The Intruders by Stephen Coonts Page B

captain won’t hold the ship in here against this coast just to qual
one pilot. We have to transit to Hawaii.”
    Jake nodded. That made sense. He flexed his shoulders and pivoted his
head slowly.
    The fear was gone. Okay, panic. But it was gone. He was still feeling
the adrenaline aftershock, which was normal.
    “I’m okay,” he told the handler, who turned to relay the message into
the squawk box.
    Flap pulled at Jake’s sleeve. “You don’t have to do this tonight.
There’s no war on. It doesn’t matter a whit whether you get qualled
tonight or a week from now in Hawaii.”
    Jake stared. The flippant, kiss-my-ass cool dude he had flown with all
day was gone. The man there now was serious and in total control, with
sharp, intelligent eyes. This must be the Flap Le Beau that was the
legend.
    “I can hack it. Are you okay?”
    “I am if you are.”
    “I am. I gave you a load of shit today just to see if you could handle
a little pressure. You can. You don’t have anything to prove to
anybody.”
    Jake shook his head from side to side. “I have to go now so the next
time I’ll know I can.”
    A trace of a smile crossed Le Beau’s face. He nodded, just the tiniest
dip of the head, and turned toward the handler.
    “What plane do they want us to aviate, Handler-man? Ask the grunts in
Ready Four and have them send up the book.”Please, sir!”
    “Of course, sir. Did I leave the please out? What’s come over me? I
must still be all shook up. You know, we came within two inches of
being chocolate and vanilla pudding out there. If we’d fell another two
inches you’d be cleaning us up with spoons. I’m gonna write a thank-you
letter to Jesus.
    Praise God, that was a religious experience, Amen! I feel born again,
Amen! The narrowness of our escape and my ecstasy must have made me the
eensiest bit careless in my military manners. I apologize. You
understand, don’t you, sir?”
    “Ecstasy! What crap! Go sit over there in that corner with your Amens
and keep your mouth shut until your fellow jarheads get the maintenance
book up here for your pilot to read. He can read, can’t he?”
    “Oh yes, sir. He’s Navy, not Marine. He’s got a good, solid,
second-grade education. His mamma told me he did just fine in school
until - - .”
    Jake Grafton decided he was thirsty and needed to take a leak. He
wandered away to attend to both problems.
    He was slurping water from a fountain in the passageway outside the
hatch to Flight Deck Control when he realized that Lieutenant Colonel
Haldane was standing beside him.
    Haldane was wearing his uniform tonight, not his flight suit.
    His I-been-there decorations under his gold aviator wings made an
impressive splotch of color on his left breast.
    “What happened?” he asked Jake.
    “They gave me a late wave-off, sir. I was almost at the ramp, or at it.
Somebody said something about the deck going foul. Whatever, at the
time all I knew was that the red lights were flashing and the LSO was
shouting. So I did my thing. I was just too close.”
    Haldane was watching his eyes as he spoke. When he finished speaking
the colonel gave him another five seconds of intense scrutiny before he
asked, “Did you do everything right?”
    Jake Grafton swallowed hard. This just wasn’t his day.
    “No, sir. I didn’t. I knew we had passed the wave-off point, so I was
concentrating on the ball and lineup. When the wave-off lights came on,
I guess I was sorta stunned there for a tenth of a second. Then I
reacted automatically-nose up, boards in, full power. I should have
given her the gun and got the boards in, but I should have just held the
nose attitude. Should have rode it into a bolter.”
    Haldane’s head bobbed a millimeter. “Are you up to two more?” he asked.
    “I think so, sir.”
    “If you don’t want to go I’ll back you up. No questions asked.”
    “I’d like to go now, sir, if we can get a bird.”
    “How many carrier landings do you have?”
    “Before today, sir,