Outlaw

When he did, the new yellow shirt gave a command for a slight left turn.

Colt added pressure to the left rudder pedal, then released it, demonstrating to the yellow shirt that he was looking at and following the commands of the right person.

All around him, jets moved, propellers turned, and sailors scampered about near one another in what appeared to be nothing more than a tangled mess of metal and flesh. But all of Colt’s focus was on the yellow shirt who continued guiding his jet into position on the second catapult in the landing area. Slowly, the yellow shirt closed his hands into fists, and Colt pressed on his brake pedals to stop his forward movement. He reached down and set the parking brake and took a moment to relax before the launch started, looking to his right at two Super Hornets lined up on the bow catapults, just forward of where his jet had been parked.

Being on the flight deck with an entire air wing embarked was exhilarating, but preparing to launch for an air-to-ground training sortie with live one-thousand-pound bombs loaded on each of his pylons was icing on the cake. The yellow shirt spoke into the boom microphone attached to his cranial, then raised his hand again to get Colt’s attention. He gave him the signal to release brakes and taxied him forward before passing him off to another yellow shirt who straddled the catapult track in front of him. As his jet moved across the lowered jet blast deflector, the new yellow shirt gave him the signal to spread his wings.

Colt reached down and rotated the handle near his right knee and stole a quick glance over each shoulder to ensure his wings moved into position. In his mirror, he saw the jet blast deflector raise behind him, protecting others on the flight deck from being knocked over by his exhaust when he went to full power during the cat shot.

Colt looked left at the weight board and moved his hand in an upward motion to let the sailor know his jet was heavier than expected. The sailor pulled the box down, rotated a knob, then showed it to him again. Colt gave him a thumbs-up and returned his attention to the yellow shirt who guided his launch bar into the shuttle.

Thunk.

Colt took a few more deep breaths to prepare himself for the launch. When it began, one of the two Super Hornets on the bow catapults would launch before him and the other after. The bow and waist catapults would continue to alternate until every jet in the cycle was airborne. After each launch, the catapult shuttle would retract into position as the JBD lowered and permitted the next aircraft in line to taxi into position. The process would continue, flinging fourth- and fifth-generation fighters into the air every thirty seconds, until the cycle was complete.

Colt knew once the jets staged behind the waist catapults were airborne, the flight deck crew would scramble into action to prepare the landing area for recovery. Even while they continued launching aircraft from the two bow catapults, the jets holding overhead would descend and break into the landing pattern. It was chaotic, and it was dangerous.

And it was the most beautiful thing Colt had ever seen.

The roar of a jet at full power drew his attention to a five wet Super Hornet on the bow preparing to launch into the sky. It was from the Dambusters of VFA-195—a squadron that traced its lineage to the TBM-1 Avenger and Bull Halsey’s Naval Task Force in World War II — and the five external fuel tanks were a dead giveaway it was launching to fill the airborne tanker role.

The boat shuddered when the catapult fired, and the jet raced down the short track until it reached the end, where it dipped below the flight deck before beginning a slow climb away from the water. The pilot immediately banked right while raising the landing gear and flaps and accelerating away from the ship.

The yellow shirt interrupted Colt’s focus on the tanker and taxied him forward until he felt tension from the holdback fitting. Another signal to hold brakes, then he put Colt in tension and gave him the signal to run up to full power.

Colt pushed his throttles forward to the stops and spooled up his engines to military thrust — the highest thrust setting before afterburner. He immediately wiped out the controls, moving his stick in a boxlike pattern, and pressed on both rudder pedals to ensure his flight controls moved without binding. He scanned his engine instruments for anything amiss, then saluted the Shooter.

The Shooter, or catapult officer, was a pilot assigned to the ship who was responsible for the final safety check before firing the catapult. He returned Colt’s salute and lowered his hand to the flight deck before raising and pointing it at the bow of the ship as the signal for the catapult to fire.