Flame Out

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Rain spattered the front of the cockpit, loud even against the drone of the A-6E Intruder’s two Pratt and Whitney turbojets. Bleed air blasted the rain away from the canopy, but the visibility wasn’t good. Not good at all …

“Perfect end to a perfect mission,” Bannon muttered aloud. It was true. The Intruder squadron off U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson had been practicing antiship attacks against the frigate Gridley for two hours until worsening weather had finally made further operations impossible. Bannon had made four mock passes against her, but each time the burly man in the Bombardier/Navigator’s position beside him had found some fault with the way he handled the plane. And each time Intruder 507 had ended up missing the target. He felt like a newbie aviator back at flight school in Pensacola again.

The weather had clamped down over the carrier deck just in time to screw up their landing approach, of course. That had slowed down the recovery cycle, especially after Lieutenant Commander Anderson had been waved off on two attempts. The delay had kept them circling far longer than he liked, and Bannon had been worrying about the fuel level for the past ten minutes. Ordinarily he would have Put in a request to tank up from an orbiting KA-6D tanker, but he didn’t want to elicit yet another scathing comment from his companion. Now he was regretting the decision not to ask for a shot at the “Texaco.”

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