The Intruders (14 page)

Oh, God, he thought, trying to take it in as the adrenaline whacked him
in the heart.

His eyes went to the engine instruments, white tapes arranged vertically
in front of his left knee. They look ‘d The acceleration stopped and
the plane was off e the cat, the nose coming up. A glance at the
airspeed-not decaying.

Angle-of-attack gauge agreed. He grabbed the stick and slapped the gear
handle up. Wings level, check the nose His left hand rose automatically
toward the emergency jettison button above the gear handle. If he
pushed it and held it down for one second the five drop tanks, each
containing two thousand pounds of fuel, would be jettisoned from the
aircraft. She would instantly be five tons lighter and could then fly
on one engine. He was sorely tempted but he didn’t push it. his hand
came back to the throttles.

Which engine was it?

Both lights were screaming at him!

Which fucking engine?

Engine tapes still okay … airspeed okay … eight degrees nose up.
He was squinting against the glare of the red fire lights. He had let
the left wing sag so he picked it up. Climbing through two hundred
feet, 160 knots …

Both fire lights-the book said to pull the affected engine to idle, but
he had both lights on!

Fire!

Was he on fire? If he was it was time to eject. Jettison this fucking
airplane. Swim for it. He looked in the mirrors.

Black. Nothing to see.

He became aware that Flap was on the radio. “… both fire lights …
declaring an emergency … Boss, can you see any fire?”

The reply was clear in his ears. “Off the bow, you look fine. You say
you have both fire lights on?”

Jake cut in on Flap. “Both of them. We’d like a dump Charley.”

“Your signal dump. It’ll be about eight more minutes until we have a
ready deck. We’ll call you.”

“Roger.”

His heart was slowing. She didn’t seem to be on fire.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Accelerating through 185 knots, he raised the flaps and slats, then
toggled the switches for the wing and main dump valves. They were
carrying 26,000 pounds of fuel and the max he could take aboard the ship
was 6,000. He needed to dump ten tons of fuel into the atmosphere.

And as he reached for the switch that would isolate a portion of the
combined hydraulic system, he looked at the hydraulic gauges. For the
first time. He had forgotten to look at the hydraulic gauges before.
Now, squinting against the glare of the fire lights, he saw the needle
on the right combined system pump flickering.

uh-oh. A fire could be meeting hydraulic lines. Hydraulic fluid itself
was nonflammable, but the lines could melt.

,We have hydraulic problems,” he told Flap. -How come those fire lights
are so bright?” Flap asked. -I can barely see the gauges.”

“Dunno.” Jake was too busy to cuss out that comfortable) anonymous
bureaucrat who had specified the wattage of the bulbs in the fire
warning lights- They Were certainty impossible to miss. You are about
to die, they screamed. -Maybe you better stop dumping the main tank-”

Flap was right. Jake secured the main tank dump. Still 8,500 pounds
there By now he had the plane at 2,500 feet headed downwind, steady at
250 knots on the reciprocal of the launch bearing, When he pulled the
power back the fire lights stayed on Did they have a fire? Modern jet
aircraft utilized every cubic, inch of space inside the fuselage for
fuel, engines, pumps, switches, hydraulic lines, electronic gear, wires,
etc., and the spars and stringers that held the whole thing together. A
fire anywhere within the plane had to be burning something critical. And
if it got to the fuel tanks … well, the explosion would be
spectacular Jake again checked the rearview mirrors for a glow.

Nothing.

,Get out the checklist,” he told Flap as he turned off the Cabin
pressurization system. Unfortunately the ducts carrying bleed air from
the engines had failed on a half-dozen 0, ccasions in the past: the
resulting fires had cost the Navy men and airplanes. Jake had no desire
to add his name to that fist. If there was a leak downstream of the
valve that controlled cabin pressurization, closing the valve should
isolate it.

“Got it right here. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

Flap read the comments and recommended procedure over the ICS. One Of
the comments read, If a fire warning light stay$ illuminated, secure the
affected engine.

He only had two engines and both fire lights were lit. So much for that
advice.

The right combined hydraulic system gauge read zero. -The needle on the
left one was sagging, twitching. And a hydrau lie leak was a secondary
indication of fire! But did he have one?

“Marine airplanes are shit,” he groused to Flap, who shot back:

“Yeall, the Navy gives us all the crap they don’t want.”

Flap got busy on the radio and reported the hydraulic failure. Soon he
was talking to Approach. The controller put them in an orbit ten miles
aft of the ship. Jake slowed to 220 knots and checked the fuel quantity
remaining in the wings- Still a few thousand. In the glow of the left
wing-tip light he could just make Out the stream from the dump pipe
gushing away into the slipstream.

Well, he had it under control. Other than the nuisance glare of the
fire lights, everything would be fairly normal.

He would blow the gear down, lower the flaps electrically and just motor
down the glide slope. He could hack it.

He released the left side of his oxygen mask. He sniffed carefully,
then swabbed the sweat from his face. as heart rate was pretty much
back to normal and the adrenaline was wearing off. There was no fire-he
was fairly confident of that.

Wing fuel read zero. OK. He would leave the dump open a moment or two
longer to purge the tank, then secure it.

He reached down and punched the button to make the needle on the fuel
gauge register main tank fuel. And stared, unable to believe his eyes.
Only 3,500 pounds.

yes, the main dump switch was off. But the valve never, closed! All
the fuel in the main tank had dumped, right down to the top of the
Standpipe, which prevented the last 3,600 pounds from going overboard.
And he had already burned a hundred pounds of that 3,600.

He slapped on the mask and spoke to the controller. “Uh, Approach, War
Ace Five Two One has another problem out here. The main dump valve
didn’t close. We’re down to Three Point Five. How soon can you give us
a charley?”

“Standby, War Ace.”

Flap leaned across the center console and stared at the offending fuel
gauge for several seconds, then straightened up. He didn’t say
anything.

,How far is it to Hickam Field?” Jake asked.

Flap consulted the notes on his kneeboard. “About a hundred fifty
miles.”

“We’re almost to bingo!” Jake exclaimed, his horror evident in his
voice.. “We’ve got to have a tanker eight now!”

Flap Le Beau keyed the radio: “Approach, War Ace Five Two One, our state
is Three Point Five. We’re eight hundred pounds above bingo. Apparently
the fuselage dump valve stuck open. Request a tanker ASAP.”

“Negative, War Ace. We’ll take you aboard in about eight or ten more
minutes.”

A sense of foreboding seized Jake Grafton. They were in deep and
serious trouble. “How’s the spare tanker?” he asked.

“We’re still trying to launch it” was the reply. “We should have it off
in a few minutes.”

Jake couldn’t help himself. “Is there some problem with the spare?” He
felt like a condemned man asking if he could have one more cigarette.

“Yes.” One word.

“They’re digging us a hole,” Flap told Jake.

The pilot glumly examined the instruments. What else can, go wrong?
Bingo was the fuel state that required he depart for the shore divert
field on a max range profile flight. Bingo was a low fuel emergency.
And he was eight hundred Holy … pounds above that state. He had to
leave for the shore field before his fuel reached that level or he would
flame out before he got there.

Without additional fuel which only a tanker could provide, Jake had to
trap or eject. Well, he still had some time. Right now he was burning
four thousand pounds of fuel per hour.

When he blew the gear down he would be unable to raise them again. And
his fuel consumption would immediately jump to six thousand pounds per
hour in level flight. More in a climb. At this moment he had three
thousand four hundred.

Why had he switched the fuel gauge from the fuselage tank to the wings?
So he could monitor dumping. Of course, there was a totalizer there
under the needle, but it was us ally unreliable. Over the years he had
developed a habit of ignoring it. What a fool he was! The lash stung
and he laid it on hard.

He could stand the glare of the fire warning lights no longer. He took
the L-shaped flashlight hanging on the webbing of his survival vest and
pounded the offending lights until they shattered. The cockpit was
darker, a lot darker, and that calmed him.

At least the weather was good tonight. Ceiling was high, maybe ten
thousand feet, and the visibility underneath was ten miles or so. He
could see the lights of the carrier eight miles away, just a little
collection of red and white lights in the dark universe, and here and
there, the little globs of light that were her escorts. At least he
could fly alongside a destroyer or frigate when he had to eject. Then
he and Flap wouldn’t have to depend on the rescue helicopter to find
them.

That was something. A straw to grasp.

Exasperated, his thoughts turned to Callie. It was fourthirty in the
morning in Chicago; she was probably in bed asleep.

Thirty-one hundred pounds on the fuel gauge, A-6s had been known to
flame out with as much as seven hundred pounds showing on the gauge. He
could have as little as twenty-four hundred.

He got a pen from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit and did some
figuring on the top card on his kneeboard, which as usual he wore
strapped to his right thigh. The numbers told him he was burning
sixty-seven pounds of fuel a minute, about ten gallons. Every six
seconds a gallon of gas went into the engines. Twenty-four hundred
divided by sixty seven-hell, he could dangle here twisting slowly in the
wind for thirty-five more minutes. What’s the problem? What’s the
sweat? Well, when he lowered the gear the power requirements would go
up. He might bolter. The deck could stay fouled. The weather could go
to hell. Something else could go wrong with this plane-like the gear
might not come down or the hook might stay up. Or . . . He felt
frustrated and outraged. The plane had betrayed him!

The second hand on the clock caught his eye. It swept around and around
and around.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a police car?”

Flap asked.

“No, and I don’t need to hear it now.”

“Stole a cruiser, with a bubble-gum machine on top, siren, police radio,
even a shotgun on a rack in the front, the whole deal. Fellow in Jersey
wanted it for a farm truck. He wanted to take the trunk lid off and
weld up a pickup bed.

Was gonna use it to haul manure. He was a retired Mafia soldier. Now I
didn’t know Mafia guys ever retired, but this one apparently had. He
was out of the rackets and had him a little farm in north Jersey. A
brother I knew told me there was five hundred bucks in it for me if I
could come up with a police car. Luckily I knew another bro, who was
screwing a cop’s daughter pretty regular, so I got to thinking. Five
hundred bucks was real money to me back then. Anyway . . .”

Jake could hear pilots in other planes checking into marshal. It all
sounded pretty normal. Well, the weather was good, no one was
shooting…

“Ninety-nine planes in marshal, ninety-nine planes in marshal, this is
Approach.” Ninety-nine meant “all.”

“Your signal, max conserve. Add ten minutes to your commence times. Add
ten minutes to push times.”

Now what?

Should he ask? He waited a minute, waited while another sixty-seven
pounds of fuel went into the engines. Then he said, “Approach, War Ace
Five Two One. Does that ten minutes apply to me too?”

“Affirm.”

“Uh, what’s the problem?”

Silence. Then, “The nose gear collapsed on a Phantom on Cat Three. The
deck is foul.” Cat Three was on the waist, in the landing area.

“War Ace Five Two One has Two Point Eight. Any word on Texaco?” Texaco
was the tanker.

“We’re working on it, War Ace.”

Flap left his story unfinished. Jake stared at the offending V

i fuel gauge. Should he just say Bingo and go?

The ship was headed northwest, into the prevailing wind Hickam was
northeast, As the minutes passed they were’ getting no closer to
Hickain, but on the other hand, they were getting no farther away.
Without more fuel, what did it matter?

The minutes ticked by. Five, six, seven …

The needle on the fuel gauge passed twenty-four hundred pounds and kept
descending. One pass-that was it. The would get one lousy pass at the
deck. If he boltered for any reason, he and Flap were going to have to
swim for it.

The crew fidgeted.

The hell of it was that they were betting everything on the emergency
gear extension system. Compressed nitrogen would be used to blow the
gear down since hydraulic fluid was no longer available to do the job.
If any one of the three wheels failed to lock down, they could not trap
aboard the ship. They would have to eject.

Betting your ass on any one system in an airplane with a variety of
other problems is not the recommended path to a long and happy life.

Jake Grafton sat monitoring the instruments and thinking about the black
ocean beneath him. At least the water was warm. With warm water came
sharks. He hated sharks, feared them unreasonably. Sharks were his
phobia. If he went into the water he would have to fight back the
panic, have to keep functioning somehow.