The Mary Jane Mission Page 4

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the two pilots replied automatically.

  “This is starting to piss me off!” MacDonald said. “I want to know what’s out there. Dismissed.”

  Once the pilots left, MacDonald slumped into his chair. He was trying to sort out the events in his mind. The USAF claimed they were not sending up any of their aircraft in the early morning hours when the sightings occurred. In addition, Fifi, the B-29, had not been flying for three days, and the way things were going it might not even be ready for its Tinian reunion flight, now only five days away. According to the pattern, the next sighting was due at approximately oh-two-hundred tomorrow or the next day and should be off the island of Agrihan. MacDonald shook his head.

  The whole thing was just too nutty. What the hell was out there?

  * * * *

  USS MIDWAY

  On the moonlit deck, Les and the plane captain checked the F-18 Hornet over. No leaks, no wrenches left in the intakes, none of the little things that could kill a pilot. No cracks on the tires or wings. The two satisfied, Les confidently climbed the ladder and slid into the cockpit.

  He ran through the checklist, a handwritten set of notes on a piece of cardboard that he kept on his knees. He pressed the correct buttons for the navigation system, the radio, and on down the line... Then the deck crew gave him the all-clear. He fired up the engines, left to right. With the engines at idle, he waited for the crew to clear the parking chains and chocks. A young sailor in yellow — A Yellow Shirt — directed him by flashlight to the launch spot on Number One catapult. The Blue Shirts, complete with blue wands, scanned the F-18s control surfaces.

  On the catapult, the hook-up man attached the launching bar on the nose gear into the shuttle. Then a Green Shirt took over and checked the holdback bar and its attached bolt, which would let loose only once the F-18 left the deck.

  The on-deck speakers aboard USS Midway blared to life. “LAUNCH ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AND ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR! LAUNCH ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AND ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR!”

  Green flashlight in right hand and red flashlight in left hand, the catapult officer directed Les. The officer zig-zagged the green light side to side. Les advanced the throttles to full. The Hornet’s power wrenched against the holdback. While he pressed on the rudder pedals, the Blue Shirts checked to see that the rudders operated properly left to right.

  Les watched for the catapult officer to move the green flashlight down, the signal for the pilot to push the throttles beyond the military range and onto afterburner. The light went down. Les lit the afterburners. The Hornet wrenched even more against the holdback. The hook-up man performed a final check on the launching bar and bolt. It was his job to do the final crawl under the aircraft before launching. He had a very dangerous assignment. If the bar wasn’t attached properly, he could be run over by the aircraft. If he so much as moved the wrong way after crawling out, he could be sucked into the engine intake.

  The scream of the full-throttled engines in his ears, Les saluted the catapult officer, then prepared himself. He glanced to his left at Runsted in his own F-18 on the other catapult. The mighty sound of four powerful engines could be heard for miles on the open sea. The two unarmed Hornets had been modified on Guam, each carrying an AAS-38 forward-looking infra-red pod on the port side, and a Martin-Marietta Laser Spot Tracker/Strike Camera on the starboard side, on the two positions otherwise occupied by Sparrow missiles.

  Les looked up to his right, at the high, dimly lit superstructure. Inside was the Air Boss with his Flyco staff at the Flying Control Position. Below the superstructure, in the Goofer’s Gallery walkway, where one could watch the deck proceedings in safety, were several deck crewmen dressed in their appropriate colored jackets. Only minutes before the yellow- and green-coated crewmen had been busy preparing Runsted and Les for the launch, once the Hornets had been brought up from below the elevators and spotted on the catapults. Now, these crewmen were squatting in the safety area between the two catapults. At the thumbs-up signal of the hook-up man, Les switched on his red and green navigation lights, which disclosed to all that he was ready.

  The deck island lights turned green. Below deck, high-pressure steam built up in the steam receiver. The catapult fire button was pressed. The launch valves that regulated the thrust of the catapult with the exact amount of steam for Les’s F-18 were opened.

  The launch pushed Les’s head back into his seat. The G-forces left him dizzy for a split second, until he was clear of the deck. He had just been propelled from zero to one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour in under two seconds. He remembered to keep his chin slightly down so that he could read the instruments and react in an emergency. Over the water, his wings grabbed the night air. He brought the nose up a few degrees, then the wheels and flaps up. RPM, fuel, oil pressure, hydraulics, registered normal. No surprise emergency lights on the right and left warning panels.

  “BULLDOG, ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AIRBORNE.”

  “ROGER ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. SWITCH TO CHANNEL TEN.”

  “WILCO,” Les replied.

  The aircraft climbed rapidly. He leveled off at 2,000 feet.

  “BULLDOG TO ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. TARGET ON HEADING THREE-FOUR-NINE. ANGELS THREE. ONE-NINETY KNOTS. RANGE — TWELVE MILES.”

  “ROGER BULLDOG. ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE OVER.”

  Launched a few seconds after Les, Runsted came up off Les’s starboard wing, some 100 feet away.

  “ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE, ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR READY FOR THE HUNT. ARE WE LOOKING FOR A UFO, HULK?”

  “QUIET,” Les barked. “SPREAD OUT TO 300 YARDS. CLIMB TO ANGELS THREE. WE’RE ALMOST ON THE TARGET.”

  “ROGER, ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE.”

  Through scattered cloud, Les was soon closing in on four red-hot exhausts. He lightly punched the radio transmitter. “ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE TO BULLDOG. COMING UP ON BOGIE’S SIX.”

  With the aid of a camera connected to the radar, the Hornet’s FLIR recorded for Les a positive identification six miles from the bogie, even before a visual was made. By selecting a 12x12 degree field of view on the throttle, a clear picture at night burned onto the radar display, the unmistakable outline of a four-engine aircraft. He closed down the field of view to 3x3 degree, an image magnification of four times. He recognized the aircraft immediately. He had seen pictures of the same type in his father’s World War II album. A Boeing B-29 Superfortress. It had to be Fifi.

  But why out here, this far from Guam? This — the B-29 — was the source of all the trouble?

  “ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR TO ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. SEE WHAT I SEE? WHAT GOES ON HERE? THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE? OVER.”

  “I DON’T KNOW. LET’S GET CLOSER. EASE UP AT 500 YARDS.”

  “ROGER.”

  At 500 yards away, the pilots brought back the throttles to a slow 195 knots, Les off the B-29s tail at eight o’clock level, Runsted at four o’clock low.

  But before they could make radio contact with the target, they saw tracers in the night.

  “GEEZ, HULK, THE CRAZY GUYS ARE SHOOTING AT ME! LOOK AT THE TRACERS. DAMN, THEY GOT GUNS ABOARD!”

  “BREAK! BREAK!” Les replied. “I’LL GO IN.”

  Runsted shoved the throttles forward and quickly broke down and away, his afterburners blazing red-orange in the night. In seconds, he was far out of range, only a speck. Les pushed on his throttles and shot the fighter past the bomber’s port wing, missing by 100 feet, all the time keeping a heavy thumb on the column’s photo button.

  * * * *

  INSIDE THE B-29

  “COMMANDER TO TAIL GUNNER. ANY MORE ACTION OUT THERE?” the pilot asked over the intercom.

  “NO, SIR.”

  “DON’T BE SO TRIGGER-HAPPY.”

  “I DIDN’T GET A REAL GOOD LOOK AT THEM, COMMANDER. WHEN THEY CAME PAST I THOUGHT THEY WERE BAKA BOMBS AT FIRST. THEN THEY BURST AWAY AT ONE HELL OF A SPEED, LIKE THEIR ENGINES WERE ON FIRE.”

  The commander hit the intercom again. “COMMANDER TO CREW. GET A HOLD OF YOURSELVES. WE CAN’T FOUL UP
ON THIS. STOP AND THINK. THERE’S NOTHING BUT OCEAN OUT HERE.”

  “BUT I KNOW WHAT I SAW, SIR,” the tail gunner pleaded.

  The co-pilot looked over. “I saw something, too,” he said.

  The commander frowned. “NAVIGATOR?”

  “YES, SIR.”

  “DO YOU HAVE THAT NEW COURSE FOR IWO YET?”

  “YOUR NEW COMPASS HEADING SHOULD BE THREE-FOUR-EIGHT, COMMANDER.”

  “STEERING THREE-FOUR-EIGHT.” The pilot-commander glanced at his compass and confirmed by adjusting his course. “HOW FAR TO IWO?”

  “FOUR HUNDRED AND SIX MILES, SIR. AT PRESENT GROUND SPEED WE SHOULD BE THERE IN APPROXIMATELY ONE HOUR AND FIFTY-EIGHT MINUTES.”

  “ROGER. COMMANDER OUT.”

  The commander glanced behind and to his right at the flight engineer. The commander shot his right hand in the air — a slight wave — and smiled. In forty minutes, the flight engineer’s mechanical handiwork would be needed. The flight engineer merely nodded, then resumed his duties, facing aft at his instrument panel.

  Bent over the Mercator map at his desk with calipers and pencil, the navigator finished plotting the B-29s position by performing a double-check of his figures. First, he took the true course, which was the direction of the bomber measured in degrees. They were heading nearly due north. He took into consideration the wind direction, from the right in this case, and he added the figure to the true course to obtain the true heading. Next, he took the recorded minimal magnetic variation of that area of the Pacific and added it in, thus giving him the magnetic heading. He knew the bomber’s deviation — the error in the plane’s compass due to such things as radio disturbances — was zero. As a result, he now had the compass heading. Throughout the mission, he would give the commander compass reading changes on which the commander would turn.

  In the process of making more calculations, the navigator was careful to differentiate between the True Air Speed (TAS) and Ground Speed (GS). He read the TAS off the airspeed indicator. The GS he calculated by pinning down his location, then dividing by time. He determined that in the last thirty minutes the B-29 had flown exactly 102.5 nautical miles.

  Satisfied, he inserted the information in his log.

  Time: 0202 local

  Position: 14 miles NW Asuncion

  True Course: 341

  Drift Correction: +7

  True Heading: 348

  Variation: +1

  Magnetic Heading: 349

  Deviation: -

  Compass Heading: 349

  Temperature: +21

  Altitude: 3000 feet

  TAS: 216 knots

  GS: 205 knots

  Distance to Iwo Jima: 406 miles

  Time: 0158

  ETA: 0402

  * * * *

  USS MIDWAY

  Carrier landings were always tricky business. Les knew it. He had never liked night landings, although he did consider them a worthy challenge, like pricking an Arizona rattler’s tail. What was to enjoy in landing on a dark, pitching flat-top, often in windy and rainy conditions? It was enough to make at least a few aviators pack in the navy for good. Tonight, however, a full moon would make it a notch easier. Moonlight helped to ascertain the horizon, that sometimes unidentifiable separation between sea and sky. Les remembered two pilots in the last few years who had quit because of treacherous recoveries. This would be his hundred and thirtieth landing. Or trap, as they called it. He was hoping for an OK mark from the LSO — the Landing Signals Officer — who stood to the port side of the deck, directing the incoming pilots. The grade, whatever it would be, would be displayed next to his name on the ready room chart. OK was equal to an A-plus. He didn’t want anything to do with the inferior marks of Fair (not that good but safe), No Grade (dangerous for the pilot, crew, and carrier), and Cut (lousy, unsafe, could have resulted or did result in a serious accident).

  Les switched the Hornet to the ACLS, the Automatic Carrier Landing System, also known as Mode One. He was over nine miles from the ship. The onboard computer would now take over and bring the fighter in at a sink rate of 600 feet per minute on a “hands-off” approach.

  “DEAD CENTER ON THE GLIDEPATH, ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. BRING HER IN,” the approach controller said over the radio.

  Les took over the controls at one mile and continued to bring the Hornet down, coming in at a four-degree glidescope. The visibility over the nose and the angle of attack in a Hornet was excellent. Every little bit helped in a carrier landing.

  Midway’s deck, only 600 feet away, was unlit except for a series of lights along the edges and down the center line. The strategy on carriers in general was to aim the fighter’s arrester hook at the third wire. Too low and Hulk would bang into the stern. Too far left or right and he’d hit parked aircraft. Too high and he’d have to settle for a “bolter,” or go-around. Landing on Midway was especially tough because she had only three wires, as opposed to the bigger flat-tops, which contained six. In case he was forced to try again, he was coming in at standard procedure for navy pilots — full military power and full flaps. Minutes before, Hulk had been ordered to dump several thousand pounds of fuel into the ocean to lighten the load and make for an easier touch down.

  Les picked up the orange ball on the landing sight, to the deck’s port side. The green optical lights on the Fresnel lenses were in line. He had the right altitude and his wings were level. The deck raced towards him. Then he felt a solid thunk and a quick jolt to the body.

  The wire caught.

  He made it. Number 130. The hook runner sprinted up to the fighter and with a hand motion let the deck operator know that the fighter was OK to pull backwards to disengage the tail hook. Les knew how rough the hook runner’s job was. It was only one year earlier on the same carrier that Les had seen an F-18 break loose from the arresting wire upon landing. The wire had cut the legs off the hook runner. The pilot had been so shaken he quit the navy.

  When he climbed down the retractable boarding ladder, Les saw the silhouette of Tiger’s Hornet, several hundred feet out, halfway on the downwind path. He noted wind gusts across the deck. The green-coated ground crew quickly pulled Les’s fighter away to one side. From behind the barricade below the superstructure, he turned to watch Runsted on final.

  “You’re too high, you dope,” Les said to himself, as his eyes went from the landings lights to Runsted’s fighter, coming in full power. “You’re too high.”

  Then as Tiger neared the deck, he lit the afterburners and pulled the Hornet’s nose up. Over the sea, he banked to port. Les shook his head. Try again, pal.

  * * * *

  The two pilots met a short time later by Runsted’s recovered Hornet, just as the deck crew circled it.

  “I couldn’t control her.”

  “Crosswind?” Les asked.

  “Yeah.” Runsted frowned as he rested his hand on the nose of the F-18. Then, something caught his attention. A hole in the metal. He stuck a finger through it. “Geez, will you look at that,” he said, frustration in his voice.

  “That’s a bullet hole,” Les responded.

  “Yeah, fifty caliber.”

  The two checked the aircraft over for other holes. None. The crew hooked the fighter up and towed it away, as the pilots stood there.

  “What are we going to tell the captain, Hulk?”

  “Simple,” Les replied quickly. “We’ll just tell him... a B-29 shot at us.”

  “Sure. Hell, yeah. Why not?”

  * * * *

  GUAM

  Captain MacDonald arrived in his Agana, Guam office before sunup to examine the infrared photo-reconnaissance pictures. He swiftly closed the door behind him, then flicked on the deck lamp before he sat down. He carefully opened the sealed envelope and laid the eight-by-ten photos on his desk.

  He grunted aloud.

  So... damn... it was the B-29. Is this what he was woken for at four in the morning? However, his irritation vanished once he took a second look. This was really strange. The bomber’
s markings weren’t Fifi’s.

  What the hell?

  Chapter five

  TINIAN ISLAND

  Robert and Edna Shilling checked into the busy lobby at the Fleming Hotel, in the village of San Jose. There they received their reunion paraphernalia consisting of name tags, brochures on the 509th Composite Group and information on the island as it was today. And, of course, a room key.

  Looking around the lobby and recognizing a few people, even remembering some names, Robert suggested that they drop the bags in the room and come back down.

  They just got inside the room when the phone rang. Robert sat on the bed and went for the receiver.

  “Dad, it’s Les.”

  Robert broke into a smile, glancing up at Edna. “Hi, son.”

  “Sorry I missed you at the airport. I hope Gail took care of you.”

  “She did. No problem. Don’t you have the perfect timing.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We just got into our room. So I heard you were on some exercise out to sea.”

  Les chuckled. “Talk about timing, huh. So, when will I see yuh?”

  “We’ll be back on Guam in — let’s see — four days. Saturday morning. Arriving at nine.”

  “Right. We’ll save the talk for the weekend, OK?”

  “OK, son.”

  “See you Saturday. Have a good time. Can you put mom on?”

  “You bet.”

  * * * *

  While his wife took a shower, Robert pinched his name tag to his shirt and went downstairs to the cocktail lounge. About thirty people were casually milling about. At the bar, he took the last seat, and ordered a scotch and soda. Feeling a tap on the shoulder, he turned around quickly.

  “Bob?” The voice came from a short, well-dressed man, bald on top, a cleft chin, and supporting a large stomach. He had what appeared to be a scotch-on-the-rocks in his hand.