… Like the AGM-131X missile he had almost launched during the opening hours of Desert Storm.…
He shuddered even thinking about that day. Besides its being the most harrowing day of his life — flying that Aardvark through Indian country with nothing more than glue holding it together — it also ended on the worst possible note. After almost killing himself to save the camp and his pilot, to then be called a … traitor.…
All for not launching a nuke that he wasn’t supposed to launch anyway.
Both he and Parsons survived the crash fairly well, and the two nuclear-tipped missiles were recovered intact, but while Parsons was recovering from his wounds in a hospital, Mace was confined to an empty barracks at Batman Air Base in Turkey, where he was interrogated for three weeks straight. The interrogation took an inordinate amount of time while Washington and the brass played political football, scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do, while covering their fat asses at the same time. As Mace was entering his fourth week in isolation, somebody with balls at the Pentagon and in the Air Force finally decided what had happened wasn’t that bad. That perhaps Mace had done the world a favor by not cooking off the nuke, that the war was going to be won anyway … so without another word he was released and returned to his unit.
But word got around. How could it not, being stuck in isolation for almost four weeks? Speculation and whispering was passed from one serviceman to another … something had happened out over the desert. Something Mace had done that resulted in the injuries sustained by his squadron commander, the destruction of an expensive aircraft, and the failure of a mission … all because of him.
“A flake …”
“Coward …”
“Screwball …”
He had heard them all whispered at some point or another, but the most damaging, the most gut-wrenching of all, was the word Parsons himself had muttered: “Traitor.”
As the buzz and speculation continued on base regarding Mace’s conduct on that mission, he found himself effectively ostracized from the Air Force flying community. He was taken off flying status for several months until being reassigned into a maintenance officer’s role in Incirlik, Turkey, and, to his surprise, he found he enjoyed the challenges of keeping dozens of high-tech war machines in the air seven days a week as much as he had being a radar navigator.
Even after he was removed from the Air Force during the Reduction in Forces cutbacks and then given a Reserve commission, Mace knew he wanted back into maintenance. He was still entitled to fly, and he did so to retain his flight pay, but he no longer wanted to kill for his country … at least not directly. Instead, he wanted to care for the machine that saved his life that morning.
That was the mark Operation Desert Fire had left on Daren Mace, and though he loved the maintenance work, caring for those planes, his personal life never seemed as orderly as his military one. While he was based in Turkey, he found the more he came into contact with people, the less he wanted to be around them, as if somehow they too knew what had happened in his other life and would question him, hold it against him. Wait and watch for him to screw up again. He knew it was ridiculous, even a bit paranoid, but at least Mace had the strength of introspection to recognize these feelings for what they were — emotional baggage. And yet he decided to live with it until it subsided. During that time, even contact with his family was limited. His romantic life in Turkey was nonexistent. Daren would see someone for a few dates, and then when they learned what kind of job he had, the women would wax about the romanticism of it all, the power of being in a big cockpit, of having that stick right there, controlling everything … and then they’d try to get him to tell war stories, make the fantasy even more romantic.
And Daren Mace would cool down. Withdraw, close up. It usually ended up being the last date with the woman in question once she started getting all hot and bothered by his uniform. He frankly didn’t see the point. It was his uniform that had put him in the situation he was in there in Incirlik. Being hammered for something he correctly judged not to do.
The price for Desert Fire had been high for him, but over time, he began to feel he had paid down his debt. He had given the Air Force what they wanted — exile in a shithole base. And he had given himself time to do what he needed — recover. But, stuck there, he’d done the best damned job of his life. Not for them, but for himself. And so, when his group commander, Colonel Wes Hardin, had told him in Incirlik that the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Robins, Georgia, had called and said to him that now-Lieutenant General Layton wanted him to become the maintenance group commander for an RF-111G wing, his old FB-111 Aardvark, he jumped at the chance. He had a love for that plane like no other. It meant going back to the beautiful Northeast, back to changing seasons, back to peace and quiet. As an Enhanced Reserve Program member, he would have steady work and good pay and still lots of time to be by himself. He went to Plattsburgh several weeks early, found a part-time job cleaning and servicing beer and drink taps for local area bars and restaurants — Plattsburgh has more bars per square city block than any city in America. He moved into an efficiency apartment downtown, and found himself ready, even excited, to get started as the new MG when he heard the early-morning roar of F-111s taking off. After a lot of downtime, he was glad to be back in the traces.
Now, sitting in his staff car surveying his flight line, he knew he had a daunting task ahead of him — made worse by the warning message from Strategic Command about some possible action very soon. He was going to have to give this unit a real kick in the ass, shake things up. When — not if but when—the shit hit the fan and they were tasked to go fight overseas, he wanted these warplanes to be ready.
The flight line was virtually deserted. In the growing dawn, Mace could see snow heaped on airframes, fire bottles buried in snow, and taxiways surrounded by ridges of plowed snow and ice so high that visibility was impeded — one mountain of snow near the flight line, piled high by snowplows and truck-powered snowblowers, was over thirty feet high! Mace remembered back to his days at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire when they would put a bomb wing flag atop a snowpile like that and take bets on when the flag would reach the ground — mid-May was the best bet — but now, as the MG and not a give-a-shit crewdog, that pile of snow wasn’t funny anymore.
A few crew chiefs were out working on planes with no shelters, no warm-up facilities, no support vehicles, not even a power cart to stand beside for warmth. Security police trucks were cruising up and down the taxiways between planes, the drivers slouched down in their seats, coming dangerously close to aircraft wingtips and pitot booms. Only a few of the tall “ballpark” light towers were on, and each tower was missing a good number of lamps. The aircraft were parked next to one another haphazardly, mainly because the crew chiefs or marshalers couldn’t see the taxi lines through the snow. The place was a mess. It was time to kick some butt.