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From: "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Night Landing
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 01:18:37 +0100
*****PRIVATE: Lilith
>>>>>[One for just you and I, I think. That was not fun.

+++++begin video
An aircraft's cockpit: a fighter, from the superb view, flying above a
wrack of clouds and beneath a shockingly beautiful veil of starThe ai

The fighter is cruising at 25,000 feet and 350 knots, and for a few
minutes you have little to do except enjoy the view and try to make
sense of the complex symbology in the pilot's vision.

"Psychopath, this is King Harold, do you have contact?" crackles over
the radio.

"King Harold, Psychopath has you clean and clear, on the nose and twenty
miles out. Request clearance, over." You recognise Lynch's voice.

"Roger that, Psychopath, hold at Marshal Bravo and Foxtrot Lima Fifteen.
Deck will be clear in twenty minutes, repeat clear deck in two-zero.
Confirm, over."

"Confirmed. Marshal Bravo at fifteen thousand for two-zero minutes,
out."

+++++sequence removed for brevity

"Psychopath, this is King Harold. You have clearance, repeat, you have
clearance. Be advised that we have heavy rain and low visibility." The
voice on the radio sounds worried.

"Outstanding." mutters Lynch, before he keys the mike. "Roger that, King
Harold. Stand by your backup tanker." Releasing the mike, he mutters
"and probably the plane guard helo too..." as he nudges the nose down
and begins a steady descent.

Clouds hide the sky, and suddenly sheeting rain covers the canopy as if
someone were hurling buckets of water across it.

"Great. Just fucking great." the pilot mutters to himself, taking a deep
breath. Neither low-light nor thermographic seem to help pierce the
overcast night, and in frustration he drops back to visual.

"Okay, King Harold, I am shooting an instrument approach with visual
landing. I am at five thousand and fifteen miles, still descending and
still in cloud. Fuel state, three point two."

"Confirm range, state and position, Psychopath. The clag bottoms at
three hundred."

"Three hundred? Jesus. Okay..." You aren't used to what you're hearing
in Lynch's voice, and it takes a second to realise it's fear.

The altimeter slows its unwinding, settling at 1,500 feet. The view is
still of rain-streaked blackness, only the radar symbology showing a
wide formation of blips on the sea surface some ten miles ahead.

"Beginning approach. I have zero visibility, still in the clag." His
hands move and the symbology in his vision changes, showing a road-in-
the-sky pattern of rectangles that he's flying somewhat above: the nose
drops, until he's centred in the pattern. "On the glideslope at twelve
miles, airspeed two hundred and twenty."

"You're fast, Psychopath."

"I know, I know." A hydraulic whine behind him. "Boards out. On slope,
airspeed two-ten.... two hundred. Happy now?"

"It'll do, you're still fast."

"So sue me. Ten miles, airspeed one-ninety."

"Confirm you at ten miles and twelve hundred. You are clear and clean.
Watch for the burble, we have fifty knots headwind plus twenty own
speed, and the air down here is choppy."

"King Harold, thank you so much, I was thinking things were as bad as
they could get."

Silence for a short while as Lynch continues to fly, the multi-function
displays of the cockpit and the data the plane superimposes into his
vision his only reference.

"King Harold, I am at three miles and beginning descent." The road-in-
the-sky drops down, and Lynch noses over to keep his aircraft centred in
it.

"Psychopath, call the ball."

"Clara, repeat clara, two point eight. Gear down." A surprisingly loud
whining and scraping, and four green lights glare from the instrument
panel. "Gear okay. Hook down." Another green LED.

"Confirm you Clara. Deck is clean, ship is lit, bring her in anytime." A
new voice: "Paddles", the Landing Signals Officer.

"Roger that." Lynch follows the glideslope down, as the range and Time-
To-Go indicators tick down: with twenty seconds and less than a mile
before landing, he breaks through the thick cloud to see the lights of
the USS _Hutchison_ ahead of him, the white crucifix of the deck and
ramp lights and the green glow of the meatball.

"Ball! Psychopath, ball, two point five, on approach."

"Roger that, Psycho, Paddles has you. Power. Power! Left wing higher.
Hold that... hold that... Power!"

The deck grows through the rainsmeared canopy at a frightening rate,
Lynch's breathing ragged as he tries to fly twenty tons of fighter down
onto a pitching, heaving deck that's rushing towards him at over a
hundred miles an hour, and hit a tennis court-sized area of that deck at
a precisely controlled rate of descent.

"Right wing up... power.... waveoff! Waveoff!!!" Paddles' voice is
urgent, and Lynch responds at once, shoving the throttles to the gate
and beyond, raising the arrestor hook. The wheels smash into the deck
with a painful impact, Lynch correcting for the jolt and holding the
aircraft level as the velocity vector rises above the horizon: holding
it there as the landing gear comes back up and the airspeed builds back
up, only then throttling back out of afterburner.

"Boltered there. What went wrong?" You can barely imagine the effort it
takes Lynch to hold his voice so calm and relaxed.

"Too fast, too high, too much power. Want to try that again, Psycho?"
Paddles, likewise, sounds almost supernaturally calm.

"You telling me I got a choice?" asks Lynch, still level-toned as he
throttles back and levels out, rejoining the landing pattern. For some
minutes there is tense silence.

"Psychopath, on glideslope, ten miles at twelve hundred feet."

"Psycho, this is Paddles, call your needles."

"Dead centre, over."

"Disregard needles, Psychopath, you are high and right of glideslope.
ACLS is misbehaving."

"Oh, fuck." whispers Lynch, and a hand comes up to wipe his forehead,
before he keys the microphone. "Paddles, give steer, over."

"Down and port, Psychopath. Level out and left... left... centre up and
hold that. Hold your glideslope, hold that course. Steady... right...
steady... call the ball."

"Clara. Fucking Clara. Two point zero and Clara." His voice shakes
slightly.

"You're okay, Psychopath, I got you, I repeat I got you. I am not going
to let you crash and spoil my perfect record or fuck up our tidy deck.
Power... power... state airspeed?" asks Paddles.

"One fifty."

"Gear down, hook down, slow to one-forty."

Lynch merely clicks the microphone twice as he uses some speedbrake and
the gear comes down.

The radar is showing the carrier at less than a mile as its lights again
swim through the cloud and rain: a shriek of high-pressure air blasts
some of the water off the cockpit front, though the mess of streaks and
smears it leaves are almost worse than the alternative. You realise
Lynch is hyperventilating as he levels the wings slightly.

"Ball, one point nine!" he gasps, giving up the pretence of calm.

"Ease off the power. Ease off, and keep your wings level." Paddles
manages to sound confident. Lynch doesn't speak, but continues to guide
the fighter downwards, his breathing fast and ragged. The aircraft
shudders in the carrier's turbulent wake - the 'burble' - and he
corrects, keeping himself aimed at the base of the flight deck.

"That's good. That's great. Hold that... hold that..."

The deck rushes up and slaps the aircraft in the belly, and Lynch is
thrown forward in his straps as the aircraft is brutally yanked to a
stop.

"You're down! You're down! Shut down, Psycho. You're okay. Shut down."

Lynch reaches a trembling hand out and pulls the throttles back to idle,
then shuts both engines down.

"Open the canopy, Psychopath. Open the canopy. You're down and safe,
open up." Yellow-shirted crewmen are bustling, moving the aircraft to a
deck spot and busying themselves with tiedown chains and an access
ladder. Lynch wipes his brow with a shaking hand, and on the second try
gets the canopy release to 'open'.

Another voice bellows "Help that sonofabitch outta there!" and hands
reach in, releasing oxygen hoses, radio leads and Koch fittings, pulling
Lynch from the cockpit. The airedale supports the pilot, almost dragging
him across the deck to the sanctuary of the island, another yellow shirt
under his other arm.

Inside, the older yellowshirt grabs a mug from a waiting sailor and
thrusts it into Lynch's gloved hands. The Marine gulps at it almost
reflexively, spilling some: the airedale watches him levelly until
Lynch's shaking stops.

"Jesus H. Christ, Lieutenant, you really know how to scare me, don't
you?"

"Sorry, Chief." Lynch does sound better.

"You come in like that, keep my people out in the rain, bolter off my
deck and make me look bad, then put some Commie piece of crap down on
the deck and expect us to turn her round?"

"Demands of the mission, Chief Nichols." Lynch rummages for something.

"Aw, Christ, not in here! Come on, get over to Pri-Fly, you can smoke
there, you oughtta know that by now. Calm down before Paddles chews you
some new orifices for that landing. Damn near a no-grader." Chief
Nichols claps Lynch on the shoulder. "You had us scared there for a few
minutes, El-Tee."

"Nick, if I hadn't trapped third time, I was going to call for plane
guard and punch." Lynch hands back the empty coffee mug: Nichols has a
replacement ready already. They begin picking their way through the grey
maze.

"Yeah, I guessed that. And you knew that. And you weren't going to fuck
up that much, were you?"

"Not if I could help it. But where the hell did that storm come from?"

"Off Nambia, who knows?" Nichols shrugs. "The Painted Desert, man. You
ought to know that better than us."

"I thought that was just on land."

"Well, it leaks out to sea too, El-Tee. You call in and we report clear
skies for twelve hours every direction. You get here and this is what we
see." They emerge onto an exposed catwalk, at least screened from the
rain: Lynch lights a cigarette and draws on it almost desperately, after
a few moments passing another to Chief Nichols. "So, sir, you want to
tell us what's so important?"

"Seeing as it's you, Chief... this battlegroup is twelve hours from
going to war."
+++++end video

I've briefed them, and I'm flying out once the storm clears.

I don't think I'll need them. But I'm glad they're there.

Wonder if D'Arkan knew what my backup is for this? And if he'd worry
more or less if he did know?

I want to get back to extraditing corporate criminals for a while after
this. This is too damn scary for me.]<<<<<
-- Lynch <01:15:32/04-01-58>

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.