by Jim DeFelice
Though he recognized her from his unit, Dixon didn’t know Becky Rosen; in fact, he didn’t know most of the maintenance people besides his own crew chief and one or two of the men who habitually worked on his plane. He’d heard a few things about her though, none of them pleasant. Short, built like a mud wrestler, she had cat eyes and round, freckled cheeks.
She turned around and saw him staring at her from the ground. “Dixon, right? What the hell did you do to this Hog? Drive it through a wheat thresher?”
“I didn’t do anything to it,” he said, taken by surprise. “Captain Glenon was flying.”
“Doberman, huh? I thought he knew better than this. Fuck, did he think we were bored or something?”
“Maybe,” said the lieutenant, not really knowing what else to say.
She scowled. “What the hell happened to yours?”
“My plane? Nothing.”
“Well where is it? Did you walk back from Iraq?”
Dixon felt his entire body begin to burn. His temporary assignment as non-intelligence officer had taken his mind off his failure, but now the guilt shot back in a heavy dose.
But damn it; when did a tech sergeant earn the right to grill an officer?
“Major Johnson bumped me,” he said stiffly.
“Oh.” She looked at him a moment, then turned back to the plane.
There was something in the look that pissed him off even more than her tart tone.
Pity?
He didn’t need that from a stinking technician.
“Say Lieutenant, you think you could hand me up that TACAN aerial cover?”
“What?”
“The big flat doohicky thing by your feet. The radio antenna? The fin?”
“I know what it is.” Dixon was so flustered with anger he couldn’t say anything else. He reached over and picked up the thick blade. Rosen had returned to work on the Hog, and so he had to climb up onto the wing to hand it to her.
“Thanks. Looks like the IFF is fine, but these wires here are toast. You all right, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Get shot at?”
“I guess so.”
He tried to make his voice sound hard, but Rosen laughed as if he were joking. “Hand me the screwdriver out of the bag over there, okay?”
“What, you think I’m your gofer?”
“No, sir, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “But I was under the impression that you wanted to get this airplane back in the air as soon as possible, and helping me out a little will expedite matters.”
“Expedite. Where’d you learn that word?”
“I have a masters degree in English lit,” she said, holding out her hand for the tool.
Dixon couldn’t tell if she was serious. He reached into the large bag Rosen used as a tool carrier and handed her the screwdriver. He noticed that the bag, though covered with grease and dirt, was made of leather.
“My dad gave it to me. Sentimental value,” she said.
“The degree?”
“No, the bag, wise guy. I earned the degree myself. Romance poetry.” She took the tool and went back to work connecting the fin. Dixon couldn’t see what she was doing beneath the access cover and fin, but there were loose parts everywhere. “What was it like?”
“What?”
“Jesus! Bombing Saddam,” she said. “Did you hit your target?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Rosen turned so quickly her face almost smacked his. “No offense, Lieutenant, but we’re busting our butts back here for you guys, and a straight answer wouldn’t hurt now and then.”
Dixon stepped back. “What’s up your ass?”
Rosen turned around to him. “Lieutenant?”
“Why are you riding me?”
“I’m not.” Her eyes were all innocence. “I’m not. Come on, help me get these wires in here. Don’t mind the sheet metal. I had to bend things a little. We’ll straighten that out later. Not by the book, but you want to fly before tonight, right?”
She didn’t mean anything, Dixon thought to himself. She’s just blunt.
“Watch your hands. That end’s sharp. Twenty-seven millimeter went right through here, see? Doberman was flying?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s one lucky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that. She slapped the side of the plane like she was smacking a favorite horse. “Of course, a Hog can take a lot of shit. But what I’d like to know is how he managed to take triple-A on the top of the plane. I can understand the holes in the belly and the back, but this?”
“Probably he had the Hog on its side, rolling out of the attack,” said Dixon. He motioned with his hands. “The shells would have gotten him like this. There was a lot of triple-A.”
“I thought you guys were supposed to stay above the flak.”
“We were. But the cloud cover was kind of high. Have to see where we’re bombing. And you know… ”
“Anything over five hundred feet you want oxygen, right? That Hog macho anti-snob snobbery shit.” She slammed an access panel closed, then scooped up her tools and slid down the ladder to the ground, half-running to work on another part of the jet. Dixon, still unsure what the hell to make of her, followed tentatively.
“By three. Four the latest,” she said.
“Huh?”
“It’s going to take me a little while to finish. I want to make sure it will work the whole way home. The rest of this we can tidy up back at the aerodrome. The crew here did a kick ass job. Looks like they stamped you out a new rear end. Honest. You’ll be taking off for King Fahd in no time.”
“Great.”
“You sound disappointed. You looking to go back north?”
“Yeah,” he said, his anger stoking up again.
“You’re not scared?”
Scared?
She wasn’t busting his chops. It was a real question.
“Yeah,” admitted Dixon. “I was petrified.”
Her eyes softened. They were pretty eyes, actually, when they looked at you like this.
“Takes balls to admit it,” she said, snapping her game face back on. “Don’t worry, you’ll get another shot. Say listen, Lieutenant, you think you can go steal a really big hammer off that crew over there? A really big one. I have to do some serious banging if we’re going to get you back to Fahd in time for dinner. And don’t tell them what it’s for. Somebody comes over here with a manual and we’re going to bed without supper for three weeks.”
CHAPTER 22
OVER SAUDI ARABIA
1504
The first refuel was a piece of cake.
It was on the second that Doberman lost control of the plane.
They grabbed a tanker and top priority about three seconds after crossing the Iraqi border. Doberman had a good feel for the plane by then; the damaged Hog didn’t have the most desirable flying characteristics, but he could hold her reasonably steady at five thousand feet. The tanker, though, ordinarily did its business much higher than that. Apprised of the situation, the KC-135 pilot slid down to about ten thousand feet; Doberman coaxed the Hog toward her gently. Even under the best conditions with two engines, it took the underpowered plane an eternity to climb; now it seemed like he was climbing Mount Everest.
The director lights beneath the tanker normally provided a reference for approaching planes. This morning they seemed only to throw him off, juggling back and forth as he eased in. Finally, Doberman got close enough for the boom operator in the back of the tanker to hook his spike into the receptacle. The Hog snorted with pleasure as it sucked up the fuel.
That was the first time. Swinging southeast toward King Fahd, they had to be vectored out the path of a large package of bombers headed north. Doberman’s right hand started shaking uncontrollably as he brought the plane to the proper course heading. At first it was just a twitch in his thumb, and he laughed at it — compared to the immense knot in his back, this torture was amusing.
But as it spread from his thumb to his other fin
gers, he stopped thinking it was funny. He grabbed the stick with his left hand and shook his right in the air before him, as if he could shoo the problem away. When that didn’t work, he tried stretching his hand out against the top of the instrument panel. Finally, he yelled at it to stop.
It stopped.
“Doberman, you okay in there?” A-Bomb asked. A-Bomb had slid behind him; Mongoose was in the lead.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Doberman.
“You know you’re down to three angels.”
The pilot looked at the altimeter in shock. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I was just looking for a good draw. I got an ace in my hand.”
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m bringing it back up.” Doberman put his right hand back on the stick, holding the control with both hands for a few seconds, not sure he could trust it.
“How are you on fuel?”
“Fine,” he barked.
“Just asking.”
Mongoose called in with the time to tanker and the frequency, then double-checked the course headings with both pilots.
Doberman barely acknowledged. There was so much shit to do, so much blank sky to fly through.
Luckiest dead man, huh? What the hell were the odds of getting all shot to hell twice in one day?
Worse than pulling a full house on a four-card draw. Worse than hitting an inside straight.
Never in his life had he done that.
Nah, he must have. All the years he’d played cards, since his uncle JR taught him at age seven, and he hadn’t gotten one?
Didn’t remember if he did. Shit, it was just that he never tried to do it. A sucker’s move.
Good ol’ JR. Taught him how to play poker, taught him how to smoke cigars, taught him just about everything important.
Ought to call him.
Jesus, that would be a good trick, Doberman realized. JR died two years ago.
Hell of a thing to forget. Son of a bitch got crunched so bad in a car accident they had to close the coffin.
“Doberman, you awake back there? The tanker is trying to reach you on their frequency.”
The pilot gave the com panel a dirty look, as if it were responsible for JR’s death.
“They’re at twenty-four thousand feet,” said Mongoose. “You’re two cars back.”
At 24,000 feet? No way he was getting that high. Hell, even a perfect Hog didn’t like being that far off the ground.
“Devil Four?”
“Yeah, I’m switching to their frequency now,” Doberman snapped. “I need them to come down. Way down.”
The tanker was a KC–IOA Extender, a military version of the three-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-10 adapted to a tanker role. Taking the boom from the jet was similar to grabbing a line from the older KC-135, and in fact Doberman had flown his Hog into the Gulf following a KC–IOA. He could suck up to one blind, and had come close to doing so on several night flights.
But no way he was getting to 24,000 feet, not in this lifetime. He was at six thousand, and struggling as it was.
How high can you fly with a hole in your wing?
The tanker pilot brought the plane to about seven thousand feet and threw his landing gear out to help slow himself down. Doberman huffed and puffed against the wind to hold the Hog relatively steady as he closed in. Everything was taking so damn long but at least the A-10 was flying perfectly; slow and perfect.
Then as the pilot pushed the Hog the last few feet toward the long pipe extending from the plane’s rear end, he felt his head starting to spin. His eyes seemed to slip back behind their sockets and down into his cheeks. When he got them back in place, he thought he was coming too close too fast and backed off the throttle; the next thing he knew, he was heading downward in a spin.
* * *
A-Bomb, riding off Doberman’s starboard wing, saw the Hog tilting to the left. Before he could key the mike to say anything, Doberman’s plane had rolled toward the earth.
He tucked his wing and started to follow. There was no fresh sign of damage to the Hog, and the wing remained intact despite the stress of the dive. In fact, if A-Bomb didn’t know there was a hole in it, he would have sworn there was nothing wrong with the A-lOA that was plummeting toward the earth at several hundred miles an hour.
Doberman didn’t answer his hail. A-Bomb tried choking back the metallic taste that crept into the corners of his mouth, but it kept coming.
* * *
Lines and circles. You could divide the world into lines and circles. Everything could be measured. In the physical world, at least. Measuring changed it. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, right? But it could always be counted off somehow.
Counting off. Ten, nine, eight…
Doberman’s eyes found the altimeter clock as he pleaded with the stick to right the aircraft. He had a bum wing, but he could do it. He’d been a check pilot, putting newly overhauled Hogs through their paces. This was a piece of cake.
Unlucky or not, he could do it.
His mind was flooded with images that rolled and pitched much faster than the injured Hog. He was dizzy as hell, and the shake had returned, only it was hitting his chest. He reached for the throttle, discovering with a start that his hand was already on it.
What the fuck is going on with my brain!
Yo! Snap the hell out of it!
Something in his head hiccupped as the Hog fell from his hands. Now he felt a numb pain in his chest.
Maybe the damage this morning was supposed to take him out. Maybe somebody, somewhere was fixing the ledger. Luckiest dead man, my ass.
JR was there, giving him advice. “Fold when you see the other guy’s eyes twinkle.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Why’d you teach a little kid how to play poker for?
Because you’re too young to parachute.
JR took him up in Cessna for his thirteenth birthday, got him hooked on flying.
For his fourteenth birthday, JR got him a parachute ride, the damn coolest thing that had ever happened to him in his life.
Too cool to tell his mom, though, until after he landed intact.
Jump, JR was telling him. Just jump. Everything else is automatic.
* * *
A-Bomb watched as Doberman’s starboard wing began to edge upwards; the plane was heading into a spin.
“Eject!” he yelled over the radio. “Doberman eject! Get the fuck out of that plane!”
* * *
Doberman felt it getting further and further away from him. He couldn’t get the nose pointed back upwards, and now the wing was sliding out from under him.
The airbrakes weren’t working. The right aileron had been hit, and probably the inside ones were screwed up.
There was a simple formula in his head for fixing all of this. It was just a matter of finding it in the clutter.
Call with two pair. Fold on anything less.
A-Bomb was yelling at him, but Doberman couldn’t hear what he was saying.
He could hear his uncle, though. He was telling him to jump from the Cessna. Jump; everything else is automatic.
No, that was the problem; he was so tired he was trying to fly on instincts and the Hog didn’t like that, not with a frazzled wing.
He wasn’t compensating right. He was pretending he was just out of the maintenance shop. Straighten up and fly right, he told himself.
The refrain danced in his brain. JR used to hum that song. Meant he had a good hand. Gave himself away. Made it easy to beat him.
The Hog snorted as Doberman’s hands finally took hold of its sides. The metallic animal sniffed at the air, unsure where the hell it was. A small piece from its wing, part of the aileron, damaged by debris when the missile hit, flew backwards like a Frisbee. Then the craft straightened herself out.
Doberman leveled out at one thousand feet, heart pumping, feet shaking, but head clear.
“Man, you got a one-track mind with this ejection thing,�
� he told A-Bomb. “I don’t feel like jumping today. Maybe tomorrow.
CHAPTER 23
OVER SAUDI ARABIA
1554
Mongoose found the two Hogs flying together at about three thousand feet. They were climbing back toward the tanker like a pair of little old ladies walking up a staircase.
“What the hell happened?”
“I think the wash from the tanker knocked something loose in the wing,” Doberman told him. “That and I might have had a touch of vertigo creeping in on the tanker.”
“Definite on that first theory,” said A-Bomb. “Part of your aileron is missing.”
“Can you fly that thing?” Mongoose asked.
“Watch me.”
“I don’t know how that fuckin’ wing is holding together,” said A-Bomb. “I say we head for the nearest set of sand bags and the hell with King Fahd.”
“I can make it,” said Doberman. “I just need some more gas, that’s all.”
“I think we’ve pushed it far enough,” said Mongoose. He pulled his map open, double-checking their position. “Let A-Bomb and me gas up, then call it a day. We’ll hang with you until the chopper comes.”
“Jesus, we’ve come this far,” said Doberman. “I know I can do that tanker. Just get the guy to come down to me instead of the other way around.”
“The tanker just bingo’d,” said Mongoose. “A replacement is on the way.”
“Fine. Have him meet us en route to Fahd,” said Doberman. “Hell, I got plenty of gas. I can squeeze another hundred miles out of what I’ve got left. I’ll back off power another ten percent.”
“You’re flying backwards as it is,” said A-Bomb. “No shit, Goose, I think we’ve pushed this as far as it can go.”
“You can’t order me to bail out. That’s bullshit. I’m not losing this plane.”
“You have to get a lot higher and faster to refuel,” Mongoose told Doberman. “I don’t know if you’ll hang together.”
“Get me a divert field then.”
“What if the gear doesn’t come down?”
“Man, why are you giving up on me?”
“I’m not giving up on you, Doberman. I’m trying to keep you in one piece.”