Joint Task Force #1: Liberia by David E. Meadows Page A

it, but nothing moved. Holding the stick, he took his right hand and unbuckled his seat belt. Then, putting all of his body weight against the stick, he felt it move forward. His eyes widened. All right, baby, come on! He leaned his chest against the stick and reached over, pushing the throttle forward. Power increased. The nose of the aircraft shifted slightly from a head-on rush toward the earth to a twenty-degree descent. Shoemaker was still heading toward a fast-approaching ground. “It’s not the fall that kills you,” his flight instructor had told him when he first entered the Navy. “It’s that sudden stop when you hit the ground.”
    He was vaguely aware of listening to the other aircraft entering the landing pattern of USS Boxer . Christ! He was formation leader. It just wasn’t right that this was happening to him. However, he might pull this out by the seat of his pants. He would try it again.
    Shoemaker pulled back on the stick, flipped the pressures on the pedals, trying to bubble the aircraft out of the tornadolike spin taking him to the ground.
    “You’ve got power, Lieutenant Shoemaker,” Dr. Dunning said.
    Dunning was not happy. It was never his technology at fault. It was never his ideas. It was never his concepts. It was always the pilots, or the junior engineers, or the contractors, but never him or Naval Air Systems Command—better known as NAVAIRSYSCOM—or Naval Research Labs that was at fault.
    “Spin is slowing,” Shoemaker reported over the radio. He took a deep breath. He had not realized he had been holding it.
    “I can see what’s happening, Lieutenant,” Dunning said with a hint of petulance. “I have the master control panel here with all the gauges, so you just bring my prototype home and don’t lose her.”
    “What about me?” he asked sarcastically.
    “What about you? It isn’t as if we can’t replace you.”
    Asshole. Shoemaker reversed the pedals again. Wrong move! The spin was back. It shoved the aircraft forward. Once again he was headed toward the ground. Five thousand feet! Warning lights and beepers broke the cockpit isolation.
    “Lieutenant! What are you doing?” Professor Dunning shrilled, his voice high-pitched in anger.
    Five thousand feet, too sharp a descent angle—he was losing what little control he had had. All he needed now was for one of those F-14 glory hounds to light him with their fire-control radar and set off the warning blare from the electronic-countermeasures suite.
    Engine power died. Shoemaker watched helplessly as the RPMs rapidly dropped until only the speed of descent was being measured.
    “Shoemaker! What in the hell did you do?”
    Nash bit his lip. He flipped off the power, pulled the throttle back. Almost immediately, he flicked the power switch back on and shoved the throttle forward all the way, mentally making the sign of the cross across his chest and forehead. So, this is how a pilot felt when he knew death was rushing to meet him. His breath was short, rapid. He felt this urge to urinate.
    Shoemaker pulled back on the stick. Surprised how easy it came back. The spin slowed. He had power again, but it was increasing too slowly. It wasn’t going to be enough!
    “Come on, baby, come on,” he whispered.
    He reached forward and slapped the gauge. Power hung at fifty percent. He pushed the throttle again, but it was already fully forward. The speed gauge showed three hundred knots. No way he could switch to propeller. The wind would tear the thing apart and the pieces would rip through the fuselage—the small cockpit on board it being one of the things torn apart.
    “It don’t look good!”
    “DON’T YOU CRASH MY AIRCRAFT!”
    “Damn, Doc! What the hell do you want me to do?”
    Five hundred feet.
    “Get her up! Get her up!”
    “I have tried everything—”
    The ground! Shoemaker instinctively covered his face with his hands. The screens went black. The sounds of the displays, gauges, and electronics controlling