'Thank you, Admiral.' Not elegant, but it was all I could manage.
He nodded, as if he was distracted by something else. 'Go see your skipper. She's going to have a few words for you, I imagine.'
If I didn't know better, I could have sworn he was looking amused. Me, I already had the cold sweats, thinking about what Commander Flynn was gonna do to me when she found out about this little stunt.
'Tomboy's a good skipper ? she'll understand why I'm doing this.' Damn admiral was reading my mind, I was convinced. His next words proved it.
'But you're right, she's going to make you pay for this.' He sighed, then was back in the room all the way, back from whatever distant place he'd been at when he'd arrived at this decision. 'Now get the fuck out of here, Bird Dog. Why is it that you're always in the middle of everything?'
I backed out of the room, moving so fast I damn near ran into the Chief of Staff glowering at the door. I murmured a quick apology, felt his equally icy glare try to nail me to the wall, and then just hauled ass out of there before the admiral had a chance to change his mind.
Like I said, I knew where the skipper learned it from. Talking to her was going to be a piece of cake after this.
As soon as we stepped out the door from the island onto the flight deck, the noise hit us like a tsunami. All those aircraft turning, jockeying back and forth into position whether under their own power or under tow by yellow gear. Not to mention the noise of the ship moving through the ocean at a good thirty knots, generating wind across the decks. 'Where is she?' Gator hollered.
Like I should know. I'd just signed the aircraft out, not gotten a parking-lot diagram.
I turned 360, surveying the aircraft in various stages of launch preparation. The weapons were already on the wings, the silver and dark gray ? not the blue practice bombs we flew with too often.
The helos were already turning, getting ready to launch for Flight Quarters SAR. Four thousand yards behind us, the tiny little profile of a frigate dogged our wake, standing by as plane guard in case something went wrong. Surface Navy translation ? in case they had to pull an aviator out of the drink.
Finally, I spotted our aircraft. She was forward, almost to the waist catapult, her brown-shirted plane captain making a close examination of the weapons slung under her wings. A full load out ? two Phoenix, two Sparrows, and two Sidewinders. Personally, I like going with more Sidewinders. And forget the Phoenix ? they're the long- range anti-air missiles, and you usually use those up early to put the other guy on the defensive. Nice concept and planning, but too many of 'em end up with mechanical problems. Besides, I like knife fighting better. The Phoenix requires that you maintain a radar lock on the enemy contact all the way into the last moments, and that just puts too damn many limitations on a pilot. Like I said ? I like a good knife fight. And that meant the radar-guided Sparrows or the heatseeking Sidewinders.
But since we were lead aircraft on this mission, the strike guys had decided to sling us off with the long- range Phoenix so we wouldn't be shooting through the pack if the bad guys showed up. They weigh a helluva lot more than Sidewinders and Sparrows too. And their large bulk interferes with the aerodynamics of your aircraft. Guess that's why they put 'em on the wings of the best pilot around.
'There.' I pointed out our aircraft to Gator, and then grabbed Skeeter and shoved him toward the one up near the forward cat. The little shit was flying wing on me again, again the brilliant decision of somebody in Strike. I guess I didn't mind ? but at least they could have made him carry the Phoenix instead of me.
Gator and I went through the preflight checklist carefully, with the plane captain dancing attendance on us as we checked out his bird. Either they hate it when you do this, or they love it. Either they're looking for a chance to show off how well they've taken care of the aircraft, or they're afraid you're gonna find something they screwed up.
Either way, it's my ass that's getting strapped into the four-point ejection harness and taking their little darling up to fight the bad boys. I always do a good preflight ? and Gator feels the same way.
Finally, when we were all the way done, I was satisfied. I saw Skeeter and his backseater starting to mount up, having finished a little faster than we did. For just a second, I hoped the dumb shit hadn't overlooked something that would get his ass shot out of the air.
We climbed up the aircraft and settled into our ejection seats. The plane captain followed us up, double- checked the fixtures, and helped us get settled in. At the last moment, he removed the safeties, the cotter pins, that kept the ejection seat from firing. I counted the strands in his hand carefully, then nodded. 'Good hunting, sir,' he said. He climbed back down the aircraft and I slid the canopy shut.
A moment later, he appeared off the right side of the aircraft, holding up six red streamers for my inspection. I counted them, then asked Gator to confirm it. They were the streamers that safed the weapons on my wings. I'd be one hell of a constipated Tomcat if he didn't clear those off before I tried to take a shot at a MiG.
Our plane captain turned us over to a yellow shirt, and I followed her directions up to the cat. We settled in, and they pinned the front gear ? those funny little sounds and movements of the aircraft that you get used to. At the yellow shirt's direction, I cycled the flight service, waggling everything that could waggle at him to show him I had a full range of motion on all my control services.
Finally, we were ready. At his direction, I jammed the throttles forward to full military power. He took one step back and rendered a sharp salute. I returned it. The aircraft was mine now, not his. Mine and the catapult officer's.
Two seconds later, it was all mine. There was a small little jolt, the sudden movement of the aircraft, then the gut-wrenching juggernaut down the catapult to the end of the carrier. It came up fast, too fast ? just like it always did.
And thank God. One of my own personal nightmares is a soft cat, a launch where something goes wrong with the steam-driven piston that tosses us off the pointy end of the boat. The result is you don't obtain sufficient airspeed to remain airborne, and you dribble off the end of the aircraft carrier like a wet dream. They don't find much of you often ? if you're lucky, you punch out in those three seconds that it takes to reach the pointy end.
I heard Gator grunt behind me. He always does that ? even after this long.
Then there was the sudden, mushy sinking feeling as we departed the ship. The Tomcat was still screaming at full military power, fighting for altitude and safety. We dipped down below the front of the carrier slightly, and I held my breath as I urged her up.
I love this aircraft. She only made me suffer for a microsecond, then took command of the airspace around her and started gaining altitude at a healthy pace.
I heard the net chatter as Skeeter launched, but was still too busy paying attention to my own altitude, rate of climb, and turn to watch him. I took a straight vector out to about five miles and waited for him to catch up.
Behind us, the carrier was banging an aircraft off the catapults every twenty seconds. Forward cat, waist cat, forward cat, starboard, in a continuous rotation designed to place the maximum amount of metal in the air in the minimum amount of time.
Skeeter was on me like stink on shit, then took his normal glued-to-your-wing position to my right. The rest of the flight was up now too, forming into their combat pairs.
'Viper Flight, Viper Leader,' I said into the mike. 'You guys ready?'
One by one, they sounded off. A good flight launch, no equipment casualties or other problems to interfere with a full formation.
'Okay, you all know what we're going to do. Let's go do it.'
We settled into a loose formation, cruising at seventeen thousand feet, and headed for the coast of Vietnam.
The plan was pretty simple, the way it had been laid out. Some of those weaponeers on board the ship knew what the hell they were doing. Two EA-6B aircraft were going in with us, fully armed with HARM missiles. A couple of us were going to sneak in, buzz around slowly pretending we were E-2s, and wait for the SAM site to light up. As soon as it did, the aardvarks were going to let off with the HARMs to take out the SAM's antenna.
As soon as that happened, we were going to reduce one obnoxious, very, very nasty SAM site to a nice, clean, sterile, smoking black hole in the ground.
Ten minutes off the coast, it lit us up. Gator called Out the warning from the backseat, and I knew every other RIO in the flight was seeing the same threat indications. The EA-6Bs didn't wait to be told ? the HARMs were off their wings and headed for their targets so fast the guys must have been riding the button the entire
