True Valor (5 page)

The big meatball light moved up and down, tracking with his plane. As long as his light intersected the horizontal line of green lights, he was on a perfect approach. If Patrick came in high, he would see the big yellow meatball light that tracked with his plane move above that line of green lights. If the light drifted below the green lights, his approach was low. If it went red, he was about to plow into the back of the ramp. He was trained to fly the meatball. She was there to remind him of that.

A good landing wasn’t complicated. Watch the centerline, the glide slope of the approach, and the speed. Then land the plane on the centerline, catch an arresting wire with the tailhook, and be jerked to a stop. It was the same process day or night. Rather heart-stopping at night but still a routine part of a naval aviator’s job.

“Right for center,” Grace corrected, seeing his plane drift left. The white centerline had nearly worn off the carrier deck after the months of heavy flight operations. Patrick either couldn’t see it or couldn’t get aligned.

His wings dipped and he overcorrected. She waited two heartbeats for him to realize the error. “Left a little,” she cautioned.

The Prowler nosed down. Her muscles tensed. “Power. You’re settling.” He was fighting left and right drifts while forgetting he was falling out of the sky. He was below the glide slope and rapidly closing distance with the ship.

Come on, correct.
“Power. Power.”

He aggressively added power so as not to slam into the ramp and he drifted left.

She hit the pickle. “Wave off. Wave off!” The bank of lights burst into flashing red as she ordered an abort.

She ducked as the jet roared overhead.

The windshield on the LSO platform rocked at the fury. Gracie forced her hand to relax its white-knuckle grip. No one in the LSO group had jumped into the safety basket, diving off the edge of the ship to avoid being engulfed in a ramp strike. If she hadn’t been holding the stick, she would have jumped.

Never, ever, be low.
Suffering the emotions of being an LSO taught her more about landings than she learned at the controls of the plane when she was the one flying the pattern.

“Good call,” the senior carrier air group LSO said. He stood behind her with a second handset and a pickle switch backing her up. She wanted his job someday but for now was relieved to know she had him around to back her up. Grace nodded her appreciation of the quiet words as she pivoted and watched Patrick climb back into the sky. Air control gave him vectors to come around and try again. He had about two minutes to mentally get ready. She was going to need more than that. He’d been flying at her face that last hundred feet.

She shook off the adrenaline as she wondered what Patrick’s three-man crew was thinking about now. She was grateful she flew the single seat F/A-18 Hornet and didn’t have to worry about killing her flight crew in a landing mistake.

Turning to the LSO acting as secretary for this recover, she graded the landing. “Wave off. Left drift on approach, overcorrect and settle in the middle, not enough power at the ramp.” The no grade would sting. Patrick’s landing grades for this deployment were still average “fairs” with all too frequent below average “no grades.” He was heading toward a flight review board.

The phone beside them on the LSO platform rang.

The senior LSO picked it up. From the “Yes, sirs” she knew it was probably the air boss watching events from his perch in the tower high above the flight deck.

The senior LSO hung up the phone. “One more try, and then he gets diverted to Incirlik. There’s no slack in the timeline for tonight.”

Grace nodded.

She raised her right hand with the pickle stick over her head to signal a foul deck as one of the many plane handlers used the free minute to maneuver and park an F-14 Tomcat at the edge of the flight deck. The red shirts had already begun loading live ordnance for the missions tonight. It would be a big strike. An entire air wing could only pause for one pilot so long.

“Clear deck.”

She lowered her hand. “Clear deck. Roger. Lights and boards set for a Prowler.” Patrick’s plane would be at a lighter weight on this approach, having burned fuel in the abort and circle. It would likely cause him to be high and fast. And given the near ramp strike, he’d already want to overcorrect high.

“774, three quarters of a mile, call the ball,” the air controller called.

“774, Prowler ball, 3.7,” Patrick replied. His voice sounded shaky.

“Wind at twenty-nine knots, even keel,” she said, relieved not to have a pitching deck adding another element of complexity.

Patrick was focusing better this time. He was above the glide path as she had suspected. “You’re long.”

She saw him inch a little steeper angle of attack. It was a decent approach. She let the minor errors that weren’t going to kill him go without comment.

She pivoted and followed him into the wires. The Prowler hit the deck hard, the tailhook missing the third wire and sending sparks flying as it rubbed metal on metal until it caught the fourth wire.

The fourth wire spooled out with a vicious slap and jerked the plane to a stop. As soon as the engines were throttled back to idle, Patrick raised the tailhook and a yellow shirt plane director waved him to taxi from the landing lane. Life on the carrier deck returned to normal.

“Fair pass. High in the middle. Long on lineup. Taxi into the wires.” Grace set down the pickle switch and handset. “That’s the last plane for this cycle. Secure stations and let’s go deliver grades.” Every pilot would hear directly from her their landing grade and a detailed description of what they did wrong. It was learning at the most intense level.

There was a camera on that centerline broadcasting live every landing aboard the carrier to the ready rooms and staterooms. Peer reviews were intense. Add the formal LSO’s review and posted landing grades in each squadron ready room and pilots worked on improving their landings with an intensity that had no comparison. Every pilot wanted to walk away with the Best Hook Award for the deployment.

Grace reapplied her ChapStick. JP-5 jet fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, and salty sea air mixed with the strong wind across the flight deck assaulted everyone exposed. Small pieces of the nonskid deck surface tossed up by the landing Prowler peppered her flight suit. The surface was being pounded into dust by the constant landing assaults. Before long the ship would have to suspend flight ops for several days to allow a new surface to be applied. The daily patches weren’t keeping up with the damage.

Grace was ready for a break. Being responsible for other pilots was more exhausting than being at the controls of the landing jet.

“Lieutenant Yates.”

She turned to find the squadron executive officer had joined her on the platform. “Yes, sir.”

“We’re adding Zulu-7 to tonight’s flight. Brief at 1700.”

The message was simple, the implications complex. “Yes, sir.” One of the many options they had practiced and put on the shelf for tonight’s Operation Northern Watch flight was being activated. The last-minute nature of the change suggested a target of opportunity. And for her, a very long night.

Four

* * *

NATO FORWARD OPERATING LOCATION

T
URKEY
/I
RAQ
B
ORDER

Bruce zipped the duffel bag of medical supplies closed as he studied the latest maps of northern Iraq spread out under the Plexiglas cover on the worktable. Several EA-6B Prowlers had been up during the day gathering the latest signals. The threat areas looked like rings of Swiss cheese. Already he saw the subtle shifts of Iraqi military during the day. They knew something was coming.

Over the last several months, the Iraqi military had been doing their best to shoot down a plane taking part in Operation Northern Watch. The Iraqis had come close to succeeding yesterday. The F-15E Strike Eagle hit by antiaircraft artillery had barely made it back to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Tonight the gloves were coming off.

The air tasking orders put thirty-eight pilots in the air to knock out ground control radar facilities, AAA sites, and radio relay sites around the town of Mosul and south of Saddam Lake. Those were the distributed orders; he’d been briefed on other classified missions.

They weren’t going to launch this mission from Turkey air bases and risk the fallout should something go wrong. Turkey had to live with not only Iraq but Syria as a neighbor. Eighty percent of the planes in the tasking order were launching from the USS
George Washington.

He thought of Grace many times in the last weeks, wondering how her deployment was going, but he’d never had this kind of tension in his gut. What assignment had she drawn? She’d be flying. She was too good a pilot not to draw one of the tougher strike assignments.
Lord, please, keep her safe during tonight’s flight.
He hated the sense of worry, hated worse the lack of information.

Bruce hoisted the heavy medical bag off the improvised table built from plywood resting across two sawhorses. The odds were good he would be flying tonight.

He exited the tent carrying the gear and walked across the field to the flight line. Eight weeks ago sheep had been grazing in this plateau. The Twenty-third Special Tactics Squadron out of Hurlbert Field, Florida, had made it home.

Bruce hadn’t seen much of Turkey proper. The PJs had flown over on a commercial flight to Istanbul, then shuttled down to the Incirlik Air Base and been flown out to this forward operating location within days of coming in-country.

The coalition pilots in the area—British and American—were counting on him. They could be aggressive in the air because the PJs guaranteed if a pilot got in trouble, they would get him out.

Inside his uniform, dog tags clicked. Bruce wore his own plus three others. He’d pulled a helicopter crew out of danger two weeks ago when a training mission through the tight passes of northern Turkey had ended in near tragedy. The rescue had cost the crew the price of their dog tags, a tradition that went back more PJ generations than he had been alive.

Before this deployment was over he’d likely be wearing more.

Bruce stored his gear in the first of the Pave Low III helicopters on the flight line, the black menacing machine one of the reasons he could deliver on that rescue promise. Life in the PJs was all about preparation. If they went out tonight, they would be ready to hit hard.

It was 1410 local time. It would be 0200 before he got clearance to stand down. Bruce thought about it and decided he had time for a late lunch and a nap before the evening watch began.

“Striker.”

He turned to see Wolf coming toward him from the mess tent. The Bear Cubs had shown up three weeks ago. Navy SEAL Joe “Bear” Baker and his team were operating throughout this region, and Bear had assigned the Cubs to handle the briefings.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

Wolf offered one of the sandwiches he held and Bruce took it with a quiet thanks. It was another of Tom’s infamous peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Striker had long ago figured out it was his premission ritual. “Any word on tonight?” Bruce asked.

“They’ve moved us up to standby.”

What the SEALs would be doing tonight if they got a go-ahead Bruce wasn’t fully briefed on yet; that would happen after there was a green light. But he knew one fact: On the map the Iraqi-Syrian border was a bright red line. The SEALs would be crossing it.

“Did you get through to Jill?” Bruce asked. Wolf had been down at Incirlik early this morning where there were phones available. Communication from here was restricted to mail.

“I got her answering machine. I wanted to strangle the cord.”

“I thought she said four o’clock her time.”

“She did. I don’t know if that means she got my last letter and doesn’t want to speak with me or if something happened.”

“And it’s going to be a couple days before you get a chance to call again.”

“Exactly.”

“I pity you.”

“You’re supposed to sympathize and offer to help.”

Bruce laughed. “I’m letting my sister date a Navy guy. Don’t push your luck.” He knew all about the dilemmas of missed phone calls and the uncertainty about mail. He’d worked to get just the right tone for his first letter to Grace written since he had deployed, and he still hadn’t heard back from her. Had she received the letter? It was tough, the silence, tougher than just about anything he might hear back as a reaction.

“Ready for tonight?”

Wolf, worried? Bruce narrowed his eyes as he searched his friend’s face, then smiled as he caught the dig. “Being brave is hard work. But I’ll live up to my reputation. Going to live up to yours?”

“What’s life without a little danger?”

“Peaceful,” Bruce replied, amused. “And peanut butter and banana sandwiches do not make you bulletproof.”

Wolf shrugged. “Somebody’s got to cover Bear’s back.”

And Bruce knew that simple statement said it all. For the SEALs—as well as for PJs—friendship was more than just a personal loyalty, it was a tactical advantage. The enemy wasn’t fighting one man; it was fighting a team. And when dying for a friend was the price every man was willing to pay without a second thought, the teams could do what individuals could not—bring everyone home. Bruce knew that truth from personal experience. He had his partner Rich to thank for surviving more close calls than he cared to put into words. “Got enough ammo?”

“Quit nagging. We learned the lesson of Ecuador. We’re ready.”

STATESIDE SUPPORT, INC.

N
ORFOLK
, V
IRGINIA

“What do you think, Scott?” Jill Stanton tried to sound calm as she stood in the mess that was Seaman Tyler Jones’s living room. The stereo speakers he had considered his pride and joy were gone. Half the CDs. A video camera. The burglar had been thorough, taking things he could carry and easily resell. The shock she’d gotten hit with on walking into this crime scene was wearing off. She was still feeling shaky, but it was being replaced with a growing sense of anger.