A Private Little War

by Jason Sheehan

  But he recalled the moment it’d turned. When, in the middle of the bullshit, Fenn had stopped and said, “Now Vic… Vic is…”

  Carter’d said, “What? Vic is what?” because it’d occurred to him then that of everything they’d talked about—and they’d talked about everything—Vic was something they hadn’t. As though sacrosanct. Or maybe precisely the opposite.

  Still, hearing her name on Fenn’s lips had gotten Carter’s hackles up for some reason. A gut reflex, her name like a slow lightning bolt touching him, climbing the ladder of his spine.

  “Vic is…”

  And Carter’d waited for it. Vic is unlucky. Vic is a death sentence. Vic is bad for business. He’d heard it all before—the kinds of conversations that dried up the minute someone realized he was close enough to maybe hear. Him and Vic—that was no secret. Especially not from Fenn. Him and Vic had been him-and-Vic ten feet from him, just one bed away. Fenn knew everything.

  And at the time, it’d been almost nothing. A conversation instantly forgotten, except that it hadn’t been, because now, a month or a year later, it was all coming back to Carter. Another thing they’d talked about that wasn’t what Carter now wished they had talked about: Fenn’s secret wisdom.

  Instead, he remembered Fenn saying, “Jesus Christ, Kevin.” Using his full name, which Fenn only did when he was very drunk or very serious or both.

  Fenn saying, “That is the saddest goddamn woman I have ever known.”

  Fenn saying, “For real,” and “Kevin?” and “You okay, Kev?”

  Two squadron was all arrayed in Camels like Carter’s Roadrunner. Fighter cover for the bombers. And the noise of those five sputtering engines grinding all around him was like an earthquake that wouldn’t stop, hitting him right in the guts, throbbing through him in waves, almost hypnotic but for being so loud that he couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think clearly.

  Carter closed his eyes, trying to love the droning noise, trying to climb inside it like a blanket of sound. It was the reverberation of death, fast approaching; the language of the machine that he cherished. He spoke to himself, to his plane, in words that were drowned by the throbbing, crashing walls of noise. He slapped the breech on the cannon open and closed, open and closed. He adjusted his safety belts. He lowered his head and pressed it against her instrument panel, thinking how, after all that coffee, he wished he’d taken the time to put on the catheter.

  Twenty minutes passed, became thirty. Only after all that did Carter finally hear the squawk in his ear of the radio calling him. He’d been sleeping, he thought. Just a little.

  “Two squadron clearing for takeoff.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah, Carter.”

  “I was sleeping, I think.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Looking up, Carter saw Lambert and Rockwell, two of Vic’s ground crew, come jogging out of the comms tent to flag him for takeoff. He shook his head, pawed at his eyes with fingers gone numb from the vibration.

  Rockwell pulled his chocks, then Jack’s. Lambert, walking backward, held two yellow flags crossed in one hand, giving them the slow caution. Carter and Jack began to roll—a lazy, creeping taxi, hard wheels bumping over the close-cut grass and a million small stones.

  Finally, Carter thought. Finally.

  He’d done this hundreds of times before, but his stomach still boiled with butterflies. Modern jets, transatmospheric fighters, shuttles, dropships, spacecraft especially—they were all designed to remove the pilot from the experience of flying; to insulate him from the elements, from wind, weather, engine noise, exhaust fumes, and that sickening, giddy, here-we-go sensation of actually leaving the ground and taking to the air.

  But in an open cockpit, there were no illusions. Every bump, roar, clatter, and stink came directly at the pilot. Burning oil, wet leather, the screaming of an over-revved engine in a dive, the throaty chugging of machine guns firing and tac tac tac tac of spent brass caught in the slipstream bouncing off wings and cowling. In his plane, Carter was loudly, plainly, often painfully aware that he was trusting his life to little more than an uncomfortable chair bolted onto a lawn-mower engine, surrounded by nothing but a rickety, sparse conglomeration of sticks and fabric, bombs, bullets, and modern aircraft fuel. Everything around him was flammable, explosive, or both. And once he was up, he knew that there was nowhere to go but down.

  Lambert gave them the green and, in unison, Jack and Carter throttled up. As he watched the speed indicator starting to climb, Carter was still thinking how crazy it was to do what he did and how very much fun. He gnawed at his lip with his teeth and felt the churning of nervous adrenaline in his stomach. He passed critical speed (that point at which there was too much forward velocity and not enough runway left to slow down should something go terribly, catastrophically wrong) and spared a quick look at the rearview mirror mounted to one of his wing struts just to make sure that David and Tommy were under way and in sequence.

  But they weren’t. Lambert had red-flagged them both, and Carter could see the cottonball puffs of blue-gray smoke drifting away above them, a sure sign that they’d killed their engines.

  Carter and Jack reached speed. Carter felt the shudder of breath on control surfaces, and he and Jack lifted together, both at full throttle, easing away from each other and nosing up into thirty-degree climbing turns for a circle around the field as planned.

  Tipped over on their wings, they both had a good view of the east end of C strip and the field house where first squadron had come to rest. There were three D.VIIs, all jumbled up on the runway skirt, and people rushing to and fro. Vic was down there somewhere in that mess. Carter couldn’t pick her out individually, but he could feel her moving through the personal space of his own swelling panic. He knew that three D.VIIs were one plane too few for the number that ought to have come home. Heavy smoke clung tightly to the ground like fog, getting whipped into rococo curls behind Jack and Carter as they turned close overhead.

  Passing the longhouse that ran parallel alongside B strip, Carter saw Fenn’s Fokker already up, the two DH.2s lifting, and a fourth plane—Billy’s two-seater Bristol—trundling along close on their tails. Ground control capture was just starting to show planes in flight on his map display, and none of them belonged to Fenn’s second squadron. He was busily shouting nonsense into the radio, demanding that ground crews launch his wingmen, cursing, spitting. There was no effect. By the time Carter and Jack had made their first turn, two squadron was already on its way back to the longhouse.

  Roadrunner and Jack Hawker’s plane, Fast Nancy, moved into position above and behind Fenn’s Jackrabbit, snap-rolling to dump speed as the chugging, heavily loaded Aircos struggled to catch up and keep ahead of the much-faster Bristol riding drag position. Forming up, the radio was filled with control chatter, but no one was answering Carter, or Jack, who’d gotten into the shouting, too, threatening the lives of all and sundry and demanding to know why the rest of his squadron members were now enjoying coffee and donuts in the field house rather than being up in the air and on his tail where they belonged. And no one was answering Fenn, who’d started cursing his own pilots for cowardice or dereliction in cruel, soft tones almost drowned out by the more strident voices of protest.

  It was Ted who finally answered, calling in on the all-hands channel from the gunner’s seat of the Bristol with Billy Stitches on the stick.

  “Come about to course fifteen degrees north-northeast, level at one thousand feet. Two squadron plus five hundred and kindly quit your goddamn whining. Fighters to high cover. Charlie, Stork, make your target a downed Fokker approximately eighteen miles out. Look for the smoke. Bombs away on my mark only.”

  Ted paused and, for a second, there was nothing on the radio but the sound of static. He allowed the shock to root in deep before continuing. “Captain Teague, you’re wing leader. I’ll be going in with Billy to inspect the wreck. You and first squadron will cover. Two squadron covers you. Understood?�
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  The pilots consented with their silence, as if speaking would’ve broken the cheap, stunned solemnity of the moment. It was Fenn who finally ruptured the hush. “Copy, command. Jackrabbit is flight leader. Coming around to fifteen degrees at one thousand short. Flight, follow my lead.”

  They turned in formation, stacking up behind and above Jackrabbit, wobbling on the unsteady air, drifting like bad dreams looking for a place to settle.

  “So who was it, Ted? Who went in?”

  And Ted didn’t answer immediately, as if debating whether to tell the pilots at all. Like it was a state secret or something and not just a matter of them all counting heads in the mess that night and seeing who’d turned up missing-presumed-dead.

  There was a moment of quiet, the radios popping and sizzling like bacon frying, the pilots all imagining a different friend or partner mashed up inside the crumpled wreck of a D.VII. Death by fall. Death by flame. Slow death, choked by smoke, seared by an engine fire, bleeding out in the cold, terrible quiet. A quick death, maybe—on impact or by bullet through the heart or head. Infinitely preferable, though the endings all came out the same. Danny Diaz… Who could help but think of that story just then?

  “It was Morris,” Ted said. “Morris, goddammit.”

  Carter thought how Morris was no friend to Ted—no more than any of the rest of them were—but that they’d bunked together briefly about half a year back after a storm that had blown away some tents and temporarily jumbled up the living arrangements. The two of them, Ted and Morris, had shared an affinity for pinochle that none of the other pilots understood, and they had spent a couple of long weeks waking together, smelling each other’s dirty socks and bad breath and listening to each other snore. That sometimes passed for closeness between men and was damn close to carnal intimacy for a man like Ted.

  “Everyone shut up and do their jobs,” Ted said, the spotter’s radio handset held too close to his mouth, fogging the channel with the rattle of his sucking breath. “No more talking. Jackrabbit, you have the lead.”

  The crash site was easy to spot by the finger of greasy, black smoke reaching up into the sky. Carter and Jack, Fenn and the two DH.2s went into split circles at one thousand and fifteen hundred while Ted, Billy, and the Bristol went in for a rough field landing close to Morris’s plane, the Delta Doll, drag-assing along a flattish, grassy swath that had probably looked a lot more favorable from the air than from the ground.

  From their height, Jack and Carter could see the smudge of troops moving a few miles off. They weren’t yet close, but had most definitely made their way across the river and into Flyboy’s side of the lines.

  Jack called Billy. Billy told him to sit on his hands. Ted called in the bombers from the ground. “Morris cashed his check,” he said. “Plane is a total wreck. Grease it.” Two passes and the area was a smoking crater. Close by, the Bristol was still on the ground.

  Everyone would find out later that Morris had gone radio silent about two minutes after the pilots on the ground had gotten the call to scramble. The Delta Doll had been limping at the tail of the flight back from Mutter’s Ridge, and Porter Vaughn—flight leader of first squadron—had dropped out of formation to check on him. He’d called flight control to report that the Doll was trailing smoke and losing altitude, pilot unresponsive. Thirty seconds later, he’d called in again to say that Morris had rolled over and was down, no radio contact. Ted had given the order to pull the extra planes out of the lineup. He’d grabbed Billy straight off the strip, muscled a ground crew into hauling the Bristol out of the longhouse and into drag position. They’d primed her, thrown off all weight they could manage, dumped in a hatful of gas, and put her in the air. The thought was that if Morris was still alive, he could be loaded into the gunner’s seat and Ted could hobble home in the damaged Fokker. If the Doll was inoperable, he could ride on someone’s lap. And if both plane and pilot were unrecoverable, the order would be to bomb both to keep them out of the hands of the unfriendly indigs who’d crossed the river before dawn at the now-unguarded ford and were currently headed their way.

  Jack and Carter circled and circled, doing a crossing-eight pattern above Fenn, who was in a holding pattern above the bombers who’d gone in low and slow so as not to accidentally splash Billy, Ted, or the Bristol with their drop: HE and incendiary five-pounders, laid out by hand. The bombers were lugging their way back up to altitude, still fat with bombs, and with each passing minute, everyone was expecting to see the Bristol climbing back into formation. But it didn’t. And then it didn’t again. On each turn they were disappointed, further confused. The unfriendlies were split now into two distinct groups, the forward of them quickly outpacing the rear. Carter called down for permission to break and hit the advancing troops, but he was denied.

  “Remain in position, guys,” Billy radioed back. “Chief’s orders.”

  So they circled some more. Carter fished the spotting scope out of his jacket and took a look out toward the river at the enemy advance. The rear group was indig infantry, jogging along in rank, nests of spear-tips glittering in the sunlight. The forward was cavalry, riding under the whip.

  He called Billy again. “Billy, those are horses coming your way, you know.”

  “Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious. But we can see them just fine from here. Simon says stay put.” Over the radio, Carter could hear him racking the bolts on the Bristol’s machine guns.

  Two more times around, he told himself. Then we go in anyway. Carter switched channels to talk to Jack and told him the same. Jack agreed.

  They made one circle. Roadrunner carried two .303s in the nose cowling, which he primed and racked, plus a block-mount cannon. He cleared the plug from the external breech, lifted a five-round clip of 37 mm RDX explosive shells from the magazine box, and dropped it in. Carter knew all too well that the failing of the cannon was that, when the shells ejected, they hit him right in the knees and then rattled around loose on the floorboards, always in danger of fouling the pedals. It was an imperfect weapon system, but pulling the trigger was like firing a beer bottle filled with dynamite, so there was that. Just one round would flatten a small house, so one picked targets with a certain amount of discretion. Carter knew that he had to hate something and want it blown to small pieces quite badly to justify the pain and bother of going to the cannon. He knew that the popcorn guns would settle up anything short of a serious loathing just fine.

  He popped the safety catch off the cannon’s trigger.

  But then, as he and Jack came around through their second and final turn, Jack spotted the Bristol airborne, punching a hole through the cloud of dust and smoke raised by the bombing. It was struggling to gain altitude, clawing at the air. Jack cut his turn outside and dropped back into position. Carter followed through onto his wing. Across a gap of sky, he looked over at Jack and Jack shrugged.

  Ted’s voice broke in over the radio. “Home, gentlemen,” he said. “Jackrabbit, I have the lead. All wings fall in. We’re going into refit and lockdown till I say otherwise. Until we find out what the fuck is going on around here, no one flies.”

  Not another word was said by anyone until every plane was safely back on the ground. They made best speed for the airfield behind the Bristol, but that wasn’t very fast. Billy’s plane was sluggish and off-balance. It waggled discomfortingly in the crosswinds. Once they were down, the pilots found out that this was because Billy and Ted were carrying Morris’s body with them. He’d been thrown from his plane in the crash and vaulted partway up a tree, still attached to part of his seat. Ted had kept Billy on the ground while he’d gone up to cut Morris down, then rode the whole way home with the corpse in his lap, Morris’s head pillowed against his shoulder.

  So even once they were back on the ground—after hearing that and seeing Ted standing there beside the Bristol with Morris’s body in his arms, his shirt covered in gore, waiting while Doc Edison chattered in his ear and someone went to grab a tarp for wrapping the body in—no one s
aid much of anything either.

  Ted had already given the lockdown order so, obviously, the planes weren’t going to fly.

  And this was how the war on Iaxo began for them in earnest.

  PART 2

  A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR

  TED HAD LOST TRACK OF THE DAYS SOMEHOW. He hadn’t slept. Something in his head felt rattly and broken—some vital component fogged or ligature snapped. Carter had come home. The bombers had come home. A patrol had gone out, flying bomb-damage assessment, and Morris Ross had died in a way and for reasons that Ted couldn’t quite fathom. There was a disconnect somewhere. It didn’t make any sense.

  Ted understood that there was a problem. The final orders had stated clearly that the operation on Carpenter was “outside compromised,” meaning that someone knew they were here, meddling, trying to get rich. Someone wanted them to stop, or to get rich themselves, on their own terms, so was feeding supplies now to the other side. Though their technological advantage here was massive, it was also tenuous.

  Fact: A bomb, a machine gun, a man in a biplane—all of that was glorious witchcraft to someone who didn’t even know where the wind came from. But it didn’t take much to trump that. As easy as it had been for Flyboy to get here—to ship in the men and the materials to make two years’ worth of one-sided war—it would be just as easy for someone else to do the same. Up to this point, though, their indigs had been the only ones paying. Cavalier, Eastbourne, Palas, Flyboy, and the rest—none of them were working here just for the fun of it. No one was here because they believed in anything. They had their orders. Distant companies had picked the side that was going to win this game of war, pushed their bets with guns and bombs and men and airplanes, and had known that, once all was said and done, everyone would profit handsomely for their work save the dead. Had things been different, they might’ve been fighting for the other side. It wouldn’t have mattered. The other side just had nothing to negotiate with.