Becky Furness made a few inquiries and got the runaround every time. Women pilots, they said, were paid less to start because they were given more time off and had to be replaced or retrained and requalified more often than men. Bullshit. As a senior squadron flight instructor, she had access to her fellow pilots’ flight records, and she knew that a lot of the guys leaving the squadron who ended up flying in the majors had fewer total hours, fewer pilot-in-command hours, and fewer civilian hours than she did.
She also knew her résumé was a lot more impressive than most.
Born in Vergennes, Vermont, in 1955, she was a 1977 graduate of the University of Vermont at Burlington, majoring in biology, and received a commission in the U.S. Air Force through ROTC that same year after going through a two-year scholarship program. She attended pilot training at Williams AFB in 1978, graduating in 1979 in the top 5 percent of her class. In 1979 Rebecca graduated from KC-135 Combat Crew Training at Castle AFB, Atwater, California, and was assigned to the 319th Bombardment Wing, Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, in 1980, flying the KC-135A tanker on strategic combat alert. After upgrading to aircraft commander and instructor pilot, she transferred to the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, March AFB, California, in 1988, flying the KC-10A Extender tanker. She also upgraded to aircraft commander just before Operation Desert Storm.
Yeah, it was a pretty good résumé, she thought, but what good was it doing her?
Just then, to Furness’ surprise, Sam Marlowe emerged from the flight deck, noticed her sitting by herself, and came over to her. She was surprised, not because he dared to approach her after his embarrassing dressing-down earlier, but because she had been so busy since takeoff that she had no time to get up for relief — now, only minutes after taking over, Marlowe was roaming around. “What’s going on, Sam?”
By unspoken consent, they both were determined to ignore the previous incident.
“We got a call to do an emergency refueling farther north,” Marlowe said. “An F-111 and a Tornado.”
“An Aardvark and a Tornado? We gonna do a buddy refueling?”
“Buddy refueling — one-eleven on the boom and Tornado on a pod — then escort all the way to his divert base,” Marlowe said. “All we got was a set of coordinates for the base — no name. Probably a desert strip for the special-ops guys. We rendezvous in about ten minutes at ten thousand feet.”
“Cool,” Furness said. The refueling altitude, ten thousand feet, was an indication of what the emergency was — a decompressed cockpit, probably from battle damage. Aircrews flying with no cabin pressurization would stay at or below ten thousand feet to avoid oxygen starvation. The strange mix of aircraft was a puzzle, which made the situation that much more interesting. “So which one’s broken?” she asked.
“I don’t know … I didn’t catch the whole thing,” Marlowe replied. “All I know is, we’re going into Indian country.”
“We’re what?”
“They’re sending us over the border to go get the -111,” Marlowe said. “Only about fifty miles or so, but we’ll be over enemy territory. That means a Bronze Star at least, maybe even a Silver Star.”
So much for a cool, safe, secure little world on board the KC-10 tanker. This plane was a big, slow, inviting target for enemy gunners or missiles even at its best performance — at low altitude with a crippled aircraft on the boom, it was a real sitting duck. Even the world’s worst fighter pilot could down a tanker with one arm tied behind his back. Dread went up and down Furness’ spine. This could really get hairy.
She heard herself say, “I’ll be in the boom pod. I gotta see this.”
“Lucky dog,” Marlowe said. “Maybe you’ll see a really chewed-up fighter jock out there. Take some pictures for me.”
SIX
Mace examined Parsons carefully. His face was sheet white from the cold, but his oxygen indicator was still blinking, which meant he was breathing. Fresh blood was still oozing into his mask. Good, his heart was still beating. Holding the control stick between his knees, Mace wiped the stuff out of his mask to keep it from clogging and suffocating him. Parsons’ head rolled to the right, and it appeared that he was trying to tell him something, but in the howl of the windblast thundering through the broken windscreen it was impossible to hear him.
Mace shouted, “Hang tough, Colonel. We’re almost home!” then reattached Parsons’ oxygen mask and strapped him in tight.
Back on the controls, Mace surveyed the instrument panel. Without an operable fuel gauge and with an electrical emergency, he had to manually control the fuel flow to the right engine, and that required almost constant monitoring. The wing fuel had burned down to zero, so now he had to maintain the longitudinal balance by burning fuel from the forward body tanks. But without boost pumps the forward body would never keep itself filled, so Mace followed an emergency checklist and had to pop a fuel-dump-valve circuit breaker, backflow fuel from the aft body tank to the forward body tank through the fuel-dump system, then push in the circuit breaker and watch the angle-of-attack gauge to make sure they weren’t too tail-heavy or nose-heavy.
Normally the F-111G fuel management system was automatic and he rarely thought about it, but it was amazing what a no-shit inflight emergency sometimes did for your memory — he was able to remember all the funny spaghetti diagrams, the fuel-pump relay logic, even the specific tank quantities and boost-pump flow rates. When it came to life or death, the human mind kicked into overdrive.
Once the fuel panel was set up, Mace got on the radio. “Nightmare” had sent him over to a discrete UHF channel, unsecure but assigned all to themselves, so he knew the bozos in charge — and probably half the Iraqi military command staff — were listening in: “Nightmare, what’s the fuckin’ plan? My pilot is still alive, but he looks like Dracula on a bender, and I need some gas or I’m likely to be walking.”
“Breakdance, this is Nightmare.” The irritated voice of General Eyers (although Mace didn’t know that) came on the line. “Unless you have a specific request or emergency that we need to be notified of, keep off the radio. And use proper radio procedures and terminology on this channel. Over.”
“Hey, asshole,” Mace exploded on the radio, “I haven’t heard squat from you guys in over fifteen minutes. You want some emergency info? I figure if I don’t have any more holes in me, I got about twenty minutes’ worth of gas, at most. My pilot’s hurt bad, and he needs attention. I figure I can’t punch out because of structural damage to the capsule, so I gotta set it down. Now I can see lots of nice, straight paved roads down there, so unless you want to come get me and my car-go,” emphasizing the nukes in the bomb bay, “you better fuckin’ talk to me. Over.”
There was a rather long, silent pause; then a different and far less official-sounding voice came back: “Breakdance, this is Nightmare. We’re doing everything we can. You’re still in Indian country, there are border air-defense units all around you, and this is an unsecure channel, so we can’t tell you too much, but we’re going to bring you down soon. Just hang in there. We’re watching you and your airspace very carefully. If there are any bandits nearby, we’ll tell you immediately. Do your best to avoid SAMs. Otherwise, if you see any aircraft approaching you, maintain your last assigned heading and don’t try to evade. Let us know if your a.c.’s condition looks worse. Stay off the air unless it’s an emergency. We’re right here with you.”