Furness found that she was staring open-mouthed at the MG. He looked — well, like a movie star. He had a ruddy, energetic glow in his face, great blond hair peeking out from under his hat, and those green eyes looked so vital, confident, even happy.
“Rebecca?” His face searched hers, looking anxious and concerned but, after realizing she wasn’t hurt, he relaxed. He held her left shoulder with his right hand, reached down, and turned the four-point harness connector, releasing all her harness straps at once. “Move slowly, and let me know if there’s any pain.”
She leaned forward, and he put his left hand on her right shoulder to help ease her away from the seat. “No … no, I feel okay. Everything’s okay.” A fireman was sitting atop the capsule, and with his help Mace eased Furness out of the cockpit. She steadied herself on the canopy sill after her legs were swung out.
Her feet were resting on a mound of snow that had piled itself up all around the Vampire bomber. The nose was almost completely buried in snow, and the wall of snow also nearly covered the wings’ leading edges and engine intakes. If she hadn’t shut down the engines first, they would have flamed out from having the intakes clogged with snow like that. Overall, the plane looked in pretty good shape considering the nose section was lying on the ground.
Mace covered her shoulders with a rough wool blanket as he helped her off with her flight helmet. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, Major,” Mace said. “Let’s get you down from there.” A fireman put a cervical collar around her neck, and several firemen and medics helped her down off the bomber and into a waiting ambulance. With Fogelman on a gurney with her, Furness was laid on another gurney in the ambulance, covered with blankets, and strapped in securely. The MG rode with her the entire way in the back of the ambulance.
“How bad does my plane look, sir?” Furness asked him.
“Don’t worry about that,” Mace replied.
“Okay.” She sighed. He seemed completely nonplussed about the disaster on his runway, which was pretty amazing for an MG. “How’s Mark?” she asked with worry.
He checked on Fogelman, who was being cared for by two medics and a flight surgeon. “Mark cracked his head pretty good. He’s unconscious.” He saw Furness turn away from him and tears start to flow down her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled, as if from the cold. “Hey, everything’s going to be fine. Mark’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not that … I just never crashed a plane before,” she muttered through cold, chattering teeth. “I never even came close …”
“You didn’t crash, Rebecca, you brought yourself and your crew back safely and saved the plane from extensive damage or even total loss,” the MG said. “You should be proud of yourself. Take a deep breath and try to relax.”
“I tried to get away from Paula’s plane … I pulled as hard as I could …” she insisted.
“I said, try to relax, Major,” the MG said — she had forgotten his name already, and was already thinking of him as just the MG. “You did good. You were in a no-win situation. I used to be an Aardvark crewdog, too, and I know about crash landings, believe me.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, unfortunately.” He nodded. “Both me and the pilot got out okay, but I got the grilling of a lifetime — everything but the bamboo shoots up the fingernails and the rubber hoses — and it was all for nothing. That won’t happen this time. I’m in charge of the accident investigation board, and I’ve got procedures to follow, but I will tell you that as long as I’m in charge of the investigation, we’ll dispense with the shit they put me through. I promise you.”
“What is going to happen, sir?” she asked, biting a nail nervously.
“Can the ‘sir’ stuff unless it’s around the brass,” Mace said. “The name is Daren. Daren Mace.”
Rebecca’s lip stopped chattering when she heard that name … and the voice. She had a weird sense of déjà vu, but didn’t know why … somewhere she’d heard that name before.
“You gotta realize that under the regs we gotta do certain things right away,” Mace was explaining. “An aircraft investigation board’s been convened. They’re going to take blood, and they’re going to give you EEGs and X rays and all that shit, and they’ll test your urine once you have to use the bathroom. You realize they’re looking for … foreign substances. They have to do all this right away. A flight surgeon will be with you the whole time, and you can have someone else stay with you if you want — your husband, your parents, anybody. Want me to call someone?”
The ambulance hit a slight bump, which jolted them a bit. She thought about calling her uncle, but he would already be in Washington for the new Congressional session. Ed Caldwell? He’d be useless. Her parents were in Florida, and the nearest sibling was in Dallas, Texas. She had friends at Liberty Air, but no one she wanted to drag out here and stay with her. “There’s … no one,” Furness replied. “Dollie Jacobs will be all right.” She had known Dr. Jacobs, the squadron flight surgeon, ever since she arrived at Plattsburgh.
“Fine,” Mace said. “She’ll meet us at the hospital — she’s checking out the others right now. You realize that the accident investigation board’s already been sworn in, and we’re interviewing the others in your flight, as well as the F-16 crews. We’re also retrieving the Boston Center and Air Defense Command recordings.” He told her who else was on the accident investigation board — they were all Wing officers, all people she knew and trusted — except the new MG, of course. “The most important thing to remember is that nothing you say to me or the board can be used against you, ever, so I encourage you to talk to me and the other board members, and don’t talk to anyone else. The Chief Circuit Defense Counsel has been called in from Langley, so if you feel you want to talk with counsel, we’ll do that right away.” The Area Defense Council was a team of military lawyers who were used as military defense attorneys — they reported only to the Air Force Judge Advocate General and the Secretary of the Air Force in Washington, not to any local commander, and so could not be swayed or influenced by rank or position.
“I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I … I feel just fine talking with you,” Rebecca heard herself say. She hadn’t intended on that sounding so personal, but … it just came out that way.…
“Hey,” Mace said, smiling, as the ambulance slowed to a stop at the emergency entrance to the base hospital. “Better stop that — you’re starting to turn me on, BC.”
Furness’ eyes widened and her mouth went dry. She had heard those very same words before … but where? “Daren. I know that name. I remember … you … you were in Saudi … I mean, Iraq____”
Mace smiled at her, showing her those pearly whites. He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “We’ll talk later … Shamu,” he said. As soon as the ambulance doors opened, he stepped out, and Dr. Dollie Jacobs took his place and began to examine her.
Jacobs had Rebecca transferred to an examining room, where she and two nurses gave her a thorough examination. The entire medical staff was wearing fatigues instead of hospital whites — that was a very unusual uniform-of-the-day combination for the hospital. “We getting an IG inspection or something, Dollie?” Furness asked.
Jacobs was examining Rebecca’s ear canals for any signs of bleeding or eardrum rupture: “There’s … uh … you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“We got a message about two hours ago,” Jacobs explained. “We’re doing a full aircraft-generation — and it’s not an exercise, it’s the real thing.”
“A generation?” Furness asked, thinking she hadn’t heard right. “Are you sure? Not a deployment?” The 394th Air Battle Wing’s primary mission was “deployment,” or preparing to move to another location and begin offensive bombing missions. The wing rarely practiced or performed a “generation”—that was when all of the bombers on base were loaded with thermonuclear weapons, and the tankers configured for long-range refueling missions, and both were placed on round-the-clock strategic alert, ready to go to war.