Warriors (9781101621189)

by Young, Tom

  Gold and Webster sat in metal folding chairs at a wooden table. Parson went to the bar. She smiled when he brought her a glass of red wine; he hadn’t even had to ask. He handed a Guinness to Webster and opened a Bud for himself.

  She tried to gauge Parson’s manner, as well as the colonel’s. Gold had made a life of communicating, of reading people. Something worried these guys. The crash, of course, provided reason enough to feel down. To witness untimely deaths, she knew far too well, unhinged you a little, even if you didn’t know the deceased. But Gold sensed Parson and the colonel had something else on their minds. She didn’t know how to approach the topic, so she stayed on safe territory by asking Webster about his background.

  “I’m playing hooky from my day job,” Webster said. “My law firm back in Knoxville does some international work. UN, ICC, that sort of thing.”

  “Interstate Commerce Commission?” Parson asked.

  “International Criminal Court,” Gold said.

  “Oh.”

  “So when Michael said he needed you,” Webster explained, “I called in some favors. But I told everybody not to lean on you.”

  “They didn’t,” Gold said. That was true. Her superiors had said only that she could go if she wanted. And of course she wanted to help Parson.

  “Thanks again for coming,” Parson said. “I hoped this would amount to a little break for you, but it’s getting more complicated.”

  “How’s that?” Gold asked.

  “We found opium in the wreckage,” Webster said. He took a sip from his Guinness.

  The news saddened Gold, but it did not surprise her. About ninety percent of the world’s opium came from Afghanistan. And the Afghan military had a long way to go toward rooting out corruption.

  “How were they hiding it?” Gold asked. “Or could you tell?”

  “We could,” Parson said. He explained how the smugglers disguised the opium as packing material. Drug-sniffing dogs would have found it in an instant, but if the Afghans had brought dogs to this cargo at all, the animals would have been bomb-sniffing dogs. Somebody in the narcotics operation knew something about military air cargo.

  Gold wondered if the crew’s last words on the cockpit voice recorder would reveal any hints about the contraband. She doubted it, but she intended to translate anything she heard on that recording, no matter how trivial it might seem.

  “When do you think we’ll have the recording back?” Gold asked.

  “We’ve shipped some evidence, including the CVR, back to the States,” Parson said. “They’ll send us the audio file over the SIPRNet.”

  Parson’s reference to the classified computer net made Gold doubly glad she’d maintained her top secret clearance. She hadn’t expected to need it with her new job, but both the government and civilian employers valued anyone with a TS, so you didn’t let such a clearance expire if you could help it. Gold considered for a moment whether she and the two men should even be discussing this in the rec center if any part of the matter was classified. No one else was listening, and a Toby Keith tune blasted over the speakers. But just to be safe, she decided to steer the conversation to more routine aspects of the problem.

  “So how do you piece together what happens in a crash?” Gold asked. She took a sip of the wine Parson had brought her. She’d expected cheap stuff, but the red tasted rich and smoky. Not what she thought she’d find in a prefab building with country music on the CD player.

  “You try not to make any assumptions,” Parson said, “and you listen to what the evidence tells you.”

  “Sounds like prosecuting a case,” Webster said.

  “I saw the crash,” Parson said, “so that helps, and a wind shear event is pretty simple. But you still have to look at stuff like why they didn’t go missed-approach early enough to make it.”

  He’s in his element, Gold thought. She admired competence, and though Parson certainly had his rough edges, he spoke the language of aviation as if he’d invented it himself. She’d watched him fly a crippled C-5 Galaxy while badly hurt and in terrible pain. Gold remembered how he’d marshaled the combined skills of his crew to save his passengers—some of them, at least. This time, however, Parson could not save anyone; he could only try to keep other crews from making the mistakes that had killed the three fliers.

  “You look at all the links in the chain,” Webster said.

  “Yeah,” Parson said. “When something bad happens, it’s almost never because of just one thing. You get a chain of errors and missed opportunities and bad attitudes, and they link up to cause a damned disaster like we just had out there.” Parson gestured toward the runway with his beer hand, sloshing a little over his fingers. “Shit,” he said.

  “We teach aviators to look for accident chains as they form,” Webster said. “If you remove one link, then there’s no disaster.”

  “How do you do that?” Gold asked.

  “You change what’s happening,” Webster said.

  “Like if you just heard the tower give a wind shear warning,” Parson said, “and you see you’re coming down at about eight thousand feet per minute, you don’t just sit on your ass and ride it in. You push up the throttles and go the fuck around.”

  Gold could feel Parson’s anger over the accident. He had not trained this crew himself, but he’d helped train many other Afghan fliers, and he’d put a lot of sweat and even some blood into helping them create a professional air force. To see an Afghan crew die in what he appeared to regard as a preventable crash—while smuggling drugs, no less—must come as an awful disappointment.

  She couldn’t do much for Parson until the CVR recording came back, so she decided to change the subject. Maybe get everyone’s mind off the destruction that had happened only steps away.

  “Colonel,” she said, “it sounds like you have an interesting job.”

  “Sometimes,” Webster said, “but at other times it’s boring as hell. At least the Guard lets me get out from behind that desk and do something different.”

  “Like trying to keep Michael Parson out of trouble?”

  “Exactly,” Webster laughed.

  “Good luck,” Gold said.

  Parson smiled thinly and took a pull from his beer. He started to say something—probably to give her a good-natured retort—but jet noise drowned him out. The streak-scream of a jet fighter taking off rumbled in waves across the base, followed by the identical sound of a second aircraft. Lead and wingman, Gold supposed, heading out to hit a target in Afghanistan. Nice to be out of there for a little while, she had to admit.

  “So what about you, Sophia?” Parson asked. “I thought you’d be working on a doctorate in philosophy or religion by now. Just can’t stay away from the garden spots?”

  “Something like that,” Gold said. She took a sip of wine while she thought about the rest of her answer. “It’s hard to let go when there’s so much need.”

  “You’ve earned a break. I thought you wanted to go back to school.”

  “More than you know. And I did get accepted at Duke and Maryland.”

  “Congrats. Use that new GI Bill. Nobody deserves it more than you.”

  “Someday,” Gold said. Someday.

  • • •

  IN THE TWO DAYS that went by while she waited for the cockpit recording, Gold had no official duties. Parson got away from his own duties as often as he could to spend time with her. They began both days with a run around the base, Parson wearing his blue-and-silver Air Force PT uniform, and Gold still using her old workout clothes with ARMY embroidered on the gray jacket. For most of her life, she’d nearly always led the pack on platoon runs. However, the insurgent’s bullet had cost her some lung capacity, and Parson ran ahead. But in their five-mile runs, neither of them ever slowed to a walk. They shared every meal together in the dining hall, each going through the ritual of signing the roster and rubbing a
dollop of hand sanitizer across their fingers. Gold had spent so much time in deployed locations that she associated the antiseptic smell of hand sanitizer with food.

  Between meals, Gold passed the hours in the Green Beans coffee shop, delving into the wisdom of John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. She was sipping an espresso, enjoying the company of the cat lounging on her table, when Parson came in and told her he had the CVR file.

  “Let’s listen to it in the intel vault,” he said.

  The intel vault amounted to a room in the command building with some extra soundproofing. In her career, Gold had seen intel facilities ranging from a tent with an armed guard to a high-tech SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility, with alarms and coded locks.

  Following the usual protocol, Gold left her cell phone outside the room in a designated wooden box. Parson steered her to a computer reserved for her. She slid her ID card into the reader and signed on. An intel officer showed her how to pull up the audio file. Before she played it, she also opened a word processing program and donned a set of earphones.

  “Are you ready for this?” Parson asked.

  Gold thought for a moment, then nodded. But no, she wasn’t ready for this, nor would she ever be. How did one prepare to listen to people die? Still, she appreciated Parson’s question. He had the decency to realize how jarring it was to pull her away from a moment of leisure and sit her down to something like this. She took a deep breath and clicked PLAY.

  In the first several seconds, she heard only noise: the hum of electronics, the rush of the slipstream over the hull of the aircraft. Parson had explained how she’d be listening to various inputs, including the radios, ambient sounds from an area microphone mounted in the cockpit, and chatter over the interphone from the pilot, copilot, and loadmaster. The area mike picked up a lot of extraneous sounds that mixed with everything else.

  Gold listened for fifteen minutes, tapping into the keyboard everything she heard. She wrote the words in English, whether they were spoken in that language or in Pashto. Soon she realized the crew used English on the radios and Pashto over the interphone. So far, it all seemed routine. The pilots discussed the weather.

  “That front is approaching Manas,” one pilot said in Pashto.

  “I can see that,” the other pilot said. Tone a little condescending. So maybe this was the aircraft commander, Gold thought. But how could he see the front? Were the clouds that distinct? Oh, yes, she remembered. Airborne radar. Gold had learned a few things from Parson, seemingly by osmosis.

  “Perhaps we should consider a divert,” the copilot said.

  “No,” the aircraft commander said.

  For several minutes, the crew said no more about the weather. They began some sort of checklist; Gold transcribed it all and trusted Parson to make sense of the technical parts. The sound of rain increased, and Gold heard grunts and curses. She took down all that, too.

  “Bishkek VOR tuned and identified, sir,” the copilot said.

  “I will carry a few extra knots down final,” the aircraft commander said.

  “Sir, it is getting bad. We have plenty of fuel. Let us go to the alternate.”

  “Kochkor is no better. Can you not see the radar?”

  “Then Almaty.”

  “That is in Kazakhstan, you fool. We have no diplomatic clearance for that country. If we declare an emergency and land in Almaty, we could get stuck there for days.”

  So the aircraft commander had a strong motivation to reach Manas, Gold realized. He apparently knew about his extra cargo and needed to get it there on time regardless of risks. Well, he got it there, all right. As for the copilot, maybe he knew; maybe he didn’t.

  A voice in accented English came over the radio: a Kyrgyz air traffic controller, Gold assumed.

  “Golay One-Three,” the controller said, “descend and maintain 4,400 feet. You are cleared for the VOR/DME approach to Runway Two-Six. Contact tower on one-one-eight point one.”

  “One-one-eight point one,” the copilot said. “Cleared for approach.” Resignation in his voice.

  Silence for a few moments. Gold supposed the copilot was changing frequencies. Then he called the tower, and the tower cleared Golay One-Three to land. The tower also warned about wind shear, just as Parson had said. None of the crew members said anything else about diverting to an alternate airport.

  The aircraft commander called for the landing checklist, and the copilot began reading the items. Gold continued taking down each word.

  “Gear down,” the aircraft commander said.

  “Gear down,” the copilot responded. Gold heard the landing gear lever seat into position as the copilot moved it. Then the copilot said, “Down and locked.”

  “I have the approach lights,” the aircraft commander said. “Going visual.”

  Gold clicked on PAUSE to catch up with her typing. Absurdly, in some odd corner of her mind she wanted an interphone switch that would let her speak back in time, so she could tell the crew what was about to happen to them. Warn them off. Tell the aircraft commander he’d made a bad decision: So what if you’re late? Whoever you’re carrying those drugs for won’t kill you any deader than you’re about to kill yourself—and your crew members, jackass. She realized she was channeling a little of Parson’s attitude now. She also knew there was no changing the outcome. Though Gold listened to events in real time, that real time had passed. What was done was done, and not even the angels could change it. She clicked PLAY.

  The copilot swore, and Gold heard a jostling sound. Items in the cockpit, Gold imagined, helmet bags and checklists thrown by another jolt of turbulence.

  “Paam kawa,” the copilot said. Gold typed: WATCH OUT.

  “Baad dai,” the aircraft commander replied. Gold wrote: IT IS WINDY. Then the commander added, “We have all seen wind before.”

  “Zmaa neh khwakhigee,” a new voice said. Gold typed: I DON’T LIKE THIS. The enlisted loadmaster, apparently, now frightened enough to speak up to the officers.

  “Quiet,” the aircraft commander ordered.

  A synthesized voice came over the recording, blaring in English: SINK RATE, SINK RATE.

  “Correcting,” the aircraft commander said.

  “Descent rate, sir,” the copilot said. “We have entered a downdraft.” Evidently, the commander’s correction wasn’t working.

  “Adding power,” the commander said.

  The engine noise rose, and the synthesized warning repeated: SINK RATE. The voice hushed for a moment, then screeched: PULL UP, PULL UP.

  “Power!” the copilot shouted. Then he yelled, “I have the aircraft!”

  “No, you do not!” the commander shouted.

  Curses and rattles. Then the aircraft commander said, “Golay One-Three going around.” So he had relented. But now it was too late to do the right thing.

  “Gear up,” the commander ordered.

  “Gear up,” the copilot acknowledged. Gold heard a whack, presumably an angry and fearful copilot slamming the gear handle.

  The turboprops howled. The artificial voice again called: PULL UP, PULL UP.

  The pilots stopped speaking. Parson had said that happens in so many crashes: right before impact, people lock up and shut up. Until the screams begin.

  And the screams began. Underneath the screams, Gold heard a grinding or crunching sound. Only one voice spoke intelligible words. It sounded like the loadmaster, who ended his life in mid-sentence: “There is no God but God and—”

  Unidentifiable noise rose in volume—then stopped.

  Gold let out a long breath. She typed: END OF TAPE.

  5

  PARSON HAD MORE THAN just a plane crash on his hands, and he knew law enforcement would get involved one way or another. But to make things even more complicated, the United States didn’t really have jurisdiction. The Manas Trans
it Center wasn’t an American-owned base; the government of Kyrgyzstan simply allowed Americans to use ramp space at the airport that served the city of Bishkek. U.S. officials had to coordinate with Kyrgyzstan—not exactly the world’s most stable government. And in Afghanistan, where the drug flight originated, some units of the National Police were practically criminal enterprises themselves. So when the Air Force Office of Special Investigations sent an agent to follow the opium trail, Parson did not envy the man.

  Special Agent Carl Cunningham showed up in Webster’s office, and Webster called in Parson and Gold to meet him. In his late twenties, Cunningham carried himself with the watchfulness of a cop in a bad neighborhood. Parson guessed that he’d come out of Air Force Security Forces, though Parson knew OSI agents could also be recruited from other fields. Some were officers, some were enlisted, some were civilian, and some were reservists. But you seldom knew their true rank. To the outside world, they were all just “Special Agent.”

  Cunningham wore gray tactical pants with large cargo pockets. White cotton shirt. A canvas vest extended below his waistband, but the slight bulge gave away the presence of his sidearm. The agent’s black beard looked newly trimmed. Parson wondered if Cunningham had worn his beard longer in the recent past to blend in with troublemakers in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

  “Colonel Webster tells me you’ve already transcribed the cockpit voice recording,” Cunningham said. Parson puzzled over the man’s accent. It sounded almost British. “Transcribed” sounded like “transcroibed.”

  “We have,” Gold said. “I made a copy for you.” Gold handed him a manila envelope.

  “Thanks very much,” Cunningham said. “Did you find anything of interest on the recording?” Now, where had Parson heard people talk like that? Oh, yeah: while stationed at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. You occasionally heard that accent in coastal areas of the state. A few island communities had existed in enough isolation to keep some of the voice of their Elizabethan forebears. This guy wasn’t a Brit; he was an Outer Banks redneck with an education. You’re a long damned way from Cape Hatteras, Parson thought.