by Dale Brown
“Go ahead and lock yourself in,” she said, “then pull those straps tight.”
“You don’t need anything else?” he asked nervously.
“I’m all set. Lock your harness.”
Fogelman tightened his straps one more time, lowered both helmet visors, tightened his oxygen mask connectors, then flipped a lever that would lock the inertial crash reel in place. He would not be able to reach any switches or move his body after that reel was locked. He pulled on the straps so hard that his thighs looked as if they’d been severed. “Locked,” he said. Then: “You ever take a cable before, Rebecca?”
Hearing her first name spoken by Mark Fogelman was a surprise—this was the first time he had ever said it. She replied, “No. I took a departure end cable once, but it was just a safety precaution. We took the cable going about forty knots—we hardly felt it. I guarantee we’ll feel this one. One-sixty to zero like that. “ She couldn’t see his face, but saw him hesitate for a long moment; then, as she turned final and began to line up on the runway, he began straightening his neck, pressing the back of his head securely against the contoured headrest.
The snow had started to fall harder now, and the visibility was down to perhaps three to five miles. There was only going to be one shot at this. “Thunder Zero-One turning final.”
“Got you in sight, Zero-One,” Delta replied. “Bring her on in. Equipment’s ready.” No one liked to say “fire trucks” or “crash trucks” on the radio—everyone used the euphemism “equipment” instead.
The touchdown zone had been heavily worked while Furness was in the pattern to make this landing as soft and smooth as possible. Airports did not foam runways anymore—foam was expensive, dangerous to work with, and not always effective—so Mace had used the next-best thing. The runway was scraped clean of ice and snow from its approach end to the arresting cable, but on the other side of the cable Mace had used snowplows, dump trucks, and huge snowblowers, and piled tons of snow on the runway to a depth of several feet. Then he had arranged the dump trucks and snowplows on either side of the runway to act as a barrier in case Furness missed or broke the cable and slid off the runway. Finally, the last half of the runway was again cleared and scraped so she could try for the departure-end arresting cable as a last resort. If she missed that, only the outer fence and some trees would stop her.
Rebecca pulled the yellow, hook-shaped handle, and the HOOK DOWN warning light illuminated. “I see your hook, Zero-One,” Delta reported. “Lock your harness and get ready.” Furness didn’t reply, but lowered both visors, locked her inertial reel, and prepared to land.
Furness’ no-flap, no-slat, no-spoiler approach was fast and low. The cold air buoyed her wings, threatening to sail her over the cable, but she was determined not to let that happen. Her wheels touched down just a few yards from the overrun. She held the nose off, using her flight controls to steer the bomber, not trusting the broken nose gear to steer straight on the runway.
As soon as the arresting cable disappeared under the nose, Furness began to lower the nose back onto the runway …
Then the hook caught the cable, and the huge arresting-gear brakes kicked in. Rebecca heard a doglike woof from Fogelman, and she heard herself cry out as Fogelman’s head and torso snapped forward and his head hit the thin metal glareshield—he had either failed to lock his harness or the reel itself had failed. The bomber’s nose came down as if the nose-gear strut were compressing as usual, but there was no typical oleo shock absorber bounce—the nose just kept right on coming down until the fuselage hit the snow. Furness held it off as long as she could, pulling the control stick back to her belly, but eventually the cable brakes held and the nose crashed to the ground. The cable continued to reel out for another two hundred feet, sending waves of snow over the canopy.
Rebecca’s body strained against the shoulder straps as the bomber began to slow, digging the thick web straps into her shoulders and thighs. The nose was pitched over so far that it appeared that they were rocketing into the ground, and the sound of the fuselage scraping against the porous-friction runway surface was what a building being dynamited must sound like. But Furness somehow had the presence of mind to act. When the bomber settled to a stop, she unlocked her shoulder-harness inertial reel to free her seat straps, yanked the throttles to idle, then to CUTOFF, pushed both fire pushbuttons to isolate fuel from the engines, and lifted the silver agent-discharge switch to activate the engine-compartment fire extinguishers.
Furness ripped her oxygen mask off and raised her visors, then reached over to Fogelman. He was slumped forward in his seat, the top part of his helmet was cracked, and there was no movement. “Mark, you all right?” she shouted. “Mark, answer me …”
The bomber was being pulled back slightly by the stretching action of the arresting cable, but Furness could hear voices and footsteps outside. At least a foot of snow was brushed off the cockpit canopies, and a silver-hooded fireman appeared over Furness’ head. “Other side!” she screamed through the canopy. “The wizzo’s hurt!”
The fireman motioned to someone on the other side of the cockpit, and was then pushed aside by a man in a winter-weight flying jacket and watch cap. “Check your throttles and fire buttons!” he shouted.
“Cutoff and depressed!” Furness shouted back. The fuel valves should have closed and the fire extinguishers should have activated by now, she thought, so she shut off the battery switch as well. “Battery switch off!”
“Good,” the man said. Rebecca thought the man looked remarkably calm despite the fact that he was standing atop the broken hulk of a fifty-million-dollar aircraft. “Guard the ejection levers.” He motioned someone else clear, then depressed the canopy-release button and swung the left-side canopy open. The first thing he did was put a spare set of safety pins in the two ejection levers and the capsule-recovery handles on the center cockpit beam. That done, he could relax a bit. “Capsule’s pinned,” he said to the firemen surrounding the bomber. “Clear to go in. Wizzo looks like he might be hurt. Be careful.” Puffing from the running and climbing he did, he turned to Furness, smiled, and said, “Nice to have you back in one piece, Major Furness.”
Despite the forced landing, despite the damage, despite her hurt crewmember and her own pain, Rebecca could think of only one thing—the man’s voice: “You’re … you’re Delta? The new MG?” The man nodded. And then she recognized that incredible face. “You’re also the guy from the bar last night!”
“Naw, that was my evil twin brother,” Daren Mace said with a smile. When her shocked expression remained, he nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Are you hurt, Rebecca? Can you move?”
Furness found that she was staring open-mouthed at the MG. He looked—well, like a movie star. He had a ruddy, energetic glow in his face, great blond hair peeking out from under his hat, and those green eyes looked so vital, confident, even happy.
“Rebecca?” His face searched hers, looking anxious and concerned but, after realizing she wasn’t hurt, he relaxed. He held her left shoulder with his right hand, reached down, and turned the four-point harness connector, releasing all her harness straps at once. “Move slowly, and let me know if there’s any pain.”
She leaned forward, and he put his left hand on her right shoulder to help ease her away from the seat. “No … no, I feel okay. Everything’s okay.” A fireman was sitting atop the capsule, and with his help Mace eased Furness out of the cockpit. She steadied herself on the canopy sill after her legs were swung out.
Her feet were resting on a mound of snow that had piled itself up all around the Vampire bomber. The nose was almost completely buried in snow, and the wall of snow also nearly covered the wings’ leading edges and engine intakes. If she hadn’t shut down the engines first, they would have flamed out from having the intakes clogged with snow like that. Overall, the plane looked in pretty good shape considering the nose section was lying on the ground.
Mace covered her shoulders with a rough wool blanket as he
helped her off with her flight helmet. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, Major,” Mace said. “Let’s get you down from there.” A fireman put a cervical collar around her neck, and several firemen and medics helped her down off the bomber and into a waiting ambulance. With Fogelman on a gurney with her, Furness was laid on another gurney in the ambulance, covered with blankets, and strapped in securely. The MG rode with her the entire way in the back of the ambulance.
“How bad does my plane look, sir?” Furness asked him.
“Don’t worry about that,” Mace replied.
“Okay.” She sighed. He seemed completely nonplussed about the disaster on his runway, which was pretty amazing for an MG. “How’s Mark?” she asked with worry.
He checked on Fogelman, who was being cared for by two medics and a flight surgeon. “Mark cracked his head pretty good. He’s unconscious.” He saw Furness turn away from him and tears start to flow down her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled, as if from the cold. “Hey, everything’s going to be fine. Mark’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not that … I just never crashed a plane before,” she muttered through cold, chattering teeth. “I never even came close …”
“You didn’t crash, Rebecca, you brought yourself and your crew back safely and saved the plane from extensive damage or even total loss,” the MG said. “You should be proud of yourself. Take a deep breath and try to relax.”
“I tried to get away from Paula’s plane … I pulled as hard as I could …” she insisted.
“I said, try to relax, Major,” the MG said—she had forgotten his name already, and was already thinking of him as just the MG. “You did good. You were in a no-win situation. I used to be an Aardvark crewdog, too, and I know about crash landings, believe me.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, unfortunately.” He nodded. “Both me and the pilot got out okay, but I got the grilling of a lifetime—everything but the bamboo shoots up the fingernails and the rubber hoses—and it was all for nothing. That won’t happen this time. I’m in charge of the accident investigation board, and I’ve got procedures to follow, but I will tell you that as long as I’m in charge of the investigation, we’ll dispense with the shit they put me through. I promise you.”
“What is going to happen, sir?” she asked, biting a nail nervously.
“Can the ‘sir’ stuff unless it’s around the brass,” Mace said. “The name is Daren. Daren Mace.”
Rebecca’s lip stopped chattering when she heard that name … and the voice. She had a weird sense of déjà vu, but didn’t know why … somewhere she’d heard that name before.
“You gotta realize that under the regs we gotta do certain things right away,” Mace was explaining. “An aircraft investigation board’s been convened. They’re going to take blood, and they’re going to give you EEGs and X rays and all that shit, and they’ll test your urine once you have to use the bathroom. You realize they’re looking for … foreign substances. They have to do all this right away. A flight surgeon will be with you the whole time, and you can have someone else stay with you if you want—your husband, your parents, anybody. Want me to call someone?”
The ambulance hit a slight bump, which jolted them a bit. She thought about calling her uncle, but he would already be in Washington for the new Congressional session. Ed Caldwell? He’d be useless. Her parents were in Florida, and the nearest sibling was in Dallas, Texas. She had friends at Liberty Air, but no one she wanted to drag out here and stay with her. “There’s … no one,” Furness replied. “Dollie Jacobs will be all right.” She had known Dr. Jacobs, the squadron flight surgeon, ever since she arrived at Plattsburgh.
“Fine,” Mace said. “She’ll meet us at the hospital—she’s checking out the others right now. You realize that the accident investigation board’s already been sworn in, and we’re interviewing the others in your flight, as well as the F-16 crews. We’re also retrieving the Boston Center and Air Defense Command recordings.” He told her who else was on the accident investigation board—they were all Wing officers, all people she knew and trusted—except the new MG, of course. “The most important thing to remember is that nothing you say to me or the board can be used against you, ever, so I encourage you to talk to me and the other board members, and don’t talk to anyone else. The Chief Circuit Defense Counsel has been called in from Langley, so if you feel you want to talk with counsel, we’ll do that right away.” The Area Defense Council was a team of military lawyers who were used as military defense attorneys—they reported only to the Air Force Judge Advocate General and the Secretary of the Air Force in Washington, not to any local commander, and so could not be swayed or influenced by rank or position.
“I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I … I feel just fine talking with you,” Rebecca heard herself say. She hadn’t intended on that sounding so personal, but … it just came out that way.…
“Hey,” Mace said, smiling, as the ambulance slowed to a stop at the emergency entrance to the base hospital. “Better stop that—you’re starting to turn me on, BC.”
Furness’ eyes widened and her mouth went dry. She had heard those very same words before … but where? “Daren. I know that name. I remember … you … you were in Saudi … I mean, Iraq____”
Mace smiled at her, showing her those pearly whites. He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “We’ll talk later … Shamu,” he said. As soon as the ambulance doors opened, he stepped out, and Dr. Dollie Jacobs took his place and began to examine her.
Jacobs had Rebecca transferred to an examining room, where she and two nurses gave her a thorough examination. The entire medical staff was wearing fatigues instead of hospital whites—that was a very unusual uniform-of-the-day combination for the hospital. “We getting an IG inspection or something, Dollie?” Furness asked.
Jacobs was examining Rebecca’s ear canals for any signs of bleeding or eardrum rupture: “There’s … uh … you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“We got a message about two hours ago,” Jacobs explained. “We’re doing a full aircraft-generation—and it’s not an exercise, it’s the real thing.”
“A generation?” Furness asked, thinking she hadn’t heard right. “Are you sure? Not a deployment?” The 394th Air Battle Wing’s primary mission was “deployment,” or preparing to move to another location and begin offensive bombing missions. The wing rarely practiced or performed a “generation”—that was when all of the bombers on base were loaded with thermonuclear weapons, and the tankers configured for long-range refueling missions, and both were placed on round-the-clock strategic alert, ready to go to war.
“I’m afraid not,” Jacobs said. “Russia has attacked the Ukraine with at least one nuke. The shit, as they say, is really hitting the fan.”
TWENTY-FOUR
394th Air Battle Wing Headquarters
“Where the hell have you been, Colonel?” Colonel Lafferty, the wing vice commander, asked a few minutes later as Daren Mace entered the battle staff conference room. “The battle staff meeting ended ten minutes ago.”
“At the bomber recovery,” Mace replied. His fatigues were soaking wet from crawling on the snow-covered plane, and his hair was tousled and sweaty. “I accompanied Furness and Fogelman to the hospital.”
“Daren, I need your ass right here at headquarters,” General Cole interjected. “I understand that it’s important to talk with the crews and see the damage yourself, but we’ve got a generation to run here.”
“Sir, did you receive a report on Furness and Fogelman yet?” Mace interjected. He turned to Greg McGwire, the Operations Group commander, and asked, “Do you know what the status of your crewmembers is, Colonel McGwire?”
“No, but what does that have to do with—”
“Well, I know, because I bothered to goddamn ask,” Mace said, obviously angry at being rebuffed simply because he was more concerned about the crews than the machines. “If we’re generating SIOP sorties, I think it’s important to k
now the condition of those you’re handing the codes to, don’t you think, sir?
“Major Furness appears unhurt. Mark Fogelman is still unconscious with head injuries. Our movie star, Ted Little, is being examined for a mild concussion. The flight surgeon says that all of them might need a staff PRP evaluation before being allowed back on flying status. That means two crews and two planes down for now.” He paused for a moment, then averted his eyes, just enough to show Cole or McGwire that he wasn’t trying to challenge anyone, then added, “With all due respect, sir, you can’t always run a generation from the command post.”
General Cole appeared angry and ready to blast back at Mace, but instead he took a deep breath, simmering, then said, “Thank you for the report, Colonel. Just answer the phone when I call, Daren, is that clear?” Mace nodded, then accepted a cup of coffee and a computer printout on the progress of the aircraft generation from Captain Porter. To the Operations Group commander, Cole asked, “John, let’s plan on decertifying Norton and Furness for at least one day, pending a staff review. What will this do to our alert lines?”
“Shouldn’t affect the generation at all, General,” McGwire replied. “All the alert lines are manned. We can put Furness and Norton together on the Charlie alert lines—as an instructor, Furness is fully qualified as a weapons system officer—which won’t come up for at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours. That means we’ll be only one crew down.”