Authors: Tom Young
Silent Enemy (15 page)
After her ordeal, it surprised her how quickly her nails grew back. Just a matter of weeks. Little visible scarring remained. Although Gold had dressed modestly all her life, now sometimes when she wore civilian clothes she would paint her nails a deep glossy red. At the moment, however, they were unpolished and clipped short.
In the months that followed her capture and rescue, she had needed as much strength to resist falling into despair as she’d needed to resist the torture itself. But the same values she had called on at knifepoint gave her perspective, and eventually even a start at forgiveness. That, however, she was finding to be a process rather than a single act.
Gold glanced at her fingertips, rubbed them with her thumb. Then she looked outside. On the ocean below, she saw the lights of ships like diamonds glittering on black velvet.
11
P
arson steered his aircraft out over the water, two fingers of his left hand curled around the yoke. Then he decided to let the flight director and autopilot take over, so he reached down to his right and pressed two push buttons labeled PITCH and LATERAL. The first thing he needed was a clearance, to set up part of the route to Johnston Island. He needed a lot of other things, too, including at least one more aerial refueling. It would be a long night now literally, flying west as darkness moved west. The stars spread before him, a host of trembling silver points.
arson steered his aircraft out over the water, two fingers of his left hand curled around the yoke. Then he decided to let the flight director and autopilot take over, so he reached down to his right and pressed two push buttons labeled PITCH and LATERAL. The first thing he needed was a clearance, to set up part of the route to Johnston Island. He needed a lot of other things, too, including at least one more aerial refueling. It would be a long night now literally, flying west as darkness moved west. The stars spread before him, a host of trembling silver points.
“Take the airplane,” he told Colman. “My radios.”
Parson detached his utility light from over his head. He pulled on its coiled cord and shone it onto the pages of the Flight Information Handbook. He looked up a frequency and rolled it into the number one HF radio.
When he pulled up HF1 audio, he could hear the shifting crackles of radio waves bouncing across great distances of atmosphere. He pressed his TALK switch and called, “Santa Maria. Santa Maria. Air Evac Eight-Four.” In sidetone through his headset, his own voice sounded far away. After just a few seconds, a woman answered him from an oceanic air traffic control center in the Azores.
“Air Evac Eight-Four, Santa Maria,” she said. “Say your request.”
Parson told her his coordinates, then said, “New destination is Johnston Atoll. Yes, the one in the Pacific. Request oceanic clearance, ma’am.”
“Santa Maria is aware of your situation,” the controller said. “You are cleared to three-three degrees north, two-two west, then two-four degrees north, three-seven west. Rest of route to follow later. Maintain flight level three-four-zero. How copy?”
“Air Evac Eight-Four copies all,” Parson said, “but we’d like to amend that altitude. We’ll need to descend for aerial refueling and some other things. May we have a block altitude between two-five-oh and three-four-oh?”
Static hissed for just a moment, and then the Portuguese-accented woman said, “That’s approved.”
“Well, at least somebody finally wants to cooperate with us,” Parson said on interphone. Then he flipped his TALK switch the other way and said, “Thank you, ma’am. Do you have any weather information for our route of flight?”
“Ah, Air Evac Eight-Four, we expect widely scattered convective activity across that region of the Atlantic.”
Parson would have liked more detail, but for an area not covered by land-based radar it was the best he could expect. “Understood,” he said. “Air Evac Eight-Four will maintain a listening watch on this frequency.”
“Roger that, Eight-Four,” the controller said. “Godspeed.”
Parson brought up the flight plan page on his FMS, then entered his new waypoints.
“So where’s this place we’re going?” Colman asked.
“Johnston Atoll is several hundred miles west of Hawaii,” Parson said.
“Oh, man.”
“Yeah. We used to use it as a place to burn up chemical weapons.”
“Sounds like what’s in store for us.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve been there in a C-141, back before they shut it down,” Dunne said. “Sometimes when you flew in, you’d see this great old big column of smoke, and the controllers would warn you not to fly through it.”
“How long is the runway?” Parson asked.
“It’s been a while,” Dunne said, “but I want to say it’s nine thousand feet.”
“Sounds like a hellhole,” Colman said.
“It’s a pretty place, actually,” Dunne said, “but it’s gotta be contaminated to a fare-thee-well.”
“Wonderful,” Colman said.
Parson pressed some buttons on his center console, looked at his CDU screen. “Well,” he said, “the FMS says it’s only sixteen hours away.”
“And we got five hours’ worth of gas,” Dunne said.
“All right, let’s prioritize,” Parson said. “First we need to get fuel again. Then we’re going to make a decision about what to do with that fucking bomb. And we’re
not
just going to hope it’s a dud. You heard what happened to that C-17.”
not
just going to hope it’s a dud. You heard what happened to that C-17.”
“What did the sergeant major say about her friend’s suggestion?” Dunne asked.
“I don’t know exactly what he has in mind,” Parson said, “but after we refuel, we’re going to find out.”
Instinctively, Parson checked his aeronautical charts for places to land if the aerial refuel didn’t happen for one reason or another. The Madeira Islands lay ahead and a bit to the south. Normally, he would never plan a mission in which his crew’s lives depended on an aerial refuel. The tanker could abort for its own emergency. The aerial refuel door might fail closed. Valves might not open. So he’d always have a divert location in mind; he never left himself without a backup plan.
But that was normal ops. He slapped the chart down onto his side console, set a frequency in HF number two, and made another radio call.
“Hilda,” he said, “what’s the status of an AR for Air Evac Eight-Four?”
“We have a KC-135 launching from Lajes any minute now,” the flight manager said. “Texaco Six-Eight should reach you in about three hours.”
Parson looked back at Dunne and said on interphone, “Let me see that fuel sheet again.” Dunne handed him the Form 4054, with its columns of numbers. Parson scanned the form, checked his watch, looked at the fuel flow gauges.
“All right,” Parson said over the air, “that’s closer than I’d like, but it’ll work.”
Parson imagined the Stratotanker lifting into the air from Lajes Field on the island of Terceira, near Santa Maria, in the Azores. The thunder of its engines rolling across Terceira’s windswept pastures. He hoped it wasn’t late.
Setting a course across the water with this fuel situation ran against all his training and instincts. The ocean had never seemed so vast. He wondered if this was how the early navigators felt when they sailed into the unknown, with all the experts telling them they’d reach the edge of the earth and fall into the void, ship and crew plummeting forever.
With a few hours to sweat before the tanker rendezvous, Parson told himself to turn his thoughts to something more useful than pointless worry. He decided now was a good time to find out what Gold’s friend was suggesting.
“Cargo,” he called. “Pilot. You can tell Sergeant Major Gold she can come up here if she wants.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you know about this sergeant major?” Dunne asked.
“Mainly that she’s a mystery,” Parson said. “I don’t get how she does what she does, but I’m glad she’s there.”
“How’s that?”
“Shooting people who don’t like us is the easy part. Understanding them and getting them to understand us is a lot harder. That’s where she comes in.”
“I wouldn’t want that job.”
“Me, neither.”
When Gold appeared on the flight deck, she sat again at the nav table. She donned her headset and said, “What can I do, sir?”
“Tell me about your friend’s idea,” said Parson.
“I have a digital camera. Mahsoud says the EOD people can better help us if they can see the bomb. He says we should take a photo of it and send it to somebody. Can you do that with the computer over there?” Gold pointed to Dunne’s panel.
“Probably,” Dunne said. “I’ve never done that with satcom, but this thing does have a USB port.”
“So we need a way to get the image from the camera into the computer,” Parson said. “Anybody got a card reader?”
“Not with me,” Colman said.
“I’m afraid I don’t have one, either,” Gold said.
“I didn’t bring mine,” Dunne said. “But on a plane full of military people, I know somebody did.”
“I’m on it,” Parson said. He turned the wafer switch on his comm box to PA and told his crew and passengers what he wanted. From downstairs he heard the bustle of baggage being unstrapped and passed around. Boot steps and thuds. After a few minutes, a loadmaster climbed the flight deck ladder. When he slid open the door, he had a cord dangling from his fingers.
“Got it,” the loadmaster said. “It belongs to one of the aeromeds.” Gold took the card reader and passed it to Dunne.
“Tell whoever it is I said thanks,” Parson said. “Sergeant Major Gold, tell your friend the same. What’s his name again?”
“Mahsoud.”
This development put Parson in a better mood. Progress, he thought, or at least something like it. Our chances are still a million to one, but at least we won’t ride it down without a fight.
All his career, the Air Force had sent him to classes on something called CRM, crew resource management. The idea was to encourage aircraft commanders to listen to the rest of the crew and to encourage crew members to speak up. You never knew who might have the nugget of information—or inspiration—that solved a problem. Parson considered it the Air Force’s effort to teach and institutionalize what a good leader would do naturally.
He didn’t know how useful this particular nugget would become, but he intended to find out. As far as Parson was concerned, Gold and Mahsoud had just got promoted from passengers to crew.
GOLD LOOKED FORWARD TO TELLING MAHSOUD
how Parson had taken his suggestion. For the moment, though, she decided to let him rest. She sat at the nav seat and watched the crew. At the moment, they didn’t seem as busy as before. Eventually, Parson turned to her.
how Parson had taken his suggestion. For the moment, though, she decided to let him rest. She sat at the nav seat and watched the crew. At the moment, they didn’t seem as busy as before. Eventually, Parson turned to her.
“I guess we never got around to telling you our new destination, did we?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“They’re sending us all the way across the Atlantic, over Central America, and into the Pacific, to a place called Johnston Island.”
“Oh, my God. Why?”
“They’re worried about that stuff on board. If we roll the airplane up into a ball on Johnston, we won’t hurt anybody but ourselves.”
Gold pondered that for a minute. The thought of that much more flying sickened her, but she had to admit it made sense. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, and if you were one of the few, you were just out of luck. A military concept she knew quite well.
“Will you need to get more fuel?” Gold asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
Parson made a PA announcement to inform everyone else. Gold heard the groans from downstairs. She looked around the flight deck, dreading the hours ahead. Then she wondered if she should take those hours for granted. Apparently, the bomb was not supposed to go off until the plane descended to a certain altitude, but how stable was it? With an armed high explosive in the tail, she thought, our lives could end at any moment. But wasn’t that always true? She knew a colleague struck in the temple by a sniper’s bullet, dead before he hit the ground. A teacher who suffered an aneurysm in her sleep, never to wake. Friends killed by traffic accidents, drunken drivers. Mortality was a silent enemy, invisible but ever present and ever patient.
She knew of wise people who said, “We are not promised tomorrow.” But, dear God, we’re not even promised the next five minutes.
Up ahead, through Parson’s side window, lights gleamed in the distance like swirls of ocher in a sea of ink. Some shone from above the waterline, illuminating hillsides.
“What’s that?” Gold asked. She didn’t really feel like talking, but she forced herself. Better than sliding into quiet depression.
“The Madeira Islands,” Parson said. “Portugal owns them.”
“Where the wine comes from,” Gold said.
“How’s that?”
“Madeira wine. It’s a long-lived red. Back in the days of sail, traders could ship it because it wouldn’t spoil at sea.”
“Oh.”
It figured Parson wasn’t a wine drinker. The one time she’d seen him drink came right after their medal ceremony, when he had a Scotch. It was at an outdoor reception with a cash bar, at Fort Myer, next to Arlington National Cemetery. At least he’d bought good stuff; he’d splurged on Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Parson tried to order one for her, but she couldn’t stand the scent of it. He took two sips of his own, then said, “For those who can’t be here,” and poured the rest into the grass.
Gold sat in the darkness of the flight deck for a while, until the lights of Madeira receded under the left wing. She decided to check on Mahsoud again.
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