Two of the F-14s, Bullet Four and Five, were with the RC-135 acting as primary escorts, and the other two, Bullet Two and Three, were shuttling to the KC-10 tanker for refueling. Four more F-14 fighters were ready aboard
… And it sounded like there was going to be trouble. With unknown aircraft heading their way, this was no place to be for one of the U.S. Air Force’s most sophisticated spy planes. The data was important, but not important enough to risk the manpower or the hardware. “Time to leave, Grasshopper. We’re calling it a night,” Blanchard said. Being flippant about a possible fighter attack usually wasn’t her style, but she had found after pushing a crew for so long that the initial wave of excitement that hit a crewman who suddenly found himself or herself under attack sometimes caused costly mistakes; if you could relax a person during that initial fear-heavy period, he performed better.
“Pilot, this is Recce One, execute egress now,” Blanchard continued. “Crew, this is Recce One, terminate all emissions, secure your stations and queue your data for transmission. Report by station when complete.” She watched her status board light up with coded intelligence-data packets waiting for transmission; Blanchard and Fruntz could pick out the most important ones for immediate transmission, or send them in all in one quick burst, or send them one by one in ordered, error-checked bundles. They preferred the last method until the bandits got closer and posed a more serious threat. Then Blanchard and Fruntz would use the faster 57,000-kilobit-per second routines, shoveling the data out as fast as the RC-135’s computers could handle it.
“Flashlight, turn left heading one-four-zero,” the AWACS controller called out. “Manado airfield will be at your twelve o’clock position, two-five-zero miles.” Manado, a good-sized city on the Minahasa Peninsula of northern Indonesia, was the first emergency landing site; on a southeast heading, they were also flying away from the Philippines and toward their tanker and the USS
“Flashlight copies,” Blanchard’s pilot replied. He unconsciously pushed the throttles up to near military power, trying to claw every bit of distance between himself and the unknowns.
It took only a few moments for Blanchard and Fruntz to finish their primary job — safely transmit the reams of radar and sensor data collected on this short trip. They began yet another error-checking routine after all the data was transmitted, where the receiving station on Guam would compute check sums from each line of data from their transmission, then compare the sums with Blanchard’s information. If it matched, Blanchard would erase the verified data and repeat the process with another data file. The verification process was the most time-consuming — satellite transmissions even at the best of times were relatively slow and prone to interruptions — but it was the safest way of ensuring that the information had been transmitted and received without errors before they would risk erasing it… and the information would all be erased before the enemy fighters got within striking distance.
This shit was happening too fast, Lieutenant Greg “Hitman” Povik thought.
Night carrier operations were the absolute worst. Flying combat sorties was bad enough, but a night cat shot was sheer terror. Strapped into a sixty-thousand-pound machine, blasted out into the darkness from zero to one hundred and fifty knots in two seconds. Hard enough to flatten eyeballs. Hard enough that the brain thinks you’re in a steep nose-high climb, so your tendency is to push the nose down to the water — that will kill you in one second if you succumb to the feeling. You have no outside reference, no sign of up or down or sideways, no natural cues. The ultimate in sensory deprivation, even though you’re surrounded by instruments.
So you keep full afterburner and back pressure on the stick until after the shot, after you’ve cleared the deck and established a positive rate of climb. Believe the instruments, because your brain will kill you if you let it. Positive rate of climb, positive altitude increase — gear up. Passing one- eighty, flaps and slats up. Passing two-fifty, wings moving back, turn out and listen up for your wingman.
