The Minotaur jg-3 Page 24

The dirt escaping his fingers made a sculpted pile. The wind swirled away a portion of each handful. The slower the dirt trick- led from his fingers, the more of it the wind claimed.

  The most probable argument, Jake decided, was that Athena would destabilize the existing East-West military balance. This ar- gument had finesse. Athena was too cheap to argue the dollars. So argue the consequences. Argue that Athena pushes Russia closer to a first strike. Argue nuclear war and radioactive ashes and the Four Horsemen. If you can’t dazzle them with logic or baffle them with bullshit, then scare the bejesus out of them.

  Jake stood and stirred the pile of dust with his toe. The wind carried it away grain by grain.

  It was late afternoon, on the third flight of the day, and Rita was flying straight legs north and south, each leg one mile farther west of the radar site. Toad was bored. He was using the navigation system to ensure she stayed precisely where Captain Grafton wanted her to be. That was the hard part. After he had turned on the Athena system there was nothing to do but monitor its “oper- ating” light. He did keep an eye on the Athena temp light, so if it came on he could turn off the system in a smart, military manner. For this the U.S. Navy was using its best Naval Flight Officer, a professional aerial warrior. Peace is hell.

  Off to the west, down on the desert, was a long shadow cast by the two-story black windowless building that constituted the only structure in the town known as Deegon’s Well. That building was a whorehouse. Presumably it also contained the office of the mayor and the rest of the municipal employees. From this distance it appeared to be just a tiny box on the desert. He knew it was painted black and had two stories and no windows because he had once inspected it from the parking lot in front. Just a tourist, of course.

  He keyed his ICS mike to call Rita’s attention to this famous landmark, but thought better of it.

  Rita was checking the fuel remaining in the various tanks. He pressed his head against the radar hood and examined the cursor position.

  He heard a whump, a loud, loose whump, and instantaneously the air pressure and noise level rose dramatically. Something struck him. He jerked his head back from the hood and looked around wildly.

  The wind howled, shrieked, screamed, even through his helmet. Rita was back against her seat, slumped down, covered with gore, her right hand groping wildly for her face.

  A bird! They had hit a bird.

  He keyed the ICS without conscious thought and said her name. He couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice.

  The plane was rolling off on one wing, the nose dipping. He used his left hand to grab the stick between Rita’s knees and center it.

  Slow down. They had to slow down, had to lessen the velocity of the wind funneling through that smashed-out left quarter panel. The bird must have come through there and crashed against Rita as she bent over the fuel management panel on the left console.

  He pulled back on the stick to bring the nose up into a climb and concentrated on keeping the wings level. Higher. Higher. Twenty degrees nose-up. Airspeed dropping: 250 indicated, 240, 230—he should drop the gear and flaps, get this flying pig slowed way down —210 knots.

  The gear handle was on the left side of the instrument panel, right under the hole where the plexiglas quarter panel used to be, right under that river of air that was pressurizing the cockpit.

  He tried to reach it. Just beyond his fingertips. Harness release unlocked. No go. Juggling the stick with his left hand, he used his right to release the two Koch fittings on the top of his torso har- ness. If the seat fired now he wouldn’t have a parachute. He reached again. Nope. He was going to have to unfasten the Koch fittings that held his bottom to the ejection seat. With fingers that were all thumbs he released the two catches, then attacked the bayonet fittings on his oxygen mask. Might as well get it off too. He jerked loose the cord that went to the earphones in his helmet.

  Damn — he was stalling. He could feel the buffet and the nose pitched forward. He let it go down and got some airspeed, then eased it back.

  He was having difficulty holding the wings level. Power at about 86 percent on both engines. That was okay. But the smell — Jesus God!

  The overpowering odor made his eyes water. He tried to breathe only through his mouth.

  No longer restrained by the inertia reel in the ejection seat, he grasped the stick with his right hand and stretched across with his left to the gear handle and slapped it down.

  Now for the flaps. He was lying across the center console, trying to keep his head out of the wind blast as be felt for the flap lever beside the throttle quadrant. Leave the throttles alone. Get the flaps down to thirty degrees. Fumbling, he pulled the lever aft.

  Toad was overcorrecting with the stick as he fought to keep the wings level, first too much one way, then too much the other. Goddamn, those peckerhead pilots do this without even thinking about it.

  There! Gear down and locked. Flaps and slats out, stabilator Shifted. Hallelujah.

  He glanced up at Rita. She had shit and blood and gore all over her face and shoulders. Feathers. They were everywhere!

  Her helmet — it was twisted sideways. Using glances, he tried to wipe off the worst of the crap with his left hand as he concentrated on holding the plane straight and level: 140 knots now, 8,300 feet on the altimeter. Conditions in the cockpit were a lot better.

  Were there any mountains this high around here? He couldn’t remember, and he couldn’t see over the top of the instrument panel, bent over the way he was.

  First things first- He twisted her helmet back straight. The face Shield was shattered, broken, but it had protected her face and eyes from the worst of the impact

  She was dazed. She damn well better come out of it quick, be- cause he sure couldn’t land this plane.

  Her right eye was covered with goo, whether hers or the bird’s be couldn’t tell. He wiped at it with his gloved fingers. The bird’s.

  Her left eye was clear but unfocused, bunking like crazy. “C’mon, Rita baby. I can’t keep flying this thing!” In his frustra- tion he shouted. She couldn’t hear him.

  Back to the panel: 135 knots. Maybe he could engage the autopi- lot

  Yeah, the autopilot. If it would work. He jabbed at the switches and released the stick experimentally. Yeah! Hot damn! It engaged.

  He devoted his attention to her. Cuffed her gently, rubbed her cheeks- She shook her head and raised her right hand to her face.

  He got himself rearranged in his seat and held his mask to his face. “Rita?” Nothing. No sound in his ears. Now what? He had forgotten to plug the cord to his helmet back in. He did so. ftGod- damnit, Rita,” he roared- ”Snap out of it.”

  Someone was talking on the radio. He listened. He could hear the words now. It was Grafton. Toad keyed the radio mike. “We took a bird hit. Rita’s a little dazed. We’re going to land at Fallen when she comes around.”

  “Understand you took a bird. Where?”

  “Right in the cockpit, CAG. Hit Rita in the head. We’re going to Fallen when she comes around. Now I’m leaving this freq and calling Fallen on Guard.” Without waiting for a reply, he jabbed the channelization switches and called Fallen tower. ‘Fallen tower, this is Misty 22 on Guard. Mayday. We’re fifteen or twenty mites out. Roll the crash truck.”

  Which way are we heading? 120 degrees. He tugged the stick to the right and settled into a ten-degree turn, which the autopilot held. Fallen was off to the west here somewhere. He craned to see over the instrument panel in that direction.

  “Misty 22, Fallen tower on Guard. Roger your Mayday. Come up…” and the controller gave them a discrete frequency.

  Hey, stupid, look at the radar. He examined it. Be patient. Toad, be patient. You’re doing okay, if only Rita comes around. And if she doesn’t, well, screw it. You can figure out some way to eject her right over the runway, then you can hop out. Too bad those penny- pinchers in the puzzle palace never spent the bucks for a command ejection system for the A-6. But you can get her out some
how. It’s been done before. There — that must be the base there, just coming onto the screen from the right. He waited until it was dead ahead, then pushed the stick left until the wings were level. Now he dialed in the Fallon tower freq and gave them a call.

  Rita was using her right arm to get her left up to the throttle quadrant. “Toad?”

  “Yeah. You okay?”

  “What—“

  “Bird strike. All that goo on you is bird shit and gore. Relax, it ain’t you. Can you see?”

  “I think — right eye’s blurred. This wind. Left is red — blood— can’t see …”

  “Okay. I got the gear and flaps down and we’re on autopilot motoring toward Fallen. After a while or two you’re gonna land this thing. Just sit back right now and get yourself going again.”

  She rubbed at her face with her right hand-

  The autopilot dropped off the line. Automatically she grasped the stick and began flying.

  “See,” exclaimed Toad Tarkington triumphantly, “you can do it! All fucking right! We’re almost home. Raise your left wing.” She did so and he resumed his monologue, only to pause occasionally to answer a question over the radio.

  Rita Moravia flew by instinct, her vision restricted to one eye, and that giving her only a blurred impression of the attitude instru- ments on the panel before her. It was enough. She could feel the plane respond to her touch, and confirmation of that response was all she needed from her vision. Needed now. She would need to see a lot better to land. The wind — it was part of the problem. The wind wasn’t coming into the plane through the shattered quarter panel at 140 knots — the closed cockpit prevented that — but it was coming in at an uncomfortable velocity and temperature.

  Cold. She was cold. She should slow some more.

  She tugged at the throttles with her left hand. Her arm was numb: her fingers felt like they were frozen. The power levers came back, though the engine-RPM and fuel-flow tapes were too blurred to read. Still she turned her head and squinted with her good eye. She could make out the angle-of-attack stoplight indexer on the glare shield and trimmed to an on-speed condition.

  For the first time she looked outside, trying to see the ground. Just a blurred brown backdrop. But Toad could get her lined up.

  She tried to make her left thumb depress the ICS button, and after a few seconds succeeded. “Where are we?”

  “Come left about twenty degrees and start a descent to … oh, say, six thousand. Can you see?”

  “I can see to fly. Can’t see outside very well. Get me lined up and all and I think I can do it”

  Toad got back on the radio.

  She made the heading change and only then retarded the throt- tles slightly and let the nose slip down a degree or so. One thing at a time. She had once had an instructor who liked to chant that to his students, who were often in over their heads. When it’s all going to hell, he used to say, just do one thing at a time.

  The plane sank slowly, the altimeter needle swinging counter- clockwise with about the speed of an elevator indicator. So they had all day. Go down slow and you have an easy transition at the bottom. Go down too fast and … As she sat there she continued to blink and flex her left arm. Doesn’t feel like anything’s broken, just numb. Maybe the world’s most colorful bruise on my shoul- der, some orange-and-purple splotch that will be the envy of every tattooed motorcyclist north of Juarez.

  She was hurting now. As the numbness wore off she was hurting. Her face felt like someone had used a steak hammer on it. Like she had slid down the sidewalk on her cheekbone for a couple hundred yards.

  “Come right about fifteen degrees or so and you’ll be lined up,” Toad said. “You got fourteen thousand feet of concrete here, Rita, but I think we should try for a wire.” He reached up with his left hand and pulled the handle to drop the tailhook. “Just keep it lined up and descending wings level and we’ll be in fat city.”

  “Fuel? How’s our fuel?”

  “About ten grand or so. Just a little heavy. Let’s dump the fuel in the wings.”

  Rita reached with her left hand, up there under that blown-out quarter panel, for the dump switch on the fuel management panel. “I can’t get it,” she said finally.

  “I’ll get it.” Toad leaned across and hunted until he had the proper switch.

  “Landing checklist.”

  “Okay, you got three down and locked, flaps and slats out, stab shifted, boards?” She put them out and added some power. It took a while to get the plane stabilized on speed again.

  “Pop-up?” Toad murmured when she once again had everything under control. “Can you check the fiaper on pop-up?” The switch was on her left console. She had to lower her head and look as she rumbled with numb fingers. “Watch your wings,” Toad warned.

  She brought the wings back to level.

  “Screw the pop-up,” Toad announced, figuring that she just couldn’t ascertain the switch position. “It’s probably still on. Check the brakes.”

  This also took some doing. She had to lift both feet free of the deck where her heels rested and place the balls of her feet on top of the rudder pedals, then push. She had never before realized what a strain that put on her stomach muscles. She was weak as a kitten. She struggled and got her feet arranged and pushed hard. They met resistance. “Brakes okay.” She would have to do this again on the runway if the hook skipped over the short-field arresting gear or she landed long. For now she let her feet slide down the pedals until her heels were once again on the deck.

  “My mask.” She gagged. “Get my mask off!”

  Toad got her right fitting released just in time. She retched and the vomit poured down over her chest.

  Seeing Rita vomit and smelling that smell, Toad felt his own stomach turn over. He choked it back and helped her hold the plane level until she stopped heaving.

  “Okay,” she said when she finally got her mask back on, “check your harness lock and we’re ready to do it.” She took her hand off the stick and locked the harness lever on the forward right corner of the ejection seat.

  “Oh, poo,” Toad said. She glanced his way. He was reconnecting his Koch fittings- “Sort of forgot to strap myself back in,” he ex- plained.

  She ran her seat up as far as she could and yet still reach the rudder pedals. This put her a face a little higher out of the wind, and in seconds she could see better, but only out of her right eye. Her left was still clogged with blood.

  “You’re coming down nicely, passing six thousand MSL, eigh- teen hundred above the ground. Let’s keep this sink rate and we’ll do okay. Come left a couple degrees, though.”

  She complied.

  “A little more. And gimme just a smidgen more power.”

  When she squinted and blinked a few more times, she could make out the runway. There was a little crosswind and Toad had her aimed off to the left slightly to compensate.

  The approach seemed to take forever, perhaps because she was hurting and perhaps because she was unsure if she could handle it at the bottom. She would just have to wait and see, but it was difficult waiting when she was so cold, and growing colder.

  She let the plane descend without throttle corrections, without wiggling the stick or trying to sweeten her lineup. With three hun- dred feet still to go on the radar altimeter, she made a heading correction. She was going to have trouble judging the altitude with only one eye, and she thought about that. She could do it, she decided. There was the meatball on the Optical Landing System. She began to fly it, working mightily to move the throttles. Still coming down, on speed, lined up, across the threshold. Now! Throttles back a little and nose just so, right rudder and left stick to straighten her out … oh yes!’

  The mainmounts kissed the concrete.

  The pilot used the stick to hold the nose wheel off as she smoothly closed the throttles. She had no more than got the en- gines to idle when she felt the rapid deceleration as the tailhook engaged the short-field arresting gear. The nose slammed down. As the pla
ne was jerked to a rapid stop, she applied the brakes.

  She got the flap handle forward with her left hand, but knew she wouldn’t be able to tug hard enough to pull the parking brake handle out. Toggling the harness lock release by her right thigh, she got enough freedom to reach it with her right.

  Toad opened the canopy. As it whined its way aft a fire truck came roaring up and screeched to a halt with firemen tumbling off.

  Canopy open, Rita checked that the flaps and slats were in. Her left shoulder was aching badly now and it was difficult to make her fingers do as she wished. One of the firemen ran out from the wheel well and made a cutting motion across his throat He had inserted the safety pins in the landing gear.

  Both throttles around the horn to cutoff, engine-fuel master switches off as the RFMs dropped. Then the generators dropped off the line with an audible click and everything in the cockpit went dead. Exhausted, she fumbled with the generator switches until they too were secured.

  It was very quiet. She got the mask loose and, using only her right hand, pried the helmet off. The compressor blades tinkled steadily, gently, as the wind kept them turning, like a mobile on the porch of your grandmother’s house when you returned after a long absence.

  A man was standing on the pilot’s boarding ladder. He looked at her and drew back in horror.

  “A bird,” she croaked.

  She heard Toad give a disgusted exclamation. “Wipe it off her, man! It’s just bird guts. It ain’t her brains!”

  They were loading Rita into an ambulance and the crash crew was filling out paperwork when a gray navy sedan screeched to a halt near the fire truck. Jake Grafton jumped out and strode toward Toad as white smoke wafted from the auto’s engine compartment.

  “Looks like you were in a hurry,” Toad said, and managed a grin. He was sitting, leaning back against the nose wheel, too drained to even stand. He felt as if he had just finished a ten-mile run. The crash chief tossed the captain a salute and he returned it even though he wasn’t wearing a hat. He obviously had other things on his mind.

  “How’s Rita?”

  “Gonna be okay, I think. When they looked at her they thought she had brains and eyeballs oozing out everywhere, but they got most of it cleaned off. Never saw so much shit. Must have been a damn big bird. They’re taking her over to the hospital for X rays and all.”