The Trojan Sea Page 22

  “Until he dies,” she repeated. She thought for a moment. “Like in assassination?”

  “Definitely not. If that happened, the Cubans would make him a martyr and turn the revolución into a holy crusade.”

  L.J. stood in front of the whiteboard and contemplated her chart.

  “There has to be a way,” she murmured.

  Marsten came to his feet, his knees still a little wobbly from what L.J. had shown him. He waved a hand at the board. “Don’t even think about this. Too dangerous.”

  “Keep all our options open. All of them.” She watched him leave and returned to the board. “Here’s to the revolution,” she said. Another thought came to her, and she buzzed Marsten’s office. “Lloyd, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. Why don’t we send everyone home at noon and come back Monday?” He agreed, and she resumed pacing the floor, glancing at the empty blocks in her flowchart. She darted to the third, and still empty box, and wrote “Castro removed in disgrace.” She sat down and savored her handiwork. Only one block remained to be filled in.

  All she had to do was find something that could make it happen.

  Newport News

  A rare feeling of contentment worked its way through Jane. Normally she felt so at peace only at sea following a rough night when a vibrant sunrise cracked the horizon with the promise of another day of God’s grace. She was not a religious person and seldom thought about spiritual matters, but there was an order in the universe that was with Stuart’s family as they gathered for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. She held Stuart’s hand as Shanker murmured a blessing. He ended his prayer with “And please save us from that misguided creature in the White House.”

  Martha, Stuart’s mother, gave her husband a warning look and told him to start carving the turkey. “What was that all about?” Jane asked in a low voice.

  “Dad hates President Turner,” Stuart answered. “I don’t think he can handle the idea of a woman being the commander in chief of the armed forces.” Jane mentally categorized Shanker as an old grouch with nothing better to do than complain. She dropped the subject, remembering how her grandfather would go on endlessly about President Nixon, until finally they couldn’t take the old man anywhere.

  Across the table, Chalky Seagrave, the English Lightning pilot, was thoroughly taken with Maggot’s fiancée, a pretty, vivacious, but slightly overweight woman from Missouri named Mary. Maggot sat on the other side of his bride-to-be and just smiled a lot. Stuart’s son, Eric, kept wiggling in his chair, excited about what Friday might bring.

  “Do you think the weather will be okay?” he asked for perhaps the tenth time.

  “Eric,” Stuart said in exasperation, “we’ve been over this I don’t know how many times.”

  “It’s okay,” Seagrave said. “I remember my first flight in a jet. I didn’t sleep for two nights.” He looked at Eric. “There’s a weather update at eighteen hundred hours. We’ll check it then.” His bright blue eyes twinkled. “My guess is that you won’t be sleeping much tonight.”

  “Then we’re going, we’re going!” Eric shouted.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Seagrave told him. “I want at least a five-thousand-foot ceiling and ten miles visibility before we take off.”

  Maggot cocked his head, thinking. Federal aviation regulations called for a thousand-foot ceiling and three miles forward visibility under VFR, visual flight rules. “Are those your personal weather minimums?” he asked.

  “Which are the highest in the world,” Shanker kidded. “It makes you wonder how the blokes ever crawled out from under the rocks and built Stonehenge, much less took off in an airplane.”

  “I’ll think about that,” Seagrave said, giving as good as he got, “when I buzz the field. Of course, you will be watching from your normal position on top of the rocks, yes?”

  “Boys, boys,” Martha said, warning the two to stop.

  Seagrave, always with an eye for a pretty woman, explained it all to Mary. “Since we’re flying for fun and not to frighten ourselves, I want decent weather. No need to challenge the gods of flying.” He winked at Eric. “Right?”

  “Right!” the twelve-year-old answered.

  Jane squeezed Stuart’s hand. “Eric will be in good hands,” she whispered. Stuart gave a little nod, accepting the truth of it. However, he was still worried about his only son going up for a ride in the Lightning. But Eric had worked hard as member of the ground crew and had been there for every takeoff and landing when others had gone up. Now it was his turn.

  “It’ll be all right,” Shanker said. “Chalky’s a damn good pilot.” Seagrave laughed. “This from Shanker? Will wonders never cease?”

  Eric was up early the next morning and checked the weather. Disappointment crashed over him like a tidal wave when he heard that there was a heavy cloud deck at four thousand feet moving in off the Atlantic. “Not to worry,” Shanker told him. “It often lifts, and we should have five thousand feet by noon.” Martha went along with the amateur forecast and packed a picnic lunch for them to take to the hangar. “I love cold turkey sandwiches,” Shanker announced. The four men—Shanker, Seagrave, Maggot, and Stuart—allowed Eric to hustle them out to the car. Jane stayed behind with Martha and Mary to work on details for the wedding, which was scheduled for late January.

  The hangars on the general-aviation side of the airport were alive with activity that morning as the men who called themselves the Gray Eagles gathered. They were an odd collection bound together by a love of old airplanes and their latest acquisition, the Lightning. But they were not alone and shared the hangar complex with an Experimental Aircraft Association chapter, whose members built their own aircraft. There was a lot of good-natured kidding and rivalry between the two groups, but they always worked together, sharing advice, tools, building skills, and lies.

  When the Stuart family and Seagrave arrived that Friday morning, there was a rush of activity around the hangar. They watched as the Lightning was tugged outside between two hangars and parked next to a white Legend, a small kitplane that bore an uncanny resemblance to a World War II P-51 Mustang fighter. But unlike its famous predecessor, the Legend was much smaller, just under twenty-six feet long with a twenty-eight-foot wingspan. While the Legend sat on tricycle landing gear and was not a tail-dragger like the famous Mustang, there was no doubting its heritage. Hidden under the sleek cowling was a Walter 657 shaft horsepower turbine engine, which gave it a performance rivaling the old fighter.

  The owner and builder of the Legend was a solid person, in both physique and reputation. He was a family man, a respected member of the community, and active in the Rotary Club. As a young man he had dreamed of flying high-performance fighters, but family pressure and an early marriage had forced him into the family business, where he had acquired a large fortune and a small potbelly. Nearing retirement, he had finally pursued his dream and built the Legend. He was a good pilot, safe enough, and knew his limitations. But deep inside, Hank Langston was a teenager who had never grown up, only old, and still dreamed of fighting the good fight. Consequently, and lacking a son of his own, he had semi-adopted Eric, and the two had become good friends.

  “Is today the day?” Hank called when he saw Eric. The twelve-year-old boy gave him the traditional thumbs-up. “Well,” Hank said, “whenever you want to fly in a real airplane, give me a call.”

  A TV reporter and cameraman drove up to shoot a special on Hank for a local TV station. When the reporter saw the two aircraft sitting side by side, he wanted to contrast the Legend against the overpowering Lightning. The Gray Eagles readily agreed, and soon the reporter was interviewing everyone in sight. He faked a deep envy when Eric told him he was going up for a ride in the Lightning, if the ceiling would only lift. The cameraman maneuvered to record Eric being strapped into the passenger seat while Shanker explained how the electrically operated seat had plenty of adjustment to accommodate even a boy who was just over five feet tall.

  Eric was still sitting in the cockp
it when Seagrave climbed into the seat next to him. “The weather is cooperating, and we’ve got five thousand feet,” he announced. “Let’s do it before Mother Nature changes her mind.” He laughed at the smile on Eric’s face. The Gray Eagles sprang into action and tugged the jet out to the main taxiway, where it was safe for engine start. Even at idle, the jet thrust reached back over a hundred feet and could do harm. The TV reporter followed as Harry gave a running monologue on what Eric must be feeling or, at least, what he would be feeling. The starting whine of number one, the engine mounted on top, drowned out any further conversation.

  They all walked to the edge of the parking ramp to watch the Lightning take off. Shanker tuned his handheld radio to the tower frequency for the TV crew as Stuart shifted his weight from foot to foot. He envied his father and brother their cool calm as worry nagged him, eating away at his confidence. Eric is my only child, he thought, now sorry that he’d let him go. I should be worried.

  “Did you see that kid smile?” Shanker said.

  Maggot laughed. “See it? I heard it all the way over here.”

  The TV camera dutifully recorded their remarks. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” the reporter asked.

  Shanker shrugged as if only an idiot wouldn’t know what was happening. “They’ve taken the active runway, and we should hear the tower clear them for takeoff.” On cue, the tower cleared them. “Chalky’s running the engines up and should release brakes about now.” The Lightning started to move, slowly accelerating. A sharp crack echoed over the small group when Seagrave lit the afterburners. “He’s stroked the reheats,” Shanker explained as the Lightning rapidly accelerated. “Reheat is bloke talk for the afterburners. At a hundred and fifty knots he’ll pull smoothly back on the control column—there he goes—and come unstuck between one seventy-five and one eighty knots.” The men watched in silence as the jet lifted off and the flaps and landing gear came up.

  Shanker nodded in approval, his face a study of envy, pride, and remembrance. “Watch this,” he said. The Lightning pitched up into a steep climb and disappeared through a big hole in the clouds. “He’s climbing out at four-fifty knots, point nine Mach.” With the Lightning out of sight, the cameraman focused on Shanker’s face. “His initial climb is probably around fifty thousand feet a minute, but he’ll lose that real quick. He’ll level off around thirty-five thousand feet in about four and a half minutes.”

  “I’m impressed,” Maggot muttered under his breath, also a little envious. He flew A-10s, and while he loved the jet, the Warthog did nothing fast.

  They listened to the radio as the tower cleared the Lightning to switch frequencies to Norfolk Approach Control. “What happens now?” the TV reporter asked.

  “He’ll head out over the ocean, perform a few flight checks, probably give Eric a little stick time, and then come back down for some pattern work before landing.”

  “How long will they be up?” the reporter asked.

  Shanker ran the numbers. “We topped off the internal and wing tanks, no external fuel tanks, so that’s ninety-one hundred pounds of fuel. Probably be on the ground in forty to forty-five minutes with sixteen hundred pounds of fuel remaining.”

  “That doesn’t seem like a lot of time,” the reporter said.

  Shanker gave him a condescending look. “This isn’t an airliner.”

  I’ve got to trust them, Stuart thought. He scanned the sky and frowned. The high ceiling seemed much more ominous than just a few moments before. “Maggot,” he muttered, “the clouds seem thicker. How’re they gonna get back down?”

  “No biggie,” Maggot said. “If he can’t find a break to descend, he can call for an instrument approach with Norfolk Approach. Piece of cake.” The cameraman never swung his Betacam around, but he did record the conversation.

  The Lightning tipped and rolled as Seagrave put the jet through its paces, never flying straight and level for more than a few seconds. The old skills came back with a rush and, for a few moments, he was in a fighter pilot’s heaven. “Wow!” Eric shouted over the intercom when the horizon was finally where it should be.

  “You want to try it?” Chalky asked. Eric nodded, and Seagrave turned the controls over to the boy. “I’ll talk you through an aileron roll.”

  “Can I do that?” Eric asked.

  “Sure, why not? You’re not an airline pilot, are you?” Eric shook his head, his smile a mile wide under his oxygen mask. “It’s real easy,” Seagrave explained. “Hold the stick lightly, that’s it, and snap it smartly to the right, always holding a little back pressure to keep the nose up, but don’t hold it over, and you need to center it back up so the old girl will stop rolling. Okay, you do it.”

  Eric moved the control column to the right, and the Lightning performed as advertised. “I can’t believe I did it! It was so easy!”

  “That’s because the Lightning is very maneuverable,” Seagrave explained. “It’s like we’re balanced on the point of a needle.”

  “Doesn’t that mean it’s unstable?” Eric asked.

  “Instability is the handmaiden of maneuverability.” He hoped the boy understood.

  “I get it,” Eric said. Before he could say more, Seagrave held up a hand, cutting him off. The generator caption light was glowing red on the standard warning panel. The TURB, AC, and GEN warning lights on the auxiliary warning panel flicked on, then off, then on again. Seagrave throttled back smoothly and flipped the generator switch to standby. Now the CPR—cabin-pressure warning—caption on the standard warning panel caught his eye.

  “We have a burst air duct,” he told Eric. Nothing in his voice indicated his worry. He immediately switched the generator to the emergency position, knowing this would tell him where the air duct had burst. Fortunately, the inverter had gone to standby, so his MRG—master reference gyro—was still on-line. He selected the inverter to its standby position, hoping that it would continue to function.

  “Well, Eric, like the astronauts say, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ Let’s just say it’s semi-serious. But we don’t panic. While I sort it out, would you take a look at the flip cards I gave you? Then we can double-check all my actions.” Eric reached for the packet of Flight Reference Cards in his flight-suit pocket while Seagrave ran the emergency checklist from memory, one of the abilities that mark a fighter pilot.

  The generator light on the standard warning panel had gone out, which confirmed his gut reaction that they had a burst air duct. Checking, he noted that after switching the generator to emergency, he still had TURB, AC, and GEN warnings on the auxiliary warning panel. This was bad news, for it meant the reheat nozzles would be fully open, giving him a power loss of some 40 percent. While this was no sweat with both engines running, it was something he could have done without. Now he took action for the AC failure: pressed the AC reset. Damn, no joy. The warnings remained.

  The inverter and pitot heater were set to the standby position. He didn’t want the ASI—airspeed indicator—to fail due to icing when he penetrated the cloud cover below them. Off with the autopilot master switch, radar off, and now scan the standby ASI. At least that was working. What else? No speed strip, Tacan lost, IFF failed, fuel-vent heaters not working, no windscreen heaters. The canopy blower for demisting was out, along with the JPT—the jet-pipe temperature controllers that automatically regulated the exhaust temperatures. Must keep a careful eye on engine temperatures, he reminded himself.

  When he was done, Seagrave had Eric read the checklist from the flip cards just in case he had missed an action. But he’d gotten it right the first time. “You’re the cool one,” he told Eric, paying the boy a true compliment.

  Seagrave was about to key the radio when the generator light on the standard warning panel flashed on. The doll’s-eye warning indicator for the inverter flickered, and the master reference gyro tumbled. He immediately pressed the generator reset, but there was no response. Now they really had problems—just battery power to get them home. He immediately dumped all the main
electrical loads, the DC fuel pumps first, and switched the pitot heater to standby power.

  Now Seagrave made his only mistake. He should have declared an emergency with Air Traffic Control. But his experiences with the British Civil Aviation Agency had made him distrustful of all bureaucrats, and he didn’t want the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency using this emergency as an excuse to ground the Lightning. He owed the Gray Eagles at least an effort to avoid that. Besides, if the situation got any worse, he could declare an emergency then. And his being a fighter pilot, there was no doubt in his mind that he could safely land with minimal assistance.

  He keyed the radio. “Norfolk Approach, Lightning One RTB at this time for a precautionary landing.”

  Shanker turned up the volume of his handheld radio the moment he heard Approach Control answer Seagrave’s radio call announcing he was returning to base. Because of the range, he could hear only Approach’s transmissions and not what Seagrave was saying. The TV reporter caught it immediately and told his cameraman to focus on Stuart. “This could be hot,” he said under his breath before moving next to Shanker so he could pick up the radio calls.

  “What’s wrong?” Stuart asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” Maggot answered.

  The radio squawked at them as the approach controller asked for the nature of the problem. “Copy you have a burst air duct and AC turbine failure,” the approach controller repeated.

  Stuart was almost screaming. “What’s that mean?”

  “Electrical problems,” Maggot answered. “Take it easy. Happens all the time. Chalky can handle it.” He looked at Shanker and motioned him to step away to where they could talk in private. The cameraman zoomed in on them, wishing he could pick up the sound.

  When they were out of microphone range, Maggot asked, “What’s he lost?”

  “He’s lost his AC bus,” Shanker explained, “which means all his nav aids and the IFF.” He ran down the list of AC-powered electrical systems the Lightning had lost. It was extensive. “The generator has picked up some of the load.”