waist catapults, deck crewmen were already scurrying across the deck, together with one of the ubiquitous tractors or 'mules' used to tow aircraft.
The accident had crippled the EA-6B, but not destroyed it. Still, time was more precious now than equipment. The Prowler, and the millions of dollars' worth of sophisticated electronics aboard, would be tipped over the side rather than allow it to further delay the mission. Too long a delay in the launch schedule, and Jefferson's aircraft would be returning after dark.
Night landings were always far more hazardous than recoveries made during the day, and while bombing strikes were planned throughout the night, the plan called for a reduction in the number of missions in order to keep the hazards associated with night ops to a minimum. Rather than face the drastically heightened risks of a night mission, he would have to scrub the alpha strike until tomorrow, and that meant the Marine assault would be going in with a lot more enemy hardpoints and radar sites operational than would be the case otherwise.
Pilot fatigue was Tombstone's principal worry now. Tired men made mistakes, as had just been demonstrated on Cat Three. And every military officer tasked with planning long-range bombing strikes always had to keep in mind what had happened during Operation El Dorado Canyon.
El Dorado Canyon was the code name of the American bombing raid against Libya in 1986, launched in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities. Part of the assault had been assigned to Air Force F-111 Aardvarks attached to the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Lakenheath, England.
It was a large and complex mission, involving both Air Force planes out of England and Navy aircraft launched from carriers in the Gulf of Sidra, attacking five separate targets, three in and around Tripoli and two at Benghazi. In all, eighteen F-111s had been assigned to the objectives at Tripoli, and of those, nine had been slated to hit the two-hundred-acre compound of Libya's leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi.
But the planning for the El Dorado Canyon had been intense, a strain on pilots and crews that robbed them of sleep for the forty-eight hours preceding the mission. Then, Spain and France had both refused overfly privileges for aircraft participating in the raid, forcing the entire contingent out of England to go the long way around, down Europe's Atlantic coast and past the Strait of Gibraltar, a flight of three thousand miles that took six and a half hours.
That flight had been an epic nightmare, requiring multiple midair refuelings and continuous, nerve-wracking close-formation flying, a tactic designed to make several planes appear as one on enemy radar. One of the pilots became disoriented during refueling and, 'flying on automatic,' followed the tanker halfway back to England. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late to rejoin his flight. Four more scrubbed the attack because of breakdowns with the aircraft's electronic systems, especially with the F-111's radar, which proved to have a disturbing tendency to break down during long flights. A sixth Aardvark went down at sea just off the Libyan coast, the only American plane lost in the operation. The cause of the crash was unknown, but pilot error was a definite possibility. A seventh F-111 aircrew probably misidentified a checkpoint on the Libyan coast, though equipment malfunction was also a possibility; whatever the cause, the bombs missed Qaddafi's compound and landed near the French Embassy. Civilians died, including French nationals, in what was ironically and with bitter black humor referred to later as retaliation for the French refusal of overflight privileges. Of the nine original aircraft tasked with the mission, only two actually hit the target. Damage to the compound had been relatively light.
Adding injury to the insult, one of the casualties, unfortunately, had been Qaddafi's adopted daughter.
The bombing of the Libyan dictator's compound had not been a direct attempt to kill Qaddafi ? it was known that he only intermittently stayed there ? but it had been intended to deliver a strongly worded warning against continuing his terrorism campaign against the West. In that, probably, the raid had succeeded, but the poor performance of the Aardvarks in that part of the mission had been a shock. During the planning, it had been estimated that at least four or five of the nine F-111s would be able to complete their bombing runs; two aircraft had simply not been enough to ensure the raid's success.
In fairness, it was important to remember that the other elements of Operation El Dorado Canyon had carried out their parts of the mission flawlessly, causing heavy damage to the other targets.
Tombstone signaled for an enlisted man standing nearby to bring him a cup of coffee. On the PLAT monitor, the Prowler's curiously flattened stabilizer tipped suddenly into the air as its nose went over the side. It hung there a moment, suspended, then vanished below the edge of the flight deck. The deck crew were already lined up along Catapult Three, walking their way slowly aft as they searched for bits of debris. Other men were using fire hoses to wash down an area of the deck astride the rear of the cat, sweeping away mingled gasoline, oil, and blood.
He wondered if the accident had badly shaken the men of the deck crew.
Coming on top of a sailor's suicide, an incident like that could further erode morale, might even cause further carelessness and more accidents.
On another PLAT monitor, this one showing activity forward at Cats One and Two, an EA-6B Prowler howled off the port catapult, while hookup men locked the cat shuttle to the undercarriage of an F/A-18 Hornet to starboard.
Steam boiled across the deck, obscuring the crowds of color-coded men hurrying about their elaborate choreography of readying, inspecting, and launching aircraft. The checkers, men in white jerseys and with black- and-white checked helmets, were especially evident as they combed each aircraft for downgrudges, open access panels, and loose weapons. In the background, over a communications channel, Tombstone could hear the Air Boss bellowing radio orders from his crows'-nest perch up in Pri-Fly. From the sound of it, there'd been a fault in the 'mouse' worn by one of the plane directors, the distinctive earphone headset also affectionately called a Mickey Mouse, and the director hadn't noticed yet that he was off the air. That was another bit of human error. Every man who had one was supposed to frequently check his personal radio. It took several moments to get another deck officer with a mouse on to go over and physically grab the man and alert him to the equipment failure.
How many more were going to die before this thing was done, either from enemy action or from damned, stupid carelessness born of grinding, bone-weary exhaustion?
Maybe I've just seen too damned much of this, he thought. Pamela had been after him to give it up for a long time, though recently they'd managed to arrive at a kind of uneasy truce between his dedication to his career and their love for each other. Damn, maybe she'd been right all along.
Right now he felt tired ? not physically, though that was certainly a part of it, but exhausted in spirit, in his mind. He was tired to the very core of his being, but unlike those teenagers still hard at work full-out on the deck with no sleep, he was ready to pack it in. He thought of the faces of the men and women of Viper Squadron earlier, when he'd told them that they'd be flying shotgun for the Intruders this afternoon. Slider and some of the others had looked like they were ready to mutiny there for a moment… but by the time he'd gotten past the initial resistance and started filling them in on their mission, the newer hands had actually looked eager, rousing from their exhaustive torpor, positively glowing when they heard they'd be spearheading an attack wave into Russian territory.
Well, he could remember feeling the same way himself once, when he'd been assigned a challenging or exacting mission. But that was a hell of a long time ago.
Had he made a mistake, ordering the Air Boss to expedite the cleanup on the waist cats? That tired hookup man had merely killed himself and delayed the launch schedule; if Jefferson's CAG screwed up, a lot of people would die.
He didn't like the heavy, clammy feeling that thought carried with it.
The Hornet was ready. The deck director gave the aviator a thumb's-up, and the man in the aircraft saluted. The director whirled, dropped to one knee, touched the deck, pointed ahead…
… and the Hornet screamed off the catapult on a line of steam, dipping slightly as it cleared the bow, then rising steadily into the blue afternoon sky, its landing gear folding neatly away.
Tombstone had made his decision. There was no turning back now.
In tight formation with two other Intruders and a Prowler ECM aircraft, the A-6 boomed low across the water, low enough that salt spray pattered across its windscreen. It was as though they were flying through fog or a light rain, with the windshield wiper ineffectually batting away at the moisture almost as quickly as it collected.
Willis ignored the water, keeping his eyes glued instead to the glowing screen of his Kaiser AVA-1 Visual
