by Young, Tom
Dunne emerged from the avionics compartment coughing, holding some sort of electrical box in his hand. The smoke seemed to be dissipating.
Parson removed his mask and said, “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Dunne said, “but it shocked the piss out of me.”
“What is that?”
“I just yanked it out of the rack. It’s the MADAR power supply.”
The electrical junction for the flight engineer’s computer. For the satcom, and so many other things. Parson glanced at the screen. It no longer said COMMUNICATIONS CONTROLLER FAILURE. It said nothing at all.
WITH THE STORMS BEHIND IT NOW, the airplane flew smoothly enough that Gold put down the airsickness bag she had clenched in her fist. The bag remained empty, though several times she had nearly retched into it. People downstairs must have thrown up, though. She noticed the odor of vomit all the way from her seat at the nav table.
The welcome end to the jet’s tossing and rolling made her think of a line from both Scripture and song: . . . the rough places plain. If she ever lived to hear Handel’s masterwork once more, that phrase would have special meaning. But then she tried to put the idea from her mind; she knew she might never again experience the pleasures of music, reading, culture. Concert halls and libraries, some of her favorite places, seemed worlds away from this ill-fated ship of war and its cargo of wounded, maimed in both body and spirit.
Perhaps she could help clean up whatever mess there was downstairs. She checked off headset and opened the flight deck door. A wave of foul smell hit her, and her stomach heaved. When her gut settled again, she descended the ladder.
Aeromeds and loadmasters were already on their hands and knees, wiping up vomit with thick paper towels. Gold nearly slipped on the slickened floor. She took a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser, then unrolled a wad of the towels. One of the flight medics began to spray disinfectant, and a medicine smell mingled with the stink of bodily fluids. Gold got down on the floor and helped clean up what was left.
Some of the liquids soaked into the knees of her ACU trousers, and the odor made her mouth flood with saliva in a final warning from her stomach. She tried to force it down, gave up, vomited onto the floor. She had not eaten much, though, and she lost little but clear phlegm. An aeromed gave her another paper towel, and she wiped her mouth, then cleaned up the rest.
None of the patients slept now. Mahsoud gazed out his window. Fawad sat up, watching her with his unbandaged eye. She got to her feet and steadied herself against a litter stanchion.
“How do you feel, Officer Fawad?” Gold asked in Pashto, voice still gravelly.
“I am better,” he said. “Perhaps better than you at the moment. But I am terribly cramped. Can you help me walk to stretch my legs?”
“I will,” Gold said, “as soon as the nurses allow it.” As she spoke, she peeled off the latex gloves and dropped them into a trash bag. The black plastic bulged with discarded gloves, bloody bandages, syringes, and other medical waste.
Fawad did not look better. His face appeared grave and ashen. But Gold took it as a good sign that he wanted to move around. The MCD and the other medical people seemed busy at the moment; she’d ask them at a better time. She doubted security concerns would prevent letting the patients walk. Each of the wounded had been searched for weapons before boarding, and searched again in flight.
“That was an awful storm,” Gold said, thinking it would do Fawad good to talk.
“Were you frightened?” he asked.
“I certainly was. When the lightning struck, I thought we were going down.” And I’m still frightened, Gold thought.
“Allah is mighty,” Fawad said. “The airplane is in his hands.”
True enough, Gold thought, though she wished she could offer more concrete hope. Fawad was in pain and facing an uncertain future—assuming anyone on board had a future.
Mahsoud motioned to her, and she joined him at his window. “Have you seen the shooting stars?” he asked. He wheezed as he spoke, but his eyes were bright.
“Yes,” Gold said. “Major Parson pointed them out.”
“Perhaps Muhammad saw something like this on his Mi’raj, his Night Journey.”
“It is a wondrous sight.” Gold did not add that the flight seemed more like a tour of hell than the Prophet’s Night Journey to heaven on a winged horse.
“I saw you and Major Parson go by earlier,” Mahsoud said. “Did you take photos of the bomb?”
“We did, but I do not know whether we can send them now.” She hated to tell him that, but she had too much respect for him to hide important information.
“Why not?”
“When lightning hit the airplane, it damaged some things. There was a fire.”
Mahsoud’s face fell. “We must send the photos,” he said. “The bomb technicians can hardly help us if they cannot see what we are dealing with.”
“Major Parson and his crew will do the best they can,” Gold said. “I know him to be resourceful. With another pilot, we might be dead by now.”
“If God wishes us to live, we will.”
I’m hearing that a lot tonight, Gold thought. But she liked the way Mahsoud put it a little better. She kept to herself her own New England version: God helps those who help themselves. Well, we’re working on it, she considered. At least if we don’t survive, it won’t be for lack of trying. We will not go quietly into this night.
She looked out Mahsoud’s window. On the water’s surface, the flood lamps of a lone ship burned like a single dying ember. A meteor streaked toward the ocean as if to join the vessel. And above, stars blazed as if all glory were shining through pinpoints in the blackness. Gold felt she should draw some meaning from this visitation of lights. But she could not quite work her mind toward what that might be.
Mahsoud turned his face from the window. He coughed once, then again, then began a convulsion of hacking that seemed to tear at his lungs. Unsure what to do, Gold placed her hand on his back and patted gently. His shirt felt damp and clammy. She looked around for help, and the MCD came over.
“Ma’am,” Gold asked, “can you give him something else?”
“I’m not sure there’s much else we can do now,” the MCD said. “I’m going to try to talk to a doctor.”
The MCD put on her headset, went to a comm unit on the wall, and turned the selector switch to HF2. So maybe there’s some oncall flight surgeon, Gold realized. Too bad not to have one on board, but these Air Force types always seemed to be able to reach whoever they needed. That stood to reason, since they were calling from a thirty-four-thousand-foot antenna. Gold had been on Army patrols so deep in Afghan valleys that line-of-sight radios had little use except as clubs.
The MCD seemed to swear under her breath, and she took off her headset.
“What did he say?” Gold asked.
“I couldn’t get through,” the MCD said. “Even if I did, the doctor would probably say the patient needs dexamethasone, but we don’t have it in our kit.”
“Can we do anything else?”
“Just tell him to breathe through the nebulizer for a while.”
Mahsoud followed her instructions and then took the device from his mouth and shut his eyes. He exhaled, coughed some more, and said, “Can you bring me your camera? I wish to see that bomb.”
“You should sleep,” Gold said.
“I cannot. Please, let me see the photographs.”
“Major Parson has my camera.”
“Well, if he cannot transmit the photographs, he does not need it.”
Gold had never heard Mahsoud speak rudely before. His tone stung that much more because it came from someone so unfailingly polite. He really wants to see those pictures, she thought. All right, he’s earned it.
“I’ll be right back,” Gold said.
She climbed to the flight deck, retrieved her camera and headset, and turned on the camera for Mahsoud. As she handed him the camera, he said in English, “I am sorry I snapped at you,
teacher. Please forgive me.” A tear slid down his cheek. “I am so afraid,” he said.
His expression of fear surprised her. He’d wanted to be a bomb technician; he’d have faced this threat all the time. But then, Gold realized, he’d have been in a position to take action. Here, he could only wait, with dread worming its way into his psyche. Perhaps looking at the photos would give him something to do, a way to take part.
When he looked at the first photo, he stared at it for a full minute. Then he advanced the camera, examined the next shot.
“Sergeant Major,” he said, “please use your headphones and call the cockpit.”
“What is it, Mahsoud?”
“I do not have the words in English. But I need to talk to Major Parson.”
16
The airplane did not want to stay trimmed. Parson was flying it now, and he kept pulling back on the yoke to prevent it from descending. But when he used his thumb switch to put in the slightest degree of nose-up trim, the jet tried to climb. The old girl’s bent, he thought. We know we exceeded our g-limits in those storms. And the plane probably had a history of rough landings from Saigon to Baghdad.
He gave up and engaged the autopilot. The autopilot servos and the flight augmentation computers made their constant minute corrections, finer than those of any human hand, and the aircraft held its altitude as if on rails.
Parson hardly counted himself a philosopher. But he marveled that man could do something as ingenious as digging minerals out of the ground and fashioning them into a flying machine or as base as constantly finding reasons to kill one another. Our fallen nature, Gold might call it. Parson knew only that it happened, it sucked, and you had to be ready for it. And here we are, he thought, on the receiving end at thirty-four thousand feet.
Out the cockpit windows, he could discern the horizon easily despite the darkness. The stars ended along a distinct line. Beneath that line, an ocean black as oil. Parson tried to mull over his options. They seemed to diminish as weather and long hours in the air took their toll on the plane.
The hours were taking their toll on Parson, too. His eyes grew so tired the numbers blurred on the dials of his instruments. Just as he most needed good judgment and quick reaction time, fatigue sapped his mind and muscles. He wondered if he—or any pilot—could get crew and passengers through this alive.
Gold’s voice came over the interphone. “Major Parson?” she called.
He reached for his TALK switch and said, “I’m here. What’s up?”
“I’m downstairs with Mahsoud. He’s looking at the photos you took and says he has something to tell you.”
“Does he know what he’s looking at?” Parson asked.
“Maybe. He wanted to be an EOD guy before he got hurt. He’s read everything on the subject he could find in Pashto.”
“That can’t be much,” Colman said.
“Shh,” Parson hissed. “Let her talk.”
“He says his English isn’t good enough for technical stuff, so I’ll interpret for him.”
“Shoot.”
“Okay. Stand by.”
Several seconds passed. Then Gold pressed her TALK button without saying anything for a moment. Parson heard only the background noise of the cargo compartment. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts.
“All right,” she said finally. “He’s saying something about a switch of liquid metal.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Parson said.
“I know it. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll see what else he says.”
“Maybe he’s just delirious from his pain meds.”
“No, he’s not,” Dunne said. “He’s talking about a mercury switch.”
“A what?” Parson asked.
“A mercury tilt switch. It triggers when you move it because mercury conducts electricity. If you have a car alarm, you probably have one on your trunk lid. Somebody opens the trunk, the alarm goes off.”
“So if somebody moves the bomb,” Parson said, “the son of a bitch explodes.”
“Yeah,” Dunne said.
“So we’re fucked,” Colman said. “We can’t even touch it.”
Parson stared outside. The meteor shower seemed to have played out for tonight.
“Bring me that camera,” Parson said. “I remember noticing something on top of that duffel bag. And tell your friend I owe him a case of beer if we get through this.”
“I don’t think he drinks, sir.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“I’ll be right up.”
When Gold brought the camera back to the flight deck, she had it set to the first photo. Despite the washed-out glare from the flash, Parson could see some type of sensor taped by its wires to the outside of the duffel bag. It showed up better in the next shot. Whatever it was, it looked pretty simple. Just a black rectangle about the size of a cigarette lighter, with two wires leading from it. Presumably, those wires led to a battery and more circuitry for an ignition source. He had not thought much about it when he’d taken the pictures, given the cold and the depleting oxygen.
“So tell me about these mercury switches,” Parson said to Dunne. “How much tilt does it take to set one off?”
“Depends on how it’s configured,” the flight engineer said. “A lot of them are set to ten or twelve degrees. And then it’s a question of how many degrees from what starting point.”
A chill ran through Parson’s core. He looked at the pitch reference scale on his attitude indicator, with a line at every five degrees. It would have been an unusual maneuver for him to pitch up twelve degrees, but certainly nothing outrageous. And he’d been banking up to thirty degrees. He supposed the only reason that hadn’t set off the bomb was because he, Colman, and the autopilot had made well-coordinated turns with just enough load factor to keep the mercury from shifting inside the switch. All the while, he’d held his own destruction by his fingertips.
And the storm was another matter. Every jolt might have brought them within a degree or two of annihilation. But for whatever reason, the mercury never bridged its contacts.
“May I see that?” Colman asked. Parson placed the camera on the center console, and Colman picked it up. “What are you thinking? If we disconnect that switch, the bomb won’t go off?”
“No,” Parson said. “I’m thinking if we get rid of that switch, we might be able to move the damned thing. It’ll still go off when we get below a certain altitude.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“I’m working on it.”
Parson thought he sensed some hope in Colman’s voice, more than he felt himself. So they’d identified one mercury switch. What if the bomb had other antitamper devices? Whoever built it knew enough to keep it from exploding due to normal flight maneuvers and even turbulence. The bomb maker apparently wanted detonation only on descent—or if someone actually picked up the device. The bastard had talent. When it came to terrorists, Parson worried more about their competence than their fanaticism.
So what is my plan? Parson wondered. Everybody on this jet expects the aircraft commander to fix this, he thought. To fix anything. A burden of responsibility with infinite density, like the inside of a black hole. Something that admitted of no excuses, no alternatives, no delays, no second chances, no way out. Nothing but to face the problem and deal with the consequences.
At least now he had a little more information. Maybe the EOD people on the ground could give him some specifics. He turned his comm switch to HFI.
“Hilda,” he called. “Air Evac Eight-Four.”
Nothing came back but static. He tried again and still got nothing.
“I bet the antenna for that radio is at the bottom of the Atlantic,” Dunne said.
Parson switched to HF2. He got the same result.
“I hope to hell we haven’t lost both HF radios,” he said. “We’ll be deaf and dumb until we’re close enough to land for the VHFs to work.”
“I’ll check the circuit breakers,” Dunne said. Parso
n knew he was just going through the motions. Since the lightning strike and electrical fire, Dunne had been checking the breakers constantly. Parson decided to try a different frequency, using a call sign for any global Air Force station.
“Mainsail, Mainsail,” he said. “Air Evac Eight-Four.”
No answer.
“Mainsail,” Parson repeated. “Air Evac Eight-Four. Emergency aircraft.”
A woman’s voice came back, barely audible through the hiss: “Air Evac Eight-Four, Yokota. Go ahead.”
That wasn’t the answer Parson expected, but if nobody heard him except an air base in Japan, he’d talk to Japan. The radio operator sounded like a fourth grader. Parson didn’t care if he’d reached a teenage two-striper or a four-star general; he just wanted a phone patch.
“Good to hear you, Yokota,” he said. “Air Evac Eight-Four would like a patch to a DSN line at Scott Air Force Base.”
“Yokota’s ready to copy the number, sir.”
Parson read her the phone number. While he waited for the call to go through, he said over interphone, “They can’t hear me at Lajes, but we get an answer from the Far East?” It was a rhetorical question. Shortwave radio could work strangely, with its signals bouncing off the ionosphere. And it probably got even weirder if you were working with half an antenna.
When the radio operator spoke again, it sounded as if her voice were warbling through waves of interference, like a Cold War propaganda broadcast punched through a jamming signal. “Air Evac Eight-Four,” she said, “the Tanker Airlift Control Center is on the line.”
Parson identified himself and asked the flight manager to put ordnance disposal on the phone. A senior master sergeant picked up.
“Please tell me you know something about bombs,” Parson said.
“I’m a bomb tech instructor. But I can barely hear you, sir.”
“Yeah, we just came through a hailstorm and we also got hit by lightning.”
“You’re weak but readable,” the sergeant said. “How can I help you, sir?”
“We took some photos of the bomb in our tail section. We wanted to send them to you, but the lightning strike knocked out our satcom.”
