Vicksburg, the group's Aegis cruiser, trailing the carrier astern; the DDG Lawrence Kearny and the DD John A. Winslow were positioned well out on either flank. Farther out still, mere specks on the western horizon, were the CBG's two ASW frigates, Gridley and Biddle.
'Tomcat One-oh-one,' Jefferson's Air Marshall said over Bayerly's headphones. 'Charlie now.' That was the signal to leave the Marshall and begin his approach to the carrier.
'One-oh-one, roger.' He banked the F-14, descending to eight hundred feet and going into the final turn which would bring the aircraft in above the Jefferson's wake. Pulling out of the 4-G turn, Bayerly cut the throttles back to idle and popped the speed brakes. As the F-14 dropped below three hundred knots, the Tomcat's wings began to slide forward. Bayerly overrode the wings with the manual control, keeping the Tomcat looking clean and sleek as it went into the break.
Don't go ballistic on us, Magruder had said. Bayerly reached up to wipe the sweat from his eyes and found his hand blocked by his helmet visor.
Magruder's words still burned.
Bayerly's discontent had been gnawing at him, ever since the drama of Operation Righteous Thunder had played itself out in the skies over Wonsan three months earlier. He was hard pressed to even identify the emotion, but he knew it was connected with Tombstone Magruder and the lionization which had been directed at him ever since the Korean raid.
They'd been treating the guy like a genuine grade-A hero… press interviews, TV, the Navy Cross from the Secretary of Defense, the works! What Bayerly felt was not jealousy, exactly, but it was closely akin… a sense that blind luck had once again shown a vicious prejudice. As if the nephew of the carrier group's admiral needed any more luck!
His speed dropped quickly. At two hundred eighty knots Bayerly let the wings slide forward, providing extra lift and control at low speed, then lowered the landing gear. At two hundred thirty knots he lowered the flaps, still slowing, still descending, now at six hundred feet above the waves and a mile abeam of the Jefferson.
The carrier looked bigger now, but she still carried the impression of being an impossibly small target on a very large ocean. The Jefferson's island rose along the starboard side of her flight deck in a tangle of radar antennae and masts, of catwalks and windscreens. From off her port side, he could see the aircraft arrayed on her deck, appearing tiny and white against the dark surface of her 'roof.'
Passing the carrier's stern, Bayerly set his rate of descent at six hundred feet per minute and initiated a twenty-two degree bank to the left.
Sweeping across Jefferson's wake some three quarters of a mile behind her, he worked the controls to line up for his approach to the deck. From here, he could see the Fresnel lens system on the port side, across the flight deck from the island. The Fresnel lens, or 'meatball,' an arrangement of lights which changed their relative positions as he changed his, showed him whether or not he was aligned properly with the carrier's deck. It was time now to 'call the ball.'
'One-oh-one,' he said, identifying his aircraft. 'Tomcat ball. Six point one.' The number gave his fuel state, sixty-one hundred pounds.
'Roger ball,' the voice of Jefferson's Air Boss replied from the carrier's Primary Flight Control, 'Pried-Fly' in popular jargon. The acknowledgment had just passed from the Air Boss to the Landing Signals Officer, or LSO, standing at his station just below the Fresnel lens. Bayerly was half a mile astern of the Jefferson now, seconds away from the roundoff of her flight deck.
Damn Tombstone Magruder, anyway! Him and his Top Gun airs. He never boasted about having been through the Navy Fighter Weapons School at Miramar, but he managed to let you know without saying it. There was an arrogance about the man, an assumed superiority.
'Power up!'
Damn! He'd let his speed fall too fast. His Tomcat was dropping too quickly down the glide path. He pulled back on the stick and nudged the throttles forward. The F-14 rose… too much, damn it!
'Wave off!' the LSO sang in his ear. 'Wave off!'
His wheels touched the deck, but too far forward, missing all four of the arrestor cables stretched across the aft end of the flight deck in his path.
He was already jamming the throttles to full forward, building enough thrust to get the F-14 back in the air.
'Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!' The LSO's call was an embarrassing litany as the Tomcat raced down the deck, the island a gray blur off his starboard wingtip. Then he was airborne once more.
CHAPTER 3
Tombstone watched the Jefferson's stern spread out before and below his F-14 as he held the aircraft's angle of attack steady. He spared one final glance for the ball, noted that he was square on target, then let the Tomcat slip over the roundoff and down to the deck. His wheels touched with a jolt; at the same moment he rammed the throttles to full military power, just in case his tailhook failed to engage one of the arrestor cables.
He felt the reassuring forward surge of deceleration and dragged the throttles back to idle as the hook snagged the number-three wire. After checking his instruments for fire or warning lights, Tombstone let the F-14 roll backwards slightly to 'spit out the wire,' then followed the hand signals of a yellow-shirted deck director.
In the sky, a Tomcat is the epitome of grace and maneuverability; on a carrier deck it has all of the delicate grace of a beached walrus, especially when the flight deck is wet or rolling in heavy seas. Carefully, he folded the Tomcat's wings, then nudged the throttles up slightly, using his feet to control brakes and rudder pedals for the turn into his designated parking space.
Chief Bob Smith, crew chief for Tomcat 201, was already unfolding the ladder on the port side beneath the cockpit when Tombstone cracked the canopy.
'Smooth mission, Commander?'
'Not bad, Chief.' He was still worried about Made It. He'd heard the LSO call the bolter for 101 over the radio, knew that Bayerly would have been directed out and around for another pass. He decided to make his way across the deck to the LSO's platform aft of the meatball.
Batman's Tomcat 232 swept in across the stern for a graceful trap on the number-three wire. Tombstone waited for an opening, then trotted across the open flight deck, past the small army of deck crewmen and handlers who were working on the recoveries.
Lieutenant Commander Ted 'Bumer' Craig stood with a cluster of other officers behind the collapsible windscreen mounted at his console on the LSO platform. Bumer was VF-95's LSO, a tall, blond man from Indianapolis who was dividing his attention between the incoming planes themselves and their TV images on the Pilot Landing Aid Television screen on his console. In one hand he held the 'pickle,' a handle with a guarded switch which triggered the red wave-off lights bracketing the meatball at his back like the rings around a target's bull's- eye. In his other hand he gripped a telephone handset for communicating with the Air Boss up in Pried-Fly, as well as with the incoming pilots.
'Ho, Stoney,' Bumer said as Tombstone jumped off the flight deck and into the well behind the windscreen. 'With you in a sec.'
Tombstone watched the next Tomcat, the number 203 prominent on the nose, line up for a trap. While Tombstone and Batman had been over northern Thailand, other aircraft from their squadron had been patrolling the skies closer to the Jefferson. Lieutenant Ron 'Price' Taggart's 203 ship had been one of these.
Bumer spoke into his handset. 'You're a little left, Price,' he said.
'Come right a bit.' Taggart's F-14 corrected. 'Good… good… not too much. Deck's coming up.'
The Tomcat shrieked onto the deck, engines revving as the wheels clattered across steel. The arrestor hook caught the number-four wire, dragging the F-14 to a halt.
'I'll give him a 'fair,'' Bumer said, making a notation on a clipboard in front of him. As squadron LSO, it was Bumer's job to grade every landing each pilot made. The possible marks were 'okay,' the best possible; 'fair,' which
