“Master arm,” he said over the radio. Cole flipped the switch with his left hand, then fingered the other armament switches to satisfy himself that they were in the correct positions.
Jake saw the end of the valley ahead, a gentle upslope to a ridge not quite touching the clouds. The green forest seemed to caress the undersides of the planes as they shot up the slope.
Through the bombsight glass, Grafton saw the ridge and the flashing guns that lined the treeless summit. Streaks of white-hot artillery shells veined the air.
They can’t miss. They can’t. We’re too close. Jake sensed the white bolts racing straight for the cockpit then, at the last possible instant, veer away and flash to the right or left or over.
They can’t miss. They can’t. We’re too close.
He looked down as he crossed the naked summit Impressed on his brain for as long as he had yet to five was the confused image of flashing guns, men in black loading and firing the weapons, and rising dust clouds He glanced across at Corey Ford and the Boxman and saw that their plane was almost abreast about hundred feet away. A streak of fire ripped aft from it belly. Then the machine exploded.
The fireball was yellow with a white core. it slowed as it expanded and disappeared behind.
Jake and Little Augie swept down into the valley.
“they got Ford,” Little said over the radio.
“There’s the runway,” Cole told him. The narrow valley was fried with the rising streaks from automated weapons. The dust devils created by the hammering guns lined the sides of the runway like sentries from netherworld. Knowing that Little would take the right Jake aimed his plane down the trees on the left side o the runway. He held the plane level and let the ground fall away.
Whump! The Intruder took a sledgehammer blow. The pilot’s eyes flicked to the instrument panel-right RPM unwinding, right exhaust gas temperature climbing. He chopped the throttle on the dying engine to cutoff and began a hard turn to the left to climb the ridge.
Panic and revulsion welled up in him and he thought, Got to get the hell out of here before they get the other engine!
Then from the middle of the tree line halfway down the runway a glint of light on silver caught his eye. A Mig!
What the hell! We’re dead anyway!
Jake flung the plane toward the Mig. As the target reached the bottom of the sight glass, he brought his thumb down on the bomb-release pickle. He felt the small, slow thumps as the RockEyes kicked off the racks, a pair each third of a second.
A stream of white streaks licked across the top of the canopy and smashed into the Intruder’s tail. The needle on the airspeed indicator flipped to zero.
On the west end of the airfield only two lone artillery pieces blasted into the sky.
With the last of the bombs gone, he pulled the plane left and up. He would climb the ridge. One last look over his shoulder at the airfield. A fireball was rising from the trees. “Got one,” he whispered.
The clouds enveloped them. “We should have come in from the west,” he told Cole.
Back over the ocean Jake reported on covered Strike frequency the loss of his wingman to the ship. He told them that if they sent another strike it should come in from the west and get up into the clouds off target. Then he called Little to arrange a rendezvous.
The other A-6 appeared as a white seed floating in a sunbleached sky. The seed sprouted wings and a tail. Soon Jake could distinguish the men in the cockpit. Little Augie brought his plane in alongside until Jake could see each rivet, each streak Of oil, each smudge of dirt.
“You have four or five nice holes in the tail, Jake. Augie slid under and lingered there, then surfaced on the right side. “No holes around the right intake. Can see anything. Maybe something went down the intake?” Something sure as hell had, something launched from a gun barrel. “You have two small holes in the right flap, Jake. And some bad dings in the armor plate over the right engine. Other than that. .
. .”
Jake and Cole examined the other A-6 inch by inch and found only a small hole in the left horizontal stabilizer.
When Jake had the lead again, he dropped his hook then raised it. He tested the gear and flaps. The plane tended to slew right or left as he added or subtracted power, but this was normal for single-engine flight and easily corrected with the rudder. “You look pretty good to me,” Little informed him. Jake raised the gear an dropped the nose to get enough airspeed to raise the flaps The extent of the damage was reported to the ship, and in a few moments the Strike controller Ordered Jake to land aboard rather than divert to Da Nang.
The damaged Intruder was the last jet aboard the ship. Jake flew a straight-in approach without speed brakes. He knew that the most common error on single-engine approaches was a pilot’s reluctance to reduce power on the good engine for fear of entering a descent that the one engine could not break, so he concentrated on reducing power when necessary and on doubling his power additions. He caught the three wire, and Cole said, “Not bad for a single-engine approach.
The wings folded slowly because only one hydraulic pump supplied the pressure. He was directed to the number-two elevator and was immediately lowered to the hangar deck. After taxiing off the elevator into the cavernous bay and waiting for the blue-shirted men of the tie-down crew to install chocks and chains, he opened the canopy and chopped the engine.
A crowd of somber men waited at the foot of the boarding ladder. Grafton took refuge in the familiar tasks- lifting the safety latches on the ejection seat handles, securing the proper switches, and unfastening the lapbelt and parachute riser fittings. When he could put the moment off no longer, he climbed from the cockpit and lowered himself down the ladder.
Cowboy met him. “I’m sorry, shipmate.”
Jake Grafton began to weep. He had not cried since his grandmother had died when he was sixteen. Cowboy and Sammy Lundeen led him to a stairwell off the hangar deck where he sat on the ladder.
Cowboy closed the hatch leading to the hangar bay and lit a cigarette that he passed to Jake. “Have his hands been like that very long?” Jake heard Cowboy ask Sammy.
The raw smoke after two hours on oxygen scoured his lungs. The cigarette burned out when the fire reached the filter. Carefully he put the butt in his left sleeve pocket. “I’m all right now,” Jake said. He stood up and looked his roommate in the eye. “I made the wrong choice. I should’ve come in from the west.”
“You couldn’t have known that.” Sammy put his hand on Jake’s shoulder.
“Hang in there, Jake. Hang in.” Jake nodded. He would try. But it was becoming more and more difficult, and he was getting so damned tired.
TWENTY
He woke up and looked at his watch: eight o’clock, but A.M. or P.m.? He heard Sammy snoring in the bunk overhead, so he decided that it must be eight at night or Sammy would be on duty. He lay there awhile, trying to brush aside the shrouds hanging over his memory. He recalled a large red capsule held out to him in the white palm of Mad Jack. He had downed the sedative without waiting for water. Why had he been so willing? The sounds of the ship echoed in his ears, and the sight of the plane exploding in a fireball replayed in his mind. Corey Ford and the Boxman, that was why.
The sedative had left him with a headache. He inched one leg out of bed and lowered his foot to the floor. The other leg followed. He rested. Finally slowly, he raised his body until he was sitting. He lurched over to the sink and wet a facecloth. collapsed back on the bunk, he put the cold cloth on his forehead. He had done this so many times before-for hangovers. Lying there in the darkness, he tried to draw the maximum benefit from the cool cloth over his eyes even while scenes from the previous morning’s flight kept flashing into his returning consciousness. After fifteen Minutes he was fully awake. He threw the washcloth toward the sink. He changed his underwear and dressed in a khaki uniform, grabbed his flight jacket and shut the door behind him.
He found Devil 502, the plane he had flown the previous day, in a corner of the hangar where machines were stored that were badly damaged or awaiting spare parts. Devil 502 had become a hangar queen. Well, the goddamn
