Lone Rock

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The nimble single seat A-4 Charlie Skyhawk aircraft skipped across columns of air beginning to warm from the desert sand below. In the cockpit Lieutenant Junior Grade Martin Chase Prize, commonly known as Cash, fought the lethargy of a Monday morning that began too early. Too early to focus on the hint of mist hanging onto the rocks and sagebrush of Rawhide Flats just off his left wingtip. Instead he had to put everything out of his mind except concentrating on Bravo Nineteen, a Navy practice target range, near Fallon, Nevada. It demanded his undivided attention and skills that should have been a bit sharper if he had only gotten a few more hours of sleep the night before.


Dammit, this time get it right, he thought, as he approached roll-in at fourteen thousand feet above sea level. He was beginning the third run of his first flight on his first day in his first fleet squadron, determined to prove himself.


Easing the throttle back to 80 percent, he nudged the stick ever so slightly to the left, rolled the A-4 until he was upside down while pulling the nose around until he looked through the top of the canopy at the 300 foot circular target marked out on the mottled copper desert floor. He began to pull the aircraft nose down through the horizon as he keyed the mike. “Haymaker two, rolling in!”


“Roger Haymaker,” Target Control crackled in his ear, “Cleared in hot.”


“Roger, switches hot.” Placing the lighted cross-hairs of the gun-site five mils below the bulls-eye on the ground Cash lifted the guard on the master armament switch between his knees, toggled it to the “on” position, rolled wings level in a forty-five degree dive and flipped the speed brake switch as he monitored his increasing airspeed and watched the altimeter began to unwind through twelve thousand feet. “Looking good - hold what you’ve got, pickle at ninety four hundred,” he said to himself into his oxygen mask.


“Maker two, this is one. Are you in your run?” The Voice that broke into Cash’s intense concentration belonged to the Squadron Operation’s Officer, Lieutenant Commander Crane.


Cash fumbled the mike switch on the throttle, “Maker two, that’s affirm,” then pressed the pickle button to release the Mark 76 practice bomb and began a six “G” pullout. His normally one hundred sixty five pound stocky build slumped into the Rapek ejection seat with a force of nine hundred and ninety pounds while the nose of the A-4 rose smartly through the horizon to establish a climb back to pattern altitude. Cash relaxed his backpressure on the control stick, pushed the throttle forward to one hundred percent power and while climbing thirty degrees nose up looked for his interval on the plane ahead of him in the race track bombing pattern. “Haymaker two, clear of the target, switches cold”


“Roger Haymaker two, your hit, two eight zero at eleven o-clock”


Cash bit his bottom lip, removed the number two yellow pencil from the side of his kneeboard and placed a two and an eight in the appropriate box of his target score sheet before breaking the pencil lead on the zero. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.”


Absolutely disgusting performance, he thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to leave the RAG. Cash learned about the his transfer from the Replacement Air Group squadron in Lemoore, California on Friday, and it had been a whirlwind of events that spirited him to Attack Squadron 224 over the short weekend. He watched Haymaker three pull off target and scrutinized three’s hit marked by the puff of smoke at the edge of the fifteen foot target bulls eye. He decided he needed to concentrate a little bit harder.


Nearing his roll-in point again, the absolute last person he wanted to hear from was Lieutenant Commander Crane. But there he was, “Haymaker two, Maker one, I’m going to join on your right wing and follow you through this run. Maybe I can see something that will help.”


Right, Cash thought, that’s all I need. “Maker two, roger”


Two seconds before Cash was at his roll-in point, Cranes A-4 came whistling from behind close enough for him to feel a burble of air slap against his right wingtip. Trying unsuccessfully to ignore the distraction that was now hanging slightly above and to the right, Cash rolled left a fraction of a second late producing a run that was just a tad on the steep side. Then while he called target control and struggled with the stick and rudder to correct his position, the greater problem of airspeed went unchecked by the forgotten speed brake so that, at pickle altitude, when he realized he had also not switched his master armament switch on and leaned forward to reach it, the rocks and sagebrush of Rawhide Flats exploded into focus.


Survival instinct and cockpit procedures raced into action. Cash pulled hard back on the stick and throttle and deployed the speed brakes at the same time that Lieutenant Commander Crane, following him down the chute, realized the seriousness of the situation and screamed over target frequency, “Pull up! pull up! pull up!”


The A4 jerked like a stone skipping off a wave. Cash’s g-suit slammed against his legs and gravity pulled the sweat from under his helmet down across his face. The jagged rock edges of the Blow Sand Mountains shouted a silent alarm as he slackened his death grip on the stick and established a return to a normal climb.