“Manual! I’m manual!”
Rat jumped in as he saw 302 balloon too high for landing. “You’re going high. Drop your nose! Drop your nose!” Trench did so, but overcorrected and was now at risk of crunching his jet on deck. Behind him Coach cried, “He’s drifting left!” Screw it, Rat thought, knowing this was it.
“Attitude, idle!” Rat shouted into the handset as Trench roared past him and came down hard. He slammed onto the deck, the jet bouncing back into the air but not before his tailhook snagged one of the arresting wires to keep it on deck. By reflex, Trench went to full power as he felt himself decelerate on the violent roll out and sensed nothing but water on his left side.
“We got’cha. Stay with it. Stay with it. Keep a little power on,” the Air Boss radioed. Crash and salvage crews ran out to his jet, and a flight deck tractor trailing an aircraft towbar chugged over to his nose. In his cockpit, Trench slumped in his seat, but he unhooked his mask and gulped in one lungful of air after another. Alive — but, at the same time, dead.
“Safe your seat and open the canopy, three-zero-two. Nice job, we’ve got you. You can shut down the engines,” the Air Boss transmitted.
* * *
From her vantage point in the catwalk Macho climbed the ladder to the flight deck and moved toward 302. The jet was now surrounded by personnel, the Boss barking orders on the 5MC. Overhead, she saw aircraft circling, waiting for their turn to land. Confusion reigned. Nobody knew if they were going to recover the aircraft overhead or launch the ones on deck first. She moved down the bow toward the angle, toward 302 as activity swirled about her. She saw Trench stand up in the cockpit, assisted by crash and salvage sailors and corpsmen from Medical. The approach had not been smooth, and the jet had hit the deck hard.
Was he coupled all the way to touchdown, or did he fly that blind? Macho wondered. She was shocked to see 302 so close to the deck edge and realized that another ten feet left would have put him into the catwalk, and probably over the side. How did this happen? she thought, even while knowing that things can happen in this business with no warning. Trench was her enemy, and she hated the Neanderthal misogyny he represented — but he was also her squadronmate. The XO’s words rang true. You don’t have to like each other.
Trench was out of the jet now. A throng of sailors guided him toward the island, putting their arms around him as they led him off the deck — maybe his last time on it. Macho watched from a distance, confused, trying to comprehend what had happened and what it meant.