Strike Eagle (2 page)

Chapter 1

Friday, 1 June

Clark Air Base
Republic of the Philippine Islands

Clear and minus thirty degrees outside the cockpit window, thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean. Blue sky diffused into a mottled green where the jungle lay on the horizon. Five miles below them the Pacific Ocean looked like tiny ripples on a broad landscape of blue-green flatness, the clouds fluffy wisps. Strung out over a three-mile line flew five aircraft, four of them fighters, following a lumbering KC-10.

First Lieutenant Bruce Steele craned his neck around the cockpit of his aging F-15E Strike Eagle. It may have been one of the oldest fighters in the inventory, but it still packed more punch on air-to-ground than the F-22 and F-35 combined.

Miniature color TV monitors were inlaid next to switches, buttons, and other instruments on the crowded cockpit panel. A heads-up display jutted up directly in front of him. Cockpit gray clashed against the rest of the color-filled outside world. He felt like he was flying a high-tech video game.

Bruce spotted the other aircraft by their contrails, dense white plumes of water vapor spewed from the engines. Just visible two hundred miles in front of him rose a volcanic hill, protruding thousands of feet above the surrounding jungle but still miles beneath the fighters. A voice came over his headphones.

“Maddog, Lead. Estimate ‘feet dry’ in twenty miles. Prepare to descend. Remain in loose route.”

Bruce squinted out the cockpit to where the ocean ended. The “feet dry” warning confirmed Bruce’s estimate that they’d soon fly over land. His helmet filled with the sounds of the other fighters confirming his orders. One after another the clipped replies came:

“Two.”

“Three.”

Bruce clicked his mike. “Four.”

The lead aircraft kicked off a message to the Air Force version of the giant DC-10, the KC-10 tanker that had escorted them across the “pond,” as the Pacific Ocean was affectionately called. The dual-seated F-15E had a cruising range of more than twenty-eight hundred miles and could certainly make the hop over part of the pond—from Anderson AFB in Guam, where they had left some eight hours ago.

But Murphy’s Law reigned supreme in the Air Force: if something was going to go wrong, then it usually did. So rather than have the fighters cross the long stretch of deep water alone, a KC-10 tanker accompanied the crafts and kept them refueled.

As the flight began to descend from its cruising altitude, Bruce heard the voice of his navigator and backseater, Charlie Fargassa.

“I got a lock on the TACAN, ’sassin.” Charlie pronounced Bruce’s call sign “Assassin” in two syllables.

Bruce went “hot-mike”: he flipped the mike to transmit within the fighter only. “That’s a rog. Ready to stretch those legs?”

“You said it. I could piss for a week.”

Bruce grinned. For the last eight hours he had been forced to use a “piddle pack” to urinate. Besides being inconvenient and uncomfortable, the device made Bruce nervous—he didn’t like the possibility of loose liquid in the cockpit.

Charlie was another matter. The older man—by all of six years—refused to use the piddle pack, and instead opted to grit his teeth and bear it. When the Wing Commander back at Luke Air Force Base had made the equipment mandatory, Charlie steadfastly refused to be “plugged in.”

Charlie needed a little needling, just to drive the point home. “Twenty more minutes. Can you handle it, Foggy?”

Again, silence. Then weakly, “That’s a rog, Assassin.”

Bruce nearly gagged trying not to laugh. It felt good to be heading into a new place, a new environment. Damn good.

Bruce was on top of the world. And passing through thirty thousand feet, that was literally true.

He absently rubbed his left ring finger, feeling the absence of his wedding band. Wearing rings while flying was strictly against regulations, and good common sense. If Bruce had to start rummaging through the cockpit, or suddenly flip switches, there was a chance his ring would catch on a protrusion or allow electrical arcing. If he were lucky, he’d only tear some skin away. For the unlucky, entire fingers could be lost.

But it wasn’t merely the missing wedding ring that felt strange; it was knowing that he would never put it back on.

The divorce had been finalized the day before he left Luke for the trip to Clark.
Ashley.
The memory still hurt—the times they had together and the promise of what was to come. You would think that after ten years together, including two years of marriage, you would learn something about the other person. No surprises, nothing major, but just pleasant, gentle discoveries …

The day he last saw her she looked just like she had ten years before, in high school. She had followed him to the Air Force Academy, waiting those long four years until he graduated and even through their wedding during June Week.…
Can you ever know anyone completely?

The memory still tore at him. Even the uncontested divorce, an Arizona “quickie” designed to numb the pain. He hadn’t seen her since that night.…

Bruce pulled himself out of his memories, for he knew that they could become a fixation causing him to tune everything else out. And that was a cardinal sin when flying.

There were too many new things to experience, new relationships to build. A fleeting thought of his father crossed his mind. It had been years since he had really spoken with him, and now he was going to be so close; maybe this was the opportunity to start over.
Subic wasn’t too far away
.…

Now over land, the fighters were left on their own. The KC-10 had peeled off when they had started to descend, winging its way up to Kadena AFB in Okinawa. The officers on the tanker had several more hours of flight time left, but at least they could get up and stretch—you could nearly play football inside the giant, wide-body aircraft. Cots for sleeping, a small kitchen—all the comforts of home. And a real toilet to boot.

Shaking his right hand to relieve cramping, Bruce grasped the throttle and clicked the mike switch.

“Foggy, you still awake?”

“Who do you think is minding the store when you’re off on Mars?”

“What are you talking about?”

Charlie snorted. “Check altimeter, Assassin.”

Bruce scanned the multi-display console. He was surprised to see that the flight had descended to less than twenty thousand feet. The descent had been that smooth.

Bruce normally allowed Charlie to fly the fighter whenever times were slow. Takeoffs, landings, and dogfights didn’t qualify as slow, but then again Charlie had a pretty good feel for the craft. Besides, he could never tell when Charlie might have to come through for him and fly the airplane back home.

It had happened before; it would happen again.

“Sorry, Foggy. Guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“S’all right, keeps my mind off the bathroom.”

They were interrupted by the radio.

“Let’s tighten it up, Maddog. Move in to fingertip.”

“Twenty miles, Skipper. We’ve been cleared to break on initial to an overhead pattern.”

“Roger that. Welcome to Clark, girls and boys.”

Charlie read the checklist over the intercom, checking off items as they prepared for landing. The words came as clipped, short sentences, checking over the range of items in the craft.

“Fuel.”

“Ten thousand pounds.”

“Altimeter.”

“Passing nine thousand.”

The minutes passed quickly. They came in from the south, heading straight for the sprawling complex. A single volcanic mountain jutted up from the jungle floor to the west. A checkerboard pattern of green fields dotted the surrounding area. From a mile above ground the area looked peaceful, lush. The day was hazy, barely affording a view of mountains. Bruce knew that Subic Naval Station, where his father was now stationed, lay to the southwest, some fifty miles away. He couldn’t make out the Navy base through the clouds.

“Maddog, echelon right.”

Maddog flight moved from a full, V-shaped fingertip formation to a half V. Two thousand feet to the right lay a town—dingy streets and tin-covered buildings. All around were the remnants of half-built buildings, a morass of people, the tops of brightly colored jeeps, and a confusion of activity.

Then suddenly, they popped over a wire fence. The fence seemed to delineate a different world, a different universe. Bright green grass, razor-straight streets, and a permeating sense of orderliness.

“Fifteen hundred,” warned Charlie.

Bruce still followed in a tight wing, flying three feet behind Maddog Three’s wing tip and three feet to the left. They continued to fly over the expanse of Clark Air Base. The runway came up fast—even throttling back, they were on the landing strip almost before they knew it.

“Maddog, break to an overhead pattern on my command: one
break!”
Skipper’s fighter tore off and down to the right, turning hard to come in for a landing. The rest of Maddog continued on.

The feeling hit Bruce like a sledgehammer, the suddenness of it.

The months pushing through the divorce, the rut he had fallen into … and now he was starting a new life, away from Ashley, but with the promise of a wide-open beginning. And with his Dad not fifty miles away, it had to be an omen.

“Two’s in break.”

He felt better than he had in his life—even including throwing the hat at June Week, or his interception in the Liberty Bowl. There was a crescendo lifting him up, pumping him into excitement.

“Three’s in break.”

When Maddog Three’s F-15E Strike Eagle broke right, leaving him alone in the air, Bruce went nonlinear.

“Four—
break.”

He jammed the stick hard to his front and right. His fighter flipped over and executed the “break right” upside down. The gear warning horn blared throughout the cockpit.

“Yahoo!” Charlie’s voice ricocheted over the intercom. “Go for it!”

They continued the tight turn upside down until the F-15E pointed at the runway. Buildings and cars whizzed by below them; Bruce didn’t look, but he could imagine the open-mouthed stares as people gaped at the upside-down fighter. Now five hundred feet above ground level, Bruce continued to burn in toward the runway, still upside down.

Charlie’s whoops added to the cacophony. Descending through three hundred feet, Bruce flipped the aircraft right side up and brought the aircraft on in. The airways were filled with excited voices—Bruce ignored them and greased his craft onto runway 02.

The fighter didn’t even bounce as it glided in. Bruce automatically started the rundown sequence, disarmed the ejection seat, and switched to the runway frequency.

“Taxiway Alpha to Joliet Ramp, Maddog. Parking assigned after a maintenance check—you are cleared for crossover.”

“Roger, tower.”

“Rog, rog, Assassin!” Charlie said. “You really know how to bring them in. Let’s hope nobody saw that, otherwise you’re going to be one hurting mo’fro.”

Bruce clicked his mike. He concentrated on taxiing the fighter.

By the time they arrived Bruce was too exhausted, too exhilarated to say anything. Charlie had kept quiet since landing, and the usual friendly banter was missing between the craft. Everyone was tired and ready to rest up for the next phase of the show—the start of the actual day-to-day flight operations.

When Bruce revved down his engines, the enlisted engineer popped him off a friendly salute and ran back to where a gaggle of people waited. She motioned to the group. They pushed aluminum stairs to the F-15E and she climbed up. As the cockpit opened, Bruce unbuckled and struggled out of his seat.

Long arms reached down to help him out. “Welcome to Clark, sir.” The female crew chief smiled down at him. She wasn’t a knockout, but she was pretty—and very female. It took a second before Bruce grinned. With his divorce, he had to keep reminding himself that it was all right to start looking again.

“Thanks.” He decided he was going to like it here.

As he pushed out of the craft, a blue-and-white staff car slid up to the fighter. A panel on the front of the car displayed an eagle—the symbol for a full colonel—with the words 4th tfw commander stenciled below the bird. Bruce’s eyes widened.

Bruce nudged Charlie. “Think he’s coming to personally welcome us to Clark?”

Charlie looked deadpan. “What you mean ‘us,’ Assassin? You’re the friggin’ pilot. And since that upside-down stunt broke every safety reg in the book, I’m not expecting the natives to be too friendly.”

A blond, lanky officer pulled himself from the staff car. On his light blue shirt, command pilot wings were positioned over a shiny pair of Army “Jump Wings.” The Jump Wings showed that the colonel had completed the arduous parachute school at Fort Benning.

He wasn’t smiling, and he looked straight at Bruce.

“Welcome to Clark, sir,” whispered Charlie, mimicking the female airman.

Angeles City, Philippine Islands

The street smelled of urine, week-old garbage, and the odor of heavy cooking oil. Two- and three-story buildings enclosed the street in shadows. There was a danger of being hit by dirty water, or buckets of rotting vegetables thrown from the upper two stories. The noise was overwhelming. A half a block away, an open-air market spilled out into the street.

Cervante Escindo had never gotten used to the backwardness, the cramped and crowded living style of this city. Manila to the south, or even Bagio to the north, was nothing like this, so backward and yet pulsating at the same time. People from the barrios, small villages that dotted the majority of the Philippines, found it difficult to adjust here. To Cervante, it seemed inconceivable that such a state of affairs persisted.

But Cervante Escindo knew why. And that was why he was here.

Fifty miles to the southwest lay a similar city, one that could pass for Angeles if you shut your eyes and felt the pain weaving through the city—the pain of a people being raped. For Angeles’ sister city Olongapo lay outside of the Subic Bay Naval Base, just as Angeles lay outside of Clark.

If it hadn’t been for Clark and the thousands of Americans stationed at the sprawling military base, Angeles would have been nothing more than another dot on the map, a barrio peopled by a few hundred Filipinos. But the growth of Clark Field after World War II, after the American “liberation” of the Filipinos from the Japanese, had caused Angeles City’s population to skyrocket. Even after the Americans had left for three decades, the city continued to grow.