Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (42 page)

 
          
“Give
’em the fuselage lights, John,” Elliott said. He was busy adjusting his seat
down and forward for the best position for refueling.

 
          
“Roger,”
from Ormack. Just then the Old Dog began to slide to the right, Ormack pressed
on the left rudder pedal and looked anxiously at Elliott.

 
          
“General?
You okay?”

 
          
“Sure,
I’ve got it.”

 
          
“We’re
yawing to the right. Straighten her out. Let up on the right rudder.” The Old
Dog slowly straightened out.

 
          
“You’ve
got the refueling, John,” Elliott said, relaxing his grip on the yoke. His head
rested on the headrest on the back of the ejection seat, his chest heaved.

 
          
“But—”

 
          
“I
was testing out the rudders,” Elliott told Ormack. “I pushed on the right pedal
but didn’t feel anything happen so I pressed harder. I still can’t feel
anything ... I think I’ve lost my right leg.”

 
          
“Goddamn,”
Ormack said, grabbing the yoke and putting his feet on the rudder pedals. “I’ve
got the aircraft.”

 
          
“You’ve
got the aircraft,” Elliott responded, shaking the yoke. Ormack gave it a shake
to confirm he had control. Elliott slid a hand down his right leg and over the
calf. A few hours earlier such an exploration would have caused almost
excruciating pain. Now, nothing. He could see his finger pressing on the muscle
beneath his knee, but he felt
nothing.
It was an eerie feeling, like touching a hunk of salami . . .

 
          
Ormack
looked anxiously at the huge KC-10 looming before them, its boom extended,
waiting.

 
          
“General,”
Ormack said firmly, “I’m aborting this mission—”

 
          
“Ao”

           
“McLanahan had a point, sir. It’s
not worth your leg—”

 
          
“Refuel
this aircraft, Colonel,” Elliott said firmly. “We’re not stopping now.”

 
          
“But,
General, I—”

 
          
“I
said refuel this bomber. Two men have already sacrificed
their
lives for this mission.” He grabbed the yoke, gave it an
angry shake and put a gloved hand back on the throttle cluster between them.
“And if I have to refuel this plane without your help I will. Understood?”

 
          
Ormack
slowly nodded. “All right, General, all right . . . I’ve got the airplane . . .
but I need a pilot, General. A one-hundred percent combat ready pilot. Do I
have one?”

           
“Well, my right calf is about
twenty-five percent, John. But your pilot who also happens to be commander of
the Old Dog is one hundred percent. Refuel this plane.”

 
          
Ormack
nodded in surrender, looked at the air-to-air TACAN distance readout. “Icepack,
Genesis is approaching one-half mile.
^,,

 
          
The
boom operator gripped his fly-by-wire digital boom controls and stared into the
darkness below. The wingtip position lights of the mysterious receiver were
just barely visible, as were some fuselage and upper- position lights. The
slipway-door light danced eerily in the gloom before him, and he had to close
his eyes to avoid getting the “leans,” a loss of equilibrium caused by the
moving light without any horizon references. There were lights out there, but
even at a half-mile he couldn’t see any airplane body to go with them.

 
          
“Genesis,”
the boom operator said, “be advised I have your lights but have insufficient
vertical, horizontal, and depth references for a safe call to precontact
position.”

 
          
“We
have a good tally on you,” Ormack told him. “Clear us to precontact and we’ll
give you range countdown to contact. If you can’t see us that way ...” He
looked to Elliott.

 
          
“Clear
us to precontact,” Elliott said, filling in for Ormack. “Stick the boom out
there, booms. We’ll put this plane underneath it and you plug us.”

 
          
“Roger,
Genesis,” the boomer said uneasily. “You are cleared to precontact position,
with caution.”

 
          
“Roger.
Moving in.”

 
          
Sands
and the boom operator stared anxiously as the slipway door light moved toward
them.

 
          
“One
hundred feet,” Ormack reported as his own depth perception finally snapped in.
Before, he had merely aimed the top of the Old Dog toward the nozzle light
ahead; now he could better gauge the actual distance involved.

 
          
“Still
no—” The boom operator paused. For an instant he could discern an object
passing just on the edges of his wide pod window. He tried to piece that
glimpse into a whole airplane, but it was impossible.

 
          
“Stabilized
precontact,” Ormack reported.

 
          
“What?”
from the boom operator.

 
          
Nothing.
The boom operator saw nothing below him except a single light. Everything else
melted completely into the space around it. The precontact position on most
large aircraft was twenty feet behind and ten feet below the nozzle, less than
sixty feet from where he and Colonel Sands sat in the boom pod. They were
looking directly below the nozzle, in the glow of the small nozzle light, and
there was nothing. In the depths of the growing twilight, Mason
thought
he could see the outline of a
large aircraft—but it could just as easily be his imagination playing tricks on
him. “Genesis, I’m going to turn on the belly lights.”

 
          
“Who’s
in the pod?” Elliott asked quickly.

 
          
“Colonel
Sands and Tech Sergeant Mason,” the boom operator replied.

 
          
“Okay.
Eddie, make sure that’s all that goes in there.”

 
          
“Hell,
I’m not sure if I want to be here.”

 
          
“Clear
on the belly lights,” Ormack said, taking a firm grip on the yoke. The boom
operator reached above him and flicked a switch.

 
          
And
suddenly there it was. The long, pointed nose stretched underneath the boom
pod. Just on the edge of the pod window the outline of the eleven missiles were
visible on their gray pylons. In the direct glare of the tanker’s light the
forward fuselage could now be seen, but the rest of the plane, aft of the
training edge wing roots and beyond, was invisible. Through the sleek, sharp,
Oriental-like angles of the strange-looking cockpit windows, the pilot and
copilot, without helmets or oxygen masks, could barely be made out.

 
          
“What
the ...” The boom operator’s words stuck in his throat.

 
          
“You
got him, booms?” Reynolds asked over the tanker’s interphone. “What is it?”

 
          
“It’s
. . . it’s a B-52 ... I think,” Mason stammered over interphone.

 
          
“You
think?
What the hell is it?”

 
          
“It’s
a damned spaceship. It’s . . .”

 
          
“Acknowledge,
Icepack,” Ormack repeated. “Stabilized precontact and ready.”

 
          
“Elliott,
what the hell are you flying?” Sands demanded.

 
          
“Gas
first, Eddie. Questions later.”

 
          
“Forward
ten,” the boomer said. “Cleared to contact position. Icepack is ready.” Ormack
expertly slid the
Megafortress
ahead.
His practice and experience made for a steady platform, so all the boomer had
to do was extend the nozzle a few feet.

 
          
“Genesis
showing contact,” Ormack said. “Nice job, boom.”

 
          
“Icepack
has contact,” Mason reported. He started the fuel pumps. “Taking fuel, no
leaks.”

 
          
“Taking
fuel,” Ormack acknowledged.

 
          
“All
right, Genesis,” Sands said. “How about some answers?”

 
          
“Eddie,
you don’t want to know,” Elliott told him, glanced over at John Ormack and
managed a smile. The
Megafortress
was
so smooth and steady that it was easy for Ormack to keep the huge bomber in the
boom’s refueling envelope—it seemed he was scarcely touching the controls. “You
don’t want to know where we’ve been, where we’re going, or what we’re doing.”

           
“Where you’re
going?
There’s no question about where, General. You know—hell, you
knew about my code words so you
must
know—that I can only give you enough fuel to make it to Shemya or a suitable
alternate. I can’t fill you up.”

 
          
“You’ve
got to, Colonel. We need as close to full tanks as possible.”

 
          
“General,
I’ve busted more rules in the past twenty minutes than I’ve done in two years.
And that’s a lot, even for me. I can’t give you that much—”

 
          
“This
isn’t a strip alert refueling any more, Eddie,” Elliott said. “This is now an
unscheduled, alternate tactical refueling. We had tanker support from Eielson
and Fairchild scheduled but they didn’t launch. Now you’re it.”

 
          
“You
had
two
tankers?” Sands said. “What
the hell you going with two—?” And then Sands stopped, looked in disblief at
Reynolds and Ashley. They arrived at the answer simultaneously. Missiles on the
strange B-52’s wings . . .

 
          
“Elliott,”
Sands finally said. “What the
hell
is
going on?”

 
          
No
reply.

 
          
“Jesus
Christ,” Sands said. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and stared at the bomber
below them.

 
          
“Ashley?”

 
          
“Computing
max offload now, Colonel,” the copilot replied, pulling out his performance
manuals, charts, and flight plans.

 
          
“Give
us enough to land at
Anchorage
with ten thousand over the high fix,” Sands told the copilot. “We may
need it if runway conditions at Shemya deteriorate. God
damn
. ”

 
          
Under
the close eye of Mason on board the KC-10 and Elliott aboard the Old Dog, it
was nearly an hour later when Ashley nodded to the flight engineer, who radioed
back to the boompod on the tanker’s interphone.

 
          
Elliott
looked across the cockpit and rechecked the fuel distribution system’s
indicators. Ormack had taken it off “automatic” to avoid putting fuel into the
left outboard wing tank in case it sustained any damage when the tip tank
ripped off at Dreamland, and now the system required careful monitoring.

 
          
“Showing
no flow down here,” he radioed to the tanker.

 
          
“That’s
it, Genesis,” Ashley said. “We’ve got enough to return to Shemya, shoot one
approach, go missed approach, and arrive at
Anchorage
with ten thousand over the fix.”

 
          
Elliott
totaled up the gauges and checked it against the fuel totalizer. It would have
to do.

 
          
“I’ll
take a disconnect, Icepack,” Ormack said. In the refueling pod Mason gave a
short countdown and punched the nozzle out of the Old Dog’s receptacle. Ormack
reached up and closed the slipway door.