Battle Born pm-8

by Dale Brown

  “Don’t worry about it none, Rodeo,” she said in her raspy, cigarette-scratched voice. “Give ’em time. They’ll take you back.”

  “Time is the one thing I don’t think I have, Marty,” Rinc said.

  “You don’t worry about nuthin’ ’cept your check ride tomorrow,” she told him. She had the flying schedule pinned down as well as if she were on the operations distribution list. “You jes’ show ’em what you got. You ain’t a member of Aces High ’cause they let you in the back. You a member because you got what it takes.”

  She noticed Rinc glancing over toward the Snake Eyes board again. “Fergit ‘bout dat too, Rodeo.” But she didn’t offer to take it down. She couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. The Snakes Eyes wall was like a shrine. However hurtful or even vindictive a posting, no one, not even Martina, could mess with it.

  “Did that asshole Long Dong put that up there?”

  “Long Dong’s sho’ enough an asshole. Don’t let him git under your skin none.” He noticed she didn’t actually answer him. “You listen good, boy,” she said, pointing a sausagelike finger at him. “You hold your head up like a man and don’t never be ashamed of anything anyone ever says about you — even if it’s a damned lie. You remember that.” And then she left him alone.

  Rinc got out his flight manuals, charts, and target study notes and tried looking them over, but the words and pictures blurred before his eyes. He left all of it on the table — Martina would see to it that no one touched it — grabbed his glass, went outside, and climbed up the freshly painted wood steps that led to the roof. There he put on his sunglasses and sat down on a metal bench. The sky was ice-blue. The air was cold, but the sun felt warm. There were clouds piling up over Mount Rose to the west, and the Sierra Nevada mountaintops above eight thousand feet still wore a thin blanket of snow.

  The winds were calm, so the tower was using the northbound runways. As he watched, two B-1B bombers pulled out of their parking spots and taxied to runway 34 left, a Reno Air Boeing 727 following them. It was easy to visualize the passengers straining to look out the windows as they taxied past the Air National Guard ramp and catching a glimpse of the sleek, deadly warplanes. At the end of the taxiway, the Bones turned right onto the “hammerhead,” a section of the taxiway with a high steel wall on the runway side, to make way for the commercial flight to pass. The warplanes were soon followed by the SOF, or supervisor of flying, an experienced pilot whose task was to do a “last chance inspection,” a drive around the B-1s to check that all streamers were removed and the planes were ready for takeoff.

  The steel revetment wall in the hammerhead was supposedly there to protect commercial flights in case any weapons accidentally dropped on the runway and exploded. These days, almost all B-1 missions carried practice bombs, either small “beer can” bombs or concrete-filled bomb casings. But because it was only a replacement unit, Reno had no stockpiles of real weapons. All the weapons they might be called upon to use were stored at the weapons depot near Naval Air Station Fallon, and would be delivered to the base by rail. The steel wall was only window-dressing any-way — a two-thousand-pound Mark 84 would take out any aircraft and almost anything else above ground within a half mile of the blast.

  A few minutes later, after the commercial flight had departed, the first Bone taxied into position and ran its engines up to full afterburner takeoff power. Watching a B-1B Lancer on its takeoff roll was just as thrilling to him now as it had been the first time he saw one more than ten years ago. The bomber looked huge on its long, spindly legs with its wings fully extended, but when the pilot pushed those throttles up to full afterburner, it leaped down the runway like a cheetah.

  The noise was not too bad — loud, like the old Boeing 727 that had taken off just before it, but not irritating. But when the afterburners were plugged in, the sound was deafening, a low, piercing harmonic rumbling that you could feel in the middle of your chest from two miles away. Surprisingly, there were few noise complaints. When they took off to the north, the Bones flew within a half mile of the Reno Hilton and right over John Ascuaga’s Nugget Hotel and Casino, and they must certainly rattle the windows in those hotel towers! But Rinc had often seen hundreds of people gather outside the casinos to watch the Bones launch, especially during the rare nighttime launches when the bombers’ afterburner plumes stretched a hundred feet across the sky. It was like a mini air show several times a week. The Bones were part of the city’s attractions, like the glittering neon lights, the brothels, and the National Bowling Center. Eerie, a little ominous, yet curiously welcome. Nonetheless, takeoffs and landings between nine P.M. and seven A.M. were allowed only on weekends and only using military power, which produced about the same amount of noise as a commercial airliner.

  Rinc must have been temporarily deafened after the Bone blasted off because he never heard her approach on the rooftop.

  “Hello, Rodeo.”

  He turned, startled. There before him was Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Furness.

  He got to his feet, but as he stepped toward her, he sensed her body stiffening. “Rebecca, I… It’s good to see you,” he stammered.

  Her eyes hardened, her jaw was set taut — and then she rushed into his arms. “Damn you to hell, Rinc,” she whispered, pulling him tightly to her and kissing him hard and hungrily. Tasting her lips, Rinc felt like a man on the verge of drowning who had just taken a deep gulp of sweet, fresh air.

  They kissed for a few lingering moments. He sat down on the bench and tried to pull her next to him, but she remained standing. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked him, the hurt evident in her voice. “Why didn’t you call to tell me you got back on flying status?”

  “I was going to that night,” Rinc said. “But the way you acted in the sim — I thought it was too early, maybe not right…”

  “You’re a real jerk sometimes, Rinc,” Rebecca said angrily. “I love you. I care about you. You can’t just cut me out like that. I’ve hardly heard from you at all since you got out of the hospital. You’ve never returned my calls, never called me…”

  “I tried.”

  “Trying doesn’t help. It hurts too much. And then to see you in the sim, duplicating the crash — that was worse. You were well enough to hunt for a different cause for the crash, but not well enough to want to see me. I decided the best I could do was let Long Dong chew on your butt for a while.”

  Her words sliced into Rinc’s very soul. “Oh God, Beck, I am so sorry,” he cried. “If I could, I’d trade my life for all of them. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Dammit, Seaver, don’t you understand?” she said hotly. “No one wants you to trade your life for anyone on your dead crew. No one wants to see you dead — that’s the last thing anyone wants. Especially me. We want you to be one of us again. It’s you that has this chip on his shoulder. What you don’t seem to get is that we’re all hurting… dammit, I’m hurting. I want you back. I want you with me, the way it was before.”

  “The way it was before?” Rinc interjected. “What was so great about that? Sneaking around? Not allowed even to come near each other in public for fear someone might see us? Nothing but a series of one-nighters…”

  “Look, Rinc,” she answered. “You know this was the way it had to be. We talked it out when we first fell in love — that we’d rather have each other part-time than not at all. I am your squadron commander and your superior officer. If anyone in this unit learned we were sleeping together, I’d lose my job and you’d lose all credibility. There wasn’t any possibility of a normal relationship. There still isn’t — not until and unless we both decide, together, that we’re willing to make a serious career change — either you leave the Guard, or I do. But you know all this — my God, we’ve hashed it out over and over. What’s the point of bringing it up again? We’re stuck with the decision we’ve made — to stay in, and to see each other whenever and however we could.”

  He start
ed to speak but she cut him off, the pain evident in her voice. “Listen, Rinc,” she told him, “however difficult it is, this still doesn’t give you the right to ignore me, to cut me out when I needed to know that you were all right. It killed me to think that you were in pain or needed my help. And after you came out of the hospital it hurt even worse to be worrying that maybe you didn’t want me anymore.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Rinc said. He took her hand, and she raised it to her lips. “Oh, Beck, I’ve been so lonely. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed your body tight up against mine, making love to you under the stars…”

  “I’m here, Rodeo,” she said. “I’ve missed you too, and I want you more than I can ever tell you.” She paused, waiting. God yes, she wanted him, wanted him inside her now. But he needed to invite her. She wanted him to ask for her. When she was younger, she’d had plenty of men who just wanted sex, release. But no more. She was too old to simply provide a warm place to put it. She needed to love and be loved, and being loved meant being asked.

  Still, she was not above doing a little prompting, especially for this man. She smiled at Rinc, took his hand, and ran it down the front of her body, letting it graze her breast and his fingers just barely tug at the waistline of her blue jeans. “Rinc?”

  “I’d… I’d better get a little more studying done,” she heard him say. He was watching her, watching for the hurt that he knew would spread across her face. “Hey, Beck, I’m sorry. It’s just the check ride coming up, you know… it brings back some memories. The crash, the accident… I don’t think I’d be much company.”

  “I understand — although I’m horny enough to do you right here on this rooftop, big guy.” She smiled at him mischievously. “I’d be just as happy to talk with you and be with you if you’d like. Well, not just as happy, but it would be fine.”

  “I’m not sure if I want to talk about it, Beck. Ever.”

  “I know,” Rebecca said sympathetically. But then she let her voice and her body harden. “People die in airplanes, Rinc,” she told him. “It’s a dangerous business. I know you, and I know — knew — Chappie and Mad Dog. We’re all alike. We push the envelope hard. That’s how we survive — and sometimes don’t. That’s why we’re the best.”

  “Then why does everyone blame me for the crash?” Rinc asked angrily. “Because I survived it? Why doesn’t anyone believe me when I tell them that I’m not responsible for the crash?”

  Rebecca reached out her hand to stroke his face. “I believe you, Rinc,” she said.

  “Like hell you do!” he shouted. “You’re like everyone else — I punched out, so I must’ve either chickened out or caused the crash. That’s bullshit. You and all the rest of this damned squadron can kiss my ass!” He pushed her hand away. “Leave me the hell alone, Colonel ma’am. I’m off the clock.”

  Furness choked down the sudden, gut-wrenching pain and found she was furious. “Fine with me,” she said. “Whatever’s eating on you, I hope you enjoy it — alone. Good-bye, Major, and I hope you go straight to hell.”

  He sat alone on the bench, steaming, looking down at his clenched fists. Minutes later there was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was a guy he’d never seen before. “Who the hell are you?” he barked.

  “Sorry,” the guy said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was looking for Lieutenant Colonel Furness. Thought she might be up here.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  The guy didn’t move. Rinc was deciding whether to ignore him or chase him off the deck when he was surprised by a question: “You’re Rinc Seaver, aren’t you?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name’s McLanahan. Patrick McLanahan.”

  “So what?” The name registered somewhere in the back of Rinc’s mind, vaguely connected to when he was just starting out in the active-duty Air Force, but he was too angry and too dejected to pursue it. “You can see Furness’s not here, and I don’t feel like company.”

  “It’s tough, losing a crew. The guilt will stay with you the rest of your life.”

  Alarms went off in Rinc’s head. Who was this guy? He knew way too much. All thoughts of losing Rebecca Furness as a friend and lover vanished, replaced by an intense wariness.

  He got to his feet and sized up the stranger. This McLanahan was not too tall, not too short. He looked solidly built, like he worked out — most crewdogs these days were thin, so Rinc doubted he was a flier. His hair was blond with graying temples, cut shorter than Air Force reg 35–10 required. He wore an Air Force issue — brown leather flying jacket, with no rank or insignia on it, over his civvies. Rinc stepped closer and noticed that McLanahan didn’t react — didn’t back off, but didn’t go on guard either.

  “What’d you say your name was?” Rinc asked.

  “McLanahan.”

  “Military?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t say his rank, which meant he was probably a very low-or very high-ranking commissioned or noncommissioned officer. But by the way he acted, Rinc thought, the man most likely outranked him. What was going on here? “What unit?”

  “Air Force headquarters. Office of the chief of staff.”

  Definitely outranked, Rinc decided — he was probably a light colonel or colonel, maybe even a one-star. That explained a lot. He’d heard that the place was crawling with inspectors, investigators, and evaluators for weeks after the crash; in fact, he had been visited by a few of them while he was in the hospital recovering. But by the time he was out of the hospital, the investigation was just about wrapped up. It was one of the main reasons he felt such an urgency to get back on his feet and explore some alternate theories of the crash on his own in the simulator — he hadn’t had a real opportunity to present his side of the story and time was short. And now that he was trying to get back in the cockpit, the investigators and evaluators were back — gunning directly for him this time.

  “Don’t tell me; let me guess. You’re flying with me day after tomorrow,” Rinc said. The guy was probably an ex-crewdog, tapped by someone in the chief of staff’s office or some other Pentagon staffer to decide his fate. The only bright spot was that it meant the brass probably hadn’t already made their decision. “You’re going to do my evaluation for the squadron. You’re also here to see what kind of shape my unit’s in, whether we’re ready to do the job or ready to be disbanded.”

  McLanahan nodded. Seaver’s insight and honesty impressed him. “Exactly.”

  “We get just one day of mission prep before you decide my future? I don’t get a Guard evaluator from my own unit? No sim ride with you first? That sucks.”

  “Major Seaver, if you think the process is unfair, you know you have only one recourse — you can vote with your feet,” McLanahan said coldly.

  “Everyone would like that, wouldn’t they?” Rinc snorted. “You ever fly the Bone before, sir?”

  “Yes.” But before Rinc could ask the obvious question — when and where — McLanahan asked, “Are you in or out, Major?”

  Rinc looked at McLanahan quizzically. A little evasive perhaps? Did this guy have a past, one he didn’t want to talk about? Curiouser and curiouser. He shrugged. “I’ll play it any way Air Force wants to play it. Sir,” he replied.

  “There you go,” McLanahan said. “Proper attitude adjustment achieved. I’ll meet you at the squadron at six A.M. tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your ride. If I think we’ll need one, I’ll schedule the simulator.” Rinc knew the simulator was booked up for the next three weeks, but he had no doubt this guy could rearrange the schedule. “I’ll tag along when you mission-plan with your crew at oh eight hundred.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.” McLanahan headed for the stairs, then stopped and turned around. “There’s a lot more healing to be accomplished beyond the hospital and the check ride,” he said, looking down the stairs toward the parking lot where Seaver’s dead partner’s wife used to run. “You left the team when you punched
out of that Bone. You’ve got to prove that you can be a part of it again.”

  “So I’m a putz because I survived, huh?”

  “I guess you will be, if you believe you are,” Patrick said.

  “You think I caused that crash?”

  “That’s for the accident board to determine, not me,” McLanahan replied. “I’m not here to pass judgment on what happened in the accident, Seaver — I’m here to judge if you’re still able to be a combat-ready Air Guard B-1B aviator. But you can ace this check ride and still be on your way out. There are a hundred ways to do it.”

  “I know, sir,” Rinc said. This was a very smart guy. It was tough to realize that his skills, knowledge, dedication, and experience suddenly meant nothing — that his fate was in the hands of someone else, plain and simple.

  “I think you’ve got the picture. Get some rest — you’ll need it. Tomorrow, oh six hundred.” And he left without looking back.

  * * *

  The big woman behind the bar gave Patrick an evil look as he stepped back inside. Both the place and the bartender had the same tough, hard-shelled atmosphere of the biker bars in his hometown of Sacramento that he had reluctantly tangled with in recent months, but the feel was completely different. Like the biker bars, this place sought to exclude strangers — but he sensed it also seemed to welcome future friends, especially military types.

  Patrick walked over to the woman, about to ask where he could find the commander of the Air National Guard squadron, when she wordlessly jerked her head to the right, indicating a hallway. Well, she was consistent — she hadn’t said anything earlier when he said he was looking for Seaver. But the nod had a kind of implicit warning to it — she’s that way, but watch your step.

  He followed the hallway. The two doors on the left were the rest rooms. One of the doors on the right looked as if it led to the storeroom or kitchen; the other door had a sign reading “Private.” Patrick had had enough of going into strange rooms in the back of redneck locals-only taverns, but duty called. He took a deep breath and entered.