Final Flight

Stephen Coonts Final Flight

PRAISE FOR FINAL FLIGHT

“A NEW HIGH IN ADVENTURE STORIES … A SUPERLATIVE THRILLER … A NEW MASTERPIECE.”

— The West Coast Review of Books

“COONTS GOES BACK TO PUTTING THE READER IN THE COCKPIT and describes the sights and sounds of an aircraft carrier. He is a master of that art.”

— The Washington Post Book World

“A GOOD YARN … in the same rich and powerful mold as Flight of the Intruder.”

— Seattle-Post Intelligencer

“VIVIDLY TRUTHFUL … COLOR, ACTION AND GRIPPING DRAMA.”

— Deland Sun News, Florida

“A TOP-FLIGHT STORY … STAMPS COONTS AS ONE OF THE PREMIER WRITERS OF THIS GENRE ALONG WITH DALE BROWN AND TOM CLANCY.”

— The Milwaukee Journal

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOR THEIR KINDNESS in offering technical advice to improve this novel, the author wishes to thank Lieutenant Commander James Boma; Commander R. E. “Smoke” Davis; Commander A1 Diel; Captain Stu Fitrell; Captain Steve Ganyard, USMC; Lieutenant Commander Robert S. Riche; Robert L. Shaw; Barrett Tillman; and Commander Bruce Wood. For reasons that should be obvious, the ship described in this novel differs in several significant ways from Nimitz-class carriers.

Confront the enemy with the tip of your sword against his face.

— Miyamoto Musashi

1

The pilots of the two F-14 D Tomcats on the catapults shoved the throttles of their engines to full military power at the same time. Up on Vulture’s Row, high on the carrier’s island superstructure, the off-duty observers pushed their fingers even deeper into their ears as the roar of four mighty engines at full power became an unendurable, soulnumbing crescendo.

The bow catapult officer, seated facing aft at his control console between the catapults, returned the salute of the pilot of the fighter on Catapult One, glanced at the signal light on the island — still yellow — and looked over his shoulder, down the catapult toward the bow. The bow safety observer had his left hand up, his thumb in the air. The cat officer again scanned the fighter. Still okay.

In the waist catapult control console, the cat officer there looked across the nose of the fighter on Catapult Three at the signal light on the island superstructure. He, too, checked again to ensure the deck was clear.

The light on the island turned from yellow to green.

Simultaneously both launching officers scanned the length of their cats, looked again at the planes at full power, and pushed the fire buttons on their catapults.

Down below deck, the giant launching valves opened and steam slammed into the back of the catapult pistons.

Three seconds later the wheels of the two fighters ran off the deck and the wings bit the air.

In the plane off the bow catapult, the pilot, Captain Jake Grafton, slapped the gear handle up with his left hand. He allowed the nose to rise to eight degrees nose-up and held it there as he trimmed and the machine accelerated. At 200 knots he raised the flap handle. With the flaps up, he lowered the nose of the accelerating fighter and leveled at five hundred feet below the slate gray overcast.

Now he glanced back and left. His wingman, who had launched from Cat Three, was several hundred feet away in a loose formation. Jake eased the throttles aft a percent or two to give the other pilot a power advantage, then scanned his instruments. EGT, RPM, fuel flow, oil pressure, hydraulics, all okay. No warning lights.

“You okay back there?” he asked the Radar Intercept Officer, the RIO, in the seat behind him.

“Sure, CAG. No sweat.” The RIO was Lieutenant Toad Tarkington. He and Grafton had only flown together three times before today, since Jake, the air wing commander, divided his flying between the two F-14D squadrons, the two F/A-18 squadrons, and the squadron flying the A-6E.

The Tomcat accelerated quickly, its wings sweeping aft automatically as it accelerated through.7 Mach. At 500 knots indicated, with his wingman tucked in on the left wing, Jake Grafton pulled the stick back and pointed the fighter into the overcast.

Not a word had been said on the radio. The radar altimeter and TACAN had not been turned on. And the radars of both fighters were not transmitting.

Aboard the carrier from which the fighters had just launched, the USS United States, America’s newest Nimitz-class ship, total electronic silence was also being observed, as it was aboard the eight surface combatants arranged loosely in the miles of ocean around the carrier. No radars swept the skies. No radio signals were being broadcast. Yet down in the Combat Information Centers aboard every ship the sailors sat and listened for electronic signals from Soviet ships and planes.

Russian planes were aloft this afternoon over the North Atlantic searching for the United States. They had been searching for three days now and still hadn’t found her out here in these millions of square miles of ocean. The Americans were making the search as difficult as possible. The United States had been sailing east under a thick frontal system for five days, hidden from the cameras of reconnaissance satellites ever since she left Chesapeake Bay. Laden with moisture, the extensive cloud system covered a lot of ocean. The task group dashed from squall to squall; the rain would help mask the ships’ radar signature from Soviet satellites.

The exit into the North Atlantic had been aided by two nuclear-powered attack submarines. They had sailed from Norfolk the day before the carrier and located the Soviet snooper submarine that routinely lurked at the mouth of the bay. The American boats dashed back and forth at high speed to screen the noise of the departing task group, which slipped away to the southeast while the Russian vainly tried to sort out the screw noises of the warships from the cacophony made by the American subs and the dozen or so merchantmen entering and leaving the bay.