Top Gun (28 page)

“Pay attention to me first, and the ball second,” Greene’s backseater pilot instructor warned on that first flight. The Buckeye
was arrowing toward the earth. The ground was coming up so fast that Greene was sure they were going to auger in, but then
the PI ordered, “Put her down—now!”

Greene, gritting his teeth, slammed that Buckeye down where the instructor told him to. As the arrestor cable grabbed the
Buckeye’s tailhook, Greene’s harness straps bit into his shoulders and the moleskin protective strip mohawking the top of
his helmet scraped the inside top of the canopy. The Buck left rubber scorches on the tarmac, but Greene got the fucking job
done.

“That was okay… for a first time,” the instructor muttered through the cockpit intercom.

Damn right it was okay.
Greene thought.
Ain’t nothing the Navy can do the Air Force can’t do better.

But when it came time for it to be Blaisdale’s turn. Buzz froze up. By then, Greene had finished for the day, and was watching
from the sidelines as Buzz’s sleek little T-2 Buck made its first approach toward that rectangle painted on the tarmac, shimmering
in the Florida heat.

“He’s coming in too low,” remarked one of the squid pilots standing around watching along with Greene.

“He’ll do okay,” Greene muttered hopefully.

But Buzz didn’t do okay at all. He bounced the airstrip, touching down too early and then rising up and dropping down again,
totally missing the painted rectangle that represented the carrier’s flight deck.

“If that had been the real thing…” The squid pilot trailed off, shaking his head.

“Hey, it wasn’t the real thing,” Greene said, feeling defensive. “Cut the guy some slack. It was his first try. He’ll do better.”

To the squid’s credit, he didn’t say anything further, not even when Buzz proceeded to botch his remaining landing attempts.
Greene felt embarrassed for his friend. That kind of initial performance might have been excusable for an inexperienced pilot,
but it was searingly humiliating for Blaisdale.

From then on, Blaisdale was shook. For a fighter jock there is nothing worse than a loss of confidence. Buzz knew what he
had to do, but it was as if his reflexes conspired against him. He never did get the hang of hammering his plane into the
landing rectangle. For a while, Blaisdale tried talking it out with Greene, but there are some things—the really important
things—that talk can’t fix. Eventually, Blaisdale just got kind of quiet and moody. Greene recognized the symptoms. He’d seen
them before. Blaisdale may not have known it himself yet, but he’d given up.

The weeks passed. Greene moved ahead in his training. Blaisdale didn’t. He was like a man with a critical illness, lingering
on by a thread. Each day the squid instructors took him up and tried to teach him what he couldn’t seem to learn. Sometimes
different instructors took him up during the same day. It wasn’t about cruelty on the part of the Navy; the squids didn’t
know what else to do. They would have washed out one of their own—plenty of squids did wash out—but in this case the touchy
interservice politics of the situation didn’t allow for giving Blaisdale the boot. The Navy wasn’t about to kick Buzz Blaisdale
out of Indian Giver; he would have to take himself out of it. By this point, all of the Navy’s efforts were directed toward
giving Blaisdale a nudge in that direction.

Finally, the the day came around for Greene to get his feet wet landing on a training carrier. He awoke that morning to find
Buzz in his Air Force service uniform: slate-blue trousers and tunic; light-blue shirt and dark-blue tie; visored cap. Buzz
was packing his bags.

“Well.” Buzz shrugged, smiling thinly when he saw that Greene was awake. “I’m out of here.”

Greene sat up in bed, scratching, and yawning. “I guess that makes sense,” he said.

He felt terrible, but what could he say?
Sorry you didn’t make the cut?
Buzz was doing the right thing. His only mistake had been waiting as long as he had. If Blaisdale couldn’t hack the basic
necessary flight procedures during Visual Flight Rules, how would he ever manage the rest of CARQUAL? Carrier qualification
required proficiency in ILS Instrument Landing System carrier approaches. And what about the night landings?

Outside the trailer, a jeep’s headlights flashed against the curtains, illuminating the gray Florida dawn. A horn honked.

“That’s my ride,” Buzz said, hefting his bags. “See you around, Robbie.”

“Yeah, see you,” Greene murmured.

Blaisdale looked supremely uncomfortable. “I’ll let you know where I’m reassigned,” he said.

“Good,” Greene said, although he knew it was unlikely Blaisdale would do any such thing. Greene had been witness to his friend’s
great humiliating failure. Buzz would be anxious to put the shame behind him, and that meant disassociating with everyone
who’d been on the scene when he’d failed to make the cut. This was good-bye.

Their eyes never met as Greene rolled out of bed and padded toward the trailer’s narrow stall shower. By the time he was done
showering, Buzz was gone.

A couple of hours later, Greene was adorned in his olive-drab, Nomex fire-retardant flight overalls and “speed jeans” G-suit.
He was cinched into his parachute harness, wearing his helmet and oxygen mask; strapped into the Buckeye’s pilot’s seat. For
a change, his backseater PI on this trip, Lieutenant Commander Bill “Popeye” Popovich, was quiet as they soared past the Florida
coastline and out over the blue water, toward the training carrier.

Greene felt surprisingly calm considering the momentousness of what he was about to attempt. After all, successfully setting
a jet down on a flattop was a true rite of passage. Greene guessed that the pain he’d felt on Buzz Blaisdale’s behalf earlier
that day had served to numb his emotions concerning himself.

Greene was also feeling good about that fact that he had Popeye Popovich along as his backseater this first time getting his
feet wet. Greene had flown with Lieutenant Commander Popovich a couple of times; the senior instructor had come along on most
of Greene’s check rides. Popeye, who’d gotten his Navy call-sign nickname for obvious reasons, was in his late forties, with
a gray crewcut and light-blue eyes. Of all the squid instructors, Greene liked Popeye the best. Unlike some of the other PIs,
the lieutenant commander didn’t have an attitude problem. Popeye didn’t seem to care who you were or where you were from.
If you flew the airplane okay, you were okay in his book.

Greene’s radio headset crackled. “This landing should be a piece of cake for a hotshot like you, Air Force,” Popeye said over
the cockpit intercom. “My fucking grandmother could land on a flattop on a
bee-yuutiful
day like today.

“I didn’t know your fucking grandmother was in the Navy, Popeye,” Greene muttered. “Of course it’s a beautiful day with A-1
flying conditions. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be out here in the first place.…”

Greene had no trouble locating the carrier. From three miles away and three thousand feet in the air, the flattop looked like
a scant smudge of gray trailing a comet’s tail of white wake across the surface of the blue ocean. Landings on a carrier were
made into the wind, so Greene circled the flattop, passing it downwind.

“You know, you young guys today got things
sooo
easy,” Popeye announced.

Uh-oh. here we go,
Greene thought affectionately. Popeye could chew your ear off reminiscing about the old days.

“Back in Korea, this kind of work was still dangerous,” Popeye rambled.
“We
didn’t have the precision instruments you pussies got now, and those Panthers
we
flew weren’t anywhere near as throttle responsive—”

“Hey, Popeye,” Greene interrupted as he put the Buckeye into a crosswind turn toward the carrier’s stern. “Didn’t I see you
in that flick
The Bridge at Toko-Ri?”

“Huh?” Popeye demanded. “What’s that?”

“Yeah, man…” Greene finished his crosswind turn and dirtied up his airplane by lowering his landing gear, flaps, and tailhook
as he began his landing approach. “You were in that movie, Popeye…. Weren’t you the guy who held William Holden’s leather
jacket for him?”

“Kids today,” Popeye snorted dolefully. “Can’t tell ’em shit.”

A new voice crackled through Greene’s helmet. “Five five five, clear deck, clear deck,” the CATCC Carrier Air Traffic Control
Center officer on board the carrier radioed, watching Greene’s approach on his radar screen. The message directed to Greene’s
jet number 555 was that the carrier’s deck was cleared for his landing.

“Now, don’t you go spotting that deck, Air Force,” Popeye cautioned.

“Roger.” Greene nodded absently, his mind on the task ahead of him. His tendency to concentrate on the deck to the exclusion
of all else was the biggest problem Greene had faced during his training, and “spotting the deck” had been Buzz Blaisdale’s
insurmountable error, as well. As an Air Force pilot, it was second nature for Greene during a VFI landing to fixate on the
approaching runway, but when you did that trying to land on a carrier, the optical perspective invariably served to convince
you that you were coming in too high. It was all an illusion, and if you gave in to it and came in too low, you’d hit the
ramp and turn yourself into barbecue. The way to fight the optical illusion was not to steadily eyeball the deck in the first
place. Instead, you listened up to your carrier-based controllers and kept your eyes moving across your instruments, as well
as peering out your canopy at that itty bit of metal that was home sweet home.

The carrier loomed. That smudge of gray had grown into a narrow strip of hot-topped parking lot sliced from some suburban
shopping mall and set afloat in the glinting blue Atlantic. Greene could clearly see the white striping that outlined the
five-hundred-foot-long angled flight deck. True to habit, he felt he was coming in too high, but let his angle of attack indicator
persuade him otherwise. He glanced at the ocean skimming past beneath his wings. I
go any lower. I’ll need windshield wipers to clear the salt spray.

“Five five five, on line, one mile,” said the carrier’s air controller. He was informing Greene that he was flying a correct
approach toward the carrier, and that he was a mile away.

“R-Roger,” Greene managed. His mouth had suddenly gone so dry that he had difficulty getting the word out.

“You’re sounding tense, there. Air Force,” Popeye said lightly. “You don’t want to hit that ramp now.… If you bolt the carrier,
I can take control of the airplane and get us out of it. You trap a little too much to the right or left, we’ll merely slide
off the deck and into the nets, and probably come out of this with just a couple of broken necks. But you hit that ramp, and
we become deep-fried food for the fishes.”

“Thanks, Popeye, I really needed to hear that right now,” Greene snapped.

“No problem. Air Force.” Popeye chuckled. “Did I mention that my fucking grandmother could set her down on a
bee-yuutiful
day like today?”

“This is where I came in,” Greene said. He heard himself laugh.

“There you, go. Air Force,” Popeye said. “Smile and the world smiles with you…”

Son of a bitch, I do feel better,
Greene thought gratefully. Talk about stress, he wondered how a guy like Popeye could take so many backseat rides with first-timers
and still find it within himself to joke the novice pilot out of his funk.

“Five five five, all down, call the ball,” said another voice from the carrier, that of the landing signal officer. The LSO
would be in charge of Greene’s landing during its final moments. talking him down with last-second corrections if necessary,
or, if the LSO didn’t like the look of Greene’s approach, waving him off. Just now, the LSO had told Greene that his landing-gear
flaps and tailhook were down, and had asked Greene if he had visual contact with the LLD Light Landing Device.

“Five five five on the ball,” Greene said, telling the LSO that he had visual contact with the LLD.

“Roger, ball,” the LSO said.

Greene’s touchdown aimpoint was the center of the four arresting cables that bisected the angled flight deck, roughly parallel
to the carrier’s superstructure. The cables were spaced forty feet apart: 120 feet of sanctuary in all, hence the 120-foot
training rectangle painted on the tarmac way back when all this was just make-believe.

“Five five five on line, very slightly right, one half mile, call the ball.”

Greene nudged the Buckeye starboard as he replied, “Five, five five. I’ve got center ball.”

The carrier was coming up fast now.
Just another few seconds,
Greene thought.

The instant before Greene touched down, he would have to go to full throttle—full military power—so that his bird would have
the energy to make it back into the sky in case Greene “bolted,” missing all four cables, or in case something else went wrong.
At full throttle, he’d travel from the first cable to the fourth in less than a half second.

“You ideally want that number-three wire. Air Force,” Popeye said calmly.

“Five five five on line,” the LSO radioed. “Good luck, Air Force.”

“Well, well, well,” Popeye laughed appreciatively. “Looks like you provisionally got yourself your call-sign moniker.”

“Provisionally?”

“Sure,” Popeye said. “You’ve got to earn it to keep it.”

Don’t think,
Greene warned himself, pushing out of his mind the cautionary films they’d shown the pilots during training of those who’d
done this wrong, in the process transforming themselves into fireballs.
Don’t think. Do.

The carrier was rocketing toward him with incredible speed. Greene’s stomach was doing nervous flip-flops.
Come onnnn,
he thought, his eyes flitting from the ball, the expanding carrier deck, and his instruments.
Popeye’s fucking grandmother could do it on such a bee-yuutiful day.

Greene glimpsed the LSO officer and his people on their platform cantilevered off the carrier’s aft port side, and then his
bird’s nose crossed the ramp—