the escalator on the second deck, the pilot went into the head. He relieved himself, then sat on the toilet and lit a cigarette. The place reeked of stale urine and disinfectant, but the cigarette tasted good after hours without one. Jake rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his chin in his hands as fatigue permeated him.
His flight boots were almost worn out. One sole had an inch-long split along the side. The leather was cracking. Not once in five years had he polished the boots.
Most of the blood stains were gone from the G-suit and survival vest, rubbed off as he sat and walked and moved around. The fire-retardant nomex outer layer of the G-suit was oily and dirty and torn in places, but the worst of the brown stains had faded to mere discolorations, difficult to see. Grief is like that, he thought. It fades in the course of living.
He closed his eyes and savored the darkness. At length he opened them and stared at his hands. They quivered, and he could not still the tremors.
The door opened and Sammy Lundeen stepped inside. He slouched against the door.
“That was a helluva chance you took to tank that guy, Cool Hand.”
