was average and indicated the aviator had made the proper corrections on time; 'no grade,' which meant that there'd been danger to the plane, the crew, or other personnel; and 'cut,' meaning a real screw-up, one which could have ended in disaster. The LSO's grades were a source of intense competition among the aviators, with each week's ratings posted on the greenie board off the hangar deck for everyone to see.
Bumer looked at Tombstone. 'That' it for your squadron, Tombstone. You come to watch Made It?'
'Is he the last one up?'
'Yup, Air Boss charlied him again a couple of minutes ago. He's coming around next.'
Lieutenant Commander 'Di Di' Roberts stood at Bumer's side. He was VF-97's LSO this afternoon and responsible for getting Made It down on the deck. As Bumer handed him the pickle, he was already speaking into his handset. 'A little high.' Light glinted from his sunglasses as he spoke.
'Power down…'
Tombstone couldn't hear Bayerly's reply, but the incoming Tomcat responded, power dropping, nose rising. Not enough… 'Shit-fire, he's afraid of the deck now,' someone said behind Tombstone's back.
'Still high,' Roberts said. He glanced quickly at the PLAT screen, then back at the F-14. 'Power back, just a tad more…'
Bayerly's aircraft swept in across the roundoff, chasing its own shadow across the deck, its dangling tailhook sweeping just above the taut arrestor cables. Roberts triggered the pickle in his hand, and the bull's-eye lit up red behind him. 'Wave off! Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!'
The Tomcat's wheels touched with a grating squeal, and then the noise was lost in thunder as Bayerly's engines opened up full. The blue-gray Tomcat flashed past the LSO platform, setting the air above the deck shimmering with the heat of its jet wash. Then the aircraft was dwindling into the sky ahead of the carrier, banking to port.
'That's okay, Commander,' Roberts said calmly into his radio, 'Happens to us all. Bring her around again. Third time's the charm, old buddy.' He released the transmit switch on the handset and looked Craig in the eye. 'He doesn't sound good, Bumer.'
'Rattled?'
'Something.'
A telephone buzzed on the console, and another officer picked it up.
'Air Boss, Di Di,' he said, holding the receiver. 'Captain wants to know if there's a problem.'
'No goddamn problem,' Roberts replied. 'Just a two-time bolter. He'll make it next go-round.'
Tombstone crossed to the deck railing and looked across the waves.
Bayerly's Tomcat was a tiny silver speck now, gleaming in the sun far beyond the rescue helo, which was maintaining its position two miles off Jefferson's port beam. Each time an aviator pulled a bolter, it shook his confidence in himself and in his aircraft that much more… making the next attempt harder.
It had happened to Tombstone more than once, and the feeling was not a good one. He'd known aviators who had pulled ten or twelve bolters in a row before finally making a trap. One had passed out cold minutes after climbing out of his plane; another had walked straight down to the CAG's office and turned in his wings. Of all the operations expected of a Navy fighter pilot, none was more difficult, more out-and-out scary than landing an aircraft on a carrier's flight deck.
'Right, Made It,' Roberts was saying into the handset. 'You're lining up fine. Captain says if he can assist by maneuvering the boat, just say so.
Say again? Okay… roger that. Bring her on in. Soft and smooth… just like you were sticking your best girl…'
Bayerly's Tomcat pulled into its final break three quarters of a mile behind the Jefferson. Even at that distance, Tombstone caught the signs of nervousness, the slight flutter to the wings as Bayerly overcompensated, corrected, then corrected too far. He was fighting his Tomcat, wrestling it toward the trap.
Not good…
'You're lined up fine.' Roberts's voice was a soothing balm. 'Still a bit high. Slack off some. More…'
'Shit!' someone behind them snapped. 'He's still too high!'
Roberts grimaced, shaking his head. Tombstone saw the same thing, felt the same worry; Bayerly was still afraid of the deck after his first two close calls. He was going to bolter again.
'Wave off!' Roberts pressed the pickle switch. 'Wave off!'
Bayerly saw the red wave-off signal and bit off an obscenity. What happened next passed too quickly for the luxury of decision or reason. He had to get down on deck, had to land before his already shaken nerve went completely and he made a fool of himself in front of every man in the squadron, in front of the wing, in front of Magruder.
The thought of death didn't even enter into the equation. With a savage yank on the throttles, he cut back the engines until they were barely idling, and brought the nose up… up… He heard Di Di Roberts shouting at him, but he was already committed. His F-14 plummeted.
The tactic, known as 'diving for the deck,' was not an approved technique for carrier landing. Screw that, Bayerly thought. Any port in a storm…
As the deck rushed up to meet him, he throttled up. His tailhook snagged the number-four wire just as his landing gear slammed into the deck with a jolt that slammed Bayerly's tailbone and elicited a yelp of surprise or pain out of Stratton. He cut back the engine, then sat there, unable for a moment to move. The sheer shock and… not joy, precisely, but surprise of being down and in one piece were overwhelming.
He pulled his oxygen mask away from his face and ran his hand over his eyes. His glove came away slick with sweat. But he was down!
Commander Marusko leaned back in the chair with a squeak of casters.
Tombstone and Made It stood at attention side by side, facing him across his cluttered desk. He ran one hand across his balding scalp and burned the two of them with his blackest scowl.
'So, are you hotdogs going to tell me what the hell that was all about up there, or just stand there looking at me shit-faced?'
Both of the aviators avoided his eyes, focusing on some point behind his shoulder. They'd changed out of their flight suits and wore their khakis.
The office was small and cramped, as were most such spaces on board the Jefferson. This one reflected the man who occupied it: framed commendations and degrees adorned the bulkheads… those not taken up by book shelves or filing cabinets. A plastic model of an F/A-18 perched on a shelf above the IBM Selectric on its typing stand. Books on engineering and flight avionics were interspersed with quarterly fitness reports. A color photograph of an attractive woman and a pretty teenaged girl rested atop a ship's library copy of Moby Dick.
The title CAG ? commander Air Group ? was a holdover from the days when a carrier fielded an air group rather than an air wing; Navy tradition being what it was, the older term was still in use, like the word 'head' in a Navy where the enlisted men no longer went to the 'head' of the ship to relieve themselves.
More and more, the carrier Navy was coming to use the concept known as 'SuperCAG,' where the wing commander acted strictly as an administrator and never, as in Vietnam days, actually flew. That, Marusko had long since decided, was his real problem. He still found time to get in his qualifying hours in the air, but he no longer flew on a regular basis with the rest of the aviators. For someone who loved flying as much as Marusko did, that was a constant, gnawing pain.
'I don't know what you mean, Sir,' Bayerly said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, his middle fingers correctly aligned with the crease in his uniform pants.
'We'll start with you, mister,' Marusko said. 'You violated the Rules of Engagement for your mission on at least three points. You went below the hard deck, you crossed the border into Burma… and don't give me that hot- pursuit shit. And you engaged in close combat with unknown forces in everything but the shooting. God damn it, you were this close…' He held up thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart. 'This close to getting into a shooting match with those people. What do you have to say for yourself?'
'Sir, we… I mean, our orders indicated we were to fly cover for our That allies. I understood that to mean
