by Jim DeFelice
“Yeah. Or worse.”
Hypoxia was the medical term for lack of oxygen. There was a whole range of symptoms, the most critical in this case being loss of consciousness. Turk suspected that Ginella’s plane was flying itself. With no one at the controls, it would keep going until it crashed.
She might in fact already be dead.
He tried hailing her several times, using both her squadron frequency and the international emergency channel. A pair of F/A–18s were coming southwest from a carrier in the eastern Mediterranean, but Turk was much closer, and within a minute saw the distinctive tail of the aircraft dead ahead.
“Shooter Four, I’m coming up on her six.”
“Four acknowledges.”
Turk backed off the throttle, easing the Tigershark into position over the Hog’s right wing. He zoomed the camera covering that direction so he could look into the bubble canopy of the A–10E. At first glance there seemed to be nothing wrong beyond a few shrapnel nicks in the aircraft’s skin. But when he zoomed on Ginella, he saw her helmet slumped to the side.
Turk radioed Li and the controller, giving his position and heading, then telling them what he saw.
“She’s gotta be out of it,” he added. “Autopilot has to be flying the plane. I don’t know if we can rouse her.”
“Maybe if you buzz nearby,” suggested Li. “Maybe the buffet will wake her up.”
It was a long shot, but worth a try. Turk took a deep breath, then moved his hand forward on the simulated throttle.
* * *
Some twenty miles west, Danny Freah listened to the pilots as they attempted to rouse the Hog squadron commander. He’d heard of some similar incidents in the past, including one that had involved an A–10A that was lost over the U.S.
Any pilot flying above 12,000 or so could easily succumb to hypoxia, even in an ostensibly pressurized aircraft, if he wasn’t receiving the proper mix of oxygen, or if something otherwise impeded the body’s absorption of that oxygen.
How ironic, he thought, for a pilot to survive combat only to succumb to a run-of-the-mill problem.
“I knew his mother,” said Rubeo, who was sitting on the bench next to him.
“Who?” Danny lifted the visor on his helmet and turned to Rubeo. “Who are you talking about?”
“Neil Kharon. The man who jumped. His mother worked at Dreamland. It was before your time.”
“I’m sorry.”
Rubeo nodded.
“I was listening to a transmission,” said Danny. “One of the aircraft that was helping us is having a flight emergency. They can’t raise the pilot.”
“I see.”
“Turk thinks she lost oxygen.”
Rubeo stared at him. Danny was about to turn away when the scientist asked what type of airplane it was.
“An A–10E. One of the Hogs I mentioned earlier.”
“Have the Tigershark take it over,” suggested Rubeo.
“How?”
“Give me your com set.”
“It’s in the helmet.”
“Then give me the helmet.”
* * *
Turk pulled the Tigershark back parallel to the A–10, this time on its left side. Three swoops and Ginella had not woken.
The plane, however, had moved into a circular pattern, apparently responding to a slight shift of pressure on the controls.
“She’s going to be bingo fuel soon,” said Li, begging the question of how her own fuel was.
“I’m not sure what else we can do,” Turk said. “Maybe as she starts to run out of fuel the plane will descend. Once she’s below twelve thousand feet, she’ll regain consciousness and she can bail.”
Li didn’t answer. The odds of that scenario coming true, let alone having a good outcome, were incalculable.
“Tigershark, this is Ray Rubeo.” The transmission came from Danny’s helmet, but Rubeo’s ID flashed on the screen, the Whiplash system automatically recognizing his voice. “Are you on the line?”
“Affirmative, Dr. Rubeo.”
“You are following an A–10E. Am I correct?”
“Yes, sir. The plane is flying in a circular pattern. I’m guessing she has a very slight input on the stick because—”
“No response from the pilot?”
“Copy that. No response.”
“The A–10E is equipped with a remote suite that can be controlled from your aircraft by tuning to the proper frequency and using the coded command sequence, just as if it was Flighthawk or Sabre.”
“Yeah, roger,” said Turk. “I did some of the testing. But the pilots told me the circuitry is inactive in these planes.”
“Inactive but not nonexistent, Captain. Stand by, please. I need to consult one of my people.”
* * *
The dilemma invigorated Rubeo, giving him something to focus on other than Neil Kharon and his horrendously wasted talent and life.
The A–10E system had been adopted from one of the control setups developed for the early Flighthawks. It wasn’t quite cutting edge, but that was by design, since the Air Force specs called for a system that was both “compact and robust”—service-ese for a small but well-proven unit.
One of the primary requirements — and one of the things that had caused the main contractor on the project serious headaches — was the need to make the remote flight system entirely secondary to the “ordinary” pilot system. Unlike the Tigershark, which had been built from the ground up as a remote aircraft, the A–10E had to include legacy systems, most significantly in this case the autopilot, which had only been added to the plane in the A–1 °C conversions. Because of that, one of Rubeo’s companies had worked closely with the main contractor, developing a system that allowed both to coexist in the aircraft.
The head of that project was Rick Terci, an engineer based in Seattle. Rubeo’s call woke him up.
“The system won’t dead start in the air if it’s been under human control,” said Terci when Rubeo explained what was happening. “Not without her permission. The only way I can think of to get the remote on would be to turn the autopilot on first. Then you could cut in with the command. That would work. But you have to get the autopilot on.”
“Yes.” Rubeo saw the unit in his head, a black box located at the right side of the fuselage just in front of the canopy. For a normal aircraft, the shot would be almost impossible. But the Tigershark’s rail gun could hit the spot with precision.
How, then, would they get the remote control to engage?
“I’m thinking if we could jolt the plane electronically,” Rubeo told Terci. “If we could surge the power, and the computer would reset. At that point we can contact it and take over.”
“You mean reboot the entire electrical system? In the air? Sure, but how do we do that? And still have something left?”
“Well how would you do it?” Rubeo asked. He let his mind wander, trying to visualize the system.
“Can’t think of a way,” said Terci. “Not while it’s flying. Not and still have the plane able to fly.”
“If we shoot out the generators?”
“Then you have no power at all. Not going to work.” Terci made a strange sound with his mouth. Rubeo realized the engineer was biting his thumbnail.
A good sign; he only did that when he was on the verge of an idea.
“No, it’s simpler,” said Terci. “Just have a flight condition where the autopilot takes over. Then sign in from there. But you have to get the autopilot on… Say there’s a sudden dip so the airplane loses altitude.”
“The safety protocol won’t allow the system to take over if it went into autopilot while under pilot control,” said Rubeo. “We still need to have the system reboot somehow.”
“Yes,” said Terci, repeating Rubeo’s point. “You need an electric shock to delete what was originally programmed, or it will just return to the pilot. It just has to reboot — no, wait — you could just delete that part of the memory. No, just make the computer think there�
�s an anomaly. You don’t need a massive event, just a reset.”
“How?”
“Hmmph.”
“What if we overload a data collector circuit so the computer reads it as a fault and has to reset? If the circuit no longer exists, it will reset into test mode.”
“Yes. You take over in retest. Sure, because it’s resetting the program registers.”
“Will that work?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. But what circuit would be the right one to blow out?”
“There must be a dozen. Can you access the schematics?”
“I don’t know if my computer is on. Then I have to get into the company mainframes.”
“You have less than ten minutes to discover the proper circuit,” said Rubeo. “Please do not waste them by saying how difficult the task is.”
* * *
Turk heard Li contact the tanker. He could tell from the tone in her voice that she thought Ginella was gone.
And maybe he did, too.
There was no reason for him to want to save her. On the contrary, he was sure his life would be easier if she were dead.
But it was his duty to try.
“Captain Mako, this is Ray Rubeo.”
“Go ahead, Doc.”
“I have a sequence of events that I believe if followed very minutely will result in the aircraft’s remote control apparatus starting up. At that point, you will be able to issue the proper commands and fly the plane from the Tigershark.”
“Really?”
“There is an element of doubt,” added Rubeo. “But I am of the mind that it is better than nothing. I think it does have a chance of working.”
“I’m game.”
“I am going to add one of my specialists to the line. Your first shot must be very precise. The second even more so.”
Turk listened as the engineer described the locations on the Hog that had to be struck. Fortunately, the engineer was able to upload the targeting data to him through the Whiplash system, and within a few seconds the Tigershark’s computer marked the location.
Making the first shot was simply a matter of climbing 5,000 feet, then ramming straight down to an intercept course at exactly 632 knots and firing.
That was tough, but the second shot involved an even more difficult problem. It had to be made at a box housed near the plane’s right wing root within thirty seconds of the first.
“Thirty seconds?” Turk asked.
“Has to do with the monitors that control the emergency system check-in,” replied Terci. “The battery will—”
“All right, all right,” said Turk. “Getting into position for the first shot.”
Turk hit his mark 5,000 feet over the Hog and pushed down so he would be on the intercept point. As he reached the target speed, the computer gave him the shooting cue and he fired.
Perfect shot.
But as he swung into position for the second shot, the A–10E turned on its wing and began to dive straight down.
“There’s a problem,” he told Rubeo. He pushed his plane to follow. “I think we’re going to lose her.”
* * *
Since the helmet was tied into the Whiplash system, Rubeo could command the screen to show him what the Tigershark saw. He did so, then immediately began to regret it — the A–10A was in what looked like a slow motion downward spiral, heading for the ground.
They had not calculated this possibility.
Why?
“The pilot must be semiconscious,” said Terci. “She’s fighting the controls.”
“Yes.”
“If she can level off at ten thousand feet or so, she’ll be fine.”
“What about the second shot?”
“You won’t get it now. Get her to level off.”
“I doubt that will be easy for her to do. How else can we override that system?”
“That’s the only circuit possible, and even that’s iffy.”
Turk looked at the airplane. He had to strike a glancing blow on a plane that was very close to entering a spin. Even lining up to get to the right parameter for the computer to calculate the shot was going to be tough.
There was no other choice.
* * *
“I don’t know that I can make the shot, even with the computer’s help,” said Turk.
They were now at 25,000 feet, moving downward in a large but gradually tightening circle. If Ginella was trying to regain control — a theory Turk was dubious about — she wasn’t having any particular success.
The computer’s solution was for the Tigershark to exactly duplicate the Hog’s flight. It was the sort of solution a computer would propose — it saw nothing out of the ordinary, since the impossibility of doing that hadn’t been programmed.
“I can’t follow this course and keep my plane,” Turk told Rubeo. “She’s going to end up in a spin. It’ll get faster and faster. I have to try to stop it, then take the shot.”
“How exactly do you propose to do that?”
“I come in along the wing and tap it. It’ll knock the plane out of the course she’s on.”
“Will it stabilize it?”
“No way — but if I can just get the flight path to straighten out a little, I can take that shot.”
“How do you propose to do this?” said Rubeo sarcastically. “Are you going to reach your hands out?”
“No. I use my wings. It’ll work if I’m careful. I just have to do enough to disrupt the plane.”
“You’re sure?”
It was as much of a long shot as Rubeo’s original solution, even more so. It was very possible he might throw it into an even worse situation. But it was the only thing he could think of to save her. And he knew he had to try.
“Yes,” he told Rubeo, trying to put steel in his voice. “It will work.”
Turk dropped the Tigershark closer to the Hog, ignoring the proximity warning.
Every novice flier has to demonstrate that he or she can recover from an incipient spin before being allowed to do anything very fancy in an airplane. The first few times, the experience is fairly scary, as the sensation of vertigo — and worse, the feeling that you aren’t moving at all — tends to completely unnerve someone new to the cockpit. There is actually considerable time to correct the problem, but only if you go about things methodically, with a clear mind.
Mastering this and other emergency situations isn’t important just because of the danger they represent. Being able to control the aircraft through them instills a critical level of confidence in a novice pilot.
Turk felt like a newbie now. He remembered the leading edge of his first incipient spin. He’d almost panicked — almost, almost, lost it.
The trick had been to let go. Not literally, but mentally — to let go of his fear and self-doubt and trust himself, what he had been taught, what he knew he had to do.
To trust the plane.
It was an important lesson — one you always needed to relearn, especially in the face of mistakes.
But did that lesson really apply here? This was something very different. He trusted himself and his plane — but the A–10E wasn’t his to trust.
Instinct told him to try. There was no other choice.
“Tigershark, we don’t think that’s going to work,” said Rubeo.
“Too late, Doc. I’m already on it.”
He nudged the aircraft closer, trying to merge with the other plane. Turk told the computer to stop its proximity warnings, but his own sense of space held him back. He had to fight against his instincts as he lifted the wing to the left, coming up against the Hog’s.
The Tigershark jerked down as the force of slipstream off the other plane’s wing pushed it away. Turk struggled to control the plane but lost altitude too quickly to stay close. He saw the Hog moving overhead and tried to adjust, shifting to the right for another try.
Do it, he told himself. Do it.
Tap the wing. Throw it off course. Take your shot.
“What?”
asked a disembodied voice. “What?”
A woman’s voice… Ginella’s, as if coming out of a dream.
“You’re going into a spin,” he said over the radio, trying to push the Tigershark closer.
“What?” asked the other pilot.
“You need to recover,” said Turk. “You’re at twelve thousand feet and dropping.”
“I… can’t.”
“You can,” said Turk. He backed the Tigershark off. “Your O-two is screwed up.”
“My… oxygen.”
“Recover!”
“I—”
“Do it!”
Turk started to move back, desperate now — he had done so much, to the point of sacrificing his own plane in a desperate attempt to save her.
He had to succeed.
He started to come back.
“Where are you?” Ginella asked.
“I’m nearby. Can you eject?”
“I… eject.”
“Eject.”
“I… I have it. I have it.”
The Hog’s wing steadied. The plane was still moving in a circle, but the flight was sturdier, more under control. Turk took the Tigershark out wider.
“I’m at — I have control,” said Ginella. “I have… control.”
The A–10 recovered, pulling out ahead, then swooping straight and level.
“Do you think you can handle a refuel?” Turk asked. “If we set a course to the tanker?”
“Yes.” Ginella’s voice was still a little shaky.
“You sure?”
“I am not walking home from here, Captain,” she snapped, her voice nasty.
Good, thought Turk. She’s back.
“I need a vector to the tanker,” said Turk, talking to the controller. “I need a vector and a tanker. And get rescue assets.”
The Hog began to climb.
“Stay under eight thousand feet,” he told Ginella. “The lower the better.”
“Copy that. You can rejoin your flight. I have it from here.”
“Just follow me,” Turk told her. “We’re going home.”
THE TINT OF SUCCESS
1
Sicily
Ray Rubeo felt his legs start to give way as he reached the tarmac. He reached out and grabbed Danny Freah’s side, taking him by surprise and nearly knocking him over.
