Читать книгу Night Trap - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 14

Christine was seconds from the wire. She had two thousand pounds of fuel—plenty for one landing, dicey if she had to go around again and nobody up to give her more. To Rafehausen, Christine felt like a reluctant partner at the prom—she did what he wanted, just not exactly in time to his moves. Mushy, he thought.

Rafe wanted to see the boat. He didn’t dare glance at the altimeter; instead, he was staring into the darkness, trying to find the lens—the cluster of lights at the port bow that would guide him down. Where was the fucking lens?

Then Christine broke out of the squall and there was too much light, too much brightness, as if the whole reflective surface of the deck had struck his dark-accustomed eyes at once. He winced. At the same time, he found the lens, and the voice inside his head that was really eight years of flying experience said Wrong! Wrong set of lights, it meant.

Wrong.

Wrong for landing.

Wrong for me. And this inner voice, which the good pilot hears like an angel’s whisper, said much more: it said Power; it said Go; it said airspeed lift altitude move MOVE! All in an instant because the lights were not set for an S-3B, meaning that the tension on the wires was wrong and the instructions were wrong, and the boat was expecting somebody else.

Rafe wanted to look over his shoulder for the F-14 that might be landing right on top of him.

And the voice said Wrong: you’re trying to land on the wrong fucking boat.

Blinding light all around him. The deck was there there there THERE! The tail slammed down; the plane lurched; Rafe went to high power—

—and they didn’t stop. No blow to the ribs. No neglected junk flying past them in the false wind of deceleration. Only hurtling down the deck on the edge of airspeed, night vision shot to shit by the landing lights, sparks rooster-tailing from their hook, and a second later falling over the front end into the dark without a hope, yet hoping, praying.

All of them astonished and scared and seeing nothing but light as they flashed down the deck of the wrong carrier—not seeing the startled air officer in Pri-Fly, not seeing the deck crew flinch back from them, not seeing the man who was down on the catwalk, safe but still flattening himself against the far bulkhead as if he thought they would take his head off, their lights flashing on the name-patch on his left breast: Bonner, S.