by Young, Tom
That’s when a goose—a great big black-and-white What the fuck are you doing this far south? Canada goose—flapped across the runway. And right through the compressor blades of the number two engine. Parson felt the thump, heard the bang.
“Reject,” the flight engineer called. “Flameout on two.”
Parson ripped the throttles back to idle. “Spoilers,” he called.
The copilot yanked the spoiler handle, and Parson pulled the outboard throttles into reverse thrust, stood on the brakes. The jet shuddered as the antiskid system cycled the brake pressure to help prevent blowing tires.
Parson got the Galaxy stopped before the end of the runway, and he’d managed to avoid taking a heavy plane into the air with a dead engine. But safety came at a cost. Objects in motion want to stay in motion, especially objects that big. When the brake rotors met the stators, all that speed, power, and weight got translated into friction. And heat.
“Reach Six-Two-Four,” the tower called, “your wheel wells are smoking.”
“Roll the trucks,” the copilot said.
By the time Parson taxied off the runway, flames billowed from the brakes and tires. He shut down the aircraft, and he and his crew evacuated. Standing on the taxiway near the yellow hold-short lines, Parson watched the fire department hose down the wheel wells. The investigation that followed found no fault with Parson’s procedures, but the incident reminded him how quickly an aircraft could get into trouble.
• • •
PARSON, GOLD, AND CUNNINGHAM met the KC-135 crew just as sunrise pinked the eastern horizon over Manas. The morning glow lit the scattered cumulus, giving the clouds the appearance of burning islands drifting overhead. When the blue Air Force van stopped in front of the Stratotanker, the crew chief emerged first. A generator cart sat beside the aircraft, its electrical cord still plugged into a receptacle near the 135’s nose. The crew chief pressed a start button on the generator, and the diesel engine belched black smoke, clattered to life. After the generator accelerated and settled into a steady hum, the crew chief flipped a toggle switch, and a green contactor light came on. Good ground power available for the airplane.
Parson enjoyed watching these guys conduct the familiar ritual of waking up a cold jet. He’d performed the same tasks thousands of times, but not lately. Command responsibilities, most recently his assignment as a safety officer, had kept him out of the cockpit more than he preferred. He’d always known that would happen. If a pilot stayed in the Air Force long enough, there came a time to put away childish flying and focus on management. Part of him wanted to gather these young men around him and say, Enjoy this time. Watch one another’s back, serve your country well, and savor this part of your lives. It will pass far too quickly.
Instead, he simply watched them unlock the crew entry door, extend the ladder, and climb aboard their aircraft. Parson followed them inside, and Gold and Cunningham came up behind him. Cunningham wore ABUs today, the standard Air Force camo, with the stripes of a tech sergeant.
The cockpit looked a little unfamiliar. Parson had never flown a Boeing product, and the panels were laid out differently from the Lockheed birds he knew so well. This aircraft dated from the Kennedy administration, old enough that all the crew stations had built-in ashtrays. Parson tried to stay out of the crew’s way as they examined maintenance forms, powered up electrical systems, and ran through their preflight checklists. When they finished the preflight inspection, they let Parson take the cockpit jump seat. Gold and Cunningham sat in the back. Parson plugged in his headset just as the copilot made a radio call for a flight clearance.
“Cleared to destination as filed,” the Kyrgyz controller said. “Climb and maintain ten thousand feet. Expect flight level two-niner-zero ten minutes after departure.”
On the interphone, Hodges said, “Something tells me we ain’t gonna make it.”
The copilot smiled, took a sip of coffee from a foam cup.
“You guys are making it look good,” Parson said. “Where are we going?”
“Istanbul,” Hodges said.
“Always wanted to see Istanbul,” Parson said.
“Engine start checklist,” Hodges called.
The copilot put his coffee in a cup holder and picked up his checklist binder. Parson listened to the challenge-and-response rhythm of the checklist procedures, watched Hodges place switches on the panel in front of him to the GROUND START position. One by one, the pilot moved start levers on the center control stand, and four CFM56 turbofans roared to life. A tailwind pushed exhaust fumes in front of the intakes, and the odor remained in the bleed air that flowed through the air-conditioning system. The smell of a day’s work beginning.
The boom operator locked down the crew entrance door, and the Stratotanker lumbered off Juliet Ramp and down Taxiway Alpha. Near the end of the runway, the copilot called for takeoff clearance.
“Clear for takeoff, Runway Zero-Eight,” the controller answered.
Hodges steered onto the runway, advanced the throttles. The CFMs spooled up from a whine to a howl, and the aircraft began to accelerate. Parson peered around the copilot’s shoulder to watch the airspeed indicator. As the instrument scrolled past eighty knots, the copilot said, “Reject.”
With one smooth motion, Hodges pulled the power back to idle. Then he took hold of the speed brake lever beside the throttles. Hodges deployed the speed brakes to sixty degrees, and Parson felt himself pushed against his shoulder straps as the jet slowed down.
“Oh, my goodness,” Parson said. “You boys got an emergency. Ain’t that awful?”
“I’m terrified,” Hodges said.
“Me, too,” the copilot said. “Don’t spill my coffee.” Then the copilot pressed his transmit switch and said, “Sunoco Two-Eight aborting takeoff.”
The tower controller gave the tanker crew a few seconds to stop their jet. When the aircraft turned off the runway, the controller said, “Sunoco Two-Eight, state the nature of your emergency.”
“Ah, we have a hydraulic leak,” the copilot transmitted.
“Lying sack of shit,” Parson said on interphone.
“You should hear him on the satphone to his girlfriends,” Hodges said.
“Do you require assistance?” the tower asked.
“Let’s have the trucks stand by for us on the taxiway,” the copilot transmitted.
Parson smiled, pressed his interphone switch, and said, “And the Academy Award goes to the crew of Sunoco Two-Eight.”
“I’d like to thank my agent,” the copilot said.
“And I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry,” Hodges said. Then the pilot turned serious, twisted in his seat to face Parson. “All right, sir,” he said, “where do you want us to stop?”
Parson unbuckled and rose to look out the flight deck windows. “Shut it down close to that aerial port hangar, but don’t block access,” he said. “Make sure your tail clears the taxiway intersection. I want those guys in there to conduct business as usual.”
Two crash trucks rolled out of the fire department garage. The vehicles drove more slowly than when they’d responded to the C-27 accident; this time they appeared only as a precaution. The trucks stopped near the Stratotanker’s nose. Parson considered his next moves; the trickiest part of his charade would happen now.
“Tell ground control you’re doing an emergency egress,” Parson said. “When you get outside, tell the fire chief you had a hydraulic leak on the takeoff roll, but you didn’t overheat the brakes.” It helped that the trucks had come out, but now Parson wanted them to go away.
Hodges made the radio call as Parson ordered, and the crew shut down the engines. When Hodges reached for the battery switch, Parson said, “Hold on.” Then, while he still had electrical power, Parson asked, “Crew chief, are you on headset?”
“Yes, sir,” came the answer from the back.
“Cool,�
�� Parson said. “When you get out there, as soon as nobody’s looking, I want you to dump hydraulic fluid all over one of the landing gear struts.”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“See you outside.”
Hodges flipped the switch, and the jet went dark. After the pilot, copilot, and boom operator climbed down the ladder, Parson followed them, headset around his neck, cord dangling at his waist. He looked up to see Gold and Cunningham coming behind him. The crew chief picked up two quarts of hydraulic fluid and a tool bag.
Once on the ground, the crew chief opened his tool bag and took out a sharp-pointed can opener, the kind mechanics called a church key. With the church key, the crew chief punched holes in the fluid cans, looked around. Hodges was talking to the firefighters, gesturing with his arms. The firefighters stood around their vehicles, the tops of their silver suits unzipped. One spoke into a handheld radio, and they remounted the trucks and drove back to the fire station.
Parson nodded to the crew chief, who walked over to the wheel well and poured both cans of hydraulic fluid over a strut assembly. The red liquid oozed across the concrete from underneath the aircraft. The scene put Parson in mind of a harpooned whale.
“What a mess,” Parson said. “Might just take all day to fix this.”
“Might,” the crew chief said.
“Can’t even tow the aircraft.”
“Oh, no, sir. That might damage something.”
Cunningham walked around the Stratotanker as if he were inspecting it. As he stepped past Parson, he smiled faintly and shook his head. The OSI agent reached into the crew chief’s tool bag and took out a wrench. Found a dry spot between the landing gear struts. Then he put his hand into a cargo pocket and withdrew a camera.
8
GOLD SAT WITH PARSON on the ramp underneath the wing of the KC-135. Cunningham watched from the landing gear. Every now and then the OSI agent would pick up his wrench, pretend to work on something, wipe his hands with a rag. Just to make things look right, the crew chief opened a laptop computer and made a show of checking maintenance manuals. He also scattered tools around his computer: a Phillips screwdriver, a speed wrench, and a set of socket wrenches. The rest of the Stratotanker crew went to the chow hall.
“What if the Afghans recognize us?” Gold asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Parson said. “They know I’m the safety officer. I’m supposed to be out here if somebody has an emergency and rejects a takeoff.”
“What about me?”
“They know you work with the safety officer.”
“Fair enough,” Gold said. “So we’re hiding in plain sight.”
“That’s kind of how a deer stand works.”
Sounded like the Parson she had always known. A hunter at heart. An alpha wolf, ready to inflict violence when called for, but only to feed or protect his pack. And if Parson considered you part of his pack, he’d do anything for you. Gold had seen him prove that more than once. But he probably wouldn’t like the wolf analogy, Gold thought. She and Parson had fought off starving wolves while downed in Afghanistan during a winter storm. Not one of her better memories.
For two hours, nothing of note took place on the ramp or in the Afghans’ open hangar. Inside the hangar, a man swept the floor, then smoked a cigarette. As Gold watched, she felt a stitch of pain in her ribs. The bullet wound from her last mission. Afghanistan had left its mark on her. But the mission that had nearly killed her worked to heal her in some ways. She and Parson had helped rescue kids from a Taliban splinter group that used child soldiers. A mission worth her life. And one that made her feel her efforts had not been in vain. In a way, her physical agony eased some of her mental torments. More than a fair trade, in her view.
While they waited for something to happen, they used the time to continue catching up. Gold appreciated that Parson asked about Fatima, an Afghan girl they’d found orphaned. After Gold was shot, Parson had picked up where she’d left off and used information she’d gathered to find a good orphanage for Fatima and her brother, Mohammed. Though Gold and Parson had never been intimate, she thought of Fatima almost as their daughter.
“When’s the last time you saw her?” Parson asked.
“About a month ago. She’s reading so well now. She even tutors her brother.” As part of Gold’s work with the UN, she had toured schools and orphanages throughout Afghanistan. Fatima and Mohammed lived in one of the better facilities.
“I’m glad she’s learning,” Parson said, “but there are people in Afghanistan who won’t like that.”
Gold knew all too well what Parson meant. The Taliban opposed any education for girls. Terrorists blew up schools, threw acid in girls’ faces, murdered teachers. In Pakistan, the Taliban had shot a teenage girl who had campaigned for girls’ education. Gold offered a silent prayer for Malala Yousafzai, who survived the bullet wounds to her head and neck.
The growl of turboprops interrupted Gold’s thoughts. She looked up, shielded her eyes with her hand. Parson had told her the distinct sound of a turboprop came not from its turbine engines but from the propellers spun by the turbines. A pure jet made more of a whistling noise.
And there came the plane, a C-27 Spartan approaching through a clear sky. The aircraft banked to the left.
“Hey, Cunningham,” Parson whispered. “We’re gonna have company in a minute. A C-27 just turned downwind.”
“I see it,” Cunningham said.
Gold took a pair of foam earplugs from her pocket; she knew the noise of the Spartan’s engines would grow painfully loud when the aircraft taxied into parking. She twisted the earplugs, inserted them into her ears, and she watched Parson do the same thing. As the foam untwisted and expanded, her world grew quieter.
After a few minutes, the Spartan’s wheels barked onto the runway. Puffs of blue tire smoke erupted where the C-27 touched down. The aircraft rolled toward the far end of the runway, and three Afghan ground crewmen strolled from the hangar and onto the ramp. One carried a pair of yellow wooden chocks, each with a three-foot length of rope attached. The men looked at the Stratotanker, gestured and spoke among themselves. Gold removed one of her earplugs for a moment so she could hear better. The Afghans pointed at the tanker jet, and one of them said in Pashto, “He will have room to get by the wings.”
“Are they worried about us?” Parson asked.
“No,” Gold said. “They’re talking about wingtip clearance.”
Parson nodded, apparently satisfied his plan was working. The C-27 rolled along the taxiway now, growing larger and louder. Gold replaced the earplug, and she smelled the exhaust whipped by propeller blast. The aircraft lumbered past the Stratotanker, and Gold noted the green, black, and red roundel of the Afghan Air Force. Through the cockpit windows she saw the pilots—one clean-shaven and one bearded—both wearing headsets and brown flight suits.
The C-27 made a right turn into the parking apron, and the move placed the exhaust and prop wash directly over Gold and Parson. The hot wind burned her eyes and tousled her hair, and the fumes of burning jet fuel stung her nostrils. She and Parson retreated to the other side of the tanker. After a minute or two, the Spartan’s engines finally hushed, and the acrid gale subsided. Parson walked under the tanker’s tail, feigned interest in the KC-135’s boom assembly. From there, he gained a better vantage point to watch the ramp. Still hidden by the wheels, Cunningham began snapping photos.
The ground crew unloaded three pallets. Gold noticed nothing unusual, and Parson and Cunningham didn’t seem to, either. She saw that Parson stayed away from the KC-135’s gear struts to avoid drawing attention to Cunningham’s hiding spot.
Gold joined Parson in the shade of the tail. She faced the runway, her back to the C-27, and whispered, “See anything suspicious?”
“Not really,” Parson said, “other than that they’re here at all. Can’t think of any legitimate reason for them to ship o
ut this much stuff.”
“So what do we do now?”
“That’s really up to Cunningham and the OSI. But I imagine they’ll be more interested in who takes that stuff out than who brought it in.”
“Where’s Colonel Webster today?” Gold asked. “He might have enjoyed our little jaunt down the runway.”
“He would have,” Parson said. “But I think he’s doing the lawyer thing. Checking manifests or something.”
The Afghans left the C-27 unattended for more than an hour. Gold supposed the fliers and ground crewmen had gone to lunch. When they returned, one of the pilots walked around his airplane. He examined the underside of the wings, opened panels along the fuselage and then closed them, checked tires.
“What’s he doing?” Gold asked.
“Through-flight inspection,” Parson whispered. “We advisers and instructors all used to harp on good procedures. Maybe he listened.”
The pilot climbed aboard, followed by the other two crew members. A few minutes later the auxiliary power unit howled up to speed, and one of the propellers began to turn. As the second engine started, Parson retreated to the far side of the Stratotanker. Gold followed him, sat beside him near the crew chief, who continued reading manuals on his computer. Probably not just acting, Gold guessed, but using the time to study. Warm wind from the C-27’s props flowed around and under the KC-135, and Gold felt the smoky breeze on her cheek.
The engine noise made conversation difficult, so Gold and Parson did not speak. But Parson met her eyes, nodded, patted her back. She took his hand, closed her fist around two of his fingers shortened by frostbite years ago. Funny how we can communicate, Gold thought, even when we can’t talk.
She released his hand, and he looked away from her. Parson unzipped a pocket, pulled out a datebook, and opened it. Back to business as usual. As he worked, Gold noticed his scars. When he pushed up his flight suit sleeve, the effort revealed a mark left by a terrorist’s sword, of all things.