Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (22 page)

“Got out of army, got out of Russia,” he whispered. “But life of soldier was all I knew.” Shook his head, gave an ironic smile. “Thought with Legion I could serve with best but maybe not have to kill again.”

So the life of the soldier was all he knew. Yeah, Blount could relate. And Ivan had lived that life for a pretty good while if he fought in Chechnya. An experienced fighter, then. He sure looked the part.

“You?” Ivan asked.

“Same thing, bud,” Blount whispered. “Saw bad things. Did bad things. Got out—well, almost. Got back in.”

“Too bad for us.”

Yeah, too bad for us, Blount mused. He could have avoided this fate so easily. He
had
avoided it, and then he'd stepped back into its path.

But he stopped that line of thought as if he'd stomped the brakes
of an old farm truck on a dirt road. Down that road lay self-pity, a thing that would make him combat-ineffective.

He still had a mission.

Blount gave another twist to the bolt, felt more cement grind away. His final mission might change a little bit, depending on whether and when he could free at least one arm.

He still had his orders, given to him long ago.

Sir, this recruit's first general order is to take charge of this post and all government property in view.

A
loft in a sky the color of a robin's egg, far above desert dust, Parson crouched in the boom operator's pod of a KC-135 Stratotanker. Beside Parson, the boom operator lay at his crew station in a prone position, chin on a padded chin rest, left hand near a control stick for the refueling boom. The tanker jet had taken off from Mitiga on a mission to refuel the Mirages on patrol over North Africa. Somewhere out there Chartier and his backseater shared the sky with the tanker, along with a second Mirage flying as wingman.

The Mirage crews searched for targets of opportunity, listened for distress calls, watched for any signs of the missing Marines and Legionnaires. So far they'd reported nothing. Parson pulled back the sleeve of his flight suit to check his aviator's watch. Pretty soon the French jets would reach bingo fuel. Time to gas up and resume the hunt.

Parson wore a headset so he could follow the tanker's radio traffic and interphone conversations. He rode along on this flight as an ACM, an additional crew member. At Mitiga, he'd set all his resources into motion, given every order that could possibly help Blount. If he just sat at his desk now, sick worry would consume him. He wouldn't even have the solace of talking to Gold; she was so busy setting up her itinerary for visiting refugee camps that she didn't have time to chat. And he'd probably spend time worrying about her, too. Here in the air, he could at least see part of his plans in action.

As a pilot in the C-5 Galaxy, Parson had taken gas from
Stratotankers many times, but he'd never seen an aerial refueling from this point of view. Amid UHF hiss, he heard Chartier call the tanker.

“Crude Eight-Seven, Dagger flight has you in sight.”

“Roger that, Dagger. Clear to join,” the tanker copilot called.

The tanker's left-seat pilot, the aircraft commander, gave an order on interphone.

“Okay, folks, let's knock out the preparation for contact checklist.”

Clipped commands crossed the interphone. When the checklist called for the sighting door, the boom operator opened the door to uncover the boom pod window. Beyond the boom pod lay the expanse of the Sahara glaring in the desert sun.

Parson adjusted his sunglasses, peered through the glass. Searched in vain for two specks that would represent a pair of Mirage fighters. The boom operator, a staff sergeant in his early twenties, did the same.

“Tallyho on the Mirages,” the boom operator said.

Parson examined the ground and sky. Nothing.

“Where?” he asked.

“Seven o'clock, sir, right at the horizon.”

Young eyes, Parson thought. He squinted, scanned in a sideways-8 pattern.

There.

Right where beige ground met azure sky, a pair of dots hovered in the haze. At first they appeared to show no relative movement with the tanker. But after a few seconds, they grew larger and took the shape of arrowheads. The Mirages flew a thousand feet below the tanker; in a few minutes they'd climb up to the refueling altitude of 24,000 feet.

The tanker crew finished the checklist. The boom operator lowered the refuel boom. The boom dropped into the slipstream, steered by small winglets, or ruddervators. On the ruddervators, Parson saw
the designation: 134 ARW. These guys came from the 134th Air Refueling Wing, Tennessee Air National Guard. Knoxville folks.

The refueling drogue, which looked like a large basket at the end of a hose, extended from the boom. Most USAF aircraft refueled by inserting the boom into a latching receptacle, but the Mirage gassed up by the probe-and-drogue method. Chartier would have to maneuver his aircraft so that his receiving probe fit into the drogue. Then valves would open and fuel would flow. The job called for precision flying and flawless teamwork between the tanker and receiver.

“All right, I'm in tanker manual override,” the boom op said. “I got comm one.”

“It's your show, boom,” the aircraft commander said.

“Roger, sir.”

The boom operator moved the selector on his comm box to UHF1. With that, he became the director of an aerial ballet conducted at more than two hundred fifty knots. The two Mirages drew nearer but widened their formation. One of them remained a thousand feet below, and the other began climbing toward the tail of the KC-135. As the fighter rose toward formatting altitude, Parson got a better view of its delta wings, its refuel probe jutting from the right side, the weapons mounted on rails under the wings.

The Mirage flew so precisely that it seemed to lock itself into position just below and aft of the Stratotanker. Parson heard Chartier's voice on the radio:

“Dagger One-One is stable.”

“Dagger One-One is cleared to contact,” the boom operator answered.

The Mirage floated toward the drogue. Parson could see Chartier and his backseater, Sniper, in the tandem cockpits. Their helmets became clearly visible, and they flew so close Parson could have seen their eyes if not for their smoked visors. Chartier kept his right hand on the control stick and his left hand on the throttle. He seemed not to move either hand, but Parson knew the French pilot was making
adjustments so minute they required only the slightest pressure from his fingers.

The fighter jet's probe eased into the basket, clicked into place with a momentary mist of fuel. The hose shimmied with the impact.

“Contact,” the boom operator radioed.

“Latched,” Chartier said.

Parson watched Chartier and Sniper with professional interest. A lot of pilots had little rituals for flying this delicate maneuver. In the C-5, Parson liked to lower his seat full down for a better view of the tanker. Some guys called for cool temps on the air-conditioning to avoid sweating. Some chewed gum. A few talked to themselves: “Hold what you got, hold what you got, hold what you got.”

The boom operator monitored his panel, watched the pounds of fuel count down on his gauges. Parson noticed the boom op's unofficial morale patch on his right shoulder. The patch read
KC-135 BOOM OPERATOR
, and it featured an image of Bart Simpson. Beside Bart, the lettering read
PUMP THIS, MAN!
Parson chuckled to himself. As an officer, he knew he should tell the boomer to put on an official patch, but he had more important things to worry about. So did the boomer.

The airplanes reached a turn point on the refueling track, and both began a gentle bank to the right, still connected and fueling. The desert scrolled by below, lakes of sand interrupted by the spiderwebs of dry wadis and the ripples of dunes. A belt of dusty air hugged the ground, but up here on the track, the winds flowed clear.

A couple of minutes went by without any traffic on the radio, so Parson asked the boom operator if he could use comm one.

“All yours, sir.”

“Thanks,” Parson said on interphone. Then he transmitted, “Hey, Frenchie, this is Parson. You comfortable enough to talk?”

The radio hissed for a moment, then Chartier answered. The French pilot could transmit by pressing a button on the throttle assembly without removing his hands from stick and throttle.

“I am as comfortable as if my head were on my
chérie
's
lap on a beach towel on the Riviera.”

The remark made Parson smile despite his worries. “Yeah, right. You guys see or hear anything?”

Another pause. When Chartier spoke again, his tone was serious.

“I am afraid not. We have monitored the guard frequency, listened for beacons, anything. Nothing visual on the ground, either.”

Parson watched the Sahara unrolling beneath him. Blount and the others were down there, at a given set of coordinates, at a certain distance along a radial from a navigational beacon. Just a question of learning the numbers. But how? The fighters, tankers, and drones at Parson's disposal might eventually find his missing friend—or they might accomplish nothing except boring holes in the sky. Parson had to try everything.

He pressed his transmit button and said, “Thanks, guys. See you back at Mitiga.”

“Roger that, sir,” Chartier said. “I am almost full now.” A few seconds later he called, “Dagger One-One requests disconnect.”

“Dagger One-One, Crude Eight-Seven disconnect.”

Once again a mist of residual fuel puffed from the drogue, and the Mirage's probe withdrew. Chartier and Sniper slid farther aft of the tanker and drifted to a slightly lower altitude. The other Mirage eased up into the pre-contact position, called stable, received clearance from the boom operator to move into contact.

The second jet took on its fuel as quickly as the first. Parson noted how aerial refueling in the real world never involved as much time behind the tanker as the AR training missions. On any given training flight, he'd spend an hour or more in the wake turbulence of the KC-135, latching and unlatching. Plugging with the tanker's autopilot on. With the autopilot off. Flying the AR from the left seat, and then from the right seat. Parson had plenty of beefs about policy, but he felt the Air Force did at least one thing well: When the training
made the real-world mission seem easy, you were doing something right.

However, no amount of training could prepare him for his next task, and he dreaded it. He'd decided he owed it to Blount to call the big Marine's wife, just to check in. Parson's official duties did not require it; he was not in Blount's chain of command. But their shared experience in Afghanistan had formed bonds and obligations that transcended rules and regs. A fight to the death against a common enemy had a way of doing that. He had checked with Headquarters Marine Corps earlier in the day, and they'd told him he could contact the family.

When the Stratotanker landed back at Mitiga, Parson thanked the crew for letting him ride along, then climbed down the boarding ladder. The tanker's air-conditioning had cooled the lenses of his aviator's glasses enough that they fogged over when touched by the warm desert breeze. He pulled off the shades, wiped them on the sleeve of his flight suit. The Nomex fabric had frayed along the cuffs; he'd kept this particular suit for years. Parson tended to hold on to flight suits until they wore out completely; he liked the feel of flight gear well broken in.

In the ops center, he opened a Dr Pepper and checked his watch. Two in the afternoon. That made it eight in the morning back in Beaufort, South Carolina. Was that too early to call? No, Blount's people came from salt-of-the-earth farmer stock; they'd probably been up since dawn. Would a call from a colonel scare Bernadette worse than she was already? Probably not. As an experienced military wife, she'd know officers brought the worst news in person, not over the phone. A knock would terrorize her, but not a ring.

With no more excuses to procrastinate, Parson took a swallow of his soft drink and turned on his cell phone. Thumbed through his contacts until he found Blount's home number. Turned on his satellite phone, cross-referenced the number, punched it in.

A world away in South Carolina, the phone rang four times before someone picked it up. Parson was surprised to hear a male voice say, “Blount residence.”

Who was this? Blount didn't have a son.

“Ah, good morning. This is Colonel Michael Parson. Air Force.”

The person on the other end paused for a moment, then said, “Good day, sir. This is Sergeant Major Thomas Buell, retired Marine Corps. I am Gunnery Sergeant Blount's grandfather.”

The voice sent chills up Parson's back. What pain must this man feel right now, with his grandson in enemy hands? Yet Buell found the strength to speak clearly and strongly, and to observe military courtesy to boot. The voice carried the gravel of age, but Buell sounded like someone with a sharp mind who had taken command in a crisis. This Sergeant Major Thomas Buell must have made one formidable Marine in his day. Yeah, Blount would have come from a line like this.

“Sergeant Major,” Parson said, “I am a friend of your grandson's. I'm not in his chain of command, but I'm helping coordinate air support for his recovery.”

“We appreciate your efforts, sir. Do you have any news for us?”

“Only that we're doing all we can. We're keeping manned aircraft and drones up around the clock. Crews have instructions to listen for beacons or voice calls, and watch for any visuals on the ground.”

“I'm familiar with the procedures,” Buell said.

“I just got down from a flight to refuel some fighters on patrol. They're looking and listening for your grandson even as we speak.”

“That's good to hear.”

Buell did not sound relieved or impressed. Parson doubted he had told the man much he didn't already know. Certainly Buell knew the odds, the history of incidents like this.

“Sir,” Parson said, “I won't kid you about what we're facing. But I can't imagine anyone better equipped for this than your grandson.”

Long pause. Parson wondered if the old man had to compose
himself, to fight to maintain his professional bearing. No longer in the service, Buell had no obligation to “sir”
anybody or to conduct himself like a senior NCO. But it seemed part of his nature.

“I thank you for the respect you've shown this family with your phone call,” Buell said.

“How's Mrs. Blount doing?”

“As well as you can expect under the circumstances.”

“May I speak with her?”

“I'll see. Stand by, sir.”

Buell put down the receiver. Then came what sounded like wheels across a hardwood floor. Maybe the old man used a scooter or wheelchair. Parson drew in a long breath. Did he really want to do this? No turning back now. At least he knew Blount's wife and kids had a rock to depend on in the gunny's absence. After a couple of minutes, someone picked up the phone.

“This is Bernadette Blount.”

The woman sounded hoarse, tired. Of course she did, Parson thought. He introduced himself and said, “Ma'am, I'm calling from Libya. I'm a friend of your husband's.”