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Navy fighter pilots flew the ball every time they landed, on land as well as sea, just to keep their skills up. It was this specialized ability that allowed them to bring their twenty-ton, swept-wing fighters down to the heaving, slickened, ludicrously minuscule decks of aircraft carriers—right on target. It was what made naval aviators different from their counterparts on the rest of the planet.

  So they practiced incessantly. They practiced flying the ball even when they were landing on a thirteen thousand foot runway, as Chip Van Doren and Slab Bacon were doing today. To a Navy fighter pilot, it was the most important skill in aviation. Weapons delivery, air combat maneuvering, formation flying—those were all items of business necessary to carry out your mission. Flying the ball was something more vital. It meant getting home alive.

  Chip Van Doren had the same trouble every new pilot had trying to fly the ball: He over-controlled. The tendency, at first, was to jam on too much power to correct a descent, causing the ball to shoot off the top of the lens. Or yank the throttle back too much, causing the ball to sink off the bottom. The ball, centered between the datum lights, was the pilot’s cue to a precise path to touchdown. The trick was to make tiny, precise corrections with the fighter’s two throttles. Squeeze on a bit. The ball is moving ever so slightly up. . . squeeze off a tiny bit. . . that’s enough, put a little back on. . .

  “Like milking a mouse,” old carrier pilots liked to say. Tiny inputs. Anticipating the results of every movement of throttles and flight controls.

  They made six touch-and-go landings—landing and then pushing the throttles up to take off again—before it was time to call it a day. They had been out for one hour and a half. To Van Doren, it seemed like ten minutes.

  When he unstrapped and climbed out the front seat, he realized he was soaked with perspiration. It had been a very intense ninety minutes.

  The two pilots climbed down the boarding ladder and pulled off their helmets.

  “Well?” said Slab, the instructor.

  “Awesome,” said Chip Van Doren, the new fighter pilot.

  <>

  By the of end of March, 1995, each of the nuggets of Class 2-95 had made at least his first fam flight in the Hornet. Broad grins covered the young faces. It was a rite of passage. They could hang out in the ready room, wearing their gray-green flight suits, and not feel like spectators at a soccer game. Now, by God, they were in the game. Real, bona fide, ass-kicking players. They were fighter pilots, at least to the extent that they were flying real fighters and not simulators.

  In addition to the Gladiators squadron patch stuck on the shoulder of their flight suit, each was now entitled to wear the bright red Hornet patch adorned with the silhouette of the F/A-18, courtesy of the McDonnell Douglas corporation.

  They compared impressions. Angie Morales was the most coolly analytical: “I was surprised by the. . . energy of the airplane. In the landing pattern, I felt a little behind the airplane at first. The tremendous energy—that’s something you don’t get a feel for in the simulator.”

  One of the McCormacks, Heckle or Jeckle—no one could yet tell— sauntered into the ready room with a profound observation: “Wow! It flies just like the simulator.”

  Which got a laugh. Everyone understood that it was both a joke and the truth. They were still going through the head trip—a peculiar inversion of perception that went with “flying” a simulator. They had spent nearly a month flying the simulated version of the Hornet. Now that they had gotten to the real thing, it just didn’t seem. . . real. Reality and simulated reality—they were indistinguishable.

  Burner was last. He came marching—swaggering—into the ready room after his FFAM-101. Sweat stained the back and the armpits of his flight suit. He summed it up for all of them. “Unreal,” the Marine announced. “Un-freaking-real.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SLAB

  Sometimes Slab Bacon wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in law school. Looking back, it seemed such an unlikely career shift—the law office to the cockpit of a fighter. He knew one thing for sure, though: He liked being a fighter pilot a hell of a lot more than he would have liked being a lawyer.

  Although he had grown up in an Air Force family, Slab hadn’t been interested in a military career when he was in school. He hadn’t applied for ROTC scholarships or academy appointments.

  When he graduated from Northeast Louisiana State, he went on to law school at the University of Texas. But at the end of one season of clerking in a Dallas law office, a dismal truth was sinking in: I hate this goddamn job. And what I hate about it most of all is. . . lawyers!

  It was possible in those days to go directly into aviation officer training at Pensacola, get a commission and be a naval aviator. Right off the street. It was 1987 and the Cold War was still hot. The Reagan military build-up was in full gallop. The Fine Mesh was still coarse enough to admit even law school drop outs. It was the end of Slab Bacon’s career in jurisprudence.

  Watching Slab at work in the squadron offices, you could see vestiges of the law clerk. Slab was obsessively organized. He kept track of all his duties and projects on a grease board over his desk. He could be seen in the passageways of the squadron, always moving at warp speed, carrying pieces of paper on some urgent mission. Slab was busy. He was the busiest lieutenant anyone had ever seen.

  A few of his colleagues thought that perhaps Slab was too busy. “Slab’s anal, you know,” observed another instructor, who made it a point not to be busy. “He’s a compulsive doer. Doesn’t matter what, he’s gotta be doing. Drives us crazy, him running around like a goddamn dog in a meat locker.”

  But Slab was the kind of junior officer that senior officers loved. Slab would do all the gritty little jobs that everyone hated—the monthly reports and assessments and record keeping and bureaucratic bullshit that plagued every branch of the military. The Navy—especially the Navy—loved record keeping. Slab was known as a doer, and his career, because of it, was on a fast track.

  Slab, of course, was more than a paperwork whiz. He was also a good instructor who could fly the hell out of a Hornet. Like all the instructors in the RAG, he had earned for himself a reputation as a strike fighter pilot.

  It was no coincidence that his commanding officer in his fleet squadron, VFA-86, had been Commander Matt Moffit, the same officer who now commanded the RAG. Moffit had observed Slab Bacon in action. Both in peace and war.

  <>

  It was early in the war. They’d been bombing from high altitude, above ten thousand, because the CAG (Commander, Air Group) didn’t want to risk losing any airplanes to ground fire this early in the game. That would come later, when they went in to support the ground invasion.

  Slab had come back from a mission over the desert. He was sitting in the ready room when Matt Moffit, his skipper, barged in.

  “CAG wants to see you, Slab. Now.”

  For a fleeting minute, while Slab followed his skipper down the passageway, down the ladder to the second deck, it crossed his mind that he might be getting a medal. A Distinguished Flying Cross? A Navy Commendation Medal? Of course! Why else would he be summoned to the CAG’s office?

  And then Slab saw the CAG’s face. He was not smiling. The CAG looked like he had just digested a cinder block. Matt Moffit, a man who smiled a lot, was standing there wearing the face of an undertaker.

  Forget the medal, Slab told himself. This is not a medal day. Today you’re dog meat.

  CAG was holding up a blurred black and white photograph, the kind they copied from cockpit video tapes. The photo was a close-up of a ship in the water. The ship was some kind of freighter. It had several holes in the hull, and smoke was pouring from the deck. The ship looked like someone had blown the living shit out of it.

  <>

  His target—his real target—had been obscured beneath the clouds that day. His wingman had diverted back to the carrier with a mechanical problem. So there he was, all alone, bombs on board, ammo left in the guns, with nothing to shoot at. H
e would have to jettison the bombs before returning to his aircraft carrier, the America.

  So far, thought Slab, it was a boring war.

  Then he saw it, just offshore. It wasn’t going anywhere, no wake, just sitting out there in the gulf. Even from fifteen thousand feet, Slab could see that the ship—it looked like a small freighter—had already been worked over.

  He called Alpha Whiskey, the airborne tactical controller. He told them about the ship.

  “Roger, Galeforce sixteen. The vessel you’re looking at. . . ah, we confirm that it is definitely hostile. The same ship was targeted yesterday by some A-6s. Apparently they didn’t sink it. Do you have weapons on board?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “It’s all yours.”

  The CAG had ruled that they must drop their bombs from an altitude above ten thousand feet. Oookay, thought Slab. No problem.

  Slab rolled into a forty degree dive on the target vessel. He “pickled”—pressed the weapons release button on his control stick—off two Mark 83 one-thousand-pounders. These were so-called “dumb” bombs, meaning they had no guidance after they were dropped from the Hornet. It was the F/A-18’s own computerized bombing system——that imparted “intelligence” to the bombs. The computer resolved all the factors of speed, dive angle, wind, and released the bombs at a calculated point in time and space to deliver them precisely onto the target.

  But it was a fallible system, particularly when you dropped from such a high altitude. Too many variables were introduced after the bombs went, particularly the wind direction and velocity below ten thousand feet, which could skew the bomb trajectory by a hundred feet or more.

  Slab felt the Whump! as his bombs kicked off the rack on his starboard wing. He pulled up, grunting under the G forces, and looked back over his shoulder at the target. He saw two water-geysering explosions—a hundred feet behind the ship. Christ! If anyone was on board down there, they’d be laughing their asses off.

  It was time to push the envelope. Just a little. He rolled in on the target again. This time he pickled at eight thousand feet. He felt the satisfying Whump! again as his bombs kicked off the rack. He pulled up and looked for his hits.

  Fifty feet. To the port side.

  This is bullshit, thought Slab. With that thought, his own computer—his fighter pilot envelope-pushing logic machine—started going through a complex rationalization. The ten thousand foot floor was really meant for targets in the desert, right? That’s where they have all the missiles and anti-aircraft guns. This is over water, right? So the rule really doesn’t apply, does it? Not really. . .

  Down he went. Steep and low. Slab pressed his dive until the Iraqi ship swelled to the size of the Bismarck in his windshield. Whump! His bombs went, and Slab pulled up hard. He was low over the water. Grunting, he looked back over his shoulder.

  He saw a large geysering bomb-plume at the waterline, on the port side. And directly amidships—where the ship’s superstructure used to be—a great, orange, metal-shrouding, oil-belching fireball. It was a horrific sight. And glorious.

  Now what? Well, hell, he was down here anyway. The bombs were gone, but he still had guns. . .

  Slab rolled in again on the smoking ship. He could see no sign of life, no boats in the water, no one shooting back. The Iraqi crew had hauled ass as soon as the A-6s showed up yesterday.

  At a range of a thousand yards he opened up with the rotary cannon mounted in the nose of the Hornet. Brrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaap.

  The M61 rotary cannon was a fearsome weapon. It fired at an incredible six thousand rounds a minute. He saw the tracers arcing into the ship. Pieces were flying off the hull, off the deck, ripping loose like debris in a hurricane. Sparks flashed. Holes opened in the rusty slab-sided hull.

  He made another strafing pass. Six thousand rounds a minute—Brrraaaappppp. . . Brrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap—firing until the ammo was finished.

  He took one last look as he climbed out over the gulf. The freighter was low in the water. Smoke billowed from the hatches, from the shattered superstructure, from the holes in the hull. The Iraqi ship was not in good shape.

  Back on the deck of the America, Slab went to the Intelligence office for the mission debriefing. He told them about spotting the ship, and about being cleared onto it by Alpha Whiskey. Yes, he said, he thought he got some good hits. He decided not to be too specific on the matter of altitudes.

  And then, almost as an afterthought, he turned over to the intelligence officer the HUD (Head Up Display) tape—the on-board cockpit video that recorded everything he had done.

  <>

  CAG was holding the black and white photo of the smoking freighter. It was an enlargement taken from Slab’s HUD video.

  “Slab, what altitude was this?”

  “Ah, sir, I might have gotten a little below the floor altitude ---“

  “Seven hundred feet.”

  “Sir, I don’t think--“

  “SEVEN. . . HUNDRED. . . FUCKING. . . FEET! That happens to be nine-thousand-three-hundred feet below the minimum delivery altitude.”

  Now Slab knew. He definitely was not here to get a Distinguished Flying Cross.

  “Yes, sir. I may have made a bad decision.”

  CAG had a lot on his mind, being responsible for the activities of eighty-some warplanes and the fates of all their pilots. This was not his first war. As a fresh young nugget, he had been caught up in the last days of Vietnam. He was a man who understood the passions of young fighter pilots, and he wouldn’t give a nickel for one who wasn’t willing to pursue the enemy—even down to seven hundred feet.

  “Slab, you get this through your head. I’m not gonna lose any airplanes because of stupid cowboy stunts like this. If I so much as suspect you of doing something like this again, I’ll kick your ass all the way from here to Baghdad. You got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  <>

  Slab Bacon survived the Gulf War. He even collected a few medals and then received a prize assignment: instructor in the Strike Fighter RAG. Slab had a textbook Navy career going. Slab Bacon, everyone figured, was on track to get command of a squadron, maybe an air group, maybe more.

  But like many naval aviators his age, Slab Bacon had reached a crossroads in his life. He was thirty-three years old, and had given eight years of his life to the Navy. And he had recently acquired three items of overwhelming importance in his life: Brenda, Brandon, and Hannah. Wife, stepson, baby daughter.

  Stay in or get out ? It was the kind of gut-wrenching decision every would-be career Navy pilot goes through. Stay in, hope your career advances without a major glitch, pray that your family has the stamina and understanding and resourcefulness to endure the years of separation while you’re deployed aboard a succession of aircraft carriers. Raise your kids in absentia. Trust that your wife still keeps her poise and balance after enough casketless funerals of your friends.

  Or you get out. Slab had old squadron mates who had resigned when their contracts were up, gone to the airlines, into business, back to school. Slab’s best friend was a pilot with Federal Express. After his second year with the airline, he was making exactly twice Slab’s Navy salary. The best part was no six month deployments aboard carriers. No missing seeing your kids grow up. No casketless funerals.

  The problem was, Slab loved the Navy. And he especially loved flying strike fighters. Nothing, absolutely nothing would be sweeter or more fulfilling than taking command of his own sea-going fighter squadron. But to do that, he—and his little family—had to pay the price.

  But in early 1995 something came to Slab’s attention—a fighter pilot’s job that was, for him, at least, made in heaven: The Swiss Air Force was buying Hornets.

  Thirty two of them—brand new F/A-18 strike fighters. And now the Swiss Air Force was requesting the loan from the U. S. Navy of a few qualified F/A-18 instructor pilots to serve with the Swiss Air Force as liaison officers and advisors. A few good men.

  Like Slab Bacon.

  Switz
erland! It would be an assignment made in heaven for their little family. Yodelers and cheese and ski slopes and mountain villages. . . Brenda could just see them—ensconced in their alpine chalet, the kids in an international school, chatting in German and French, living the good life. . .

  In February of 1995, Slab Bacon put in his formal request for the assignment. It received a positive endorsement from his commanding officer, Captain Moffit. The letter was routed upward through the chain of command, formally requesting that Lieutenant Bacon be considered for an exchange posting with the Swiss Air Force. By late summer, Slab was told, a decision would be made.

  In the meantime, Slab Bacon reached a private decision. If the Swiss job came through, he was in the Navy to stay. He would be a lifer, with all that it entailed—the long cruises, the sacrifices. If not, he was gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TAMING THE BEAST

  Now that Class 2-95 had finally begun flying, they no longer saw much of each other. Their schedules were all different, with flights slated from pre-dawn until late at night. In between actual hops in the F/A-18, they still had a heavy simulator schedule. Almost everything they did in the Hornet—bombing, instrument flying, air combat maneuvering—first had to be rehearsed in the simulator.

  It was a grueling schedule, beginning before dawn if they were on the first launch of the day. Briefing began an hour-and-a-half before take off time. The actual flight lasted another hour-and-a-half. After landing, they taxied their jets to the fuel pit, remaining in the cockpit, until the fighter was refueled, a process that sometimes took another hour. Another student would be waiting to strap into the jet and take off on another training mission. VFA-106’s stable of Hornet jets spent no idle time on the ground.

  After securing the jet and shedding the layers of flight gear, it was time to swill down a couple of cokes and cool down. In a single training flight in the Hornet, along with the preflighting and refueling sessions, a pilot could sweat off four or five pounds of body weight.