room, a hurried conference was held and it was decided that a repair crew would be transported back to Cubi on the daily cargo plane.
“Looks like Corey Ford and the Boxman will enjoy an extra night on the beach,” Parker remarked.
“Hope it doesn’t kill the boy,” said the Old Man, thinking of Box.
Jake Grafton watched the Devils’ pilot, New Guy, from the air boss’s vantage point in Pried-Fly. This enclosed space, high in the island, protruded out over the flight deck and offered an unimpeded view of the flight deck and of the aircraft in the air near the ship.
After six landings aboard the carrier in daylight, each pilot new to the ship would make three night traps that evening. After this final exam there would be no graduation or diploma. The air wing LSO would debrief each man individually, and unless a negative comment was made to the operations officer of the squadron to which the man belonged, the new pilot’s name would appear on the flight schedule. Without fanfare or celebration, the young aviator was now a carrier pilot. He would stand his watches and fly the scheduled missions and, if he were skillful enough and lucky enough, he would live through his tour of duty.
Jake enjoyed his Pried-Fly stints. Throughout a cruise, each of a squadron’s junior officers had to take his turn in Pried-Fly, observing not only the new pilots but the experienced ones as well. In the profession of flying, a man was good enough or he wasn’t any good at all, and that fact was written in blood. In the crowd of young officers who gathered behind the chairs of the boss and assistant boss, the action was fast and the comments swift. It reminded Grafton of the grandstand crowd at a horserace. What was needed, Jake thought, was some enterprising soul to offer bets on which wire the next plane would snag. The air boss kept up a running commentary on the performance of the fledglings for the benefit of the squadron observers, and Jake wrote copious notes in his squadron’s log book.
Jake watched the new Intruder driver, who caught the target third wire three out of six times with no bolters. He flew the pattern at the proper distance an kept the right interval between himself and other aircraft, although twice the air boss complained that he was late turning from the downwind leg crosswind toward the ship’s wake. Grafton scribbled down that remark.
When all the aircraft were back aboard, the Pried-Flight observers and the recently landed crews made the way to their ready rooms for a debriefing and a written examination. The textbook was NATOPS-Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures-which came in a separate volume for each type of aircraft. Jake and Sammy regularly drilled each other on the Intruder’s hydraulics, electronics, engines, crew safety and comfort systems, and performance under any possible flight condition. They also practiced using the computer graphs from which fuel consumption, airspeed, maximum G loads, and similar information could be traded. NATOPS quizzes were heavy on emergency procedures, although any fact from the book was fair game. A classified exam, based on the secret supplement to the NATOPS manual, was given less frequently than the emergency and operating procedure quizzes.
“What if I don’t pass?” Little asked loudly.
“If you don’t pass, you don’t fly,” Big Augie answered from across the room.
“But what if I don’t want to fly?” Little quavered.
“Then we’ll think of something else,” four voices sang in unison.
Later that night, Jake looked up Chief Styert to discuss Hardesty and his marriage certificate. “So where is our newlywed?”
Jake asked. Chief Styert sent for Hardesty.
While they waited, Jake filled the chief in on some of the administrative items that were discussed at the all-officers meeting. “The Skipper says we’re going to be doing a lot of high-priority night work, as well as daytime Alpha strikes. We’ll be pushing it this time out, but on our next in-port period we may go to Singapore.”
“The men would rather go back to Subic Bay,” the chief said. The liquor and women were cheaper and the raunchy night life more to their tastes. Jake sighed. Join the navy and see Po City.
“Yeah, I know that and so does the Captain, but there’ll be another carrier in port then, so we’ll have to suck it up and go to Singapore.” The chief looked glum. Maybe he had a girlfriend in Po City, too.
Hardesty arrived, looking pale. “How did your leave go?” Jake asked.
“Okay.” The boy had not shaved in several days and a dozen or so scraggly whiskers had sprouted like weeds amid the pimples on his chin.
“Did you make it down to Manila?”
“Hmm,” replied the boy, averting his eyes toward the deck.
“The Chief tells me you went down to Personnel this morning and filled out the paperwork on your wife.”
Hardesty merely nodded. This was like pulling teeth, Jake thought. “Got a copy of the marriage certificate with you?”
Hardesty drew some papers from his shirt. He shuffled through them, selected a large parchment document, and handed it to Jake without looking at him.
The officer unfolded it. It was the original and in Spanish. Hardesty’s name was there. John Thomas Hardesty and Consuelo Maria Garcia Lopez de Hernandez. Lots of official signatures, a couple of wax seals, and a date. Jake glanced at the calendar over the chief’s desk, then back to the document.
“This date is just two days ago,” he said. “Yessir.”
“You were married only two days ago?”
“Yeah.”
“After I told you less than a week ago that you needed official permission from the navy to marry a Philippine national, you went out and did it anyway?” Anger crept into Jake’s voice. “You stood there a we ago and lied to me, one lie after another. You lied to me and you lied to the Chief.” The boy glanced up, ready to reply, but Jake cut him off. “You violated a general regulation. You signed a false official document when you requested leave.” The volume went up.
“Goddamn, Hardesty! You think this is a Boy Scout camp? What the hell else are you going to lie about? Are you going to come in here and tell the Chief you fixed a plane when you haven’t? How in the name of God can we trust you?” Jake lapsed into silence and sank back into the chair. The chief cleared his throat. “If you want to toss your oar in, Chief, go right ahead.” As Styert tongue-lashed the boy, Jake pondered the problem. The kid had wanted to marry, decided not to wait for Uncle Sam’s official blessing, and lied to get the time off. Is it really any of the navy’s business when or whom a sailor marries? So he had said “fuck the navy So what?
“You’re a real fucking dummy,” the chief told the boy. “You could’ve gotten leave if you’d just said you wanted some time off. Didn’t you know that?” Hardesty shook his head. “If your goddamn brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow your nose. Why in hell didn’t you come to me and talk it over? What do you think your chief is for, anyway? Do you think I’m some kind of freak that just hatched out as a chief? I was a sailor before you were born. I was getting laid in Olongapo when you were in diapers. Son, you really piss me off.”
“Go on up to the berthing compartment, Hardesty,” said Jake.
When Hardesty had disappeared, the officer and the chief talked about what he had done. “Looks like one for mast, Chief.” Styert agreed. “And you sit that boy down and make damn sure he and the rest of the men know enough to come to you with problems.”
“Yessir,” said the chief, who seemed to realize that he had just been reprimanded.
Jake found the maintenance officer, Lieutenant Commander Joe Wagner, in his stateroom immersed in the paperwork necessary to keep sixteen state-of-the art aircraft repaired. After Grafton explained the problem, Wagner rummaged through a drawer and gave Jake a blank report chit. “I think you should talk this over with the Skipper before you fill out the report. It’s a little unusual, I know, but this sounds like one of those tar babies that could stir the interest of some congressman. Might as well let Camparelli have his say before we make it official.”
Commander Camparelli, clad only in his underwear, sat at his stateroom desk. “Hello, Grafton. Pull up a chair.” The skipper slipped his glasses down his nose and peered over the rims. “What’s on your mind?”
Jake told him about Hardesty and showed him the parchment. “I ought to write him up for lying to me and the Chief,” he concluded. “But Joe Wagner suggested checking with you first before this becomes official.”
“Lot of merit in that,” the commander said as he studied the marriage license. “There’re a lot of things I’d just as soon not know about officially. Like that little fracas in front of Pauline’s that I heard about unofficially.
Seems one sailor from the deck department somehow took a plunge in the alligator pond and some other fellows were injured-just scratched really-in the scuffle that followed.” His eyes locked with Grafton’s.
“One man lost a couple teeth.”
