Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  The nozzle was hovering right over Parsons’ head, less than a foot away. The wind rumbling around the boom’s control vanes and under the big tanker’s belly seemed to suck the bomber right up into it. Mace watched it slide aft, getting closer, closer, closer …

  Suddenly all of the lights on the tanker’s director-light system flashed rapidly on and off—the breakaway signal. Mace didn’t react very fast—he was watching the boom instead of the tanker and didn’t notice anything wrong until the boom started to move away—but the tanker reacted immediately: it accelerated ahead like a shot and climbed as if it was on an express elevator. The sudden acceleration and the roar of the KC-10’s three huge engines quadrupled the noise in the bomber’s cockpit, and the smell of burning jet fuel was overpowering. For a moment Mace thought he had been struck by the boom and his jet had caught fire. Mace automatically pulled the throttle back, but almost immediately the stall-warning horn blared, so he shoved power back in. When he did so, the F-111G swerved violently to the left and Mace almost lost control.

  Just when Mace was about to give it up and try to eject, he glanced over his right shoulder and saw the RAF Tornado tucked in close on the right wingtip as if he was cemented there. Normally a wingman stayed with the tanker on an emergency breakaway, but the Tornado crew chose to stay with the crippled bomber. The presence of the Tornado really helped steady his hand, and several minutes later he had his airspeed and wits back. Mace steered toward the tanker, determined to get it right this time—and then the MASTER CAUTION light, a large yellow light right in the front center of the instrument panel, snapped on.

  Mace quickly scanned the instruments and found the problem: the FUEL LO PRESS light was on. The boost-pump lights for the aft body and fuel-dump system were on, indicating no flow, and two of the four forward body-pump lights were on. That meant less than one thousand pounds of fuel remaining. About five to ten minutes, less if he had really bad fuel leaks, until the last engine flamed out. And there was only one step in the “Double Engine Failure” checklist, and he knew it by heart: EJECT. But with all the damage they had sustained on the left side, the capsule might not separate from the plane, and even if they made it, Parsons would probably not survive the impact.

  Mace had one more chance: plug the tanker this time or die.

  It was as simple as that.

  SEVEN

  Rebecca Furness didn’t have a chance to see the F-111G the first time—the other boom operators and the rest of her crew were already in the pod watching—so she waited patiently, watching the Tornado through the starboard porthole, until the breakaway call. She asked her copilot in the pod to switch with her, and he complied immediately—that close call, with the bomber coming only inches away from smacking into the tanker, had rattled him, and he scrambled out of there in a hurry. Furness waited for her tight-lipped, white-faced copilot to climb out, then took a short, steep ladder down into the boom operator’s pod in the aft belly of the KC-10.

  Before her was a huge window, four feet by three feet, which was the largest one-piece glass panel in any pressurized aircraft. The senior boom operator on board, a chief master sergeant, was in the instructor’s seat, while Furness’ crew boomer was in the other seat, so she took a position between them and donned a headset.

  “Oh … my … God …” she gasped when the F-111G hovered into view. She had seen lots of Aardvarks coming in for refueling, some even with emergencies on board, but in her eight years in the service she had never seen one as bad as this. The pilot looked as if he was hanging out in space, being held in place only by the relentless windblast pounding on his body. The entire left front side was blackened, and huge gashes of torn metal were clearly visible. It looked as if a giant clawed hand had tried to rip the pilot bodily out of the plane and had almost succeeded. The Tornado fighter-bomber was so close now that she could see it, too, close enough so that either one of them could plug into the boom.

  “The nav looks scared shitless,” the boom operator, Technical Sergeant Glenn Clintock, said on interphone. “He can hardly keep it straight.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” the senior master sergeant asked. He was the air refueling wing’s senior enlisted adviser and still an active boom operator. “If he stays fixated on the nozzle, he’ll ram us for sure.”

  “What’s he doing?” Furness asked.

  “He’s staring at the boom nozzle,” Clintock replied. “It’s a typical new-guy reaction. You can’t help but watch the boom nozzle because it’s so close to your head just before it plugs you. When you stare at the boom you unconsciously fly the airplane up into it, and when you realize what you’re doing you jerk the plane away too fast and waste time. He’s got to concentrate on his visual cues and let us worry about the nozzle—except most navs don’t know what the visual cues are. He’s really in a world of hurt.”

  “So tell him.”

  “Can’t. We’re still over Iraq. One squeak from us and we’ll get hosed by SAM sites or fighter patrols. We’re also still within triple-A gun range—one lone Zeus-23 unit that gets a bead on us could eat our lunch.”

  As Clintock explained the problem, Furness concentrated on the figure of the navigator. She could barely see his hands working the control stick and throttles—rather, the throttle, because the left engine was obviously dead—and his visored eyes nervously watching the boom and the tanker. She could somehow feel his fear, sense his anxiety. “What’s his fuel state?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” the chief replied. “We’re supposed to be radio-silent until after contact.”

  “He’s clean configuration … does he have any stores on board at all?”

  “Don’t know that either,” the chief said.

  Furness watched in horrible fascination as the F-111G unsteadily made its way closer.

  “This guy’s not going to make it in,” the chief said. “I recommend we call it off and let him find a flat piece of ground to land on.” The chief master sergeant turned to Furness and said, “You’re senior officer on board, Captain. What do you think?”

  Furness didn’t reply right away. Of all the aircraft in the Kuwaiti theater of operations, the aerial refueling tankers, especially the Air Force models, were the most important. No bombing missions could be conducted, unless by long-range bombers like the B-52 or F-111G, without refueling, and even the bigger jets, because they were based so far away, needed at least one refueling en route. Tankers were force multipliers. One tanker not only serviced dozens of other aircraft every hour, but they refueled other Navy and Air Force tankers, which in turn refueled dozens of planes. That meant that losing one tanker was akin to losing several dozen strike aircraft. Losing one tanker like the KC-10, which could gas up USAF, Navy, and allied aircraft as well as carry cargo for long distances, was probably equivalent to losing one hundred strike aircraft. What commander, even at flag or general officer rank, in this day and age, could sustain the loss of a hundred combat aircraft at once? His career would be over instantly.

  It was Furness’ responsibility to make sure her aircraft was safe and mission-ready—if this was going to be a long war, and there was every indication that it would be so, the KC-10 was probably the most important aircraft in the Coalition fleet. The chief was right: risking the KC-10 like this, with the bomber crew so inexperienced and rattled, was not only unsafe but operationally improper. The chief master sergeant was reminding her of her responsibility: some two- or three-star general could ask them to try to refuel this stricken plane, but it was her job, and hers alone, to protect her aircraft and her crew.

  “Captain? He’s moving in again. What do you want to do?”

  Furness unplugged her headset from the interphone cord and into the boom operator’s observer’s cord, then flipped the switch to radio one. “Pilot of the F-111, this is the commander of Shamu Two-Two. How do you hear me?”

  “Open channel!” someone shouted on interphone. “Check switches!”

  “Captain, we’re supposed to be radio-silen
t,” Clintock said, his eyes wide. “You’re on interplane.”

  “I know,” Furness replied. “But we’ve got to talk this guy in or he won’t make it.”

  “But you’re going to get us all killed!”

  Furness wasn’t listening: “F-111 pilot, this is Shamu Two-Two. How do you read?”

  “This is Breakdance. I read you loud and clear, lady. Have we broken radio silence? Acknowledge.”

  “Yes … and no,” Furness said. “I can give you one more shot, and this time we’ll do it, or else I have no choice but to send you to an alternate recovery strip.”

  “Then let’s do it,” the voice from the F-111G said. “I’m running on fumes. Clear me in to contact position.”

  Furness nodded with satisfaction. She was expecting a scared, totally out-of-control nav on the radio, but instead found a determined, realistic fighter. She nodded to Clintock and said, “Clear him in and let’s get it on, Glenn.”

  “You got it, Captain,” Clintock said. On interplane, he said, “Breakdance, this is Shamu Two-Two, cleared to contact position, Two-Two is ready.”

  “No, no, not that way, Glenn,” Furness said. She motioned for the senior master sergeant to get out of his seat beside Clintock—he had no choice but to comply, but he was obviously perturbed about it—then strapped herself in and got on the radio: “Okay, guy, c’mon in. What’s your first name?”

  “Say again?”

  “I asked you, what’s your first name—or do you want to be called Breakdance all morning?”

  That got his attention: “Daren,” he replied with obvious humor in his voice.

  “Okay, Daren, I’m Rebecca. My friends call me BC. We’re going to dispense with the normal radio calls and do this my way. It’s just you and me, cowboy. I’ve got the juice, so come get it.”

  “Okay, BC,” Mace replied with a hint of amusement. “Here I come.”

  Furness watched as the F-111G began moving closer. She could see the long black nose bobbing a bit as the nav made rather large pitch changes—too large for being less than fifty feet away: “Use nice, easy power and stick changes,” she said. “Nothing drastic, nothing sudden. Forget about your fuel state, forget about your pilot, forget about everything. Relax. It’s like pulling your big Jaguar into your garage and parking it. Concentrate on slipping that big Aardvark nose right under my tail. We’ll tell you when to stop.”

  “You’re starting to turn me on, BC,” Mace radioed back.

  The F-111G eased itself gently into position, the tip of its long black fiberglass nose all the way under the boomer’s pod, the refueling receptacle less than ten feet from the nozzle.

  “Look at the plane, not the nozzle, Daren,” Furness said, ignoring his last remark. “Look at me. Start developing a picture of the underside of the plane in relation to your canopy rails. Don’t look at the nozzle—that’s our job. Keep coming … keep coming …”

  Suddenly, Mace’s radar warning receiver came to life: a loud deedledeedledeedle came on the interphone, and a bat-wing symbol appeared on the right side of the indicator. He automatically started to back away in preparation for a breakaway maneuver. “Two-Two, I’ve got a bandit at three o’clock,” Mace shouted on the interplane frequency. “Repeat—bandit at three o’clock. Stand by for evasive action.”

  “Wait! Hold your position, Daren,” Furness said. “You’ve got a fuel emergency. Get on the boom and get your gas, then we’ll do a separation.”

  This time, before the chief master sergeant could react, Sam Marlowe shouted on interphone: “Furness, that’s not the SOP! If we come under attack, we do a breakaway and begin evasive maneuvers. That fighter can be on top of us in no time!”

  “I’m not losing this guy.”

  “But you’re willing to get our asses killed!” Marlowe thundered. “I’m calling a breakaway.”

  “Like hell!” Furness shouted. “This is my aircraft and my sortie!”

  A calm but determined British voice said on the refueling frequency, “Shamu, Breakdance, this is Elvis Three-Ought-Seven, we have a bogey at our three o’clock, turning starboard to engage. We’ll be back shortly, Elvis Three-Ought-Seven.” The Tornado suddenly banked sharply right and climbed steeply, with afterburners glowing brightly and its wings tucked all the way back against its fuselage.

  “Daren, continue in to contact position, and do it quick,” Furness said. “If my crew gets a visual on the bandit, we’ll begin evasive maneuvers.”

  “I copy,” Mace replied. “Coming in.”

  But it wasn’t going to happen. The Tornado had disappeared from sight, the radios were silent, and the bat-wing symbol on the threat scope kept on closing. “Shamu, the threat’s approaching lethal range, and I can’t see the Tornado. You better—” just then, they heard a calm British voice on the refueling frequency: “Lousy bugger … don’t try it … yes, thank you … lovely … lovely … missile away, missile away.” There was no sign of excitement, no sign of stress at all in the voice—except for a bit of strain against the G-forces. The bat-wing symbol disappeared from the threat scope. “Splash one MiG, chaps. Elvis Three-Ought-Seven, splash one. Coming in on the rejoin.”

  Furness found she was holding her hands to her face in absolute, sheer horror. Just like that, as if it was a simple stroke of a pen or a brush of a hand, the Tornado crew had killed an Iraqi pilot and shot down his plane. It was only now that the threat was gone that she realized the threat to herself—had it gone any other way, she could have been the one crashing to the desert floor in pieces.

  Even now, she could see a small column of smoke rising from the ground, not that far away. Death was that close for all of them, but especially for the crew of the KC-10 Extender tanker. The F-111G could descend to hill-hugging altitude, fly faster than most fighter-interceptors, use jammers, and dispense decoy chaff and flares to protect itself; the Panavia Tornado could do all that and launch air-to-air missiles itself. But the KC-10 was powerless, as vulnerable as a newborn baby. The KC-10 could not even detect nearby threats, unless the pilots got lucky and saw the missile or fighters coming—at night or in bad weather, they would be dead long before they saw the threat. Flying these behemoths over enemy territory was crazy, simply insane. Aircraft flying in combat needed to be able to fight. More than that, she wanted to fight. She wanted to be the one in the F-111G dropping bombs, or the one in the Tornado shooting down bandits. Refueling was fine, and it was a necessary mission, but if she was going to fly, she wanted to fight.

  “Thank you, Elvis,” Furness said shakily to the Tornado crew as they maneuvered their jet up beside the F-111G again.

  “My pleasure, mademoiselle,” the Tornado pilot replied in the very same voice he used to announce that he was blowing away the Iraqi.

  “Okay, Daren,” Furness said, “you’re cleared back in. Remember, nice and easy. There’s a little bump when you get inside, but don’t try to anticipate it or try to smooth it out. Ride the bump and keep moving in.”

  Mace again eased the crippled F-111G into position. He struggled momentarily with the bow wave, overcompensating for the push by pulling back on the stick, then fluttering dangerously close to the tanker’s belly when he broke free, but he managed to stay in position through the momentary oscillation and moved slowly but steadily into contact position. “Okay, right there,” Furness called out. “That’s perfect. You don’t have to look up, just get your bearings from the markings on the belly … I said don’t look up, Daren, just remember the picture you see right now.”

  She saw the signal from Clintock that he was ready to plug the F-111G. “Here we go, Daren … a little push from the boom … don’t try to help it or back away from it, just hold your picture.”

  Clintock carefully eased the boom down a bit lower and extended the nozzle. It scraped only a few inches against the slipway, then plugged into the bomber’s receptacle with a satisfied ch-clunk! The green AR/NWS light went out, indicating that the toggles had made contact and the nozzle was locked in place. “
I’ve got contact,” Mace reported.

  “Contact, Two-Two,” Clintock reported. “Taking fuel.”

  The director’s lights on the tanker’s belly automatically illuminated, and Mace found himself right in the middle of the envelope, with the UP-DOWN elevation marker and IN-OUT boom-extension markers both right in the center.

  “Okay, Daren, good job. Now just ignore the director lights. Maintain that last picture you see through the canopy. You can glance at the lights every now and then as a crosscheck, but they’ll just confirm what you should already see. Relax your hands, take a deep breath. You’re taking fuel, and we don’t see any leaks. Good job, guy.”

  Mace was afraid to breathe, afraid to move, but he tried to do as the tanker commander said and relax. He found that, once it was trimmed up and at the proper aimpoint, it was very easy to stay in the contact position—the KC-10 practically dragged the bomber along. One by one, the forward-body low-pressure lights and the LO FUEL PRESS caution light went out. “Thanks, BC,” he said on interplane. “You really saved our bacon. I’m grateful.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Furness said. “Give me a ride in your plane someday.” If she ever had her choice of planes to fly, without any women-in-combat restrictions, the F-111 would be it.

  “You got a deal.”

  After over three minutes on the boom, the nozzle suddenly popped out and Clintock pulled it quickly away from the bomber. “Pressure disconnect, Breakdance,” Clintock reported.

  “We can’t give you any more fuel because your system says it’s full, Daren,” Furness added. “What have you got?”

  “My fuel system is dead, so I don’t know what I got,” Mace said. “I can try manually transferring fuel, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”