The Intruders by Stephen Coonts Page A

Grafton instinctively knew that it had
come too late. The ship was right there, filling the windscreen. He
kept the angle-of-attack on the optimum indications centered doughnut-by
feeding in back stick while he tried to bend the throttles over the
stops.
    Somehow he found the ICS switch with his left thumb and shouted to Flap,
“Hook up!” but the aircraft was already decelerating. The
angle-of-attack indexer showed slow and his eye flicked to the AOA gauge
on the panel, just in time to see the needle sweep counterclockwise to
the peg as the G threw him forward into his harness straps.
    Then they fell the four feet to the deck.
    The impact snapped his head forward viciously and slammed him downward
into the seat, stunning him.
    He got his head up and tried to focus his eyes as cold fear enveloped
him. Are we stopped? Or going off the angled deck? Dazed, scared
clear through and unable to see his instruments, he instinctively placed
the stick in the eightdegree-nose-up position and kept the engines at
full power.
    The air boss exploded over the radio: “Jesus Christ, Paddies, why’d you
wave him off in close?”
    On the LSO platform Hugh Skidmore was having trouble finding the
transmit button on his radio. He fumbled for it as he stared forward at
the A-6 straining futilely against the fourth wire with its engines
still at full power. Miraculously the airplane seemed to be all in one
piece. Here a hundred yards behind those two jet exhausts without the
protection of a sound-suppression helmet the noise was awesome, a
thunder that numbed the ears and vibrated the soul.
    Unwilling to wait for Skidmore’s response, the air boss now roared over
the radio at Jake Grafton: “We got you, son. Kill those engines! You
aren’t going anywhere now.”
    Long seconds ticked by before the pilot complied. When he did, finally,
the air boss remembered Skidmore:
    “El Ss Ok if you ever, ever, wave off another airplane in close on this
fucking boat I will personally come down there and throw your silly ass
into the goddamn wake. Do you read me, you mindless bastard?”
    Skidmore found his voice. “The deck went foul, Boss.”
    “We’ll cut up the corpse later. Wave off the guy in the groove so we
can get this squashed A-6 out of the gear and clean the shit out of the
cockpit.”
    The plane in the groove was still a half mile out, but Skidmore
obediently triggered the wave-off lights. As he did so he heard the
engines of the A-6 in the gear die as the pilot secured the fuel flow.
    Already the arresting gear officer had his troops on deck stripping the
pennant from number-three engine. The rest of the recovery would be
accomplished with only three engines on line.
    Skidmore turned to the Real McCoy. “I guess I screwed the pooch on that
one.”
    McCoy was still looking at the A-6 up forward. The yellow shirts were
hooking a tow tractor to the nose wheel. He turned his gaze on
Skidmore, who was looking into his face.
    He had to say something. “Looks like the boss is safetywired to the
pissed-off position.”
    Skidmore nodded toward the stern. “I thought he could make it. I
didn’t think he was that close.”
    “Well .. .”
    “Oh, hell.”
    Jake Grafton stood rubbing his neck in Flight Deck Control, the room in
the base of the carrier’s island superstructure where the aircraft
handler directs the movement of every plane on the ship. Flap Le Beau
stood beside him.
    Someone was talking to the handler on the squawk box, apparently someone
in Air Ops. The handler listened awhile, then leaned toward Jake and
said, “You need two more traps. The in-flight engagement was your
fourth.”
    “Yeah.”
    “If you’re feeling up to it, we’ll give you another plane and send you
out for your last two. Or you can wait until we get to Hawaii and we’ll
do the whole night bit again. It’s up to you. How do you feel?”
    Jake used a sleeve to swab the sweat from his forehead and eyes. “What
about tomorrow night?” he asked.
    “The