Silent Enemy

by Young, Tom

  “If anything happens to me and the aircraft remains flyable, Lieutenant Colman will take command, assisted by Sergeant Dunne. I know you’ll give them your full cooperation.”

  Parson paused, but the hum continued, as if he still had his finger on the TALK switch, considering. Then he said, “I’ll see you . . . when it’s over.”

  On the flight deck, Gold found Parson giving last-minute instructions on interphone. “Your plane, your radios,” he told Colman. “Just keep us level at twenty-five thousand.” Then he added, “I’ll check in on headset from up in troop. That’s when you guys can start depressurizing.”

  “Roger that,” Dunne said.

  “What would you like me to do?” Gold asked.

  “Same as before,” Parson said. “Keep an eye on us from the negative pressure valves, but don’t go back in the tail unless there’s a damned good reason.”

  “What about me?” Justin asked. Gold had told Parson about the talk she’d had with Justin up in the lav. She couldn’t blame Parson if he decided not to trust the young aeromed.

  “Are you up for this?” Parson asked.

  “I think so. I want to help.”

  “All right. You’re coming with me and the crew chief. You’re going to be our oxygen runner. Keep those full bottles coming, and bring the empties back to Sergeant Major Gold. She’ll refill them for you. Don’t forget to keep an eye on your own oxygen.”

  “Yes, sir.” Justin smiled. Though Gold could see little to smile about, she understood how he felt.

  She looked in on Mahsoud in the bunk room. He lay wide awake, and his color still appeared good. The MCD was looking at his vital signs on a Propaq monitor.

  “Any change?” Gold asked.

  “He’s not any worse,” the MCD said. “I wish we didn’t have to depressurize again, but I realize it’s necessary.”

  Not the diagnosis Gold wanted to hear. “I will be well,” Mahsoud said in English. “I worry about you and the major, with what you are about to do.”

  “Just rest and let the nurses take care of you,” Gold said.

  “Very well,” Mahsoud said. After a pause, he added, “I wonder what the Falnama would say about this.”

  “We don’t have time to check it now,” Gold said, “but we will learn what the future holds soon enough.” Or whether we have a future at all, she thought. No matter what the Falnama or any other book said, it couldn’t guarantee success. You could never have assurance of winning, she thought. You could only deserve it, and the rest was out of your hands.

  She stepped out of the bunk room and looked forward through the cockpit windows. Cumulus bloomed down below, rising above jungled hills. With all that had happened, Gold had stopped keeping track of the flight’s progress, and the sight of land surprised her. Was that Panama? Maybe Honduras? Twin mountains rose from an island in the middle of a lake. Their conical shape made it apparent they were volcanoes. Inactive, at least for now.

  “What is that?” Gold asked.

  “Lake Nicaragua,” Parson said.

  The growing clouds obscured much of the ground and water. Each white mass featured its own terrain relief: white mountains and canyons, valleys and plains. When the west coast of Central America came into view, the clouds stopped at the beach as if fenced. As the strip of sand passed underneath the nose of the aircraft, Gold looked ahead into a new ocean. The turquoise peaks and troughs of waves stretched into the distance, undulating all the way to Asia.

  She put the Pacific from her mind and followed Parson down the flight deck ladder. Justin came with them, carrying blankets from the bunk rooms. In the cargo compartment, Spencer pulled on a pair of black non-issued gloves. White lettering across the back of each glove read MECHANIX. He donned a nylon civilian windbreaker. Parson said, “Chief, that won’t be nearly enough.”

  “It’s all I got, sir.”

  “Take one of these blankets,” Parson said. “It’s cold as the north side of a witch’s heart back there.”

  “Yes, sir.” The crew chief took a blanket from Justin and wrapped it over his shoulders. Then Spencer hoisted his drill, along with a ball-peen hammer and a canvas tool bag.

  “You look like you’re ready to do some damage,” Parson said.

  “This ain’t exactly precision work.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Up in the troop compartment, Parson plugged his headset into an interphone cord, pressed the TALK button, and said, “Begin depressurization.”

  A few seconds later, Gold’s ears popped as cabin altitude rose. The air expanding in her sinuses and eustachian tubes didn’t bother her; she’d experienced the same thing before every parachute jump. If only she could escape that way: Wait for the green light, feet and knees together. Don’t anticipate the ground. Just roll when you hit it.

  But the C-5 carried no parachutes, and even if it did, she wouldn’t bail out unless there was a chute for everybody.

  Parson removed his headset and picked up a harness. He buckled it—straps over his chest and around his thighs—and he stuffed its lanyard into a flight suit pocket. Then he wrapped a blanket over his shoulders and donned an oxygen mask attached to one of the cylinders.

  Spencer geared up the same way, then picked up his tools. Gold and Justin also went on oxygen, and Parson handed the interphone cord to Gold. She plugged in her own headset and heard Colman ask, “You guys all right back there?”

  “We are,” she said. “Major Parson is off headset now.”

  “Copy that. We’ll let you know when depressurization’s complete.”

  Gold swallowed to clear her ears and nasal passages, felt the familiar pop again. Parson put his fingers around the edge of one of the negative pressure valves and tugged experimentally. It did not budge. Gold thought about the physics, and she realized the valve would never open until outside pressure equaled inside pressure.

  Her ears began to hurt a little, so she swallowed once more. Another pop, and the pain stopped. Parson tried the valve, and this time he lifted it with one finger.

  “Zero differential,” Dunne said over interphone.

  Parson gave a thumbs-up, met Gold’s eyes. He pointed to Justin and Spencer. Then, without a word, he opened a negative pressure valve and crawled into the tail section.

  23

  The cold, the wind roar, and the vibration made Parson’s abdominal muscles clench. It all seemed worse than before. At first he guessed it was just his nerves. But several hours had passed since his first trip back into the tail. That much longer at high altitude, with the metal getting more cold-soaked, it probably was worse.

  He knew B-17 crews in World War II flew whole missions at this altitude without pressurization, ports for the waist guns open to the wind. The gunners could not touch their weapons bare-handed or their fingers would stick to their .50 cals. Crewmen wore heavy leather flying suits wired with heating elements that plugged into the bomber’s electrical system. When a man got a limb blown off, his buddies could stop the bleeding by holding the stump in the slipstream until it froze.

  Parson lacked the protective clothing—and the youth—of those Air Force ancestors. Through storm damage to his airplane, he’d also lost most of the technical advances made since their time. Nothing he could do about it but suck it up and hack the mission.

  He steadied himself on all fours, then rose to his feet. One of his foam earplugs dropped from his right ear and vanished in the darkness. The noise volume doubled, and Parson had no spare plugs. He pulled his flashlight from a lower pocket and turned it on.

  The beam illuminated the black nonskid material glued to the catwalk. Parson moved in half steps, careful not to lose his footing on the trembling walkway. The aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence that nearly threw him off the walk and into the aluminum ribs of the aircraft. He cursed and shuffled ahead, now keeping both feet planted and scraping along the nonskid.

  Behind him, the pressure valve opened, and Spencer emerged. Parson turned and saw him illuminated only by
the shivering glow of an overhead lamp vibrating in its mounts. The crew chief’s yellow MA-1 bottle hung from a strap around his shoulder, and a hose ran from the bottle to a mask covering his mouth and nose. He looked at Parson and pressed his elbows to his sides in a gesture that could only mean It’s cold. Parson gave him an I told you so nod and made his way to the empennage ladder.

  Near the foot of the ladder, the Pacific backlit the louvers of the stabilizer access hatch. Rays of blue neon shafted up through the hatch and danced across sheet metal and control cables. The torsion and rattle of the tail section gave a shimmer to the light as if the ocean itself were flickering. Parson wondered if the effect would distract Spencer, but there was nothing anyone could do about that.

  The crew chief kneeled by the hatch, and Parson mounted the ladder to get out of his way. Then Spencer pulled out the lanyard attached to his safety harness. Normally, the lanyard strap would connect to a tie-down ring by a D clip, but back here there were no tie-down rings. The crew chief improvised by looping the strap around the bottom rung of the ladder and tying a square knot. Next, he adjusted the strap’s length so if he slipped toward the hatch once he got it open, he wouldn’t fall through.

  Parson aimed his flashlight at his MA-1 cylinder’s pressure gauge. Two hundred psi. A third of it gone already. Where was Justin? Parson wondered if it had been a mistake to use a young medic in an aviator’s place. But how hard could it be? Simply bring oxygen bottles down the catwalk and take the empties back like a milkman making rounds. Parson would rather have given the job to a loadmaster. But he wanted the loadmasters downstairs with the passengers in case the plane went down and they had to do a water evacuation.

  On the ladder, with his back to the pressure valves, Parson did not see Justin enter the tail section. But he heard the tromping of boots, and then the young aeromed appeared on the catwalk holding two oxygen bottles and the portable lamp. Justin placed the lamp beside the crew chief, who pointed it toward one of the access hatch bolts.

  Spencer placed the drill bit against the bolt and pressed the power drill’s trigger. A grinding whine rose underneath the torrents of air flowing over the C-5’s tail. The aircraft’s designers had placed the hatch there so maintenance workers outside, atop a stand, could service components on the ground. Opening it from the outside might take two minutes. Parson didn’t know how long it would take to drill out the bolts from the inside.

  After what seemed like several minutes of drilling, Spencer opened his tool bag and took out the hammer and a steel punch. He held the punch like a railroad spike and banged it with the hammer. The punch sank a couple of inches, apparently knocking what was left of the bolt out of the hole. Spencer withdrew the punch, looked at Parson, gave a thumbs-up. Then he started drilling out the next bolt.

  As the crew chief worked, Justin examined the man’s bottle. He tapped at the gauge and handed him a fresh cylinder. Spencer unplugged his mask from the old bottle and inserted the hose into the new one.

  Parson looked at his own oxygen pressure. Seventy-five psi. Just a few breaths left. Justin extended a new bottle toward Parson and Parson swapped it with his original. The hose snapped into the receptacle with a click.

  The work in the tail section made Parson think of scuba diving, which he’d learned in younger days—constantly watching air pressure, communicating by gestures, moving with effort in an environment not meant for the human body. It reminded Parson of why he preferred hunting and fishing to diving.

  Instinctively, he went through his PRICE check for a new oxygen source: Pressure good, 300 psi. Regulator set to NORM. Indicator not applicable on these cylinders. Connections seated properly. Emergency setting, N/A; if you were using this thing at all, you were in an emergency.

  Now that he had full oxygen again, he decided this was a good time to get his first task out of the way. He could not move the bomb until he disconnected that mercury switch. Parson climbed a few rungs until he reached the bomb. Then he took his own harness lanyard and tied it to the ladder.

  He dug his penlight from his pocket, switched it on, and placed it in his mouth. Even though the light had been inside his clothing, the cold metal burned his tongue. He bit down on the light to steady it and now its beam illuminated wherever he turned his head.

  Parson braced his left knee against an aluminum gusset plate, part of the tail’s supporting structure. That relieved his cramped legs just a little. He kept most of his weight on his right boot, still on a ladder rung. But when he leaned backward slightly, his hips and shoulders took some of the load as well. Hardly the most comfortable position for a tricky job, but it was the best he was going to get. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic, he thought. Why does it have to be so damned cold?

  With both hands free, he regarded the bomb. In the weak beam of the penlight, it looked so mundane. So harmless. A common duffel bag, with nothing out of the ordinary except the wires leading to the black rectangle of the mercury switch.

  Parson unsnapped the sheath for his Leatherman multitool and he opened the tool’s jaws. The jaws functioned as needle-nose pliers, but their hinge point doubled as a wire cutter. Moving his head slowly, Parson shone his penlight along the length of the wires. He wanted to find a place where he could get the Leatherman around one of the wires without moving it. If he bumped the wire and shifted that mercury switch, he’d probably have just enough time for a flicker of regret. Then the flash would take him—and everybody else—into the next world.

  The wires lay flat against the canvas bag. He couldn’t get so much as a knife blade between the wire and the cloth, let alone the Leatherman. Below him, Spencer banged out the second bolt from the access hatch. The crew chief looked up and motioned with another thumbs-up. His effort was pointless unless Parson could disconnect that mercury switch from its electrical source. His airplane’s circuits coursed with three-phase high-voltage current—enough to light a small town. But right now his life depended on cutting power from a pissant drugstore battery.

  He placed the fingertips of his left hand against the duffel bag, next to the wire. With only the slightest pressure, he felt something underneath the canvas. Whatever it was—Semtex, C-4, or RDX—it gave just a little bit. Now a gap of about a centimeter opened between the wire and the bag. Not quite enough.

  Using two gloved fingers, Parson started to press one more time. Just as his hand made contact with the duffel bag, the aircraft hit turbulence. It was only light chop, but it jolted him and made him push the bag harder than he’d intended.

  His chest went cold with dread. Parson withdrew his hand and held on to the ladder. He closed his eyes and felt a bead of sweat turned to ice water roll down his back. He stretched out his left leg, then braced his knee as before. The aircraft settled down again.

  The penlight nearly dropped from his mouth. But when he opened his eyes and raised his head, he saw he had about an inch and a half of space between the wire and the duffel bag.

  Please, God, he thought, give me five seconds of smooth air. Parson placed his Leatherman’s pliers around the wire, all the way up to the cutting blades.

  Time stopped. Nothing existed but the cold, the shriek of the wind, and the tenor whine of jet engines. Parson closed the tool over the wire—and pressed.

  He felt the wire snap. His heart beat once. No flash. Then it beat once more. Parson exhaled. He continued to see, and to live. He inhaled oxygen, pure and frigid, and he looked down at the crew chief. Three bolts gone now. About a dozen to go.

  GOLD HELD OPEN THE PRESSURE VALVE and watched the work going on in the tail. Flashlight beams jittered and bounced; they made her think of the headlamps of an Afghan jingle truck laboring up a mountain path.

  Cold air flowed through the valve opening as if it were the portal to some frozen hell. She wanted to turn her face, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off Parson, Justin, and the crew chief. Gold shuddered, and not entirely because of the temperature.

  As she’d recovered from her capture and torture
, the counselors warned her that certain things would spark unwanted memories. Any sensation that reminded her of the experience might bring anxiety, sweats, hypervigilance. For her, the main triggers were pain to the fingers and severe cold. Right now, her palms grew clammy, and her stomach churned with nausea.

  She fought instinct with intellect. What would the Stoics say? Pain and discomfort exist, but they only color the world in which one acts. Therefore, they are of no consequence.

  Justin began plodding up the catwalk toward her. He carried in his arms two oxygen cylinders, presumably empty, and he breathed from a third cylinder strapped around his shoulder. He kneeled at the pressure valves and pushed through the empties. Gold took them from him, then extended her arm and helped him crawl into the troop compartment.

  “How’s it going back there?” she asked. Though she wore a headset, she had to shout through her mask because Justin wasn’t on interphone. No point dragging a cord back into the tail section.

  “Slowly,” he said. “Crew chief’s got less than half the bolts out of that hatch.” He stretched out his arms, apparently trying to absorb the relative warmth of the troop compartment.

  Gold went to the recharger hose and plugged in the first bottle. The hiss brought the needle from near 0 to 300. She thumbed the hose’s latching lever, and the braided steel tubing disconnected with a pfft. Condensation dripped from the cylinder as she handed it back to Justin. She refilled the second cylinder, then topped off Justin’s and her own.

  “Are you all right to head back in there?” Gold asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Justin said.

  Gold couldn’t get used to these junior airmen calling her ma’am. In the Army, you said ma’am and sir only to officers, but these Air Force types seemed to use those honorifics with anyone of greater rank, commissioned or not. A minor point, but she liked it that Justin was observing his service’s protocol. Maybe he had his head back on straight. Without another word, he gathered the refilled bottles, opened the lower pressure valve, and reentered the tail.