by Young, Tom
Parson had begun this flight with fifty-seven crew and passengers. Only forty, including himself, survived. What could he have done differently? How many of the dead might still be alive if he’d commanded better?
The same questions had dogged him four years ago, had dogged him ever since. In war, people lived and died by decisions to turn right or left, to speed up or slow down, to pull the trigger now or to wait.
Parson thought of the friends who had died around him in Afghanistan. He doubted he could ever form bonds like that again. That part of him had sheared away, left behind in the snows of the Hindu Kush. Nothing mattered but the people you loved, and they could be taken so quickly.
He still had bad dreams about having to leave his crewmates behind in their wrecked C-130. Those images even came to him, unbidden, when he was awake: Jordan with a snapped neck. Luke talking to him one moment, shot through the throat the next. Lieutenant Colonel Fisher immobilized with two broken legs, waiting to be overrun.
And then he’d found Nunez with his head sawed off. The aftermath of that medieval execution—the putrefying blood, the decapitated corpse, the stench of death—seemed to decompose Parson’s very sanity. The memory moldered inside him, colored everything else in his mind. The scene replayed itself over and over when he saw Nunez’s closed casket at a Catholic church in East Los Angeles. After the funeral, Nunez’s sister had held on to him and would not let him go. To his surprise, the family held no resentment that he had survived when Nunez had not. To his relief, they’d asked no questions.
Fisher’s family wanted to know everything. At the grave site in the Gettysburg National Cemetery, an EC-130 from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard had flown over in tribute. Then Parson had explained how Fisher had ordered him and Gold to take to the mountains with the prisoner they’d been transporting.
Parson had missed Luke’s service. But later, at the cemetery by a cotton field in Mississippi, Luke’s father gave Parson his old Air Medal from the Vietnam War. And after Jordan was laid to rest in Iowa, the local VFW held a memorial. The VFW post commander offered Parson a salute.
He’d worried about how the families might receive him, whether they’d blame him for leaving the rest of the crew. But they seemed to understand the importance of the mission. He supposed they had to believe in the mission.
This time, he didn’t know most of the dead, but somebody knew them. Those dreaded knocks on doors would begin soon. The fire’s black smoke mocked him as it rose from the cremating flames. It seemed to signal the futility of his efforts and carry it across the Pacific and around the world.
He watched Gold talking to one of the Afghans, moving among the wounded. At least she was still here. People could still learn things from her, just like he had. Maybe that was worth something.
If she went on with her work, that might bring a little salve to his wounds. Through his years of military service, Parson knew the value of joint effort. When you did your best to help the team, you became part of something more important than anything you could manage by yourself. Perhaps his biggest contribution, the reason for all his skill and training, was to keep her alive to make her contribution.
The breeze freshened, brought with it a hint of salt. Some part of Parson’s mind never quit analyzing the wind and sky, and he noted that the zephyrs bent the smoke and shifted it about twenty degrees. Not a big change, perhaps the result of frontal movement two hundred miles out. The odor of blazing jet fuel remained, though not as noxious as before. The flames had already consumed most of the gas, and now they had to content themselves with oil, tires, metals. It might take days, but eventually the fire would burn itself out.
GOLD COULD SEE COLMAN and the aeromeds had things under control, the wounded calm and still. She assured Baitullah and the other patients that an aircraft was on the way. Then there was little left to do but wait. She sat beside Parson in the sand, but she did not look at him. Her eyes were dry now. Gold picked up an amber cowrie shell, smooth and perfect like petrified sap. She wondered about the life that had once inhabited it.
Then she considered some alternate future, one that included Mahsoud. She imagined him an older man, standing on his prosthesis in a lecture hall, expounding on some point of literature.
The tears returned silently. Parson sat up, winced with the pain it caused him. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Gold said.
Parson didn’t speak for a while. A tern landed in the flat sand left by the tide. It regarded them with apparent curiosity, then flapped across the atoll toward a lagoon.
“What do you think Mahsoud would want?” he said finally.
“I don’t know.” Gold looked at the cowrie. The sun hit it at an angle that illuminated it like a nugget of opal.
“I think you do.”
Gold didn’t feel like hearing that now, but she liked it that Parson cared. If Mahsoud mattered to him, then he must have learned something since the days when all he wanted was payback for his dead crewmates.
“We have a long way to go to get to the kind of world Mahsoud would have needed,” Gold said.
“There are others like him,” Parson said. “You’ll find them. Or they’ll find you.”
Gold looked out at the ocean. On the horizon, a line of distant clouds took the shape of a snow-covered mountain range. A dot appeared in the sky, just above a line of palms. At first it seemed not to move. After a few minutes, it took the shape of an airplane. It expanded until Gold could make out its wings and hear its engines.
“That’s the C-17 out of Hickam,” Parson said.
Gold knew it would take her to a place of rest, but she despised the thought of getting back on an aircraft. The jet overflew the island, banked into a turn. A loadmaster ran up the beach to Parson, carrying a handheld radio. “They want to talk to you, sir,” the loadmaster said.
“Where’d you get that PRC-90?” Parson asked.
“I grabbed a survival vest on the way out.”
“Good job.” Parson took the radio, pressed a switch on the side, and said, “Reach Two-Zero, Air Evac Eight-Four Alpha.”
“Air Evac Eight-Four Alpha, Reach Two-Zero,” the C-17 pilot called. “Good to hear you got out of that thing.”
“Some of us did,” Parson said. “Please tell me you have morphine on board.”
“I’m sure we do,” came the answer. “We also got a flight surgeon who’s going to run a bunch of tests and have you guys starting popping Cipro.”
“Copy that,” Parson said. “Hey, don’t fly through the smoke.”
“We won’t, Air Evac. Where are you?”
“On the beach, about five hundred yards upwind of the fire. Lieutenant Colman will be in charge down here.”
“See you when we get on the ground.”
Gold watched the C-17 make its approach. For a moment she could imagine it came from a netherworld, that nothing else existed but this crust of coral and sand and the infinite Pacific that surrounded it. The reverie lasted only a second or two; Gold had experienced too much reality to indulge in fantasy. That jet didn’t come from the world Mahsoud would have needed. It came from the one that failed him.
“Sophia,” Parson said. “Sit beside me on the ride to Hickam, will you?”
“All right.”
She looked at Parson, the bags under his eyes, the scratches on his face, the bloodstains and scorches on his flight suit. Back then in Afghanistan, she had helped him keep focused on the mission. Now he seemed intent on returning the favor.
She wanted to say more, but the C-17’s whistling howl drowned out conversation. Its wheels barked onto the pavement, left puffs of gray smoke. The aircraft shimmered in heat waves rising from the asphalt as it rolled to the far end of the runway. The engine noise hushed with the distance. The jet came to a full stop, then began a slow, ponderous turn. Aeromeds and loadmasters on the beach started standing, collecting gear, talking to patients.
Colman and a med
ic came over with an empty litter. Parson slid himself onto it, and he grimaced as they lifted him.
“Time to go home,” he said.
Gold shook her head. No, not time for that yet. Between here and home, she had much work to do, if she could still find the strength to do it. She took one last look at the cowrie, threw it with a sidearm toss. It struck the water once, twice, three times. Then it vanished into the endless blue.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If not for my wife, Kristen, this book would probably not exist. From her unwavering support during my long absences for military duty to her encouragement through all the frustrations and rewards of an author’s life, she has been the beacon that kept me on course. (And she’s a pretty darn good writing coach.)
Once this manuscript met Kristen’s approval, it went to some fine folks at Putnam. I’m honored to work with publisher and editor in chief Neil Nyren and company president Ivan Held, along with Thomas Colgan at Berkley. Many thanks also to Michael Barson, Victoria Comella, Kate Stark, Chris Nelson, Lydia Hirt, and all the staff at Penguin Group.
My literary agent, Michael Carlisle, made it all possible. His colleague, Lyndsey Blessing, has helped bring my work into foreign translation. And I owe much to author and professor John Casey, as well as Richard Elam, Barbara Esstman, Liz Lee, and Jodie Forrest. Thanks also to old friend and Navy vet Carol Otis for some medical information.
In addition, I’d like to extend thanks to my great friends and squadron mates in the 167th Airlift Wing, West Virginia Air National Guard, for their companionship and inspiration. Kevin Miller, Curtis Garrett, and former commander Wayne “Speedy” Lloyd provided technical help. Special appreciation goes to Joe Myers for his encouragement and editing input, and to the aeromedical section’s Bud Martz, who found time to help me with medical details while he was busy helping save the lives of heroes.
THE STORY BEHIND SILENT ENEMY
In my previous novel, The Mullah’s Storm, Major Parson and Sergeant Gold found themselves shot down, trapped on the ground, fleeing an enemy they fought hand to hand and bullet by bullet. In Silent Enemy, they meet again for what should be an uneventful flight, transporting wounded out of Afghanistan—but a terrorist bomb traps them at altitude, unable to land. The crisis forces them on a journey more than halfway around the world, beset by danger.
From the Trojan War to the War on Terror, tales of a ship and crew in peril have timeless appeal. We can all relate to the fear of getting lost, the challenge of facing the elements. We can all envy the bonds that form within the crews, and admire the skills they bring to bear, whether they’re seamen climbing through rigging or airmen climbing through clouds. We’re all fascinated by their leaders, from Odysseus to Captain Kirk. How will he handle this problem? What would we do in his place?
For military aircrews, these types of questions come up all the time. As an Air National Guard aviator, I’ve found myself in situations where the worst could have happened if not for the commander’s leadership, the crew’s airmanship, and a little mercy from the gods of wind and storm.
One morning in 1998, my crewmates and I were in the middle of a long trip home from an airlift mission in Bangladesh. We took off from Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa in our C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, headed for Wake Island, a tiny atoll in the Pacific. En route, we suddenly encountered unforecasted, unfavorable winds. As the navigator and I made calculations, the cost in groundspeed and fuel became clear, and it became apparent we might not have the fuel to reach Wake. Looking down, the ocean never seemed so vast. We discussed options with the aircraft commander, considered turning around, declaring a fuel emergency, landing at Iwo Jima. . . .
And then the winds shifted to our tail, the numbers improved, and we landed at Wake with fuel to spare.
My logbook also includes about five engine shutdowns, smoke in the flight deck, a couple of hydraulic losses, a brake fire, two pressurization failures, and electrical weirdness not even covered by the flight manual.
In Silent Enemy, Major Parson has those kinds of troubles, and they compound as his long flight continues. That happens in airplanes: A malfunction in one system might cause problems with another. What makes it worse for Parson is that he can’t land for repairs without triggering the bomb. As you might imagine, there aren’t too many things you can fix on an airplane while it’s flying.
But Parson can refuel in the air. He keeps his aircraft aloft through multiple aerial refuelings. Military fliers practice aerial refuelings so often they become routine, and as a crew member you almost forget the inherent danger of two jets flying within feet of each other. That is why I chose to describe the novel’s first aerial refueling from the point of view of Sergeant Gold, one of the passengers.
Throughout the novel, the point of view switches between Parson and Gold so the reader can experience the flight from the perspective of both pilot and passenger. For Parson, the burdens of leadership weigh heavy as he and his crew grow tired, the patients worsen, and the aircraft breaks down around them. For Gold, the journey tests her faith, her endurance, and her belief in the fight for a better world.
This is all further complicated by the fact that this is a medical flight. The most poignant journeys I’ve ever flown as a military flier have involved transporting troops injured in war. The entire concept of modern combat medicine depends on airlifting the severely wounded off the battlefield almost immediately. In the old days, the effort focused on moving medical facilities as far forward into the combat zone as possible (think of the old MASH units), but now it’s the reverse, moving the wounded to state-of-the-art medical centers in Europe or the U.S.
This means transporting people still fighting for their lives: treatment continues almost seamlessly from battlefield to combat theater surgical facility to major hospital, and the wounded fly while still under intensive care. Flight nurses and medics, called aeromeds, specialize in this continuity of care, their equipment and training turning the back of an airplane into a sick bay. Silent Enemy puts readers on board an airborne emergency room, where the flight nurses and medics deal with the most heartbreaking of war injuries in a confined space rocked by turbulence and subject to all the other hazards of flight.
One hazard they usually don’t have to worry about, however, is a midair explosion. The novel’s basic plot element is fictional, and I’d like to think the Air Force’s security police will make sure it stays that way. But if a crew ever did take off with a bomb rigged to detonate on descent, the ensuing events might be terribly similar to those described in Silent Enemy. As my wife read the manuscript, she noted that I seemed to be retelling every in-flight crisis I’d ever experienced or trained for.
I happened to write a few pages of Silent Enemy while stuck with several other aircrews in Rota, Spain. We were waiting out a cloud of volcanic ash that had played havoc with air traffic all over Europe. It seemed appropriate to work on a journey story while I was in midjourney myself, trapped at an ancient seaport, running into old crewmates I hadn’t seen in years. Some were on the way out of Iraq or Afghanistan. Some were on the way in.
As I complete this essay, their travels continue. In even the best-case scenarios, young soldiers, sailors, and airmen will keep going into harm’s way. At any moment, service members like my fictitious Major Parson and Sergeant Gold are in the skies above you, headed for wherever their missions take them. When they get there, politics won’t matter. They’ll care only about doing their jobs, watching their friends’ backs, and getting home. I hope Silent Enemy offers a glimpse of who they are and why they do what they do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas W. Young, author of The Mullah’s Storm, served in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Air National Guard. He has also flown combat missions to Bosnia and Kosovo, and additional missions to Latin America, the Horn of Africa, and the Far East. In all, Young has logged almost four thousand hours as a flight engineer on the C-5 Galaxy
and the C-130 Hercules, while flying to almost forty countries. Military honors include two Air Medals, three Aerial Achievement Medals, and the Air Force Combat Action Medal.
In civilian life, he spent ten years as a writer and editor with the broadcast division of the Associated Press, and flew as a first officer for Independence Air, an airline based at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Young holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Young’s nonfiction publications include The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan, released in 2008 by McFarland and Company. His narrative “Night Flight to Baghdad” appeared in the Random House anthology Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U. S. Troops and Their Families.
ALSO BY THOMAS W. YOUNG
FICTION
The Mullah’s Storm
NONFICTION
The Speed of Heat:
An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan