The channel went silent.
The voice sounded like he knew what he was talking about, like a former Aardvark driver. The other guy was a southern Army grunt all the way, probably a general, maybe even Schwarzkopf himself. Well, he was still an asshole for not talking to him. Mace was able to take a deep breath to help some of the tension flow out of his body.
Mace was scanning the skies around him when he saw a small speck of an aircraft. The speck’s position on the canopy did not change, which meant it was on a collision course. At six to eight miles it looked like another F-111, but when it got within five miles Mace recognized it as a Panavia Tornado, Western Europe’s most advanced fighter-bomber.
At first Mace thought the Tornado was joining too fast, and he was ready to dodge away, but the big aircraft swooped quickly but easily into place, about fifty feet away from Mace’s right wing. He could see that it was a British Tornado — the UK, Germany, Italy, and Saudi Arabia all flew Tornados — and that it carried two Sidewinder missiles and two fuel tanks, with all of its underbelly weapon stations empty.
The RAF backseater gave Mace a thumbs-up, then gave him a signal Mace did not recognize. Seconds later, the Tornado dipped under Mace’s F-111G, appeared briefly on the left side, then, in a very dramatic display of expert airmanship, rolled inverted and flew atop the stricken Aardvark so the British backseater could look up through his cockpit canopy and get a good look at any damage on the top side. He was giving Mace a visual inspection; now he felt bad because he was too surprised to give the Tornado as thorough an inspection, because Mace knew he must be coming back from an attack against Iraq. The Tornado then moved away from Mace and, as Mace watched in sheer fascination, the British crew jettisoned its external fuel tanks, leaving only the two Sidewinder missiles. He then moved in close again, and the backseater gave Mace another thumbs-up. To his surprise, Mace noticed the very large portrait of a nude woman sitting atop a bomb painted on the left side of the Tornado, along with the name “Gulf Killer” and the names of its ground crews. The Brits had obviously wasted no time putting nose art on their combat aircraft.
“Pretty slick moves, Gulf Killer,” Mace said aloud, being careful not to talk on the radio. As if he had heard him, the Tornado backseater clasped his hands over his head in self-congratulation.
A few minutes later the Tornado backseater pointed above Mace’s head, and the sight astounded him: the huge, looming fuselage of a KC-10 Extender tanker appeared as if out of nowhere, accelerating easily ahead of the crippled bomber. It was at least two thousand feet above him, but it still looked as big as a thundercloud. The Extender’s air refueling boom was already lowered into the contact position, the nozzle extended all the way into the yellow region, and the buddy pod refueling hose and drogue was extended on the tanker’s right wingtip.
The tanker descended and decelerated a few moments later, so now it was only five hundred feet above Mace’s altitude. A white flashing light appeared on the tanker’s right wingtip and the basket-like drogue was extended, a signal that the Tornado was cleared in for refueling. The RAF Tornado backseater waved as the Tornado hungrily moved up and, a few seconds later, slid his refueling probe effortlessly into the round white drogue. Then Mace saw two white flashing lights on the director lights along the tanker’s belly, the signal that he was cleared in to the boom.
He’s going to do it, he thought grimly, flipping his checklist to the “Before Air Refueling” and “Before Pre-Contact” pages. He’s going to do a single-engine refueling with a KC-10 tanker at low altitude over enemy territory. The checklist did not take long because he could not do most of the items: exterior lights were not working, wings wouldn’t move, autopilot was already off, fuel system was dead, radar was dead. Mace flipped the air-refueling-door switch and was relieved to get a green AR/NWS light, meaning the air refueling system was ready for nozzle contact.
Slowly, carefully, Mace eased the throttle forward and inched the nose upward. The F-111G responded sluggishly, rumbling in protest as it climbed. The airspeed did not want to increase at all, it seemed, and Mace nudged the throttle forward some more. Before he realized it, he was at the military-power throttle stop, ready to go into afterburner. He knew he couldn’t do that — lighting the ’burners with structural damage and an engine out could start a fire. He could do nothing else but remain patient and hope his crippled bird could catch up.
It took several long minutes, but Mace finally climbed up behind the KC-10 and was inching toward the refueling boom. He was still a good fifty feet from contact, but the huge underside of the tanker blocked his view of everything else. He was now even with the nozzle and moving toward it. The open end of the nozzle was dark, like the barrel of a cannon aimed right at him. The tanker’s director lights urged him forward and up. God damn, he wished he could talk on the radios! Someone please talk to me!
The nozzle was now directly over the shattered windscreen, less than two feet above Parsons’ head. It was huge, eight inches in diameter, with colored markings along its length to visually indicate the distance between aircraft. Mace could see every scratch, every mark, every little word stenciled on the boom and nozzle. It seemed as if it was going to come right inside the cockpit with him.…
The nozzle was hovering right over Parsons’ head, less than a foot away. The wind rumbling around the boom’s control vanes and under the big tanker’s belly seemed to suck the bomber right up into it. Mace watched it slide aft, getting closer, closer, closer …
Suddenly all of the lights on the tanker’s director-light system flashed rapidly on and off — the breakaway signal. Mace didn’t react very fast — he was watching the boom instead of the tanker and didn’t notice anything wrong until the boom started to move away — but the tanker reacted immediately: it accelerated ahead like a shot and climbed as if it was on an express elevator. The sudden acceleration and the roar of the KC-10’s three huge engines quadrupled the noise in the bomber’s cockpit, and the smell of burning jet fuel was overpowering. For a moment Mace thought he had been struck by the boom and his jet had caught fire. Mace automatically pulled the throttle back, but almost immediately the stall-warning horn blared, so he shoved power back in. When he did so, the F-111G swerved violently to the left and Mace almost lost control.
Just when Mace was about to give it up and try to eject, he glanced over his right shoulder and saw the RAF Tornado tucked in close on the right wingtip as if he was cemented there. Normally a wingman stayed with the tanker on an emergency breakaway, but the Tornado crew chose to stay with the crippled bomber. The presence of the Tornado really helped steady his hand, and several minutes later he had his airspeed and wits back. Mace steered toward the tanker, determined to get it right this time — and then the MASTER CAUTION light, a large yellow light right in the front center of the instrument panel, snapped on.
Mace quickly scanned the instruments and found the problem: the FUEL LO PRESS light was on. The boost-pump lights for the aft body and fuel-dump system were on, indicating no flow, and two of the four forward body-pump lights were on. That meant less than one thousand pounds of fuel remaining. About five to ten minutes, less if he had really bad fuel leaks, until the last engine flamed out. And there was only one step in the “Double Engine Failure” checklist, and he knew it by heart: EJECT. But with all the damage they had sustained on the left side, the capsule might not separate from the plane, and even if they made it, Parsons would probably not survive the impact.
Mace had one more chance: plug the tanker this time or die.