by Young, Tom
“Why not?”
“We’re not equipped to deal with it. This transfusion just has to work. Most people have ten or twelve pints, and he’s lost at least four or five.”
“Can I give another pint?” Gold asked.
“No,” the medic said. “Good of you to ask, but we won’t do that. We’ll do the next best thing.”
The medic inserted a second needle in Justin’s other arm. The additional IV dripped clear liquid from a bag marked LACTATED RINGER’S INJECTION USP.
Justin’s eyelids fluttered, and he made a long, moaning sound.
“Hold on for us, buddy,” the medic said. “You done good.”
“I’m sorry your friend got hurt,” Gold said to the medic. “Do you know him well?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty green. But he doesn’t mind working. I can’t figure why he cracked up earlier. Seen too much too early, maybe.”
“May I talk to him?” Gold asked.
“It won’t hurt,” the medic said, “but I don’t know if he can hear you.”
Gold had seen chaplains whisper words of comfort to the wounded and dying. A soothing voice could give strength to someone fighting for life or ease the passing of someone losing that fight. A minister had once told her it didn’t even matter what you said. It helped just to keep them company, remind them they weren’t alone.
She wanted to be in three places at once. She wanted badly to check on Mahsoud. She wanted to let Parson squeeze her hand while the MCD plucked foreign objects from his body. But for now, she thought she could do the most good here.
“Airman,” she whispered, “this is the sergeant major. We’re all proud of you. You helped Major Parson do what he had to do.”
Justin’s eyes opened about halfway. They seemed cloudy and uncomprehending. Gold watched her blood flow into him, and to her relief, he suffered no reaction to the transfusion. The medic checked his watch. “Well, at least that’s working,” the medic said.
“The transfusion’s going fine, Justin,” Gold said. “I’d have felt rejected if you didn’t like my blood.” She tried to think of more to say, just to keep the words coming. “That injury doesn’t have to stop you. You can still be a paramedic, almost anything you want. You know the Golden Knights, the Army parachute team? One of those guys has an artificial leg.”
Gold continued her monologue. She spoke of the New England countryside, of maple leaves and maple syrup. She asked if Justin liked Bach. She inquired about his favorite subjects in school. She told him hers were history and social studies. After a while, his eyes opened all the way, and he looked straight at her.
“Bomb gone,” he said.
26
Parson’s legs felt as if they were on fire, reignited with each touch of the MCD’s forceps. Finally, she stopped and said, “That’s all I can do. You’ll still set off metal detectors, though.”
The MCD and another nurse bandaged his wounds as best they could. The pain still burned, but the flames flickered down into a heated ache like banked embers. The nurses closed the rips in the pant legs of his flight suit with safety pins.
“Now you look like a punk rocker,” the MCD said.
“Country’s more my speed,” Parson said. “I want to get back to the flight deck.”
“If you insist,” the MCD said.
Parson raised up on his arms and tried to turn over on his back. The pain hit him again, this time more like lightning than fire. Most of it came from the fracture. “Fuck!” he shouted.
“I guess now you know to let us help you,” the MCD said.
Then help me, damn you, Parson thought. He realized that was just the pain talking. She was doing all she could with what she had. She pulled gently on his arms to help him roll over.
“Now sit up very slowly,” she said.
Parson levered himself into a sitting position, taking his time. Every movement hurt, but not with the searing pain he’d experienced a moment ago.
“How about we take you up to the flight deck the same way we carried you down from the troop compartment?” the MCD asked.
“That was pretty uncomfortable,” Parson said. “I think I can make it if you just give me one guy to lean on.”
“All right. But don’t put any weight at all on that broken leg.”
“I won’t,” Parson said. “Can I have my boots back?”
“No. You might experience some swelling in your legs and feet. You’re better off without footwear.”
So I won’t die with my boots on, Parson thought. But at least I’ll be in command of my aircraft.
The MCD and one of the medics eased Parson down from his litter. With his arms around their shoulders, he steadied himself on his unbroken leg. Through his sock, he felt the warmth of the under-floor heating system. At least some things on the airplane still worked. Gold watched him as he mounted the flight deck ladder.
“What can I do to help, sir?” she asked.
“Give me a few minutes to get settled in upstairs,” Parson said. “Then you can bring me a cup of water and some more aspirin.”
“Yes, sir.”
Parson hoped she’d come up and stay in the nav seat. Her presence had a calming influence that helped him think clearly. She seemed to have that effect on most people. Except, of course, that bastard who’d pulled the fire handles and tried to kill everybody.
The medic gripped Parson’s upper left arm, and Parson held on to the handrail with his right. He picked up his good leg—or at least his less injured leg—and let his weight rest on the medic and the handrail. Then he put his foot up on the next rung. Fortunately, the ladder did not run vertically from the cargo compartment floor. It was essentially a retractable stairway, on an incline, and Parson managed to climb it one step at a time. Each time he put his foot down, the metal structure shuddered.
Eventually, he reached the top step and the flight deck door. He pushed the door open. Then he stood and puzzled for a moment, holding onto the handrails, trying to figure how to make it to his seat.
From the front bunk room, Mahsoud recognized him. Mahsoud lifted his oxygen mask to speak. “Major Parson,” he called. “Sir, are you—hurt?”
“I’m okay, Mahsoud. Thanks.”
Dunne and Colman both turned around. Dunne unbuckled his harness, stood up, and said, “Let me help you to a bunk room.”
“Bullshit,” Parson said. “You can help me to the pilot’s seat. I want to see what’s going on.”
Dunne went to the pilot’s seat and slid it all the way left and aft. Then he and the medic helped Parson hobble between the seat and the center console. When Parson’s bad leg brushed against a seat adjustment lever, it caused him another blinding jolt of pain.
“Son of a bitch,” Parson cried. Then he said, “No, not you guys. It just hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“I bet it does,” Colman said. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“Yeah, I was getting bored downstairs.”
Dunne and the medic lowered Parson into his seat. Parson noticed Dunne had a scarlet blotch across the white of his right eye—no doubt a capillary burst during the repeated depressurizations. It didn’t seem to bother him. “You ready for me to move your chair?” Dunne asked.
“Yeah, just do it slow.”
Dunne moved a lever and slid Parson forward and to the center of the seat tracks.
“Want your rudder pedals cranked closer to you?” Dunne asked.
“No, I can’t do anything with my feet. Colman’s got the aircraft. I’ll just supervise.”
Parson reached down into his helmet bag and found his sunglasses and headset where he’d left them. When he put them on, something seemed to click within him like a switch returning to its normal setting. His personality, training, and talents had brought him to this place, and he felt he belonged in it. He still didn’t know if he was the best aircraft commander to handle this set of problems. But he was the only one here.
He gathered up the ends of his leather-and-webbing seat har
ness. Then he connected the steel fittings of the quick-release buckle and closed the locking lever. Parson listened for a moment to the slipstream hissing like river rapids. He looked out at the Pacific, furrowed with swells and dotted by low clouds. Then he got back to work.
A scan of the panels gave little but bad news. Warning lights decorated the cockpit like a Christmas tree. On the engineer panel, he saw GEN OUT, PUMP OUT, LOW PRESS, all from that number one engine shut down for lack of oil pressure. On his own annunciator panel, he noted ELEVATOR POWER and RUDDER POWER. They merely suggested more trouble above, on the overhead panel. The indicators up there illustrated his difficulties in more detail, with hydraulic system warning lights for each individual control actuator: SYS OFF, SYS OFF, SYS OFF, SYS OFF. Colman had all three axes of the autopilot engaged. Parson wondered how hard it was working to maintain some semblance of stable flight, so he decided to see for himself.
“I want to feel how it’s flying for a minute,” Parson said. “It’s all yours after that.”
“Yes, sir,” Colman said.
Parson placed both hands on the yoke. He put his thumb on a red button marked AP DISC. Then he punched it.
The yoke immediately pressed forward against his fingers as the nose dropped. The vertical speed indicator showed a descent of about six hundred feet per minute. Parson pulled back to regain the lost altitude. For several seconds, the aircraft did not respond. Then the nose came up into a thousand-foot-per-minute climb. The C-5 overshot its original altitude, and again it took several seconds to respond to Parson’s control inputs. The delayed reactions reminded Parson of when he’d once fired a replica flintlock rifle: after the trigger pull, the fizz of powder in the pan, then nothing, nothing, and BANG.
“Oh, boy,” Parson said. “She’s hurt real bad.”
“That’s the truth,” Colman said. “I’ve had to learn to fly all over again.”
Parson figured the depowered control surfaces were free-floating, causing those oscillations. He waited until the nose leveled somewhat, and then he said, “All right, I’ve had enough. Reengage.”
Colman pressed buttons on the center console, and the autopilot and flight augmentation computers took over again. Even they could not hold completely level flight. Parson imagined their servos and EH valves in constant motion trying to stabilize something inherently unstable.
“We’re going to have to figure some way to get more pitch control,” Parson said.
In the aircraft’s current state, there was no telling what it would do at touchdown. If the deck angle dropped, the C-5 would likely slam down nose first and break apart. If the nose cycled up, the plane would climb out of ground effect at low speed, enter an aerodynamic stall, and fall back down like a cinder block. Probably not survivable either way. And at Johnston Island, there were no fire trucks, no rescue teams. Nothing but a ribbon of decaying pavement.
“What can we do?” Colman asked. Parson noted his tone as much as his words. No quaver in his voice now. Just an academic question. As if this were a simulator.
“I’m thinking,” Parson said.
As Parson scanned his instruments, he remembered the vibration problem on the number four engine. He placed his thumb and forefinger around the knob of the number four throttle. He felt it trembling, worse than before. Like the rumble of a distant train, sensed by the touch of a rail.
JUSTIN DIDN’T STAY ALERT FOR LONG. He drifted into a morphine trance, for which Gold was grateful. Then he seemed to fall asleep. Some of the color returned to his cheeks, or was it her imagination? She wanted to believe her blood and the saline solution had brought him back from the brink. But she knew his continued survival depended on a safe landing and then a quick medevac from Johnston Island. Both appeared far from likely.
Something burned slow within her, like the hung fire of a cartridge with a bad primer. The feeling reminded her of working with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan. The PRT would enter a village supposedly cleared of Taliban. By then, things should have been safe, the way cleared for the building of a school or a clinic. But the chatter of an AK-47 or the crump of a distant IED would start the war all over again. Eventually, nothing felt secure anywhere. For Gold, it brought to mind more words from Marcus Aurelius: Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. If safe harbor existed, it was not on this mortal dimension.
Gold looked for a foam cup and she could find no new ones. From the floor of the cargo compartment, she took the cleanest used one, then filled it with the last few inches of water from an opened plastic bottle. The MCD gave her two more aspirin, and Gold climbed the steps to the flight deck.
When she opened the door, daylight assaulted her eyes. The blue ocean reflected the sun’s rays as if the water were lit from beneath the surface. All the crew members wore their aviator’s shades, and they were deep in conversation on headset. Dunne had two thick manuals open across the flight engineer’s table. One of the pages had a multicolored schematic that looked to Gold like abstract art. The caption read HYDRAULIC SYSTEM NUMBER ONE. Colman was looking up at the overhead panel. Parson was talking, pointing to switches.
He looked more than four years older. Pale skin, now shadowed with stubble, stretched across his jawbone like aged parchment. A bloody scratch marked his nose. When he removed his sunglasses to rub his eyes, they were as red as an addict’s.
Gold didn’t want to interrupt, so she extended her cupped hand silently, holding the aspirin. Parson nodded at her and took them and the water. He cut his eyes toward the nav station and said, “Have a seat. You won’t bother us.” Then he popped the aspirin into his mouth, took a swig of water, swallowed, and frowned.
“I will, sir,” she said, “after I check on Mahsoud.”
In the forward bunk room, Mahsoud lay awake, holding the oxygen mask to his face. His eyes widened when he saw Gold. He raised his mask and said, “How are you, teacher?”
“I am well,” she said. She didn’t say, I am tired. I want this to end. I want to wake up from this bad dream.
For a moment, she wanted to climb into the bunk opposite Mahsoud and pull that green U.S.-issued blanket over her. There, she could imagine herself safe as in the bedroom of her childhood home and forget the speed, altitude, and the damaged state of this machine. But she decided not to indulge in illusory security. Life’s only guarantee was death. No point denying it, even for a few minutes.
Gold thought Mahsoud looked better. But then a spasm of coughing racked him. He lifted the mask until his fit of hacking cleared. When he inhaled again, he drew a rasping breath that reminded Gold of a child she’d seen in Herat dying of whooping cough. It didn’t take an aeromed to know Mahsoud had fluid in his respiratory tract.
He needed a real hospital right now. Gold did some rough geography in her head. If Parson and his crew managed to land the plane, a miracle in itself, where was the nearest medical facility? Hawaii. Hickam Air Force Base. How far was that from Johnston? Probably several hundred miles east. Not far compared to the distance they’d already traveled.
“Put the mask back on, Mahsoud,” Gold said in Pashto. “You need the oxygen.”
Mahsoud nodded, coughed once more, and replaced the mask. Gold heard that rasp again, muffled this time.
“Have you ever been on a beach?” Gold asked. “Seen waves breaking on shore?”
Mahsoud shook his head. His eyes held a puzzled look: Why are you asking me this?
Gold decided not to pursue the thought further. She told Mahsoud to rest and that she’d be close by if he needed anything. Then she sat at the nav table and put on her headset.
Parson, Colman, and Dunne were still working out their technical problems. Dunne had opened the metal rings on one of his binders, and the three of them were passing around pages.
“So it says to depower the ground spoilers,” Parson said on interphone. “Then you override the lockout and use the spoiler handle.”
“And that makes the flight spoilers come up together?” Colman asked.<
br />
“Yeah,” Parson said. “That should give us a nose-up pitching moment.”
“It will,” Dunne said. “But it’ll also dump part of the lift, so you’re going to have to add some power.”
“And time it all just right,” Parson said. Then he noticed Gold in the nav seat. “Welcome back,” he said.
Colman shook his head. “Sure sounds tricky,” he said.
“You bet it is,” Parson said, “but it’s all we got.”
Gold did not understand everything she heard, but she could tell they were talking about something they’d never done before. And they’d have to figure it out despite their pain and sleep deprivation.
“Have you ever done this in the sim?” Colman asked.
“No,” Parson said.
“I don’t think it’s been flight-tested, either,” Dunne added.
“Maybe we ought to flight-test it ourselves at altitude before we try to land with it,” Colman said.
“That’s a good idea,” Parson said.
Gold considered the task faced by the crew. Hundreds of miles of ocean lay ahead that they had to roll up, minute by minute, with a crippled aircraft. And that was the easy part. Then they had to aim this thing at a strip of asphalt probably narrower than the plane’s wingspan, using controls that didn’t work.
She felt frail as she looked out over the water spangled by slanting light. The sight gave her a chill. Her own life seemed brief and unimportant now that it might be nearing its end. Once at Nags Head, while on leave from Fort Bragg, she had watched a German shepherd puppy walk on the beach, apparently for the first time. The vastness of the sea frightened the animal, and it sat in the sand and yowled and cried. Now Gold understood how the pup felt. It had suddenly faced its own insignificance. The sweep of creation overwhelmed the animal’s mind, as it nearly had Gold’s.
The crew looked over stray pages from their manuals. Then Dunne gathered up the sheets, placed them back in his binder, and snapped the rings closed.
“So do we want to try this now?” Colman asked.