Punk's War

by Ward Carroll

  Whatever adrenaline had kept Punk operating for the day was almost completely depleted now; normally smooth movements of his head, arms, and fingers were jerky and awkwardly deliberate. His eyes alternately and involuntarily locked onto and jumped between the altimeter, airspeed, RPM, and fuel flow gauges, and it took much longer than normal to register their readings. He felt the ache of lactic acid in his left forearm as he moved the throttles, and in his right hand as he adjusted his grip on the stick. The dull pain made him angry—angry about the crappy e-mail, angry about how dark it was, and angry about the effort they’d been forced to put into the last twelve hours of flying and twenty-four of being awake.

  Earlier in the day, about noon, in order to focus all efforts on the real threat to the east, the admiral begged the air wing out of their Operation Southern Watch commitment over Southern Iraq, much to the rescheduling heartache of the Air Force–led Joint Task Force–Southwest Asia in Saudi Arabia. Minutes later, the battle group commander also lost points in the NATO arena by canceling a war-at-sea exercise against a British destroyer.

  Then at 1300, Punk and Spud took to the air with thirty-four of their fellow aviators, including the helicopter crews. Throughout the day the CAP stations were manned and re-manned in a tag team process called “relief on station.” The off-going fighters were not permitted to leave station and return back to the Boat until the oncoming jets checked in on Strike.

  But the pace of each mission was such that as soon as the flight was established on station, pilots looked at watches as much as anywhere else, wondering when they could go back and land. They would drive in circles for an hour and a half and then be rewarded for their efforts with a night trap, generally considered by pilots as naval aviation’s most consistently terrifying task.

  At 0230, launch time for the follow-on event, Spud pogo’d between Departure and Strike, trying to verify that their reliefs were airborne and that soon they’d be able to head back. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibilities that if somebody didn’t make it for the next event, Punk and Spud would have to hit the tanker and stay up for another hour and a half, a prospect that Punk feared would, with its lack of stimulation, lower his IQ so much that he might not retain the mental faculties required to control the jet to a safe night landing. All he could think of now was arriving back on deck with all the big pieces still attached to the jet, climbing into bed, and getting some sleep.

  Bill Thompson and Biff reported airborne in Slinger 112 over Departure. One down, one to go. Minutes passed and the second jet didn’t check in, so Spud asked over base frequency, “Biff, where’s your wingman?”

  “You mean my flight lead? I dunno,” Biff answered. “XO, are you and Beads still on deck?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Beads responded. “We don’t even have the starboard engine running yet. The power plants guys are troubleshooting a fuel leak from the right nacelle. They’re telling me it doesn’t look good.”

  Awww shhhiiiitttt . . . If it wasn’t Murphy’s goddam law in action. Punk froze in disbelief.

  “Gents, we’re hard down,” the XO passed over squadron common. “We’re shutting down. Be safe out there.”

  “You know what we’ve gotta do,” Spud said over the intercom.

  “Yes, dammit,” Punk snapped back. “Let’s make sure, just in case.”

  “Hawkeye, Slinger one-oh-three,” Spud said over Strike.

  “Go ahead, Slinger,” the controller returned.

  “Assume Alpha Whiskey wants two-jet coverage at all times?”

  “Stand by . . . Alpha Whiskey, do you copy the question?”

  “That’s correct,” a new voice said, presumably that of the TAO on the cruiser or even Alpha Whiskey himself, the cruiser’s captain. “Two-jet coverage.”

  “One-zero-three’s relief went down on deck,” Spud explained. “We can double cycle, if required, but we’re going to need about eight thousand pounds of give to make it for another cycle.”

  “Hawkeye copies. We’ll coordinate. Stand by.”

  “One-twelve’s checking in and proceeding to station,” Bill Thompson said on Strike.

  “Fuzzy, you’re cleared to detach and head to Marshal,” Punk instructed on squadron common.

  “I’ll stay out here if you want, buddy,” Fuzzy offered halfheartedly.

  “Shut up and go get your night trap,” Punk said. Fuzzy couldn’t even fly loose defensive combat spread right now. He was in no better shape than Punk to suck up more flight time, and he certainly didn’t voice any strong counter to his flight lead’s direction.

  Fuzzy accelerated from behind them, positioned himself directly abeam, flicked his external lights twice and then began a lazy descent back toward the Boat. Punk watched his wingman disappear behind the canopy rail. Fuzzy and Turtle would be in their racks before him.

  His needs were meager now, he thought. He didn’t want riches, power or fame, just a few hours of sleep.

  Punk drew a big breath and moved around a bit in an attempt to rally for the task ahead. The selfless act of doing more than everyone else actually buoyed his spirits a bit. And let’s see those pussies Jordan works with do this . . .

  At the same time there was no denying his fatigue. His eyes stung, and he had to squint to focus on anything long enough for cognitive thought to take place.

  Spud, also showing signs of a long day, got tired of waiting for the tanker situation to work itself out and started calling the shots from his end. “Hawkeye, one-zero-three’s going to return overhead for Texaco. Switching Departure.” He switched the frequency before the controller could even think to voice an objection.

  Departure quickly revealed itself to be yet another chamber of confusion in the late-night house of horror and sleep deprivation. The air ops officer in the carrier’s traffic control center was arguing alternately over the radio with one of the S-3 pilots in a jet spotted just behind catapult one, and face-to-face with the S-3 squadron’s rep in the control center.

  “Seven-oh-three, are you ready to go flying or not?” the air ops officer asked on Departure.

  “Seven-zero-three is the spare, not the go bird,” the Viking pilot responded.

  “I know that. Answer the question.”

  “I have to finish my final checks. It’ll be a few minutes.”

  “Hurry up. We’re going to launch you as soon as you’re ready.”

  “One-oh-three’s up, looking for 8K give,” Spud interjected during the first dead air on the frequency.

  “Roger, one-zero-three. We don’t have your tanker airborne yet. Hold overhead at angels eight.”

  The air ops officer shifted his focus back to the lieutenant commander standing behind him. “Tell me again how much gas you’ve got airborne.”

  “Not enough to give one-oh-three 8K,” the lieutenant commander answered. “I’ve got 4K available in the off-going tanker up there now, but he’s got to cover this recovery.” This discussion was distasteful to him. He’d been reared in the S-3 community during the glory days of antisubmarine warfare. The end of the Cold War and a shrinking defense budget slowly shoved ASW to the back burner. Now with only three potentially hostile submarines in the region (Iranian Kilo Class boats that seldom ventured away from their home ports) the S-3’s primary utility was that of a carrier-based tanker. The service of providing gas was generally routine and without glory. They didn’t make movies about tanker guys, despite the fact that available fuel determined the “how” of carrier aviation: how many, how fast, how high, how far, and how long.

  “And I know I’m going to need the recovery gas for the recovery,” the air ops officer added. “There’s something about the thirteen-hour mark of an air plan. It’s the witching hour. We can fly a twelve-hour schedule no problem, but as soon as we go longer than that every pilot in the air wing goes brain dead.” He patted his ample belly in a self-satisfied fashion and then ran his fingers through his tight curly hair. The S-3 pilot noted the naval flight officer wings on the air ops o
fficer’s chest and the E-2-shaped projection on his belt buckle and wondered what the hell gave the commander any credibility to judge pilot performance. E-2 “moles” like this guy couldn’t even see outside as the airplane was brought aboard the carrier.

  The air ops officer turned back to study the profusion of information surrounding him.

  “What’s the divert,” the lieutenant commander asked, “and how far away is it?”

  “Al Jabar, Kuwait,” the air ops officer responded after a few moments of fishing the white letters out of one of his well-stocked data reservoirs. “Right now it’s one hundred twenty miles away.” Screens and monitors and televisions that accented the otherwise dark room in flickers of blue light surrounded them.

  The lieutenant commander took a swig from the styrofoam cup he was holding and observed, “You know, the S-3 was never really meant to be a tanker; it’s a sub killer. Our life would be a lot easier right now with big tankers: KC-10s and KC-135s.”

  “That’s true,” the air ops officer agreed as he sat back down in his ready room–style chair surrounded by vintage phones and comm boxes, equipment that told the history of the Boat almost as well as anything available in the public affairs officer’s files. “But, the Air Force wasn’t interested in flying through the night with us, so they’re all bedded down in their air-conditioned tents. They consider our little issue with Iran a force protection problem and not a theater concern, and I’m sure they said, ‘We’re here to support the operations in southern Iraq, not fly over the Gulf.”’

  “That reminds me of War College,” the lieutenant commander smirked with the tortured memory of one who’d spent some time in the joint arena. “The Air Force guys at school used to proclaim that the Navy caused as much trouble with our presence as we prevented. They claimed that 45 percent of our sorties were overhead.”

  “Actually, today that number would be a little low . . . by about 55 percent,” the air ops officer said with a wry smile in return. He put the red radio receiver back to his ear and refocused his attention to the situation on the flight deck. “Seven-oh-three, how’s it going?”

  “We’re taxiing to the cat now,” the pilot answered. “Should be airborne in two minutes.”

  “One-zero-three, do you copy?”

  “One-zero-three copies. Meet you at angels eight.”

  Two minutes turned into ten, and eventually the S-3 made it into the sky with the eight thousand pounds of gas they intended to pass to Slinger 103. The Viking didn’t have the power of the Tomcat, and it was another four minutes before its whiny turbofan motors were able to get the boxy airframe to altitude.

  On his left, Punk spotted the tanker’s distinctive green flasher stirring the inky murk below him, and he instructed the Viking pilot to pick up an orbit to effect a rendezvous. After another 80 degrees of turn, Punk was positioned on the tanker’s left wing, awaiting clearance from the S-3 pilot to plug into the refueling hose that was already streamed to its full forty-foot extension. The signal came: a circular motion with a red-lensed flashlight, and as Spud acknowledged the signal with the same motion of his own flashlight, Punk extended the refueling probe and slid back to maneuver into the drogue.

  It had been a week since Punk had tanked at night, and on his first attempt to plug into the basket, he missed completely. He backed away, re-stabilized, and approached again. The second time, he over-finessed the closure, caught one side of the drogue and sent it flinging above them. The assembly flung back and grazed the nose of the Tomcat as Punk was backing out.

  “Easy with it,” Spud interjected. “No hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “This is just pissing me off!” Punk yelled over the intercom. “I am definitely not in the mood for this.”

  Punk parked the jet ten feet behind the basket and made an effort to focus while he waited for the oscillations of the refueling hose to quit. He had startled himself with his anger, and he realized just how tired he was. He kept pushing the image of his dingy-but-soft pillow out of his consciousness.

  On the third approach, Spud took a more active role with verbal coaching. “Keep the closure coming,” he said over the intercom. “Good . . . keep it coming . . . up and right now, up and right . . . right, right . . . good plug.”

  Once in the basket with his refueling probe, Punk drove forward slightly in an effort to get the amber indicator on the tanker’s store to turn green, indicating good flow down the line. After ten seconds, the light remained amber. Spud saw the light and confirmed that the value on his fuel totalizer was not increasing.

  “One-oh-three’s not getting anything, Viking,” Spud said on Departure.

  “Roger, disconnect and we’ll recycle,” the S-3 pilot responded. Punk cursed under his breath for the wasted effort of a successful plug as he moved back to the tanker’s left side and watched the hose reel in and then run back out. “One-oh-three, cleared to engage.”

  Following another short jousting match, Punk was in the basket, and this time he was rewarded with a green light on the flow indicator. As Punk flew form on the S-3’s left horizontal stabilizer, Spud watched his fuel gauge roll up five hundred pounds, and then stop. The flow light switched back to amber.

  What the hell? “Viking, we got a little and then it stopped,” Spud said.

  “Yeah, go ahead and back out,” the S-3 pilot instructed. “Departure, it looks like our package is sour.”

  That wasn’t what the air ops officer needed to hear. The commander wheeled around and glared at the Viking rep as if he’d caused the malfunction. “What’s the problem with your air force?”

  “Excuse me, sir?” the lieutenant commander asked in return. “What? What did I do?”

  “You’re the squadron’s rep—”

  The air ops officer’s response was cut off by the sound of the first jet, a Hornet, down on the recovery. Over-propelled by a last-second burst of power commanded by the nugget pilot, the airplane bounced off the flight deck, sailed over the arresting wires, and boltered off the angle deck, trailing a shower of sparks from the tail hook’s scraping across the non-skid, like a match struck along the side of a matchbox.

  The in-house circuit buzzed a single blast, a signal reserved for the captain’s use. “Oh boy, here we go,” sighed the air ops officer. “The witching hour.” He picked the black receiver out of its brass holder and stammered a “Yessir.”

  “This can go to hell quick,” the captain said. From his chair on the port side of the bridge, five levels above the control center, he attempted to keep his finger on many pulses. He sat leaning heavily on his left elbow with the handset to his ear, alternately focusing out at the flight deck and the hundred points of reflective tape each marking a warm body in the darkness and inside around the handful of computer displays and navigational readouts that surrounded him.

  He was the “Boy Captain,” so named because he’d been promoted to the rank several years ahead of his peers and because he looked to be about twenty years younger than he actually was. He was average height but had a very muscular build and a head of free flowing brown hair that he had a habit of balling his fist into when he was stressed.

  “I copy that, Captain,” the air ops officer replied to the captain’s observation. “We’ve already got our tanker hawking that Hornet off the bolter.”

  “What’s the plan for the Tomcat overhead?”

  “We’re working that at the moment, sir. We may have to take him this recovery if he can’t get gas.” The roar of a Hornet snagging one of the arresting wires caused a momentary break in the conversation.

  “You’d better talk to the admiral’s staff and figure it out. Is my screen correct up here? Do we only have four thousand pounds of available gas in the air right now?”

  “That’s affirmative, sir.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “One of their jets broke on deck before the launch, and the other one went sour airborne.”

  “That’s not a lot of gas in the air.”
His right hand worked into his hair for the first time that night.

  “No, it’s not, sir.”

  “And we’ve still got six to recover. What’s the divert?”

  “Al Jabar.”

  “Oh, yeah, I see it up here. I’m still getting used to all these computer screens.”

  The air ops officer forced a laugh in response. “We can’t fight technology, Captain.”

  “Is it open?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Is the field at Al Jabar open?”

  A shot of adrenaline surged through the air ops officer’s portly body. He couldn’t remember if they’d coordinated with Air Force personnel at Al Jabar to keep the field open past the normal 2200 closing time. He quickly wrestled with what to tell the captain, knowing that anything other than, “Yessir, I took care of it,” was the wrong answer.

  “The flag staff wants to know when the Tomcat will be back on station,” a lieutenant in another corner of the control center called across the room. “They said the admiral feels vulnerable right now.”

  “We’re in the process of figuring it out, dammit,” the air ops officer shot back with his hand over the phone, still unsure of what to say to the captain. “The admiral feels vulnerable?” he mused aloud. “Try doing my job for a while.”

  “Air ops, did you hear my question?” the captain asked.

  “Oh, yessir. Um . . . I’m almost positive we checked with Al Jabar base ops earlier today, but I’ll call them and make sure they’re still open.”

  “Do that,” the captain said, and then dropped the connection at his end.

  “Sampson!” the air ops officer screamed at one of the enlisted men kibitzing around the lone coffee pot in the space. “It’s damage control time. Get on the phone to Al Jabar and tell them we need the field open through the night.”

  “Again?” the petty officer asked in return.

  “Again? What do you mean?”

  “Well, sir, I think Furlong called them earlier today. I read it in the log during my turnover.” The lanky sailor moved across the space and picked up a light green book with “Official Phone Record” scribbled on the front cover in black marker. “Let’s see . . . yeah. Here it is: ‘Called Al Jabar base ops to keep field open.’”