NIMITZ CLASS

 

One

April 22, 2002. The Indian Ocean.

On board the United States Aircraft Carrier, Thomas Jefferson. 9S, 92E. Speed 30.

They had waved him off twice now. And each time Lieutenant William R. Howell had eased open the throttle of his big F-14 interceptor/attack Tomcat and climbed away to starboard, watching the speed needle slide smoothly from 150 knots to 280 knots. The acceleration was almost imperceptible, but in seconds the Lieutenant saw the six-story island of the carrier turn into a half-inch-high black thimble against the blue sky.

The deep Utah drawl of the Landing Signal Officer standing on the carrier stern was still calm: ‘Tomcat two-zero-one, we still have a fouled deck – gotta wave you off one more time – just an oil leak – this is not an emergency, repeat: not an emergency.’

Lt. Howell spoke quietly and slowly: ‘Tomcat two-zero-one. Roger that. I’m taking a turn around. Will approach again from 12 miles.’ He eased the fighter plane’s nose up, just a fraction, and felt his stomach tighten. It was never more than a fleeting feeling, but it always brought home the truth, that landing any aircraft at sea on the narrow, angled, 750-foot-long, pitching landing area remains a life-or-death test of skill and nerve for any pilot. It takes most rookies a couple of months to stop their knees shaking after each landing. Pilots short of skill, or nerve, are normally found working on the ground, driving freight planes, or dead. He knew that there were around 20 plane-wrecking crashes on US carriers each year.

From the rear seat, the Radar-Intercept Officer (RIO) Lt. Freddie Larsen, muttered, ‘Shit. There’s about a hundred of ’em down there, been clearing up an oil spill for a half-hour – what the hell’s going on?’ Neither aviator was a day over 28 years old, but already they had perfected the Navy flyer’s nonchalance in the face of instant death at supersonic speed. Especially Howell.

‘Dunno,’ he said, gunning the Tomcat like a bullet through the scattered low clouds whipping past this monster twin-tailed warplane, now moving at almost five miles every minute. ‘Did y’ever see a big fighter jet hit an oil pool on a carrier deck?’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘It ain’t pretty. If she slews out off a true line you gotta real good chance of killing a lot of guys. Specially if she hits something and burns, which she’s damn near certain to do.’

‘Try to avoid that, willya?’

Freddie felt the Tomcat throttle down as Howell banked away to the left. He felt the familiar pull of the slowing engines, worked his shoulders against the yaw of the aircraft, like the motorcycle rider he once had been.

The F-14 is not much more than a motorbike with a 64-foot wingspan anyway. Unexpectedly sensitive to the wind at low speed, two rock-hard seats, no comfort, and an engine with the power to turn her into a Mach 2 rocketship – 1,400 hundred knots, no sweat, out there on the edge of the US fighter pilot’s personal survival envelope.

Still holding the speed down to around 280 knots Howell now took a long turn. The Tomcat heeled over at an angle of almost 90 degrees, the engines screaming behind him, as if the sound was trying to catch and swallow him. Up ahead he could no longer see the carrier, because of the intermittent white clouds obscuring his vision, and casting dark shadows on the blue water. Below the two flyers was one of the loneliest seaways on earth, the 3,500-mile stretch of the central Indian Ocean between the African island of Madagascar and the rock-strewn western coast of Sumatra.

The US carrier and its escorts, forming a complete 12-ship Battle Group including two nuclear-powered submarines, were steaming towards the American naval base on Diego Garcia, the tiny atoll 500 miles south of the equator, which represents the only safe Anglo-American haven in the entire area.

This was a real US Battle Group seascape, a place where the most beady-eyed admirals and their staff ‘worked up’ new missile systems, new warships, and endlessly catapulted their ace naval aviators off the flight deck – zero to 168 knots in 2.1 seconds. This was not a spot for the faint-hearted. This was a simulated theater of war, designed strictly for the very best the nation could produce … men who possessed what Tom Wolfe immortally labeled ‘the right stuff.’ Everyone serves out here for six interminable months at a time.

Lt. Howell, losing height down to 1,200 feet, spoke again to the carrier’s flight controllers. ‘Tower, this is Tomcat two-zero-one at eight miles. Coming in again.’ His words were few, and again the jet fighter began to ease down, losing height, the engines throttling marginally off the piercing high-C shriek which would splinter a shelf of wineglasses. Howell, insulated behind his goggles and earphones, searched the horizon for the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier.

His intercom crackled. ‘Roger, Tomcat two-zero-one. Your deck is cleared for landing now – gotcha visual … come on in, watch your altitude, and check your line-up. Wind’s gusting at 30 knots out of the south-west. We’re still right into it. You’re all set.’

‘Roger, Tower … six miles.’

All Navy and Air Force pilots have a special, relaxed, aw-shucks way of imparting news from these high-speed fighter aircraft, some say copied directly from America’s most famous combat ace, General Chuck Yeager, the first test pilot to break the sound barrier in his supersecret Bell X-1 in 1947.

Talking to the tower, almost every young Navy flyer affects some kind of a West Virginian country boy drawl, precisely how they imagine General Yeager might have put it, real slow, ice-calm in the face of disaster. ‘Gotta little flame out on the ole starboard engine, jest gonna cut the power out there, bring her in on one. Y’all wanna move the flight deck over a coupla ticks, gimme a better shot in the cross-wind. It ain’t a problem.’

Lieutenant William R. Howell imitated the General ‘better’n any of ’em.’ And easier. Because he was not really Lt. William R. Howell, anyway. He was Billy-Ray Howell, whose dad, an ex-coal-miner and southern Methodist, now kept the general store back in the same home town as Chuck Yeager – up in the western hollows of the Appalachian Mountains, Hamlin, a place of fewer than 1,000 souls, right on the Mud River, close to the eastern Kentucky border in Lincoln County. Like Chuck Yeager, Billy-Ray talked about the ‘hollers,’ fished the Mud River, was the son of a man who had shot a few bears in his time, ‘cain’t hardly wait to git home, see my dad.’

When he had the stick of an F-14 in his hand, Billy-Ray Howell was General Yeager. He thought like him, talked like him and acted as he knew the General would in any emergency. No matter that big Chuck had retired to live in California. As far as Billy-Ray was concerned he and Chuck Yeager formed an unspoken, mystical West Virginia partnership in the air, and he, Billy-Ray, was a kind of heir-apparent. In his view the old country way of life out among the hickory and walnut tree woods of Lincoln County gave a kid a tough center. And he was ‘damn near sure Mr Yeager would agree with that.’

The strategy had paid off too. Billy-Ray had achieved his schoolboy ambition to become a naval aviator. Years of study, years of training had seen him close to the top of every class he had ever been in. Everyone in naval aviation knew that young Billy-Ray Howell was going onwards and upwards. They had done ever since he first earned his engineering degree at the US Naval Academy.

No one was surprised by how good he was when he began his jet fighter training, pushing the old T2 Buckeyes around the skies above Whiting Field, east of Pensacola, in north-west Florida.

And now the voice coming into the flight-control area was nearly identical to that of General Yeager, the steady ‘up-holler’ tone betraying no urgency: ‘Tower, Tomcat two-zero-one, four miles. I got somethin’ gone kinda weird on me, right here … landin’ gear warning light’s jes’ flickin’ some. Didn’t feel the wheels lock down. But it might be somethin’s jes’ wrong with th’ole light bulb.’

‘Tower to Tomcat two-zero-one. Roger that. Continue on in and make a pass right down the deck at about 50 feet, 200 knots. That way the guys can take a close look at the undercarriage.’

‘Roger, tower … comin’ on in.’

Out on the exposed and windswept carrier deck, the Landing Signal Officer radioed instructions to the pilot and could see that Tomcat 201 was about 45 seconds out, a howling, 20-ton brute of an aircraft, bucking along in the unpredictable gusts over the Indian Ocean, the pilot trying to hold her on a glide path 2 degrees above the horizontal. There was a big swell on the surface, and the whole ship, moving along at 15 knots, was pitching through about 3 degrees, one and a half degrees either side of horizontal: that meant the ends, bow and stern were moving through 60 feet every 30 seconds. All incoming aircraft would have a hell of an approach into the strong, hot wind, and timing the moment of impact would test the deftness and proficiency of every pilot. That was with landing wheels.

The LSO Lieutenant Rick Evans, a lanky fighter pilot out of Georgia, was now standing out on the exposed port-quarter of the carrier, his binoculars trained on Tomcat 201. And he could already see the landing wheels were not down, and he could see the flaps were not down either. His mind was churning. He knew that Billy-Ray Howell was in trouble. Non-functioning landing gear has always been the flyer’s nightmare, civil or military. But out here it was 100 times worse.

A fighter plane does not come in along the near-flat path followed by civil jetliners which glide, and then ‘flare out’ a few feet above mile-long runways. Out here there’s no time. And not much space. Navy flyers slam those 22-ton Tomcats down at 160 knots, flying them right into the deck, hook down, praying for it to grab the wire.

The downward momentum on the landing wheels is astronomical. They are monster shock-absorbers, built to kill the entire onrushing weight of the aircraft. If the hook misses, the pilot has one-twentieth of a second to change his mind, ‘do a bolter’ – shove open the throttle and blast off the bow, climbing away to starboard with the casual observation, ‘Comin’ on in again.’

The slightest problem with the hydraulic locking mechanism aborts the landing and, almost without exception, writes off the aircraft. Because the Navy would rather ditch a $35 million jet, on its own, than kill two aviators who have cost $2 million apiece to train. They would also much prefer the aircraft to slam into the ocean, and avoid the terrible risk of a major fire on the flight deck, which a belly-down landing may cause. Not to mention the possible write-off of another 40 parked planes, and possibly the entire ship if the fire gets to the millions of gallons of aircraft fuel.

Everyone on the flight deck knew that Billy-Ray and Freddie would almost certainly have to ditch the jet, and blast themselves out of the cockpit with the ejector, a dangerous and terrifying procedure, one which can cost any pilot an arm or a leg, or worse yet, his life. ‘Holy Christ,’ said Lieutenant Evans, miserably.

By now the LSO and his team were all edging towards the deep, heavily padded ‘pit’ into which they would dive for safety if Billy-Ray lost control and the Tomcat plummeted into the carrier’s stern. All fire crews were on red-alert. ‘Conn-Captain, 4 degrees right rudder. Steer two-one-zero. I want 30 knots minimum over the deck. Speed as required.’

Everyone could now hear the roar of the engines on the incoming Tomcat, and the bush telegraph of the carrier was working full tilt. Most everyone had a soft spot for Billy-Ray. He’d been married for only a year, and half the personnel of the naval air base on the Pax River in Maryland had been at the wedding. His bride Suzie Danford was the tall, dark-haired daughter of Admiral Skip Danford. She’d met the curly-haired, dark-eyed Billy-Ray, with his coal miner’s shoulders and sly smile, long before he had become one of the Navy’s elite flyers, while he was completing training at Pensacola.

And now she was alone in Maryland, waiting out the endless six months of his first tour of sea duty. Like all aviators’ wives, dreading the unexpected knock upon the door, dreading the stranger from the air base calling on the phone, the one who would explain that her Billy-Ray had punched a big hole in the Indian Ocean. And there was nothing melodramatic about any of it. About 20 per cent of all Navy pilots die in the first nine years of their service. At the age of 26, Suzie Danford Howell was no stranger to death. And the possibility of her own husband joining Jeff McCall, Charlie Rowland and Dave Redland haunted her nights. Sometimes she thought it would all drive her crazy. But she tried to keep her fears silent.

She did not know, however, the mortal danger her husband was now in. There are virtually no procedures for landing-gear failure. Nothing works, save for a touch of blind luck if the pilot can jolt down and then up, and the gears slam down and lock, putting out the warning light. But time is short. If that Tomcat F-14 runs out of gas it will drop like a 20-ton slab of concrete and hit the long waves of the Indian Ocean like a meteorite … ‘Billy-Ray Howell and Freddie are in trouble’ – the word was sweeping through the carrier.

On the tower side of the flight deck, Ensign Junior Grade Jim Adams, a huge black man from south Boston, dressed in a big fluorescent yellow jacket, was talking on his radio phone to the hydraulics operators on the deck below who controlled the arresting wires, one of which would grab the Tomcat, slowing it down to zero speed in two seconds flat, heaving the aircraft to a halt.

Big Jim, the duty Arresting Gear Officer, had already ordered the controls set to withstand the Tomcat’s 50,000lb force slamming into the deck at 160 knots precisely, with the pilot’s hand hard on the throttle in case the hook missed. But Jim knew the problem … ‘Billy-Ray Howell’s in big trouble up there.’

Big Jim loved Billy-Ray. They talked about baseball endlessly: Jim because he believed he would have made a near-legendary first-batsman for the Boston Red Sox, Billy-Ray because he had been a pretty good right-handed pitcher at Hamlin High. Next year their spring furlough would coincide and they planned a jaunt to watch the Red Sox spring training for four days in Florida. Right now Big Jim wished only that he could check out and fix the hydraulics on the Tomcat’s landing gear, and he found himself whispering the age-old prayer of all carrier flight deck crew … ‘Please, please don’t let him die, please let him get out.’

Up on the bridge, Captain Carl Rheinegen was speaking to the senior LSO back on the stern. ‘Has he got a hydraulics malfunction? Do not land him. Hold him up and clear!’

Again the big waterproof phone clutched by Lieutenant Rick Evans crackled, and the incoming voice was still slow. ‘Tower this is Tomcat two-zero-one. Still got some kinda screwup here. Tried to give her a few jolts. But it didn’t work. Light’s still on. I can cross the stern okay and come on by, but I don’t think the hydraulics are too good. I’d prefer to keep the speed at 250 and take her straight back up. Git a little air underneath. No real problem. Stick’s a little tough. But we got gas. Lemme know.’

And now the F-14 was thundering in towards the stern, twice as fast as an 80 m.p.h. metroliner through New Jersey, and ten times as deafening. Too fast, but still with height. ‘Tower to Tomcat two-zero-one. Hit the throttle and pull right out. Forget the pass. Repeat, forget the pass.’

‘Roger that,’ said Billy-Ray Howell carefully, and he slammed the throttle forward and hauled on the stick. But nothing much happened except for acceleration. She seemed to flatten out and then she was diving in towards the end of the flight deck, still with two Phoenix missiles under her wing. Enough to blow half the flight deck to bits. Still slow and easy, Billy-Ray drawled: ‘Tomcat, two-zero-one, I’ll jest take a little jog to my left and git out over the portside.’ And he watched through his deep-set eyes as the heaving flight deck roared up to meet him. He fought to stay aloft but the Tomcat now had a mind of its own. A bloody mind.

Rick Evans, watching the F-14 now hurtling towards the portside edge of the flight deck, snapped back into the phone: ‘Get out, Billy-Ray, HIT IT!’

For a split second Freddie Larsen thought his pilot might consider ejection a sign of weakness or lack of cool. And he screamed for the first time in his flying career, ‘PUNCH IT OUT, BILLY-RAY, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE PUNCH IT OUT!!’

The Tomcat ripped past the carrier’s mast, just as Lieutenant William R. Howell’s right fist banged the lever. The compacted charge exploded beneath his seat and blew him head-first out of the cockpit. Freddie followed, point five of a second later, the violence of the two explosions rendering them both momentarily unconscious. Freddie came round first, saw the Tomcat crash about 20 feet off the carrier’s port bow, sending a gout of water 50 feet into the air, almost up to the flight deck.

But they were clear. When Billy-Ray came round, he saw his parachute canopy swinging above his head and the carrier’s surging, white stern wake beneath him. And even as he and Freddie hit the water, the Sea King helicopter was lifting off the deck of the carrier, in a roaring whirlwind of air. Flight-deck crew were emerging from cover. All landing and take-off operations were suspended, and down in the heaving sea, half drowned despite his watertight survival suit, fighting for breath, Billy-Ray Howell could hear the God-sent voice of the rescue Chief yelling through the loud-hailer: ‘Easy guys, take it real easy, release the chutes, and keep still, we’ll be right down.’

The big chopper came in. A 19-year-old midshipman jumped straight out into the water with the lines, and made for the two stricken US airmen. ‘You guys okay?’ he asked. ‘We’re a whole lot better’n we would be still in the ole F-14,’ said Billy-Ray. Thirty-five seconds later they were winched up to safety, trembling from shock, Freddie Larsen with a broken right arm, Billy-Ray with a gashed eyebrow and blood pouring down his face, which made his grin look a bit crooked.

The chopper came in to land on the starboard side of the deck. Three medics were there, plus stretcher-bearers. Lt. Rick Evans was also trembling and he just kept saying over and over, ‘Gee, I’m just so sorry guys. I’m just so sorry.’

There was a small but somber welcoming party for the two battered airmen. Big Jim Adams came rushing through the group, against every kind of naval regulation, and he lifted Billy-Ray right out of the chopper, cradling him in his massive arms, saying: ‘Don’t you never damned die on me again, man, hear me?’ Everyone could see the tears streaming down Big Jim’s face.

The medics then took over, giving both men a shot of painkiller and strapping Billy-Ray and Freddie into the wheeled stretchers. And the whole procession, now about 14 strong, all a bit shaken, headed for the elevators, bound together by the camaraderie of men who have looked into the face of death together.

Freddie spoke first: ‘You are a crazy prick, Billy-Ray. You shoulda hit the button 15 seconds earlier.’

‘Bullshit, Freddie. I had the timing right. If I’d punched out any earlier you’d probably be sittin’ up there on top of the mast right now.’

‘Yeah, and one second later we’d both be sitting on the bottom of the fucking Indian Ocean.’

‘Shit!’ said Billy-Ray, ‘You’re an ungrateful sonofabitch. I jes’ saved your life. And you ain’t even my real problem. Do you realize Suzie’s gonna have a heart attack when she hears about this? Guess I’ll have to blame you.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ said Freddie, trying to smile, reaching out with his good arm to grasp his pilot’s still shaking hand. ‘Wanna do it again sometime!’

The loss of a big Tomcat fighter aircraft is generally regarded as a career-threatening occurrence. A scapegoat is a near essential in the US Navy after a foul-up which costs Uncle Sam around $35 million. Both the Captain and the Admiral would have to answer for this, and they had a lot of questions. Was this pilot error? Was it flight deck error? Who had checked and serviced the aircraft before it came up on deck for its last journey? Had the officer in charge of the final checkover, moments before take-off, missed something? Was there any clue that the launching officer should have seen?

The preliminary report would be required in the Pentagon just as soon as it could be completed. And the official inquiry was convened instantly. Hydraulics experts were called in first. The officers would routinely talk to Billy-Ray and Freddie during the evening, in the carrier’s brilliantly equipped hospital, after the surgeons had set the young navigator’s arm.

None of the aviators believed the pilot had made any kind of mistake, and everyone knew that Lieutenant William R. Howell had hung in there until the last possible second in order to drive his 200-knot timebomb safely out over the side of the ship. Senior officers would no doubt reach a sympathetic conclusion, but there would be real hard questions asked of the Maintenance Department and its specialist hydraulics engineers.

While the preliminary inquiry into the accident continued, the day-to-day business of the US Battle Group at sea also proceeded on schedule. Up in the Admiral’s Bridge, Captain Jack Baldridge, the Battle Group Operations Officer, was normally in charge, in the absence of the Admiral himself. But right now he was in conference on the floor below, in the radar and electronics nerve center with the Tactical Action officer and the Anti-Submarine Warfare chief. As always, this was the most obviously busy place in the giant carrier. Always in half-light, illuminated mainly by the amber-colored screens of the computers, it existed in a strange, murmuring nether-world of its own, peopled by intense young technicians, glued to the screens as the radar systems swept the oceans and skies.

Jack Baldridge was a stocky, irascible Kansan, from the Great Plains of the Midwest, a little town called Burdett, up in Pawnee County, 40 miles north-east of Dodge City. Jack was from an old US Navy family, which sent its sons to sea to fight, but somehow lured them back to the old cattle ranch in the end. Jack’s father had commanded a destroyer in the North Atlantic in World War II, his younger brother Bill was a lieutenant-commander stationed outside Washington with the US Office of Naval Intelligence; somewhat mysteriously, Jack thought, but young Bill was an acknowledged expert on nuclear weapons, their safety, their storage and deployment.

Most people expected that the 40-year-old Jack would become a rear-admiral. Naval warfare was his life, and he was the outstanding commander in the entire Battle Group, shouldering significant responsibility as the Group’s Admiral’s right-hand man. His kid brother Bill, however, who looked like a cowboy, rode a horse like a cowboy and was apt to drive Navy staff cars like a cowboy, had gone as far as he was going. He was not a natural commander, but his scientific achievements in the field of nuclear physics and weaponry were so impressive the Navy chiefs had felt obliged to award him senior rank. Bill was a natural crisis man, a cool, thoughtful naval scientist, who often came up with solutions no one had previously considered. There were several elderly admirals who did not care for him, because of his unorthodox methods, but Bill Baldridge had many supporters.

Where Jack was a solidly married, down-to-earth Navy captain of the highest possible quality, no one quite knew where Bill would end up, except in a variety of different beds all over Washington. At 36 he showed no signs of giving up his bachelor lifestyle and the trail of romantic havoc he had left from Dodge City to Arlington, Virginia. Jack regarded his brother with immense benevolence.

Down in the electronic operations, Captain Baldridge was moving on several fronts. Captain Rheinegen, in overall command of the ship, had just ordered a minor change of course as they steamed over the Ninety East Ridge which runs north–south, east of the mid-Indian basin. Here the ocean is only about a mile deep, but as the carrier pushed on along its north-westerly course the depth fell away to almost four miles below the keel. Captain Baldridge had already calculated that the Tomcat probably hit the ridge as it sank and settled about 5,000 feet below the surface.

He checked the positions of all the ships in the group, agreed with his ASW that four underwater ‘contacts’ were spurious; talked briefly to the Sonar Controller and the Link Operators; checking in with the Surface Picture Compiler. He could hear the Missile Gun Director in conference with the Surface Detector, and he took a call on a coded line from Captain Art Barry, the New Yorker who commanded the 11,000-ton guided missile cruiser Arkansas, which was currently steaming about eight miles off their starboard bow. The message was cryptic: ‘Kansas City Royals 2 Yankees 8. Five bucks. Art.’

‘Sonofagun,’ said Baldridge. ‘Guess he thinks that’s cute. We’ve just dropped a $35 million aircraft on the floor of this godforsaken ocean, and he’s getting the baseball results on the satellite.’ Of course it would have been an entirely different matter if the message had been Royals 8 Yankees 2. ‘Beautiful guy, Art. Gets his priorities straight.’

Baldridge glanced at his watch, and began to write in his notebook without thinking, not for the official record, just the result of a lifetime in the US Navy. He wrote the date and time in naval fashion ‘221700APR02’ (the day, the time, 5 p.m. then month and year). Then he wrote the ship’s position – mid-Indian Ocean, 9S (9 degrees latitude south), 91E (91 degrees longitude east). Then, ‘Bitch of a day. Royals 2 Yankees 8. Tomcat lost. Billy-Ray and Freddie hurt, but safe.’ He too had a soft spot for Billy-Ray Howell.

221709APR02. 41 30N, 29E. Course 180. Speed 4. ‘Possible on 030, 10 miles. Come and look, Ben. Maybe okay?’

‘Thank you … yes … plot him, Georgy. He’s a coal-burner, and probably slow enough. If he keeps going for the hole, and his speed suits our timetable, we’ll take him. Get in … but well behind him, Georgy.’

‘Take two hours.’

221912. ‘They start to look for us. Time expired one hour. First submarine accident signal just in, Ben.’

‘Good. What have you told the chaps?’

‘What we agree. Cover for special covert exercise. We answer nothing. Soon they stop. We not exist any more.’

‘Okay. It’ll be dark inside an hour. Now let’s get organized for the transit. Watch for the light on Rumineleteri Fortress up there on the north-west headland, then go right in … follow the target as close as you possibly can.’

‘Fine. Even though no one ever done it, right? Eh, Ben?’

‘My Teacher once told me it could be done.’

‘Ben, I do not speak your language, and my English not as good as yours. But I know this is fucking tricky. Very bad cross-currents in there. Shoals on the right bank, in the narrows near the big bridge. Shit! What if we hit and get stuck. We never get out of jail.’

‘If, Georgy, you do precisely as we discussed, we will not hit anything.’

‘But you still say we go right through the middle of port at 9 knots with fucking big white wake behind us. They see it, Ben. They can’t fucking miss it.’

‘Do I have to tell you again? They will not see it, if you keep really close, right in the middle of the Greek’s wake. He won’t want to run aground any more than you do. He won’t push his luck in the shallow spots. Let’s go, Georgy.’

‘I still not like it much.’

‘I am not telling you to like it. DO IT!’

‘Remember it is your fault if this goes wrong.’

‘If it goes wrong, that won’t matter.’

222004. ‘I want to be in our spot early, and get settled before we reach the entrance. We want a good visual night ranging mark on him. His overtaking light will do fine.’

‘Slack Greek prick, leave them on all day.’

‘I noticed. Use height 10 meters on stern light.’

‘What about his radar, Ben?’

‘He won’t see us in his ground wave, and if he does, he’ll think it’s his own wake. This chap is no Gorschkov. He can’t even remember to turn his lights off.’

‘What about other ships in channel?’

‘Anyone overtaking will stay well to one side. Oncoming ships will keep to the other. My only real worry is the cross-ferries. That’s why we want to be going through the narrowest bits between 0200 and 0500, when I hope not to meet any of them. Bloody dreary if one of them slipped across our Greek leader’s bum and we rammed him.’

‘How come, Ben, you know much more about everything than I do?’

‘Mainly because I cannot afford mistakes. Also because I had a brilliant Teacher … bright, impatient, clever, arrogant … Stay calm, Georgy. And do as I say. It’s dark enough now. Let’s range his light, and close right in.’

281400APR02. 9S, 74E. Course 010. Speed 12. Eight miles off Diego Garcia the weather had worsened, the warm wind, rising and falling, making life endlessly difficult for the aviators. On the flight deck of the US carrier Thomas Jefferson the LSOs were in their usual huddle, taking advantage of the comparative quiet, talking to the pilots of the seven incoming flights from the day’s combat air patrol, four of them circling in a stack at 8,000 feet, 20 miles out.

The day-long exercises had demanded supersonic speed tests, and many landings and take-offs. There had already been two burst tires, one of which had caused an incoming FA-18 Hornet strike-fighter to slew left on the wire, and damn near hit a parked A-6E Intruder bomber.

Gas was now low all around. Tensions were fairly high. And before the six fighters came in, the entire flight deck staff was preparing to bring down the quarterback, Hawkeye, the much bigger radar early warning and control aircraft, unmistakable because of its great electronic dome set above the fuselage.