“Acknowledge.” Liz could tell that Yao resented the rebuke.
As Four rolled in, Delight was climbing back to the perch, leading an aerial daisy chain of pirouetting Skyhawks. Vespa tracked each through the seven-thousand-foot pattern and the first pop-up, observing one hit for each pilot. On his fourth run, however, Hawk Lead pulled out without releasing; Delight had a hung bomb. Clearing the immediate area, he called Vespa. “Liz, I can’t get shed of this thing. We’re gonna have to divert to Luke. Over.”
Vespa realized that Zack Delight had no choice. The FAA had balked at permitting ATA jets to take off with live ordnance; there was no question of allowing anyone to return to a civilian field with a potentially armed bomb aboard, whatever the master switch position. “Roger, Zack. I’ll finish the cycle here.”
Deng’s fourth bomb was the best yet—it obscured the deformed old vehicle. As he called off and clear, Liz directed him to dog in the holding pattern until the others were finished. She wanted to lead a four-ship flight back into the break, “lookin’ good for the troops.”
Yao called “Three in” and made an aggressive move in his second pop-up. It was immediately apparent at the apex that he was too steep. Liz realized that Mr. Yao was determined to get a center hit, and the onerous Mr. Delight’s departure only encouraged the student. She thumbed the mike button. “Three, you’re too steep! Pull out!”
The TA-4J continued its plunge toward the chalky circle on the desert floor. Liz felt her cheeks flush. “Hawk Three, this is Hawk Lead. You are ordered to pull out. Now, mister!”
Yao’s Skyhawk never wavered in its dive. With her thumb still on the transmit button, Liz watched aghast. My god, he’s going right in …
She was already forming the thought “target fixation” for the postmortem when Yao released. Liz estimated he dropped at less than two thousand feet above the ground, and the lethal blast pattern extended to twenty-two hundred. His nose had barely come level when the Mark 82 detonated.
Five
Thumbs-Down
Hawk Three was obscured in the mushrooming smoke and dust of the explosion. Vespa gave a sigh of relief, surprised to see the Skyhawk recover. She realized he had been caught in the frag pattern. He must have damage. She ordered priorities in her mind.
“Knock it off, knock it off. This is Hawk Twelve to all Hawks. Safe all your master arm switches. Acknowledge.”
Wang in Hawk Four, the only one still with ordnance, chirped a response at least two octaves high. Liz had Yao’s jet padlocked in her vision as she pushed over to join him. Briefly she switched frequencies. “Gila Control from Hawk Twelve. We may have a damaged aircraft. I’m stopping operations.”
“Ah, roger, Hawk. We read you. Standing by.”
She was back to the common freq. “Hawk Three from Twelve. Yao, do you read me?”
Something rapid and garbled came from the two-seater now less than two thousand yards ahead of Twelve. Liz waited clarification, got none, and called again. “Yao, this is Vespa. I am a mile in trail, overtaking you to port.” She could see the stricken jet was streaming something, fuel or hydraulic fluid. Or both. The plane was in level flight, slowly turning northerly, toward Williams.
Yao’s gentle turn allowed Vespa to close more easily. She slid up on his left wing and surveyed the damage. Small holes were hemorrhaging vital fluids from the wings and empennage. The Skyhawk’s “wet wing” held three thousand pounds of fuel, and most of it was venting through holes in the bottom. It occurred to Liz that this sight had been familiar to aviators of Hook Peters’s generation: a battle-damaged A-4 trying to reach home before it bled to death.
She remembered to speak slowly, modulating her voice. “Yao, this is Vespa. Can you transmit? Over.”
She saw the student’s head turn toward her briefly, a faceless entity beneath the oxygen mask and sun visor. He tapped the side of his helmet, then he nodded vigorously. Placing his left hand on his mask, he shook his head left and right. He can receive but not transmit. She rocked her wings. “All right, Yao. Keep this heading.” She paused. “Break-break. Four, do you copy?”
“Yes, Miss Vespa. Copy.”
“Wang, I want you to safe your bomb and drop it on the nearest bull’s-eye. Then join Deng and return to base. Clear each other for hung ordnance before landing. Acknowledge.”
Wang replied, then Liz was back to Yao. “Three, this is Vespa again. Let’s do a systems check. Show me a thumb’s-up, thumb’s-down, or thumb’s-level for a declining state.” She allowed him to absorb the procedure, then began.
“Hydraulics.” Thumb down.
“Utility.” Thumb level. Damn, he’s losing his controls.
“Fuel.” Thumb level. He’s bleeding fuel and hydraulics. Vespa was frustrated, uncertain how long Yao could stay in the air.
“Electric.” Thumb up.
“Yao, I can clear you for a straight-in approach or you can eject in a safe area.” Yao motioned toward the north, nodding for emphasis. “You can maintain control long enough for a landing?”
Yao nodded again, less vigorously.
“All right. I’m calling the tower to declare an emergency.”
Assured that the fire trucks were rolling, Liz took stock. Fifteen miles out, it was still possible for Yao to eject into the row crops south of Williams, or she could talk him down.
The steps came to her like multiplication tables. “Yao, get ready. To compensate for hydraulic loss, you’ll have to pull the T-handle. First, be sure you’re below two hundred knots.” Liz glanced at her own airspeed indicator: 210.
She saw him lean down in the cockpit, then straighten. He nodded. “All right, Yao. You’re flying by cable now. The stick forces will be very high—especially the ailerons—but you can compensate somewhat with electric trim.”
The abused J52 began spitting intermittent smoke. Liz noted that the white mist in the slipstream was nearly gone. He’s about to run out of fuel. “Yao, listen. You need to switch to the fuselage fuel tank. Do it now.”
Yao nodded, then flashed a thumbs-up. Vespa asked, “Fuel flow steady?” Another nod, followed by a thumb level. Liz assumed problems with the fuel pump, but at fifty pounds per minute the fifteen hundred pounds in the fuselage tank would get the wounded Skyhawk home.
Vespa’s mind raced, trying to stay ahead of the airborne crisis proceeding at three and a half miles per minute.
He’s getting pretty low; he’s going to drag it in. “Yao, you’re losing altitude. Can you add power and hold what you got?”
Hawk Three seemed to respond, then visibly decelerated. Liz glanced at her altimeter: barely two thousand feet above the ground. It’s gonna be awful close.
“Yao, listen. I think you’re having fuel feed problems. Switch to manual fuel control.” A brisk nod acknowledged the order. “Okay, good. Now slowly advance your throttle to eighty-eight percent. Let me know how that works.”
Long moments dragged by before Yao gave a thumb’s-up.
“All right, Mr. Yao. You’re doing fine. Listen, we’re going to make a low cautionary approach. I want you to maintain 160 knots indicated, okay?” The two jets jockeyed in relation to one another, speed stabilizing at 165 by Vespa’s airspeed indicator.
“Now, one more thing, Yao. I need you to put 110 mils on your gunsight. Understand? At the end of the runway, you will aim for the thousand-foot marker and fly onto the runway. Okay?”
Yao reached up and put the setting on his sight. He looked at Vespa and displayed his left thumb again.
Liz waited a few more moments, trying to gauge Yao’s rate of descent against the remaining distance. Damn it! I need to talk to him. She waited several seconds more, then regretted the time she spent pondering. “Yao, this is Hawk Lead.” She sought to reassert her authority. “You need to decide right away if you can land or if you should eject.” She emphasized each syllable for clarity. Yao squirmed on his seat as if trying to make a decision. Following several rapid pulses, he pointed straight ahead.
; There’s the runway! Vespa could see the perimeter fence and the two-mile-long concrete strip running into the midday mirage. She knew that Yao could stand some good news. “Three, this is Vespa. I have the runway in sight. Come left about fifteen degrees.” Slowly, the TA-4 complied, steadying up on the runway heading. Barely two miles now.
Then Yao depressed the landing-gear knob and pulled the emergency gear extension handle. The nosewheel and both mains fell forward, locking under their own weight, incurring horrible drag. Liz Vespa’s heart sank. There was no retracting them. “Yao! You’re settling too fast! Power, power, power!”
The abused J52-P8 had no more power to give. As the last of the engine oil siphoned overboard, bearings and blades exceeded design limits and the jet began shaking itself apart in its mounts. At best, Liz saw that Hawk Three would impact between the fence and the gravel overrun at the threshold. The extra drag coupled with the straining engine and ponderous controls conspired with gravity to defeat lift. The “zero-zero” specifications of the IG-3 ejection seat flashed on her mental screen: wings level with no rate of descent. But there’s no time! “Yao, eject, eject, eject!”
The TA-4 shuddered, wavered for a long ephemeral moment, and the airspeed dropped through 110 knots. The canopy shot upward and away from the airframe as Yao began the ejection sequence—two seconds too late. Hawk Three fell to earth and exploded with a low, rolling carrumph.
Scooter Vespa landed through the smoke of Yao’s pyre.
Six
Post Mortem
Terry Peters was first up the boarding ladder of Hawk Twelve. He ensured the seat was safe, then waved the line crew away.
Liz pulled off her helmet and fumbled for the bag. Peters took the blue-and-white hardhat with the ATA logo and Scooter in gold script across the back. “Oh, Terry,” she croaked. “It was awful …” She choked down a sob and rubbed her watery eyes with a gloved hand. He stretched his right arm between her neck and the headrest and awkwardly hugged her, allowing his forehead to touch hers. “I know, babe. I know.”
Slowly she unstrapped and followed him down the yellow ladder. They stood by the nose gear, smelling the smoke and hearing the mindless wailing of the sirens. Peters decided against any preliminary questions. There would be plenty of those, but he felt that Mr. Wei, the program manager, undoubtedly would declare a regrettable loss wholly to pilot error. In this case, the PRC officer would be right.
Liz ran a hand through her raven hair. In that motion she seemed transformed from a shaken young woman into a professional aviator who had just sustained a loss. She looked at her employer with eyes still misted but calm. “We didn’t have full comm,” she said in an even voice. “He could receive but not transmit, so I gave him the lead. He signaled that he was losing utility and fuel, but he still thought he could make the field. About two miles out I saw he might not make it and I asked if he …” She ran out of breath. Inhaling, she continued. “I asked if he didn’t want to eject while he had time. But he continued the approach, and …” She cleared her throat. “ … and he dropped the gear too soon. He started a high sink rate, and then he lost power and the bird went in.” She dropped her right hand, palm down. “Just like that. He pulled the handle just as he hit.”
Peters nodded. “I know, Liz. We heard most of it on squadron common. I don’t know what else you could have done …” His voice trailed off.
He won’t say that I should have ordered Yao to eject sooner. She realized that eventually some of the others might be less reluctant to voice that opinion. With a start, she thought of Delight and Wang, who probably now were landing at Luke. “Does Zack know?”
Peters shook his head. “Negats, unless he monitored our freq, which I doubt. Anyway, I don’t want to distract him when he has to land with hung ordnance.”
Liz realized that ATA still had a lesser emergency to sweat out before the day could be put behind them. She looked at Peters again. “Ozzie?”
Peters’s blue eyes went to the pavement before meeting hers again. “He knows.”
Seven
Slaying Dragons
“Ozzie?”
“Yes.”
“This is Liz.”
Ostrewski’s pulse briefly spiked, then returned to his normal fifty-five. But his grip tightened on the phone while he thought of something to say.
“Hi, Liz.” He never asked “How are you?” unless he meant it. Whatever his faults, insincerity was not among them.
Her breath was measured, controlled. “Listen, Michael. I really think we should talk. Could I come over?”
“Well, yeah. I mean … tonight?”
“Yes, if that’s all right.”
No point putting it off. “Okay. Ah, sure.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “You’re still shook about Yao?”
“He’s dead, Ozzie. But you and I haven’t said ten words since yesterday morning. The investigation and everything …” She swallowed. “I just felt you didn’t want to talk to me, you know.”
He swallowed hard. “Why, of course I’ll talk to you.”
“Thanks. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“‘Bye, Scooter.” He hung up. “Damn!”
Fourteen minutes later the doorbell rang at Ostrewski’s condo. Before he opened the door, he inhaled, closed his eyes, and did a five count. He did not want to do this—he would rather tangle with two of Colonel Li’s MiG-29s again—but he recognized the only way out was straight ahead.
“Hi, Liz. C’mon in.” He managed a smile.
“Thanks.” She stepped inside and looked around. “Gosh, this is nice. I’ve never been here before.” Oh, that’s original, Liz. Talk about stating the obvious!
Ozzie showed her to the living room, where he had some ice and soft drinks. “Well, I haven’t done much entertaining, you know. At least not before I met Maria.”
Liz sat on the sofa, trying to appear nonchalant. “Oh, when do we get to meet her?”
Ostrewski sat in the chair at right angles to the sofa. He poured a Coke for himself and a Tab for Liz. “Oh, I’ll prob’ly bring her around one day. We’re just now going steady.” Got that out of the way.
She sipped her drink, trying to decide how she felt about that information. “Mmmm … what’s she do?”
“She’s an MBA; manages the family business—construction. It’s a large family, sort of like mine.” He waved to a series of color photos on the wall behind the sofa.
Liz turned to study the Ostrewski family portraits surrounding a simple crucifix. A big, happy Polish clan with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. The only other photo was a large framed shot of an F-14 squadron. It was labeled “VF-181 Fightin’ Felines, USS Langley,” and the date. Suddenly Liz felt on safer ground. “Was that your combat cruise?”
“Yeah. The CO was Buzzard McBride. That’s me and Fido Colley behind the skipper.”
She leaned forward, hands in her lap. “I’d really like to hear about it sometime, Ozzie. As much as you can tell.”
He leaned back, a defensive gesture. “I can’t say much, Liz. There’s a twelve-year hold. I don’t even know why. Something to do with intel sources and diplomacy.”
“But that’s crazy. A lot of people know what happened.”
He smiled. “Like the GS-20 said, ‘There’s no reason for it—it’s just our policy.’”
Vespa recognized a no-win setup and changed the subject. She looked him full in the face. “I need to know what you think about Yao.”
Well, there it is. “Liz, I think he screwed up—twice. He pressed too low and he stayed with a dying jet too long.”
“Some of the Chinese think I’m partly to blame. Damn it, Ozzie, I have to know what you think. What you really think. He was your student and I lost him …” She had sworn she would not cry; she held back the tears. For ten seconds. Then the dam broke.
Michael Ostrewski, who had dueled with the Tiger of the North, shot eight Front-Line aircraft out of the sky, and held the Navy Cross, felt helpless with a weepi
ng female. It was one more Guy Thing.
“Ah, Liz …” He moved beside her on the sofa, awkwardly patted her shoulder, then wrapped both arms around her. She leaned into him and let the sobs out.
Nearly three and a half minutes trickled by, two hundred seconds, each with a beginning, middle, and an end. Abruptly she sat up, wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and sniffed a few times. He handed her a Kleenex.
“Thank you. I’m all right now.” She blew her nose and Ostrewski had no idea what to say. Instead, he picked up her glass and passed it to her.
She drained the soda, set it down, and looked at him through misted eyes. “I really do need to know, Ozzie. Do you think I could have saved Yao?”
He took her hand. He realized that she needed to know another professional’s opinion of her judgment. “Liz, I think if I’d been there I’d probably have told him to pull the handle. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t know what you knew, and you didn’t know what I knew about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I brought him along, that’s all. I think I got inside his head. He was insecure about his bombing, and my guess is that he thought by saving the jet he could sort of make up for, you know, screwing up.”
Liz dabbed at one eye with the hankie. “Did you like him?”
“What?”
“I mean it. Did you like Yao as a person?”
“Well … gee, I don’t know. I didn’t think of him as an individual human with friends and maybe a family. He was a student who was my responsibility.” He shrugged. “It was a professional relationship, that’s all.” Ozzie looked at her again. “Do you like Deng?”
She smiled. “Yeah, I do. The way he wears his Stetson everywhere. And he has that shy quality about him, you know?” Ozzie nodded. He didn’t know.
“But he’s a good student, Liz. He follows orders.”
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