by Young, Tom
“If you find something,” Parson said, “don’t move it. At least, not yet.”
“Don’t worry,” Dunne said.
Dunne led the way down the flight deck ladder to the cargo compartment. Downstairs, Gold saw that a blanket covered the face of one of the patients. And the wounded sergeant lay still and quiet now, Flex-Cuffed to his litter. At least he’d survived the depressurization. Blood stained the bandage around his head.
When they passed Mahsoud’s stretcher, he looked at Gold as if to say What on earth are you doing? Gold touched his arm as she walked by, but she didn’t stop to speak to him. It was too hard to yell through the mask at someone not on headset.
At the aft end of the cargo compartment, Gold and Dunne climbed another ladder to the troop section. At the back of the troop compartment, Dunne moved aside an aluminum cage that guarded two circular hatches in the wall, each big enough for someone to crawl through. They had hinges at the top, so they could swing open vertically. What the crew had called valves looked more like round doors to Gold.
Dunne flipped a wall-mounted toggle switch marked EMPENNAGE SERVICE LIGHT and raised the lower door. Cold air rolled from it like he’d opened a freezer. When the frigid air mingled with the warmer atmosphere of the troop compartment, fog swirled as if some malevolent specter haunted the aircraft.
“These are the negative pressure valves,” he said. “They just lift open now that we’re depressurized. Hold this one for me, please, and you can watch from here.”
Dunne took an interphone cord from the wall and connected it to Gold’s mask. Then he wrapped himself in the blanket and snapped on his flashlight. Gold held the pressure valve as he squeezed through it.
He passed into a hollow dark opening big enough to contain two Army trucks. Inside the tail cone, the plane’s structure rattled and shook. With no insulation or noiseproofing there, the slipstream raged like a hurricane tearing at a tin shack. A service lamp trembled in its mounts and cast a dim, pulsing glow on cables, wiring, endless rows of rivets.
This strange section of the aircraft amounted to a tunnel about eighty feet long. At the entrance, by the pressure valves, it was about thirty feet wide, but it narrowed toward the end of the tail. The area contained no seats or steps; it was obviously not intended for access in flight. The metal cavity was larger than the interior of some passenger planes Gold had seen, but in this aircraft it served only as the aft tip of the tapered fuselage.
Gold watched as Dunne made his way down a catwalk, cradling his oxygen cylinder in one arm. He steadied himself against the vibration with the other arm, found handholds among the braces and formers. To Gold, he looked like a coal miner descending a contaminated shaft during an earthquake. She found her TALK switch and pressed it.
“He’s in the tail,” she said.
“Roger that,” Parson said. “How’s he doing?”
“I’m sure he’s freezing, but he’s moving around okay.”
Dunne swept his flashlight beam, a pool of light playing against the cold, buckling metal. So many hiding places, Gold thought. She shone Parson’s Maglite at Dunne’s feet, hoped she could at least help keep him from tripping.
He came to a ladder at the aft end of the tail cone. Pocketed his flashlight, ascended the ladder. His boots disappeared as he climbed out of sight.
“He’s headed up some kind of passageway,” Gold said. “Where’s he going?”
“That leads up into the vertical stabilizer,” Parson said. “The maintenance guys use it.”
“I can’t see him now.”
“He shouldn’t be gone long.”
Seconds ticked into minutes, and Gold began to worry. Still no sign of the flight engineer. Had he gotten stuck up there? Passed out?
“I still don’t see him,” Gold said.
“Keep me advised,” Parson answered.
Gold wanted to go back and look, but Parson had specifically told her not to do that. The pressure on her bottle was dropping, and she knew Dunne had to be low on oxygen, too. Gold wasn’t an aviator, but common sense told her that since Dunne was exerting himself and he was a big guy, he was probably using up oxygen faster than she was. And there certainly wouldn’t be any refill hoses where he had gone, in a part of the plane never meant to be manned.
She stood and refilled her own bottle from a recharger hose on the troop compartment wall. The effort brought a stitch of pain in her ribs. She watched the oxygen pressure needle climb back to 300 psi. Then she kneeled by the pressure valves and looked around for Dunne. Still nothing.
Another oxygen cylinder stood in a bracket nearby. Gold took it, checked its pressure. Full. She scanned the tail cone again with the flashlight.
Dunne’s boots appeared on the ladder, first his left, then his right. He seemed steady enough on his feet.
“I see him,” Gold said. “He’s coming back down.”
“Copy that,” Parson said.
Dunne reached the catwalk, began walking toward Gold. Now he appeared to move with effort, as if his boots were sticking to the metal. Then he sank to his knees, fell forward as if shot. Motionless.
Gold took off her headset and scrambled through the lower valve, pointing the flashlight so she could see where to step. The strap on the extra oxygen cylinder caught on the lip of the valve opening, and Gold jerked until it ripped free. A stabbing pain spread through her torso, but she tried to ignore it. Dropped the flashlight. Gold fumbled in the shadows cast by the weak service lamp overhead and found the flashlight underneath the catwalk. She grasped for it with ungloved hands, the catwalk’s steel so cold it seemed to burn. As she raised herself back up, she grabbed a cross brace for support. Her sweating palm stuck to it. She yanked her hand away, left a strip of skin frozen to the steel.
When she reached Dunne, she cradled her flashlight between her knees and rolled him over. No response, like moving a corpse. His eyes were closed, face ashen. Pressure on his oxygen bottle was zero.
Gold disconnected his mask from the empty bottle, plugged the hose into the spare, and felt it seat into the receptacle with a click. Dunne opened his eyes, blinked. Gold could hardly believe one breath would make him recover so quickly. Though she was a paratrooper, she had never been free fall qualified, so she had no training in high-altitude physiology. Now she just hoped Dunne could get up. She thought she could drag him to the pressure valves if she had to, but it would hurt like hell. Pulling him all the way through one of the valves would be impossible.
Rays of sunlight filtered through a louvered panel on the floor. Blue segments shining from some kind of access hatch, hints of clouds and sea below.
Dunne staggered to his feet, tried to shout something. Gold could not understand him above the roar. She put his arm around her neck and helped him to the pressure valve. He went down on his knees and crawled through. When Gold followed, she found him shivering on the troop compartment floor, still clutching the blanket around him.
He yelled again through his mask. Unintelligible.
“What?” Gold said.
He grabbed his oxygen mask by the hose and pulled it far enough from his face to speak.
“There’s something back there,” he said.
6
Too much time had passed since Parson had heard anything from Gold and Dunne.
“Sergeant Gold,” he called, “are you still on headset?”
No answer. Parson cursed himself for not briefing her that you always checked with the aircraft commander before you went off headset. She’s bright, he thought, but don’t expect her to think like aircrew.
Then he heard clicks on the interphone, the whine of audio feedback, Dunne’s voice. Sounded out of breath: “Pilot, Engineer. We got problems.”
For a moment, Parson said nothing. The objects around him seemed to blur, as if imagined in some dreamlike state. Switches and instruments faded, their purposes forgotten. His mouth had a leaden taste in it that made no sense.
Parson knew of a C-130 crew years ago that had
made a navigational blunder on a low-level training flight. They flew into a box canyon and found they had neither the turning radius to reverse course, nor the power to climb over the rim. Was this how they felt in those moments before they hit the canyon wall?
Focus, he told himself. Function. Face whatever comes. He took a deep breath, pressed the TALK switch.
“Tell me what you saw,” he said.
“There’s a duffel bag up in the stabilizer.” Dunne’s voice shook. Probably still shivering, Parson guessed. “It has wires attached,” Dunne added.
So there it was. Nothing theoretical about the threat now. Parson’s universe narrowed, tunneled, consisted only of the airplane, its crew and passengers, fuel, sky, and high explosive.
“Can you remember anything else?” Parson asked. “We need to describe it to TACC.”
“There’s more than the bomb,” Dunne said. “Pasteboard boxes and black plastic bags. Maybe a half dozen. I didn’t see any wires in those.”
What the fuck? Parson thought. Then he understood. A dirty bomb. Or worse. Anthrax spores. Sarin. Mustard gas. Or VX.
“You didn’t touch any of it, did you?” Parson said.
“Negative.”
“Good. God only knows what that garbage could be.”
“Yeah, but I got a vague idea.”
No wonder the bad guys set these things to go off on descent instead of climb, Parson thought. Scatter that shit all over Germany and punish them for helping the U.S.
Down below, the edge of the Black Sea hove into view. Romania. The shoreline passed under the wings, the ground a patchwork quilt of green forests, brown fields, crops in corduroy furrows, hedgerows embroidering the borders.
The stamping of boots up the ladder announced the return of Dunne and Gold to the flight deck. Gold’s blond hair had tangled into her headset. Dunne’s cheeks, the part of them not covered by his oxygen mask, were red. He coughed into the mask as he strapped back into the engineer’s seat.
Parson didn’t know Dunne well, but he’d flown with him before and was beginning to learn how Dunne operated. When Parson was still a copilot on the C-5, he’d gotten stuck at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, with a blown starter. The crew, including Dunne, waited for several days for a new starter to come in. When it finally arrived, Parson found Dunne up on a stand with an engine cowl open. The flight engineer had a wooden chock in his hands and he was pounding it against the engine like a battering ram. Parson wasn’t a mechanic, but he knew nothing in the maintenance manuals called for beating a jet engine into submission.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Parson said.
“Don’t ask, sir.”
Parson later learned the old starter had swelled its casing when it blew. As a result, Dunne couldn’t get a socket wrench on all the attachment bolts. He’d had to knock the thing around on its shaft to remove it. Unorthodox, and certainly not according to the tech order, but faster and cheaper than changing the whole engine.
What to do now? Parson knew he had several hours’ worth of fuel on board. There was no sense squandering it down here at twenty-five thousand now that he knew what he was dealing with. Better fuel economy up high. He waited for Dunne to settle in at his panel, watched him scan his instruments. Good, Parson noted. He’s still doing his job.
“Engineer,” Parson said, “repressurize us. Then I’m going to request a climb back up to three-four-oh.”
“Yes, sir,” Dunne said.
“Could it make the bomb go off if we repressurize?” Colman asked.
“No,” Parson said. “Remember, it’s in an unpressurized section.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Then Parson made a call to downstairs. “MCD,” he said. “Pilot.”
“Go ahead.”
“Ma’am, we’re about to repressurize, if the patients are ready.”
“There’s not really anything we can to do get them ready.”
Parson wasn’t sure how to react to that. It seemed simply a fact to which the MCD was resigned. He nodded to Dunne, who twisted the pressurization master switch to FLIGHT. Parson felt the swell begin against his eardrums. Pressing his fingers over the oxygen mask, he held his nose and exhaled against it to equalize the pressure, heard the faint pop. He had to swallow now and then to keep his ears comfortable with the change in cabin altitude. Thought again about what that must do to the inside of a wound cavity. But did any of that matter anymore?
“Tell me when the cabin pressure gets down below ten thousand feet,” Parson said.
“Roger that,” Dunne said.
Parson turned his wafer switch to VHF. “Control,” he said, “Air Evac Eight-Four requests climb to flight level three-four-zero.”
A voice responded with the exaggerated l ’s of a Slavic accent: “Air Evac Eight-Four, climb and maintain flight level three-four-zero. Contact Bucharest on one-one-niner-point-five.”
Colman was flying the plane now. He set the altitude alerter, advanced the throttles. The nose pitched up slightly, and the aircraft began a gentle climb. Parson noticed Colman kept his hand on the throttles: a good technique to remind yourself to pull off some power after the aircraft leveled. This new copilot did everything methodically, like most new guys. He moved switches one at a time, not in a quick flow. He seemed to work from memory and procedure rather than instinct. That was okay with Parson. Better to do the right thing slowly than screw up fast. But this kid would have to learn that the flight manual’s index would not give him all the answers.
After several minutes, Dunne said, “Cabin’s below ten thousand.”
“All right, everybody,” Parson said. “You can come off oxygen now.”
Parson pulled the sweep-on mask away from his mouth and nose, placed it back in its holder. He adjusted the boom mike on his headset, inhaled the cabin’s air. It always felt good to take off that mask. His face had gone numb.
He checked in with Bucharest, then switched to HF and called the Tanker Airlift Control Center. The flight manager put the DO on the line.
“Sir,” Parson said, “we have a bomb on board. We depressurized so the engineer could check the empennage and he found a device up in the vertical stabilizer.”
No response for a moment. Then the colonel said, “We copy your situation, Eight-Four. Maintain altitude while we get some answers from EOD. We’ll gas you up again if we need to.”
“Eight-Four wilco,” Parson said. “But there’s more.” Parson told him about the boxes and bags of unidentified material.
Another long pause. Then only: “Hilda Contingency Cell copies all.”
As the aircraft climbed, it passed through a thin cirrus layer like punching through a white shroud. After several minutes, the autopilot leveled the plane, the altimeters reading thirty-four thousand. Heavier now with fuel, the C-5 had reached the ceiling for its weight. It did not so much fly as wallow through the air. Parson felt the right wing dip a few degrees, a touch of Dutch roll. Then the flight augmentation computers corrected, and the ship settled into straight and level flight. At least that’s working, Parson thought. Hell, we don’t need any more problems.
“So what do we do now?” Colman asked. Voice steady, but his face very white. So were his hands, purple veins visible under the skin as he gripped the yoke.
Parson stared out into the blue. “I don’t know,” he said. Then he chided himself for saying that. The aircraft commander always knows. Or at least he knows who to ask. The crew members, the whole damned Air Force, expect you to suck it up and deal with it. No matter how much you might doubt yourself, he thought, you don’t have the right to show it.
The radio interrupted the flight deck conversation: “Air Evac Eight-Four, Hilda. You still on frequency?”
“Hilda, Eight-Four,” Parson called. “Go ahead.”
“Dip shop needs to talk to you. Stand by.”
What now? Parson wondered. Like I have time for their paperwork.
Then another voice on the radio: “Air Evac Eight-Four, Hilda
. Be advised Germany has revoked your diplomatic clearance. We’re working on a reroute to Rota or Sigonella.”
Parson slammed his fist onto his armrest and swore. Pressed his TALK switch.
“Why the—Why would they do that?”
“Word has gotten out. They don’t want an at-risk plane over their territory.”
Well, word had to get out eventually, Parson thought. Hard to keep a secret about airplanes blowing up. “What about the patients?” Parson asked. “We have some critical cases on board.”
“We’re working that. The base hospital wherever you land will do what it can.”
Didn’t sound like much of a solution to Parson. Some base hospitals were little more than walk-in clinics. Maybe they don’t expect us to make it that far, he thought.
“Air Evac Eight-Four copies all,” Parson said. “We’ll maintain a listening watch on this freq until you come up with a new destination.”
Now it no longer made sense to follow the flight plan to Germany. Parson looked down at the screen on his FMS, set to a page listing familiar waypoints to Ramstein, a destination now denied him. Wherever the plane wound up, assuming it landed at all, no place could handle the patients as well as the Landstuhl hospital, just a few miles from Ramstein. No doubt more of them would die. If my dip clearance has been revoked, Parson thought, that means the bureaucrats and politicians know what’s going on and they’ve all come in to help. Fuck you very much.
But Parson could do nothing about that now. And there was no point going fast in the wrong direction.
“Control,” Parson called, “Air Evac Eight-Four needs to cancel flight plan to Ramstein. We’d like a partial route clearance anywhere more toward the west-southwest. Our destination will probably change to Rota or Sigonella.”
The Romanian controller asked Parson to stand by, then called him back:
“Air Evac Eight-Four, you are cleared Belgrade, Split, Aviano. Maintain flight level three-four-zero. We will give you further clearance when you confirm destination.”
“Air Evac Eight-Four copies,” Parson said.
