There’d be more, a long string beyond that, but for now, just one solid, drink-free day was his goal.
For much of his air force career he had hated paperwork, abhorring the bureaucratic red tape and bullshit. Now he welcomed it— not because he appreciated that it was impossible to run an organization as vast and complex as the air force without it, but because it gave him something to focus on. But inevitably, it was over. When the colonel finished proof-reading the last fitness report— something that could have waited for weeks if not months— he found his small desk completely empty. He got up, deciding to check things in the shop area, a short walk from the complex of trailers used as the squadron offices and dubbed “Hog Heaven” by the men. Besides Devil Squadron, seven A-10A units, over a hundred planes, used King Fahd as their home drome; it was also home to an assortment of helo and C-130 units, not to mention serving as a safe place to set down for anyone in the area. O’Hare on the day before Thanksgiving wasn’t half as busy.
Out in the Devil’s repair areas, one of Knowlington’s crews was refurbishing a Hog damaged during action earlier in the week. A new starboard rudder was being fitted in place on the large double tail at the rear; the colonel stopped to watch as the wing and its new control surface were quickly made whole. It was a testament not only to the crew, but to the men who had designed the plane for rapid repair in battle conditions.
“Colonel, can we help you, sir?” snapped off Sergeant Rebecca Rosen. She had a piece of a radar altimeter in her hand.
That or the liver of some unsuspecting airman who’d come on to her.
Officer’s liver would be larger.
“I’m in good shape at the moment, Sergeant,” Knowlington told her. “How about yourself?”
“Well, there was one thing, Sir.”
The colonel resisted the temptation to say, “How did I guess?” Instead he took a step backwards, gesturing that she should continue. One of the tricks to dealing with Rosen was to keep her from a completely private area where she would feel at liberty to vent for hours.
She squinted, obviously debating whether to ask to speak in his office. The colonel, an old hand at hearing grievances real and imagined, stood hard-faced. It wasn’t that he disliked dealing with true problems. Rosen, however, was a walking folder of potential disciplinary BS. Just under five-two with a trim and not unpleasant build, her most distinguishing feature was the six-by-six chip on her shoulder. Knowlington’s chief sergeant rated her among the best technicians in the air force, an expert on the Hog’s avionics and a tireless worker. He also had her pegged as the top problem magnet in the squadron, a judgment Knowlington couldn’t argue with.
“The other afternoon,” she said. “Captain Meyer, sir, well he, uh— ”
“OK, now tell me. Meyer is who?” Knowlington asked.
Rosen stopped, her eyes receding into their sockets as she realized she had miscalculated. The spec five had obviously expected Meyer to complain about something she’d done; now that Rosen realized he hadn’t, she beat a slippery retreat. The squirm on her face was almost worth the pain she’d cause him next time. “Um, never mind, sir. I have to get this installed pretty much right away.”
“Any time, Sergeant,” said Knowlington cheerfully.
He distributed a few other nods, making sure the crewmen knew he was there but trying at the same time not to bother them. A good part of his job as commander was to be a cheerleader, as much as possible applauding the men— and now women— coming up with incentives to keep the team together and moving in the right direction, but trusting his subordinates as much as possible to do their jobs. Over the past few years he’d found it less and less necessary to be a scumbag; either the air force was getting better, or he was.
A Navy A-6 Intruder touched down on the runway with a loud screech. Knowlington stepped forward to watch as the muscled gray swallow taxied. The first time he’d seen one he’d been at Da Nang, diverted for an emergency landing after flying a bit too close to a triple-A battery in his Thud. He was in good enough shape to circle the field while the Navy pilot, low on fuel, made his own pit stop. The plane had suffered an unexplained electronics failure, a common failure of planes of the era, Intruders especially.
They had beers later. The Navy guy, a lieutenant with two tours under his belt, bemoaned the fact that he would take a hell of a ribbing when he got back to the carrier; real pilots brought their planes back to their ship, no matter what.
Later, on their third or fourth beer, Knowlington saw the glance. It was the first time he’d truly seen fear in a pilot’s eye. In retrospect, he realized that he’d seen other signs before, but not recognized them, didn’t know what they meant: the furtive glance at your hands, the slight hesitation before speaking, the quick order of another drink, the urge to talk too much. It wasn’t fear so much as being afraid of fear, as doubting yourself, and that was what killed you.
He heard later the guy had been shot down on his very next mission. MIA.
Knowlington tried to move his mind off the past, think of something else as the Intruder disappeared down the runway. Hell of a thing, trying to land on a carrier. Skull had never had the pleasure, and he counted himself lucky. Landing on a dime was one thing; landing on something that rolled beneath you was quite another.
Just another thing to make you doubt yourself, squinting for the ball in the dark when you were just about out of gas and probably had to take a leak besides.
Intruders were supposed to be pretty stable bombers, muscular workhorses that carried a ton-load of bombs— 15,000 to 16,000 pounds— off a carrier without breaking a sweat.
Thuds were champion haulers themselves. The notched-wing fighter-bombers had been designed to hump nukes at breakneck speed over enemy lines and get the pilot back in one un-radiated piece. Skull had carried some dummy nukes very early in his career, but what he used the F-105 for was dropping sticks on the North Vietnamese. He’d been pretty damn good at it, too.
Carrying a nuke. Now there was a pucker-ass job, if you stopped to think what you were doing. Some of the real old-timers talked about jets where they knew they’d never get away from the blast. Who was it— Schroeder, maybe? — laughed about the F-84, hanging his butt over Cuba three days in a row.
No, that was a different story. They had a tendency to blur together.
Damn, he wanted a drink.
His heart started pounding. He was back in the Thud, Ol’ Horse, plane one, stone ages. Smell of raw kerosene and something that reminded him of a dentist’s office thick in his nose. Muscling the stick after dropping his load. Tail-end Charlie and he’d lost the rest of the flight. Just like the nugget he was.
Nothing to panic about. Knowlington brought the plane around to his course, climbing and then something happened, something made him crane his neck back. Maybe it was training or luck or intuition or just random chance, but as the young pilot pitched his eyes toward the rear quarter of his plane he saw the double dagger of a MiG-17 coming up to get him.
They were tough little bastards, in theory obsolete but in reality more than competent dogfighters. They got you in a fur ball and you could easily get your throat slit. The eggheads could pretend the F-105 had them outclassed but experience said otherwise. Had Knowlington not realized the bastard was on him, he would have been nailed in thirty seconds.