The Ocean Between Us Read Online Free PDF

impossibly small. The fact that it was steaming away from him at thirty knots only made the ride more interesting.
    Sweat tracked down between his shoulder blades, and he wondered if experienced pilots ever got used to this. Too high and he’d miss the wire and bolt off into the night again with barely enough fuel to make another pass. The slightest tip to one side risked a collision with a jet parked on the deck. A drift to the other side meant an unscheduled swim and the loss of a fifty-two-million-dollar aircraft. The LSO might wave him off two seconds before landing. If he came in too low, he’d hit the ramp and turn the plane and its crew into a fireball.
    This is so cool, he thought.
    His legs twitched and trembled uncontrollably on the rudder pedals. His lineup was good, or so he thought until the expressionless voice of the LSO came in through his headset. “You’re low, six-two-three. Power.”
    Josh shoved his hand forward, overcompensating. The uncooperative nose of the aircraft reminded him that he was a rookie with fewer than fifty traps under his belt, not even a dozen at night.
    “Take it easy,” said the soothing voice in his ear.
    Then the emergency signal sounded. The LSO’s next order was not so soothing: “Red deck! Red deck! Power!” The vertical wave-off lights lit like a Christmas tree.
    Josh rammed the throttles hard to the stops to firewall the engine. A red deck was closed to incoming aircraft, even those that were seconds from landing. He cut away and climbed back into the night. The plane shuddered like a live beast.
    “Watch the PIO, nugget.”
    Pilot-induced oscillation. “Got it. Not everybody wants to bea Blue Angel.” Josh concentrated on the climb, breaking the landing pattern. The plane shifted from side to side. “She’s yawing,” he said, flicking a glance at the instrument panel.
    “The computer will correct it,” said Hatch.
    “What the hell happened down there?”
    “Fouled deck. Wait for instructions.”
    A fouled deck could mean any number of things—an aircraft mishap, equipment left on deck, maybe personnel in the landing zone. For now, Josh could only worry about resuming the landing pattern and monitoring the fuel.
    “Check your lineup.”
    Even as he followed orders, Josh could see the lights of the “angel,” the carrier’s rescue helicopter, hovering like a benevolent guardian over the ship. Then the helo dipped and swept into a pattern he’d never seen before. Rescuing someone?
    “Quit with the PIO, already,” Hatch repeated. Then, to the tower, he said, “Got a bit of a problem, Mother. How about you send a rescue helo out our way, just in case this nugget can’t get us down?”
    “It’s not me,” Josh said. “Jesus, this plane is bent.” He wasn’t being defensive. The computer wasn’t making the proper corrections. The Prowler yawed hard to the right as though bent over a giant knee. Josh had never felt anything quite like it. The aircraft was in an uncommanded, uncontrolled, oscillating, full-rudder deflection.
    He raised the gear handle and the plane pitched back to the left. That’s it, then, he thought as he took himself out of the landing pattern again and ordered the lead jet in the new pattern to get away.
    “Vertical speed indicator just took a dip,” Hatch reported. Josh already knew this. The VSI was part of the ECMO’s instrument scan, but Josh was the pilot. It was all his business.
    A negative dip. That was ejection criteria. The broadcast of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” sounded surreal.
    With the radio squawking Emergency, he tried three more cycles, one after another. “I can’t control the rudders,” he reportedin a voice that was icily calm. They were still climbing, and every man in the cockpit understood why, though none would speak of it aloud. If they had to eject, they would need the altitude.
    Fresh adrenaline burst through him. The drop in vertical speed was only part of the emergency. Any second the nose