The Intruders

THE INTRUDERS

By: Stephen P. Coonts

Synopsis:

1973. The Vietnam War is finally over, but for Lieutenant Jake Grafton,
U.S.N., freshly returned from two harrowing combat cruises, his own
country seems almost as hostile. When his fists get him into trouble,
he lands an excruciating eight-month cruise on the aircraft carrier
COLUMBIA teaching Jarheads-Marines-the nuances of carrier aviation. As
a Navy man working beside Marines without carrier aviation experience,
Grafton’s about to discover another world of fresh hell. Taking off and
landing from a slippery flight deck, on a choppy sea in a pitch-black
night, there is no room for error-or for animosity. And while these
Marines have Jake wishing he was back fighting the VC, he’ll have to
learn to live with them. For they must fly together in the same
cockpit, must lock into each other and into their million-dollar
machines, and make the split-second decisions that hurtle them toward
their common goals: excellence-and survival.

Novels by Stephen Coonts

Flight of the Intruder

Final Flight

The Minotaur

Under Siege

The Red Horseman*

The Intruders*

Nonfiction

Books by Stephen Coonts

The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America

*Published by POCKET BOOKS

New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

The sale of this book Without its cover is unauthorized. If You
Purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that It was
reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author
nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped
book.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

A Pocket Star Book published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon &
Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright 0 1994 by Stephen P. Coonts

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New
York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-87061-0

First Pocket Books paperback printing June 1995

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon &
Schuster Inc.

Cover art by Dru Blair

Printed in the U.S.A.

Author’s Note

For their kindness in assisting with the technical aspects of this
novel, the author wishes to thank Captain Sam Sayers, USN Ret, and
Captain Bruce Wood, USN.

The in-flight emergencies featured m this novel are based on actual
incidents. Where necessary I have simplified the complete cockpit
switchology, emergency and air traffic control procedures in the
interest of readlibility and pacing. I have also altered the outcome of
some of the incidents. It was not my intent to write an aviation safety
treatise or a manual on how to do it, but to entertain.

I also hope that you, the reader, develop a better understanding of the
pride, skill, profession”= and dedication of the men and women of U.S.
Navy and Marine Corps Aviation. As you read these words, they are out
there on the oceans of the earth working for all of us. This book is
dedicated to them.

Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm does bind the restless wave,
Who biddest the mighty ocean deep, Its own appointed Units keep; hear us
when we cry to thee For those in peril on the sea. -The Navy Hymn

William Whiting

The Intruders

The HUGE SHIP TOWERED ABOVE THE pier THAT projECTED into the bay. The
rain falling from a low, slate-colored sky made everything look dark and
wet-the ship, the pier, the trucks, even the sailors hurrying to and
fro.

At the gate at the head of the pier stood a portable guard shack where a
sailor huddled with the collar of his pea coat turned up, his hands
thrust deep into his pockets. There was no heater in the wooden shack
so the air here was no warmer than it was outside, but at least he was
out of the wind. Raw and wet, the swirling air lashed at unprotected
flesh and cut like a knife through thin trousers.

The sailor looked yet again up at the projecting flight deck of the
great ship, at the tails and wing butts of the aircraft sticking over
the edge. Then his eyes wandered back along the ship’s length, over a
thousand feet. The gray steel behemoth looked so permanent, so solid,
one almost had to accept on faith the notion that it was indeed a ship
that could move at will upon the oceans. It looked, the sailor decided,
like a cliff of blue-black granite.

Streams of water trickled from scuppers high on the edge of the flight
deck. When the wind gusted these dribbles scattered and became an
indistinguishable part of the ram. In the lulls the streams splattered
randomly against the pier, the camels that wedged the hull away from the
pilings, and Were restless black water of the bay.

The sailor watched the continuous march of small swells as they surged
against the oil containment booms, swirled trash against the pilings,
and lapped nervously against the hull of the ship. Of course the ship
didn’t move. She lay as motionless as if she were resting on bedrock.

Yet she was floating upon that oily black wet stuff, the sailor mused.
This 95,000 tons of steel would get under way tomorrow morning, steam
across the bay and through the Golden Gate. All of her eighty aircraft
were already aboard, all except the last one that was just now being
lifted by a crane onto the forward starboard elevator, Elevator One.

This past week had been spent loading bombs, bullets, beans, toilet
paper–supplies by the tractor-trailer load, an endless stream of trucks
and railroad cars, which were pushed down tracks in the middle of the
pier.

Tomorrow. Carrying her planes and five thousand men, the ship would
leave the land behind and move freely in a universe of sea and sky-that
was a fact amazing and marvelous and somewhat daunting. The carrier
would be a man-made planet voyaging in a universe of water, storms,
darkness, maybe occasionally even sunlight. And on this planet would be
the men-working and eating, working and sleeping working and sweating
working and praying that somehow, someday the ship would once again
return to the land.

And he would be aboard her. This would be his first cruise, at the age
of nineteen years. The prospect was a little strange and a little
frightening.

The sailor shivered involuntarily-was it the cold?–and looked again at
the tails of the planes projecting over the edge of the flight deck.
What would it be like to ride one of those planes down the catapult into
the sky, or to come across the fantail and catch one of the arresting
gear wires?

The sailor didn’t know, nor was it likely he would ever find out, a fact
that gave him a faint sense of disappointment.

He was a storekeeper, a clerk. The aviators who would fly were
officers, all older and presumably vastly certainly they lived in a
world far different than his. But maybe someday. When you are nineteen
the future stretches away like a highway until it disappears into the
haze. Who knows what lies ahead on that infinite, misty road?

The sailor wasn’t very interested in that mystical future: his thoughts
turned glumly to the here and now. He was homesick. There was a girl
at home whom he hadn’t been all that serious about when he joined the
Navy after high school, but the separation had worked its insidious
magic.

Now he was writing her three long letters per week, plus a letter to his
folks and one to his brother. The girl … well, she was dating
another guy. That fact ate at his insides something fierce.

He was thinking about the girl, going over what he would say in his next
letter-her last letter to him had arrived three weeks ago-when a taxi
pulled up on the other side of the gate. An officer stepped out and
stood looking at the ship, a lieutenant, wearing a leather flight jacket
and a khaki foreand-aft cap.

After the cab driver opened the hunk, the officer paid him and hoisted
two heavy parachute bags. One he swung onto his right shoulder. The
other he picked up with his left hand. He strode toward the gate and
the guard shack.

The sailor came out into the rain with his clipboard. He saluted the
officer and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I need to see your ID card.”

The officer made eye contact with the sailor for the first time. He was
about six feet tall, with gray eyes and a nose that was a trifle too
large for his face. He lowered the bags to the wet concrete, dug in his
pocket for his wallet, extracted an ID card and handed it to the sailor.

The sailor carefully copied the information from the ID card to the
Paper on his clipboard as he tried to shield the paper from the rain. LT
Jacob L. Grafton, USN. Then he passed the credit-card-size piece of
plastic back to the officer.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Okay, sailor,” the lieutenant said. After he stowed the card he stood
silently for several seconds looking at the ship.

He ignored the falling rain.

Finally he looked again at the sailor. “Your first cruise?”

“Yessir.”

“Where you from?”

“Iowa, Sir.”

After a last glance at the airplanes on the flight deck above, the
officer reached for his bags. He again hoisted one of the parachute
bags to his right shoulder, then lifted the other in his left hand. From
the way the bags sagged the sailor guessed they weighed at least fifty
pounds each.

The officer didn’t seem to have any trouble handling them, though.

“Iowa’s a long way behind you,” the lieutenant said softly.

“Yessir.”

“Good luck,” the lieutenant said, and walked away down the pier.

The sailor stood oblivious to the rain and watched him go.

Not just Iowa … everything was behind. The ship, the great ocean,
Hawaii, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia-all that was ahead. They would
sail in the morning. Only one more night.

The sailor retreated to the shack and closed the door. He began to
whistle to himself.

An hour later Lieutenant Jake Grafton finally found his new two-man
stateroom and dumped his bags. His roommate, a Navy pilot, wasn’t
around, but apparently he had moved into the bottom bunk.

Jake climbed into the top bunk and stretched out.

Just five months into his first shore tour-after three years in a fleet
squadron with two combat cruises-his tour was cut short. Now he was
going to sea again, this time with a Marine squadron.

Amateur hour! Jarheads!

How had he gotten himself into this fix anyway?

Well, the world started coming unglued about three weeks ago, when he
went to Chicago to see Callie. He dosed his eyes and half-listened to
the sounds of the ship as it all came flooding back.

“Do you know Chicago?” Callie McKenzie asked.

It was 11 A.M. on a Thursday morning and they were on the freeway from
O’Hare into the city. Callie was at the wheel.

Jake Grafton leaned back in the passenger’s seat and grinned. “No.”

Her eyes darted across his face. She was still glowing from the long,
passionate kiss she had received at the gate in front of an appreciative
audience of travelers and gate attendants. Then they had walked down
the concourse arm in arm. Now Jake’s green nylon folding clothes bag
was in the trunk and they had left the worst of O’Hare’s traffic behind.

… Thank you for the letters,” she said. “You’re quite a
correspondent. “Well, thank you for all the ones you wrote to me.”

She drove in silence, her cheeks still flushed. After a bit she said,
“So your knee is okay and you’re flying again?”

“Oh, sure.” Unconsciously Jake rubbed the knee that had been injured in
an ejection over Laos six months ago. When he realized that he was
doing it, he laughed, then said, “But that’s history. The war’s over,
the POWs are home, it’s June, you’re beautiful, I’m here-all in all,
life is damn good.”

In spite of herself Callie McKenzie flushed again. Here he was, in the
flesh, the man she had met in Hong Kong last fall and spent a
bittersweet weekend with in the Philippines. What was that, seven days
total? And she was in love with him.

She had avidly read and reread his letters and written long, chatty
replies. She had told him she loved him in every line. And she had
called him the first evening she arrived back in the States after
finishing her two-year tour in Hong Kong with the State Department. That
was ten days ago.

Now, here he was.

They had so much to talk about, a relationship to renew.

She was worried about that. Love was so tricky. What if the magic
didn’t happen?

“My folks are anxious to meet you,” she said, a trifle nervously Jake
Grafton thought. He was nervous too, so nervous that he couldn’t eat
the breakfast they had served on the plane from Seattle. Yet here with
her now, he could feel the tension leaving him. It was going to be all
right.

When he didn’t reply, she glanced at him. He was looking at the skyline
of the city, wearing a half-smile. The car seemed crowded with his
presence. That was one of the things she had remembered-he seemed a
much larger than he was. He hadn’t changed. Somehow she found that
reassuring. After another glance at his face, she concentrated on
driving.

In a moment she asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Oh, getting there.”

“I thought we’d go downtown, get some lunch, do some sightseeing, then
go home this evening after my folks get home from the university.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You’ll like Chicago,” she said.