Free The Intruders by Stephen Coonts Page B

key.”
    “So what weapons does a Soviet frigate carry?”
    Jake squirmed. “Colonel, I don’t know.”
    Haldane nodded once, slowly, and looked away. “I would like for you to
study this matter, Mr. Grafton. When you think you have an answer to
the question, come see me.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    “That’s all. Good luck tonight.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Jake rose and walked away, mortified.
    Well, hell, the stuff he had spent his career attacking was all
mud-based. Of course he should know about ships, but …
    What Haldane must think-a naval officer who doesn’t know diddly-squat
about naval warfare!
    Congratulations, Jake. You just got your tour with the Marines off to a
great start.
    THERE WAS STILL A LITTLE SPLOTCH OF LIGHT IN THE WESTER ,N sky and a
clearly discernible horizon when Jake Grafton taxied toward the catapult
that evening. This first shot would be a “pinky,” without severe sweat.
He needed six landings to attain his night qualification, which meant
after this twilight shot there would be five more … in darkness.
    A pinky first one was just dandy With him.
    He carefully scanned the evening sky. The cloud cover was almost total,
with the only holes toward the west, and low, maybe seven or eight
thousand feet. Wind still out of the northwest, but stiffer than this
morning. That was good.
    Tonight the ship could steam slower into the wind and yet still have the
optimum thirty knots of wind over the deck.
    Since every mile upwind took her farther from the coast and the
airfields ashore, the fewer of those miles the better.
    Car quals are always goat-ropes, Jake thought, something going wrong
sooner or later, so there is at least a fifty-fifty chance I’ll have to
divert ashore once tonight. And if my luck is in, maybe spend the night
in the Alameda BOO, call Callie …
    No matter how long you’ve been ashore, after a half hour back aboard one
of these gray tubs you’re tired, hungry and horny. No way to cure the
loniless, but a night ashore in a real bed would work wonders on the
other syndromes, with real food and a long, hot shower and Callie’s
voice on the phone His reverie was interrupted by Flap Le Beau’s voice
on the intercom system, the ICS. “Don’t do nothin’ cute tonight, huh? My
internal table ain’t so stable when we’re out here flyin’ through black
goo.”
    “You and Muhammad Ali. How about laying off the monologue. When I want
comedy I watch TV.”
    “Golden silence to practice your pilot gig. You got it. Just fly like
an angel flitting toward paradise.”
    “You do the radio frequency changes and I’ll do the transmissions,
okay?”
    “Fine.”
    “Takeoff checklist,” Jake said, and Flap began reading off the items.
Jake checked each item and gave the appropriate response.
    And soon they were taxiing toward the cat. Automatically Jake leaned
forward and tugged hard on the VDI, the televisionlike display in the
center of the instrument panel that functioned as the primary attitude
reference. It was tight, just as it should be.
    “Flashlight on the backup gyro, please,” Jake said to Flap, who already
had it in his hand. If both generators dropped off the line, the little
gyro would continue to provide good attitude information for about
thirty seconds, long enough for Jake to deploy the ram-air turbine,
called the RAT, an emergency wind-driven generator.
    Of course a double generator failure was rare, and if it happened on a
launch with a discernible horizon there wouldn’t be a problem. Yet on a
coal black night … and all nights at sea were coal black. Jake
Grafton well knew that emergencies were quirky-they only happened at the
worst possible time, the time when you least expected one and could
least afford it. Then you would have to entertain two or three.
    The A-7 on the cat in front of Jake was having a problem with the
nose-tow apparatus. A small conference was convening around the nose
wheel, but nothing obvious seemed to be happening.
    Jake looked