Silent Enemy (37 page)
Authors: Tom Young
He wondered if a dying man might feel this way as he waited for judgment. The sum of his deeds, both good and evil, now closed out and tallied. And on the other side either paradise or damnation awaited, depending on the final calculus.
Parson examined his radar altimeter. Its digital numbers flickered and danced as the radar beam swept the water: 9005, 8990, 9003, 9000
.
He realized his aircraft had descended below the bomb’s presumed trip point. If he hadn’t already gotten rid of the damned thing, the people under his command might be dead already.
.
He realized his aircraft had descended below the bomb’s presumed trip point. If he hadn’t already gotten rid of the damned thing, the people under his command might be dead already.
And he still had work to do. Could he let somebody know his status? He decided to try the HF radios again, just for good measure. Parson turned his wafer switch to HFI.
“Mainsail,” he called. “Air Evac Eight-Four.”
No answer. He repeated the call. Still nothing. Parson switched to HF2 and tried again. Nothing but static.
All right, he asked himself, now what? The C-5 was no longer on any charted jet route. There might be no one anywhere near here monitoring the emergency channels. But it couldn’t hurt to try. Parson turned his wafer switch once more.
“Any station,” he said, “Air Evac Eight-Four.”
The answer came in grainy UHF: “Air Evac Eight-Four, Reach Two-Zero has you weak but readable. We are a C-17 off Hickam, en route your destination. Please advise.”
A rescue bird. Was it possible? Or was this some auditory hallucination? Maybe not. Parson saw Colman, Dunne, and Gold were looking at him. So they’d heard it, too.
“We’re about five hundred miles out from Johnston,” Parson transmitted. “The bomb’s gone now, but it went off when we jettisoned it. Two engines failed, heavy damage, marginal control.”
“Reach Two-Zero copies,” the C-17 pilot called. “We have a medical team on board. Look, buddy, you just set that thing down on that chunk of coral, and we’ll take you home.”
Parson leaned back against the headrest, looked out at the Pacific. Glints of sunlight sparkled on the water like drifting shards of silver. Just set that thing on that chunk of coral. Just lay your burdens down. If only it were that simple. But if he and his crew could pull it off, salvation awaited in the form of a C-17 Globemaster and the medics, food, water, and morphine inside it. God, for the morphine.
GOLD BEGAN TO WORRY ABOUT
the best-case scenario. What if the crew actually
did
land this thing? How would Parson—let alone Mahsoud, Justin, and the other patients—get out quickly if necessary?
the best-case scenario. What if the crew actually
did
land this thing? How would Parson—let alone Mahsoud, Justin, and the other patients—get out quickly if necessary?
“Yeah, we need to think about that,” Parson said when Gold brought it up. “I hate to take away Mahsoud’s oxygen hose, but we better get him downstairs so the aeromeds can bring him out.”
“Concur,” the MCD said on interphone. “If the loadmasters open the aft ramp as soon as we get slowed down, we’ll take everybody out the back.”
“What about you?” Gold asked Parson.
“Don’t worry about me,” Parson said. “I don’t want to block anybody on the ladder, so once everybody else gets out, I’ll climb down.”
“With a broken leg?” Dunne asked. “What if the aircraft’s on fire?”
“What if it is?” Parson said. “I still want everybody else out first.”
“Screw that,” Dunne said.
Not how Gold would address a major, but she agreed with the sentiment.
“Just let me drop out the window with an escape reel,” Parson said.
“That’s tricky even for someone who’s able-bodied,” Colman said. “We can get you down the ladder quicker than we can get you out a window.”
“All right, but if it looks bad, just egress without me.”
No one answered.
“I’m serious,” Parson said. “If you guys get killed trying to rescue me, I’ll kick your asses up one side of hell and down the other.”
“Once the airplane stops,” the MCD called, “I’m in command. And we
will
get you out.”
will
get you out.”
That’s right, Gold thought. Pull rank on him.
“All right,” Parson said. “The lieutenant colonel’s in charge on the ground.”
“That’s better,” the MCD said. “Now let’s see about moving Mahsoud.”
Gold didn’t like it when the aeromeds took away Mahsoud’s oxygen mask and snapped his regulator to OFF. But to have any hope of getting him out after a crash landing, they had to carry him to the cargo compartment. Mahsoud did not protest, but he groaned when they strapped him to a stretcher. And he cried out when it scraped against the flight deck door panel on the way down. The airplane had become a pipe filled with pain, Gold thought. A vessel of hard edges and narrow passageways, reverberating with the moans of the wounded and the curses of the crew. And, surrounding it all, the slipstream’s rush like the sound of days slipping away.
The medics latched Mahsoud’s stretcher into place at his old spot by the porthole window. Sunlight filtered through the delaminated glass and formed a penumbra around the window’s edges. Outside, the Pacific glowed like blue lava.
“It will be over soon, Mahsoud,” Gold said. She took out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his face, careful to avoid burns and contusions.
“One way or another,” he said. He wheezed when he spoke.
“A rescue plane is on the way,” Gold said. “I heard it on the radio.”
Mahsoud showed little joy at that news. He seemed to feel it did not apply to him.
Gold wondered about that herself. Would the aircraft from Hickam arrive only to find debris floating just offshore from Johnston? She could imagine the C-17 circling a rainbow smear of jet fuel, looking for life vests. Then perhaps it would overfly the atoll in a sad low pass before returning to Hawaii.
“What does your Falnama tell us now?” Mahsoud asked.
Gold didn’t feel like retrieving the book from her bags, but she decided it was worth it if it would distract Mahsoud. She just hoped he wouldn’t take any passage too seriously. To Gold, anything that smacked of fortune-telling ranked as nonsense. Though she respected all religions, she put no value on their stray tendrils of superstition. She read the Falnama as a cultural document, nothing more.
“Open to a page at random,” Mahsoud said when she brought the book.
Gold knew that was how people used the Falnama centuries ago. She hoped Mahsoud sought mere entertainment and not serious guidance. For that, he should read the Quran, as she read the Bible. But she opened her translated edition as he asked. At the top of the page, it read:
Accept that you are an instrument of Allah’s will.
A sentence filled with merit, to Gold’s mind. At least it wasn’t something that might raise hopes higher than warranted. She showed Mahsoud the English words.
“True enough,” he said in Pashto. “We have reached a point where we can only accept what comes.”
“Such as a life of academics instead of a life of action?” Gold asked.
“You chose both,” Mahsoud said, “but, yes, I understand your meaning—if life remains for us at all.”
Mahsoud closed his eyes, and Gold decided to let him rest. He seemed, if not at peace, at least resigned. The words of the Falnama appeared to remind him he had a proper role in a plan too vast for comprehension.
Around the cargo compartment, a few of the aeromeds and loadmasters tried to sleep. Gold noticed no one slept for long, but when they did, they slept anywhere: lying flat on the floor, sitting up with forehead on knees, in fetal position on a vacant litter.
The crew members who remained awake began to secure equipment. They anchored Pelican cases to the floor with chains and tie-down devices. Loadmasters ratcheted straps tight across mounds of luggage. Aeromeds placed some of their more delicate tools, such as IV pumps and cardiac monitors, into foam-padded crates. Gold wondered how much of the effort was rote procedure and how much stemmed from an expectation that the equipment would ever be used again. At the very least, Gold realized, secured gear would not turn into missiles during a crash landing.
Across the cargo bay from Mahsoud, Justin watched with listless eyes. Gold could not tell how much he understood. He seemed to have drawn blinds within himself, closed off light from outside. She hoped he would come to know what a gift he’d helped give everyone aboard, that pride and satisfaction in his deed might see him through the painful recovery that awaited him if he survived this flight.
For now, anyway, he remained alive. Gold felt light-headed, just a bit tired and weak. She knew why; she realized where that part of her strength had gone. It lay before her, in someone else’s veins, her tithe of blood.
28
T
he pain in Parson’s leg twisted around itself, reached ever greater heights. He had to force his thoughts through it, across it, like concentrating with a high fever. The agony seemed to shape-shift: One moment, a thousand needles pricked the broken limb. Next, a single blade ran it through. Then the sharp points and edges went away only to be replaced by a coat of oil lit afire.
he pain in Parson’s leg twisted around itself, reached ever greater heights. He had to force his thoughts through it, across it, like concentrating with a high fever. The agony seemed to shape-shift: One moment, a thousand needles pricked the broken limb. Next, a single blade ran it through. Then the sharp points and edges went away only to be replaced by a coat of oil lit afire.
His throat felt as if he’d swallowed sand. A strange buzzing annoyed him, barely audible. It didn’t seem like the normal whines of avionics. Parson realized it was probably in his head—the sound track of shock. Or maybe hearing damage from the blast.
The number four engine still seemed to want to shake itself off its pylon. Though it no longer ran, the rotors turned with the air forced through the intake. That created drag and vibration more severe than anything Parson had ever experienced. He just hoped the shutoff valves would hold. When he’d pulled the fire handle for number four, it should have cut off fuel and hydraulic fluid to that engine. But given the way the TF-39 had shelled itself out and then begun rattling and spewing sparks, he could not know with certainty. The nacelle contained any number of components and fluids that could burn like hell’s own furnace. A generator cased in magnesium. A pylon, connecting the engine with the wing, laced with lines of flammables.
Parson wished he could just jettison the damned thing—press a button and drop it into the ocean. No such system existed. Whatever was going on with that engine, he and his crew would have to live with it.
Gold entered the flight deck and sat at the nav table. “Where do you want me for the landing?” she asked.
“Right there,” Parson said. “Your seat has a four-point harness. If you cinch it down tight, that’s as safe a place as any.” All true, but Parson didn’t add that he wanted her there for his own reasons, too. Her voice cut the pain. Her presence helped him think.
He checked the FMS: a little more than two hundred miles to go. “Listen up, guys,” he said. “We’re still a ways out, but I want to start configuring to land. We know we have to emergency extend some of the landing gear.”
“The forward mains, at least,” Dunne said. “God only knows how the electric motors will work after the lightning strike.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” Parson said. “Whatever new problems we’re going to have, let’s go ahead and find out what they are.” He needed to make sure the plane was set up for landing well before arrival at Johnston. In its damaged condition, it did not have the power or controllability for a go-around.
“So do you want me to put the gear down now?” Colman asked.
“Gear down,” Parson ordered.
“Airspeed,” Dunne said.
Parson checked his instruments. The plane was flying at two hundred and fifty knots. Gear operate speed was two hundred.
“Good catch,” Parson said. “We’re all tired, and I feel like hell. Keep backing me up like that.”
“You mean, like always?” Dunne said.
Colman retarded the two good throttles by millimeters.
“That’s it, sir,” Dunne said. “Don’t change speed too quick.”
The airspeed crept down a few knots at a time. Parson scanned the panel, then looked outside. The scene before him presented no color except blue, in every possible shade. The sunlight illuminated the water as if to cleanse the whole planet. Aquamarine in the peaks of the waves, deep azure in the troughs. The horizon like a straight line of a fountain pen’s ink, and, above it, the lapis infinity of the sky.
When the airspeed indicator reached two hundred, Parson repeated, “Gear down.” Colman put his hand on the gear handle and hesitated, as if moving it would lever open a door to realities too harsh to face. Then he placed it in the DOWN position.
As expected, the indicators for the forward main gear continued to show their UP flags. But Parson felt and heard a thunk underneath him as the nose gear unlocked. And the indicators for the aft mains flipped from UP to the barber poles that meant IN TRANSIT, like the barest hint of a promise.
“Pressure holding?” Parson asked.
“So far, so good,” Dunne said.
The aft gear extended and locked down. Their indicators displayed the green wheels of safe landing gear.
“Well, that’s a little progress,” Colman said.
The nose gear now showed red wheels. So at least the doors had opened, but the nosewheels had not fully extended and locked. Parson cursed himself for forgetting to glance at his watch’s second hand when Colman moved the gear handle. It shouldn’t have taken longer than twenty-five seconds to put down the wheels through normal means. He thought more time than that had passed, but in his pain and exhaustion he couldn’t be sure. Blazing nerve endings in his legs sent filaments of madness into his mind. By sheer will, he forced those filaments to retract.
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