The Ocean Between Us

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t make good copy. Not anymore. I used to be a cowboy, turning everything into a competition. I used to look another pilot in the eye, call him my best friend and then wax his ass in training.”

“But you don’t do that anymore?”

He hesitated. “I’ll introduce you to some guys who do.”

They put on headsets, goggles and cranials with ear protectors marked across the top with reflective tape. Then Steve stood aside, motioning her ahead.

They climbed several more steel ladders. Steve opened another hatch and they passed a sign: Beware Jet Blast-Props-Rotor Blades. They crossed the platform, mounted a few more steps and finally reached the four-and-a-half-acre flight deck.

A strong, cold wind slapped at them, carrying with it the reek of jet fuel and hydraulic fluid. Cinders flung up from the nonskid surface of the deck needled their faces. Behind the protective goggles, Francine’s eyes reflected amazement. This was a strange new world, with the deck humming underfoot, busy personnel in color-coded jerseys and cranials communicating by gesture, planes and tractors scurrying to and fro. Despite the late hour, bright lights and thundering sound burst across the deck in a chaotic but precisely choreographed ballet of landing aircraft. The deafening noise made speech superfluous, so he gave her an expansive gesture: Welcome to the bird farm. She staggered a little as a blast of wind hit her, but then responded with a thumbs-up.

They crossed the roof to the island tower and climbed a series of ladders, passing various control centers. In Flight Deck Control, a chief petty officer kept track of the different aircraft and their positions on the “Ouija board,” little game-piece planes on a scale map of the deck. After asking permission to enter the bridge, he led her up another level to the top of the island, where the Air Boss presided over a domain of darkened cubicles encased in shatterproof safety glass. In Primary Flight Control, touch-sensitive glass, glowing control panels and monitors reflected off the intent faces of busy crew members. Another screen showed the positions of the entire battle group and other vessels in the area. Steve pointed out destroyers, cruisers, a supply ship, the oiler.

“And what’s that?” she asked, pointing to the screen.

“Probably a Japanese fishing boat,” Steve said.

In the tinted glass aerie, Commander Shep Hardin, the Air Boss on duty, barked commands at the flight deck. He paused briefly to greet them. “Aren’t you lucky,” he said to Atwater. “A guided tour by the gray wolf himself.”

“Thanks a lot, pal,” Steve said, then turned to the reporter. “Hardin’s no fun, anyway. Want to watch from Vultures Row?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

As they headed for the observation balcony overlooking the flight deck, she asked, “Why did he call you the gray wolf?”

He was sort of wishing she hadn’t heard that. “A carrier crew is made up of young men and women, most of them under twenty-five. At forty-four, I’m old.” He didn’t want to go into all the politics and posturing of his climb to the upper ranks. He pointed to a row of three aircraft chained to the deck. “Those are Prowlers, parked down there. They’re used for electronic reconnaissance and jamming.”

Francine cupped her hands around her eyes, pressed her face to the glass and studied the lighted deck. “The planes look sort of…lived in.”

She was right. These deck-weary aircraft hardly resembled the gleaming birds in Navy publicity photos. They looked as though they’d been patched together with duct tape, baling wire and Bondo.

“Ma’am, flight ops are the whole reason a carrier exists, so keeping the planes operational is crucial. Air crews work 24/7 to keep them ready to go,” he assured her, but he hoped she didn’t notice the drip of hydraulic fluid spattering the black steel deck. “The Prowler squadron has only four aircraft, so they get used a lot. It’s late in the cruise, and the concern isn’t making them look pretty. It’s making them work right.”

“And Lamont, the…nugget, is flying the other one.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Using her deck-ops manual for a flat surface, she made a note on her yellow pad.

“You ready to see some landings?” he asked.

“In a sec.” She scribbled furiously.

Then he instructed her to lower her goggles, slid open the door and they stepped outside. High off the bow, two shooting stars streaked briefly, drawing twin parallel lines down the black sky before disappearing. Steve tried to alert the reporter, but it was over so quickly that she missed it. No big deal. Shooting stars weren’t the main attraction tonight. Planes rained from the sky, one after another, slamming down on deck with screams of rubber and metal. Tail hooks searching for an arresting wire threw up rooster tails of sparks.

He handed the reporter a pair of binoculars and pointed out Landing Signal Officer Whitey Love, who stood with the other LSOs on the port side atop a wind-harried platform. From his vantage point under the edge of the flight deck, near the first set of arresting wires, the LSO studied the night sky through a pair of infrared lenses. Over the headset, he talked to his pilots. It was his job to coax each fifty-thousand-pound aircraft, hurtling at a hundred thirty miles per hour, to a three-hundred-foot landing strip.

A luminous amber signal on the port-deck edge aligned with a row of green lights, signaling that the incoming pilot was on the proper glide path for a safe landing. The dainty-looking tail hook had a shot at just five wires. Each cable could be used for a set number of traps before it was retired, compromised by the strain of stopping the speeding jets. If something went wrong, it could mean the loss of a sixty-million-dollar aircraft off the deck, and perhaps the lives of the pilot and crew.

Steve noticed a whiteshirt and three other VIPs loaded with equipment. Atwater saw his look and motioned him inside.

“My photographer and videographer and their assistant,” she explained.

He hoped the camera guys had been briefed on safety, too. The videographer appeared clueless as he filmed a turning jet that was on its way to the elevator. He clearly had no idea that the blast might toss him twenty feet in the air. Just in time, the host yanked him out of harm’s way and the group headed to the island.

They met up at deck level, where the floor hummed and a water cooler by the base of the elevator vibrated dangerously. As Francine made the introductions, an ordie in a soiled red shirt stepped inside, slapping a smoking glove against his thigh.

Steve recognized Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Michael Rivera behind the smudged goggles. The sailor quickly came to attention. The photographers immediately aimed their cameras at him.

“Everything all right?” Steve asked.

“Yes, sir. Slight problem with the flares, is all,” Rivera said, removing his goggles and scuffed red cranial. “It’s okay now.”

“Go down to the battle-dressing station and get that hand looked at.”

“No need, sir. Just wanted to get out of the wind for a minute.”

Rivera was Steve’s favorite kind of sailor—professional, dedicated, sure of himself. Not likely to let a smart-ass hotshot fighter pilot intimidate him on the flight deck. Besides that, Rivera’s winning smile and genuine warmth made him a regular recruiting poster boy. His face was covered in grime from a long shift on the flight deck, but that only made his teeth look whiter.

Atwater loved him instantly. Steve could tell from the soft-eyed expression on her face. Hell, he might as well indulge her. He made the introductions, and Rivera warmed right up, probably grateful for a break from the chaos of the open deck.

“And what do you do?” Atwater asked him, pen poised over her notebook.

“I deal with ordnance, ma’am. The bomb farm’s the area between the island and the rail where bombs and missiles are stored during flight operations. From there they’re brought to the aircraft.”

“And there was trouble with a flare?”

Rivera nodded. “Flares are used with F-14 Tomcats as a decoy for heat-seeking missiles. Each flare contains eighty internal units, and each of those burn at sixteen hundred degrees, so we’re real careful with them.” He grinned, and an irrepressible happiness shone from him. “I have even more reason to be careful these days. Had an e-mail from my wife this morning. The doctor found out the baby’s sex. We’re having a boy.” He looked ready to burst with pride. “Our first.”

“Will you be home for the birth?” Ms. Atwater asked.

“No, ma’am. But she’s got a lot of support at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington State. Captain Bennett’s wife has been a real good friend to Patricia,” he added with a grateful look at Steve.

Don’t look at me, Steve thought. He had no idea what Grace was up to, but it didn’t surprise him to hear she was helping out a young airman’s wife. Discomfited, he looked through a viewing pane while the PAO who had been escorting the photographers joined in the conversation with Rivera.

Outside, Steve noticed…something. He’d spent too many hours on a carrier deck to not clue in when something was going on. A subtle change came over the crew charged with recovering the next aircraft. It was like a slight shift in the wind or an invisible spurt of adrenaline, something the reporter or even most of the flight-deck ops would never notice.

Steve excused himself. The CAG LSO, Bud Forster, who didn’t usually participate in a recovery unless things got ugly, was speaking quickly into his headset. “Prowler six-two-three…” he said, and his face was made of stone. Steve knew that look.

And he knew whose plane Forster was talking about. Lamont was driving the Prowler, and whatever was going on had not been in the plans for tonight’s exercises. Forster was handling it, though, and Steve wasn’t about to interrupt his work. He would have stuck around, but when he looked at the deck again, he noticed Francine Atwater and the others following Rivera to the bomb farm. The PAO was nowhere in sight.

None of the civilians would sense the mounting tension, he realized, hurrying down to the deck. But Steve felt it buzzing like an electrical current through his whole body. Shit. He’d have to go round them up like a herd of cats. Your ass is grass, Rivera, Steve thought. And I’m John Deere.

But then he reminded himself that he was the one who was supposed to be in charge of Francine Atwater, and he’d walked away. As he headed toward the ordnance, he thought he saw sparks and a stream of smoke from an aircraft flare dispenser on the deck behind Rivera and the civilians.

He blinked and rubbed his glove across his goggles, and saw it again. They were too far away to hear a shouted warning. But he shouted, anyway, at the same time signaling flight-deck control to sound a fire alarm. During flight ops there was always a fire truck and a team of firefighters standing by with nozzles leading to water tanks and aqueous film-forming foam.

Rivera, who was closest to the dispenser, spun around. He cast about, looking for the source of the fire, and for a second Steve thought he might miss the smoke. Then Rivera grabbed the burning cylinder and headed for the edge of the flight deck. There was a crack like a rifle shot. Sparks and rockets ripped apart the night. Rivera rolled on the ground. His entire arm was a glowing torch.

Steve ran. When he reached the burning man, he plunged to his knees and ripped off his float coat. He used the vest to smother the flames on Rivera’s arm and back, screaming for a medic even though he knew he wouldn’t be heard. It didn’t matter. By now, everyone on the bow of the flight deck would have seen, and help would be on its way. He wanted to stay with Rivera, hold and reassure him, but the dispenser was still smoking. In the cylinder, the internal units were burning with an intensity Steve felt even from three feet away.

If it smokes, get rid of it. The most basic rule of fire control.

He grabbed the handle of the dispenser. His glove ignited and he roared in agony but refused to let go. The damned thing felt like it weighed a ton, yet somehow he managed to rush to the deck edge with it.

A blast of heat and light engulfed him. There was nothing under his feet, and he felt as though he’d been sucked into a tornado. Where the hell was the safety net? That was the only coherent thought he had as he was hurled through empty air. Yet curiously, he could distinguish only one sound through the rush of wind—a throaty and frantic baying sound from the navigation bridge.

It was the special alarm reserved for one of the most dreaded incidents of carrier operations—man overboard.

CHAPTER 2

Prowler 623/BuNo 163530

0015 hours

Landing in the pitch-dark on the moving deck of a carrier was a freaking nightmare. And Josh Lamont loved the fear with a feverish intensity that sometimes worried his flight crew. When he saw his name on the flight schedule, he felt that familiar sizzle of anticipation. Night exercises, multiple aircraft, every second a hairbreadth from death—heaven didn’t get any better than this.

The preflight brief and man-up had been as routine as brushing your teeth. The night was clear and a million; you could see forever. Outside the Prowler’s bubble canopy, he could see the stars and planets swirling past. Straight on and high, twin shooting stars slid down and disappeared.

Josh grinned inside his mask, knowing he’d seen something rare. The euphoria of flying allowed him to ignore the fact that he’d been strapped to an ejection seat for two hours and was about to come home to the bird farm for a night-arrested landing. He switched his radio frequency and picked up the off-key singing of Ron Hatch, one of the electronic countermeasures officers, who sat on his right and was belting out his third chorus of “Mary Ann Barnes.”

“She can shoot green peas from her fundamental orifice,” sang Hatch, “do a double somersault and catch ’em on her tits….”

Newman and Turnbull, the other two ECMOs seated behind them, sang along. They were older and more experienced than Josh. Newman, who sat behind Hatch, looked to be as old as Bennett himself, a veteran of the problematic cruise of the Kennedy in 1983.

As the junior officer of the crew, Josh added his voice to the noise. The song about the “Queen of All the Acrobats” was known to every Navy pilot, passed like a secret handshake through flight schools and training programs. Their voices were tinny strains through the headsets, crackling with good humor. Being on the carrier was like being trapped at Alcatraz—no escape, no place to hide. Going up on a mission to touch the stars was a two-hour recess.

Josh studied the view outside the Prowler’s bubble. The sky wasn’t black, but a rich and layered purple, misty with stars. He had dreamed about this all his life. Flying had been his driving passion since he was a boy. And not just any flying. Navy jets. He had done battle with his parents over his obsession and aimed himself like a missile at his goal. Growing up in urban upper-class Atlanta, he wasn’t supposed to be pilot material. His childhood had consisted of excruciatingly quiet dinners in a house you tiptoed through. He used to envy big families filled with kids and noise, a chaotic contrast to his own tense and lonely existence. Attending the Naval Academy had actually felt liberating compared to the stiff, invisible confines of his boyhood.

And now here he was, living the future he’d envisioned for himself. And yet, ironically, this cruise brought him face-to-face with the hidden past. With Steve Bennett, a man he never thought he’d meet.

And then there was Lauren, a woman he never thought he’d deserve. She was more than a passing fancy. She’d taken up residence inside him. She was part of the air he breathed, the dreams he dreamed. The one thing he loved more than flying.

He imagined her waking up, thinking of him, checking her e-mail to read the short, funny messages he sent from the ship. Just before the man-up, he’d checked his e-mail to find a hurried-sounding note from her: Please call right away. I need to talk to you. He didn’t have time to contact her before the mission. But as soon as he finished up here, he’d call. He couldn’t wait. He wanted to hear her voice saying the only thing he wanted to hear from her: Yes.

His thumb began to tremble and search the top of the control stick, manipulating the button to ensure that the jet would sail down the glide slope when the time came. Despite his intense concentration, he caught his mind wandering to Lauren again—the way she liked to be touched, the sound of her voice, the taste of her lips.

He should have pressed her for an answer before shipping out. But then he wondered, did he really want an answer from her? Flying Navy jets was a simple matter compared to loving a woman. All the same, he’d picked out a ring in Pattaya, Thailand.

As they neared their final approach, Hatch and company became all business.

“Don’t get fancy on us,” Hatch said. “Just do what you need to do. Better to be good than lucky.”

“Yeah,” said Josh. “But if you’re lucky, you don’t need to be good.”

“Be lucky on someone else’s watch.”

The ship was down there in the dark somewhere, too distant to see yet. He checked the horizon and the climb indicator to make sure he was level. Altitude eight thousand feet. Speed four-hundred-thirty knots. He made a series of other checks around the cockpit. He touched the Velcro fastening of a pocket on his G-suit—that was where he kept Lauren’s ring, for luck. Anything loose in the cockpit turned into a runaway missile during landing.

The approach controller gave him his new final bearing. The Prowler thundered down through three thousand feet. Josh’s gaze swept the instrument panel. According to the TACAN, the ship was steaming west-northwest at thirty knots. He came to idle, and the aircraft hung for a moment in an eerie, vaguely magical silence. Then he broke hard left to level the Prowler downwind of the ship. It was too dark to see the wake, but his instruments did the work, showing him lined up with the angled deck.

A couple of minutes passed. “Dirty up,” said the approach controller.

Josh pulled back on the throttle, lowered the handle, moved a lever down, hanging out his flaps, slats, gear and droops. Air screamed over the ailerons. Then he released the tail hook and scanned the panel again before calling in his landing checklist.

He was on full alert now, breathing hard, aware of everything with a strange clarity of sensation. He could feel the nylon webbing of the straps binding him to the ejection seat, the spongy pads of his earpieces, the jockstrap rim of the mask over his nose and mouth. He darted his gaze in a set pattern, his own way of checking the instrument readings.

“Prowler six-two-three, at five miles, lock on, call your needles.”

Josh compared his readings to the controller’s. His hands twitched over the stick and throttles. The tiny toy aircraft on the gyro listed to the right. He made a correction. “Boards out,” he said. “Landing check complete.” Adrenaline roared through him. He ought to be flying better. It was a bad time for doubts to poke at him, but he couldn’t help it.

He looked past the instrument panel. All he saw of the carrier was a misty yellow light. Not a damned thing more. He was three-quarters of a mile out and had to shift from scanning blessedly precise, crystal-clear instruments in the cockpit to focusing on the glowing meatball far below, the centerline of the deck and the angle of attack. It was like putting on the glasses of someone who was nearly blind.

“You’re okay. Easy as passing a camel through the eye of a needle. Make your ball call.”

“Six-two-three Prowler, roger ball, state five point five Lamont,” he said, telling the landing signal officer he’d seen the vertical light indicating the descent path, and that his aircraft had 5,500 pounds of fuel.

In order to land on the moving deck, he had to strictly control his glideslope, speed and centerline. The floating city of five thousand inhabitants, lit like a child’s Lite-Brite in the black sea, looked impossibly small. The fact that it was steaming away from him at thirty knots only made the ride more interesting.

Sweat tracked down between his shoulder blades, and he wondered if experienced pilots ever got used to this. Too high and he’d miss the wire and bolt off into the night again with barely enough fuel to make another pass. The slightest tip to one side risked a collision with a jet parked on the deck. A drift to the other side meant an unscheduled swim and the loss of a fifty-two-million-dollar aircraft. The LSO might wave him off two seconds before landing. If he came in too low, he’d hit the ramp and turn the plane and its crew into a fireball.

This is so cool, he thought.

His legs twitched and trembled uncontrollably on the rudder pedals. His lineup was good, or so he thought until the expressionless voice of the LSO came in through his headset. “You’re low, six-two-three. Power.”

Josh shoved his hand forward, overcompensating. The uncooperative nose of the aircraft reminded him that he was a rookie with fewer than fifty traps under his belt, not even a dozen at night.

“Take it easy,” said the soothing voice in his ear.

Then the emergency signal sounded. The LSO’s next order was not so soothing: “Red deck! Red deck! Power!” The vertical wave-off lights lit like a Christmas tree.

Josh rammed the throttles hard to the stops to firewall the engine. A red deck was closed to incoming aircraft, even those that were seconds from landing. He cut away and climbed back into the night. The plane shuddered like a live beast.

“Watch the PIO, nugget.”

Pilot-induced oscillation. “Got it. Not everybody wants to be a Blue Angel.” Josh concentrated on the climb, breaking the landing pattern. The plane shifted from side to side. “She’s yawing,” he said, flicking a glance at the instrument panel.

“The computer will correct it,” said Hatch.

“What the hell happened down there?”

“Fouled deck. Wait for instructions.”

A fouled deck could mean any number of things—an aircraft mishap, equipment left on deck, maybe personnel in the landing zone. For now, Josh could only worry about resuming the landing pattern and monitoring the fuel.

“Check your lineup.”

Even as he followed orders, Josh could see the lights of the “angel,” the carrier’s rescue helicopter, hovering like a benevolent guardian over the ship. Then the helo dipped and swept into a pattern he’d never seen before. Rescuing someone?

“Quit with the PIO, already,” Hatch repeated. Then, to the tower, he said, “Got a bit of a problem, Mother. How about you send a rescue helo out our way, just in case this nugget can’t get us down?”

“It’s not me,” Josh said. “Jesus, this plane is bent.” He wasn’t being defensive. The computer wasn’t making the proper corrections. The Prowler yawed hard to the right as though bent over a giant knee. Josh had never felt anything quite like it. The aircraft was in an uncommanded, uncontrolled, oscillating, full-rudder deflection.

He raised the gear handle and the plane pitched back to the left. That’s it, then, he thought as he took himself out of the landing pattern again and ordered the lead jet in the new pattern to get away.

“Vertical speed indicator just took a dip,” Hatch reported. Josh already knew this. The VSI was part of the ECMO’s instrument scan, but Josh was the pilot. It was all his business.

A negative dip. That was ejection criteria. The broadcast of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” sounded surreal.

With the radio squawking Emergency, he tried three more cycles, one after another. “I can’t control the rudders,” he reported in a voice that was icily calm. They were still climbing, and every man in the cockpit understood why, though none would speak of it aloud. If they had to eject, they would need the altitude.