Dark Wing

by Richard Herman

  The four A-10s crossed the range in a tight echelon formation with the nose of each set slightly back from the aircraft on the left. They peeled off to the left at eight-second intervals to take spacing for their first circuit on the range. The timing was critical if the four Warthogs were to enter the rectangular pattern correctly. The idea was for one jet to be at each corner once they were in the circuit. Leonard radioed, “Toga One, base,” when he turned base leg. He checked his formation—all were in sight and spread out perfectly behind him. Everything’s fucking perfect today, he thought as he rechecked his switches for the first pass.

  The altimeter was rooted on twelve thousand feet as he made the final turn. “Toga One’s in,” he radioed, rolling onto the target. The first event was a forty-five-degree dive bomb, the steepest wire they would fly in dropping bombs. From the cockpit, it looked as if he was going straight down rather than at forty-five degrees. The symbols on the HUD (head-up display) in front of him flickered. What the hell is wrong with LASTE now? he thought.

  LASTE was the low-altitude safety and targeting enhancement system that gave the Warthog a highly effective gun and bombsight. A sophisticated computer integrated inputs from the inertial navigation system, autopilot, and radar altimeter and projected everything the pilot needed to know onto his HUD. A pilot never had to take his eyes off the target and look down into the cockpit to check his instruments. When LASTE was peaked and tweaked, it made the Warthog super-smart, not the bombs.

  Leonard’s decision was automatic. “Toga One will be dry, systems,” he radioed. He double-checked his instruments as he came down the chute. The airspeed was accelerating through 375 knots, the altimeter was frantically unwinding, and the symbols on the HUD were telling him exactly what they should.

  The pipper dot was approaching the target, which was inside the bombing reticle circle as the altimeter touched seven thousand feet, the release altitude. “Toga One’s off dry,” he radioed. He honked back on the stick, loading the A-10 with four gs in two seconds as he pulled off. It had been a perfect sight picture and except for that strange flicker on the HUD, a perfect pass. And of course, he reminded himself, the decision to go through dry. Probably a queer electron, he thought. He turned crosswind and checked his flight. A Warthog was at each corner. Crisp radio calls filled the radio.

  “Toga Two’s in.” His wingman was turning final and rolling onto the target.

  “Toga Three’s base.” Ashton’s voice was cool and quick as she turned onto her base leg. Toga Four was at “coffin corner” and no radio call was required.

  The three members of his flight all scored a bull on their first pass, impressing the range controller. They’re going to be tough today, Leonard told himself. Toga flight continued to circle the range, working down to the lower-altitude events. The LASTE in his bird worked as advertised and his scores were good. He grudgingly noted that Ashton sounded good on the radio and flew better.

  After twelve minutes, they were to the event he liked best—strafe out of a pop maneuver. It suited his nature to fly the pattern at one hundred feet above the ground and then pop up to eight hundred feet before rolling 135 degrees and pulling the nose down to the target. They practiced to minimize exposure time on final and tried to keep their run in to five seconds. He would root the airspeed on 325 knots as he came down the chute and the pipper in the HUD marched to the target. At 2,250 feet slant range from the target, his finger would twitch on the trigger and the GAU-8, the seven-barreled, thirty-millimeter gatling gun that was designed to kill tanks, would fire, giving out a deep growl. He loved it.

  “Toga One’s in,” he radioed.

  “Cleared,” the range controller answered.

  Leonard rolled out and lined up on the “rag”—an old drag chute that was strung between two telephone poles. The analog range bar that rotated counterclockwise around the inside of the HUD’s gun reticle circle was passing the five o’clock position. He was inside five thousand feet slant range of the target.

  The range controller watched the Warthog as it approached. A cloud of smoke erupted from its nose, followed by a sharp crack as the bullets shattered the sound barrier passing his observation tower. Then a harsh, angry growl shook the glass windows, the sound of the gun firing. The sand in front of the left pole exploded as Leonard walked his burst wide and to the left. The middle of the telephone pole disappeared in a wooden cloud as the rounds shredded it. Damn! Leonard raged. What went wrong? It looked like a good pass.

  The range controller’s lips compressed into a tight grimace. Four of his Range Rats would spend half a day replacing the pole. “Toga One,” he radioed, “you got the pole. Go to a backup event.” The other A- 10s would not get their chance to use the gun.

  “Rog,” Leonard answered. “Toga flight, this will be a pop to a low-angle bomb on the timber trestle bridge.” The controller pulled a face. He couldn’t see the bridge his Range Rats had built in a shallow valley on the far end of the range. He picked up his binoculars as Leonard led his four-ship formation around the pattern at one hundred feet above the deck.

  “One’s in,” Leonard radioed as he started his pop.

  “Cleared.” The controller studied Leonard’s pop. “He’s a little close and apexing high,” he mumbled to himself. Being too close to the target and high, Leonard would have to dive bomb at a steeper angle than normal. The controller held the mike to his mouth, ready to call Leonard off. Then he thought better of it. The pass was in parameters.

  The Warthog rolled sweetly as Leonard apexed at exactly two thousand feet and brought the nose to the bridge in one smooth motion. The HUD flickered once and he double-checked his instruments. His airspeed was approaching 325 knots and the dive angle was at seventeen degrees.

  A little steep, he thought, but nothing to worry about. He made a mental note to pickle high so he would have plenty of altitude to pull out. He had seen this before on the first pass. That queer electron is a persistent little shit, he thought. Rather than go through dry, he maneuvered the Warthog so the target was moving down the projected bomb impact line and into the bomb reticle on his HUD. Looking good.

  He could clearly see the trestle bridge in the valley and the low treelined ridge immediately beyond it. Unconsciously, his feet danced on the rudders and the Warthog responded. A tickle at the back of his mind warned him the sight picture was wrong. He ignored it and concentrated on the target, totally oblivious to everything but the bridge he wanted to bomb. The pipper was approaching the target. His thumb started to depress the pickle button.

  Suddenly, the target blurred as the ground rushed at him. Target fixation, the curse of every fighter pilot, was trying to kill him. Bitching Betty, the computer-activated woman’s voice in the ground collision avoidance system, bitched at him. “Pull up! Pull up!” It was ninety-five decibels of imperative he couldn’t ignore. He had gotten too low to the ground and at his speed and dive angle, he needed about 150 feet to pull out. He wasn’t sure he had it. He honked back on the stick until he got a steady tone in his headset, telling him that he was max performing the jet. The Warthog responded and he pulled out of the valley, barely clearing the ridge line. Gonna make it, he thought.

  The A-10 was climbing steeply and Leonard had cleared the ridge line by twenty feet when his left wing struck a tree. The tree took a chunk out of the wing, severed the hydraulic lines, and bent the outer nine feet of the left wing up at a thirty-degree angle. The Warthog rolled to the left as Leonard fought for control, still maintaining a climb. But he couldn’t stop the roll. He jerked at the ejection handles at the sides of his seat.

  The ACES II ejection seat fired as the Warthog rolled past ninety degrees. An eleven g kick sent him out of the cockpit three-tenths of a second after he pulled the handle—on an angle toward the ground below him.

  Skeeter Ashton had rolled out onto her base leg when the canopy flew off Leonard’s Warthog. For two seconds she watched horrified as the ejection seat shot out of the doomed jet on a shallow downwar
d trajectory. He needed 150 feet of altitude to get a full parachute. The drogue chute streamed out from the seat and deployed the main chute. He was jerked out of the seat just as it disappeared into a tree.

  “Toga flight,” she transmitted, “Toga One is down. Climb to three thousand feet, stay in the pattern, and maintain visual contact.” She had taken command of the flight.

  A better idea came to her. “Toga Two, climb and orbit overhead to establish contact with home plate for radio relay. Toga Four, RTB. Repeat, return to base. Cannon Range, Toga Three is almost overhead Toga One. His chute deployed and there was seat separation. Standby.” Now she could see the parachute. “I have the chute in sight, hanging in a tree. No movement observed.”

  “Rog, Toga Three,” the range controller acknowledged. “SAR Crash Rescue is on the way. Can you direct them to the pilot? It’s real hard to find anybody in all that foliage.”

  “Can do as soon as they come up this frequency,” Ashton told him. “The jet crashed just beyond the SCUD mobile launcher. It’s starting to burn. Send the fire wagon.”

  Sara Waters was standing at the scheduling counter in squadron operations talking to the SOF, the supervisor of flying, when the UHF radio came to life. “Groundhog, Toga Two. How copy?” The transmission was scratchy, barely readable.

  “Toga Two, Groundhog reads you two by,” the SOF answered. Waters glanced at the Plexiglas-covered boards on the wall behind the SOF. According to the schedule, Toga flight should still be on Cannon Range.

  “Toga …” A cracking sound drowned out the transmission.

  “Toga Two, say again. You’re unreadable.” the SOF radioed. “He’s either got radio problems or out of range,” he told Waters.

  More crackling and spitting from the radio. “… crash on Cannon Range.”

  “My God!” the SOF shouted. “Get the boss.”

  Waters bolted out the door and made the short run down the hall to Pontowski’s office. “We’ve lost a plane at Cannon!” she blurted.

  Pontowski was out of his chair. “Name? Call sign?” he asked as he rushed past her.

  “It’s a Toga,” she told him.

  “Shit!” he blurted. Visions of Skeeter Ashton charred to a grisly, unrecognizable lump in the mangled cockpit of a Warthog flashed in front of him. He skidded through the door and pushed his way through the small crowd that was already lining the scheduling counter.

  “It’s Toga One,” the SOF told him. “John Leonard. He ejected and his parachute is in the trees. No word on his condition. Crash Rescue is almost to him now. Pretty thick trees and foliage. Skeeter’s vectoring ‘em in from overhead. She stacked Toga Two above the range as a radio relay and told Toga Four to RTB.”

  Pontowski nodded. Skeeter Ashton could obviously do the job and had done everything right. “Good work,” he said. He pointed to the scheduler, who was standing next to the SOF. “Call the tower and have them do an accountability check on all airborne aircraft. Tell the command post so they can verify with the range control officer at Cannon and start on the messages. Call wing headquarters and make sure they know. Get the flying safety officer ASAP.”

  “Well, Colonel,” a voice said behind him. “It looks like we’re making shit happen now.”

  Pontowski turned to the speaker. It was his operations officer, Major Frank Hester. His face was an impenetrable mask.

  “This wasn’t what I had in mind,” Pontowski growled.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saturday, January 20

  Whiteman AFB, Missouri

  The crash of Toga One at Cannon Range triggered a finely honed response by the Air Force. It was a reaction learned, refined, and reinforced over the years for one purpose—to discover the cause of the accident to prevent it from happening again. That task fell to a safety investigation board, commonly called an SIB. Hard experience had taught the Air Force two hard lessons: Act fast and do not use the results of the safety investigation board to punish.

  Within forty minutes after learning of the crash, the wing at Whiteman Air Force Base had convened an interim SIB. The vice wing commander was appointed the acting board president, and he was in a helicopter with the chief of safety heading for Cannon Range with one objective—to preserve the evidence for the regular SIB.

  The job was made much easier because the pilot, Captain John Leonard, had survived with minor bruises. Crash rescue would not have to gather parts of the body or scrape off human remains that had welded to the wreckage. There would be no small lump lost in a green body bag, and the wing commander and chaplain would not have to tell a wife she had lost her husband.

  Before noon, Colonel Charles A. Tucker, the vice commander of the 552nd Air Control Wing, received a phone call at his quarters on Tinker Air Force Base eight miles southeast of Oklahoma City. It was his boss telling him that he was the president of an SIB being convened at Whiteman and to get moving. Three hours later, Tucker was flying to Whiteman Air Force Base to take the reins of the investigation. Within twenty-four hours, his board would be completely formed with five other voting members: an investigating officer who was an expert at investigating accidents, a pilot member who was qualified in A- l Os, a maintenance officer, a flight surgeon, and a commander’s representative from the wing. They would be supported by three nonvoting members of the board—two egress and life support NCOs and a recorder.

  Colonel Charles A. Tucker was a thin, balding, slightly hunch-shouldered, and irascible individual who had served on four other SIBs as board president. He had earned a reputation for being ruthless in gathering evidence, demanding the best of everyone involved, and ferreting out the truth. He spared no one and his nickname, “Tucker the Fucker,” traveled with him. But in the end, he was totally impartial and fair.

  Because of men like Tucker, the system worked.

  Sara Waters was in the small kitchen off the squadron lounge drawing a fresh cup of coffee when she heard two men talking in the lounge. She immediately recognized the voices of Major Frank Hester, the squadron’s ops officer, and Hal “Snake” Bartlett. “He’s such an asshole,” Bartlett said. “He proves it’s who you know, not what you know that counts.”

  “There’s good news,” Hester said. “We have to provide a commander’s representative to the SIB and Pontowski asked me to select a pilot. Will you do it?”

  “Sure,” Bartlett said. “Isn’t the commander’s rep a spy for the commander?”

  “Yeah,” Hester answered, “everybody knows that. But in this case, I want you working for me. Make sure the SIB hears that Legs called the week before the accident asking for a recommendation about Leonard. I’ll lay it all out for ‘em if I get the chance. Pontowski should’ve grounded him.”

  Waters blushed brightly when she realized the “Legs” they were talking about was her. Everyone in the squadron was given a nickname they called a tactical call sign, some earned, others given by common agreement. Then a hot indignation swept over her—the nickname given her was sexist. She heard a low-pitched belly laugh from Bartlett. “When Tucker the Fucker hears that, he’ll nail Pontowski to the wall for not acting on his own ops officer’s recommendation.”

  “Yeah,” Hester said. “We’ll hold the record for having a commander with the shortest time on base.”

  “Great,” Bartlett said. “Absolutely fuckin’ great.”

  Waters slipped out of the kitchen, shaking with fury. She hurried back to her office, infuriated with the nickname they had given her. Slowly, she calmed and reasoned it through. If I make a case out of “Legs,” she thought, they’ll just cut me out of the pattern. Damn, she swore to herself, cut me out of the pattern—I even use their jargon. She scanned the squadron roster that included everyone’s tactical call sign. It helped her control her anger when she saw First Lieutenant Rod “Buns” Cox. Sergeant Lori Williams, her administration clerk, had given him that nickname and the squadron had stapled it to the lieutenant as his personal call sign, ignoring his protests.

  “Men,” she fumed to herself.
At last, she was able to think clearly and remember what else the two men had said. Her anger started to rise again and she checked her notebook. Her notes detailed the ops officer’s recommendation on Leonard: “Hester—Leonard’s been having some personal problems lately. Nothing serious … it’s only temporary … he’ll get over it.”

  That lying bastard, she thought. She sank into her chair and sipped her coffee, thinking. Damn him. Hester didn’t say to ground Leonard. In fact, his recommendation was worthless. Then it came to her. Hester was covering for his men. But would the safety investigation board get to the truth of the matter?

  The injustice of it all ate at her. Pontowski wasn’t responsible for Leonard’s crash on the range. If anyone was responsible, it was Hester, for not giving Pontowski the advice he needed to make good decisions during the first days of his command. Would Hester tell the board the truth? Her stomach soured as she realized she would never know, because testimony taken by the board was confidential and never released.

  Methodically, Waters evaluated the individuals involved with the crash and made a decision. It was time to choose sides. Pontowski had only asked two things of her—to do her job and to be his eyes and ears. She rose from her desk and went in search of Lori Williams. She found the girl in Public Affairs. “Lori, I’ve got a job for you.”

  Ten minutes later, Lori reported to the captain acting as the recorder for the SIB and told him that she was the administrative clerk temporarily assigned to help the board. The captain was relieved to have competent help and set her to work typing.

  That night, Lori shoved a manila envelope under the door to Waters’ BOQ room.

  Two days later, Waters steeled herself with the knowledge of three reports Lori had back-doored to her, walked over to her commander’s open door, and knocked twice. Pontowski looked up from the pile of paperwork that greeted him every morning and motioned her to take a seat. She closed the door and sat. Pontowski leaned back in his chair. “I take it the door means this is close-hold,” he said, grinning at her.