With Hostile Intent by Robert Gandt

Author:Robert Gandt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: aerial combat, carrier war, no fly zone, fighter jet, hornet jets
Publisher: Robert Gandt

Chapter Fourteen

Inquest

Persian Gulf

1015, Monday, 19 May

Where the hell is Devo?

Spam eased the nose up and started her climb back to ten thousand feet. She glanced around, left, then right. No Devo.

“Devo, you up?” she said on the number two radio.

No answer.

That was just like him, she thought. Take off and leave his wingman. Particularly if the wingman was a woman.

Leveling at 10,000 feet, she tried calling Devo again. Still no answer. She was getting a bad feeling about this. Something weird had happened back there over the freighter. Like a good wingman, she had stayed with him as they passed over the ship. She remembered looking down at the ship, and then when she looked back up — Devo’s jet wasn’t there.

He should have been more explicit in the briefing about what he wanted her to do. Instead, he had wasted time with all that picayune shit about where they would rendezvous. As though she needed lecturing from a. . . drunk.

He had probably hauled ass back to the Reagan and left her out here. That would be the typical move of your classic male chauvinist fighter pilot who thinks women ought to be darning their socks. She’d get his ass roasted on a spit when they got back to the ship. She’d tell Killer what a jerk his executive officer really was.

Now she had to get back to the ship by herself, and she wasn’t sure what the hell she was supposed to do. One more thing he didn’t cover in the briefing.

She could hear the other returning jets calling on the CATCC — Carrier Air Traffic Control Center — frequency. Spam checked in using her call sign: Stinger 42.

“Roger Stinger 42,” said the controller. “You got Stinger 41 with you?”

“Negative.”

Several seconds ticked past, then a different voice came over the frequency. “Stinger 42, this is the Captain. Look, we’re not painting Stinger 41’s transponder squawk, and we think he might be a nordo.” A “nordo” was an aircraft with lost radios. “Take a look around and see if your flight lead is with you, maybe on your wing.”

Spam took a quick glance to either side of her jet. Empty sky. No radioless jet flying on her wing. “Negative. He’s not here.”

Spam wondered what the hell was going on. The captain of the ship? They were worried about Devo. It didn’t occur to them that he had abandoned his wingman. She was getting a feeling that something had gone wrong, and she had learned by now how the male-biased Navy operated: The bastards were going to blame it on her.

Spam stopped thinking about Devo. It was time to land on the thing.

Her first pass was unstable, causing the LSO to give her a frantic wave off close to the ramp. Overcorrecting on the second pass, she missed all three arresting wires and boltered, back into the pattern.

Her third pass was within limits but ugly. High in the groove, settling at the ramp, with an urgent power call from Pearly, ending with a number one wire — the closest to the blunt unforgiving ramp of the deck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.